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We couldn't fit all our listeners' questions in last time, so we are back for part II with even trickier, thought-provoking inquiries for Ron, Jason, and Mark. They explore the dilemma of choosing a single subject to photograph for life, fears surrounding memory card failures, strategies for selling prints, memorable wildlife encounters, lens selection, and dream behaviors to capture in the wild. The discussion is filled with humor and camaraderie, making it both informative and entertaining.Sound Bites "You're going to be screwed in the spring." "It's kind of a bunch of BS." "It's a dilemma." "It's a constant battle." "You have to be super careful." "It's meant to impress people." "It's a personal choice." "It's not a fair question." "You still have the option." "Thank you for sending it in, Jason." "I'm more fearful of a lot of things." "Bears are where the wild things are." "I take them all." "I would like a pan blur cheetah in full sprint."Chapters00:00 Understanding AI Tool Pricing and Credits 03:05 The Dilemma of Photo Theft in Wildlife Photography 05:58 Listener Questions: Engaging with the Community 09:11 Navigating Copyright and Image Sharing 11:58 Shooting Wildlife in Challenging Conditions 14:48 Choosing Your Subject: A Photographer's Dilemma 33:50 The Quest for the Perfect Shot 37:00 Memory Card Fears and Backup Strategies 46:01 Navigating Print Sales in Photography 52:54 Memorable Wildlife Encounters 01:00:05 Choosing the Right Lens for the Job 01:07:59 Dream Behaviors to CaptureQuestions and IG Links@JohnRay_PhotographyImage theft: Are you contemplating not posting on social media?@Brian_Michaelis_PhotographyCan you share some shooting tips for photographing wildlife in falling snow?@Hunting_with_a_Lens (Jason Mirandi)For each one of you, you can only shoot one species for the rest of your life. Which species would you choose?@PJAdventuresinCanada (Peter and Jen)How fearful are you that your memory cards will fail and what do you do to protect your best pics?@Keri_Jones_Photography Which platforms have you found to be the most successful at selling prints and artwork?@SackettWildlifeImages (Shaun Sackett)What has been one of your other great experiences, excluding bears, while observing bears?@1_foot_shorter (Brandt Bennett)How do you determine what lenses to take?@She_BehindtheLens (Megan)What is your dream animal behavior to capture on camera?Thanks for listening to the Beyond the Wild Podcast. Remember to subscribe to be notified of upcoming episodes for your listening and viewing enjoyment! Beyond the Wild Podcast is sponsored by Pictureline.com and Canon USA.

Ask Austin Anything! In this episode Austin answers questions from listeners just like you. Get your question answered on a future Ask Austin Anything episode by submitting it to the link below.Time Stamped Show Notes:[0:30] - #AAA for January 2023[1:05] - Jo - How should we prepare to job search in today's climate; i.e. big layoffs in large organizations so now there are more "experienced + highly qualified" people hitting up their colleagues for references?[4:31] - MacKenzie  - Do you think recruiters hold it against you if you've applied to your dream company several times in the past?[6:51] - Jen - How to overcome burnout so you're ready for your next job?[10:24] - Rich - Are resume / LinkedIn profile rewrites not worth spending money on?[14:16] - Jasmine - I noticed you changed up some of your content. What new channels and styles are you testing and what are you doubling down on?Ask Austin Anything (And Have Him Answer Live On The Podcast!)Click here to submit your question.Want To Level Up Your Job Search?Click here to learn more about 1:1 career coaching to help you land your dream job without applying online.Check out Austin's courses and, as a thank you for listening to the show, use the code PODCAST to get 5% off any digital course:The Interview Preparation System - Austin's proven, all-in-one process for turning your next job interview into a job offer.Value Validation Project Starter Kit - Everything you need to create a job-winning VVP that will blow hiring managers away and set you apart from the competition.No Experience, No Problem - Austin's proven framework for building the skills and experience you need to break into a new industry (even if you have *zero* experience right now).Try Austin's Job Search ToolsResyBuild.io - Build a beautiful, job-winning resume in minutes.ResyMatch.io - Score your resume vs. your target job description and get feedback.ResyBullet.io - Learn how to write attention grabbing resume bullets.Mailscoop.io - Find anyone's professional email in seconds.Connect with Austin for daily job search content:Cultivated CultureLinkedInTwitterThanks for listening!

Jen - How do I talk with my priest about him not wanting our kids in the church? Leticia - If everyone who disagrees with abortion moves out of LA we will be leaving it to be doomed in sin. Cynthia - I just left morning mass and adoration. At Mass, I don't mind loud kids but during the adoration I was struggling with the kids who were noisy. It was the first time I had to leave adoration. Patrick shares his article, “Suffer the Little Children” Patrick responds to an email from Tina Teresa - How can I talk with someone in a polite way who has been posting a lot of angry things on FB about Roe v Wade? Supreme Court rules for former coach in public school prayer case Patrick responds to the pro-choice memes that have saturated social media over the weekend and points out their false narrative

Chad talks to Leadership Coach and Founder of Plucky, Jen Dary, about working with individuals and companies to create healthy dynamics at work. In fact, Plucky just released a new product that aids in doing just that! Manager Weeklies are notebooks designed to help leaders intentionally set up their weeks and track progress. It includes tips and tricks, including useful 1:1 tools. Each notebook is designed to last one quarter. Follow Jen Dary on Twitter (https://twitter.com/jenniferdary) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jen-dary-46b0367/) Plucky (https://www.beplucky.com/) Manager Weeklies info & order link (https://shop.beplucky.com/products/manager-weeklies-2-pack) Newsletter: beplucky.com/newsletter (https://beplucky.com/newsletter) Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. And with me today is Jen Dary, founder of Plucky. Jen, welcome back to the podcast. JEN: Thank you. My third time. Three time's a charm. I feel very lucky. CHAD: There aren't many people who have been on the podcast as guests three or more times. So you're in an ever-increasing select group of returning guests. JEN: Thank you. I feel like it's maybe because the Tokyo Olympics have just started, but I feel competitive and ready to take on this third session. CHAD: [laughs] So the last time you were on was October 28th, 2019 is when the episode came out. JEN: Millennia ago. CHAD: Not quite two years ago, but yeah, also a millennia ago. And that was Episode 342 so if people want to go back and take a listen to that. And then before that, you were on Episode 270, which I actually don't even know the date of. It was even longer. So welcome back. You are celebrating the eighth anniversary of Plucky. JEN: I know. I don't really think of it in these ways because I don't have an MBA, or I didn't come from a business background or anything. But definitely when I hit five years, I feel like my husband said something about that. He was like, "Honey, you should be really proud. Not a lot of businesses make it five years." And that was not really on my mind. But now that Plucky is eight, I feel like oh man, I'm just so happy to talk about how businesses evolve and how what you thought it was going to be in year one was different than year three, was different than year five, and of course, it's different than year eight. So we're eight years in, but nothing's the same, and everything's the same. I'm sure you've experienced that too. CHAD: It was actually the eighth year going into the ninth year mark that we at thoughtbot started to make big changes. And it was that idea of coming up on a decade. It started to feel like, wow, there's real momentum here. And instead of thinking about what the next year looks like, what does the next decade look like? And are we the kind of company that is going to last 20 years? And that put us in a different mindset. And I started to think about the impact we were having and the legacy that we would have. And was it big enough for the size of the company that we had? JEN: How old is thoughtbot right now? CHAD: We just celebrated our 18th anniversary. JEN: Oh my gosh. All right. Well, maybe at the very end, you can give me your best wisdom for the ninth year. [laughter] CHAD: Oh jeez. Okay. [chuckles] JEN: No presh, but tuck that in the back of your brain. CHAD: Yeah, get some sleep. That's my best advice. JEN: [laughs] Great. CHAD: That would be great. We can come back to that. JEN: Cool. CHAD: So obviously, it's been a big two years since we last talked. I'm sure a lot has progressed in Plucky. How have things changed? JEN: Well, what's funny is that the two years spread that we're talking about or 18 months or whatever it is, for the most part, overlaps with COVID so far. So by the end of 2019, things were cooking, and everything is good. And even, personally speaking, my youngest son would be entering kindergarten in the fall of 2020. Again, as a business owner, a mom, all those things I was sort of at the end of 2019 hot, so good. And then I was anticipating 2020 to be continued pretty much the same as is. Like, we would keep training managers. I would keep traveling. All that would get easier because the kids are getting bigger, then my kid would go to kindergarten. And I was also finishing a book about...I can't remember if we talked about this before, but I was really sick in 2016. I had a brain tumor diagnosis, and I'm okay now. It was benign. I had this memoir that was eh, I don't know, maybe two-thirds done. All that was the plan for 2020, Chad. And I'm sure this is shocking news to you, but none of it happened, including freaking kindergarten, obviously in person. So on the business side of things, I kept everything stable as best as I could. So coaching kept going because coaching has always been remote. We have some products, and we kept shipping those out as best we could. At the very beginning of COVID, when everybody thought it was this three, four-week hiatus from real life, I recorded a story every day. Because I was like, what can I do for all the world that's working? So I recorded a storytime for Plucky with my kids. And I put it out on social media so that working parents could have another 15 minutes of distraction for their kids. That's how cute I was back then. [laughter] After one month of that, I was like, I need somebody to read stories to my kids. Yikes. CHAD: Yeah. [laughs] JEN: So the big thing that changed was that our manager trainings in person obviously I had to cancel those. So I transitioned from in-person to virtual events, and that has continued. And as of this recording, end of July, I was thinking that our November event this year…it's the 20th cohort of So Now You're a Manager. I was going to have it in person. And just last week, I pulled the plug on that. And I was like, no, we're going to stay virtual a little bit longer because I don't know how to predict what the hell is coming. So again, that sort of stabilizing, right? Like, okay, well, now I know how to do the virtual. That will be the stable choice this year, which is weird to say, but true. CHAD: Yeah. So you just gave a great organic listing of the things that Plucky does, and a big part of that was that in-person So Now You're a Manager training, which, if people remember from the previous episodes, new managers at thoughtbot have attended over the years. It's a really great training for people who become managers. So what was transitioning that to remote like? Because you'd only ever done it in person before, right? JEN: Yeah, totally. The first 11 cohorts were in person, and then we got to 12, and that was supposed to happen in March in Atlanta. We canceled that, and it wasn't until June that we had the 12th, and that was the first virtual one. And to say that I needed to go through stages of grief is probably pretty accurate. [chuckles] My energy in person is so a thing, like a tool of mine and just pulling people together, and making safe space for conversations and all that jazz. So I was like, what the hell is that going to be like on Zoom? And meanwhile, remember I'm watching my first grader go through the shenanigans of Zoom for the end of that year. And I'm like, oh my God, how am I possibly going to get grown-ups on this and paying attention and not being distracted? So a couple of things, I will say number one is I definitely interviewed four or five people in the industry who are good at virtual events, and I tried to get their deepest wisdom about it. The second thing is that I made the cohorts smaller. So in person, we have around 20 to 22 max, and in virtual, we do 10 to 12 max. And so that got a lot smaller. Also, instead of being two days back to back, I broke it into three half days which is just a different ask. And I wasn't sure if people would bite at that. I tried to mimic it after how some people do an MBA on the side. So then they go to work, and they practice the stuff they're learning at the MBA. And so that has been my thought like, okay, you'll be with me basically for a month. We'll have three half days together, usually on a Friday. And then you're practicing in the meantime. So between the times I see you, you're improving your listening skills. You're coming back with anecdotes about hires or tough conversations or whatever. So I won't say that's like a silver lining, but it's just a different beast. And the first day I did it, I mean, I'm telling you, I was on the bathroom floor on my knees like, don't let the internet go out. CHAD: [laughs] JEN: I was so scared. I don't know why looking back. I'm in tech, but I'm not technical. It's my husband who helps me set up a monitor and whatnot. Oh God, I was so nervous. And I just thought, shit, this is the thing I can't problem-solve. If the internet goes out, I don't know what to do, but if someone's upset, I can help them. So it just brought all of my skills in a different environment. And now I feel pretty good about it. I don't know if you found this with your distributed company overall, but I have worked very hard to make sure that it's a blend, of course, this digital experience, but also I use the mail. I use snail mail a lot. So attendees get a packet before we begin. They get a gift at the end, a graduation gift. And yeah, I feel like I've learned a lot about how to have a hand-in-hand experience of digital as well as a physical object that they can touch to make that experience more than just a screen. CHAD: Yeah, I think that's important. How did changing the format, reducing the class size, what business ramifications were there for that? JEN: Well, it's way less money. [chuckles] CHAD: Right. Okay, sorry. JEN: No. Oh my God. I want to be very real about these things, especially for people starting their businesses. It's way less money. And also if you think about it, everybody had already bought tickets to Atlanta, and then they had already started buying tickets to...I can't remember what the next one was going to be, New York, I think. So for a lot of the year, everything was, I'll say, comped, but that's not really what's going on. All of a sudden, the amount of seats that I thought I was selling for the year got reduced in about half, and much of that were already pre-bought tickets. So, as a line item, that was way lower. I also think I got...man, I haven't really said this transparently to anybody before, but I'll say it here. I got really scared about what to charge. Do you charge the same thing virtually than you do in person? And so I lowered it, I would say for a year. I lowered it by a couple of hundred dollars for each ticket because I didn't know what the market wanted. And also, I didn't know, oh God, were businesses closing? Were people getting prof dev budgets? Everybody was frozen for a good while. So I'm lucky that now today I'm back up to the same price that it had been before, but it's not as much income per event. And the other thing I'll say which affects money…but again, I want to be transparent for other folks who think about or currently run businesses. One great thing to come out of some of the social unrest of last year is that we now have an equity scholarship for So Now You're a Manager. So in every cohort, be that virtually or in person, I always reserve a seat for someone who's coming from an underrepresented group, so people apply. And that is something that I very happily said I will eat the cost of that ticket because it's important to me to have different voices in the room. And that has been a total awesome thing this year. That just started in January of 2021, but that's something really great that came out of last year. CHAD: Yeah. What did you find that customers wanted, and did it change over time? Was there an appetite for it to be remote, or was there resistance to it? JEN: I think at first people were overwhelmed and didn't want it. That's why I held it from March until June until I thought people were ready. I can tell you categorically that I've had the lowest percentage of parents attend of all time because, let's be real, who wants another kind of obligation? Or also, parents during this time, especially with young children, were not in that growth space necessarily for work because there was so much to keep afloat. So other than the three half days, I also have this optional hour that I throw in just if people can come; there's this extra exercise that didn't fit in from the original curriculum. And I don't think I've had one parent, maybe one, come across all those cohorts that have been virtual to that. So the optional stuff I see parents opting out of. That said, I saw more folks who maybe either live alone or maybe have a roommate but who are pre-family or some people won't have families but someone who was socially like, "It was so hard and tiring last year." And that sort of swung back around towards the summer and end of summer. I saw much more interest there because I think people were really lonely. CHAD: Yeah. And I also think, at least for me personally and for thoughtbot, that was when the thinking definitely shifted that this wasn't going to be going away anytime soon. And so we came to terms with that and started to then make much more long-term plans and permanent changes. JEN: I think it was also in the...I want to say like early fall when Twitter announced they'd be remote. Like, they have an office, but they wouldn't oblige anyone to ever come back again. And whenever that decision was made, there were a couple of other companies...At that point, I was still living in the Bay Area, and there were a couple of other companies that made similar suggestions. And so again, to your point, there was a revisioning of what the next phase was like or at least what to expect. And so, I think people weren't holding out to go back to normal. It was like, what's the new normal? CHAD: Yeah. So when we first shut down offices and went remote, we were giving updates every two weeks, and then it changed to every month. And then it would be like, "There's really no change. We're going to give another update in April." And then April was, "We'll give another update in May." And when it came to June, we just said, "We're planning on being in this mode for at least the end of the year. Let's start all acting and make this sustainable." So that is when our thinking changed too. JEN: Did you feel like with your CEOness and business responsibility over there...what kept you grounded for all that thing? Because obviously every time you make that announcement or regardless of whether that's in person or just...I don't even know– retention or whatever it is. It feels like you're just building strategy on freaking quicksand. CHAD: It wasn't easy. You feel responsible for everybody's well-being, both financially and everything else. And so the lack of stability…you want to provide it in an unstable world. You want to say, "Well, at least you shouldn't have to worry about this. Let's provide…" but it was impossible to do. And I'm much more comfortable with uncertainty. I think there's a spectrum of comfortableness with uncertainty, and I'm pretty far on one end of it, and even I was struggling. Same thing with like I'm very much on the spectrum of not having to worry about anxiety or anything like that, and even I was feeling it. And so I was just like...at one point I said to I think it was Diana or whatever "If I'm feeling this, if I'm getting chest palpitations, [laughs] something's really wrong, and we really need to pay attention to how everybody else is feeling." JEN: Oh, yeah. I even saw that anxiety obviously with coaching clients. There are some clients that when budgets dried up, there was like an initial drop-off, I would say March, April. But then I feel very lucky that the pipeline was still very strong, and I had clients stay with me or join or whatever. You remember as well as anybody not only did we have this health crisis going on, which again we still do but my last class...So third of three of the cohort in May last year was a couple of days after George Floyd's murder. And the responsibility I felt too...like, when all these things were going on last summer, it was like, who freaking cares about anything? It's like these huge things. And you start to say nothing matters. There are only three things that matter in life. And then you kept sort of recycling the drain on that. So here I am going into teaching the third of three classes. And during the third class, I always teach concepts on how to hire, concepts on how to lay someone off and fire someone, which everyone's always very barfy and nervous about. And I try to bring us together and graduate us in what feels like a victorious moment. But that's three days after George Floyd's murder, and everyone is reeling and needing to process. And I remember thinking that morning, I don't know how this is going to go because I was fully willing to rip up the plan and do something different. But at the same time, there's also sometimes they want some structure. Folks want to just show up and take this class and be distracted from what's going on in the world. So we sort of talked about this a few minutes before we started recording but really, what has been fascinating and challenging about continuing to train managers over the last two years is that these very large things are going on in the background: George Floyd's murder, a lot of social unrest in Minneapolis, the election, COVID, all these things. And you can't just put that away and show up to manager training. It is freaking relevant because it is relevant for them. Of course, it's very meta, but all of my students are then going to go back and be responsible for 3, 5, 7 other people in their day-to-day work. So it was really wild, but again, stretching and a challenge that I met with a lot of intention. I don't know if I was always super successful at it, but I thought a lot about it. CHAD: Yeah, I think that was the shift that we saw on our team. And what I've heard from people is that enough is enough in several different categories of things. And like, we just can't keep on doing what we were doing before. It's not working, and it is unacceptable. People are angry too. So it's not just processing. It's anger and wanting to see action, wanting to take action. And yet, doing it in a world where we can't actually be together, I think, made it particularly challenging for some people and for managers to know how to meet their team members where they were. And people process things in different ways too, and people need different things. And at that point, we had hired people who had only ever been remote. So I think the connections that you have with people that you might've worked with in person you can lean on a lot in the beginning. But then you're working with someone or managing someone who you've never met in person. JEN: Yeah. It's a whole new ball game. And I think that the notion of community has gone through the wringer, not only in the worst, it's a rebirth almost. I think the notion of locally what's going on for you and then who can you see? Who can you have a barbecue with? All of those questions of like, who can I be with? Of course, the internet's great, but the internet has some major, major boundaries to it. And people see that at work, and they see that in training. CHAD: One of the things we're struggling with in that category now is there are people who live next to each other because we were historically in offices. And as it becomes more possible to get together with each other, and this is something that, as managers, we're trying to navigate, it actually has a huge potential for exclusion now that we have hired a bunch of people who are anywhere. If the teams that were in-person together but are now working remotely start getting in person again, even if it's just an outing at a park, who's not able to attend that, and how will they feel? And what expectations have we set with them? And then you have just sort of equity and inclusion issues around people we've hired in Brazil since we've gone remote. There's no way for them to come. JEN: Sure. CHAD: It's not fair. And navigating that as a team, I think we've been able to do that, but it hasn't been easy. JEN: I think sometimes the only way to see it is none of it will work. So if none of it will work, then cool. The bar's low. [laughter] Yeah, it's not going to be perfect. And all in person had its issues too. So then, if you just sort of bottom it out and say, cool, cool, cool, there's no one silver bullet answer here. So what that means is yes, as human beings, folks who are possibly able to meet up for coffee will resonate and glow and be psyched to be around some other people. So, how do we say "No," less often to that? Because that's great. That's really something to celebrate. And I'm sure if everybody was in that situation, they would try to take advantage of that too. But then to say, if you're not in that situation, here's another option. And then, every once in a while, we'll mix those options together and have like a rolling menu with it so that nothing gets too static and paralyzed and presumed. And it's in that flow state, which of course, is more fatiguing because you have decision fatigue, and you got to keep making decisions about it. But if you can just say, "Oh, well, we're going to decide that on a week to week basis or on a quarter to quarter." I probably have said this to you before in one of these other podcast conversations, but I just really think that life is a giant science experiment. So if that's true, then you can just say, "Hey, y'all, for Q3, we're going to try this. And at the end of Q3, we'll ask you how that went, and we'll either keep doing it, or we'll totally change it, or we'll increment it." Software people are really good at this because they know that not everything has to go from 2.0 to 3.0. You could go 2.1, 2.2, 2.3. There are incremental builders. So if you can leverage that metaphor even culturally or socially with the makeup of the team and the way you run things, I don't know; I kind of think that's the best you got. CHAD: Yeah. And I think we generally have the idea that we trust people and that we can provide the information. And people will generally use that information to make good decisions that are oriented towards fulfillment. So a really good example when it comes to managers is in an environment where if you're meeting in person with someone, one team member and you're their manager, and you're not meeting in person with another, that could influence negatively the other person's path to promotion or the relationship they have with you and just subtly bias you towards the person that you might be able to meet in person with. And so as a manager, making sure people know that, that that is a thing that can happen is a good way to manage that bias because I think generally, people don't want to let that happen, but they might not even realize it, so they can actively manage it. JEN: Well, it sounds like even in that thought, you are gently nudging people back towards intention and back towards just not sleepwalking through their work, that this is important for us, not only in the distance conversation here but also obviously for race, and for gender and for all kinds of different ways that humans are. We will never get it 100% right and yet intention, and taking a beat, and taking a breath before you move into conversations about promotions or whatever will help remind you hang on a second, remember there's invisible stuff inevitably going on based on who I am and where I came from. How do I make sure things are fair today? Or whatever the reminder needs to be. It sounds like that's...I don't know. It's good that you have that front of mind. CHAD: So that's one example of remote management. How much of before the pandemic were people who were coming and attending the workshops? Were they managing people remotely? And how much of your curriculum was specific to that, if any? JEN: My gut says maybe about a third were remote managers. They are definitely with bigger companies that I was seeing that. The small agencies based in Pittsburgh, you know, Austin, those places were pretty localized. But so what you get with a bigger company is also a bit more infrastructure that supports some of these cultural conversations. And we had it as part of the curriculum, but it wasn't very big, and maybe I would sort of be intentional. There are breakout groups and stuff like that. And I might think I'm going to pair these two together for their practice one-on-one because I know they're both remote managers. I am very intentional about a lot of the pairings and all that stuff, and so I would be thoughtful in that way. But now, on some level, in all these virtual workshops, everybody has an equal footing now. So everybody's kind of screwed, and everybody's also making it work. So that has been a very interesting thing to see. And I always laugh at this example, a woman who came early on, maybe like the eighth or ninth cohort, and she's a remote manager. And she would say, "Well, I don't have a water cooler. I don't have, like, I'm walking down the hall sensing somebody's upset or anything." But she would say, "This is going to sound weird, but I keep an eye on how fast they emoji something." So if you have a person who...You know this person in Slack. They're always on Slack, always so supportive, funny, have something to say, a little thumbs-up emoji, or whatever. But if one day they're at work for sure and they haven't said anything about something, she would learn to read the tea leaves like that and check-in. And I just thought that was so clever and very creative. And what she's alluding to is this level three listening that I teach, which is gut or instinct or intuition. And what she was tracking was basically a change in behavior. And that's pretty much what we're tracking when we're in the office too. There could be many reasons why somebody doesn't emoji something right away. Maybe your daughter just ran into the room. Maybe there's a doorbell. There are a million things. But at the same time, not to be too precious about it but to casually track that at least instinctively. She was doing a good job of meeting the moment as best she could. CHAD: Are there other ways in which what you've been doing has changed over the last year? What are managers concerned about or challenged by? JEN: Yeah. First of all, I always had name tags that allowed for pronouns. But this is now certainly part of the curriculum. When we start, I give some social norms and then some tech norms. And so I make the suggestion that in Zoom, after your name, you put your pronouns. And it's not a huge chunk because I really don't feel like I am the best to teach this, but I've added in a DEI component, diversity, equity, inclusion component. And we have some folks in the alumni community who are DEI consultants, so that's great. I always give them shout-outs and refer over if people are looking for that. I've noticed that people are...I'll say careful, but what I mean by careful is that they are aware of all of the stuff we're talking about, like race and social stuff. Depending on where your office was in the country, the election was sometimes really hard. I think about companies in Ohio or Pennsylvania or swing states where it was not obvious that everybody in the office was on the same page about that. And the way that that stuff comes up and is like this piece of baggage in the room that prevents literally like a website being made. We want to think no, that shouldn't enter. That's not relevant here. And yet people are careful about both trying to say, "Listen, bring who you are. You're accepted here." And also like, well, sometimes what you're suggesting you believe about the world is harmful. The whole Basecamp thing is a good example of that. And so I found the managers who come to my training to just be open to not only sharing their experiences with that but looking very much for some guidance on that from their peers and then from me. CHAD: That's sort of what I was saying about people felt like you needed to be changing the way that you were approaching things. It wasn't okay anymore for most people to say, "We shouldn't be having this conversation. It's not a work-related conversation." It affects people's work and their ability to work. It is a work issue. And you can't simply put everything aside. That's one angle of it, but we're not all equipped. We're not all educated. We're not all ready to be able to do that as managers. JEN: Totally. But with the amount of shit that we have had to handle for the last two years, short of somebody who's a social worker/priest, I don't know who was ready. I feel like a lot of what we're talking about is so resonant for me because all of this is so hard. And if you are alone doing hard things, it's impossible. But the reason that I run the manager trainings the way I do and the reason that I hold onto them after and I put them in a Slack community, they're now alumni of the program. And it's active; it depends on the day. But people have hard questions that they're wrestling with. People have jobs that they're promoting, that they're trying to get people to apply to. It's this active community that goes on afterwards. Because, honestly, Chad, I feel like a big input into me creating So You're Now a Manager and the community around it was my experience becoming a parent. I was one of the first ones of all my friends. I was the first one of my siblings, and my son was the first grandchild on both sides. And I was like, this is so lonely. All my friends are going out in Brooklyn for dinner. And I was 31. It's not like I was very young or anything, but that's New York. And so I had a moms' group. And man, that moms' group got me through those early days because we could all laugh at how hard it was. We could cry together. And when I looked at the transition that people go through from IC, individual contributor, to manager or some level of leadership, you get responsibility. You have to play the messenger sometimes, something you're not totally down with. You have sometimes competition with peers. You have to manage up sometimes. And then you have these people who come to you with requests: I want a new career path. I want more money. I want a different title. And the slog of that is very reminiscent, on some level, of parenting to me. So I thought, well, this is not going to be like, here's your book. Good luck being a manager, although books could be helpful. For me, it seemed like there was at least a certain template of a person in the world who could use community too. So I always say you'll be with me for two days or a month if it's virtual. But I can't possibly teach you everything you'll encounter. That said, we can get some critical skills under your belt. And then you can just continue to riff with this peer network. And that has been a very, I would say, unique thing about the manager training I run and something that is so fulfilling to me. I have a very tiny business. Those are, in weird ways, kind of my colleagues, the funny jokes they tell or those personalities. That was another thing that we had to let go of. In 2020, I was going to have the first reunion. CHAD: Oh yeah. We actually talked about that in the previous episode as an idea. JEN: Heartbreaking. Yeah, it was called Encore. Basically, it was a follow-up and open to anybody that has already taken SNYAM, So Now You're a Manager. I had people who pitched talks, and we had selected them. And yeah, we had to pull the plug on that. So my hope is that next year we can do that. And now we've got almost...actually; I think we just hit 300 people, so maybe 50 will come, I don't know. We'll see. But I like the idea of providing a space for these folks who were new managers when I knew them and when they came through me but have gained some skills themselves and could become thought leaders in this management space. And whenever the world is ready for it, I'm excited to put that together. CHAD: Yeah, that's awesome. That sense of community is one thing I've struggled with, to be honest. Because having done this for 18 years, there aren't many people who worked at the company that work there now anymore. [chuckles] We've grown too. So I no longer have the close personal relationship that I had with most people at the company before or close work relationships. And combined with as we've grown, it's harder...you have to be more of a leader. You have to put yourself aside. It's harder to always be a servant to others. And then I found that especially difficult last year. And it's part of why I needed to not be CEO anymore and to transition to the COO role. Because I couldn't be in a position where everyone was always looking to me continually to make...and as distributed as we are, one of our values is self-management. But continually always looking to me to be the one who always has an answer, who is the stable one, I needed a break from that. So it's been nice, the transition. JEN: I was going to say is it better? CHAD: [chuckles] So it's a little bit different than I expected. So what happened was we made that change. We made other changes, and that was all going well. And then, in February, the largest vaccine scheduling provider in the United States came to us and needed help scaling the infrastructure and all that stuff. JEN: Oh my God. That's exciting. CHAD: And so I, along with a crack team of other experienced thoughtboters, went and spent all of our time focused on that. It has pros and cons, which is right as I was transitioning into a new role; I completely got pulled away and started working full-time with that client for a very important cause, which is the reason why we did it and decided it was worth it. The silver lining is it put everyone else in a position where we went very quickly from Chad's no longer the CEO to Chad's not here right now. [chuckles] And that was unexpected. But I think that it had downsides, but it had upsides too in terms of really being in a position where people could come into their own, into their new roles and sort of a forcing function for some of the changes that we needed to make. JEN: You know, I'll give you major props on that, Chad. Because 18 years and especially, I think this about a lot of things, but especially business here, people get stuck. They really do. They get stuck, especially founders, CEOs. They don't know how to get out of something if they're tired. And there are not a lot of models for what that could look like. The biggest disservice someone could make to leading a company would be to not really be feeling it because that shit trickles down. And if you're tired or if it's not your thing anymore, really, the biggest gift you can give is to go get aligned somewhere else and then hand over the reins to what I keep thinking of as the next generation. I coach a lot of people, or I work with a lot of people who are in the middle, let's say, so they're not C-suite, and they're not newest managers, but they're sort of senior there. They're totally ready to go. I can't overstate that. [chuckles] Will they mess stuff up? Sure. So did you. Will they have questions? Absolutely. But the next generation of every company it's the most strategic thing that a CEO could do is to think, what happens if I'm not here? That allows you to take a freaking vacation, like take a month off. Or that allows you to meet such a huge civic call, which you're describing here, and step away. Or again, God forbid something happened, and you get very sick; it allows the company to be bigger than yourself. So I just commend you on even having the courage to step towards COO and then obviously also kind of redirect as needed this year. But I hope that if there are other CEOs listening or folks in the C-suite who are wiped, this is my gentle nudge to them to hand over the reins at some point. Because you'll get a paycheck, I'm sure you can figure that. CHAD: [chuckles] Being wiped was one small part of it. And I had Diana on who's the new CEO, and we talked about this. We had grown to a certain point. Also, to toot my own horn, I had done a really good job of building a team of managing directors who were really good at what they were doing. And I was no longer the best manager for them. I was no longer what they needed in order to continue to grow. I could do it, but I wasn't the best person for it. So that was the overriding reason to make the change, and being tired and needing to not always be the one that everyone was looking to was certainly a part of it. But yeah, it's been good. JEN: Yeah. I figured we would get there at some point, but we talked a little bit earlier about how I have this new product coming out in September. So the product is called Manager Weeklies, and it's basically...I got to figure out the exact noun for this. I guess this is the marketing moment. [chuckles] But it's basically a small notebook. The way I think of it is it helps you take a deep breath before your week starts. And so I'm not messing with your to-do lists. Everybody has different versions of that, Trello or wherever the heck you keep it. But before you start the week, it is so important to wonder where's my energy at? What's my perspective? What are the couple of priorities? What am I blocking? Just a couple of invitation questions there. And then the idea is that you then can do this on whatever, a Sunday night or Monday morning. And then the rest of the week has, I feel like I've said intention 50 times in this conversation but has intention in it. You can decline those three meetings because they're not the highest priority. You can make some space to actually do the work that comes out of the meetings that you're in. And what I have watched over the last maybe three years are my coaching clients who get themselves together at the beginning of the week who have some sort of practice about setting things up in a good way are the most successful. They get the promotions because they look like they know what they're doing because they do. So anyway, it's called Manager Weeklies. So it's a small notebook. Each notebook is for a quarter. And then, because I'm a coach, I also filled it with other good stuff. Like at the end, there are all kinds of prompts for ways to give praise to people on your team, ways to give feedback, ways to handle conflict, ways to say, "Yes, no, maybe." And then there's a Work Wheel tool at the very end. And so my hope is that people who just feel like they show up on a Monday already behind that they would find some help with that intention. And I feel like what you're saying is that self-awareness component that came through for you, Chad, to say, I'm not the best at this, and also, I'm a little fatigued and so, therefore, deep breath. Here's the strategy going forward. It wasn't reactive, but there was some thought behind it. And so we'll see this fall people get a chance to try that out. CHAD: That's awesome. I feel like it's getting back to your roots but also building on it. So for people who don't know, the Plucky Cards were actually the first way that I was introduced to you was someone showing me a pack of those cards. So, where can people find out more about that? JEN: The best way for people to find any information is just to subscribe to the newsletter. I send it once a month. It's usually a reflection on work, life, something going on there. So if you go to beplucky.com/newsletter, then you'll be first in the know. What's very funny, Chad, is I have a former coaching client who holds the record now. He was the first one to buy the first pack of cards. He was the first one to buy the second pack of cards. [laughs] And he was also the first one to do this Small Group ticket that I recently did as a little offshoot of Plucky. So anyway, in my mind, I always laugh, and I wonder, I wonder if he's going to grab the first pack of Manager Weeklies this fall. But you're right. They certainly plug and play with the cards very well where there's even space in the weekly template to say, what's the one-on-one topic for the week? So it could be a card that you pull, and you use, or it could just be something else going on in the world that you want to bring to all the one-on-ones. But I feel like there are a lot of things I'm not great at in the world, but the things I am good at are people. And then I listen to people over and over again through all of these experiences. And I try to hear what else do they need? What weird little thing can I invent that could help them with some of these things that they struggle with? And I'm also just really mindful of the fact that not everybody has the budget for coaching or for manager training. And I would love for Plucky to be a brand that even if you work for a nonprofit or if you don't have the money to pay for some of those more expensive things that you would have 35 bucks for a pack of cards or 20 bucks or whatever the pricing will be for the notebooks and that you can engage with my brand, even if you're not very wealthy. And I feel like as a person who works and serves an industry like tech, that is always really a priority for me to not only coach or work with the people with the most money. CHAD: Yeah. If I remember right, you designed the cards, right? JEN: Oh my God, I wish. No. CHAD: Oh, okay. JEN: For the first pack of cards I worked with, I don't know if you know him, Greg Storey. CHAD: Yeah. JEN: He's great. Greg Storey did my first deck of cards, and then he moved on, and he's doing other interesting things with his career. So I have a designer who helped me with the second deck of cards called the Manager Pack. So that's questions for managers of managers to bring to one-on-ones, and then the Manager Weeklies are coming out. I've been collaborating with a woman who runs a design little shop called YupGup in Delaware. So her name is Joni. So it is so wild, Chad. I wish that I had any design sense. But it's like, I make these things which look like a terrible PowerPoint. I'm like, here, then there will be a bullet. And then I give it to a designer like Joni at YupGup, and all of a sudden, she has a logo. And then she has some emojis and colors. And I'm like, this is how I felt when I was pregnant, and someone showed me a sonogram, and I was like, (gasps) there's a baby in there. CHAD: [laughs] JEN: This is how I felt when she showed me them, and it was so exciting. And I will never be good enough to even be talented at all to make these things myself. But I hold the idea, and then I find someone who wants to help me make that in the world. It's just magical. That is so fun for me. And so I just ordered them. Actually, I ordered 1,000 of them about three hours ago. And so they'll come in August, and I just know it will be very surreal when I open the box and look at them and think about how many people in the world and pens in the world will be used to set intention, to set up people's weeks and hopefully, make a softer and more fair and thoughtful place to work. CHAD: And one of the things I love about your business and products is that you know you're having an impact beyond that 1,000 notebooks that you put out in the world because each of those people manages 3, 4, 6, 7 people. And if you can make work better for those people, then you have a 7,000-person impact. JEN: Yeah. And it's funny you say that because I think that recently...I keep saying I'm about to go away for a month or just be out of work for a month as a break after this whole COVID time. Since starting Plucky eight years ago, I didn't really have a model. I am not a traditional business. And even though many people kept saying, "When are you going to hire? When are you going to build the team? When are you going to do all of that?" That is not the shape of Plucky medium-term or long-term. I'm not going to be a coach factory. I certainly could, but then I'd end up super burned out and not liking my job. And then I'd have a sad company, and it would be bad. So I don't want to do that. CHAD: And that's literally the opposite of Plucky. JEN: Right. I mean, in the name, right? So, where I have landed as a model is to look at what artists do. And you would never take an artist...I really like Lisa Congdon in Portland. She's a cool, cool artist. And I've heard her speak, and I like her a lot. And what would Lisa Congdon's team look like? She sure isn't hiring other artists to do the work that she's over-signed up for. You get Lisa. And so she has a shop, and then she has partnerships where she teaches at different universities. And as I move into the ninth year here, I'm thinking a lot about what's standing between me and Plucky's shape and what an artist like Lisa Congdon has going on? And honestly, fully transparently, I think it's that I need to own that Plucky is me. And it's so messy in marketing. Do you use the royal 'we'? We at Plucky? Who is we? And I think that there's some good growth in front of me this fall and next year to say, yeah, I'm Jen, and I run a company called Plucky. And I'm putting this stuff out in the world, and I hope to have ripple effects. And it won't be by hiring 100 people. It'll be just like you described, selling things to X people, and then those people's reports, those ripples will follow down. And I'm really grateful to have found myself in this place because I love coming to work every day. CHAD: Awesome. Well, even though you love coming to work every day, also enjoy your vacation. JEN: Oh my God. Thank you. CHAD: And your time off and your time to reflect. JEN: Yes, thank you so much. CHAD: You already mentioned the website, but again, mention that, and then are there other places that people can follow along or get in touch with you? JEN: Yes, sure. So the newsletter, like I said, is beplucky.com/newsletter. On Twitter, you can look at @BePlucky. I'm on LinkedIn, too, obviously for Plucky. And then I have basically a behind-the-scenes account on Instagram because it was too annoying...Like, what do you take pictures of, Chad, when you're a coach? You can't take pictures of confidential conversations. CHAD: [laughs] JEN: So Instagram, I was like, I don't know what to do with this anymore. So anyway, I just have a behind-the-scenes one over there, which is called bepluckster because somebody else had it. So yeah, so all those ways. And also, I just generally say that if you're a person listening to this podcast and you just wanted to say something to me or ask a question, you should always just email me. It's just hello@beplucky.com. I love just hearing from people. And I might not be able to send you a three-page essay back, but I really love just interacting. And if something moved you or made you think about something, whether that was something I said or Chad, you can always just shoot me a note and tell me what you're thinking. I am not precious about that. CHAD: Awesome. Likewise. So you can subscribe to the show and find notes for this episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. You can find me on Twitter @cpytel. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening. Thanks for joining us, Jen. JEN: Thank you. Announcer: This podcast was brought to you by thoughtbot. thoughtbot is your expert design and development partner. Let's make your product and team a success. Special Guest: Jen Dary.

Diahan Southard is a pioneer in the world of DNA testing and family history. She founded Your DNA Guide as a way to teach anyone with DNA how to use it to find out more about themselves and their family. She is the author of Your DNA Guide - the Book, and creator of Your DNA Guide - the Academy, an online learning platform. She spends all her spare time with her three kids and especially looks forward to date night with her handsome husband. Jayne has 23 years of experience in the field of genetic genealogy. She had the extraordinary experience of being mentored by Dr. Scott Woodward and his visionary team that took shape in the earliest days of this burgeoning field. She has been a part of nearly every stage of driving the discovery process forward: field specimen collection, marker selection and assay design, data management and computational processes, analysis, and algorithms, and investigating population-level research questions. She has lectured throughout the United States and international venues on the applications of molecular biology to elucidating ancient and recent genealogical connections. She has authored and co-authored many peer-reviewed scientific publications, as well as general articles on genetic genealogy. It is a pleasure for her to see the accelerating developments in genetic genealogy, and the wide accessibility and application it has for the average human curious about their origins. Listen to Jayne and Diahan, as they discuss with Ellen and Jen: • How the two started out as college friends embarking on a research project together. • How DNA is analyzed and what the results really mean. • Ethnicity results and the clues of family history and groups or communities. • Medical genealogy with DNA testing, possibilities and current challenges. • Issues of anonymity with DNA testing. • Differences between DNA testing companies: values, terms and conditions, and what the companies do with your information. • How does knowledge of your genetic connections affect and/or define your relationships. Want to share your story or ask a question? Call and leave us a message on our hotline: 303-997-1903. Learn more about our podcast: https://iwanttoputababyinyou.com/ Learn more about our surrogacy agencies: https://www.brightfuturesfamilies.com/ Get your IWTPABIY merch here! https://iwanttoputababyinyou.com/merch Learn more about Ellen's law firm: http://trachmanlawcenter.com/ Recommended links: Book Link: https://www.yourdnaguide.com/your-dna-guide-the-book First article in in-depth series about ethnicity results: https://www.yourdnaguide.com/ydgblog/2019/4/15/dna-ethnicity-changes-thats-not-what-it-said-before free download about finding birth parents: https://www.yourdnaguide.com/dna-birth-family

Discover outstanding books to read or give as gifts. Hear Warwick librarians give their picks for some of the best kids, teen, and adult titles from this year. For Adults with Mary Anne • Transcendent Kingdom • Anxious People • Winter in Paradise • What Happens in Paradise • Troubles in Paradise For Kids with Christine • Snail Crossing • The Old Truck • Fire Truck vs. Dragon • The Three Billy Goats Buenos For Teens with Jennifer • Watch Over Me • They Wish They Were Us • You Should See Me in a Crown For Adults with Jen • How to Astronaut: An Insider's Guide to Leaving Planet Earth • Humans • Fortune Favors the Dead • In a Holidaze --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/rhodyradio/message

Ramadan Mubarak to everyone who celebrates Ramadan! I wanted to put this quick and short episode together because I want to bring light on to how being active is an act of worship, and why we need it for Ramadan. Make sure to tune into the previous episodes with the following guests and topics: How to regain mobility during Ramadan with Dr. Jen? How to maintain muscle gains during Ramadan with Belal Hafeez? How to keep momentum during Ramadan with Omar Adam? How to finish Ramadan strong with Maarten van Elst? Remember to: Be Strong. Be Fit. BeFit4Akhirah.

Jen Williams is a travel expert, photographer and online educator who specializes in teaching novice travelers aged 50 and beyond how to live their international travel dreams through courses and services on her website Launch Your Travels. Having been to over 80 countries and islands, lived in 4 different countries and with over 20 years of experience in the travel industry, Jen effectively uses her wealth of travel experience to help her students and clients claim their travel victories. In this episode, I ask Jen: How did you come up with the idea to start this business? Why do you think it's important for people over 50 to travel? What do you think about travel apps? What's one of your favourites? What should people over 50 know before they travel that they might not think about? To learn more, visit Jen's website: [launchyourtravels.com][1] Download her free ebook: [Top 5: How to Stay Safe While Traveling][2]

The Discussion: Space education at science fairs, sweating in space suits, the public attitude towards space exploration while there are so many relevant shows on TV. A correction from a listener and a lesson in Dutch. The News: Rounding up the astronomy news this month we have: A young stellar system showing us moons being formed around exoplanets Pinpointing a Fast Radio Burst to understand what it actually is An update on the Hubble Constant Neptune-like exoplanets How do stars merge in a stable manner? A planetary nebula formed from a star in that missing 3-8 solar masses. The main news story discussion: Protest in Hawaii over the Thirty Metre Telescope. The Sky Guide: Covering the solar system and deep sky objects on offer to amateur astronomers in August: Paul: A tour of the planets on offer, the Perseid meteor show, peculiar galaxy NGC7727 and globular cluster NGC6760, both in Aquila. Jen: How to find Neptune and what to look for. The further afield, the Albireo, Epsilon Lyrae and Izar double stars. Main Object: Caldwell 4, The Iris Nebula Q&A: Could multiple space telescopes use optical interferometry to cheaply outperform the vast expensive ground-based telescopes?

It has been a few years since my husband Steve was on the show, and a lot has changed since I last brought him on. Rather than him and I just talk about our lives, we thought we would pass it over to you to ask your questions. We answered almost all of them, and I hope you enjoy getting to know Steve better. Here are the questions we answered (not in the order we answered them). Advice for tapering-Elzedomaityte Any awkwardness/insight/challenges that come from having your spouse coach you?-Sara Tell us about airport tina-alissmarie What does it feel like to have a famous and awesome wife?-Erin Do you structure cross training for injured athletes or is it up to them? Jen How are you enjoying being a father and what are you excited about experiencing with bailey? - cfluffy Do you lose benefit when you spilt your easy runs up into a morning and afternoon. (Easy runs are normally 6 to 7 miles).- Bridgett Hughes Why are my 10K and half marathon race paces the same and how do I fix this?- Alex Myroon How do you manage the balance between husband/wife relationship and running relationship? My boyfriend and I are both runners and have about the Same level and amount of experience, but sometimes it’s hard to see when we just need to support the other with running without butting in and giving advice and when a little bit of pushing with running is appropriate- Bridget Wiberg What is it like to coach your wife? What do you do if she disagrees with the plan? How do you separate running life from family life? - Kenneth E. Johnson Do you think runners can truly get accustomed to and excel in hot/humid weather, or are we doomed to have a rough experience every time Mother Nature brings summer fury? Asking as a Florida runner...any tips for this are appreciated, too! -Katy Pierce Cook What differences do you find between coaching college athletes and elites(Tina) or recreational athletes? What challenges do you face and how do you overcome them?- Mike Capka How do you balance/decide when a fatigued runner needs a day off or should run threw the fatigue? How do you decide when to scrap a workout or drop it down to an easy effort run?- Mike Capka How do you find the right balance when building a training plan for someone you are coaching? Are there staples you always put in?- Virginie Serre Have you considered training plans that are less than 40mpw?- Lucy Eichenwald What do you think about doing speed works/repeats on a treadmill vs road. How do they compare? -Judy Sherman How much running does Steve do? Does he have a future goal race in mind? Have you two ever raced each other? -Ashton Swinford If you are training to improve your times, when is training for a marathon “good enough” and when should you postpone your goal race to the next season? This season I’ve been sidelined 2x for 2-3 weeks. The first time totally off those weeks, the second time reduced mileage by 25% and didn’t do workouts. Definitely only feel like I did 75-80% of what would be ideal training. For other races I think this is maybe OK but possibly not for marathon?- Emily Hass Ryan Has becoming a father to beautiful bailey changed your coaching philosophy? Liz Ansley  Thoughts on managing expectations and knowing when your goals are unrealistic. -Karen Scobie What are your three pieces of advice for a successful relationship?-Alon Metser Any hacks to speed up your learning curve for the effort scale (it took me most of the first training segment to get comfortable with it, but I might just be a slow learner).  Why are there such relatively long runs in the taper? -David Skytte After your personal experience racing Boston #NoWatchMe, do you or Steve have any new advice or insights about marathon race strategy that might help keep one feeling good throughout most of the race? -Ashton Swinford   Thank you to Bodyhealth and Athletic Greens for being the wonderful sponsors of this episode of The Running For Real Podcast.   If you are struggling to recover quick enough from your training, my little secret is to use BodyHealth Perfect Amino to get you there. It contains all the essential amino acids, and is very easy for your body to use and begin the repair process. Click the link and use code TINAMUIR10 for 10% off.   Athletic Greens is a simple and easy way to get 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole food source ingredients. Just to help my immune system be stronger and greater! It is so simple to do and it taste good as well. Now you can get a free travel pack with 20 servings with your first purchase, Visit here to learn more! Thanks for Listening! I hope you enjoyed today's episode. To share your thoughts: Leave a note in the comment section below. Join the Running for Real Facebook Group and share your thoughts on the episode (or future guests you would like to hear from) Share this show on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest. To help out the show: Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews will really help me climb up the iTunes rankings and I promise, I read every single one. Not sure how to leave a review or subscribe, you can find out here. Thank you to Steve, I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the show.

In this very Special Episode, our heroes reminisce about days of Valentine's past as well as discuss what Valentine's has in store for them this year. How does John celebrate Valentine's Day with his wife, Jen? How does Kevin celebrate with his wife, Jenn? What the Hell is "Sweetest Day"? Tune in and find out! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/kevin918/support

Can you love your body and still want to change it? The answer to this question depends greatly on who you ask. Some people in the body-positive camp think that weight loss and self-love can’t co-exist, while the diet and fitness industry encourages self-hatred. Does the truth lie somewhere in the messy middle? Tune in for Jen, Annie and Lauren’s discussion on the topic.   What you’ll hear in this episode: Has the body positivity pendulum swung too far? Change as a natural consequence of habits and behaviors Mindset blocks and change What research says about how much control you have over your body Altering appearance for self-expression Examining motivations for changes Being realistic about timing of changes Is there way too much overthinking going on? Mothering yourself Identifying when you need self-compassion and when you need tough love The answer to the question of the day!   Resources: Secrets From The Eating Lab Learn more about Balance365 Life here Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, or Android so you never miss a new episode! Visit us on Facebook| Follow us on Instagram| Check us out on Pinterest Join our free Facebook group with over 40k women just like you! Did you enjoy the podcast? Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Google Play! It helps us get in front of new listeners so we can keep making great content. Transcript Annie: Can self-love and a desire to change your physical being co-exist or are they a contradiction of one another? The answer to that question is debatable depending on who you’re asking. On one hand of the body positive camp say body love and weight loss can not co-mingle while it seems as if the rest of the diet industry requires a certain amount of body dissatisfaction as a prerequisite to change. There is no doubt in our minds that the push for body acceptance of all shapes and sizes is a much needed message but what about those individuals who want self-acceptance and still desire to change their bodies?This is a quite complex and messy topic and on today’s episode Jen, Lauren and I share Balance365’s stance on how you can strive for change that’s rooted in self-love and acceptance and joy. Ladies, welcome back to another episode how are you? Lauren: Good. Annie: Why? Why can’t you just answer the question? Jen: I feel like you need to address us individually because what happens is, what people can’t see behind the scenes is we are actually on a video conference call looking at each other so then you are like “Ladies, how are you?” and then Lauren and I stare at each other waiting for the other ones to answer first. Lauren: Who’s going to go first? Annie: Quit being so polite and just answer the question. Lauren, how are you doing? Lauren: I am so wonderful, how are you? Annie: I am golden, thank you. Jen, how are you? Jen: Also wonderful. Annie: I feel like that was just so surface-level answers but we’ll go with it. Jen: Well, if you want to do a deep dive in my problems lately. Annie: Would you like to schedule a coaching call with one of the Balance365 coaches. Jen: Well, I need a new podcast called the Jen show. And I’ll just get all weeps and vent. Annie: I do feel like you’ve used some of our podcast episodes to kind of sort through some of your own issues about exercise. Jen: Yeah, but you know what? It’s helpful for people because my problems are their problems. That’s the narcissist in me. I struggle with things a lot of women struggle with. It can be helpful to go through it with a coach. I actually have a really good idea for a podcast series and that’s to bring on Balance365ers on to the podcast and coach them through whatever block they’re struggling with and sending that out to all of our listeners. Don’t you think that’s a good idea? Annie: I do, yeah and all jokes aside, you’re right, you do have a problems. Jen: I am your average busy working mom that struggles to make time for self care and yeah, that’s why I think our podcast resonates with so many women because we all have surpassed 200,000 downloads I’ll just add that in too. We are not standing on our high horses telling everybody what to do, we struggle with all the same things, have struggled in the past currently or we may in the future so yeah, we’re all in this together. I hope everybody feels that way when they listen and talk to us. Annie: I feel like that just got really serious, like we started out all jokey. Lauren: It started out all good and quickly. Annie: You can always count on Jen- Lauren: To make it an intense counselling session. Annie: To turn it into a serious, sentimental intense conversation. Jen: I’m an INFJ. I like intense conversations. Lauren: I don’t remember what my letters are but they’re the opposite of Jen. Jen: Yeah, we could have called that without you going through the test. Annie: OK. All jokes aside, we do have a kind of a heavy topic today, it’s something, it’s a question that comes up so frequently in our community, so frequently in the diet and fitness world and something that we’ve addressed inside our community but not on the podcast yet and that is “Can you love your body and still want to change it?” and by changing it we mean address your body composition, gain weight, lose weight, change your appearance of some sort and that’s a pretty big snowball to tackle, right? And depending on who you ask you’re likely to get a variety of answers. Extreme body positive activists will tell you that body love and weight loss cannot co-exist, do not co-exist and on the flip-side many professionals in our industry or the diet industry in general as a whole that support weight loss believe that self loathing and body dissatisfaction is a prerequisite to changing a body and here we are as the 3 co-founders of Balance365 yet again in the messy middle, right? Lauren: Yup. Jen: Yup: Annie: And so we’re, you know, again, the answer to that question is going to depend on what camp you’re asking, right? So we’re going to answer this question or discuss some of the talking points that we consider when helping our community members evaluate “Can you love your body and still want to change it? Can they co-exist?” and I think we can all agree that this body acceptance movement or accepting yourself at every shape and size is a much needed message for our culture. But what we’re experiencing is that those who still want to make changes are kind of like, “Well, what about me? What do I do? What, like, how, where do I fall into?” and sadly, it feels like in some ways the pendulum has swung a bit too far in one direction, especially when members of our community are feeling shamed for wanting to change their body still or they’re keeping it a secret or they’re afraid to tell anyone. And that, to us, isn’t neutral or an expression of body autonomy which we are super supportive and this is tricky because on some levels what we do in Balance365 is give women the tools and support they need to reach their goals, which can include weight loss, while simultaneously encouraging them to love and accept themselves and there are people out there who believe that these two concepts contradict one another, which is kind of the debate of the moment, right? Now in our industry “Can you love yourself and want to change it?” Does that mean that you don’t ultimately love yourself if you still want to change yourself? Do you have any thoughts, Jen? Jen: Well, newsflash, almost any change, lifestyle change you make in your life and do consistently is going to change your body because our bodies are always in flux and although they are a representation of our genetics and our environment, they are also a representation of our habits. So I recently changed my mode of exercise. I have gone a couple years of just doing like shorter more intense workouts and now I’m back into a phase where I have the time and opportunity and support to do some heavy lifting. I’m actually going through the Arms Like Annie program that a lot of women in our community are which is a strength training program, full body strength training program, heavy weights and guess what? My body is going to change because that’s what bodies do, they adapt to the stresses you put them under. So this I really see as a big mindset block for a lot of people, whether it’s trying to hate their body to change or resisting change because they’ve learned to love their bodies. I got some really good advice this last spring. I was struggling with a certain mindset around business and money. I was at a conference and I was talking to a man who has built multiple companies and sold them and is a multi multi millionaire. He told me he lives on a street in San Francisco and sometimes he walks out and looks down the street and can’t believe that he could buy every house on the block if he wanted to. But he grew up extremely poor and so why we connected is because I grew up without a lot of financial privilege and I find that affects me today but the advice he gave me that I now see is so universal, he said “You are so busy fighting battles in your head that you are never going to be able to get out there and fight the war” and I honestly see this as one of those mindset blocks, one of those blocks that women run into like and makes them freeze and then they expend this time and energy on it. Do I want to change my body? Don’t I want to change my body? Why do I want to change my body? And then they’re just missing the whole thing that change needs to come from a place of self care and if you are taking action on something that feels like you are caring for yourself, nurturing yourself, mothering yourself, then who cares what the outcome is? Maybe your body will get smaller, maybe it will get bigger, I don’t know. Annie: You just ran through my 3 bullet points in like five minutes. Jen: I’m sorry. I did not read the outline. Annie: So Jen summarized that so well and so concisely we can just end the podcast now. I’m just kidding but you’re spot on. You’re, it’s such a good point that you’re so busy, what did you say? You’re so busy fighting battles- Jen: You’re so busy fighting battles in your head you’re never going to get out there and fight the war and this is what we deal with in an ongoing basis in Balance365, any of our Balance365ers listening will say, “Yeah, she’s right. I mean there are so many women posting daily working through these mindset blocks” and it’s really those different programmings that we have that keep us from actually taking action and doing the things that we want to do or need to do in our lives to feel our best, like our best selves. Lauren: Yeah I was writing something earlier about this kind of exact thing, like the mindset piece that we put first is so important because when you get through that the nutrition habits and exercise habits are so simple, like they’re simple. What trips us up is like these mindset blocks like you’re talking about. Annie: And you know, I just want to back up too and I hope this is inferred and I hope that you can just sense this about us by the way we carry ourselves and the way our program is written and laid out but we absolutely believe in body autonomy and we believe that the individual has control over who and what they use their body for and for what and how long and that means that we respect to variety of goals women may have for their bodies and women come to our program with goals of building self-love and healthy habits and some come with a clear goal of weight loss and we don’t place moral value on either goal over the other. We believe that they’re all worthy and we’re here to help women achieve their goals, whatever they are. Jen: We have women share with us in Balance365 that once they really get that self acceptance piece and love their bodies they’re so afraid of losing it because nobody wants to go back there once you’re not there anymore you don’t ever want to go back in that space. So then they start the habit building process and they start losing weight and that puts them into a negative space almost of self sabotage because weight loss then becomes triggering to them as in “Wait a sec. I worked so hard to love that body and now it’s changing again” and the other thing like, newsflash, our bodies are always going to change every single day we are getting older so our hormones are changing, we’re  getting wrinkles, we’re, you know, our hair color is changing. I mean, our bodies are always changing and I think that is the biggest acceptance piece that needs to happen is your body is always changing so stop this hypervigilance on trying to control it. Annie: Right and I think that getting clear on the why behind your desire to change your body can help answer some of those questions and so often we see women wanting to change their bodies and it’s rooted in self hate or this misconception that if you fix your body you’ll love your life and your life will be perfect and you’ll have the perfect body or ultimately that you want to feel worthy and you want to feel free of shame and you want to have this loving and belonging and it’s our experience that you can’t hate your body into loving yourself and nor can you hate your body into being healthy and if that had worked I think we would have a heck of a lot more “success stories” in our lives than we really do, right? Jen: The greatest act of self love is loving yourself when you think nobody else will, so when you aren’t fitting into society’s mold of what is lovable, right, so it’s, you know, so if you do have a larger body there is a lot of good and value there of learning to love and accept yourself at a larger size before, you know, before the weight loss journey comes, if it ever comes, you know, whatever your choice but you know, it’s like only loving your kids when they’re well behaved, right, like, when, you can just love your body when it’s doing what you want it to be doing and you can’t just love yourself when your behaviors are on point, right, your nutrition’s on point, your exercise is on point, your rockin’ life, you love yourself but then as soon as your behaviors are off track you’re filled with these self loathing thoughts. That’s not love, that’s just like surface level approval. Annie: That’s conditioned. That’s conditioned love. That’s not and ultimately I think what a lot of us would really like and are striving for is to love ourselves unconditionally. Meaning our body can look a variety of ways, our behaviors can look a variety of ways and we still can treat ourselves with compassion that we would so many other people in our lives. Jen: Yeah, another good analogy I use sometimes with women is I moved into a house, a new house about a year and a half ago and it’s an older house and there was people that lived here before us that decorated, painted, designed to this house in a way that suited them but is not to my tastes at all. So, for example, my bathroom is lime green and I hate it, I hate it but I still love my home. I am still grateful to live in this home. This is the nicest home I’ve ever lived in. Growing up as a little girl my mother couldn’t have dreamed of providing this kind of house for me as a kid so every day I wake up I feel like I’m living in my dream home but my bathroom is lime green. Yes, I do want to change that color eventually. I haven’t yet, it just, I haven’t had time, it has been the right time but eventually I will paint the bathroom, I will do some renovations around this house to change it but that doesn’t, that doesn’t take away from the unconditional love and gratitude I have for this home and I wish that people could feel that way about their bodies. Sometimes there are changes that you want to make and as long as those are realistic and within your realm of control the problem is there is just such polarizing views. There’s this whole view that you mentioned at the start, Annie ,there’s this whole idea that you have complete control over what your body looks like and then there’s the other end of the spectrum people saying “You actually have no control over what your body looks like so don’t even bother thinking about it” but I think it was Dr Tracy Mann, we’re interviewing her on our podcast pretty soon here which is really exciting but she has in her books that studies in her book Secrets From The Eating Lab, studies show that it’s in the middle, you know, as usual, we actually do- Lauren: That messy middle.   Jen: Yes, like you can’t change your genetics, of course, but there are certain behaviors we have in our life that will affect the way our bodies look and feel and I think her stats are we have about a 30 percent, 30 percent of the way we look is we’re able to manipulate, which is probably a lot less than some people think and a lot more than other people think and so it’s OK. It’s OK. You can have total love for your body. You can have gratitude for the body that you were given. You can have acceptance of the genes that you have and you can still say, “You know what, I would love to reduce my abdominal body fat and I am going to step forward making change in a way that will reduce the fat I have on my body and that is coming from a place of self-love and self care and also being realistic.” Annie: And I think the important distinction there, Jen, that you’re, in terms of your bathroom, is striving for change doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with it, it’s just different. It’s not good or bad- Jen: Yeah. Annie: I mean I mean to you the lime green might be bad but- Jen: Yeah, I mean, but how some people behave about their bodies is that, taking it back to the house, they would just throw gas around this house and light it on fire like that because they don’t like the way the bathroom looks and here’s the thing, it’s also knowing that there’s a time to address that and not right, like, I have recognized over the last 18 months that trying to make any changes to the interior of my home were just not realistic. I just haven’t had the time or the resources or the money to pay somebody so we haven’t done it and there’s a time to change and then there’s a time to hold the line and just, but you can still wake up every morning and be grateful, right, like it doesn’t have to be something urgent in, like, you know, you can’t love yourself or respect yourself until you have this but I mean, we talk about it in terms of bodies but I mean there’s a lot of people that get hysteria over their house as well because it’s where they live in. Annie:  Yeah or you love your job, you enjoy your job but you want to improve in a particular skill set or – Jen: Yes. Annie: You enjoy your marriage, you love your spouse, your partner, your significant other but you wish you could spend more time on date nights or as you noted you love your children but you wish they would listen better at bedtime but you can, we believe wholeheartedly, that you can want to change an aspect or an element of yourself, your appearance, your being, whatever it is and that come from self love, that come from a place of love and care and admiration for yourself, versus- Jen: It’s not that you are more or less worthy with these changes, which is really that key component, right, like I go in and color my hair, I get blonde highlights every 3 or 4 months or so or 10 months. And it’s like, I just like it and I don’t see myself as the less worth, if I, you know, for whatever reason, if I had to go back to my, you know, grow it all out and have it just have my natural hair color, I wouldn’t be like, you know, feeling awful about myself, it would just be “Oh, like, I love coloring my hair. I wear makeup, you know.” There’s all these things, right but like- Lauren: Our outward appearance can be an expression right we are and people have different preferences, people like different hair colors and different hair styles and different makeup styles, that’s OK. It doesn’t mean like we don’t love ourselves if we’re not wearing makeup and that’s how we can use that analogy when we’re talking about our bodies. Like, you don’t have to, we say this all the time, you don’t have to love every little tiny part to love the whole, right? Annie: That’s exactly how I feel about muscles, to me they’re like an accessory, like they’re like my favorite accessory. It is honestly, it’s an act of self-expression for me to have visible muscles. Now if for whatever reason I didn’t have the visible muscles, you know, it might be an adjustment but I ultimately know that I am a human of value, of worth, just innately, not because I look a certain way, not because I can do certain things in the gym with my muscles that look a certain way. I just have value because I’m a human, as do all all women, and I mean and it’s so easy for us to see as mothers and all, we could say the same thing about our kids, like, why do our kids have value? Just because they are, just because they’re beings, they’re living, breathing humans but to give ourselves that same sense of value and worth seems so difficult. Jen: Yeah I think what happens is people, they just, they overthink this and it gets people in a tizzy on both ends whether it’s from believing you can’t love yourself until you look a certain way or believing that if you’re making changes you don’t love yourself, you know, there’s just way too much overthinking going on. Annie: So what with the approach that we’ve already kind of touched on that we take in our program is we encourage our members to adopt a self-love approach to change and if weight loss is the way in which you want to change your body, it can be a by-product of your habits and a way that you care for yourself. Jen: Yeah and it’s always a byproduct of your habits, always, right? So when you are, like, we’ve covered this in previous podcasts, but you can’t just say, snap your fingers and lose 10 pounds. Annie didn’t snap her fingers and grow muscles. All changes are a byproduct of our habits and so once you start looking at changes as a byproduct of your habits then you can look at the habits required and or the skills you need to develop in order to see that change and you can decide if that is self love and self care for you, right? Annie: And you posed a really great question, a thread came up in Balance365 last week and the question you posed in response to her is “Is this goal about health and love and self-care or is this about achievement and ideal?” Jen: Right. Annie: And that can maybe help you distinguish the why behind this. Is this coming from a place of love or is this coming from some other place that really isn’t worth perpetuating. Jen: Right, like I could be leaner than I am right now, I am quite comfortable in my body with my body weight but I have been 20 to 25 pounds leaner than I am now. I can go back to that life but there is a point where the extreme that I would have to take goes from a place of self-love and self care into self harm, right, so I, you know, I eat really balanced meals, I pay attention to my nutrition, eat when I’m hungry, stop when I’m satisfied, exercise regularly, take care of my mental health. If I wanted to lose 20 pounds at this point I would have to pay very, very close attention to my nutrition and to me that takes me into a place of self harm and it doesn’t feel well and that’s sort of my guiding compass as far as is this coming from a place of self care or is this coming from a place of self harm? Lauren: I really like that, like, how does it feel? Jen: How does this feel for you? Yeah. Annie: Yes And unfortunately there are people in our industry that would encourage you to power through that feeling. Jen: They do all the time in the fitness industry. All the freaking time. Annie: They would say “This is a prerequisite. This is a requirement that you regulate this negative self talk or pushing yourself past this comfort zone is something that’s required to achieve these goals that are ultimately of high value, right?” Jen: They describe it as a plateau, right, that you have to push through, which sometimes it, like, I mean, that’s the thing about, you’ve really got to know yourself, right, because sometimes there’s value in pushing through, right, like sometimes you don’t, every time it gets hard you don’t want to give up and walk away. Sometimes there’s hard things that you have to work through but the self harm piece is like “Is this sustainable for you? Are you willing? Are you going to do this forever?” And there’s been different times in my life, like for example, right now I get up at 5:30 in the morning to work out and start my workout at 6 and yeah, there are some days that I don’t want to do that but I push through and I’m always happy afterwards. Right now that behavior comes from a place of self care. When I had a newborn, if I would have insisted on that behavior with a newborn baby when I wasn’t sleeping all night and I was pushing myself to get up at 5:30 to work out at 6, that becomes self harm, right, because it means I am going with less and less and less sleep. I’m not even getting enough sleep to recover from my workouts. So those are really self assessment questions that you need to ask yourself and that nobody can answer except for you. Annie: And that’s exactly why we don’t prescribe weight loss or have weight loss goals or goals in general for our community members because no one knows your body better than you do, not even us who work with thousands of women on a daily basis, like, we don’t know you as well as you do and so we really just want to encourage you to pull that reflection inward and say like, “What is this about? Like, can I love my body and want to change it at the same time?” and maybe for you the answer is like “No, I can’t right now. First I have to work on loving myself, you know. Jen: So we recently had a community member share that she thought she had fat loss goals and she was ready to dig in on those fat loss goals but after some self assessment she’s realized that that actually is not a healthy space for her to be in right now and she loves the idea of just focusing on habits and letting her body be what it’s going to be and that is the ultimate form of acceptance for her and that’s where she’s at right now and we are like “A round of applause, girlfriend” because really, all we want for people is to own their life Annie: Yeah, and, you know, just some of these concepts we talk about are kind of heavy and they’re philosophical but, you know, so often what we hear, what this change looks like, this shift which can be so subtle and so small and sometimes you don’t even realize that it’s happening to people around you is that all of a sudden, you know, we’re exercising because, as Jen said, “It leaves me feeling better. I feel more confident. I have more energy throughout the day” versus “I’m getting up at 530 to punish myself because I want to change my body because I hate my body so much and I just can’t stand another day living in my own skin.” I mean, the behavior looks the same on the outside but on the inside, Jen knows this is coming from a place of self-love and self care. Jen: Yeah we often say and I think we’ve said in the podcast before, “it’s not about the what the people are doing it’s about the why and how they go about it.” That’s where the dysfunction and disorder, that’s where it can be found. Annie: Yeah, and I mean, the same can be true for how you feed your body, how you speak to your body and you know, are you feeding yourself balanced meals because your body deserves to be nourished and again, you feel better when you have balanced meals or are you starving or removing whole food groups or eating foods you don’t like because, again, you loathe your body and you want to change it and if you change your body, you change your life and if you change your life then you have less problems.” Jen: Right, the thing I love and I’ll let Lauren elaborate on this but somebody posted in our group in the last, I don’t know, year sometime, she asked about protein bars and she said “But aren’t protein bars diety?” and then you replied, Lauren, do you want to share that? Lauren:  Yes, I don’t remember exactly what I replied but I’ll say what I think about it now. So there’s no, like, diet food or not diet food, right? Like you walk into a restaurant and like two women are eating the exact same thing, they’re both eating a salad and one person restricted themselves and they’re punishing themselves for what they ate yesterday or they’re punishing themselves because they hate their body and the other person is eating to nourish their body and it makes them feel good so that’s why they’re eating their salad, right, like just like Jen said, it’s not always about the what, it’s about the why. Jen: Does it come from a place of deprivation or does it come from a place of abundance and self care? Annie: Exactly and again, they can look the same on the outside. Jen: Exactly. Annie:  On the surface. You might not be able to tell, you might not be able to distinguish and that’s why it’s so important that you get really in tune with yourself and what you’re doing and why you’re doing it and that can help you discern, is this self-love or is this self-hate are these behaviors rooted in? And you know, I just, we say this all the time and it can’t be said enough, we have a saying that “We take great care of things we love and your body is no exception” and I think about all the things that I take care of in my life, between relationships with girlfriends, my children, even my house plants, for heaven’s sakes and I want them to feel comfortable and safe and confident and thrive and grow and expand and live this vibrant life, I’m not degrading them, I’m not starving them, I’m not depriving them. I’m actually treating them really sweetly and kindly and with love and encouragement and sometimes that looks like- Jen: Sometimes there’s tough love built into that. Annie: Yes, like, “Jen, do you want to stay in bed because your bed is warm and cozy and it’s cold outside and it’s dark but I know ultimately this is the goal I committed to and I’m going to feel good” Like, it’s not all rainbows and unicorns. Jen: Absolutely. Actually, my mantra, you know, these days I’ve been struggling a bit. And my mantra is “Mother. I’m mothering myself right now.” Like I have just needed, I have needed some tough love lately and it’s not that I’m, like, being a drill sergeant to myself it’s that “Would my mother let would let me stay up and watch Netflix to 1:30 AM when I have to be up at 6 you know 5 nights in a row?” Like, no, and so that’s sometimes where the tough love has to come in but a mother, well, a mother knows. A mother knows when to push and a mother knows when to pull back, right, we do it for our kids every single day but yet for ourselves it’s like we want to put ourselves into like one box and just like stay there either because we see pendulum swing with self-compassion to, right, we see all the time women are like “Oh I’ve watched Netflix for 3 days but self care, right? and it’s like, “I don’t know. I’m not you so I don’t know if that was self care for you or not but I know for a lot of people you have moved from self care to like numbing and avoiding.” And like you know, like, my mother, if I was sick I might watch T.V. for 3 days but if I wasn’t sick my mother, you know, there’s not a lot of mothers out there who would be letting their kids just sit and watch T.V. for 3 days. Annie: After a day she would be like, “OK get off the couch.” Jen: Get outside, right? My parents used to do that all the time, like, “Get your butts outside now,” right, and so you bring it back to that and go like mother yourself. Have you gotten some fresh air today? Have you gotten some movement in? Are you eating balanced meals? You know, eating, you know, high sugar treats all day long, no that’s not self care day after day after day and that’s certainly not balance. Annie: So, you know, I think, this is just my own personal experience but I’ve heard it echoed in the stories of women we’ve worked with in the past is that they kind of are like, “Yeah, OK, I get that some women love themselves and they’re treating themselves well because they love themselves that much. That’s great for them, however for me I’m used to fueling my workouts and my food and fitness choices from self-hate and I’m worried that if I love myself that I’m just going to become lazy and I’m going to eat all the foods and I’m just going to lose all my motivation and I’m going to get complacent, right?” Jen: That’s how it feels when you’ve been in a place of control for so long, I mean what happens to the teenagers who move out of their family home at 18 that have been living under very rigid controlling rules. They go to college and they go nuts, right? Like we will always rebel against these rules. Annie: Lauren and I are like “Yep.” Jen: Yes, so it’s sort of like, you know, it’s just, it’s human nature, right it’s just human nature and so a lot of people might see their pending swing but eventually you need to like sit up and go and you just need to mother yourself, that’s what you have to do and I find that quite effective in knowing when I need a little tough love and when I need some compassion, right. So if my kids were really emotional, you know, school ends, they’re super emotional, they’re fighting, they’re just not doing well, I can look at them and have some self compassion and go like “These kids are tired, like, we’re going to turn the T.V. on a little early today because they they need some downtime, they need to skip their chores today, they’ve got no energy, you know, or emotional regulation skills like this.” Because you you look at your kids and you just assess, right, you’re always assessing what they need and that changes day to day and I think we can do that for ourselves too. We can do a much better job of it than women traditionally have been doing. We’ve just, we live under so many rules, right, like I just think women actually live under so, not just for ourselves but in our society there are so many rules and a societal construct that women always are living around that I think when we do find ourselves in that space of having free time, we may find ourselves in a rebellious space a lot because we actually have no idea how much unconscious time and energy we spend on, like, subscribing to these rules. Lauren: Preach. Annie: Word. So the anti-climatic answer to our question that I posed at the beginning of this podcast is “Can you love your body and want to change it?” is, I mean, Yes/It really depends and that’s something that you have to answer on an individual level. I personally can sit here and say with great confidence that I have changed my body as a complete act of self-love. Or self-love has resulted in a body change is maybe a better way to put it. But not everyone that changes their body is acting out of self love and vice versa and again our bodies are meant to change they’re fluid. They’re ever changing, they’re always changing, especially as women of childbearing age, I mean, my body looks so different than it did a year ago and I’m 2 plus years postpartum, like, it’s till changing from pregnancy I feel like, I mean, my hair for heaven sakes is still changing. But I think, you know, we’re, as usual, we feel like the truth to that question is somewhere in the middle. We are not on either side of one extreme camp or the other and we really want to help put women in the driver seat to answer that question on their own terms, in a way that serves them and feels good to them and anything we can help women, any way that we can help women come across that answer is good for us. Jen: Yes. Annie: All right, good one. Jen: Lauren will go zip in in the background go ” Preach.” We should get you a t-shirt that says “What she said.” Annie: OK, well, yet another great topic with yet another awkward ending in the bag but this is good. This is a good conversation that I think needed to we needed to address on our podcast because again, we’ve discussed it so many times in our community, which again, if you’re aren’t in there and you want to join it’s Healthy Habits Happy Moms on Facebook. The three of us are in there, we’ve got some awesome moderators and a great community system if you want to continue the discussion on loving your body and still changing it or how you can begin making changes from a place of self-love. It will be a great place to learn so I hope to see you inside and ladies we will chat soon, OK. Lauren: Bye. Jen: Bye.   The post 50: Can You Love Your Body And Still Want To Change It? appeared first on Balance365.

How to Subscribe to Vibrant Happy Women: Apple Podcasts · Android · Overcast · Castbox · Radio Public About this Episode: You probably know you need to get a grip on your finances, but HOW do you do it? In this episode you’ll get a step-by-step plan that will help you master your finances in as little as 1 month. Links From This Episode: www.whitneyhansen.com Follow Jen Riday on Instagram Jen on Facebook Whitney on Facebook Follow Whitney on Instagram The Money Nerds The Power of Habit – Charles Duhigg Betterment.com Mint.com You Need a Budget (YNAB) Cinch Financial Appen Upwork UberEats Q&A a Day Journal Empower.me Eliminate Overwhelm Guide (freebie from Jen) Have questions you'd like Jen to answer on the show? Email her at support@jenriday.com How to Leave a Review ...and never miss an episode again by signing up for the Eliminate Overwhelm Guide (freebie from Jen) How to Leave a Review: Click here to watch a quick video to learn how to leave a review. How to Subscribe to Vibrant Happy Women: Apple Podcasts · Android · Overcast · Castbox · Radio Public Give us a Rating and Review · Subscribe on iTunes  Comments: If you’d like to make a comment or leave feedback about the podcast, leave us a phone message at 1-608-352-6586 or email us at support@jenriday.com  

How to Subscribe to Vibrant Happy Women: Apple Podcasts · Android · Overcast · Castbox · Radio Public Do you ever wonder why change and growth seem so hard and slow? In this episode, you'll discover how to reprogram your brain through conscious communication. It's important to choose powerful words and thoughts because it will completely change your reality in all areas, from health, to relationships, to confidence in your career and much more What You'll Learn in this Episode: How to loosen the grip of the tragic stories of your life Viewing your relationships through the "cleanse or clog" lenses Why it's critical to drop unrealistic expectations of ourselves, especially in the role of mother Links From This Episode: FREE WORKSHOP with Dr. Jen: "How to Get Organized and Simplify Your Life in Only 30 Days (http://jenriday.com/workshop) www.maryshores.com Follow Mary on Instagram Follow Jen Riday on Instagram Jen on Facebook Mary on Facebook Captivate by Vanessa Van Edward Conscious Communications MaryShores.com/companion (free 35-page companion guide to Mary's book) Vibrant Happy 5 (get five self-love tips every week!) Have questions you'd like Jen to answer on the show? Email her at support@jenriday.com How to Leave a Review ...and never miss an episode again by signing up for the Vibrant Happy 5 (includes free guided meditation from Jen), which is a weekly digest of quick n' easy bullet points listing everything Jen created the previous week (including Vibrant Happy Women episodes and Happy Bits), plus other self-love-related goodies you'd enjoy. Make your inbox more positive and inspiring by signing up here. How to Leave a Review: Click here to watch a quick video to learn how to leave a review. How to Subscribe to Vibrant Happy Women: Apple Podcasts · Android · Overcast · Castbox · Radio Public Comments: If you’d like to make a comment or leave feedback about the podcast, leave us a phone message at 1-608-352-6586 or email us at support@jenriday.com.  

Jen April has been traveling solo for the last two decades! Her most memorable and fun trip was when she embarked on a solo journey to Europe (back when the internet wasn’t a thing). Jen still continues to travel by herself, because it empowers her to reconnect and rediscover her true self. Discover more about Jen and her solo journeys, on this week’s episode!   Key Takeaways: *What is Jen’s favorite solo travel experience? *Why did Jen travel to Europe solo? *Travel existed before the internet. How on earth did Jen survive? *What did Jen’s family and friends think about her traveling solo? *As a young child from a small town, Jen just wanted to get away from all of that! *Through our daily routines and expectations, we can often lose our sense of self. *What has been the hardest part about solo travel for Jen? *How has Jen’s growth transformed over the years? *It’s so easy now to get in touch with people from a different country, because of the internet. *What has been the hardest part of being a solo traveler? *What advice does Jen have for women who want to solo travel, but are afraid to? *Jen just did a solo trip to Ecuador. What’s Ecuador like? *What’s next for Jen?   Mentioned in This Episode: Transformviatravel.com Transform via Travel on Facebook Email: Jennifer@TransformviaTravel.com   Connect with Jen: Website Jen on LinkedIn   Leave a Review: Did you like this episode? Please leave an honest review on iTunes with your feedback! Also, please subscribe to the Go Solo Live podcast on iTunes to get notified when a new episode gets released. I appreciate your listening to this week's show. And tune in next week for another great guest.  

Jennifer Havice talks about how to do customer research, how writing a book has changed her business, the #1 thing she's done to move her copywriting business forward in the past year, what she's learned from horses and a ton of other great advice on the twelfth episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Don't miss it. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Jen and horses Peep Laja Copyhackers/Joanna Wiebe Jen’s book: Finding the Right Message Breakthrough Advertising Joe Sugarman’s book: Advertising Secrets Rob’s Book: Telling Your Brand Story James Turner Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: Rob: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Kira: What if you could hang out with really talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about your successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I try to do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob: You're invited to join the club for episode twelve, as we chat with freelance copywriter and marketing expert, Jennifer Havice, about conversion copywriting, how to do customer research and the impact of publishing a book on her business. Kira: Hello. Hello, Rob. Hello, Jen. Rob: Jen, Kira. Jen: How are you guys doing? Rob: We're good. Kira: I'm pumped. Rob: Yeah, excited. Kira: Jen, to start, I would love to hear about your work with horses because I know that's a passion of yours and I want to tie it to what we're talking about. If you could tie and connect your work with horses and about hobby and interest into business, what have you learned from your work with horses that has helped you in business? Rob: That's maybe a question you haven't had a lot on ... Jen: I haven't but it's actually a very good question because ... and it may still happen. At one point, I was working with my trainer to put together some resources for women riders and to help them have better relationships with their horses. There's just so many actually interesting life lessons that you can take from working with horses and there are things that are not only just life lessons but I've applied to my work and writing. Things like, clarity of the message, making sure that you're being very direct in your communication. Especially with animals, they need very clear communication, they need to know what you're talking about. They get very frustrated when you're giving them lots of different cues and mixed signals, which is something that happens on websites, as we know, and other forms of communication that we work with. Yeah, it's interesting working with animals and that relationship and really needing to be honest and transparent and direct because they can totally see right through you. Rob: Jen, I am curious, sort of stepping away from the horse training thing, how did you get started as a copywriter? You've got a lot of big clients and people who depend on you for the copy that you do and a lot of people saying good things about you, people like Peep Laja and others? How did you get started and how did you get to where you are today? Jen: That's very kind of you. Well, it's funny, I started writing online, gosh, probably about almost eight years ago and really got into blogging, of all things, and was writing some social commentary online for myself and for some other sites. As I was trying to promote that and get some of my writing seen more, I was learning everything I could about social media and how do you promote yourself and get yourself out there and everything to do with online marketing. What ended up happening is people started to come to ...

Angela Brooks interviews JEN SPRINGER! Angela Brooks asked to interview Jen Springer for her team and I wanted to interview her as well. So we’re going to REALLY change it up and have a fun call that’s going to mix my experience with helping balance out the adrenals and her path as an overworked & underpaid nurse to helping people online with the oils. Angela is creative and sharp, if you are thinking of sharing Young Living via the internet you’d be a crazy person not to be on the call tomorrow night! This woman got to GOLD via the web. Then there’s me, she’d like to pick my brain on how the adrenals affect hormones, energy levels, sex drive, weight gain, etc. Stuff ya might be interested in? What are we gonna talk about? 1. Angela: How do you enroll people you meet online? 2. Angela: The most effective place online to talk to people. 3. Angela: Keeping the online promoting strategies simple. 4. Jen: Top oils for supporting your adrenals. 5. Jen: How the adrenals affect women & their “girly stuff”. 6. Jen: How long it takes to get the adrenals back in tip top shape. Join us for the Monday Night Calls! Every week we have guests that are industry experts, successful entrepreneurs, and Corporate staff. This Young Living Business Training is free to anyone who is looking to build a business, please share with your teams. To get more training, visit http://oursimpletraining.com.