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The Genetic Rare Syndromes Observational Cohort (GenROC) study aims to improve our understanding of how rare genetic conditions affect the way children grow, their physical health and their development. Through actively involving parents as experts in their child's condition, the study seeks to gather valuable insights and ensure that family experiences shape future research and care strategies. You can find out more about the study and eligibility criteria via the Bristol University website. In this episode, Jillian Hastings Ward, patient advocate and former Chair of the Participant Panel at Genomics England, is joined by Dr Karen Low, a clinical geneticist leading the study at the University of Bristol, who shares insights into its objectives, the importance of a co-production approach with families, and the vital data being collected in the study to improve support for these children and their families. We'll also hear from Lindsay Randall, a parent who discusses the journey of receiving a rare diagnosis for her child, highlighting the critical need for more comprehensive information and community support. "If you join GenROC, that data will be used to develop a growth chart for your child essentially and their genetic condition, so I'm really excited about it because I feel like that's a very concrete definite given now for all the families in GenROC, which is just brilliant." You can download the transcript or read it below. Jillian: Welcome to Behind the Genes Lindsay: Historically, there's been a significant absence of patient voice in rare disease research and development, and knowing that's changing, I think that's really empowering for families and to know that professionals and industry are actually listening to our stories and unmet needs and really trying to understand, and that offers much greater impact on the care and treatments of patients in the future. Jillian: My name is Jillian Hastings-Ward. On today's episode I'm joined by Dr Karen Low, Consultant Clinical Geneticist and Chief Investigator for the General Cohort Study, and Lindsay Randall, Paediatric Practice Development Nurse and founder of Arthur's Quest, which is a UK registered, non-profit, raising awareness for the ultra-rare condition: SLC6A1, developmental and epileptic encephalopathy. Welcome to you both. Today we'll be discussing the GenROC study, which is aiming to understand more about the health, development and valuing the experiences of children with neurodevelopmental conditions. If you enjoy today's episode we'd love your support. Please like, share, and rate us on wherever you listen to your podcasts. Thank you both very much for joining us today, Karen and Lindsay. There's a lot we want to cover, but first of all it would be great just to put a little bit of context around the Gen-Roc study. Karen, can you tell us a bit about what the study is aiming to do, who is eligible and why do you want them? Karen:  Thank you. And thank you so much for having me today, Jillian. So, the GenROC study, first to just explain to people what ‘GenROC' stands for. GenROC stands for the Genetic Rare Syndromes Observational Cohort Study. Just to give you some context about the study, I'm a clinical geneticist and most of my clinical work focuses on paediatrics, so I see children in my clinics and the sort of children I see generally are children with rare genetic syndromes. The last five to ten years we've got much better at diagnosing children with these rare conditions and that's because testing has got so much better. We can now do whole genome sequencing and we can do that on the NHS, which is amazing, children can get their tests as part of their clinical care, so it means that a lot more children are being diagnosed with rare conditions, about 2,000 per year in the UK. And the thing about that is, that I see these children in my clinics and I give their families that diagnosis. But the problem is for so many of these ultra-rare conditions, like Lindsay's family has, we sit there and we say to the family, “Well, your child has got ‘X' condition,” and we give them some information from maybe one or two publications and linked to a leaflet and a Facebook group. And then we say, “But really we don't know that much about this condition.” And they say, “But what is it going to mean for them when they are growing up or when they are adults? Will they be able to finish school? Will they be able to work? What is it going to mean?” And I have to shrug my shoulders and go, “I'm not really sure.” And as a geneticist and as a doctor and as a mother really, I just felt that wasn't good enough, and I found it really frustrating and I know that the families that I work with, that I look after, also find it frustrating and I wanted to do better. And I also found it frustrating that for many genes, researchers would publish two or maybe three publications about these conditions, and then they would move on to the next novel gene, and actually, the journals are a bit like that as well, they like novel things, they like new conditions, they like the next gene. And so, it means that actually data doesn't always carry on being gathered in these rare conditions, and there are a lot of them. That was another thing, I sort of felt that these conditions were being done a disservice and that we needed to do better, so that's where the whole idea of the GenROC study came from was my drive and desire to improve things for families and actually to work with families to improve that, and that's where so this is a very highly co-produced study and right from the outset I've involved parents in telling me what they wanted to know and I've got a very, very active PPI group, full of parents of children who have got rare genetic conditions, and also I'm really lucky to have a young adult who has a genetic neurodevelopmental disorder herself and they all tell me about essentially what I should do and what I shouldn't do. They tell me when I'm not doing enough or when I need to do something differently, so it's very highly co-produced, they're highly involved all along the way. So, children with a confirmed genetic diagnosis in a list of eligible genes which people can see on our website if they Google GenROC University of Bristol, we've got a very easy checker for eligible genes, but they are essentially the most frequently diagnosed genes in rare neurodevelopmental disorders. And if their child is under 16, has a confirmed diagnosis and doesn't have any other genetic diagnoses then they can go into the GenROC study, that's essentially the eligibility criteria. Jillian: That's really interesting. It's very helpful to hear the background and I think as a parent of a child with a very rare disorder hearing that the clinicians also recognise this gap and the sort of pause that happens once you have your initial diagnosis, is really helpful and really encouraging. Lindsay, can we turn to you next and can you unpack a little bit about what it meant for you to get a rare diagnosis for your child and what point on your family journey was that compared to where you are now? Lindsay: I think to get a rare diagnosis for us was difficult and challenging and I think the first kind of challenge that any family has is actually being well-informed by a paediatrician who is also well-informed, and that's not always the case. That can affect the way we acknowledge or accept a diagnosis and how we also access support and how we understand what more we can do to make more connections. We did have genetic counselling offered, but I think there are families out there who don't get genetic counselling offered to help them understand the child's diagnosis, and then there's a heavy reliance on the internet, and as you said, there's a lack of information out of there. A lot of conditions are newly diagnosed or they're very complicated genes to work with, or as Karen said, they've had a couple of papers and people have moved on. And I think that does cause an immense feeling of isolation. We were diagnosed in 2018, our son, our first child, and exactly as Karen said, it was a fairly quick appointment of, “We don't really know much about this condition at the moment, there's a couple of papers. We know of 34 children in the world at the moment with your condition. Here's a Facebook group,” which we did join. And it is overwhelming to be given a diagnosis that's delivered with such little hope I guess, finding sources of information that's valid and robust is challenging, not everyone knows how to do that or has a skillset to conduct searches of academic research and I think that clinicians could definitely do better in also signposting the kind of umbrella charities like Unique and Contact and Swan and patient organisations, because I know that would have been definitely helpful for us as a family to be able to have opportunities to connect with others. Jillian: Thank you. Our diagnostic journey has been a bit a similar in that we were diagnosed through the NHS, and that at the time my son was the first person diagnosed with his disorder in the whole of the UK so it was really a big question mark, it was a question of our geneticist saying, “Here's the three PDF articles that we know exist in the world about this condition. Can you read them and tell us whether you think that sounds like him in order for us to be confirming our diagnosis?” I very much hear what you're saying there about feeling lost in the wilderness. And we too joined a Facebook group quite shortly after we got our diagnosis, and at the time my son was among the older ones or certainly as time has gone by he has been among the older children, so it can be really hard to know what might happen next. I think that now as Karen was saying we're getting much better at diagnosing people thanks to all the extra testing that's happening, that happens much earlier in life than it has done in the past, but I think then it still leaves a gap in parents' understanding because you don't necessarily know what the next ten years might look like for example. And so, I think making connections with people who are in that age bracket can be really important, but it's very hard to do. So Lindsay, I'm conscious that your professional training as a nurse must have stood you in quite good stead when you were faced with a barrage of medical literature shortly after your diagnosis, but I think one thing that every parent shares is the desire to do the best for their child and especially in this world of rare disorders. There's a huge amount of energy that comes through the community I think, faced with the need to try and self-start and build these networks and connections for themselves. Is that something that you've seen in your community as your experience? Lindsay: Yes, definitely. I think we're a growing community and over the years of course more and more children and young adults have been diagnosed with a few older adults coming through. It is very much a global networking effort and parent/patient organisations have been set up in many countries now by parents of children with children with SLC6A1. I definitely think that drive to become an expert in your child's condition is a long journey and one of continual learning and actually a lot of families simply don't have a capacity to take that on, I think often the medical and scientific jargon is difficult to understand and that makes it challenging to access. And as you said, as a paediatric nurse, I at least have some existing skills to understand healthcare to read the research and speak with medical and scientific professionals with some confidence, but in some ways, that has increased the burden I've placed on myself to become an expert for my children and other children and families who are not in the same position as me. It does require a lot of dedication and time, and that does have implications on families because it's time away from our children and from home, and from the remnants of our lives that we desperately try to cling onto, to not lose all sense of ourselves. It's not often spoken about but I do see the strain it places on the families, as well where there's a lot of separation and divorce sadly in the rare disease communities, and often that's as a result of one parent's drive to be the expert, which seems to cause one parent to fulfil more burden of care and that fosters some level of resentment or sense of loneliness towards the other one. Jillian: There are some scary statistics out there around familial breakdown in this context, and it is something which there are so many factors at play, but it definitely seems to be quite widely recognised and definitely a problem. In terms of the time that people have to spend on liaisons with the research community and the clinical community, that could bring us quite nicely back into a question for you, Karen, about what kind of information the GenROC study is looking to collect from families, can you tell us a bit more about that, please? Karen: Yes, absolutely. As I said before, I've been very conscious of the sort of lives that our families are living, and listening to Lindsay, her story is very reminiscent of so many others and yours, Jillian. So I know families have about a gazillion hospital appointments, their children are often also very, very ill intermittently or a lot of the time, then they've got school stuff to deal with or they've got EHC plans to try and fight for. It's more than a fulltime job in itself just being a parent of a child with a rare disease and it's hard work, so me asking them to do anything else is asking a lot. Luckily, I find, with the families I work with, who are universally wonderful I should add, that they are actually just really enthusiastic anyway about research for their child's condition, and that's because there isn't enough information out there, so it's relevant and important to them. But because they have no time at all, and any time they do give is their own personal time when they could be finally putting their feet up and watching something on TV, I have to make it as low effort as possible. The questionnaire is all online, using a user-friendly and interface as we've been able to develop. It's very user-friendly, it takes 10-15 minutes to complete; they can come and go from the questionnaire as well. We only ask for one time point at the beginning, which is all the sort of stuff that most parents will be able to tell you off the top of their head as well, so they don't have to go looking for loads of information, apart from a height and a weight. Then later down the line we're going to ask for a second questionnaire, it's in the process of being finalised and again that will be the same amount of time, very easy to do, online, at their convenience. It was co-produced with the PPI group, they've tested it for me, I've had really good feedback and I've asked parents who are in the study as well for feedback. Everyone tells me it's not too difficult or burdensome for them to do. The secondary questionnaire has been very much informed by conversations with the parents that I had as part of a nest of qualitative interview study in GenROC, and that has driven that secondary questionnaire quite differently to what I thought it might be when we first set up the GenROC study. At the beginning I thought it might just be: have things changed for your child? Can you give us a bit more clinical data? But actually I realised that probably I will still gather that information, but they probably won't have changed that much within the timespan in the study because it will only be a year or two after they completed the first questionnaire, and actually I realised that it would be much more useful to look at the impact of the genetic diagnosis, look at how they're accessing services within the NHS, what sorts of services they are accessing, Impact on the family and also looking at priorities for families. So families have talked to me about what their priorities are in rare disease, both in service provision but also in research, and I really am a very strong believer that we need to be given the limited funding, we need to be doing the research that matters the most to the families, not to the researchers. What do families actually want us to look into? Actually, do they want us to be looking into behaviour and what strategies work best for example, rather than something else very medical – what matters the most? And so that's going to be a specific question in that secondary questionnaire, really trying to identify what matters to families the most and then how that can be translated into clinical research in the future. So I'm really interested to see what's going to come out of that. Lindsay: I think that sounds brilliant, Karen because I think historically there's been a significant kind of absence of patient voice in rare disease research and development, and knowing that that's changing, I think that's really empowering for families and to know that professionals and industry are actually listening to our stories and unmet needs, and really trying to understand, and that offers a much greater impact on the care and treatments for patients in the future and certainly it makes endpoints more relevant to families as well. Jillian: What kind of outputs are you going to be looking at? Karen: The height and weight, the reason I'm asking for that is really because we are trying to work on growth charts for children and that's because growth charts for children with rare conditions don't exist by enlarge, there are a very, very tiny number of rare syndromes or conditions that have their own growth chart. The problem is that most children with these sort of rare conditions that we're talking about are either quite small or quite big, and the problem is that the paediatricians look at their growth and they go, “Oh well, you're much bigger or much smaller than other children your own age, what shall we do about that?” and particularly the little tiny ones it causes lots and lots of concern, so quite often these sort of growth parameters mean that the paediatricians do lots and lots of tests or put feeding tubes down, or add lots of calories, so it can be quite invasive and interventional actually that sort of growth parameter. But actually, sometimes that's because of the genetic condition and no matter how much feeding you do it's not going to change anything. The difficulty is we don't know that for certain, and actually we need good growth charts where paediatricians can make that call, and conversely sometimes a child actually does need investigating and the paediatrician puts it all down to their genetic condition, and that's why we need these growth charts. So GenROC is aiming to gather growth data from all these children and then we're going to work closely with Decipher, which is a website that was developed through the DDD study, which already holds lots of data from that study, so we're building on the power of that study and we're going to be generating growth charts for all of these genes. We've developed a new method for producing growth charts for rare conditions where you've got small numbers of patients – that was never possible before, so we've already proven now for four conditions we can, so the next stage is using all the GenROC data, putting it into Decipher and coding it in. So, if you join GenROC, that data will be used to develop a growth chart for your child essentially and their genetic condition, so I'm really excited about it because I feel like that's a very concrete definite given now for all the families in GenROC, which is just brilliant. Jillian: And is that something which will be shared with the families individually? Karen: Really great question. I hadn't planned on sharing the growth charts individually with the families, but that's something I can also go back to my PPI group and discuss with them about whether that's something people would want, and also I have a newsletter which goes out every three months to the families, so I can certainly ask that question actually directly. It's going to be widely available, the growth charts, we're going to make sure that they're accessible to paediatricians and clinicians etc. but in terms of output to the study, definitely the growth charts, we're also hoping to have other clinically useful outcomes depending on the different genes that come into the study. We essentially have a cohort of children with rare conditions, everyone puts everything down to a specific genetic condition but we know that there must be other factors at play that influence how children do. And this is a really unique thing we're trying to do with GenROC actually, looking at aside from that genetic variant, that alteration, what other factors are influencing how children are doing? Because some of those might be modifiable, you know, or some of them there could be things that could be put in place to help improve outcomes. So I'm quite excited about that as well, because that's quite new and novel and not really been thought about in this context before, so that will be an output. And the other output is something that I'm working on with Unique, which is the rare disease charity who has worked with us on GenROC from the start, and they are involved in our PPI as well and that is going to be looking at a template, calling it a report at the moment, it's in very early days, but something that parents will be able to hold, it's going to have lots of drop-down boxes that can be tailored and modified for individual patients and children, which will be a bit of a guide that they can give to clinicians, professionals, education, telling them about their condition but also telling them on an individualised basis about what needs to be looked for in the future. Because parents tell me they are fed up of having to tell everybody about their child's condition constantly, all the time, over and over again. So what the point of this output would be is to try and ease that burden a little bit. This is very early stages but we're going to involved parents all along the way. Jillian: And is that something which builds on the hospital passport idea that we've seen emerging around the world over the last few years where parents can start off telling their child's story on their own behalf? Karen: So, it's come from my own lived personal experience of being a mother of a child with autism and I haven't really spoken about that publicly before, so it's something I'm saying for the first time. I have a child who has autism and I have had to navigate things like a DLA application form. Jillian: That's Disability Living Allowance. Karen: Yes, exactly, which is a horrendous form, it's the most horrible form to complete, probably apart from an EHCP plan form but it's a horrible form to complete, it's quite upsetting as a parent and it's also got millions of boxes that you have to fill in. But one of the things that really, really helped me when I was completing that was a charity who had come up with lots of drop-downs that you could select from that might be applicable to your child to help you complete this form. And so it made me really think, “Well, could we do something similar for our children with genetic conditions but come up with lots of dropdown options that might apply to their child in all sorts of different areas?” And that was the inspiration, it was that, and doing the qualitative study that I've already done with parents of children in GenROC who were telling me about how fed up they were of having to constantly tell everybody about their child's condition over and over again. Jillian: Yes, that's probably very helpful to empower families to use standard terminology across the different families because my own son has epilepsy as part of his condition but actually trying to describe what his seizures look like I'm not sure I'm using the right words to fit the right boxes to fit them into the right categories with the neurologist. So that level of standardisation is something that we definitely need embedded into the system in order for more people to be able to use this data more effectively, so that sounds very helpful. Lindsay, coming back to you, what are you hoping to get out of this study, or what are you hoping this study will do on your behalf for the world? What motivated you to take part? Lindsay: I think I would like to see all of the aims of the study realised and for the study data to be used to inform the development of standards of care for a wide range of conditions, those included in the study. I think it would be great if that information, as Karen said, is available not only to the participants but also to children diagnosed with those conditions in the future and also it's an opportunity to consider themes that are identified across the disease groups as that can also help inform future research and look at investigations into the mechanisms of disease and where actually therapeutics could treat maybe more than one disease at a time and increase potential for basket trials and early access programmes – thank you to Dr Karen Low and her team for conducting the project because it included a comprehensive list of rare diseases, it really does give parents and patients an opportunity to have a voice and to contribute, which is empowering, and it gives them a little bit of autonomy as well over their direction that science and research goes to. Jillian: Fantastic, thank you. Karen, can you tell us a little bit about the timeframe for the study? I realise that we haven't really touched on that so far. Karen: Yes absolutely, I'm aiming to recruit 500 children as a total. We're open at 22 sites across the UK. Coinciding with this podcast actually we've opened a second door for recruitment, so the way we've recruited so far has been through clinical genetic sites, which is the way we've done these sorts of studies in the past, like the DDD study. The problem is that that relies on clinicians identifying eligible patients and clinicians are very, very busy in the NHS. I have worked closely with Unique who have been doing a lot of publicity and the genetic alliance have done publicity as well for the study, so that's been one way of identifying eligible participants. And also just parent power through social media has been amazing. The second way we're going to recruit, and this is going to happen very soon, is through Genomics England. So, we are going to trial a completely novel way of recruiting to research through Genomics England and that is for Genomics England to identify eligible participants for GenROC and this would have been through the 100,000 genome study and then they're going to send them invite letters, inviting them to take part. So that's the next phase of recruitment, I think if we have more than 500 then that will be great too, we'll be able to include those comers too, so that's not a problem. But we don't know whether this will work or not in terms of a way of recruiting to research, this is completely new for Genomics England and I'm a bit of a guinea pig if you like through the GenROC study, but I was quite willing to be that guinea pig because I thought it might increase access. So there will be some parents who have not been told about GenROC who have not heard about it, and who would love to take part, so I feel like this is the way of really widening that net as wide as possible. Jillian: I think that is a challenge isn't it, especially in rare disease – there's no point doing a public broadcast about an initiative because you're going to hit so few of the people that you're interested in, so actually how you access the community is the first challenge and I'm really pleased that Genomics England will be able to help you there because I think that is a very useful route through. I think it will probably be quite reassuring to quite a lot of families who were on the 100,000 Genomes Project who have got a diagnosis of one of the conditions that you're interested in, and are now perhaps subsequently in the fallow period after you have a diagnosis, wondering what happens next, so I can imagine it might be quite good news for some of them at least that they are now being invited to do something further. And the reason that you're building forward and you don't want people who are currently in the deciphering developmental disorders study is because you're already using their data through another source, is that correct? Karen: Exactly. So absolutely, I don't want anyone to feel that I don't want them, that's really not the case. I do want them but we have their data already from Decipher, so we're building on the DDD data already, so they're already contributing which is just the beauty of it, because that's what we should be doing in rare disease, we should be building on previous research because you know, you don't want to be trying to reinvent the wheel. Jillian: Agreed. So if someone is listening to this and has a child with a rare developmental disorder and they are interested in finding out more, what are the steps they need to take? Karen: If they Google Bristol University, GenROC, they'll come straight to the webpage and everything is on there. There's a link that they can sign up, the patient information leaflet's there, the eligible gene list is there, all the information they need, including our email address. Jillian: And is there an upper age limit for recruitment? Karen: Yes, children have to be under 16 and that's because once they get to 16 many of these conditions have associated learning difficulties, and it's just very much more complex to try and recruit young adults, young people, with learning difficulties and given it was a cohort study we felt it was going to be too difficult at the moment. Saying that, I have a huge interest actually in how these conditions present in adulthood, and I'm actually conducting a much smaller study at the moment in KBG syndrome, looking at adults, and so I hope that my future research career will allow me both to follow-up the children in GenROC, so that would be my vision but also to be able to take this forward for other adults with rare conditions, that's my aim and goal in the medium to long-term, so watch this space for that. Jillian: That sounds very exciting, thank you. Lindsay: I think I would like to say to Karen that I really like the sound of the idea of following patients up into young adulthood and adulthood, as you said, that is definitely a kind of an unknown area in lots of the rare diseases, especially in our condition, SLC6A1, it was mutation and the disease was only really discovered in 2015, so it is fairly new and we have very, very few young people and adults coming through and being diagnosed and connecting with the rest of the community. So, being able to understand the trajectory of conditions better and especially conditions where actually the presentation it's quite a spectrum, and so the long-term outcomes for people with SLC6A1 can look quite different, so it's good to collate more information about that I think. Karen: I think it's really important, so that's definitely where I'm looking to for the future with GenROC and more widely, I think it's just something I'm really interested in and has huge relevance for parents and families. Jillian: Well, I think we need to wrap up there but thank you both very much Dr Karen Low and Lindsay Randall for joining me today as we've been discussing the GenROC study, and how the study aims to improve understanding of how rare genetic syndromes affect the way children grow, their physical health, their development, but also how the patient and parent communities can work more closely with researchers to end up delivering something which is of a huge benefit to everybody. If you would like to hear more about this, please subscribe to ‘Behind the Genes' on your favourite podcast app. Thank you for listening. I've been your host, Jillian Hastings Ward. This podcast was edited by Bill Griffin at Ventoux Digital and produced by Naimah Callachand.

Though Karen did research and took birthing classes before her first baby, she didn't realize how much advocating for herself could change the course of her birth. She wanted to be the “good” patient and told herself she could do without the things her body told her she needed during labor. Karen ended up pushing for over four hours and consenting to what she was told was an emergency C-section, even though the actual surgery didn't happen until hours later.Karen had some serious postpartum symptoms of swelling and difficulty breathing that were dismissed and even laughed at until things came to a point where she knew something was very wrong. She was diagnosed with postpartum cardiomyopathy, admitted to the ICU, and transferred to cardiac care. Doctors told Karen very different things about her condition. She went from being told not to have any more children to hearing that VBAC was absolutely safe. Karen discusses how her gestational hypertension came into play with the different advice as well. Karen found her voice. She advocated for herself. She knew what her body was saying and what it was capable of. Her labor was so smooth and she WAS able to birth vaginally!Informed Pregnancy PlusNeeded WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode Details 3:46 Review of the Week06:27 Karen's stories08:50 First labor10:47 Pushing for four hours15:11 Karen's C-section17:43 Postpartum swelling and difficulty breathing21:03 Fluid in her lungs23:52 Moving to Florida and getting answers25:13 Getting pregnant again29:53 Advocating for a VBAC32:14 A spiritual dream34:34 Gestational hypertension39:36 Signing an AMA41:31 Going to the hospital45:20 Pushing for 20 minutes47:30 White coat syndrome51:59 Symptoms of hypertension and preeclampsia54:52 Tips for hypertension and preeclampsia 56:55 Karen's final tipsMeagan: Hello, hello. We are getting into almost our 300th episode, you guys. Every single time I'm recording and I'm looking at these numbers, I am blown away. I cannot believe that we have almost put out 300 episodes. Oh my goodness. I am so glad that you are here. I have this energy this year. I don't know what it is. You'll have to let me know if you notice it, but I have this energy every time I'm recording this podcast. 2024 is vibing. I'm vibing with it. I'm really liking it. We have our friend Karen and are you from Florida, Karen? Karen: Yep. I'm in Orlando, Florida. Meagan: Florida. That's what I was thinking. So if we have Florida mamas looking for providers, this is definitely an episode. I feel like probably weekly we would get 10 messages asking about providers and Florida is huge so Florida is actually one that is really common where we are getting messages for supportive providers. So Karen, along the way, if you feel to name-drop some providers that are supportive, feel free to do so but we are going to get into sharing her story in just one moment because we do have a Review of the Week. 3:46 Review of the Week Meagan: This is from louuuhuuuu. So louuuhuuuu, thank you for your review. They say that this is “very inspirational.” It says, “I knew I wanted a VBAC with my third pregnancy, but I wasn't sure if it was possible. However, I knew I didn't feel like being flat-out told, ‘No' at the first appointment. Listening to the podcast was definitely the start of me really researching birth and looking into my options. I ended up with a successful HBA2C and I definitely don't think I would have had the courage or believed it was possible without this podcast. Thank you, Meagan, for all of the work that you do to provide this information.” I love that review so much. I think that through time in my own research, I was told no. I wasn't told, “No, no.” I was told, “Sure, probably yeah. You could VBAC,” but I never really got that positive vibe. I feel like this community that we have created with all of the people on the podcast and all of the people in the community on Facebook truly is something that I lacked when I was preparing for my VBAC. I'm so grateful that we have this community for you today. Thank you, louuuuhuuuu, and huge congrats on your HBAC, your home birth after two Cesareans. If you didn't what HBA2C meant, that's home birth after two Cesareans. Just like louuuhuuuu, you can too. Make sure to follow us in our Facebook community. You can find it at The VBAC Link Community on Facebook. Answer all of the questions and we will let you in. You can find out as well that it is possible. VBAC is possible. 06:27 Karen's storiesMeagan: Okay, Karen. Welcome to the show and thank you so much for taking the time to share your story today, well your stories today. Karen: Yeah. Thank you for having me. It's a little wild actually being on your show. I've been thinking about what I was going to say even before you invited me like, “What would I say if I finally get my VBAC? It's crazy to actually be sharing my story now so I'm really excited to be talking to you today.” Meagan: Well I'm so excited that you are here and sharing your inspirational message. You know, going through your submission, it sounds so similar to so many of us. You went in for a totally planned unmedicated birth that switched to the complete opposite where you had a C-section. There are so many of us. When I was reading that, I was like, “I bet I could probably find hundreds of stories not even just in our own community that start out like that.” Karen: Yes. That's why I love listening to your podcast so much because for the first time, I didn't feel alone. But yeah. I can get into my story now if you'd like. Meagan: Yes. I would love it. Karen: Okay. So back in August– or, I'm sorry. My son was due in August 2023. This was our first baby and he was a little bit of a surprise baby, but he was very much welcome and we were excited for him. At the time, we were living in Virginia. My husband had just gotten out of the Navy and he was about to start law school. I did prepare for the birth but I don't think I prepared enough. I took a Hypnobirthing class and the doula who was leading the class was super supportive. She was just like, “You're just going to birth beautifully. I can just tell.” The midwives, the nurses at the practice were like, “Oh, you're going to birth beautifully. I can just tell.” I just kept hearing that over and over again. My ego was a little over-inflated and I was like, “I don't need to do much. I've got this.” I don't think I was prepared enough. I didn't know what I was really getting into. 08:50 First laborKaren: So when I actually started going into labor, I got there way too early. I got to the hospital too early. Like you mentioned, I wanted an unmedicated birth. I got there, I think my contractions were about every seven minutes. Now I know that I definitely should have waited at home longer. But everything seemed to be going well. I arrived. They admitted me. They seemed a little bit hesitant, but they were like, “Oh, well she's in labor. Let's just bring her in.” My water broke on its own that afternoon. Things seemed to be going well until the pain really started kicking in. I had a really hard time working through the pain even with everything I learned in HypnoBirthing. I still hadn't quite found my voice yet, my mama voice. I couldn't tell people, “Hey, you're distracting me. I'm trying to do HypnoBirthing.” I felt embarrassed about putting up the sign outside my door saying, “Hey, HypnoBirthing in progress. Please keep quiet.” I just didn't speak up. I was just trying to be a good girl and just listen to what everyone says. I heard so many times in different episodes being a good girl and just doing what I've been told. Meagan: Right. We are people pleasers. I think a lot of us are people pleasers. We don't want to ruffle feathers. We want to stay in line. We want to follow this path that we are being told we have to stay on. Karen: Yes. I mean, I just didn't realize it was something I needed to form as a mama to be able to stand up for myself because pretty soon there was going to be a baby that needed me to stand up for them. Like I said, during the birth, there were just so many distractions, people coming in and out, nurses, and visitors. It was too much. I did end up getting an epidural because I just couldn't hold out any longer. 10:47 Pushing for four hoursKaren: Around 2:00 AM, the labor and delivery nurse told me, “Oh, you need to start pushing.” I was on my back. I pushed for about two hours. I had some breaks but the baby was just stuck. For part of it, we could see that he was crowning but he just would not come out. During this entire time, no one really looked at me. I just had this one labor and delivery nurse. She was so sweet, but the midwife didn't come by. The OB didn't come by. No one really came by and I wanted to move into different positions. I felt my body telling me, “Hey, try this. Try this,” and they would tell me, “You can't move. You have to stay like that.” I pushed for four hours. Baby was in distress. I felt fine but the midwife came in and told me, “You're going to need a C-section.” This was the first time I had seen her. She told me. Meagan: Wow. Karen: Yeah. So she says, “You need a C-section. He's not going to come out vaginally.” I didn't know. I didn't know what to do. I mean, I felt that was my only option. I got really upset. I started crying. I felt like a failure. I know now that I'm not a failure. That wasn't it. But that's how I felt at the moment and my husband was devastated. He was such an amazing birth partner and he felt like he failed me. I was like, “No. You didn't fail either,” but at that moment, we just felt so let down that one, I had to ask for an epidural, and two that I was going to need a C-section. Karen: They told me. I don't remember if the word “emergency” was used or not, but they made me feel like it was an emergency and it needed to happen immediately. When I look at the paperwork and all of that stuff, I'm like, “Where was the urgency?” Because the C-section didn't happen until 10:00 AM. Meagan: Yeah. That's not an emergency. This is another thing that I'm going to be honest– it irks me because there are so many of us who are told it is an emergency. When we hear “emergency”, what do we think? Panic. Scary. Right? We divert into asking– divert. I don't know if that's the right word. We stop asking questions and we say, “Okay. Okay. Okay,” because it's an emergency and we are told that. Karen: Exactly. Meagan: I think a lot of times, truly that we are told it is an emergency and that offers some sort of– it's weird, but some sort of validation where it's like, “But it's an emergency, so okay.” We just agree and then we are grateful. We look at them in a way because it's an emergency so they are saving. Does this make sense? I don't know. Karen: No, it does. To me, when I think about it now, it feels like manipulation. Meagan: Okay, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It can be. Truly, there are real emergent Cesareans. Karen: Agreed. Meagan: We are so grateful for Cesareans that can help us and those are real, true emergent situations, but so many of us are told it's an emergency and then like you said, it's 10:00 AM or they come in and they're like, “We need to shave you,” and it's like, “Okay, that's not an emergency.” If they have time to shave you, talk with you, and leave you for four hours, no. It's not an emergency. Karen: Exactly. So if I had known what I know now, I would have asked for my options, asked to push and change positions. There are so many things I would have done but like you said, I thought it was an emergency. I was treating my baby in danger. I need to do this now even though there was nothing wrong with the baby. There wasn't. Meagan: Or you. Karen: Mhmm, exactly. His heart was fine. Everything was fine as far as I could see as far as I remember, as far as the paperwork says, so it doesn't make sense anymore to me. But yeah. 15:11 Karen's C-sectionKaren: My husband was told to dress in scrubs while they prepped me and then I asked the nurse to make sure that no one was in the room when I got back. When we came back to surgery, they wheeled me over to the OR and they were just checking to see that the epidural was still good. I could feel them touching my belly. I told them and that's the last thing I remember. The next thing I know, I just hear a baby crying in the distance. I was waking up in a different room and there were just these two nurses chatting about their day. To me, it was traumatizing. I couldn't even process what was going on and what happened. That was just so, so scary. Meagan: I'm so sorry. Karen: Yeah. Sorry. So then they wheeled me out and that's where my husband and our whole family were waiting. I was so frustrated because I told the nurse I didn't want anyone here. I knew I would be upset after the C-section and there was everyone in the room waiting. I also found out that my baby got passed around so I didn't even get to be the first to hold him. That was so extremely upsetting. I told my husband, “I want everyone out.” Everyone left and it was just me and my husband and our baby, Luke. We were there for about 15 minutes before they started to prep me to move the recovery room and I was like, “Wait a minute. I thought I got a golden hour where I would get to be alone with the baby for an hour.” They were like, “Oh yeah, you can do that in the recovery room,” and they just wheeled me over. I get so sad when I look at pictures of that time because my baby is so beautiful. I love him so much, but I felt so drugged up that I couldn't connect with him. You can see it in the pictures. I just look like I don't know where I am. I'm in pain. It's just not what I imagined that experience to be. Meagan: Right. Karen: I definitely felt robbed of an experience. I felt extremely traumatized. That was hard in and of itself, but I was trying to come to terms with what happened. It was just a very rough time in the hospital. We had some family drama as well so that didn't help. Meagan: No. Karen: I was discharged less than 48 hours later which now I know is way too early considering the symptoms I was feeling. 17:43 Postpartum swelling and difficulty breathingKaren: My legs were extremely swollen. My whole body was extremely swollen. It didn't even look like I had given birth because I was just swollen all over. One nurse even made fun of my legs and she was like, “They look like baseball bats.” She was just tapping them.Meagan: That's a warning sign. That's something to think about. Karen: Well, I didn't know that. Meagan: Well, of course, you didn't, but as a professional, she shouldn't be tapping on your legs. She should be like, “Hmm, was this like this?” Karen: I've told other medical professionals that story and they are horrified. They are like, “That was a big warning sign something was wrong,” but they discharged me regardless. I felt so completely unprepared. It was just a very bad experience all around. They didn't have a lactation consultant working over the weekend so my baby was crying and crying and crying. He wasn't getting enough to eat when he was breastfeeding. They were just laughing and saying, “Oh, all moms feel like that. He's getting enough to eat.” Sure enough, my son was jaundiced and his pediatrician was like, “No, he needs formula. He's not getting enough to eat.” He had a significant tongue tie so he was not getting enough to eat. When I got home, like I said, baby was starving. I'm not getting any sleep. When he does fall asleep, I can't sleep. I remember explaining to different people like, “I'm having trouble breathing every time I lay down.” Everyone was just like, “Oh yeah. New mom, new baby. Totally normal.” Meagan: What? It is not normal to not feel like you can't breathe. Karen: You're going to love this then. At one point, I called the nurse hotline at the hospital because they gave it to me when I was discharged. I told the nurse, “When I lay down, I can't breathe. It feels like I can't breathe.” Her response was, “Oh, sometimes new moms don't know how pain feels like.” I was just like, “Okay, I guess this is just me.” She was like, “Technically, we're supposed to tell you to come to the hospital if you are having trouble breathing.” Meagan: Technically. Karen: Technically. So I was trying to be the good girl and trying not to ruffle any feathers and I was just like, “Okay. I'll keep pushing through,” but the moment I realized things were not good, I was extremely depressed. I thought that I was going to die and leave my child alone. I was having horrible thoughts like that. Then I realized, “I'm starting to hallucinate.” So after three days of not sleeping, there was one incident where I heard my baby crying and screaming. I went over to the bassinet to look at him and he's sleeping peacefully, but I can still hear him crying and screaming clearly. I'm like, “That's not normal.” 21:03 Fluid in her lungsKaren: Once he woke up because I was trying to be a good new mom, so once he woke up, I packed myself up and my mom and I went to the ER. I explained to them, “I'm not getting sleep. I can't sleep. Every time I lay down, I can't breathe.” They were like, “Okay. Maybe you have a blood clot.” They took me back. They did an MRI scan and when I was lying down for the scan, I started taking these small quick breaths and the nurse was like, “Are you having a panic attack? What's going on?” I go, “I can't breathe.” She finally was the one that was just like, “There is something deeply wrong here. This is not normal at all.” I loved her. She really pushed to make sure that I got seen quickly. They determined that I was experiencing congestive heart failure. The way they explained it is my heart was not pumping strong enough I guess. It wasn't pumping right so that's why I was having trouble breathing because my lungs were filling up with fluid. They were able to give me medication. It was Lasix to help push out all of the fluid. I was kept at the ICU for two nights then they transferred me to the cardiac wing of the hospital. I was there four nights total because they just wanted to keep an eye on my blood pressure and this obviously wasn't normal what was happening. My blood pressure was through the roof. That was a really, really difficult time because one, I was away from my new baby and then I had three different doctors tell me, “There is something wrong with your heart. You won't be able to have more children. Your heart can't handle it.” That was distressing because my husband and I dreamed of having a big family and we were thinking, “This might be our last child.” But weirdly enough, my OB– the one who performed the C-section– disagreed. I don't like how he said this, but he was like, “Oh, don't be dramatic. It was just a little extra fluid. You're fine.” I was like, “Okay.” He said, “You can have a VBAC. You can have as many children as you want. You're going to be fine.” I wasn't a fan of him but that was interesting that he had told me, “You're going to be a great VBAC candidate.” He kind of put that idea in my head. He said that the only reason my son got stuck was because he was 9 pounds, 15 ounces so basically a 10-pounder. I was like, “Okay.” I didn't know what I know now, but that's the reason they gave me. 23:52 Moving to Florida and getting answersKaren: Eventually, we moved to Florida because I'm from Florida so I felt more comfortable with the medical care there. I just kept finding out different ways that I was failed by the medical system back in Virginia. My primary doctor determined that I had postpartum depression. My son was already two years old when she discovered that. It was just like, “Oh, okay.” Here's some medication. Now I feel like myself again. It made me realize, “Okay, what else do I need to look into?” I got a cardiologist. She was saying, “There is nothing wrong with your heart.” She can't definitively say because she wasn't there, but she was like, “They put too many fluids in your body. You are fine. There is nothing wrong with your heart.” She was just like, “You're good to go. You can have a VBAC. You can have another C-section. You can do whatever you want. You're fine. We can keep an eye on you, but you're okay.” I started seeing an OB and I told her everything that happened and I was just like, “I want a VBAC.” I told her everything the cardiologist said, gave her all of the paperwork and she was like, “Yeah. You can totally have a VBAC.” So with both of their blessings, I was like, “Okay. Let's try for baby number two. I'm okay. I'm healthy. I'm fine.” 25:13 Getting pregnant againKaren: So I got pregnant with baby number two and that was very exciting. I thought everything was going well then at 20 weeks, my OB said, “Unfortunately, I can't be your doctor anymore. This practice cannot deliver you. You are too high of a risk for this office.” Meagan: For the office. Karen: Yes. Yes. They only delivered at these smaller boutique hospitals so they said that I needed to deliver at a high-risk hospital or a hospital that accepts high-risk patients. Meagan: Okay, got you. I got you. Karen: I got a little tongue-tied. They told me I needed to deliver at a different hospital that I didn't want to deliver at. I was like, “If I'm going to deliver at a big hospital, it's going to be Winnie Palmer in Orlando.” I'm a huge fan of theirs. So I was just like, “Okay. I can't deliver with this office even though they've been aware of all my situations for a while. I'll find a different office.” But I was already 20 weeks so it's really hard to find a provider at 20 weeks. Meagan: It can be, yeah. Karen: The other disappointing thing they told me is, “Oh, by the way, you can't have any more children. You really shouldn't because, with everything that is going on with you, your body can't handle it.” It was just like, I don't understand where this is coming from. You've been telling me I've been okay. My cardiologist says I've been okay. I didn't really get what was going on. Karen: I called around and only one clinic would take me when I was that far along with this high-risk label on me. Meagan: I was going to say the label. That's exactly the word I was going to say. Karen: Yeah. I didn't feel like it really fit, but that's what they said I was. I found a big practice that had lots of doctors. It is a very prominent practice here in Orlando and I felt like I just had to settle. The first doctor I met with I was already frustrated because I asked for a female doctor and they gave me a male doctor. I don't have anything against male doctors, I just feel more comfortable with a female doctor but he was just like, “Oh. You can't VBAC at all. You had a vertical incision so you have to have a repeat C-section.” I was like, “I don't– I've never heard anyone say that. Where does it say that in my medical records?” He was just like, “I don't see it in your records, but this other doctor said that you had a vertical incision.” I'm like, “Well, how does she know that?” So I had to go and start pulling all of these records and got the surgical notes for my C-section and everything and finally, I found something that said I did not have a vertical incision so once I showed it to him, he was just like, “Oh, okay. Well, you still can't VBAC. Your hips are too tiny. You can't deliver a baby.” Meagan: Oh my goodness, just pulling them all out. Let me just shift this jar around and pull out the next reason. Karen: Yes. I was just like, “Are you serious? Okay.” Meagan: Goodness. 29:53 Advocating for a VBACKaren: So me and my husband were like, “No. I want to try. We want to try.” I'm so glad my husband was there because he is always so good at being an advocate for me. He was just like, “No. She wants a VBAC. What can we do to make it happen?” So he said, “Well, your weight is one thing because your baby was so big the first time because you gained a lot of weight. We can help you try but if after two hours of pushing you can't get that baby out, we're going to give you a C-section.” It was very frustrating, but I felt like I really had no choice. Meagan: Yeah. Karen: I hadn't discovered you yet so I was just like, “Okay. I guess it is what it is. I will try my best to have a VBAC, but this guy's going to stop me.” So I was very blessed that due to a scheduling issue, I had an appointment with a totally different doctor. She was this young female doctor. She was around my age and I felt like I could relate to her. I just really enjoyed talking to her. I don't know if this has something to do with it, but my background is I am Japanese and Colombian and she was Asian, so it was just like, “Okay. I have someone else who is a person of color who understands at least the cultural differences.” So I don't know if that really had anything to do with anything, but it did make me feel more comfortable with her.Meagan: Which is important. Karen: Yes. After years of different doctors telling me there was something wrong with me, it was so nice to have her say to me, “Oh. You want a VBAC? Yeah. You are super healthy. You are going to be fine.” It was just like, “Oh my gosh. You think I'm healthy? Every doctor had been telling me that I'm overweight. There's something wrong with my heart. There's something wrong,” and she was telling me that I was healthy. That just made me so inspired and I just became a lot more proactive with my health. I didn't feel like things had to happen to me. I felt like I had a lot more control over my situation. 32:14 A spiritual dreamKaren: There was also one other event that happened and this was around Christmas. I'm a Christian, so we've been going to God a lot with prayers and I have been asking for a successful VBAC. So Christmas morning, I woke up to a dream but it didn't feel like a dream. It felt more like a vision and I was giving birth vaginally to a little girl. In the dream, I had the knowledge that this was going to be my third child. I was like, “Wait a second. But I'm pregnant right now with my second child. How did that birth go?” I just was told by God, “Oh, that birth went well too. You're going to be fine. You're going to be happy. You're going to have many children.” So I woke up so happy that Christmas morning. I told my husband with everything I've been battling and all of these negative thoughts, there is no way that this could have been something I produced myself or just dreamed of myself because it was such a positive, happy dream when before that, I had just been having constant nightmares about C-sections.It was just this moment of, “Okay. God really is with us and he's going to make sure everything is okay.” So yeah, between having this great doctor and then having that dream, I just was more motivated to really take control of the situation like, “Okay. I don't have to let things happen to me. What can I do?” Which actually led me to The VBAC Link. I was already 33 weeks pregnant when I found you guys so it was kind of late in the game, but I'm so glad I did. I listened to The VBAC Link obsessively in the car, when I was walking my dog, all the time and I would just hear these different stories and notate, “Okay. This is what she did. This is how she got results. This is what happened to her.” I started taking all of these notes about how I should respond in different situations and I'm so glad I did because I did use some of that later on. 34:34 Gestational hypertensionKaren: Unfortunately, I did develop gestational hypertension but I'm still not completely convinced that I actually had it. They diagnosed me the week I had to put down my dog and I had her since I was 15 so it was just devastating. I was under a lot of stress and I tried to explain that to them. They were like, “No. This is gestational hypertension.” I'm like, “Okay. Here is another label.” But I kept on top of my blood pressure readings. I never had high readings. I ate well. I tried to do exercise as much as you can when you are in your third trimester. Unfortunately, this practice had a policy that patients with gestational hypertension must deliver by 37 weeks. Meagan: Whoa. Karen: Yes. They said that if you are a VBAC patient, they won't induce you. So there's another timeline. I had to deliver by 37 weeks. But yeah, things seemed to be going really well. Once I reached around 36 weeks, I actually started having prodromal labor. I'm like, “Okay, yes. Things are going really well.” Because I had gestational hypertension, I was going 3-4 times a week to the doctor at that point. Meagan: For non-stress tests and stuff? Karen: Yes, exactly. They could see that I was already 3 centimeters dilated so I was like, “Great. Everything is going great.” At the 37-week appointment, there was a scheduling issue and instead of being able to see my regular doctor, they assigned me to a different doctor and that just made me really, really nervous. I was just like, “I don't want to go. I don't feel right. Something is going to go wrong. It's not my doctor. I don't want to go.” My husband was like, “No. It's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. Let's go.” He canceled work so he could go with me. He was like, “Everything is going to be okay.” The other thing that happened that morning was my sister who was going to be in the room with us woke up with strep throat. I was like, “This is not a good week. This is not a good day. I don't want to go in.” So when I went in, my blood pressure was 160/113 which was extremely high. This doctor told me, “You need to get a C-section today.” So I was just like, “Okay. I don't want to hurt my baby. That's fine.” I was really, really upset. I was crying and I told her I was scared and she was like, “Why are you scared?” My husband was pretty blunt and was like, “Because the doctors almost killed her last time.”She was like, “How did they almost kill her?” He was like, “They put too much fluid in her body and they caused heart failure.” She laughed and she said, “That's not a thing.” I was like, “Well, my cardiologist said it was a thing. How could you say it's not a thing?” I went to the hospital. I was really upset but the nurse there was amazing. She was like, “What happened?” I basically told her everything like my life story basically up until that point. She was like, “I checked your blood pressure when you came in. You are fine.” She was like, “This is ridiculous. It just sounds like you are stressed out.” At that point, my blood pressure was–Meagan: Reasonably so.Karen: She checked my blood pressure and it was 117/83 so it was great. It was so funny because she kept the blood pressure cuff on me and the doctor who was working that day was the same doctor who told me I'd never be able to VBAC and kept coming up with excuses. My nurse was just like, “Look, her blood pressure is fine.” Then she took my blood pressure again in front of him and it went back up. She was like, “Can you step out?” She took it again and then it was fine. She started advocating on my behalf. She was like, “You guys are causing her heart pressure to go up. You guys are stressing her out. She does not have high blood pressure because of herself. It's you guys.” The doctor was just like, “Oh, well I guess it's fine, but wouldn't you rather just have a birthday today?” I'm like, “No. I would not like to just have a C-section for no reason.” He's like, “I really don't want to send you home though,” but you really should consider this C-section just in case your blood pressure goes back up. I was like, “Look. I can check it repeatedly and if it goes up, I will come back. I'm not going to be stupid and put my son's life in danger. I will come back.” He just kept trying to convince me and finally, we were like, “No. We're leaving.” I told them, “If I'm going to have a C-section, it's going to be with my regular doctor. I trust her. I'm going to have control over this situation somehow. Even if I have to have a C-section, it's going to be by someone I trust. It's not going to be by you.” 39:36 Signing an AMAKaren: He was not thrilled about hearing that but he said, “Okay fine. You have to fill out this paperwork saying you're leaving against medical advice, but it will be fine.” I was like, “Okay, fine.” I filled out this paperwork. I was scared like, “They're probably going to kick me out afterward, but whatever.” I filled it out and I went home. They did make me schedule a C-section for two days later when my regular doctor was on call. I was like, “You know what? If it has to happen that day, it's fine. I did everything I could. I took control of whatever I could. It's my doctor.” She made me feel seen and heard and she had my best interest at heart, so we are going to pray and just do what we can. The next two days, I walked 10 miles. I drank raspberry leaf tea. We had sex. We did basically everything you can do to get labor going. I was still having prodromal labor so we would get our hopes up and then it would stop and then get our hopes up and then it would stop. Around midnight the night before I was supposed to get my C-section, I was so upset. I was just like, “It's not going to happen. I'm just going to have to get a C-section.” I just gave up completely. My husband was just like, “No. God told you this was going to be fine. You're going to be fine. Let's just get some rest because it's already midnight and we have to leave at 3:00 AM so let's just get a little bit of rest and it will be fine. We will talk to the doctor in the morning.” I was like, “Okay.” So we went to sleep at 1:00. The alarm rang at 3:00 and I was in labor. Meagan: Yay! Karen: I was so excited. 41:31 Going to the hospitalKaren: We went to the hospital. They still prepped me for a C-section. They were like, “Just in case,” but I was having regular contractions. It wasn't going away. My doctor came in. She checked me and she was like, “Okay. If you want to TOLAC, I'll send you over.” I was just like, “Oh my gosh, yes. This is my dream!” We were so happy. They wheeled us over and it just felt so surreal. We just kept waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under us and someone came in and was like, “No, you need a C-section now. You're not allowed to be over here,” or something. We were just waiting. I wanted this to be another unmedicated birth, but our midwife came in and she told me her plan. She said she wanted to try a small bit of Pitocin to see if I could make the contractions a little bit stronger and then she saw my hesitation and told me, “It's only a small amount to help move things along, but you are not on a time limit. You can take however long you need to labor. It's just to help move things along. The max is 10. We won't ever get to that point.” I was just like, “Okay. I'm going to put my trust in you because my doctor trusts you.” She also asked if she could break my water to help move things along and I felt at ease so I was just like, “Okay. That's fine.” My husband was really surprised I was consenting to the Pitocin and to the water breaking. I told him, “I don't know. All this time, I'm always fighting against my gut and my gut is telling me I can trust them fine and this is going to be okay.” I listened to her plan and I said, “Yeah, let's do it.” They also kept a really close eye on my fluid levels– the thing that the other doctor said was not a thing. It felt good to know that they were actually paying attention to me and listening to me. Karen: The other thing that happened was at 10:00 AM, my sister completed 48 hours of antibiotics so she was able to join us and I was like, “Okay. Everything is going to be okay.” My husband and I were finally able to relax. Meagan: Good. Karen: Yeah. Again, I wanted to go unmedicated but I noticed something about my body which was that I could not relax my pelvic floor. I was so tired. I was so exhausted from the last 48 hours, from the walking, from not sleeping, and from everything. I was just like, “I'm trying, but I cannot relax it.” I was just like, “I think I want an epidural. I think that will relax my pelvic floor and just relax in general.” They gave me the epidural so I was finally able to get some rest. Without even having to ask them, the midwife would come in, put me in different positions, and just do different things to help me get the baby down on its own instead of last time where they just left me lying in there with no instructions. Then around 4:00 PM, they told me I was fully dilated and they were like, “Let's do some practice pushes. Let's just make sure you know what you're doing with your body. We can troubleshoot and then when you're ready, you know what to do already.” I was like, “Yeah. That's fine.” They get everything ready, start doing some practice pushes, and the midwife goes, “Oh, these aren't practice pushes.” 45:20 Pushing for 20 minutesKaren: She starts getting suited up and the room starts filling up with people and 20 minutes later, my baby was out. Meagan: 20 minutes! Karen: Yeah, 20 minutes of pushing. He was 9 pounds so he was still a big baby and perfectly healthy and beautiful. It was wonderful. One thing that my husband noticed was that the whole room was all women. It was such a cool girl power moment. They were all cheering and so happy for me getting my VBAC and it was just a total girl power that we were all like, “Yes. We did it. Girl power! The doctor is a woman. The pediatrician is a woman. We did this.” It was such a cool, surreal moment and then they had other nurses coming in and they were like, “We heard your story. That is so cool you got your VBAC.” It was so, so amazing. It was just such a huge difference having this supportive environment. I don't know. In that moment, it was like an instant feeling of relief because I felt like all of this trauma that I had been carrying with me for so long was just lifted. I felt like I was finally healed and I was able to forgive myself for the C-section and realize, “Okay. You didn't fail at anything. Things happen. You didn't know. It's okay.” Finally, I didn't have this label that I was defining myself with for so long which was traumatic birth. I finally just got to have the birth I wanted for it to be pretty smooth after the drama of the earlier morning. Everything just went perfectly and it was so, so beautiful. I was crying. We were all crying. The doctor was just like, “Okay, is this pain crying or is this happiness?” I'm like, “This is happiness!” Meagan: Pure joy.Karen: That's my story. 47:30 White coat syndromeMeagan: That is awesome. I love that you truly got to end that way surrounded with women and somebody that you really like and just having everyone rejoicing and happy and crying together and having that space be such a drastic change in your first birth. That is amazing. Thank you so much. Did you have any blood pressure issues during your labor at all? Karen: No. My blood pressure was fine. They were keeping an eye on it the entire time and I was getting nervous because I thought, maybe if it should up they would wheel me over to a C-section, but no. It was fine the entire time. Meagan: I love that. It's kind of interesting because there have been times where I've had clients where they don't have any signs of hypertension or preeclampsia or anything like that, but then they go to their visit and then they are like, “Oh my gosh. My blood pressure was just through the roof.” They go home and they are checking it at home and they are like, “It's fine.” But then they go and it's through the roof every time they go. We just had a client just the other day. She's 34 weeks and she went and her blood pressure was pretty high. It really was. It was high. The reading was high and they did a couple of readings. They said things like, “Well, we might have to go to an emergency C-section.” This and that. Anyway, she was like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on.” She was like, “I want to go home.” She went home and relaxed and had food. Her blood pressure was fine. White coat syndrome is a real thing and it's something to take into consideration like, “I never have blood pressure issues. I don't have any signs. I don't have protein. I don't have these things. What may be going on?” I love how your nurse was like, “Hey, can you step out? Go out.” She was very able to relate to that. Then sometimes, we have it and we don't know why. With your first pregnancy, did you have any high blood pressure at all? Karen: No. It was just a very uneventful pregnancy. Everything was perfect. It was very strange for these blood pressure problems to happen afterward.Meagan: Yeah. I think it's called peripartum so it could happen before or postpartum cardiomyopathy. Karen: Yes. Yes. Meagan: That's what I was thinking it was going where the heart muscles weaken and can lead to heart failure progressively. The symptoms include fatigue, hard to breathe, and feeling your heart rush. Those are common. Karen: Yeah, so that's actually what is on my medical records is that I had peripartum cardiomyopathy but my cardiologist was just like, “I don't believe that for a second. Your heart is fine.” She kept an eye on my heart the entire pregnancy and after the pregnancy. Nothing else happened. Meagan: I almost wonder if your heart was under stress. You talked about fluids. We get an astronomical amount of fluids during a C-section too. I'm just wondering if your body just went under a lot with a Cesarean. There was a lot of shifting and a lot of things happening and then of course a Cesarean. It just made me curious because sometimes if you have hypertension before, it can be a risk factor in that. Interesting. Karen: Yeah. That's something that the cardiologist said is that sometimes it gets confused with fluid overload. She thinks that's what happened. Part of the labeling that was happening is throughout my second pregnancy, I kept having to tell people that I did not have blood pressure issues with the first because they kept going, “Oh yeah, well you had blood pressure issues with your first pregnancy,” and I'd be like, “No, I didn't. Stop assuming that.” Meagan: I mean, I am no medical professional by any means, but it makes me wonder if it could have been related to the birth itself. 51:59 Symptoms of hypertension and preeclampsiaMeagan: I'd love to talk about hypertension and preeclampsia and things like that because hypertension is something that happens during pregnancy and it can be associated with lots of different reasons, but sometimes hypertension during pregnancy can lead to preeclampsia or HELLP or things like that. I want to give a little educational tidbit here. Talking about just hypertension. High blood pressure or hypertension does not necessarily make us feel unwell all the time. You can have that and not know. So you walking into your visit and them being like, “You have hypertension.” You're like, “Oh.” It's not completely abnormal to just walk in, but sometimes we might have headaches or not feel super great. If you are feeling crummy or especially if you are feeling like you can't breathe when you lay down or have shortness of breath, do not think that those are all just normal pregnancy symptoms that people who told you, “Oh, yeah. It's a new mom.” You're like, “No.” So follow your body. Trust your body. Preeclampsia is a condition that does affect pregnant women and can sometimes come on after that 20-week mark where we are having some of that swelling. We are having the high blood pressure. We have protein in our urine. That's when it turns into that preeclampsia stage. It's really hard. It's still unknown exactly why preeclampsia or hypertension come, but it's believe to be placenta-related so sometimes our placenta doesn't attach in the full-on correct manner and our blood vessels are pumping differently so we can get high blood pressure. I want to note that if you are told that you have high blood pressure or if you have preeclampsia, that doesn't always mean you have to schedule a C-section. It just doesn't. It doesn't mean it's always the best decision to not schedule a C-section if that makes sense, but that doesn't mean you have to have a C-section because you have hypertension or blood pressure. I feel like time and time again, I do. I see these comments in our community where it's like, “I really wanted my VBAC, but I just got preeclampsia. The doctor says I have to have a C-section.” That just isn't necessarily true. They can be induced. I know you mentioned your one hospital was like, “No, we can't induce because you are a VBAC,” which also isn't necessarily true. 54:52 Tips for hypertension and preeclampsia Meagan: Sometimes we also want to be aware of hypertension or preeclampsia getting worse because labor can be stressful on our body and all of the things. I wanted to just give a couple of little tips. If you have high blood pressure, increase your hydration. Go for walks. Cut out a lot of salts so really eating healthy and then you can get good supplements to help. If you are in labor and you are getting induced or something like that, sometimes you may want to shift gears. Maybe an epidural can be a good thing to reduce stress or a provider may suggest that it's not abnormal. But know that if you were told you have hypertension or you have preeclampsia, it doesn't always mean it's a for sure absolutely have to have a C-section. Even your provider was like, “Oh yeah. We've got this high blood pressure stuff. I really wanted to keep you.” You were like, “No.” Then your other doctor was like, “We'll kick you over here to 38 weeks,” because everything really was looking okay. Yay for that doctor for not making you stay and have a C-section that day. Know that you do have options. Time and time we talk about this. Don't hesitate to ask questions. Ask questions. Can I get a second opinion? Can I go home and relax and take a reading there? Is there something I can take to help with my blood pressure? Those types of things and then following your heart. What does your heart say? That's just my little tidbit. Do you have anything to add? I know you didn't have high blood pressure in the first pregnancy and then you kind of did sort of maybe have white coat syndrome or blood pressure with the second but do you have any tips on this situation? You were exactly in that space of they are telling you you have blood pressure. He is telling you he doesn't want you to go home and that type of thing.Do you have any messages to the audience?56:55 Karen's final tipsKaren: One thing I started doing during this pregnancy was meditation and that helped a lot. Whenever I felt like, “Okay. I'm going to go into a stressful situation,” which was most doctor visits, I would meditate before the doctor came in and that would really help a lot. Meagan: Yes. Exercising, eating, hydrating, meditation, and doing something to bring yourself back down can help. It doesn't always help. Sometimes we have high blood pressure and we do not understand it. We cannot control it as much as we are trying to. It just doesn't want to listen to what we are trying to do or receive the things we are trying to do, but all of these things can help. I am just so happy for you that you found good support, that you found the true bubble of love in your hospital room at the very end, and that you were able to have your VBAC. Karen: Thank you. Yeah. I do want to make sure. I'm not trying to send a message of, “Ignore high blood pressure! Do what you want!” It absolutely can be a very scary thing. If you need to have a C-section because of it, totally understandable. It's just that my big message that I tell new moms is to listen to your body and you are allowed to say no. You are allowed to say no to people and ask for options. But the big one is to listen to your body. Listen to your gut. You know what is really, truly going on with your body. Meagan: Of course, right. And typically, birth is actually the full cure for things like preeclampsia. Getting baby earthside is typically the end of that preeclampsia and the stop. That doesn't mean you shouldn't say, “No, I'm not going to do anything,” but just know that you have options. Induction is still okay typically. Ask those providers about your individual needs. Talk about your individual case but yeah, I would agree. I'm not trying to say, “Don't listen to your provider.” I'm just saying that you have options and you often will have options if they say one thing or another. Don't hesitate to ask questions. Karen: Exactly. Exactly. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan's bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Can I Have Another Snack? Podcast where we talk about food, bodies, and identity, especially through the lens of parenting. I'm Laura Thomas, I'm an anti-diet registered nutritionist and I also write the Can I Have Another Snack newsletter.Today I'm sharing part 2 of my conversation with Professor Karen Throsby, author of Sugar Rush.  If you're just joining us then make sure you go back and listen to part 1 of this episode before you jump into this one. We talk about mortified mothers, how removing sugar from the diet is gendered work that falls on women, and how the certainty around the ‘badness' of sugar belies a lot more doubt and ambiguity coming from the scientific community. So go back and check out part 1 if you haven't listened already. Today we're getting into why the so-called ‘war on ob*sity' has to constantly reinvent itself to stay relevant, and how it fails to meet its own objectives. We also talk about how ultra-processed foods are quickly becoming the new sugar and how that conversation fails to acknowledge the role that convenience foods play in offering immediate care or the privilege in being able to eat for some nebulous future health. And we couldn't talk about sugar and not talk about Jamie Oliver and the sugar tax.INTROBefore we get to Karen, a super quick reminder that all the work we do here is entirely reader and listener supported and the podcast is my biggest operating cost. I will do everything I can to keep it free and accessible to everyone, and you can help by becoming a paid subscriber - it's £5/month or £50 for the year (and you can pay that in your local currency wherever you are in the world). Paid subscribers get access to the extended CIHAS universe including our weekly discussion threads, my monthly column Dear Laura and the whole back archive. You also support the people who work on the podcast, and help ensure we can keep the lights on around here. You can sign up at laurathomasphd.co.uk and the link is in your show notes. As always, if you're experiencing financial hardship, comp subscriptions are available, please email hello@laurathomasphd.co.uk and put the work ‘snacks' in the subject line and we'll hook you up. Thank you as always for your support and for making this work possible.Alright team, I know you're going to love the second installment of this episode so let's get straight to it - here's part two of my conversations with professor Karen Throsby.  Here's the transcript in full:MAIN EPISODELaura: Karen, I want to come back to this idea that you articulate so well in the book. You say that “the so-called war on ob*sity has been unable to warrant its core empirical claims” – I'm quoting you now, “and has been a notable failure when measured against its own goals of sustained population level weight loss.”Can you explain how in order to sustain itself, the war on ob*sity had to reinvent itself like Madonna? By casting a new villain…and kind of talk about that arc a little bit? Karen: Yeah. So if we think about, I mean, obviously the sort of attack on fat bodies has, has a very long history, but if we think about its most recent history in, in the form of the war on ob*sity, which dates to around the turn of the millennium as a new kind of intensified attack where dietary fat was seen as the core problem.Sugar has always been seen as a problem. We can even go back to the 1960s and the rise of artificial sweeteners. and their take up in the diet industry. So it's always been there as a problem, but it was really fat, fat, fat, fat, fat. And that's why, when I looked at the newspaper articles, sugar was hardly talked about because the focus was different.And I think what we get is then with that repeated failure, where there has been a base, I mean, there's…in the UK, there's been a leveling off of ob*sity rates, but it doesn't meet the aspirations of the attack on ob*sity. It has been a failure. And I think it runs out of steam because it's not achieving the change.And, and yet you get this kind of constant hectoring and sort of constant renewal. I can't…there's been…I can't remember. It's like 17 policies or something, you know, in the last 20 years. And it's, you know, none of them are successful, have been successful. And then, so we get to about 2012, and one of the things that happened in the UK, of course, was the Olympics, where there was a lot of anti-ob*sity talk.It was seen as a way of refreshing the war on ob*sity, and I think that partly opened the door. Laura: Yeah. I'm sort of smirking, because I was in the States at that point doing my PhD, so I kind of, like, missed a lot of what was going on here, around 2012 in the Olympics. So yeah, it's really interesting that you're, you're not, you noted that, that that kind of anti…Karen: Like a core, a core justification for the, for funding, you know, a mega event like the Olympics was that it would boost sport, which would boost attempts to reduce ob*sity. And so you've got that in the background, you've got the fact that it is losing steam, you know, and so it needs to find another, another enemy, something to pick it back up again. And sugar, I think…because at the same time, as I mentioned earlier, we've got austerity measures being consolidated through the Welfare Reform Act in 2012, all of those welfare cuts in place. So then the idea of sugar, and the kind of an austerity worked really well together, the idea that individuals should make small economies to get by to manage their own consumption, that you shouldn't over consume because it costs the state, it costs other people money. And so those narratives came together perfectly and sugar just became this, this model enemy for the moment.And then what we see then is the rise of interest in the sugar tax. which was announced in 2016, which is the peak in the newspaper coverage, and then was launched in 2018. So in a, in a sense, the history of the social life of sugar during this moment is an arc that sort of covers the rise to the sugar tax and then its implementation.But all of the expectation that had been laid on fat is then laid onto sugar as the problem. If only we can solve this problem. And so again, as I said before, it creates this erasure of the absolute complexity of food and eating. The idea that food is only ever swallowing and metabolising, it's, you know, it's so social, it forms so many social functions around love, care, comfort, you know, all of those things that it's just completely inadequate.And then what we've got now is a tailing off. And actually it tailed off during the pandemic, there was a little peak at the beginning, if you can remember when Boris Johnson launched an anti-obesity policy, when he came out of hospital, he was blaming his own body size on the fact that he'd been very unwell. And so we saw a little peak then, but it's basically dropped off now.So in sort of 10 years, we've had a sort of complete focus on sugar and then this tailing off of interest in it. And I think now what's coming in instead is ultra processed food is now filling that gap, but it's folded sugar into it because obviously ultra processed food is, as almost all, I mean, has always got sugar in it. And so it's picked up the sugar as it's gone. So it's, all of that is still there, but it's now being talked about in terms of ultra processed food.[SMALL PREVIEW OF FIRST UPF ARTICLE]Laura: I imagine that what you, you might say about kind of almost this like third phase of the, the ‘war on ob*sity' in terms of who or what is responsible, because there almost has to be this singular entity that we can point at.And at the same time, I think it's so interesting that ultra processed food has just kind of subsumed every kind of nutritional villain that we could have. Fat, sugar, sweeteners, and just the complexity within the concept of ultra processed food in terms of just from a lay perspective, right? To try and wrap your head around what is and isn't.I mean, I have a PhD in nutrition and I struggled to get through the NOVA documentation on ultra processed food. And to bring it back to the sort of gendered aspect of this for a second, something that I noted that…so Carlos Monteiro is the guy, right, that developed the NOVA classification. I'm not sure if you've read much around this.I don't know if this is a book that's in the works for the future, but one of the things he said is that ultra processed food is the undoing, basically of the family meal. I mean, there's…there's a lot that we could unpack there in terms of, like, the sort of putting a family meal on a pedestal and how that even has sort of classed and, you know, all kinds of connotations.But, I mean, as a mother of a small child, to my thinking, actually, ultra processed food saves our family meals, right? Like, it makes it feasible to get something on the table while you have, you know, a child kind of hanging around your legs begging you to play with them. All of the, kind of, the rhetoric from Carlos Monteiro and the men of science, it kind of, it misses the piece of labour, around labour, which we've talked about, but it also misses this piece of just how we're all just struggling to survive in late stage capitalism, and how none of us in our lives have the conditions available to us where, you know, we have affordable childcare or family close by because we're living in these like hyper isolated, splintered, you know, individual houses, and we have no community and I think there's this a piece that gets missed out of this conversation about the bigger, broader social structures that we're living within, which I suppose, you know, speaks to the thesis of your book.So yeah, I was just tying it back to some of my observations around ultra processed food, so it's really interesting that you've gone there and I'm curious to hear what additional thoughts you have about that?Karen: Yeah, I mean, I think for me, the, the alarm that goes off for me when I hear this talk about ultraprocessed food is very similar to my alarm around the way the sugar, that sugar is talked about. It's carrying a lot of weight that it's, it's being now framed as again, the problem. But now it's a very different kind of problem to sugar. So we know that sugar is in a lot of foods. If you go to a supermarket, it's, you know, there's a considerable proportion of the foods will have added sugar.But there's a real difference there between, say, observing that, where you could, for example, purchase lower sugar items and so on. But to say that, I mean, what is it, 60 to 80 percent of, of food that we eat – this is the figure that we get, I mean again, who is we? – is ultra processed food and we shouldn't eat it. What, what do they expect people to eat?Are they seriously suggesting that people take out 60 to 80 percent of their habitual diet?Laura: Well, I have an answer to that actually, Karen. So Gyorgy Scrinis, who I know you reference a lot in your book, he thinks that we should all… well, he had two recommendations from one podcast I listened to. One was that we should all, there should be lots of markets everywhere that people can just pick up food, fresh food, right?And secondly, he also thinks we should all be able to go into our garden and pick a salad. Karen: Right. I mean, it's a lovely fantasy. It's a lovely fantasy. Promised on the labour of women, again.Laura: I would love to have a garden, first of all, that I could be able to do that. Karen: Lots of people don't have those gardens. They don't have farmer's markets.It's a lovely fantasy. It's probably not a bad idea, but realistically, people can't do that for all kinds of complicated reasons. And I think what gets lost there is, I think, the idea of health in the present. So, for example, we know that, when I talk about the, we, you know, the, we are eating this, what's often meant there is they are eating this, right?We know that a lot of the people, the, the big figures in the anti UPF field are not and yeah, they're not eating it. So they are eating it and there is this complete lack of understanding around, for example, if you have no money, if you really have no money, if you're very poor, if you're poor in every way, which many, many people are in this country, to feed your child a processed meal that is highly palatable, calorific, that you know they'll finish and not be hungry, is an act of care in the present, that your kid's not going to be hungry. They'll be able to concentrate at school, get a good night's sleep, those things. Whereas those…that act is not credited. So if you were to cook food from scratch or buy an unfamiliar food, for example, and give it to a child. Now I've never raised a child, but from what I kind of understand, children are incredibly conservative and it takes many, many goes at a new food before they will eat it. So if you have no money and you give your child an apple that they won't eat, you can't give them anything else. And so the cost of experimentation is very, very high for people with nothing to fall back on. And so there's lots of reasons. And then we talk about time poverty. It's better to, you know, sit down and grab something that is processed rather than not having the time to cook anything. And so lots of those reasons why people might eat this food. And until you address, I think, the inequalities that are absolutely central to food choice, it makes no sense to actually dictate food choice unless you are prepared to entrench those very same inequalities.Laura: Yeah, thank you for that. I think you articulated it so beautifully with that example around the opportunity cost of feeding a child or, you know, exposing them..we would use the language of ‘exposure' in nutritional science in terms of, you need 15 to 20 exposures before a child will accept a food and even that's horseshit, right?We know that it can take a lot more than that and, and, and even then, you know, the…say they do eat the green beans or the broccoli or whatever it is, that's unlikely to fill them up and stave off hunger for, for that child. So, yeah, I think framing it as an act of care is such a beautiful way to, to put it because, you know, the, the alternative that's being peddled by these, UPF sort of evangelists is that that you're doing something harmful for your child and setting up that binary is so problematic because again, you're just flattening down so much nuance there.Karen: Yeah, exactly that. This idea that food is either good or bad and sugar is…is bad. And if you say it's good, then you must work for the sugar industry. And if you make, if you make a set of claims, as I have, a kind of critical claim where I, I refuse the idea that it's either good or bad, I've never said that it's good or bad, I just get accused of working for Coca Cola.You know, which I'm not, by the way.Laura: Yeah, no, you're, you're an academic and what you're doing is complicating a lot of these things that, that seem….are, I suppose, where the, the rhetoric around them is so, um, binarised and flattened and yeah, just, just, uh, you're, you're asking questions, which I think we need to do a lot more of.Speaking of questions, there is one, one more thing, little topic that I'd like to – I say, little topic, it's not a little topic at all, but one of the things that you, or one of the threads that felt really important in your book that I feel often gets obscured from any conversations about sugar is the really troubling history stemming from colonialism and enslavement of sugar.Can you speak to how nutrition and public health sort of washed their hands of this history and maybe tell us a little bit about that history and, and what happens when we erase it?Karen: Yeah, I mean a lot of people are aware, even though it doesn't come to the fore as much as it should, that there is a terrible history, and in many ways present, attached to sugar.Obviously it was, you know, a central product in, in the slavery, in the slavery trade. It was, um…you know, millions of people were enslaved in the interests of sugar production, um, the murder of, of uncountable people, the dislocation of uncountable people to get sugar. And this kind of partly relates to its, its, its kind of history as a, firstly as a luxury item, and then as a kind of everyday in, in sort of, you know, the, the 20th century, it becomes a, um, it becomes a more everyday item that you know that workers would put in their tea to get to get energy. But also we can even see more recently in, in, say, Australia, for example, there's a really terrible history of indentured labour…so post slavery. At the end of slavery, there was a use of indentured labor so Pacific Island people, for example in Australia, under absolutely horrific conditions, working conditions, of profound racism as well. And these things leave a long legacy. And we know, the legacy of slavery, you know, has led to the marginalisation of people of colour, you know, into the present. And so I think it's an important point. One of the things that bothers me a little bit about the ways it does get talked about is that it gets, there's a couple of books that talk about it as a kind of essentially evil product. Look, it was connected with slavery and now it's killing everybody. Um, as if it's sort of in itself, it was contaminated, whereas in fact, of course, it was colonialism, it was capitalism, that was the problem, not sugar, because we saw things with cotton and tobacco and so on as well. So it's an interesting thing, because in some ways it gets talked about as, well, it's clearly a kind of terrible product, look at its history, and yet at the same time, we don't talk about its history and what the legacy is of that in terms of racism, the legacies of colonialism and also we should also think as well about the present environmental damage of the sugar industry, which, you know, is incredibly greedy of water, for example, and causes a great deal of environmental damage.Which is also always through the lens of colonialism in the sense of who bears the weight of that damage, which areas, which places?Laura: Absolutely. I thought there was a really…I mean, there were lots of really illuminating examples in the book, but one thing – maybe you could speak more to this – is the kind of voyeuristic aspect of Jamie Oliver's Sugar documentary where he acts…he is almost behaving like the coloniser in, or embodying the coloniser by going to Mexico and sort of, you know, as he claims, seeing the damage that has been caused by companies like Coca Cola, but that that is missing a lot of the, the historical context. Can you just describe that probably a bit better than I can?Karen: Yeah, sure. I mean, Mexico has got this, this kind of, sort of unique status in the anti-sugar world as a place where sugar consumption is very high, but was also one of the first places to introduce a sugar tax.And so it's, it's seen as, as a sort of model site – and sort of everybody references Mexico and all the policy papers and things. And what Jamie Oliver did is in this, his documentary about sugar, he went to Mexico and went to the area of Chiapas, which has a very troubled history of conflict and profound poverty, and he actually goes to a family, a family dinner, a family event. It's actually a memorial event for a family member who died and they have, and they cook up a big dinner. And he looks on very approvingly at the food that they're cooking. They're sort of, you know, frying up all these great vegetables and spices. And he, he keeps saying how authentic it is and how, what a great job they're doing.And then we, he starts seeing what they're drinking and they're drinking pop. They're drinking fizzy drinks from the bottles. And also we see, we see several shots of women feeding babies, or toddlers, giving them pop, uh, to drink. And he sort of..his disapproval is so palpable and he sort of looks at the camera like, ‘why would they do this? Don't they know?'.You know, and he seems to have forgotten that earlier he's spoken to an activist in the area who tells him that there is, there is very little drinkable water in the region. And so actually, again, we can see the pop as an act of care, that the kids are being given, you know, something safe to drink.He never asks the next question. And he's got this very colonial gaze, which is…if only these people knew they would make different choices.Laura: Yeah, that's, it's so interesting. And there was another moment, again, that there, I think there were children drinking Coca Cola and with a similar sort of like, Oh my God, don't they know any better sort of stance? It was a dentist! Who said that they saw a lot of children who had been drinking high amounts of, of, like fizzy drinks, sweetened drinks, and that that they…the dentist started asking questions and the one of the, I think it was the mother maybe, or someone in the family had said that they were giving the child a fizzy drink to help keep them quiet. And then the dentist said, well, why do you need to keep them quiet? And they had said, well, because otherwise they will be beaten by their extended family. Karen: Yeah, I think it's the case from, from Alaska actually, that particular case. But what I think what's in…but yes, the point is that the mother giving the baby fizzy drinks was again performing an act of care to protect the child, in terms of present health, the child wouldn't be beaten for crying and so on. But this, this kind of trope of babies being given pop to drink runs right the way through the anti-sugar field as like the worst, the most egregious example. And of course, it's another version of mother blaming. And of kind of…and then it goes through this colonial lens of ignorance. If only they knew…Laura: And then they need these white male chef saviours to come in and…Karen: Exactly. So again, it's about…it's not, I'm not saying that, you know, giving the babies pop is, is a good thing or a bad thing.It's performing a particular function for the people caring for that child. And then it's, it's framed through this colonial lens of: if only these people knew better, and we are the ones who can teach them. Rather than asking, what is it in your life that influences your food choices? How could we make your lives better?Laura: Yeah, that makes giving our children a sweetened drink, you know, a necessity in the first place, what necessitates that. So then, we've talked a lot about this Jamie Oliver character, and I was telling you before we started recording that I now inextricably have the image of Jamie Oliver dancing outside of Parliament playing in my mind whenever I think about the sugar tax.I don't know if you intended your book to be funny, but I found it hilarious, the way that you were just name dropping all these people who I ,like, know through nutrition, but that's that's an aside! But I wonder if you could tell us a little bit more about the sugar tax and specifically the ways that the sugar tax is constructed so that it cannot fail.Karen: So the sugar tax is… if sugar is a problem about which something must be done, then sugar tax was the something, in the UK context. And the promise of the sugar tax was that it would reduce consumption of sugar, which in turn would a) produce more money to use for health projects and b) create health benefits. It would lead to a reduction in ob*sity, diabetes, all kinds of chronic diseases. Okay.But it's set up in such a way that…so its ultimate goal is to reduce illness, right? So to reduce ob*sity – which I don't consider as being illness – but to reduce ob*sity and to improve measures…make measurable health improvements at population level. That's the target. But actually, it doesn't have to do that to succeed. So the first thing it needs to do, the first way it can succeed is by reducing consumption, which is taken as a proxy for expected benefits. So, the sugar tax did reduce consumption of sugar. A lot of drinks were reformulated in advance of the tax to have less sugar. It did reduce purchasing of the high sugar drinks to some extent. Uh, it's a fairly modest reduction, but it is a reduction and that's been mapped fairly, you know, across the board globally in these taxes, right? But there is no evidence of the measurable health impacts that were assumed to follow. And instead what happens is they get pushed into the future. Ah, ‘we haven't seen them yet, but we will see them, especially if we have more taxes'. So the problem is not that the tax hasn't worked, but that there aren't enough of them, so we need to tax sweets and, and other, you know, cereals and things. So there's that way that as long as it reduces consumption, it can't fail. Even if it doesn't produce measurable health effects. The second is financial. So it will produce money, revenue, which can then be invested into, I mean, in our case, it was, they said it would go towards breakfast clubs and sporting facilities. Although when you look across the documents, the number of times over that the money is spent is amazing. And the idea is that you get, then you get health gains by other means. So you'll have breakfast clubs, so kids will have a healthy breakfast. So it doesn't matter if the sugar reduction doesn't lead to health gains because there's a revenue gain that will lead to health benefits.What's interesting is that also can't lose because if, if the tax doesn't raise very much money, it means that the tax has worked to reduce consumption. And if the tax raises a lot of money, you can say, well, it's worked because we can now compensate for the high consumption by investing in health benefits. So…and actually, I mean, there's, there's a whole other set of questions about what actually happened to the money.Laura: Well, that was what I was wondering, because I'm still seeing that there are 4 million children in England who are food insecure. Where are the free school meals for the 800,000 children that…whose parents are on Universal Credit that aren't eligible for free school meals, like…?Karen: And Sustain, the organisation Sustain actually raised some very specific questions about money that they knew had been raised in revenue that hadn't been…that had just been drawn into the sort of, into the wealth of the country. And so there's that. And then the final way that the sugar tax can succeed is its best way…it's the most nebulous way, is that it's seen as raising awareness. That simply by the fact of its existence, it's alerting people to the dangers of sugar. And so in a sense, it doesn't have to produce any of the other benefits because it's raised awareness. And what's interesting about this to me is that that then flings it straight back onto the individual. “Well, we told you, we've signaled it through the sugar tax. You're still not eating appropriately. You're still not feeding your children appropriately.” So it's a kind of abnegation of political responsibility, even while claiming to be taking responsibility by having the tax. So this is my concern about the tax is that it can't fail. And actually it ends up throwing responsibility back onto individuals and. As always, particularly women, where food is concerned. Laura: Yeah, well, that's exactly what Matt Hancock wanted, so he's got his way. But I do, I think it's really interesting that, especially that first part that you talked about, the sort of constantly moving goalposts and, you know, oh yes, we'll see these these benefits in the future. And it just all feels so nebulous. And, and then that being used as justification for us needing more and additional, you know, taxation, again, sort of obfuscating from all of the social and structural things over here going that, that nobody is addressing. Karen: I mean, you can think about the attack on sugar and, really on the, on the war on ob*sity more generally, as it's a very future oriented project. The benefits all lie in the future. If I give up sugar now, I will experience these, these benefits in the future, which is in itself a profound active privilege. And that's why I kind of mentioned the, the healthcare in the present of giving your child a bag of chips or something that will fill them up is being an active healthcare in the present because they don't have the luxury to invest in the future in the way that is being determined, um, in these prescriptions to give up sugar.Laura: And simultaneously you see this sense of urgency on the political side of things, even though these alleged benefits to people aren't going to be seen for years and years in the future, but the sense of urgency in terms of policymaking and you get these very off the cuff, ill thought-out, you know, not thinking about the potential collateral damage of these policies just for political gain.Yeah, we're all just collateral damage in this.Karen: I mean, interestingly we're not all collateral damage, it's particular groups of people are collateral damage. Laura: Well, that's true.Karen:…is the really salient point – I agree with you – but that's the really salient point that the weight of this damage does not fall evenly. And that's where my concern, that's kind of where the book really tries to focus, is where the weight of those exclusions falls. Laura: Yeah. No, absolutely. That's so on the point. So thank you for that. Karen, before I let you go, I would love to hear what your snack is. So at the end of every episode, my guest and I share what they've been snacking on. So it could be anything, a show, a podcast, a literal snack, whatever you have been snacking on lately. So what have you got to share with the listeners? Karen: Okay. So, so mine is a…it's an activity, really. So I love to swim and I swim in an outdoor pool, which is unusual in the UK, at a health club. And just, just recently…I swim in the evening and it's got very dark, but it's been very autumnal and the leaves have been kind of falling while, and the, the, the pool is surrounded by trees and it is the most peaceful and delicious space at the end of a very busy day to just go into the pool and be surrounded by this. It's very cold. The pool is warm, but the air is very cold. And it's a very particular moment that happens in the autumn where you get this beautiful colour and the sort of mist is rising off the pool. And it's the most peaceful, relaxing space at the end of a difficult day or a long day and I just look forward to it all day and then I just love…the first 10 minutes of that swim is just, is the best moment ever. So that would, that's my, that's my snack.Laura: So I'm sitting here so envious of you right now because I know exactly what you're talking about. I live, like, a five minute walk from a Lido. here in London. It's very close, but I'm navigating some pelvic pain. I haven't been able to go for a swim for such a long time, but I know exactly that moment that you're referring to, which, um, yeah, it's so lovely when… apart from when you get to the stage in autumn where they, like, leave out baskets and with the idea that you gather up leaves as you're going. Karen: But I love the leaves being in the water. I love having the leaves in the water and it's just, it's such a comforting space for me.Laura: I agree. There's something really holding, containing about being in the water. So my snack is…it's an actual, literal snack. But it's an anticipatory snack because every year…so my brother lives in the States, and every year we do like an exchange of like, I send him a bunch of, like, Dairy Milk and all these like chocolates, and he sends me stuff from from the US, so I've sent him with a list of stuff from Trader Joe's. So I'm vegan, which I believe you are as well. I just ask him to, like, clear the shelves of any, like, vegan shelf stable snacks and just box them all up and send them to me. So I know I have, like, peanut butter pretzels and the almond butter pretzel. They're like these little nuggets filled with peanut butter and almond butter, but like a pretzel casing. So I know that they're coming and they're so salty on the outside. Public Health England…I can see Susan Jebb is just, like, screaming at me right now. But it's okay. So yeah, I'm looking forward to getting that. By the time that this episode comes out in January, I will have had my snacks.Karen: You will have had your snacks. That is fantastic. Laura: Karen, before I let you go, can you please tell everyone where they can find your book? Actually say the title of it! And where they can get it and where they can find more of your work.Karen: Yep. So the book is called Sugar Rush: Science, Politics, and the Demonisation of Fatness. And it's published by Manchester University Press and you can buy it through their website. And if you want to learn more about the work that I'm doing, you can find me at the University of Leeds. If you put my name, Karen Throsby, into the search engine, or into Google, I'll pop up. And there's a list of sort of publications that I've done there and how you can get hold of me as well.Laura: Well, I will definitely link to the book and to your part on Leeds website in the show notes that everyone can find you and learn more about your work. Karen, this has been such a treat. Thank you so much for coming and speaking with us and thank you so much for your really brilliant and important work.Karen: Thank you so much for having me on. OUTRO​Thanks so much for listening to the Can I Have Another Snack? podcast. You can support the show by subscribing in your podcast player and leaving a rating and review. And if you want to support the show further and get full access to the Can I Have Another Snack? universe, you can become a paid subscriber.It's just £5 a month or £50 for the year. As well as getting tons of cool perks you help make this work sustainable and we couldn't do it without the support of paying subscribers. Head to laurathomas.substack.com to learn more and sign up today.  Can I Have Another Snack? is hosted by me, Laura Thomas. Our sound engineer is Lucy Dearlove. Fiona Bray formats and schedules all of our posts and makes sure that they're out on time every week. Our funky artwork is by Caitlin Preyser, and the music is by Jason Barkhouse. Thanks so much for listening. ICYMI this week: “Why Do You Wear Makeup??”* Dear Laura... how do I stop fat shaming my partner's kid?* Rapid Response: Actually, Maybe Don't Say That to Your Kid* Why Are We So Obsessed With Hiding Vegetables in Our Kids' Food? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit laurathomas.substack.com

Patrick answers listener questions about where in the bible does it say that Mary is the Queen of Angels, if a “green burial” is permissible, if it's possible for someone to be demonically possessed, and if it's okay to keep a prayer journal Email – Do the cremated remains become relics if the person is turned into a Saint? Leo - Where in the bible does it say Mary is the Queen of Angels? Rhonda (08:00) – What do you think of having a “Green Burial?” Alonso (13:47) – My sister-in-law, who is a Buddhist, was possessed by her mom. Could that be a demonic possession? Page (21:24) - Spiritual Warfare: I have had some terrifying dreams. How do you know if dreams are just nightmares or coming from the evil one? The Devil's Role in the Spiritual Life Patrick recommends “The Devil's Role in the Spiritual Life: St. John of the Cross' Teaching on Satan's Involvement in Every Stage of Spiritual Growth” By Cliff Ermatinger Vicki - Is it okay to keep a pray Journal? Will evil spirits be fed off the prayers I write in it? Karen - Thank you for the InQUIZition book. It is encouraging us to dig deeper into some of the topics! Mary (37:10) – Is it okay to sage your home? Maria - Thank you for th3 InQUIZition book. I just received it. It has been great. Casey – There are people at my church publishing many copies of the St. Jude prayer thinking this is how their prayer will be answered. Is this superstitious and how do I refute it? Sandra (48:05) - My teenage daughter has a friend who is 15 and is pregnant and wants to have an abortion. Should I talk with her about this?

Encore episode originally aired Feb. 22 Patrick answers your emails: Email – Is it okay to hug and kiss if you are in a relationship but not married? Victor – What odes the Nazi salute have in common with Yoga? Janice – Question about the Miracle of Naphtha Email – What are the differences in baptism between Catholic churches and orthodox churches? Karen – Thank you for talking about difficult topics Kathy – It has been 40 years since I went to confession. Thanks to Patrick Madrid, I'm coming back to my faith. Tom – Does a lack of a valid baptism mean you can't receive the other sacraments? Krishna – Should we bless our home?

Patrick answers your emails: Email – Is it okay to hug and kiss if you are in a relationship but not married? Victor – What odes the Nazi salute have in common with Yoga? Janice – Question about the Miracle of Naphtha Email – What are the differences in baptism between Catholic churches and orthodox churches? Karen – Thank you for talking about difficult topics Kathy – It has been 40 years since I went to confession. Thanks to Patrick Madrid, I'm coming back to my faith. Tom – Does a lack of a valid baptism mean you can't receive the other sacraments? Krishna – Should we bless our home?

Thank you for joining us for our 2nd Cabral HouseCall of the weekend! I'm looking forward to sharing with you some of our community's questions that have come in over the past few weeks… Tennea: Hi Dr Cabral, I'm currently doing your IHP training. I wanted to know if you have any advice on the condition called Chronic Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) I had an accident 4 years ago leaving me “permanently disabled” in my left arm, hand, and shoulder after breaking my elbow (terrible triad). And I ended up with this nerve chronic pain CRPS. I also developed a anaphylactic reaction to seafood last year (I LOVE seafood), I believe it's related to the CRPS. I would be eternally great full for your advice or thoughts on this. Warm regards Teena Lara: Hi, dr. Cabral :) I'm hoping you could talk about the “extra” ingredients in supplements.. like different fillers, additives, preservatives..? Which ones should we be careful about, which different names do they use for the same crappy substance, for example, citric acid is in lots of them, also lactic acid, etc. What kind of a capsule (vegan) should it be and so on? Would love to buy extra clean supplements but sometimes it's really difficult to get them, especially with the crazy prices.. Thank you! Happy healing, everyone!   Rachel: Body odour. I sometimes find that I have very very strong body odour in my armpits. It's not the "normal" BO smell. It is pungent but more like a strong gasoline smell. When it happens it's almost as if I can't wash it off. Showering and washing my armpits helps lessen it, but the smell is still there. Any idea what the cause could be or how to rectify it? Thank you! Debra: I have mast cell disease,, hereditary alpha tryptaemia syndrome, and Intracranaian increased hypertension which causes debilitating migraines. I have done your detox and despite the debilitating migraines getting worse I stuck it out. I did the hair migraine erase test and I had to stop all supplements recommended for now. I was reacting to everything. Especially the shakes high in vitamin A. Do you have experience in IIH aka pseudo tumor? Would love to work together further. I'm a huge fan and desperate to heal.thanks, Debra Nick: Hi Dr. Cabral! I have two questions for you — one, i recently had a snowboarding accident where i hit my head and got a CT scan and MRI which showed a Cavernoma in the back upper outer edge of my head. Do you have any natural remedies advice for controlling / improving it? i've had no symptoms and it was found incidentally. (i'm 25 years old) my second question is — they told me i will need to monitor it probably 1-2 times a year with contrast and no contrast MRI. Should i be concerned with the gadolinium metal that's used to contrast the MRI? if so, would you have any alternative suggestions (i.e. recommending no contrast) or any detox solutions you'd recommend if you think it's necessary? thank you! Karen: Hi Dr. Cabral - I recently found your practice and I love what you do. My question is - my son joined the navy and had extensive blood work done. He discovered that he has a high percentage of sickle cell trait. He was 1% from the navy's limit. Are there health issues associated with a higher percentage of this trait? Thank you so much! Karen Thank you for tuning into this weekend's Cabral HouseCalls and be sure to check back tomorrow for our Mindset & Motivation Monday show to get your week started off right! - - - Show Notes & Resources:  http://StephenCabral.com/2256 - - - Dr. Cabral's New Book, The Rain Barrel Effect https://amzn.to/2H0W7Ge - - - Join the Community & Get Your Questions Answered: http://CabralSupportGroup.com - - -  Dr. Cabral's Most Popular At-Home Lab Tests: > Complete Minerals & Metals Test (Test for mineral imbalances & heavy metal toxicity) - - - > Complete Candida, Metabolic & Vitamins Test (Test for 75 biomarkers including yeast & bacterial gut overgrowth, as well as vitamin levels) - - - > Complete Stress, Mood & Metabolism Test (Discover your complete thyroid, adrenal, hormone, vitamin D & insulin levels) - - - > Complete Stress, Sleep & Hormones Test (Run your adrenal & hormone levels) - - - > Complete Food Sensitivity Test (Find out your hidden food sensitivities) - - - > Complete Omega-3 & Inflammation Test (Discover your levels of inflammation related to your omega-6 to omega-3 levels)

Patrick answers your emails: Is it okay to hug and kiss if you are in a relationship but not married? Victor – What odes the Nazi salute have in common with Yoga? Janice – Question about the Miracle of Naphtha Email – What are the differences in baptism between Catholic churches and orthodox churches? Karen – Thank you for talking about difficult topics Kathy – It has been 40 years since I went to confession. Thanks to Patrick Madrid, I'm coming back to my faith. Tom – Does a lack of a valid baptism mean you can't receive the other sacraments? Krishna – Should we bless our home?

The NoteWorthy concert series is presented by WDAV in partnership with the FAIR PLAY Music Equity Alliance . The series brings together gifted Black and brown artists from the Charlotte music scene with classical musicians for some genre-blending, community building music. Karen Poole, a singer/songwriter and contemporary gospel artist, is joined by trumpeter Keenan Harmon, one of the classical musicians who perform with her in the  NoteWorthy  concert series. They speak about their different musical backgrounds and what it was like to come together to perform Karen’s original songs. Karen Poole Keenan Harmon Transcript: Frank Dominguez : This is Frank Dominguez for WDAV’s Piedmont Arts. On Wednesday, September 1st at 7:30 p.m., WDAV continues the NoteWorthy virtual concert series presented in partnership with the FAIR PLAY Music Equity (Initiative). The series brings together gifted Black and brown artists from the Charlotte music scene with classical musicians for some genre-blending, community-building music. Next in the series, we feature singer-songwriter and contemporary gospel artist Karen Poole and joining in support of her terrific talents are a trio of classical musicians including violinist Alice Silva, trombonist Brent Ballard, and trumpeter Keenan Harmon, who joins me now via Zoom along with Karen to talk about the concert and their own musical journey. Welcome, Karen and Keenan. Karen Poole : Thank you.  Frank : Karen, I noticed from the bio information at your website that like a lot of gifted musicians, you were born into a musical family, so tell me a little bit about them and what you learned from them.  Karen : Yeah, absolutely. I was the baby of the family, so I got the opportunity to watch my parents as soloists and some of my older siblings just navigate, moreso in the gospel of church scene. So we were very, very heavy into the music department of our church, and I just had the opportunity to learn just standing up on people’s shoulders and looking, watching. (I’m) very blessed to have a front seat experience into this. (On a) typical day in our home, you’d hear about three or four songs singing at once. (Laughs) That’s what that was like. Born into it.  Frank : And what about a formal education in music of any kind? What was it like for you? Were you exposed to that? Karen : I did some... I want to say not formal, but more so informal training. I’ve had very great mentors throughout the years who’d sit down with me (and) teach me theory and things of that nature. I actually don’t - I’m not very fluent at reading charted music, but I have very strong ear training, and I can read some chord charts as well. But in that regard, no, I never had formal training, it’s all natural giftings that I had.  Frank : And that’s nothing to be sneezed at, of course. You know, one of the things that I've discovered over and over again in these conversations, whether it's about NoteWorthy or if I'm interviewing Black classical artists who are singers or instrumentalists, is just the amazing conservatory that's provided by the Black church music tradition. There’s so much inspiration there.  Keenan, what about you? What was your coming up like? Did it include a lot of music? Keenan Harmon : My family - I wouldn't say that my family is very musical, but [they’re] music lovers. And that’s, to me, part of the human condition. So, I rarely run into people that don’t have some affiliation with music or some love for it. But in all reality, I kind of discovered or felt that I was heeding this call from a very young age, and my parents had kind of a little bit of a diverse music taste. I mean it was kind of old school eclecticism, so I grew up around Motown, church music… I, too, am the youngest like Karen, so my brothers were really into popular music at the time, which was kind of the early hip hop scene.  And what ended up happening is [that] I felt really drawn to being a trumpet player, and then more or less, I stumbled on some recordings at a very young age that impacted my life. When I was about eleven and I started playing, I was able to hear a classical CD, it was a mostly Baroque type of thing and had a lot of trumpet on it, and likewise my mother had bought this Miles Davis CD, and at the time I knew nothing too much about it.  You know, she had been familiar with Miles. And it was actually the Live at Montreux album that was done in the last year of his life. And not knowing any of that, I asked her could I open the CD and listen to it, and here I am listening to the CD, and I thought, “My goodness, as a trumpet player I could play something like this. Something Baroque, and I could play something like this, something that’s jazz.” And so that’s kind of how… that spearheaded what I’ve been drawn to in my career as a musician.  Frank : Karen, talking about those wide ranges in sound, your sound is a good example of how eclectic contemporary gospel music can be. I think people hear that and assume it’s going to sound a certain way, but you have a very eclectic and versatile sound. What are the sources and the elements that go into your music?  Karen : First of all, I'm glad you recognize that. The best way I can describe my music is gumbo: it’s like a little bit of everything. I would say I listened to a lot of traditional gospel growing up, but definitely (was) introduced to more of a jazzy sound probably in my late teens. I started being introduced to Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, that kind of sound, Yellowjackets… and I’m somewhat of a late bloomer because we had a very strict household growing up, so it was only gospel music that I was allowed to listen to. So I was a late bloomer being introduced to other styles. And still to this day, I’m still grasping a lot of the classic tunes out there. I’m still evolving musically because of that, so I’m actually grateful for it.  And then I’d listen to more of the contemporary Christian music, like Matthew West and Lady Antebellum, stuff like that, just kind of listen to those songs, and they’re very pure sounding. And I love, actually, country music - just the way it tells a story, and the sounds from the violins and strings, all those things. Alice actually played on that (in) the performance we did, she played the violin parts for (one of my) song(s). And it was just amazing to be able to partner with (the classical musicians) and have a range of sounds that they could dig into with me, so I was excited about that.  Frank : I really noticed that, in the little bit of the sessions that I've been able to hear, that it was just incredibly eclectic. And your description of gumbo, I don’t think could be more apt. As a former Louisiana resident, that takes us to the tastiness of gumbo and the tastiness of your sounds, because I really hear that country and all of those various influences in there. It's really wonderful.  Keenan, as a working musician, versatility is pretty much a requirement for you. I mean you've been able to play all sorts of music, and you have to in order to put together enough gigs to make a living. So what are some of the disparate events that you play regularly - the kinds of places where you bring your talent to bear?  Keenan : I’ve done a lot of shows. There was a time where I'd done quite a bit of opera orchestra stuff for a while. Shows tend to run longer and pay more, so I would do that.  Frank : By shows, you mean Broadway shows? Keenan : Musicals and such, yes. On top of that, a lot of chamber music stuff. Some friends of mine and I started to do a lot of collaborations and just be on each other’s radar always to at least be available for performances and various things, and then there’s also recording work that I’ve been known to do. There was a short time - well, I say short, it was about four and a half years - [when] I worked with some guys out of Nashville. They had been in this area and they were bringing a lot of musicians in from the Nashville area, and so I got to work and collaborate and do concerts with them as well. It’s kind of like Karen had said, it’s an evolution on a continuum, and so you try to stay ahead of that and you make sure you’ve got a good namesake, you’ve got a good reputation and like you had said, versatility is the key.  I’ll put it to you like this. I tell people oftentimes that musicians, particularly in the freelance community, have to practice music like an attorney practices law, like a doctor practices medicine. I am continually studying, because authenticity is very important to me. Being genuine. Whenever I’m playing something, if we go back to Baroque or classical, [making sure] that my ornaments are proper when I’m ornamenting the music. And similarly, that I’m very fresh on ideas if I’m doing something that’s jazz.  The pandemic put a different dynamic on that, but what I found more or less is that I worked. You know, I look at last year and I worked fruitfully. One show got cancelled, one musical. Other than that, some of the concerts that I would normally do at certain times a year, like towards the holidays, they went on. So it’s a testament that people really wanted to experience some normalcy, so live music was a part of that. And then on top of that, it was just the fact that it was the determination of the musical community to try to make that happen. And so that's really how you can make (a) living. You’ve just got to persevere through it and stay fresh.  Frank : Karen, you touched on this in one of your answers earlier, but I want you to go a little deeper into what it was like collaborating with the musicians in this NoteWorthy session that folks will be seeing on September 1st. What was it like working with them, and what did they bring to your songs that you had already written and created to give them a different sound or a different life, if you will?  Karen : It was inspiring in a lot of ways. For example... the first song we did that night, “High Praise,” when I produced the music, I had recorded keyboard horns on it and while they sound good, it’s nothing like having a real horn player on it. So, I sent the music and I let [the classical musicians] know, “Hey. I don’t actually have this charted out, but if you can try to follow this pattern, that would be great.” And Keenan was so, so easy to work with. He said, “Okay, we’ll get it. We’ll figure it out.” At our first rehearsal, he had it charted out for him and Brent [Ballard], and they nailed it. It was just very minor little things that we had to adjust here and there, little nuances like something is staccato, not legato, but very, very minor.  They brought my song to life, and it was amazing to hear music that I had created live that way. It was just amazing. And then on top of that, to build a relationship with them to where even beyond this NoteWorthy performance, we can still collaborate on some other things, I can refer him for some things and vice versa, and bring him on for other shows that I might have. And now it’s forced me to have my music officially charted out. So, moving forward, I will always have this thanks to NoteWorthy. I’m grateful - amazing experience working with them.  Frank : I have a last question for the both of you, and that's what would you like to see more of in the Charlotte live music scene? What's missing right now that you think would take it up a notch and make it a better scene for both musicians and audiences? Keenan : For Charlotte, it’s really that connectivity of having people both aware of what goes on musically in Charlotte, because that’s not always the case, and then on top of it, it's to build that culture. Right before the pandemic, I was in Chicago, and I’d gone to see a couple of different performances while I was there and what amazed me - because it had been a long time since I had been to Chicago - it was just being an audience member. That was the most awe-inspiring thing was to watch how audiences were connected and interacted with various music, whether it was a classical or a jazz thing. You just had that community. So in the Charlotte area, there’s a thirst for it, I think. It’s just a matter of that connection that’s there. Having Charlotte have enough room for music is kind of the big goal because we’re making room for a lot of things in this area. Lots of things. And music, I feel like, has always been here. It’s just the awareness is the thing, I would say.  Frank : Karen, you’re here a little more recently. What have you observed in your time here? Karen : My answer may not be what you expect, but honestly, in my time here - it's been about four and a half years - I’m actually quite pleased, because the first couple of years of me being here, I was not very well-known. I made some connections with some individuals in the music scene here, like I met Tim Scott, Jr. once on a show, I think it’s called the Soulful Noel, that they do at Christmas time every year, put on by Quentin Talley. I met some folks who said, “Hey, we need an extra background singer, can you come on.” So, by me being there, I made some small networks there, and just earning my place, if I can say that. They got a chance to see how I flowed in the background.  And somewhere around the middle of 2019, I was offered an opportunity to do my own show. I had my own set. It was just a small acoustic session put on by Arsena Schroeder, and that was really exciting for me because I hadn’t performed my music at all since I’d moved to Charlotte. I’d put out a couple of singles working with a great producer, Johnny Abraham, who was also playing keys on the NoteWorthy performance.  When I did that show, people were like, “Wow, we need to see more of this.” And so that really opened up opportunities for more performances. I didn’t do very many, but the ones I got were impactful. I think that was in July of 2019, and somewhere in September, I had the opportunity to open for a major artist, Tweet, and then from there, it built the energy to say hey, I’m going to go ahead and try to finish my album. I had never put out a full length album. Yes, the pandemic hit in 2020, and I had plans to do a small live recording... we did it in February of 2020. The plan was to do that and then work on a few more, and I was going to have an album done, ready to release it on Easter of 2020. But we shut down.  Even despite that, though, I’ve just got to say it catapulted me, because I got all the tools I needed to finish recording at home. Folks around here in the music community were very much on board to work with me, and we got the album done, and I put it out in February of this year. So, even in the course of that time, I was able to do a few virtual shows, we did some shows with John Tosco. Although we were shut down, I think Charlotte did a great job of keeping us busy. As a newcomer, I’m impressed.  Frank : Well, I'm impressed with both of you, and I'm so excited from these conversations that I've had with NoteWorthy artists to see what this music scene’s going to be like when we get back to being able to comfortably perform in person, and it just seems to me like the talent that's going to be showcased is going to surprise a lot of people. So I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes. My guests have been two of the performers of the next virtual concert in the NoteWorthy series from WDAV and FAIR PLAY Music Equity Initiative, singer-songwriter and contemporary gospel artist Karen Poole and trumpeter Keenan Harmon. The concert streams on Wednesday, September 1st at 7:30 p.m., and it will also feature violinist Alice Silva and trombonist Brent Ballard. You can get more information and find a link to the Facebook Live and YouTube event at NoteWorthyClassical.org . Thank you so much, Karen and Keenan, for speaking with me. Karen : Thank you.  Keenan : Thank you.  Frank : For WDAV’s Piedmont Arts, I’m Frank Dominguez. 

In this episode of We Chat Divorce, we're joined by Gabrielle Hartley to discuss the topic of What You Need to Know Before You Get Married. Here's an overview of Gabrielle's experience:   Gabrielle Hartley, Esq. is a leading online mediator and family law attorney known for keeping 99% of her cases at the settlement table. She is the author of Better Apart; The Radically Positive Way to Separate, which received a glowing recommendation from Gwyneth Paltrow and People Magazine.   Before opening her full-service online mediation and professional training center, Gabrielle clerked in matrimonial court in NYC where she resolved hundreds of high conflict divorces.   She is a sought-after expert in the positive divorce space in media outlets such as The New York Times, The New York Post, U.S. News and World Report, has been interviewed on dozens of podcasts and is a regular guest on NBC Mass Appeals. Gabrielle serves on many committees within the ABA Mediation Access to Justice Week 2020, and co-chair of the DR Just Resolutions Mediation Edition. She is also on the Western MA Mediation and Collaborative Dispute Resolution Steering Committee.   Gabrielle trains divorce professionals in the Better Apart Method Online. In addition to offering training for professionals, she maintains a private mediation practice and is of counsel to Lisa Zeiderman's law firm in Westchester and NYC.   Hosts, Karen, and Catherine sit down with Gabrielle Hartley to discuss what you need to know before you get married. Learn More >> www.gabriellehartley.com Connect with Grace on LinkedIn >> @Gabrielle Hartley   ----more---- The We Chat Divorce podcast (hereinafter referred to as the “WCD”) represents the opinions of Catherine Shanahan, Karen Chellew, and their guests to the show. WCD should not be considered professional or legal advice. The content here is for informational purposes only. Views and opinions expressed on WCD are our own and do not represent that of our places of work. WCD should not be used in any legal capacity whatsoever.  Listeners should contact their attorney to obtain advice with respect to any particular legal matter. No listener should act or refrain from acting on the basis of information on WCD without first seeking legal advice from counsel in the relevant jurisdiction. No guarantee is given regarding the accuracy of any statements or opinions made on WCD. Unless specifically stated otherwise, Catherine Shanahan and Karen Chellew do not endorse, approve, recommend, or certify any information, product, process, service, or organization presented or mentioned on WCD, and information from this podcast should not be referenced in any way to imply such approval or endorsement. The third-party materials or content of any third-party site referenced on WCD do not necessarily reflect the opinions, standards or policies of Catherine Shanahan or Karen Chellew. WCD, CATHERINE SHANAHAN, AND KAREN CHELLEW EXPRESSLY DISCLAIM ANY AND ALL LIABILITY OR RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR OTHER DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF ANY INDIVIDUAL'S USE OF, REFERENCE TO, RELIANCE ON, OR INABILITY TO USE, THIS PODCAST OR THE INFORMATION PRESENTED IN THIS PODCAST ----more----     Karen: Welcome to We Chat Divorce, Catherine and I are honored to welcome attorney Gabrielle Hartley to our podcast, today. In this episode, we're going to discuss what you need to know before you get married. Expert advice from the divorce lawyer, so you won't ever need one. But first, let me take a couple of minutes to introduce Gabrielle. Gabrielle is a Leading Online Mediator and Family Law Attorney. She is the author of Better Apart: The Radically Positive Way to Separate, which received a glowing recommendation from Gwyneth Paltrow and People Magazine. [inaudible 00:00:37], an expert in the positive divorce space and media outlets such as The New York Times, the New York Post, U.S. News & World Report. She's been interviewed on dozens of podcasts and is a regular guest on NBC Mass Appeal. And here she is with us today. Gabrielle trains, divorce professionals in the Better Apart method online. Welcome, Gabrielle. Gabrielle: Hi. Catherine: Hello. I love this. Flipping the story, what to do before you get married. We don't often, or do we ever even talk about that? Gabrielle: Well, I find the Millennial generation is really on top of things. I know there's a lot of conversation about, everything that's wrong with them, but I'm going to say they're a planning group. And so I get a lot of phone calls with people asking me what they need to know? Do they maybe need a prenup? Or sometimes they're not even really interested in a prenup, but they're just literally interviewing me to find out what do I see that goes wrong? And so I decided to write this book, what you need to know before you get married so that people who couldn't afford an hour with me could just get it for free right now. And then just for a couple of bucks on Amazon, when it goes up there. And to talk about the things that you really need to pay attention to, which you may be totally ignored while you're in the throes of romance. Catherine: Yeah. I say this all the time, because, I say that people will budget for their wedding. They'll... How much they can spend on their dress? And how much they can spend in a venue? And what's the band? But do you ever really talk about your budget post marriage? No. What are the expectations between the two of you post the big fun marriage? Just not a conversation, a lot of people have. Gabrielle: That's right. They don't talk... They're so wedding-oriented, but they're not talking about how they're going to plan for retirement, life insurance, childcare, somebody's mom going to watch kids? Are you going to have kids? Even away from the money and we will circle right back to the money. But do one of you expect that you're going to have dinner with your parents once a week or twice a week, even? Right. Are they going to come to you or are you expected to go there for Sunday dinner? Do you expect that your spouse is always going to go with you? Gabrielle: These are things that really break people up. What about partying? Right. I have a little section called, my girl wants to party all the time or maybe I said guy, I don't remember. But, it might be a lot of fun to go out every night when you're dating and you're just living it up. But then when you finally are settling down, it may be that one of you decides it's time to open quote, "Grow up." Close quote. And the other of you might say, "What do you mean grow up? This is who I am. This is who I thought you were." There's a lot of important conversations that don't happen. And what's so interesting is when you're getting divorced, all of these conversations are often happening for the first time. Catherine: And it's the blame game. "You never wanted to go out at night. You never wanted to do this. You never held my hand. You never got me flowers." But, they never did that before. You never had the conversation before they got married. Gabrielle: Or maybe when you were dating, they did get you flowers, but they were in the courting stage, right. But now it's real-life in your marriage. So, I love that you just brought up the blame game. That's something I talk a lot about in the context of divorcing positively. It's about becoming an active visionary. Same thing, having these important conversations is not just about doing an investigation of your betrothed to be, right. It's like an investigation and to yourself, what's your vision? So what you need to know before you get married is also about, really having an important conversation about what you want out of your life with yourself. Do you want to work 70 hours a week? Or do you want to work for somebody? Or do you want to work for yourself? Do you want to work part-time? Are you picturing that you're going to be a homemaker? Are you going to have a career? Or are you going to have a job just to make some money? Or does one of you have significant family money? How's that going to work with your marriage? Right. Catherine: But, even when you have the vision, it changes. I wanted to be Donna Mills from Knots Landing. That was my goal. I was going to be this little kind of aggressive woman in the work field. And then I had my daughter and once I had her, I didn't want to work anymore. I just could not see myself leaving her. So your goals and your dreams can change, but how do you communicate that with each other? Gabrielle: Right. And it's really ongoing. And, we touched briefly on the idea of, you can have... Everybody's heard of the idea of a prenup, which is making an agreement before you get married, to tie up what would happen in the case of dissolution or divorce after you're married. And there's a lot of things that we could sort of dive into that, but also just so anyone listening to this knows if you've become, if you've gotten married and things were going well for the first, seven to 13 years and year 14, your spouse says, "You know what, I'm going to take on a bunch of debt because I've always wanted to open a restaurant." And suddenly you're like, "Oh My Gosh, I don't want to take this debt with you." Or for whatever other set of reasons there is something called a postnuptial, that you can enter into, which is basically a contract after you're married, which would designate how things will unfold. Should you get divorced? Catherine: Let me back you up there for one second. So our listeners can understand because it's a common question and quite confusing at times. So the Millennials or whatever they're called, the younger generation, I just call them all. A lot of them keep separate accounts. The first time I got married, you wouldn't even think of keeping separate accounts because I didn't grow up that way. But now they're keeping separate accounts. And does that protect them? How do they protect those separate accounts? If they don't, if they didn't get it prenup? Gabrielle: It really depends where they live. In Massachusetts, anything that's acquired after the marriage is definitely considered marital, regardless of how it's titled, the same thing in New York. It's really important that you have conversations. And quite frankly, if you want to really protect yourself, you really do need to have a written agreement just because something is not in your name... Is in your name alone does not mean that it's not both of yours. In fact, in Massachusetts, even if things were acquired before marriage, everything comes into the marital part until you prove that it's not part of the marital part. Gabrielle: Whereas in New York, everything is considered, anything marital is marital, separate is separate, and then you have to discuss and explain and prove why it should come into the marital part? And I'm only familiar really intimately with those two states. And I would suggest anybody who has money and they want to make sure that it's considered separate, that they create a contract that protects it. Let's talk a minute about inheritances or trusts, right. Those aren't necessarily going to be deemed separate property either in case of a dissolution. And that can be really shocking for some people to find out. So it's really important, they have all these conversations. Karen: So to that point, we have a lot of couples come to us or individuals come to us with their net worth statement. And so that obviously defines what they consider their marital estate. But all of those points you just made and change that net worth statement as it relates to the division of property. And so I think you usually have one person who's a spreadsheet person, right. And they come in with that and they want that to be what they're dividing. And so many times that's not what you're dividing at all, because of all of these different factors. So that's why financial clarity is so important. And having financial conversations is so important so that your goals and what you're doing? And how you're living? And how you're behaving? Is in tandem with each other. So that when you, if you would choose to separate, for whatever reason, you're not having to reach that huge gap of yuckiness. Lack of a better word there. Gabrielle: I always say hard now, easy later, right. That's what I see about mediating with people who are having a difficult time working through details, they just want to sort of glaze over things and you never want to glaze over things. The same thing when you're getting married, you really want to have these conversations. I know, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is famous for saying, "A long-term marriage is predicated on everybody being a little deaf." And yes, there's value to ignoring some of the things that could make us upset and angry once we are married. But when it comes to your financial stability and integrity and ability to move forward and have respect for each other and not want to, blow your own head off or each other's heads off. Gabrielle: It's really important that you have these conversations. Especially if you're marrying people from different backgrounds. So, it doesn't matter if you have similar amounts of money, our money narratives are so strong and they really play into how we go through life. I was just going to say, sometimes I have clients who have millions and millions of dollars and they really don't want to spend money on two hours of mediation, where somebody else has very little money and they don't want anything for free. And they just have a different relationship with money. Catherine: That's exactly it. Everybody has a different money story and whether it's good or bad, it's an intimidating conversation. But I think if my advice would be for everyone to approach it with an expectation outlook. So it's not really a questioning outlook about the finances, but if you came to your spouse or your partner and said, I just want to discuss expectations as it relates to finances." It's a much gentler, kinder way to walk into that conversation. And it's something, again, like you both said, it's an ongoing conversation. So again, two years into your marriage, you can say, "Maybe our expectations have shifted here, let's re-discuss what our plan was from two years ago to today." And if you start that pattern of expectations, it's really great because it doesn't put anybody on the defensive. Just, is a great conversation to have, and I encourage everyone to have it. Gabrielle: I think that that's a really great point. But going back to the idea of having these conversations before you get married. Typically, how we view things, yes, of course, we mature and we grow and we start to see things differently. As we become older, we tend to feel more powerful and more able if things are going in a favorable way. But, who we essentially are? Is sort of there from the beginning and having conversations about all different things, including money, even if the conversations are uncomfortable, you're doing yourself a favor. Even if you end up breaking your engagement, right. Or maybe you say, "We're going to get married." But, you get married with the knowledge of how each other thinks. You just saved yourself in 20 years, like, "Oh My Gosh, who are you?" I never knew conversations. Right. Catherine: Exactly. Yeah. Karen: Yeah. Gabrielle, how often should the prenup be revisited? Gabrielle: So a prenup is just what it says, it's prenuptial. It is created before you get married. And once you are married, you cannot have a new prenup. That would be a postnup. So after you're married, typically actually people don't revisit them all that often. The whole idea is that it's done, right. The only reason that typically people would enter a postnup is that something changed, maybe the economic position of one person or another, or the attitudes of one person or the other has changed. Maybe the people, somebody found out that their husband or wife cheated on them and they want a divorce. And they say, "The only way I'm going to stay with you is if you enter a postnup where I get 80% of everything." And the person says, "I promise, I'll never do it again." And then they call me and I say, "Oh, don't make those promises. You might not keep buddy." Right. Catherine: Yeah. Karen: Yeah. Catherine: Give her the 80%. Yeah. We have a lot of people that come through our and do our portrait. And because we provide a space where they can decompress, where they're gathering information and really let out their feelings on how their financial life has been for the past 20 years or what have you. They come to a new understanding and we send them to mediation afterward, or we send them to a marriage counselor because they decide that they just want to postnup. They want to stay together, but they want a new financial understanding between the two of them. And they want to work on their emotional side, not so much the financial side because that would be taken care of. And I think it's really a good approach if you're not sure whether you want to get divorced or not. Gabrielle: Absolutely. I actually have, I train mediators in the Better Apart method. And I have a set of mediators who I refer to, who that's, all they do is people who want to stay married, but need to create new rules for their marriage going forward, right. So it's not one size fits all. It's just when I say that, I mean the outcome is not one size fits all. People can get through all kinds of adversity. You can have really different ways of viewing things. There's always compromise concessions, acquiescence, all different ways to get along, right. But you have to be able to have meaningful conversations to get there. And I'm just going to add in a little conflict resolution tip, when you're stuck in an argument loop, let's say you start having these important premarital conversations or you're already married and you're having a hard time. When we get stuck in a loop, we're typically perseverating on the, what? What we're arguing about? Right. But if we can get beneath the what? And get to the why we care? We can start to have conversations that get some movement. Gabrielle: So it's like what we want? That's our wants and the why we want it? Is typically the need. So when we can satisfy our needs, then we can start making agreements with each other. So let's say you're getting married. And one of you wants a big family and one of you doesn't want kids. Well, red flag stop, have a conversation, "Why do you want a big family?" "Well, because we said, we're moving across the country and I don't want to feel isolated." "Why don't you want any kids?" "I feel like I'm going to be pulled in too many directions and I want a career." Well, there's a lot of space in there, right. Maybe you don't need to move across the country. Maybe you can agree to have a nanny. When we get to the why? When we dive into the why? We can create solutions and it's the same thing with financial wellness, "Why do we need $10 million of life insurance?" "Well, if you die, I'm afraid of this, that, and the other thing." "Okay, how else might we find a solution for that?" Catherine: So I call that the emotional value to a financial asset. That's finding what's the emotional connection to this asset or to the debt? Why you're acquiring this debt? Because that's really what needs to be fixed or that's the conversation that needs to be fixed. We have the data and we can give your attorneys and your mediators, the data and all the recommendations and considerations and all of that. But then you need to do the work to get to the why? Or the emotional value behind it. Excuse me. Gabrielle: Yeah. And, the Better Apart process, that book was written specifically for, [inaudible 00:17:45], can see the book, for people who are going through a divorce, but it's really navigation of getting your own inner alignment in check. So it's like, "How can I slow down? How can I get clear? How do I move past disagreements? How can I address things from a zero valence clear, neutral way?" All of these things are actually important to all of us, whether we're single, married, divorced, an artist at home on a commune or a businesswoman on wall street, no matter who we are. When we are aware of our inner thoughts, we can start changing them, we can start neutralizing and then we can start having important conversations. Karen: Yeah. And I think to your point, it's never too late to start having those conversations and start making those agreements. Because I think, the Gray Divorce is a big movement in our country right now. And I feel like it's a lot of people looking for autonomy and having those conversations and having those agreements can create for a lot of people, not for everybody, of course, that level of autonomy that they can continue their relationship that maybe is perfectly intact, except for people have lost their autonomy. Gabrielle: That's so on point Karen, that is... That's my story in a way, right. I was really unhappy in my marriage because everything was about my husband and I was very full of resentment. And I wanted to write this book and I was like, "I want to write this book. I want to be a global conversation changer around divorce. And I want to get Gwyneth Paltrow to endorse it." I had this vision and I didn't know what it was going to do to my marriage because I was suddenly playing big or whatever you want to call it. And, it was definitely created some bumps in the road, but there were bumps anyway, right. So, why not see if there's a way that you can make your relationship, whatever that relationship may be like with a spouse or with whomever, see if you can make it work and you change your own behavior? You can always leave. But why not try to change from within the context of the relationship first? Catherine: Yeah. And it's a hard conversation because the longer you wait, the harder it is. So the earlier you can do that. Good for you. My daughter did the best thing for me when she got married this past August, the prior year, she gave me the talk, "Mom, I'm not going to be home for every Christmas, Charlie and I will be alternating Christmas and Thanksgiving." And I was kind of like, "What? I can't imagine, not having my daughter there." But she really set me up to like, "This is what we discussed and we're going to alternate holidays, Christmas and Thanksgiving." [crosstalk 00:20:56]. So I was able to settle myself into that as her being my first one to go off and do that to me. Gabrielle: Catherine, that's such a great example because case in point, it's not just about who you're married to. We have lots of close relationships, our children, my goodness, right. Your children are like your lifeblood and the idea of not having holidays with them, I have three sons, so I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I'm never going to see them again." But, I can always try to trap them with me right now. But, but the fact of the matter is, what a gift that your daughter was so clear with you. And I'm sure she was that clear because she had a mom who did a lot of work around clarity and you modeled clarity to her. That's amazing, you should be really proud. You literally gave me complete chills on my arms. Catherine: What I thought was the cutest was because of my first holiday that she wasn't here. I was so worried about my son because I always want my kids to always know... As a mom, we all feel like, [inaudible 00:22:04], to know when you're not here, your kids are there to take care of each other, right. And so I remember the first thing, he was like, "Well." Trying to see if he should be with his dad that time because Danielle would be. He was trying to align the two of them. I just was so happy with that. I thought, "Oh, that's so sweet. And maybe they did this with to me." Gabrielle: They say it seeps in. Catherine: Yeah, it does seep in, right. Gabrielle: My kids are total teenagers. So... Catherine: Yeah. You'll get there. Gabrielle: Right now, you're all just really sweet. Catherine: Oh yeah. That's a sweet age. Yeah. Karen: All right. Gabrielle, how about three tips for people approaching marriage?  Gabrielle: Okay. Well, the first one we... [crosstalk 00:22:52]. Right, we've just gone through ad nauseum, which is know your financial picture, have a conversation about what you both need and want. Talk about the idea that you're going to check in every other year for adjustments. And remember taking a pause or a step back is always the best way forward. Karen: Love that. Catherine: Love that. We both just said that. That's awesome. This is awesome. Karen: Thank you, Gabrielle, for being here with us today. Gabrielle: It's my pleasure. I always love talking to you guys. Karen: We love talking with you too. Such a ball of energy. So this concludes this episode of what you need to know before you get married. Thank you for a great conversation. Gabrielle: Thank you.

Karen: I would say look for the positive in your life and as you're looking for the positive reach out and grab a hand for support because we can do this together. Automated: Hello and welcome to the Beat Cancer Answer brought to you by beatcancer.org the center for advancement in cancer education. Carl: Hello this is Carl Wagner with Beat Cancer and I have here one of our wonderful coaches Karen Holmes and I'm going to let her talk to you about her journey with cancer and how she got to come to us and become a cancer coach. With that, Karen Holmes. Karen: Hi, thank you, Carl It's wonderful to be here. Carl: Welcome. Karen: I mean that with a full heart and gratitude because being alive and being vital and full of energy is the message that I want to convey to all of the people who are experiencing cancer or who have experienced cancer as I did. It's a journey and it's a wonderful time in my life, to be able to come back and to coach other people during their cancer journey as they heal and recover from cancer. I came to being a cancer coach after I experienced inflammatory breast cancer, and that was back in 2011. I've been on this recovery journey for a long time, I feel very happy that I'm here and the journey that I have been on started when I found out that I had obviously breast cancer. I was told that I was going to get chemotherapy, I was going to have surgery, and I was going to have radiation.  And all of that seemed rather intimidating, and I did go through all of that. But during that time period, I did a lot of research. I did a lot of reading about the other holistic practices that would be helpful, that would support me through my cancer recovery. And for me, those were the most important steps that I could take. That I could be my own cancer advocate.  Although, I didn't know anything about cancer coaches at the time and so I developed some of the strategies that I've learned and I've read about in the beat cancer dot org program. And so, that all comes around when I finished my medical treatments, and I'll say that they cured me, and that's in my story. That I became this...okay you're done with all the treatments, you're done with the radiation fine we'll see you in six months. Then it was now, what do I do? That now what do I do, came to me as dance. I knew that food and movement were the best solutions to getting my vitality back.  So, I'll say that dance brought me back to life, and that's where my recovery journey really begins because I knew that I had to change my lifestyle. I knew that I wanted to become somebody who was alive and vibrant and not just somebody who was sitting around wondering what to do next. For me, the dance enlightened my life in fact, I tell people I retired from my job and I flew to Maui and I danced. And that's true, and I came home from Maui and I didn't go back to work. I didn't go back to the career that I'd had for 32 years. Instead, I began this journey of finding out what I wanted to do next and how I could support particularly other women in their breast cancer journey and that's where my focus is. And so, I became a dance teacher facilitator. I facilitate something called Azul, which is a conscious movement dance. now you're going to ask me, what is Azul? Carl: What is Azul? Karen:  Conscious dance is really awakening one's heart and awakening what's inside of you. Through the dance, I was able to embody all of the feelings that Ii was going through. It's somewhat, and I've talked to other women they agree. It's somewhat like PTSD, only for cancer patients, where you figure out that wow, I've gone through all my treatments, I'm supposed to be okay and now I realize what I've gone through and what I need to do to change. Concurrently, I changed my eating habits and I did a lot of internal work to figure out where my path was going to go. That path led me to cancer coaching and that's where I am today. To really believe in the support for other women.  I want to be able to support other women in their recovery.  I think it's really important to make that connection one-on-one.  That's what really keeps us alive, that's what motivates us, inspires us to become all that we can be. That once we've gone through this cancer treatment, we have the opportunity to change our lives. I tell people breast cancer was the worst thing and the best thing that ever happened to me. It was the worst thing because I don't wish it on anybody. It's not a pleasant journey, it can be full of suffering and angst.  And yet, what it gave me was gratitude for my life. It gave me the opportunity to change, reach out to people, to become somebody alive, somebody who can dance her way into freedom of all possibilities and ways of being. Before I logged on to do this interview, I danced for an hour. It gave me that insight as to where I wanted to go and what I wanted to say. That's where I am today. Here I am as a cancer coach. I've spent the past few months clarifying my vision. When I was going through my cancer treatments, they say have a positive vision, so my positive vision at the time was running down the coast of the Pacific Ocean. I was having a new little grandson at the time and with my hair in a ponytail so my hair would be grown and so that was the vision. The vision that I have created now, is one of a three-part vision that I created in something called pillars of healing and that's become my offering to breast cancer and cancer patients, and women who are recovering from cancer. So, in the pillars of healing, I offer three opportunities and the first one is a one-on-one cancer coach. Call me up, text me, send me an email, and I will do a free discovery call with you that we can see what it is you as an individual need. I think of you as my...I have created Lily; I have a blog on my website that lily is the person that I like to talk to. And for her I say, I offer you that one-on-one individual assistance, guidance, I will listen and we can move forward together complementing whatever medical treatment you prefer to take. So, that's the one-on-one coaching. The other two other pieces...and the second pillar is really the dance, and offering dance classes and opportunities for women experiencing cancer. The kind of dance that I do, which is Azul, is very freeing. It can be done by anybody and I say anybody regardless of one's physical attributes, because it's something that you bring from inside. Azul is not something that you're going to have choreographed steps. It's I play music and I facilitate and you move your body to whatever comes up. You listen to your body and say oh I'm going to allow this particular movement or something comes up and you'll say I understand where I'm going now.  So, that movement which I believe is critical to our healthy well-being, it really is. If you had to ask me what are the three things that would be movement and what we put in our bodies, food, and some kind of connection with...that I want to say spiritual or guidance through meditation or whatever you choose to take. That those are the three big things that are going to heal us. And that leads me to the third pillar. The third pillar is one where I am available to do presentations in person at some point or online for people on A how to prevent cancer or what are some of the things that you can do if you are experiencing cancer or somebody you know and love. Because I believe that all of us have known someone who has had a cancer journey.  So those are the three pillars. The one-on-one consultation. the dancing opportunities through Azul and the third one is I am available to give presentations to your organization, to your group, to your meeting, it can be a short one, it can be a fairly lengthy one, and it's really geared to what the organization or your group needs and wants. On my website which is pillars of healing dot org, I give a list of five things but I'm very happy to tailor any kind of presentation using the things that I believe are truly needed and wanted and beneficial to people who experience cancer. So, that in short, is really what pillars of healing are all about. Carl: Well there's a lot to unpack there, but I want to say congratulations first of all for sharing your journey and also getting through from what I was reading a 45 chance of healing and basically going through all the big three, the surgery, the chemotherapy, and radiation and going through all the hardships that go along with that losing your hair and just a fear to finding your life purpose and sharing with others I think it's wonderful. Thank you so much for all of that. I always laughed when you talked about the Azul being something anybody could do because when I dance and I'm expressing myself you better stand back a little bit because you might get knocked over by accident. I'm not a good dancer so I was just trying to imagine that but that's wonderful. So, how long have you been a coach now? Karen: It's coming up on a year. Carl: Wow, terrific. Karen: It's coming up on a year, I do believe that the coach in me stems from...I was in education and had a really nice career and I am very available to listen to people. So, the coaching just falls into line with what I have done for a very long time and being able to help people from where they are to what they want to become and that's in essence what a coach does. Carl: Yeah, so it's a natural progression for you and you have such a soothing voice, I have told you. I think even if people talk to you on the phone and didn't see you or could be an interactive person, I think just that calming voice and like you said I'm here to talk to and to listen. I think a lot of people are missing that, they don't get that in the traditional medical treatment. If they're going through traditional medical treatment, I think it's really great to take on a coach. Somebody who's there to listen to you and guide you, that's wonderful. Karen: I think it's really important when I'm coaching or anybody is coaching, to listen to what the person who's going through the experience wants to do like. I became my own advocate because I studied and I read a lot and I looked at the research and if somebody had been there to guide me, and tell me that there was research and give me the information I would have been able to move forward may be faster and a little deeper. I truly believe that there's a lot of information out there, and a lot of research that's been done and I have to say...repeat myself, that I think it's the food piece is really important. I changed the way I ate, I began to dance, I began to look forward to life and if we look at the research what it shows us, is the people who are the survivors, or the people who move forward, are the ones who say okay I have cancer and I'm still going to be alive and well and full of energy.  It's that vitality...when I was going through my treatments, a dear friend said to me. She said, somebody, has to be on the winning side and I think that's you and so I had to believe that too. And that hope and inspiration that I can give to other people is so important because I've been through...that I've walked those steps and I know that on a daily basis it's not easy. But yet, there's hope. There's hope at the end as we graduate from the medical treatment. That we don't graduate from a way of life. What I clearly see with the holistic practices, is that there is good healthy living for anybody, for everybody, that's what I believe gives us that push to become more of who we can be. Carl: And you're a wonderful role model for people that have been through it and have this great fear of recurrence. That's a big deal, people like you said, what do I do now? Now that my medical treatment is done, they just pushed me out of the nest, so to speak and now you have to fly and you don't know what to do exactly, sorry I didn't mean to cut you off. Karen: No, that's okay, because I was thinking of the word that you use, recurrence, and I hear that a lot.  I'm fearful of recurrence and these steps that we can take as individuals and as a group, to ward off that recurrence, I think are important and in your cancer journey just making it through those treatments but then setting up a lifestyle that will tell those little cancer cells not to come back.  We have them floating around in our body but we don't need them to reoccur, and that's the lifestyle, that's the coaching that we can do on an ongoing basis.  Whether we're one year, two years, 10 years, 20 years, out from our treatment. That our lifestyle changes and our view of life become more positive, that we can be filled with gratitude on a daily basis and that becomes the message that I really hope that people will take. Carl: Yeah, a change of lifestyle is so important and some people don't change. You're a wonderful role model of how you can go from one life and go through cancer and make your cancer mean something. Take it to the next level and show people yes, you can completely change your life. Maybe this new life will be a better life than the old life, but sometimes that wake-up call is all you need. Karen:  It can and you can create that better life you and I and other people have that, I want to say opportunity, to create a better life and I'm here to help other people do that. That's my function as a coach.  It can be just a tiny thing because if you're on a street corner and you take just one step to the left or one step to the right it can change your path. So, we start out with tiny steps that are very doable in your life, in my life that's what happened.  And from that, you can make other changes and you see the possibilities.  You see how it can change you, you can also see the benefits of some of these changes. Carl: Yeah, well some of the benefits you...I hate to say you can't see because it's like a prevention measure, you're talking about preventing.  When you eat better, some people just don't see it but they don't realize how eating in a bad way is negatively impacting their life.  And two, with the movement, the dance people don't realize how critical that is.  I worked with a cancer patient or a former cancer patient when he had some lymph nodes taken out and it was vital for him to do things with his arms which he wouldn't normally do to get the juices flowing because of the lymph nodes.  so yeah Karen: I think many women particularly those who've had breast cancer are fearful of the lymphedema that can occur. There is so much that one can do to contain the lymphedema that it is not just putting on a sleeve.  And there's so much you can do with movement, with the massaging, with some of the other things that are recommended. Those are the little touches, the little changes that really can change your life.  I had to smile about the eating piece because for me, when I changed the way I ate, I could feel the difference. I could feel...I also have to say I lost 50 pounds. Carl: Congratulations. Karen:  So, that was a big deal. That was huge. And when I looked at what I was eating, I could see why cancer had a field day. So, little by little I changed it. It didn't happen overnight, because it's hard to change what you eat but I did it and I would be delighted to help somebody else do the same thing.  And you have to see where it is that you or your client wants to move. Some people are very happy with what they eat and some people are very willing to change little by little. You don't do it overnight as I said but there are small changes. As for the dance, I dance because I love to dance.    I also know that anybody can dance and most people like music. So, you can move to the music in any way. I also want to state that it's very important to find the movement that your body enjoys. If you don't enjoy running or you don't enjoy yoga, if you don't enjoy lifting weights, chances are you're not going to do it over the long term and that's what we're looking at.  I think it's important to discover what the rhythm of your body responds to.  Whether it's a walk outside. Whether it's on an elliptical in a gym and some of the gyms are open and closed right now. Whether it's bike riding with your son or daughter or a partner. Those are the kinds of things that we can discover, will resonate with your body. I go back to the lymphedema piece. One of the things that I learned in my recovery was that I was very careful to build my arm to a state where it had the muscle tone. Where it had the ability to have full range of motion and the lymphedema, I was really careful with but I got that arm so that it is today as strong as it can be today, and that's very important. so that's something to work with, with a lot of people. Carl: Thank you so much, I appreciate that.  People don't realize what someone goes through when you say breast cancer.  They don't think anything's happening to their arms.  So, the eating part...certainly people can feel that benefit by just internalizing the fact that they're changing their internal terrain and making their body an inhospitable environment for cancer to thrive.  When they eat the wrong way, they make their bodies a place where cancer likes to live.  And I like what you said about doing something that people do for a long haul.  It's like you said, it's a lifestyle or making...that's so impactful and I hope people get that message, that it's the long haul. You have covered most of my questions but I do want to ask, when you're taking the course, was there something that stood out for you or you learned that you didn't really know before?  Something that really added to your program? Karen: When I did the beat cancer program, I found first of all that is synthesized and brought together a lot of the information that I had picked up along the way.  And so, it is put in one place, I want to say an encyclopedia, a compilation of the practices in which I believe. And to add to that, it was backed up by research and that's very important to show that there is definite research that there is scientific evidence for these holistic practices. Because when you talk to people, they go oh that's just what somebody's saying and that's really not true.  What we're saying is these practices have developed out of research, out of scientific data, that shows how we can prevent cancer and how we can work with our cancer recovery and that it's not simply what somebody is putting forth in what they think.  But we know that it helps us to see that it's helped people in all different countries and a variety of different cancers, in different stages of the cancer.  So that research piece really was important for me. Carl: Yeah, people don't realize that.  Susan was doing that for 35 years. This is before she ever made a course out of it, so it's not only the science that she researched but it was put into practice for 35 years of helping people.  Oh, I did notice that you said the pillars of healing dot org, is that a non-profit? Karen: No, well it probably will be a non-profit and so I had a choice of what I was going to name this. I was advised that I could use the dot org and rather than the dot com so that's where it is. Carl: Okay, yeah. Whenever I see a dot org, I think right away non-profit. Karen:  Well I will be working with people to build, what I want to say a business, but a business that really goes back into some of the cancer research, some of the cancer organizations that I believe are doing great work. Carl: Good for you. Well, look at that, a whole new you. Who knew? Karen:  It's great, well you ask for like that a one-word aha moment, I think it's gratitude, I think it's vitality, I think it's inspiration, and that's for me moving toward a healthy life for cancer clients, cancer...I want to say people who have experienced cancer, because it's not just people who are going through treatment now, but who have in the past and want to make their lives better. If they've stopped treatments and now wondering what they're going to do, how can I have a good life without a recurrence? That's also important. Carl: Live in victory and not fear. Karen: That's so important, isn't it?  That you live in a positive world and sometimes that's difficult to do. Carl: Especially if you don't have anybody telling you there's another way. So many people their family members just push them towards the doctors and when the doctors are done with them, they push them back. And they don't have anybody like you to say they look, there's a different type of life. Karen: Or they revert back to what they've been doing before they got the cancer. Worst case scenario, if we revert back to that state, chances are it would recur. So, we move forward, we move towards that better lifestyle, that healthier lifestyle. Carl: Okay so I'm going to sum it up here because I think you did a great job of covering everything. So, just a one bonus question, if there is one tip that you could give and then you gave some great golden nuggets all throughout, I mean I could pull out five or six different things I can make sound bites out of.  But if you had one tip, what would that be? Karen: I'm talking to your lily; you are part of my blog and I do tips for Lilly and letters to lily.  lily I would say look for the positive in your life and as you're looking for the positive reach out, reach out and grab a hand for support because we can do this together. Carl: Good one. Well, thank you so much.  Is there anything else you would like to add? Karen:  Check out pillarsofhealing.org and my email is on there and my phone numbers on there. I'm really good about answering emails and would love to connect with you and do a discovery call and see where we can get together...what makes sense for the two of us to work through a cancer journey together. Carl: I'm glad you mentioned that.  I'll put the links in the show notes for YouTube, but some people listen on podcast and it's great to mention that verbally, thank you. All right, thank you so much for your time. Karen:  Thank you for this opportunity.  I really appreciate what Beat Cancer is doing and has done for me and other cancer coaches. I think it's really important that it become and stay a vital organization in the community. Carl: It's a blessing for me to meet the coaches. I had a great time meeting you and again you are going to be a rock star with that soothing voice and positive attitude and being such a good role model, and I think that's great. Karen: Thank you. Carl: You're welcome. Karen: I've been looking forward to this for quite a while. Car Wagner: Yeah, sorry about the delay COVID-19 really just threw a monkey ranch in. Karen:  Well, to you and everybody else.  But it gave me an opportunity to clarify what I wanted to do so it was good for all of us. Automated: If we helped you learn just one thing today about how to prevent cope with or be cancer, then we have succeeded in our mission. Please remember to like, subscribe and comment. We appreciate all of your feedback and love your suggestions. your positive ratings help us to get discovered so we can help save more lives. Thank you again for joining us and best wishes for good health from all of us at beatcancer.org.

02:31 - Karen’s Superpower: The Ability to Simplify Things * Simplifying in a Team Context 05:55 - Better Allies (https://betterallies.com/) – Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces; Triaging and Curating Research * @BetterAllies (https://twitter.com/betterallies) * Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces (https://www.amazon.com/Better-Allies-Everyday-Inclusive-Workplaces/dp/1732723303) (Book) * The Better Allies™ Approach to Hiring (https://www.amazon.com/Better-Allies-Approach-Hiring-ebook/dp/B082WR7F86) (Book) * Present! A Techie's Guide to Public Speaking (https://www.amazon.com/Present-Techies-Guide-Public-Speaking-ebook/dp/B01BCXHULK) (Book) 14:15 - Maintaining Anonyminity (at first); Prove It Again Bias (https://genderbiasbingo.com/prove-it-again/) * Channeling White Men; Men Listening to Other Men * Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do (https://www.amazon.com/Whistling-Vivaldi-Stereotypes-Affect-Issues/dp/0393339726) (Book) * [Podcast] 'Whistling Vivaldi' And Beating Stereotypes (https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125859207) * Reduce the influence of unconscious bias with these re:Work tools (https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/fight-unconscious-bias-with-rework-tools/) * Build the Culture Instead of Fit the Culture 26:09 - Culture Add + Values Fit * Recognizing Bias Instead of Removing It * Meritocracy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy) 32:11 - Network Effect: Venturing Beyond Homogenous (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/homogenous) Networks * Marginalization + Privilege Can Be Self-Reinforcing * 50 Potential Privileges in the Workplace (https://betterallies.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/50-potential-privileges.pdf) 41:58 - Doing This Work is Everyone’s Job 48:12 - People to Follow * Minda Harts (https://twitter.com/MindaHarts) * The Memo: What Women of Color Need to Know to Secure a Seat at the Table (https://bookshop.org/books/the-memo-what-women-of-color-need-to-know-to-secure-a-seat-at-the-table/9781580058469) * Jeannie Gainsburg (https://www.savvyallyaction.com/about) * The Savvy Ally: A Guide for Becoming a Skilled LGBTQ+ Advocate (https://www.amazon.com/Savvy-Ally-JEANNIE-GAINSBURG/dp/1538136775/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=savvy+ally&qid=1608561617&sr=8-3) * David Smith (https://twitter.com/davidgsmithphd) & Brad Johnston * Good Guys: How Men Can Be Better Allies for Women in the Workplace (https://www.amazon.com/Good-Guys-Better-Allies-Workplace-ebook/dp/B08412XCHB/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=good+guys&qid=1614095097&sr=8-3) * Corey Ponder (https://www.coreyponder.com/about-me) * Learning the ABCs of Allyship (https://www.coreyponder.com/single-post/abcs-of-allyship) 51:13 - The Decline of Gender Parity in the Tech Industry * Women in Tech -- The Missing Force: Karen Catlin at TEDxCollegeofWilliam&Mary (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uiEHaDSfgI) 58:15 - Making Statements and Changing the Status Quo Reflections: Rein: Getting better at praxis: for every white dude with a beard you follow on Twitter, go follow 10 Black women in tech. Damien: How bias can interfere with an action right before the action happens. Chanté: We’re all allies. We cannot do this work alone. Today you might be the ally, tomorrow you may be the bridge. Arty: Expanding our homogenous networks. Change takes courage on all of our parts. Karen: Turning period statements into questions or adding “until now” to those statements. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Transcript: PRE-ROLL: Whether you're working on a personal project or managing enterprise infrastructure, you deserve simple, affordable, and accessible cloud computing solutions that allow you to take your project to the next level. Simplify your cloud infrastructure with Linode's Linux virtual machines and develop, deploy, and scale your modern applications faster and easier. Get started on Linode today with $100 in free credit for listeners of Greater Than Code. You can find all the details at linode.com/greaterthancode. Linode has 11 global data centers and provides 24/7/365 human support with no tiers or hand-offs regardless of your plan size. In addition to shared and dedicated compute instances, you can use your $100 in credit on S3-compatible object storage, Managed Kubernetes, and more. Visit linode.com/greaterthancode and click on the "Create Free Account" button to get started. REIN: Welcome to Episode 224 of Greater Than Code. Take two. So full disclosure, we recorded this or more specifically, didn't record this conversation so we're going to do it again. I'm your co-host, Rein Hendricks, and I'm here with my co-host, Damien Burke. DAMIEN: Thanks, Rein. And I'm here with my co-host, Chanté Thurmond. CHANTÉ: Everyone, Chanté here. And I'm here with Arty Starr. ARTY: Thank you, Chanté. And I'm here with our awesome guest today, Karen Catlin. So after spending 25 years building software products and serving as a vice-president of engineering at Macromedia and Adobe, Karen Catlin witnessed a sharp decline in the number of women working in tech. Frustrated but galvanized, she knew it was time to switch gears. Today, Karen is a leadership coach and a highly acclaimed author and speaker on inclusive workplaces. She is the author of three books: "Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces," "The Better Allies™ Approach to Hiring,” and "Present! A Techie's Guide to Public Speaking." Welcome, Karen to the show! KAREN: And it is a pleasure to be back with you and to be having this conversation today. Thanks so much for having me. ARTY: And we very much appreciate you being here again with us. So our first question we always ask at the beginning of the show is what is your superpower and how did you acquire it? KAREN: Okay so, my superpower is the ability to simplify things and I joke that I think I acquired this superpower simply as a coping strategy because there's so much information out there. We're all bombarded with things and maybe my brain is just not as big as other people so I constantly am trying to simplify things so that I can understand them, remember them, convey them, and so forth. And I'll share, I think it served me well, not only as I embarked on my computer science programming school and just trying to like grok everything that I was trying to learn as well as then entering the field initially as a software engineer. Again, simplifying things, divide and conquer, break things down into those procedural elements that can be repeated and generalized. Certainly, then as I moved into executive roles as a vice-president of engineering, you're just context switching all day long. Again, I just had to simplify everything that was going on so that could really remember things, take notes on things, and make decisions based on what I thought I needed to do. Yeah. So that's my superpower. ARTY: That's a great superpower. So in the context of the workplace and you've got teams trying to things out, maybe a design problem you're working on, trying to solve. How does simplifying things come into play in a team context like that? KAREN: Well, it comes into play a lot of ways. I'm remembering one example where there was some interpersonal conflict between two people and I was hearing both sides, as one does, and talking to them both. I got them both in a room because they just weren't seeing each other's point of views, I thought, and they were just working at odds to each other. Hearing them both talk, I was able to say, “So at the heart, this is what we're all trying to do. This is what we are trying to achieve together,” and I got them to confirm that. That was the first step in simplifying just the discussion. They were getting a little emotional about things. They were bringing in a lot of details that frankly, weren't necessary to really understand what was going on and I was able to focus them on that shared purpose that we had for the project. It doesn't even matter what it was. Actually, it was so long ago now I can't quite remember what the issue was, but I remember hearing afterwards one of the people say, “You are so good at simplifying things got down to the heart,” and I'm like, “Yes, I am. That's my superpower.” ARTY: It sounds like even more than that, or maybe a slightly different frame of just the example you just gave. It's not only simplifying things, you are distilling the essence of what's important or what someone is trying to say, and getting at what's the underlying message underneath all the things that someone's actually trying to communicate, even if they're struggling too, so that you can help two people may be coming from different directions, be able to understand one another. That's pretty powerful. KAREN: Well, thank you and I love the way you've just framed it, Arty and oh, those are big shoes to fill. Woo! I hope I've been able to do that in a number of different settings as I think back, but that's yeah, it is powerful. I think I probably still have some stuff I can learn there, too. CHANTÉ: Arty, thank you for teeing up this because what I am curious about in relation to what Karen just mentioned as her superpower, which I think is amazing, is obviously, you have authored a number of books. When it comes to allyship, it sounds like this is a great time where we can get somebody to distill and to simplify and not to oversimplify because there's an art to it. But I would love if you could maybe take us down the pathway of how did you arrive at this moment where you are authoring books on allyship and maybe you could give us a little bit of the backstory, first and then we could get into the superpower you've used along the way in your tech journey. KAREN: Okay. CHANTÉ: And how you're coaching people. KAREN: All right. Chanté, thank you. Yes, I'm happy to. So the backstory, first of all, I never set out to become an author, or to become a speaker, or this expert that people tap into about workplace inclusion. That was not my goal. I was doing my job in tech. I was a vice-president of engineering at Adobe. I was leading engineering teams and realizing that there was a decline happening before my eyes in gender diversity. Now I started my career in tech a long time ago and I started at a time when there was sort of a peak period of women studying computer science in the United States. And so, when I started my career, it wasn't 50-50 by any means, but there was plenty of gender diversity in the teams I was working on, in the conference rooms I was in, in the cube lands that I was working in and I saw a decline happening. So while I was still at Adobe, I started our women's employee resource group—goes back gosh, like 14, 15 years now—and I've started mentoring a lot of women at the company and started basically, being a vocal advocate to make sure women were represented in various leadership meetings I was in, on stage, at our internal events and conferences, giving updates at all-hands meetings, like well, thinking about that. I love doing that work so much and loved doing that work less so my VP of engineering work, I must admit. So about 9 years ago now, I decided to do a big change in my career pivot in my own career, I started leadership coaching practice. A leadership coaching practice focused on helping women who are working in tech in any capacity, any role. But women working in this industry, I wanted to help them grow their leadership skills so they could stay in tech if that's where they wanted to be and not drop out because they felt like, “I just can't get ahead,” or “I'm seeing all the white men get ahead,” for example, “before me.” So I started this coaching practice. I soon realized, though that I had a big problem with my coaching practice and the problem wasn't with my clients—they were amazing. The problem, I don't think was me. I think I'm a decent coach, still learning, still getting better, but decent. And realized the problem really that I was facing is that before I could truly help my clients, I needed to make their companies more inclusive. All of them were working at tech companies where the closer you get to the leadership team, to the C-suite, to the CEO, just the mailer and paler it got. With all due respect to anyone who's male and or pale, I'm white myself, anyone who's listening, who's male and/or pale, like that's just what the demographics were and still are in most of our companies. Also, that coupled with this mentality of, “Hey, we are a meritocracy. People get ahead in our company based on their merits, their accomplishments, the impact to the business.” When in reality, that's not what happens because if it were then the demographics across the company would be uniform, regardless of what level you are at. So the white men were getting ahead more than others. So I was like, “I need to make their companies more inclusive. In fact, I need to make all of tech more inclusive to really help my coaching clients,” and yeah, laugh, right? A big job, one person over here. Now, what's the first thing anyone does these days when they want to change the world? You start a Twitter handle. So I started the Twitter handle @betterallies. I started in 2014 with a goal to share simple everyday actions anyone could take to be more inclusive at work. In hindsight, I was leveraging my super power as I started this Twitter handle. I leveraged it because I started looking at the research that social scientists do about diversity in the workplace and not just gender diversity, but diversity of all kinds. The research that shows that they were uncovering, that shows the challenges that people of non-dominant genders, as well as race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, identity, age, abilities, and so forth. What are the challenges these people face in the workplace as they navigate that? Others are doing this great research and I really am—and this builds on what Arty was saying—I used to think I curated this, but really, I was triaging the research. I was triaging it to simplify it, get it to its essence, and figure out with all this great research that gets published, what is someone supposed to do with it? How is the average person who works in tech supposed to take action with this great research that's out there? So I triage and curate and I do it not just based on the research, but also what I'll call cautionary tales that appear in our news, in our Twitter feeds, and so forth. I'll give you two examples to make it real. One is based on research. There's research that shows that men interrupt women more than the other way around and so, based on that research, I go over to Twitter and I type in something like, “I pledge to notice when interruptions happen in the meetings I attend and redirect the conversation back to the person who was interrupted with a simple, ‘I'd like to hear Chanté finish her thought,’” and something like that that's research-driven. Then the more, the cautionary tales that pop up in the research or in the news that we consume, I remember a few years ago when there was so much that was coming out about Uber and its non-inclusive workplace. Just one of the many things we learned about was that the CEO at the time and founder, Travis Kalanick, he was using the nursing mother's room for his personal phone calls. That's not cool because then the nursing moms can't get in there to do what they need to do. So I would go over to Twitter and just a little bit of snark added, I was like, “I pledge not to use the nursing mother's room for my personal phone calls unlike Travis Kalanick at Uber,” [chuckles]. That kind of thing. So I'm just tweeting a couple times a day. I start getting Twitter messages to this anonymous Twitter account—by the way, it was anonymous at the time—and these Twitter requests would be like, “Hey, does anyone at the Better Allies Initiative do any public speaking?” and I'd be like, ‘The initiative? Huh, it's just me tweeting a couple of times a day. Okay.” But I wanted to speak about this topic and I want to retain my anonymity. So I would write back and say, “Yes, one of our contributors does some public speaking. We'll put you in touch with her,” and I go over to my personal Twitter account type something in like, “Hey, I'm Karen Catlin. I contribute to Better Allies. I love public speaking. What do you have in mind?” So I started speaking on this whole approach of everyday simple actions people could take, the Better Allies approach, and every time I gave a talk, someone would ask, “Hey, Karen, do you have a book? Because we want more of this.” For a few years, “I kept saying, no, I don't have a book. I don't have a book. I don't have a book, sorry.” But I did finally write my book. In fact, I've written two books on the topic—"Better Allies" and also, "The Better Allies™ Approach to Hiring.” The Better Allies book, I just released a second edition. It's been out there for 2 years. I've learned so much that I wanted to do a full update on the book. So I've just released that a few weeks ago. CHANTÉ: I have a follow-up question then, because Karen, you mentioned that you wanted to maintain your anonymity when you started off that handle and I would just love to hear maybe why that's so important when you're doing this work of allyship and accomplishing in this space? KAREN: Yes, and I don't know if it is important for everyone—and I'm not anonymous anymore. I have claimed credit for this. As soon as I published my books. Writing a book is a lot of work; I'm going to claim the credit. But I didn't in the beginning because okay, I'm going to say this. A lot of people thought it was a man behind the Twitter handle and I must admit, I was kind of channeling white men that I have worked with over my career and thinking about what would they really do? What could I get them to do? All of my tweets are first person, “I pledge to do this,” “I will do this,” I'm going to do this,” and there were people I have friends even who were like, “Hey, have you seen this @betterallies Twitter handle? I wonder who's behind it. I'd like to interview him for my podcast,” That type of thing. So I think that there were people out there who thought it was a white man behind the Twitter handle and I was comfortable with that because not only was I channeling these white men I had worked with in the past, but I also think that there's power in men listening to other men. I'll just say that. I have actually gotten speaking engagements when I've said, “I'm a contributor.” They're like, “Are there any men who could speak because we think men would like to hear this message from another man.” So anyway, that's kind of why I started out with that anonymous Twitter handle and with this character behind the scenes of this fake man. [laughs] But now it's okay. I say that I curate it, it's me, and I'm comfortable with that. I still do it first person because I think that white women can also be allies. We all can be allies for others with less privilege than ourselves in the workplace and I think it's important for us, everyone to be thinking, “This is a job I can and should do to be inclusive at work and to look for these everyday situations. I can take ally actions and make a difference.” ARTY: How's that changed things like, revealing your identity and that you're not actually a big white dude? [chuckles] KAREN: I know. Well, I never really said I was a big white dude! Or even a small white dude, or whatever. But I think it's fine. I claimed the association with the Twitter handle when I published my book and it was just time to just own it. It's not like people stopped following me or stopped retweeting or anything like that. It's only grown since then. So Arty, it's a good question, but I don't know. I don't know. REIN: And this is more than a little ironic because when you were talking about your coaching—and I'm going to read into this a little bit, but I think you can confirm that it's backed up by the research—to appear equally competent or professional, women have to do more and other minoritized groups have to do more. So what I was reading in was that part of the problem you had with coaching was that to get them to an equal playing field, they had to be better. KAREN: Yes. What you're describing, Rein is “prove-it-again” bias and this is well-researched and documented. Prove-it-again means that women have to prove themselves over and over again where men just have to show potential. This often happens and I'm going to give you just a scenario to bring it home. Imagine sitting in some sort of promotion calibration discussion with other managers in your group and you're talking about who gets promotions this cycle. Someone might say, “Well, I'd like to see Arty prove that she can handle managing people before we move her to the next level.” When Arty, maybe you've already been doing that for a few years; you've already managed a team, you've built a team, whatever. “I'd like to make sure she can do this with this additional thing,” like, make sure she can do it with an offshore team or something. “I want to see her do it again.” Whereas a man's like, “Ah, Damien's great. I know he can do the job. Let's promote him.” Okay, totally making this up. But you see what I'm saying is that this is what the prove-it-again bias is. So whether it is women have to be twice as good or something like that, I don't know if that's exactly what's going on, but they have to deal with this bias of once again, I have to prove that I'm worthy to be at this table, to be in this conversation, to be invited to that strategic planning meeting, to get that promotion, and I don't want to coach women to have to keep proving themselves over and over again. Instead, I want to change the dynamics of what's happening inside these organizations so it is a better playing field, not just for my clients who are mostly women, but also, anyone out there who's from an underrepresented group, who might be facing challenges as they try to navigate this world that really has been designed for other people. ARTY: Wow, that's really enlightening. I'm just thinking about this from a cognitive science perspective and how our brains work, and then if you're making a prediction about something and have an expectation frame for that. If I have an expectation that someone's going to do well, like I have a dream and image in my mind that they'll fit this particular stereotype, then if they just show potential to fit this image in my head, I can imagine and envision them doing all these things and trust that imaginary dream in my head. Whereas, if I have the opposite dream in my head where my imagination shows this expectation of this person falling on their face and doing all these things wrong, I'm already in a position of having to prove something that's outside of that expectation, which is so much harder to do. So this is the effect of these biases basically being baked into our brain already is all of our expectations and things are set up to work against people that culturally, we have these negative expectations around that have nothing to do with those actual people. KAREN: Thanks. Arty, have you ever read the book, Whistling Vivaldi? ARTY: I haven't. I am adding that to my list. KAREN: It explores stereotype threat, which is exactly what you've just described, and the title, just to give you some insight into this, how this shows up. The title, Whistling Vivaldi, is all about a story of a Black man who had to walk around his neighborhood, which I believe is mostly white and got just the concerns that people didn't trust him navigating this public space, his neighborhood. So what he would do, and I don't know if it was just in the evenings or any time, he went out to walk to be outside, he would whistle Vivaldi to break the stereotype that he was a bad person, a scary person because of the color of his skin. Instead, by whistling Vivaldi, he gave off the feeling that he was a highly educated person who studied classical music and he did that so that he could navigate his neighborhoods safely. It's awful to think about having to do that, but this book is full of these examples. It's a research-driven approach so, it's a great book to understand stereotype threat and combat it. DAMIEN: So in the interest of us and our listeners, I suppose being better allies, you spoke about stereotype threat and gave an example there. You spoke about prove-it-again bias and specifically, with prove-it-again bias, I want to know what are ways that we can identify this real-time and counter it in real-time? KAREN: Yes. With prove-it-again bias—well, with any bias, really. First of all, reminding yourself that it exists is really important. At Google, they found that simply reminding managers, before they went into a calibration, a performance calibration meeting, probably some rank ordering exercise of all the talent in the organization. Before they started a calibration meeting, they were all given a 1-page handout of here's the way bias can creep into this process. That simple act of having people review the list of here's the way bias creeps into the process was enough to help combat it during the subsequent conversation. So I think we have to remind ourselves of bias and by the way, this resource I'm describing is available as a download on Google's re:Work website. I think it's R-E-: work. There's a re:Work website with tons of resources, but it's available for download there. So that's one thing you can do is before a calibration meeting or before you're about to start an interview debrief session with a team, is remind people of the kinds of bias that can come into play so that people are more aware. Other things, and I'll talk specifically about hiring, is I am a huge proponent of making sure that before you interview the first candidate, you have objective criteria that you're going to use to evaluate the candidates because otherwise, without objective criteria, you start relying on subjectivity, which is code for bias. Things will start to be said of, “I just don't think they'd be a culture fit,” which is code for bias of “They're different from us. They're different from me. I don't think I'd want to go get a beer with them after work,” or “If I had to travel with them and get stuck on a long layover somewhere when we can travel again, I don't think I'd enjoy that.” People just instead say, “I just don't think they'd be a culture fit. So you get away from that by, instead in your objective criteria, looking for other things that are technically needed for the job, or some values perhaps that your company has in terms of curiosity or lifelong learning or whatever your company values are. You interview for those things and you figure out how you're going to measure someone against those objective criteria. Other way bias creeps into interviews is looking at or saying something like, “Well, they don't have this experience with Docker that this other candidate has,” but really, that wasn't part of the job description. No one said that the candidates needed Docker experience, but all of a sudden, because one of the candidates has Docker experience, that becomes important. So instead of getting ahead of that, make sure you list exactly what you're going to be interviewing for and evaluating people for so that the bias isn't there and bias, maybe all of a sudden Docker becomes an important thing when you realize you could get it. But it may be that it's the person who seems the most like the people in the team who has it and that’s another – you're just using that as a reason for increasing that candidate’s success to join your team because you'd like to hang out with them. You'd like to be with them. You would want to be getting a beer with them. Does that help, Damien? DAMIEN: Yeah, that's very helpful. The framing is an absolutely pre-framing before an evaluation, before an interview what biases can happen. That's a wonderful tool, which I am going to be using everywhere I can. And then what you said about culture fit and really, every subjective evaluation is, I think the words you used was “code for bias.” Like, anytime you have a subjective evaluation, it's going to be biased. So being able to decide in advance what your objective evaluations are, then you can help avoid that issue. Culture fit is just such a red flag for me. You said, I wrote down the words, “culture built,” right? Decide what the culture is – because culture is important in the company, decide what the culture is you want and then interview and evaluate for that. KAREN: Yeah. Oh, I love that. Build the culture instead of just fit the culture. I've also heard people say, “If you ever hear someone say, I don't think they'd be a culture fit, respond with ‘Well, I think they'd be a culture add,’” or Damien, to quote you, “I think they build our culture instead of just fit in.” Really powerful, really powerful. CHANTÉ: Yeah. I agree with you all and Karen, I'm not sure if you knew this, but one of the many things I do, which takes up most of my life, is I'm a DEI practitioner and I have a firm, and I also work in-house at a company, Village MD, as a director of DEI there. So one of the things that I talk a lot about is culture add and one of the things I'd love to see more companies do is to think about like, basically take an inventory of all the people on your team and try to identify where you're strong, where you're weak, and look for the skills gap analysis, basically and say, “What don't we have here,” and then, “Let's go hire for that skillset or that expertise that we don't have that we believe could help us build this thing better this year.” That's going to require people to do that exercise, not just once because your team dynamic shifts usually a few times a year. So if you're a high growth company, you should be doing that probably every quarter. But imagine what the difference would be if we approach interviewing and promotion building from that lens instead. KAREN: Yeah, and Chanté, the way you framed it is amazing. I love it. You said, “What do we not have that we need to build our product to deliver to our customers?” I don't remember the exact words you used, but that I think is important because I've also, in conversations I've had around culture fit and culture and everything, someone say to me, “Well, wait a second, Karen, what if you we're evaluating a white supremacist? It's clear, there are white supremacists and we don't have one of those yet on the team. Does that mean we should open the doors and let them in?” That's when it's like, you can use the way you've just framed as “Well, if we're building a product for white supremacists, then yeah, probably.” But to be more serious about this, it's like what's missing from our team structure, from the diversity within this team, that is going to allow us to deliver on our product, on our offering better? I think that's important. Another lens to apply here is also you can still do values fit. Make sure people fit with the values that you have as a company and that should allow you to interview out people who don't fit with your values and just to use that example of a white supremacist. That would be the way to do that, too. REIN: I think it's really important to say that ethics still matters here and values fit as a way to express that. One of the things that I would maybe caution or challenge is—and this isn't a direct challenge to you, Karen, I don't think—but it's been popular in the industry to try to remove bias from the equation. To do debiasing training and things like that and I think that that's the wrong way to go because I don't think it's cognitively possible to remove bias. I think instead what we should do, what I think that you're talking about here is being aware of the biases we have. Accounting for them in the way that we hire, because the same heuristic that leads to a bias against certain demographics is the one we use to say, “We don't want white supremacists.” KAREN: Yeah. Plus a hundred, yes. [laughs] I agree. What I was going to say, Rein to build on what you just shared is that it's important to see things like color, for example, to understand. Even if you feel you're not biased, it's important to see it, to see color, to see disability, to see someone who is going through a transition, for example, on their identity. It's important to see it because that allows you to understand the challenges that they are facing and if you say, “I don't see color, I just see them as their new identity, post-transition. I don't see their disability; I just see the person,” it negates the experience they're having, as they are trying to navigate the workplace and to be the best allies, you need to understand the challenges people are facing and how you can take action to help them either mitigate the challenge, get around the challenge, whatever that might be, or remove the challenge. ARTY: So you're not being empathetic to the circumstances by pretending that they don't exist. KAREN: Yes. Well said, yes. REIN: It’s the idea that you can be on bias that I think is dangerous. I want to call back to this idea of a meritocracy; the idea that every choice we make is based on merit and that whatever we choose is indicative of the merit of that person is the bias that is harmful. KAREN: Woo, yes. I can't wait to refer to that. I can't wait to come back and listen to you. What you just said, Rein that is powerful. REIN: Because becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? We're a meritocracy so everything we've chosen is means – if we chose someone that means that they have merit by definition. There's no way out of that trap. KAREN: Right on. CHANTÉ: Yeah. When you say that, it makes me think, too of just the sort of committal to always transforming and iterating. So if you come in the door saying, “Listen, there's no way we can eliminate bias all the time.” We're going to make the assumption that we're always being biased and therefore, what things can we put into place and what tools can we use? What resources can we leverage here to make sure that we're on a pathway for greater inclusion, greater accessibility? Therefore, making our organization more diverse and more innovative. I think, like Rein, I just want to really underscore that because that is something that I've had to really try to lead with versus add to the conversation later. So I'm appreciating that you brought it up today. Thank you. REIN: It’s like some of the choices, some of the evaluations we're making are subjective. We can't make them objective in every case; I think what we want is a framework that allows us to do these subjective evaluations in a way that accounts for bias. DAMIEN: So that's amazing. Where do we go from here? ARTY: One of the things we talked about last time with regards to various people getting promoted, this effect of maler and paler as you get closer to the C-suite, is that one of the effects of that is when you're sitting down to hire someone, well, who do you know? Who's on the list of people that I know within my network? So one of the huge biases we end up having isn't necessarily a cognitive bias, it's just a effect of where our attention has been and who we've been hanging out and who we have relationships with that are preexisting. These existing network effects also keep us in the thinking and stuff and making decisions within the context of those networks. We promote people that we know. We promote people that we have relationships with. So even just some of the dynamics of if you've got existing C-suite dynamics that is dominated by men and you've got these dynamics where it’s difficult for men and women to have relationships for various reasons, things that get complicated, that those sorts of things can end up creating a self-reinforcing effect, too. I'm wondering what are some of your thoughts on some of the ways that we can expand our networks and expand the people that we know to shift some of those systemic effects? KAREN: Yeah. Most of us have homogenous networks. Homogenous networks meaning people who are just like us because we have something in common with them, whether that is hobbies that we share, music we like talking about, food we like to go out to enjoy whatever we have things in common. So most of us end up having a –and it's true. Most white people have networks that are full of other white people and this also is friendship circles. There's again, social science research out there that shows that we tend to have networks full of people just like us. As you just were saying, Arty this impacts so many aspects of work in terms of who we hire, who we recommend, who we promote, who we even ask to take on some like stretch assignment or tasks such as giving the update at the all-hands meeting for our team, or going in and exploring some new technology that might be on the horizon that we could leverage. Who are we going to trust with these stretch assignments are people that we know and the people that we know are the people in our network. So it is important to look to diversify our network. There's so many ways to do this. When I give talks, I share some of these ways. One is literally when new people join your team or from a different demographic than you, get to know them and get to know their work and their career goals and down the road, look for how you might be able to connect some dots. But really, take the time to get to know people who you might otherwise just like, “Oh yeah, they're joining the team, whatever,” but set up that virtual coffee or whatever. The other thing you can do is join Slack groups or other discussion forums at your company for people from that demographic. After checking first, if you'd be welcome and invited, of course, but many of these groups will be open to allies and if you are wanting to join that discussion groups so that you can sort of understand the conversation, understand the challenges, get to know some of this talent. That's a great way to do it. You can also go to conferences that are designed for members of other groups that you're not a part of. Again, asking first permission, if you'd be welcome as an ally, but in tech, there's so many of these, but there's lesbians who tech, there are Black women in tech or Black coders conferences. There are Latinas in tech. Meetups and things like that. So there's so many opportunities to go and hear incredibly talented speakers talking about the technology and the projects and the work that they do and it's a great way to expand your network. I'll share my favorite hack that I do when it's in-person and I'm going to a meetup or an event. I'm an introvert, I will let everyone know that. It's hard for me to go into a networking group like the meetup that's happening and there's some pizza and some drinks before it starts, or that conference reception. It's hard for me to go into a room like that. So when I do, I quickly scan the room and I look for someone who's standing by themselves or sitting by themselves, who is from a different demographic and I go over and say, “Hi.” That's the easiest introduction for me as an introvert is to go find someone who's all by themselves and maybe feeling a little awkward that they're all by themselves too and it's a great way to strike a conversation and again, to expand my network, meet some new people, not just my friends that might be coming to the same event. DAMIEN: So one of the things that I want to call attention to, too with what you're saying there is that this marginalization and privilege is self-reinforcing. You don't have to have – even though we all have cognitive biases, they aren't actually necessary for marginalization and privilege to self-reinforce and in fact, because that actually takes effort to undo these things. If we just go along, if we pretend not to see color, or whatever, we are actually reinforcing the problems that exist. KAREN: Yeah, and Damien, on that note. In my book, and it's also a free download on my website, betterallies.com. I have a list that I've curated of 50 ways you might have privilege in the workplace. I like people to read through this list and think about all the ways they have privilege that others might not. The top of the list are “I'm a male,” and “I'm white,” and those are the top two things. But then it gets into more nuanced things and nuanced things being, “I'm not the primary caregiver for someone else.” Well, why is that something we should be aware of as allies? Well, when you're the primary caregiver, that means you may have to drop things at a moment's notice to take a child or a parent to a doctor's appointment, for example, or you might be interrupted in your work. So there's privilege when you don't have that caregiving responsibility. Another one is that you actually have budget enough spare money so that you can do after work outings with a team that aren't company sanctioned. Like, “Yeah, I can afford to go out to dinner,” and gosh, this all sounds so weird now with the pandemic and how long it’s lasting. But “Yeah, I can go out for drinks or dinner with my team after work and pay my way,” or “I can do that whitewater rafting trip on the weekend that people are getting together with.” Even though it's not company work, it's still networking and that builds bonds that builds relationships and sure, work is going to be discussed. It also includes things such as “I am not holding a visa,” which means that I have confidence that I maybe can take some risks with my career. “I can move teams, move to another manager, try something new out because I have confidence that I'm not going to potentially lose my job, which means losing my visa, which means losing my ability to live in the United States.” So there's so many ways that we have privileged that I think at first blush, we might not realize and I think building on your point, Damien it's important for us to understand this privilege so that we can be understanding of how and why we should be diversifying our network and getting to know people who have different levels of privilege than ourselves. REIN: And if you're like a white dude who's like, “This is a lot to keep track of.” Yes. When you don't have them, it's obvious. KAREN: Yeah, you can be oblivious. Otherwise – not that you would be, Rein. I'm not saying that, but one can be very oblivious. REIN: I’m probably oblivious of like, at least 30 of them, so. DAMIEN: For people who are marginalized every axes, we really cannot be unaware. It's dangerous. Those of us who were unaware of it, suffer disastrous consequences. So in places where you are privileged, if one of the privileges is to not be aware of it and yes, it is a lot to keep track of and yes, as everybody else has to keep track of that stuff. KAREN: Yeah, and building on what you both just said, this is just like technology in some ways and let me explain what I mean by that. Let's not take it out of context because there's some nuanced stuff I'm about to share. But in tech, there are so many areas of specialty, whether that is in data science or product security or accessibility related engineering or internationalization engineering and, and, and like, there's so many areas of expertise. And Rein, you’re like, “As a white guy, how am I supposed to keep track of all of this?” Well, it's hard. I get it because the field keeps changing, things keep getting innovated on or brought to the surface and the same thing, I'm sure that Chanté sees this in the DEI space. We are learning all the time about how to create more inclusive workplaces where everyone can do their best work and thrive. It's the same as like what am I learning about writing the right kind of code that is going to have lasting impact, that is going to not cause incidents over the weekend [chuckles] when we all want to be doing something else? When it's not going to down the road because technical debt that is going to have to be retired? So yeah, it's hard work. I don't mean to say it's not, but we need to make sure we have people who are thinking about this around us, who are reminding us, who are teaching us the best practices so that we are getting ahead of this versus falling behind. REIN: One of the things you said last time that I really want to make sure we bring back up is that doing this work is everyone's job. KAREN: Yes. Yeah, and Rein, I think we got into that conversation talking specifically about product security, software security. You can have a team of people who are software security specialists/experts. In fact, when I was at Adobe in my department, that was one of the groups in my department was cross-engineering product security specialists and they know this stuff. They are paying attention to the landscape. They know when those zero-day incidents happen and what the response is like, and what bounties are being paid and they know all of that because they love it. They're paying attention to it, but they can't solve the problem for the whole company. They cannot make sure that every piece of code is hardened so that the viruses don't get injected. There aren't security violations. What they need to do is educate others, be there to support them when things go bad. But it's really about educating every engineer to be using the libraries the right way, to be allocating memory in the right way, whatever so that we don't have those security violations and it's the same thing with being inclusive. I have so much respect for anyone and Chanté, it sounds like you do this work, but like, you are responsible for diversity at a company and are looking top down at what are the measurements we're going to have? What are the quarterly or annual goals that we want to have to improve our diversity? How are we going to measure that, make it happen? But we also need people in every corner of the organization, in every code review meeting, in every interview debrief, in every casual hallway conversation, or a chat in a Slack, we need all of those people to realize they have a role to play in being inclusive and have some awareness of what it looks like to not be inclusive. What someone from a different demographic is experiencing in a way you might not and what are some of the ways you can take action? So I see so many parallels there and I firmly believe, it's something I say all the time like, you don't have to have the words “diversity inclusion” belonging on your business card to make a difference. It's inclusion as a job for everyone. CHANTÉ: Yeah. That's one of the things I wrote down that I wanted to make sure that we directed folks to. I love that on your website. That was one of the things that before I ever even knew you were going to be a guest here. That's why I started following you. I love that and I want to actually dive into that because one of the things that I hear often from people when I'm doing this work, they're like, “You're so good at this.” I'm like, “Yeah, but this is a skill that you have to work towards.” So it's just like any other thing you want to make a lifestyle. You have to wake up that day and make a decision. If you're somebody who wants to eat healthier, then you wake up every morning and you have decisions to make. If you are a yogi like me, you might decide that you want to get on your yoga mat or you might want to pick up a book and read the philosophy instead. So it's a lifestyle. I'd love it if you could maybe tell us a little bit about your journey because it's humbling to hear that you got into this work knowing that you wanted to coach women in tech, but you didn't necessarily aspire to be thinking about and writing about allyship, but that became a part of it. So what are some things that you did early on, or what are some things that you're doing now in terms of showing up every day and being a better ally? KAREN: Yeah. I think that one thing you have to be comfortable with and it's hard, but I do this a lot is being an ally means realizing you're going to be wrong some of the time, because you are constantly stepping outside of that comfort zone that is just so safe—"I know how to navigate this kind of conversation, using these kinds of words and everything”—and you have to keep stepping outside that comfort zone so that you are taking some risks and you're going to make some mistakes. You are. I make them pretty regularly. I might put something in a newsletter. I send out a weekly newsletter called 5 Ally Actions with 5 ideas and things people can take and I get emails back from people who disagree with me or say, “If I had written that, I would have changed it slightly this way,” or whatever, and I'm comfortable with that because I approach everything with this mindset of curious, instead of furious. I want to be curious about why someone's giving me the feedback and what's underneath there and what can I learn from it as opposed to getting furious at them for giving me feedback and like, assaulting my expertise, or whatever, or my voice. So curious, not furious, I think is an important thing here and I want to give a shout out. I learned that phrase from a podcast I was listening to and it was Kat Gordon, who has something called The 3% Movement, which is all about getting more gender diversity in the creative industry, like the ad industry. So hat tipped to Kat Gordon for that. So getting back to you got to get comfortable with making mistakes and when we make a mistake, acknowledge it, apologize. Heartfelt apology, folks. Apologize and then figure out what you're going to do differently the next time. That's what it's all about. So the journey is real. No one ever gets an ally badge or an ally cookie. In fact, I will tell you, I recently searched on LinkedIn in job titles for ally. I was curious to see how many people put in their job titles. There are people out there who have claimed it and I don't think that's right. Unless someone else has told them that, in which case, okay, someone else has said, “You are an ally,” maybe you can put that in your title and claim the badge, but it's really not about that. It's about being on a lifelong journey really, to be inclusive, to keep learning, to keep understanding how things are changing, and not putting the spotlight on yourself. Opening the doors for other people and just stand right behind that door and realizing that it's not about you. It's so hard to do this at times because we all want to be like, “Hey, look at the cool thing I just did for somebody else.” We want that feedback, but being an ally means stepping out of the limelight and letting someone else shine. CHANTÉ: Those are great. Thank you so much, Karen, for that. I want to ask one more question since we're there. In terms of not making it about ourselves and not necessarily centering ourselves and taking action in the moment and not giving ourselves the allyship title, if you will, who are some people that you either align yourself with or that you learn from, whether it's up close and personal or from a distance? Like who are people that you feel are providing you with gems and knowledge so that you are then sharing with folks like us, that we can at least either put in the show notes or give a shout out to? KAREN: Yes! Oh, I love this. So many people. One, I will say right off the bat is Minda Harts. Minda Harts is a woman, a Black woman, and she wrote a book called The Memo: What Women of Color Need to Know to Get a Seat at the Table, I think is the byline. She and I spoke on a panel together a few months ago and I learned so much from her. I learned a lot from reading her book about the experience with Black women in the workplace, but then also, on the panel and since then, I feel that we have a nice professional, Twitter kind of friendship going on, which I just value so much. So I learned from her and what she shares all the time. Another person I learned from is Jeannie Gainsburg. Jeannie Gainsburg is an LGBTQ educator and wrote a book called The Savvy Ally and The Savvy Ally is all about – the funny thing is she and I connected. We realized we went to college together or the same class, but we didn't know each other in college, but we have the same mindset of understanding something and then distilling it into how an ally can show up. With her perspective, it's all about being an ally for the LGBTQ community and I've learned so much from her. In fact, I've quoted both Minda and Jeannie in my second edition pretty heavily. I also have learned a lot from David Smith and Brad Johnson. They recently published a book called Good Guys and their approach is also incredibly similar to mine, but they focus completely on how men can be allies for women and they don't focus on other aspects of allyship. But very much I learned about, they're the guys who are talking to other guys and basically saying, “Hey dude, it's your responsibility as a man in a professional setting to be an ally.” Like, it's part of your job to meet with the women on your team and sponsor them and support them. So, they tell it in a real way. Oh my gosh, I feel like I learned from so many other people, too and I'm forgetting, I'm not thinking holistically. So anyway, those are four people it's nice to give shout outs to. CHANTÉ: We put you on the spot so thank you, Karen. [laughs] KAREN: Okay. Here's another one. Corey Ponder, he works in tech, but he also does speaking and writing about diversity and inclusion on the side and he is a Black man. I just learned about his experience and perspective in such a real, raw way and I value that a lot. DAMIEN: Karen, I'd like to ask you a bit about something you brought up really early in our conversation today. You mentioned that before you got into this work with Better Allies and that sort of work, before you became a executive coach, leadership coach, you noticed a decline in gender parity in the tech industry. Can you talk about what that decline was, how it might've happened? KAREN: Yeah. So first of all, Damien a question for you. Were you surprised when I said that? DAMIEN: [chuckles] Well, no, not at all. I actually just today read about one of the earliest computers at NASA which is a woman, a Black woman, that the astronauts explicitly by name depended on, for example, Apollo 13. So I wanted to hear your story about what happened. KAREN: Yeah. Okay, okay. I asked only because there are many people who, when I just drop that into the conversation, they ended up coming back to it minutes and minutes later or towards the end of any kind of interview. At any rate, what happened? So I have theory and actually I gave a TEDx talk about this, exploring the theory. I won't do all 20 minutes of my TEDx talk, but when I decided to study computer science, I was a senior in high school trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life kind of thing, what I wanted to study in college. My father said to me, “Hey, well, Karen, you're really good at math and you enjoy making things. You're always crafting and sewing and knitting, and you like solving problems. I've just been reading this article about this new field called computer science which seems like it would combine all the things you're good at and maybe you would enjoy making software and by the way, this is what people earn in this field.” [chuckles] I have to admit, I grew up in a very humble financial household and so, I wanted to make sure I could support myself and earn a living when I graduated from college. So I'm like, “Okay, I'll study computer science. I'll learn how to build software.” That was 1981, the year I graduated from high school. Now get this, I had never touched a computer. Okay, we didn't have – I mean, 1981 was the year the IBM PC was released into the field. The Macintosh did not come out until 1984. So in my home, we did not have computers in the part-time jobs I had after school and summers, no one had computers and certainly, we didn't not have computers in my high school where I could learn to code where it would probably would have been in basic. This was a situation for many people across the United States. Going to college in the early 80s, if you wanted to study computer science, many people were coming with no experience. Maybe a little more than me. Maybe they had taken that basic class, but very little experience. It was almost like a level playing field at that point and we were encouraged to pursue this. My graduating class from college, I went back through my yearbook not too long ago to count, there were 38% of the computer science degrees went to women in my class and that statistic 38% is very similar to what was happening across the whole United States. According to the Department of Education, the year 1985, when I graduated from college, 37% of all computer science and information science degrees went to women. So that was pretty good. Now, fast forward 20, 25 years and that number dropped to a low of about 17%, I think and the overall number also went down of how many women were getting these degrees. And now, you don't have to have a computer science degree to work in tech necessarily, but in many tech environments and tech companies, the engineers are incredibly valued and are very visible and are paid very well. They are an incredibly important part of any tech company. So my point is that there used to be a lot more women computer scientists and it did drop. I do think it's this level playing field that I started at, but the decline happened because I believe a society, we as a society, started thinking and encouraging our young boys to get involved with robotics, with tinkering, with coding classes, with summer camps where you might learn to do coding or programming robotics. We encouraged our young boys more than our young girls and over time, that meant that a girl, if she wanted to go to the summer coding camp in her neighborhood, would show up and see only boys there, or see only a very small number of girls and be like, “Well, maybe this isn't for me.” Or coding assignments in colleges that were much more aligned with masculine interests and more feminine interests. Things that might be more – oh, I don't even really want to get into stereotypes. I don't even want to go there, but things that would be more appealing to an 18-year-old boy than an 18-year-old girl who just have different interests and just became self-fulfilling. What we're seeing now though, is that graph is moving in the right direction. The numbers are inching upwards because there's been so much focus across the United States – and hopefully, around the world, but across the United States, in terms of gender diversity is important in this field and we should be welcoming of all and we're making changes to all of these programs and encouraging our young girls to study this field, get involved with STEM, and pursue it when they get to college and beyond. DAMIEN: Yeah, you avoided giving an example so I'll give one that you reminded me of, which is for a very long time, the standard, the most common image used as an example of compression algorithms was that of a undressed woman and so, we can – KAREN: Lena. Her name is Lena. Yes, actually I know her name. She was someone when they were working on an image compression algorithm like, “We need a picture,” and someone just grabbed the Playboy magazine from their cube, took the centerfold out, and used that. REIN: You do. [laughter] Or at least as you did. The effect here is really interesting and also, really, it makes me very sad, which is that computing became seen as a prestige job. Once men realized that there was something to this, it requires expertise, they decided that they were going to do it and when they did—there's research that shows this both ways. When men enter a field, it raises the prestige and increases wages. When women enter a field, it lowers the prestige and decreases wages. KAREN: Yeah, that's a problem, but real. I don't mean to at all disagree. It's a real problem. ARTY: Just curious. Do we reinforce these things by saying them as a statement like that with a period versus bringing it up as a question? REIN: Yeah. ARTY: I'm just wondering. REIN: What I’m trying to do is describe and not be normative, but I think that's a valid point. ARTY: In my life coaching thing recently, we were talking about statements with periods and it's really easy to define the world of expectations of ourselves, define the world of expectations of everyone else for all time and all affinity as a statement with a period. As we go and do this, it creates these reinforcing effects, and then we go and do things and enact behaviors that reinforce those belief systems. So we're sitting here talking about biases and how all of this stuff gets baked in her brain and one of the ways that it gets baked into her brain is by making statements of “Well, this is how it is period.” I realize you’re making a statement of something to challenge, but I think it's something that we really need to think about that if we want to change the status quo, it starts with reimagining it different. Coming up with a different statement, with a period even as a starting point, and then letting that lead to questions of how do we go and manifest this new reality that is more what we want. KAREN: Can I embarrass myself? [laughs] ARTY: Yes, of course. KAREN: Okay, right. [laughter] KAREN: So I have two children. That's not embarrassing. They're in their early 20s now. That's not embarrassing. I had read, when they were younger, that there is research done that said that if you tell a girl just before she takes a math test, that girls aren't good at math, that her score will actually go down. This is the embarrassing thing. So before dropping my daughter off for like her PSATs and SAT exams, I just said, “Remember, girls are really good at math and you are really good at math, too.” [chuckles] So maybe already changing the narrative by using different periods statements, too [laughs] making up alternate realities. Oh gosh, I can't believe I just shared that story. My daughter would probably be so embarrassed. DAMIEN: That’s a modern story and I don't think there's anything to be embarrassed about there and I think Arty brings up an amazing and very valuable points. The suggestion I want to make in response to that is, because what Rein was describing is a fact and I’m sure it's important to know about and to know that it happened—and I'm already using that language now: it happened. In the past when men went into a field, it became more prestigious and higher paid. When women into a field, it became less prestigious and higher paid. And that's what has happened in the past and by stating it that way, now we can go, “Okay, what are we going to do now?” REIN: There's a thing I learned from Virginia Satir that I probably should have done here, which is when you find one of those ends with a period sentences Arty, like you're talking about, you add until now at the end. So when women enter a male dominated fields, wages go down until now. ARTY: And now they go up. Now they go up because everyone wants women because they're so awesome. Women bring so much awesomeness to the table so wages go up. The more women you have, the better the wages. CHANTÉ: Period. KAREN: Yeah. [laughter] Yeah, and—yes, and—the other kind of way to look at this is, I've been doing a lot of work with how might we statements and so the question is, how might we change the trajectory? How might we imagine the future of work where all people and all identities are welcome and we are building towards a future that is literally more equitable and more accessible for all? So how might we do that? We can maybe answer that question today, or we can invite folks who are going to listen in to weigh in when we post this online and talk to us on Twitter. ARTY: I love that, though. I mean, I think if we really want to change the status quo, part of that is realizing that we're the ones who make it. We're the ones that create our reality and our culture is just a manifest of all these beliefs and things that are in our head emerging from all of us. If we realize that we're actually the ones that are in control of that, that we're the ones that are manife

Many of us have suffered different effects of the pandemic in 2020. There are days where it is hard to make sense of it all or think about what to expect for 2021. That's why I found my interview with Karen Chaston is super timely, as it helps us to get a different perspective when it comes to tragedy, suffering and life lessons. In July 2011, Karen’s life changed forever when her son died unexpectedly. It is without a doubt a mother's worst nightmare. Within 15 months, Karen resigned from her CFO role of a publicly listed company and began a personal, professional and spiritual journey. From that point on, all the experiences have led hers into becoming a beyond loss expert and co-founding her business Live Love By Design.  Fast forward to today, Karen Chaston is known as a business owner, beyond loss mentor and international keynote speaker who has shared the stage with Marianne Williamson, Jamie-Lee Curtis, Valerie Harper and Dr Ellie Drake. She is the author of eight books and numerous e-books as well as an online TV show host and podcaster. Interview Highlights: How a mother’s worst nightmare has lead Karen from a CFO to become a Beyond Loss expert.Her professional and spiritual journey to move through grief and growth. Eventually, she re-calibrated and re-design her life. 5 Steps process: The Gift of Loss - We start with a Stop and Go within.People come into your life for a reason or for a spiritual lessonThere are over 40 different loss events that can affect our livesSadness is completely different from grieving and sufferingInstead of buying into someone else’s version of success and good life, we take time to design the life we actually love. That’s why Karen has co-founded her business "Live Love By Design"Three aspects of every relationship: Physical, emotional ad spiritual Sometimes the loss that we experience is not one-dimensional, it brings another kind of giftWays to connect with Karen and her webinars on topics related to: "The Gift of Loss" and "Live Love By Design”. If you would like to connect with Karen, please visit: https://www.karenchaston.com/ https://www.livelovebydesign.com/ Video: https://youtu.be/FNwGvd5FmAc Transcript: Sze Wing:Hi, everyone. I'm really happy to introduce you to my guest of the day. We have Karen Chaston with me, and she's a business owner, a Beyond Loss mentor and international keynote speaker, and I'm really excited to chat with her because she had been on stage with some really big names including Marianne Williamson, Jamie Lee Curtis, Valerie Harper and Dr Ellie Drake to name a few. So I mean, I don't know how it's going to be on the same stage with these people because I think, I love public speaking but I still sometimes get nervous, so anyway. Not the major focus for today, but I can't help it, I'm off script sometimes. Anyway. She's also an author for eight books, probably more now, and working on some more, and numerous ebooks as well as online TV show host and podcaster. So you can tell, she has been busy working and sharing her work. And in her corporate career earlier, she was a CPA, CFO of a public listed company, and a city manager for more than 25 years. So definitely, she has a very solid background in the corporate world, but she also have-- probably hand in hand that you've been obviously very productive and effective in your life, and you have written eight books after that, so. But so today, I'm really pleased to have her as my guest. About nine years ago, her life have changed forever when a tragedy hit, and within 15 months, she had resigned from her CFO and began a personal, professional and spiritual journey, and that's, I think, leading her to become a Beyond Loss expert and for founding her business called Live, Love By Design. So today, I'm very grateful to have you as my guest, Karen. So welcome to my show.Karen:Thank you, Sze, I'm so glad to be here. It's exciting. We've known each other probably for what,

"I had this moment of really enjoying the launching of ideas within existing structures " -Karen Holst I'm excited to have Karen Holst with me today. She is an entrepreneur turned intrapreneur and helps companies drive product innovation as a product strategy leader. Karen has deep expertise in human-centered design strategies, creative problem-solving, and product innovation. She worked on Ex-IDEO led innovation at Autodesk, for the CA Dept. of Education and is the co-founder of MyEdu. She currently teaches at LinkedIn Learning, and most recently, we co-authored the book Start Within: How to Sell Your Idea, Overcome Roadblocks and Love Your Job. If there was one thing she could change about meetings, it would be "that everybody comes in with an understanding of the goal,” Karen says. “I think that sounds so simple, but I think that having the same meeting over and over again and feel like you're not moving the ball any further down the field is one of the most frustrating experiences." In today’s episode, we talk about how you can energize the life of your job and the work you are doing. This is advice Karen also gives for using our book, Start Within, and how it can help you at any part of your growth journey. Listen in to find out how you can use an anthropologist's view of running a meeting, how to focus on the one element that can make the most significant impact for leading a meeting, and how to shift your expectations to fit another company’s culture meeting process.   Show Highlights [01:15] Karen’s genesis story. [03:58] How egos can get in the way of meeting productivity. [06:04] How to dive into Start Within. [10:12] Understanding meeting culture for the purpose of co-creation. [16:08] Removing the lense of how to lead a meeting “the right way”. [19:25] Running meetings how your boss expects them to be run. [21:54] Go beyond the cookie cutter approach to meetings to create your own leadership style. [24:50] What Karen learned about meetings during her first start up. [26:55] Being interested equates to asking questions and discovering purpose. [29:55] Tactics Karen has seen groups implement to get unstuck with their vision. [34:52] Other books suggestions to move your vision forward. Links and Resources Karen on LinkedIn Get a Copy of Start Within About the Guest Karen Holst is a product leader with deep expertise in human-centered design strategies, creative problem-solving, and product innovation. She has taken her career from a business strategy and entrepreneurship to strategic partnerships and market communications. Karen loves to create technology with a broader impact. She is a leader in her work, co-founding a startup and launching a new technology within a government agency.  About Voltage Control Voltage Control is a facilitation agency that helps teams work better together with custom-designed meetings and workshops, both in-person and virtual. Our master facilitators offer trusted guidance and custom coaching to companies who want to transform ineffective meetings, reignite stalled projects, and cut through assumptions. Based in Austin, Voltage Control designs and leads public and private workshops that range from small meetings to large conference-style gatherings.  Share An Episode of Control The Room Apple Podcasts Spotify Android Stitcher Engage Control The Room Voltage Control on the Web Contact Voltage Control   Intro: Welcome to the Control the Room Podcast, a series devoted to the exploration of meeting culture and uncovering cures for the common meeting. Some meetings have tight control, and others are loose. To control the room means achieving outcomes while striking a balance between imposing and removing structure, asserting and distributing power, leaning in and leaning out, all in the service of having a truly magical meeting. Douglas: Today, I'm with Karen Holst, entrepreneur turned intrapreneur. She co-founded an education-tech startup in Austin, Texas, and later went on to join IDEO, and then, led innovation at Autodesk. She's currently teaching at LinkedIn Learning, and most recently, coauthored the book Start Within: How to Sell Your Idea, Overcome Roadblocks, and Love Your Job. Welcome to the show, Karen. Karen: Hi. Thank you. Douglas: So, Karen, I'd love to start with a little bit about how you got started. Karen: Sure. So I, my junior year in college, had met two guys at my rival university. I went to the University of Texas, and they went to Texas A&M. I’d heard about a company that they were thinking about starting. And I just had—I was brimming with ideas on what I could do to make this happen. And I approached them and said they needed to bring me on board. And we just clicked, and I became a co-founder, and we launched the company. We, then, grew it through multiple rounds of funding and then ended up seeing a successful exit. So my first job was really a job I created. And then from that point on, saw that over and over throughout my career. Joined the California Department of Education and helping lead educational technology within the state, and that was really about bringing new tools and services into the classroom and figuring out how to make that process more smooth and get through the red tape. After that, joined IDEO and helped them launch IDEO U, which is an online-learning platform, teaching design thinking and creative problem solving. And had this moment of really enjoying the launching of ideas within existing structures, that being an entrepreneur, I thought I needed to own the idea, but it shifted. I could own the idea anywhere that I work. So then I was able to just go follow the shiny problems. Later joined Autodesk in their media and entertainment space and helping them innovate, and gotten to do lots of projects within corporations, nonprofits, government agencies since then. And that all led to writing the book, Start Within. Douglas: Exciting. So if you could change one thing about most meetings, what would it be? Karen: That everybody comes in with an understanding of the goal. I think that sounds so simple, but just having the same meeting over and over and feeling like you're not moving the ball any further down the field is one of the most frustrating experiences. Douglas: Yeah. And I think that aligns with quite a few of our meeting mantras and philosophies about meetings. And two that come to mind is this idea of never starting without a clear purpose. So purpose and goal are at least cousins. And then, also, you talked about how this Groundhog Day kind of feeling, just like the meetings just kind of repeating themselves. And I think, often not being clear on if we're ideating or making a decision, and if we’re making a decision, what's the process by which we're going to make that decision? Karen: Yeah. And I feel like people get in the way of the goals. So even when they're well communicated in advance and alignment, egos can get in the way, where either people are just really married to their ideas and wanting that to try to drive the meeting around that notion, or they're just blindly and accidentally, perhaps, getting in the way of progress because they're just stuck in the ego side of things. Douglas: Yeah. And I didn't intend on it, but the Groundhog Day analogy came out, and we talk about that in the book, this notion of, is everything kind of repeating itself? Are you just kind of stuck in the hamster wheel of the day to day and feeling just inundated with monotony? And so maybe let’s talk a little bit about that feeling and how the book can kind of help guide you out of that feeling in that situation. Karen: Yeah. So as humans, we are wired to innovate. We're wired to see creativity and make the mundane not mundane. And you think about while we're recording this, it's during the COVID pandemic, and we're seeing this everywhere. People are taking up new hobbies. My toddler son is asking me to read the kids’ books in different voices or to change the ending of the book, just because we're so bored of everyday feeling like the day before. And if we're wired for that, what's holding us back from actually doing that? And I think meetings, being such a big part of our work, are a key place to really energize the life and job and work that you're doing. And a lot of what we talk about in the book is to find that purpose and breathe new life into your job so that you love it, so that you feel passionate about it. So there's lots of steps in that process in how to make that happen throughout the book. Douglas: And when you think about all the steps and someone wanting to just get started, in your perspective, is it just to pick up the book and jumping into the first chapter, or is it more of a choose-your-own adventure, where it’s like, this might apply more to me? Maybe help guide the reader, the doer, into how they might dive in. Karen: Yeah. That's a great, great analogy, the choose your adventure. I say it’s more like that. The process and work of bringing an idea forward is not linear, so there's different places that you're going to start from, and that you're going to get stuck and need assistance. The book reads that way. You can just jump in where you need to. And then I say proceed with caution, because as humans, we're also wired to kind of go after the things that we're most comfortable. And that's okay to start where you're comfortable, but not to ignore the places where we need to grow. So as an example, I think about the structure of the book. It's set up in three sections: get ready, get set, and go. And I am a “go” gal through and through. I want to start prototyping and experimenting my way forward. And it takes discipline to do the work of the “get ready” and “get set.” And if I pick up the book as a lay reader, I might just dive right into the “go” because that's where I want to get started. But that's a place that I'm already pretty skilled at, and where I would really benefit is perhaps starting there, but then making sure that I'm going back through the other sections and phases of this work and building those muscles as well. So it's very similar to working out, you know? We feel great when we do that same elliptical machine or whatever, weights that we're into, but when we challenge ourselves to do a new machine or new exercise, our muscles start to learn new ways of working. Douglas: Yeah. I love that analogy of kind of cross training. It's incredible. And I often like to think about the maturity of a project. And so if we're two years into something, the book might mean something different to us than if we're about to start something or we’ve been afraid to start something. So I like the fact that can really help folks no matter where they are in the journey. Karen: Yeah. That's so true. I was talking to someone about this. And in the book we talk about when you're doing a new idea and trying to push something forward, that there's this, for every 80 hours of work that you put towards your project, there's two hours of work in communicating that with your team and bringing along stakeholders. And I've gotten pushback from people that said, “Wow, that's a lot of communication that you're spending time on,” and then others saying, “That is totally not enough to bring stakeholders along.” And I think that rule of thumb can be shifted based on where you're at in the project and trying to make new things happen, and that context is important as you go through this work, right? You’re going to have a playbook through things like Start Within, and then you have to intuit what is and isn't working, and then, kind of fine tune things beyond that. Douglas: Yeah. Also, think about—was it Malcolm Gladwell that said 10,000 hours of anything will make you an expert? And there have been people that have pushed back on that concept, like, “Well, if you're doing it wrong for 10,000 hours, you’re just going to become an expert in doing it wrong.” And I like to think that this book has provided folks with some real tactical and very actionable advice to where, as you're getting your reps in, you can start to tweak the way you go about it. Karen: Yeah, absolutely. To that point of the 10,000 hours, it's definitely about the practice of doing the work, and it's also letting go of the idea that this is only for the charismatic, extroverted people, that the one that you see standing out there and getting to do new things, it does not have to be exclusive to certain types of people. It can be learned. Douglas: Yeah, I love the idea that we can put it into practice, and we can hone that skill—to bring back the fitness analogy—we can strengthen those muscles. Karen: Right. Right. Douglas: So, you've had experience at small companies and big companies, public and private, even consulting and in-house. I’m really curious. With your vantage point across all these different types of companies, what are some of the differences that you've seen as far as meeting cultures and ability to co-create and collaborate? Just what kind of patterns have you noticed? Karen: Yes. I love that idea of a meeting culture, because going in, understanding that and even using that term for yourself really allows you to then go in with the anthropologist view of, like, here's how it's done, and where can I find opportunities of changing that and making it better? So every company I've ever worked with—nonprofit, large, big, small—have different ways of doing their work, right? The informal and written rules of how meetings should run, it changes based on team, it changes based on who's running it. But the theme at the bottom of all that is you're having these meetings in expectation that it will lead to something. So if you can take a step back and look at how meetings are being run and how efficiently and quickly you're able to go out and do the work post meetings, then you have the opportunity to reflect and say, “Where are there opportunities to make the improvements?” I think the most stark difference was at the California Department of Education. So I was coming from a startup, where we're doing scrum, we're doing standup, we're doing lots of fast-moving meetings. And then at the California Department of Education, they weren't. And it wasn't a criticism; it was a different way of thinking, a different framework, that when I went in, felt so uncomfortable. I was like, “Hey, when are we going to start picking up the pace and start taking action?” And if I went in there and behaved like that, like a cowboy here to change things up, it would have really turned people off. I needed to learn how they did things to then be able to create the right changes and grow together. It allowed me to be more thoughtful in my approach. It also allowed the team to evolve in how we did our meetings. Douglas: Yeah. And that's something we've talked about extensively, and I think it's a really keen insight that people really need to consider, which is you can change the process. You can change the method. You can change the corporate goals and objectives. But if you seek to do those things, that's going to be really difficult to also push your idea. In fact, the method, the process, and the goals and objectives, those are two separate things that are best done in isolation. If you're trying to change all that at the same time, you're going to be fighting an uphill battle. It's hard enough to make any change, much less just blowing a bunch on at the same time. Karen: Imagine going into a room, and you look at a person who is writing with their right hand, and you say, “All right, switch. Switch to your left hand. And I want you to close your eyes. And instead of writing in English, write in a different language.” That would just overload the person. How do I think about all three of these things you're trying to get me to do? And in pushing an idea forward within an organization, whether that's improving meeting outcomes all the way to launching a new idea, if you're trying to bend and shape things in multiple areas, you're just going to overload the humans that you're trying to bring along in this. So it's really about focusing in on the thing that can have the biggest impact, and then you can go back and after having made that change and seeing the change in place, reapply and do different layers of changes. Douglas: That's right. I'd even take the analogy one step further, which is, if they're doing all those things, and then we're also trying to tell them, “Let's actually write some different things on the wall. Let’s bring on a whole new concept and put that up there,” you can see how it just starts to get absurd. And yeah, that's a trap that a lot of people fall into because when—it's almost like, well, we've got the patient open; let's go ahead and make all these changes. Like, we're operating on their lungs; let's work on their heart, too. It’s maybe not the best decision. Karen: Right. Yeah, I mean, meetings, it is such a part of our work and the culture of where we work that at the very root could be the cause of dysfunction in what's going on. So I love that being in a place of leaning in and trying to improve. Douglas: So let's also take a step back and think about—I love this notion that you talked about, being an anthropologist. And in the book we talk about this element of house rules and understanding how things work at your organization so you can navigate it better. Then, we were just discussing this need to clarify and understand, are we changing the process, or are we pushing some other idea forward? And I think that metaphor of the anthropologist is really powerful because we at Voltage Control do a lot of work where we're were analyzing the meeting systems or helping people understand it, and what does that culture look like, and what sort of systems are going to support a culture that we are aspiring to be, to have? instead of just kind of going full force into the change. Like, really thinking about, do we need to be that anthropologist, or are we actually going in to make change? And so if we're in that mode of anthropologist, what sorts of things do we need to do? How might we put that anthropologist hat on and be really successful at understanding what's in front of us and how we might take advantage of it or how we might just respond to those understanding? Karen: So in doing this work, it's very hard, but you have to take out your experience elsewhere. So typically, when I coach people through trying to do this kind of work, there’s an urge to think back to where you saw it working. Like, great meetings, so we want to do it like that. I came from Amazon. We did it like this, and it was great. We got really far, and we were able to make changes and go out, do quickly. That doesn't mean it's going to work somewhere else, so you have to remove that lens of what I've seen is the right way, and I'm going to figure out how to force that fit, that puzzle piece. Instead, being an anthropologist is really trying to just open up and learn. So it's not directing learning. It's not that one person’s going to teach you, so you want to lean in on that person. It's really just trying to open the aperture and figure out where are there these aha moments on what is and isn't working? And, you know, just going back to the root of that word. If you are going into a village, you wouldn't go into a remote village and expect to be able to instill your values and how you do things and expect this group of people that have a completely different background to take that on. Instead, you're going in to learn from them and build something together. And I think that's hard to do. So it's starting with that beginner’s mindset. Douglas: We also talk about cross examining the silos and then questions that get to real learning. And I think that questions can be really powerful, and listening and observing, as kind of the anthropologist hat that you kind of speak of. And my perspective, if you can get down to actual first principles and understand what are people already upset about, if there are things about the meeting systems or the methods and the process that your organization is using that everyone's already disgruntled about, then that's low-hanging fruit to go after. But you can't learn that stuff unless you get curious and start to examine the silos and start to listen and learn. And to me, I think that's a real powerful opportunity. I'm just curious to hear if you have anything to add there. Karen: Yeah. I think the other opportunity in all this, if you're going in with this mindset, it allows you to make changes without authority. So even if you're not the person who's running the meetings, you can affect how they're run and how effective they are over time. Now, certainly it might be easier if you're the person of authority to do this work, but it's not a barrier to making things change and happen. You can lead by example. And this all starts with learning and listening and figuring it out as you go forward. But I think that is one of the biggest barriers to this kind of work. And making change within an organization is the belief that if you don't have a title or permission, then you’re just kind of an active participant that has to go along with the way things are. Douglas: Mm, yeah, that’s an interesting meeting dynamic, too. Like, if the meetings are set up such that there are active participants and not-so-active participants, the distribution of control and influence and participation can be quite skewed. I'm just curious if you’ve experienced that, and what thoughts you might have to offer there. Karen: Yeah, of course. I mean, whenever you're not in charge and someone else is, it might be a meeting you called, but your boss or leadership come into the room as well, that shifts everything. You look at them, and they have an understanding of how the meeting should go, and you report to them, so there's an understanding that you will run the meeting the way they expect it. So you kind of have to shift your own expectations and your own approaches to fit what they believe is the right way forward, even if it isn't sometimes. And so all of that just points to these baby steps, these baby experiments, that can get you closer to making those changes if you don't have the authority to make it happen, and even when you do, that there's, again, ego in the room or belief systems in the room that there's a way to do it. The little experiments, the small steps, are what can lead to big change over time. Douglas: You know, it's funny that you say that because it reminds me of times as a leader when my intention was to coach and to show alternative ways of doing things, but I basically just created a little mini-me versions of me, and that can be difficult to notice sometimes. And so we talk a lot about how the book was really inspired by this idea that so many innovation books are focused on the leader and innovation culture and this kind of top-down, like, how are we to shift the organization? And our belief was the best way to shift an organization is a direction from leadership, but empowering the doers to go do the work. And so we really wanted to have a manual for the doer. Now, even though it's a manual for the doer, this is a great tool for the leader because they can take this book and give it out to their folks and use it as a guide for them to be a better coach. And as I've thought about my coaching, even sometimes the best intentions can backfire, and just really paying attention, that have I created a mold of myself that needs to be broken so that they’re free to go about doing things the way they would do them so that we have true diversity? Karen: Yes. I advise startups, and I just had a session this week with a startup that is in the educational technology space. And so it was one that I was really well versed, but also a few years removed. And he wanted to talk about some of the approaches to funding, and then later, marketing that we did. And I went into some coaching lessons, and then I paused and said, “You're in a different time and different products. So here's what we did. Now I’m going to start asking you questions that are kind of the extreme other sides to this. Don't just follow the cookie cutter of what I just shared with you. What are ways that you're going to be different?” And I think if you intuit your way that you're creating many yous—which is a great eye opening, like, how do I not do that? because we just don't want a world full of people like ourselves—a lot of that is because we've got experience in what does and doesn't work for ourselves, and so we reflect that on others. But if we can pause on that and say, “What did and didn't work on me might be in opposition to the person I'm talking to,” can we just reframe the question to say, “How might we…” and then don't lead it towards your solution. Instead, think about these might be the ideas that do work for them, or what worked for me is not going to work for them. Douglas: There’s another really beautiful way to approach that, which is just being appreciative. Karen: Right. Douglas: Recognizing and being appreciative of everyone's input and contributions. And sociologists have a term called positive deviance, and basically, it sounds almost like deviant, but it's really about making sure that we look at those positive differences. Like, what are those deltas that are positive. So when things have been working well, what were we doing? And often, I think it's easy to look at, “Well, when I did it this way, I got this positive outcome.” Having that dialog with others can be really powerful and really kind of lifting them up on a pedestal, and then it kind of relinquishes that burden to feel like, “Hey, here's this process that I need to burden you with.” Karen: I love that. Yeah, that word needs to be rebranded so that people will be more open to it. But yeah, I think there's opportunities to reflect on what does and doesn't work and how that reflects on yourself and the people around you. So, again, it's not the cookie-cutter answer and formula that works for me will work for these other people, but instead, it's framing it in questions to allow them to explore that on their own. Douglas: Yeah. I love this. I’d already written down questions and underlined it because I wanted to come back to that because you were starting to give some advice to your mentee, and then you stopped yourself and said, “Well, let me ask some questions.” And I think that is the hallmark of a really great leader and a great facilitator is to ask really incredible questions. And I think this advice—it just dawned on me—can apply to not only the leaders—because it's very clear, like, “Hey, leaders, ask more-provocative questions of your people,”—and for the doers, it can be equally as powerful, because if your boss, if your leader, is not asking you tough questions and they're doing nothing but giving you advice or criticizing, perhaps you can prompt them to ask you questions. Karen: Ooh, I love that. Yeah, get them curious. So, in my startup days, there were really tough meetings with our board, with our investors, and I learned early in my career how to handle those types of meetings. And then later, I started working at IDEO and had a meeting with Tim Brown and other people that were—I'm doing air quotes—"invested in our idea” because we're launching this idea within the company. And so I was ready for what questions I would hear based on that experience of these tough investors and what they asked me in my years prior. And Tim Brown and the leaders there asked such thoughtful questions that floored me, and it really shifted my thinking in how to do this work. I thought it had to be bottom-line growth. And there's other questions around this kind of work and pushing ideas forward that are far more thoughtful around the humans you're building it for that will lead to growth and business strategy. So it's not leaving it up on the table. But instead, it's more thoughtful and deeper than that. And I think when we have productive meetings and great purpose in our work and what we're doing, at the root of it, somebody was asking very thoughtful questions. And you can choose to be that person. And if you are that person, I think, to your point, you can get others around you very curious. Like, it's contagious. When you're being a thoughtful person and really trying to understand things, you'll start to see that shift among others as well. Douglas: You know, I think that, especially in your LinkedIn Learning course, and a good chunk of our listeners are product people, and I once heard this really profound description of a great product person. And it was that a product person is interested, not interesting, meaning that if you come to a conversation and you try to be interesting, then you're going to share a lot of things. You're going to talk a lot. You’re going to tell stories. You’re going to try to be cool and hip and, like, “Oh, I know this. I know that.” Whereas if you're interested and you're curious, you’ll ask lots of questions. You discover all the pertinent things. That always just really stuck with me is that even if I'm in the room with someone who is intimidating and I feel like I need to impress, the best way to impress them is to ask them great questions. Karen: So, I went to a Super Bowl party. I was living in Canada, and it was at my neighbor's house. And they're not really into American football. It was just something to do on a Sunday. And in the room was a former astronaut and minister, I believe, of transportation—I'm sorry, I don't know his title—who has one of the most fascinating backgrounds. And he asked me—I couldn't get to questions about his background and what he did. He wanted to know more about startups and the book I was writing. And we get about an hour in. I'm like, “Okay, can we talk about what it's like to be an astronaut?” And I just remember leaving there, thinking he was so gifted in exploring the world around him. And it made complete sense that he had gotten to the point that he had in his career, but that he could have very well have been a person that was full of himself and talking about all the important things he's done. And instead, he wanted to learn about me. Douglas: That's the hallmark of an amazing person. And that's cool that you got to witness that, especially with someone who has already made such great accomplishments, because sometimes those traits, that innate curiosity can wane with popularity and accolades. So it's always amazing when I find someone that's had some amount of fame and notoriety and they've held on to that, because it's a gift, and it's pretty rare. Karen: I think they're also gifted at finding time and space for allowing those conversations. So, on the other end of the spectrum, a CEO or someone very busy and important can brush you off and make you feel unimportant and not be listening to your answers or not even interested in having the conversation in the first place. And when you are tight on resource for time, that can change who you are, and you have to find opportunities to still be productive, but also learning and listening from each other. Douglas: Yep. That aligns with one of my philosophies, which is that when you create space, that's when innovation can rush in. If you're constantly whizzing and whirring to and fro the next thing and pressing the buttons, there's really no opportunity for change or new things to develop. Karen: Yep. If you think about it in meditation or yoga, it's the space between breaths. We're doing this work of breathing and being thoughtful, and then it's in between those moments that you have these eye-opening, kind of out-of-body experiences. Douglas: So, I’m going to shift gears a little bit here and just talk about tactics. So really curious about what you've seen teams use to get unstuck and start building on their vision. Karen: So, we recently talked to a woman within a software company, and they're a very large company and been around for many years. And she was really excited about bringing back to her product teams our chapter in work around busting assumptions. And that was so refreshing. You know, this is a company that has figured out a way forward. They can continue to build and move beyond doing things the way they had been. But instead, she and the organization realized they needed to reflect on what's holding back their ideas, what's holding things from becoming something bigger, and how they're holding back innovation. And I think that's an exercise we could do with our teams—get out of the rut of what things should look like and have looked like, and how you might do things differently. In thinking about assumptions, there's this onion of layers, right? At the very core is the assumptions that you hold on to. And then as you build out, it's the assumptions of the team, of the organization. And then you go all the way out to the world that we live within. And if you can think about each of those layers and how they're blocking you from change, from seeing things, from understanding each other, then that can unlock you, the team, and how you work together, the work that you're doing. There's so many—it's exponential levels on ways of thinking. And it's a great framework for just moving forward and doing things differently. Douglas: It makes me think that earlier we were talking about meeting systems and meeting culture, and when and why we meet, and what's the goal, and what's the purpose. And so often meetings are just called to discuss something or make some quick decision. I get really excited when people start to open the aperture and to think about, “What if we meet to talk about our assumptions?” or “How about we make a team charter?” so these more kind of meta conversations about the team, the way we work, and things that might be getting in our way, because those types of things can have really profound ripple effects versus just being so into the tactical, like, moving things forward or, heaven forbid, a status report. And so this idea of coming together around assumptions, even applying some of the tools in the book that are designed for an individual, just kind of repurposing that for the team. Karen: Yes. Going back deeper into the tactical and beyond assumptions, one of my favorite exercises in the book that you can do solo or that you could bring to a team and do together is “No, because. Maybe if. Then, what?” And you start with these three columns of “No, because. Maybe if. Then, what?” And you think about something that's blocking you and your team from moving forward on something, and you just brainstorm all the “no, becauses.” No, because we don’t have the resources. No, because… You capture each one of those on a Post-it Note. And then you pause and you go into the next column, “Maybe if.” So, no, because we don't have the resources. Maybe if we prototype this smaller, that didn't require as much resources. Or maybe if we found funding outside of our organization. Or maybe if… You go through that same exercise for each “no, because,” and you start to brainstorm the “maybe ifs.” You can take a step back, and when you're doing this by yourself, kind of circle where there's heat, or if you're doing this with the team, you could do voting, but moving beyond and really counter attacking the “no, because” with a “then, what?” You know, what are the small experiments that you could be doing to get past this roadblock, if you could pass the barrier that is seemingly holding everybody back? And doing this work over and over with different people in teams, you see this very simple exercise open up people's thinking and to, “All right. I tangibly have something to go after.” This feels so much better than the crossed arms, and “This is hard,” and the roadblock being right in front of them. Douglas: It's really cool. And I'm excited because we're working on some templates on MURAL. They'll be launched. And if someone's listening to this in the future, I would say just go and check out the MURAL templates, because they're probably ready at that point. Karen: Yep. Start within. Douglas: The other thing I was thinking about was this notion of unlearning and constantly be curious and open to reinventing ourselves. And I think that kind of aligns with a lot of the stuff we've been talking about today, whether it's creating that space as a leader or coming together as a team to look at these assumptions, and just making sure that we've got some time reserved to just allow some of that stuff to happen and being curious about what we might not realize about the world or about our idea or about our team. I guess I'm curious to hear of what else folks should be thinking about in that regard. Karen: So I do have on my reading list Barry O'Reilly's book Unlearn, and so I haven’t read it. I'm going to stop with that because I think that is so hard to do. Even when you say it, you think, “Okay, I've accepted that I'm going to let go of my assumptions and try to lean in and unlearn some of the bad habits, or maybe good habits, so I can find new ways of doing things.” We are, again, we are wired to take the inputs that we've had over our lifetime and have that help us move forward. And it is not always obvious where those are, how they're holding you back, or how they might be helping you, too. So that's a book I want to lean into this year and see if that's a place of exploration. But where I try to do that is stepping back and creating different roles for myself. So when we talk about this in the book, if you're a person who is very positive, a “yes, and,” and trying to push things forward, could you go into a meeting before it even starts, say, “I'm going to be the naysayer. I'm going to poke holes in some of these ideas. And you, person over there, you're going to be the positive person.” Or we have different roles, and maybe we're shifting what we typically lean into and think about things differently. And how would that dynamic change the meeting? It's not meant to be comical and necessarily a strange meeting that is just run amuck and feels like a comedy show because you're trying to be a naysayer and you just aren't. It's really just about trying to turn your brain into thinking one way, into thinking a different way, and how that helps lead the team in a different direction. Douglas: I love this idea of examining the roles, and even shifting them and trying on different roles, and I think, not to overload the term role, but role playing can be really a phenomenal way to have a new lens into the world, and also, certainly will disrupt how your teammates think. And we also have talked about the idea of taxonomy, and so how can even the words that we use to talk about meetings can have an impact? So, for instance—the problem is that we just gravitate to using the word meeting, and it's just what we naturally do. And so it doesn't matter if we're assembling 20 people to talk about how well the product went or it’s just two of us having a quick chat about what we're going to have for lunch; we call it a meeting. And I think that is a disservice because it doesn't allow for a clear understanding of the purpose. And that's something we kind of started off with when I asked what was the one thing you would change about meetings is about, you said we need to be more clear about the goals. And so I really love this concept of shifting the roles, examining what those roles are, and trying new things on, because that can really align with us understanding our purpose and even pursuing our purpose more deeply. Karen: Yes. And that jargon, again, comes back to the meeting culture. So you say meeting. It means one thing at one company; it means another at another. And I saw this happen with calling it brainstorm. So doing a brainstorm from one company where we're standing up, we're active, we're putting Post-it Notes up. There's lots of conversations happening, lots of ideation. And then you go to another company that doesn't brainstorm that way. They do have brainstorm meetings. You go into it, and people are sitting, they’re taking notes on their little notepad, and it can be frustrating if that's not—it was frustrating to me. I was like, “Why aren’t we all standing up and talking?” And to them, they're like, “Why are you trying to force this other way of doing a brainstorm?” So I think the terms also have different meaning within teams across an organization and certainly within an organization. Douglas: So, Karen, in closing, what would you like to leave with our listeners? Karen: I think what's key in this moment, whenever you're listening—if it's recent to when it's posted, it's around the COVID pandemic, and we're working from home, and things are very confusing. Or we're beyond that—there's going to be these times of uncertainty and wanting to hold back on changing things within our team, our organization because we're waiting for things to smooth out. And this opportunity for while things are uncomfortable and uncertain to be when you make the changes and be thoughtful on how big those changes are and how you move forward into them, but that's really what Start Within is all about, and the importance of finding in yourself, that you can affect the change and with the right playbook and tools in hand, you can see it through. Douglas: Karen, I wanted to double stitch on something you said there, which was, we are living through an unprecedented time right now, and I just wanted to say that I've been grateful to have you as a copilot through some of this, especially as we've looked at inspecting and exploring our own white privilege together, what that means for speaking out around the book and the work that we're doing and supporting others who are struggling through this and needing the help, and how can we be better allies. So I just want to express a little gratitude on the air that it's been phenomenal to work through these challenges with you. Karen: Yes. I echo that as well. It's uncomfortable and challenging, for lack of better words. And just finding other people that are struggling through this is—finding your community and knowing that you're not alone and doing this kind of work is so important. Douglas: So, Karen, in closing, how can folks find you and find out more about the book? Karen: Sure. I'm on LinkedIn, very active there. So, Karen Holst. You can find me. We also have, for the book, the website is start-within.com. You can find it on Amazon to purchase it. And yeah, we have lots of conversations with people that are trying to affect change and bring new ideas forward within organizations. So love connecting with people on that front. Douglas: It’s been great having you, Karen. Karen: Thank you, again. Outro: Thanks for joining me for another episode of Control the Room. Don't forget to subscribe to receive updates when new episodes are released. If you want more, head over to our blog, where I post weekly articles and resource

On this episode, Karen and Cadie talk about different ways to start a business, specifically looking at, buying into, and opening into a franchise. Karen and Cadie have opened Payroll Vault, a payroll and outsourced HR service franchise, and have a lot to say about the world of the franchise business. What exactly is a franchise are the pros and cons? Where does one find franchise opportunities? What is the best way to start the search and purchasing process? Learn more about Karen Simmons & Cadie Gaut Sponsors: Karen C. Simmons, P.C. Payroll Vault - Mobile & Baldwin Counties About Cheers To Business Cheers To Business is a seriously casual business and entrepreneur podcast that discusses starting, running, refining and growing your company, or excelling at your current job with two or your soon-to-be friends - over a glass of wine. Please subscribe, review and rate Cheers To Business on iTunes, SoundCloud & Overcast. You can contact and stay connected with us by LIKING our Cheers To Business Facebook page. Thanks for listening and as always, CHEERS to you!    Full Show Transcript: Karen: Hey, welcome to today's show. This is our second episode, we're really excited. And today, we're gonna be talking about the different ways to start a business. And one is start your own. Two, you can buy an existing. Three, open a franchise. And that's what we're gonna talk about today. I'm Karen. I'm a CPA, entrepreneur with big ideas, and I'm The Mom. Cadie: I'm Cadie. I'm a payroll specialist, business owner, and detail-oriented person that makes things happen, and I'm the daughter. Welcome to "Cheers to Business Karen: Cadie, you currently own a franchise. What do you see as the pros and cons in your experience? Cadie: Well, I think the first thing I want to touch on is what a franchise is. I think there's a big misconception. Franchises are independently owned and operated businesses. Karen: So you own your own company, basically. Cadie: Yes. You own your own company, you have an agreement with a brand that may be national, but as far as in your local district, you're making the decisions, you're doing the staffing. It's really your own entity. Karen: A lot of people are under the misconception that they tell you everything to do. Cadie: Well, I mean some brands have more flexibility, others are more strict, and I think that's an important thing to look into when you are going into the franchise, you know, talk to other owners who currently are doing business with that brand. People who've owned one maybe in the past, and also the agreement that you're signing up with that franchise. Karen: You know, for example, in the CPA firm, it was me and my team, and so we knew our own rules. I think I found in the CPA firm in that structure, CPAs don't make money doing payrolls. Well, when you have over 120 of them...I knew I could open up a payroll company, but I didn't want to reinvent the wheel. Cadie: I was doing those payrolls. Thank you very much. Karen: Yes, you were. You did the majority of those payrolls. And did them very well, by the way. Cadie: But not efficiently. And that's... Karen: Correct. Cadie: That's the key, is I have this much work to do, how can I do it as fast as possible and as accurate as possible? And that's where a franchise really steps in, because they know how to do it. Karen: They've already tested everything. And I think, you know, we researched, both of us went and, you know, we're researching trying to see where the perfect platform was and that's where Payroll Vault came in and you've taken it and just run like a rockstar. Now, tell about the beginning there when we were thinking about doing this. What do you remember? What comes to mind the foremost of what our concerns were or why, yes, go. Besides being the efficiencies? Cadie: I think one of the most important things kinda when you're getting started is the brand. You know, when people create their own brand, their own logo, the name, the colors, you get very emotionally attached to that. And that's one thing almost when you step into a franchise is you have to learn to connect with that brand because it's not something that you necessarily invented or created. Karen: But it's been tested. So that's a plus. Cadie: Well, I mean from getting everything started by getting a franchise, they give you the playbook. You're not writing the playbook, and you have to look inside yourself and know whether or not you're the type of person who can follow a playbook or do you need to be the one inventing it and, and you know, maybe running into brick wall? Karen: And I think that is the personality type. However, you know, depending on what you want to do, I think you've gotta be able to step back, talk to the right people, do the research to see which model. I've done both. That's because for this situation, that worked, for this situation, the other worked. Cadie: And it's not a guarantee. I mean, just because the franchise company is telling you what to do, are you listening to them? Are you listening to other franchise owners? It's important...I think that there's a middle ground, you know, especially if the franchise gives you the flexibility. You've gotta really play with what works in your market. Karen: I think you gotta have the personality too to the to accept that your way is not always best. Cadie: Amen. Karen: We always go in and...I'm so smart. I mean, I have the t-shirt. It says... Cadie: I'll be smarter if you're less stupid, or something. Karen: No, I'd be nice if you were smart, but that wasn't the one I was talking about. Cadie: Okay. Sorry. There were so many. Karen: I was talking...the one I wore at conference last week. Cadie: While you were doing your presentation. Karen: Yeah, I wore it on purpose. It's not that I'm bossy, it's that I have better ideas. And I was making a statement. I actually had a suit to wear to that, but that one was more appropriate at a franchise conference where I was actually speaking at and she was there as the owner. So... Cadie: Back on track. Karen: Okay, back on track. We need the bill. So franchises. You'd be amazed at what places are franchises and what aren't. Cadie, what's some of the ones you've learned over the past three years? Cadie: McDonald's a franchise. Karen: Newk's. Karen: Whataburger. Karen: AT&T stores. Cadie: Jani-King [SP]. Karen: Moe's [SP]. Cadie: Huntington Learning Centers Karen: It goes on and on. Cadie: I mean, the list goes on. Karen: Yeah. You'd be amazed at what are franchise is that you don't think they are, but what that means is that there's someone here possibly local, more times than not, that your neighbor could own his own company, but because the shingle says a corporate name, they think it's not theirs, and that's not true. And I think that's what you were referencing earlier. Cadie: Yes. They do own their businesses. I think a lot of times people...you know, for example, Starbucks, they are corporate owned. Yes, they may have a local manager, however, they're not independently owned. They all fall under their own umbrella. Karen: Right, and when it's not corporate, you don't necessarily have the national advertising and, you know, they make their people go out and be in the community. It's your choices whether how successful you want your business to be. Cadie: And I think an important thing kinda off to the side, but so long the franchise, is let's say you are starting a business completely from scratch. Some people go into the idea of, "Hey, I'm gonna start this business with the intention of franchising it in the future and becoming a franchisor," meaning you created the brand that other people can buy into. Karen: I can think of two here locally that are in the middle of that right now. You know, they are building their brand. They built it where there are about...one has already started and another one is about to start. And they had built that brand, but how much investment does it take and is somebody willing to do that? Cadie: I think that's one of the biggest compliments if someone comes up to your business and ask if there's a franchise opportunity. Karen: Well, I don't know if I shared with you, but you know, I was actually at the Payroll Vault conference last week as a vendor for our company, Flexible Benefits, Inc., which is benefit packages for employees. And I did the presentation on that company and when I went back to my booth at the conference, one of the Payroll Vault owners came up to me and said, "Are you planning on franchising that?" I didn't know what to say. For once in my life, I was speechless. And it was because my mind had not gone there, that was my first presentation, and I had the wrong PowerPoint up. So I have no idea what I said while I was up there. In fact, all I remember is you telling me to wrap it up. So, you know, to have that possibility, I think that's in people's minds now. Of course, I think it's more on people's minds that already own or work for a franchise. Cadie: If you were interested in franchising your brand, kinda, what's the first step to do that? Karen: I think I would actually contact the other franchise owners that I know and our franchisors, who we know corporate. I think that, first of all, I would get my ducks in a row with talking with a franchise attorney. I mean, the documents, everything. Look at the document that we have for Payroll Vault. And I've seen other documents. They're an inch, inch-and-a-half thick with legalese. So, you know, presented with something like that, what did we do when we got the thing, Cadie? Cadie: Oh man, we hired an attorney. Karen: Exactly. Cadie: I read it, but we also got an attorney. Karen: And I trust you. So, that worked by itself, but I think, you know, what are the rules and stipulations? There's gotta be federal guidance, things that, you know, we might not necessarily know, but that again throws in a third aspect of it. One, starting from scratch. Two, buying a franchise. Or three, building a brand to be a franchiser, because they're all totally different things. Cadie: Absolutely. So, if someone walked up to you just real quick, two pros and two cons of owning a franchise. Karen: I think one of the pros is definitely not reinventing the wheel. Two, I think one of the pros is having just the acceptance of perception. Cadie: Ooh. Karen: I know. Cadie: I like that term. Karen: Thank you. To being known now for Payroll Vault, nobody here knew it. It's all out in Colorado and out West. You know, there's quite a few in California, a lot in Colorado. So we had to push that brand from scratch. So that was a little different. But it's definitely part of the package. As far as con, yes, you are answerable to someone else. I think that you have to choose whether you consider royalties, and what happens is is that the price you paid for not reinventing the will is you pay them a percentage of sales. And so every month, on your sales, you have to pay them. I consider that an investment. However, I could see where that would turn into a con at some point if you feel like you're doing all the work. Cadie, your feelings on that? It's tough. Cadie: I definitely agree with all of those, you know, pros. I like the community aspect. If, you know, we run into a situation that we've never dealt with before, I'm able to reach out to X amount of people and, "Hey, have you gone through this? Have you dealt with this?" And kinda we're able to bounce off those ideas of people who are not only in the same industry, but they understand our model and our values and how we operate. Another pro is definitely to go further into not reinventing the wheel. You know, the brand is developed, meaning not just the logo, but what that brand... Karen: Efficiencies or process? Cadie: Yes. Well, even just the website, everything like that, you know, best practices. Here's what we look for when hiring. Here's how to operate the software. I mean, everything you could imagine. Karen: Even forms, can you imagine all the forms I had to come up with when I started from scratch? I had to create an award program versus they handed everything to you. Cadie: Yeah, it's fantastic. I mean, normally, franchises offer a training period. So you go to where the headquarters is or they come to you and they make sure that everything is good to go. I mean, that piece of mind, it's invaluable. Karen: Now, you pay for that. Most of them or all of that I've seen have an upfront franchise fee. Cadie: Yes. Karen: And that is dependent on, I think, the popularity, you know, economics, supply and demand. Cadie: And the equipment as well. You know, it's gonna be a lot...Planet Fitness is another franchise. And I mean the cost to get a Planet Fitness, simply because of the gym equipment, it's astronomical. Karen: And that brings, you know, what we hope you take away with today, listening to us, is, you know, what capital do I have to have? Cadie: And most brands, if you go to their website, and you'll see franchise opportunities, it will tell you what that initial estimate buy-in cost is. Karen: You know, they give you the level of liquidity before they'll even talk to you. That means you're... Cadie: What's liquidity? Karen: Liquidity? Cadie: Go. Karen: All right. Assets that you can make available very fast. Okay? Cadie: Knowledge for the day. Karen: It is. But that's not the book version. I'm sure there's very professional... Cadie: We don't want the book version. Karen: Good, because I'm not about the book version. I got flip flops on right now. So if you were to rely on someone to be able to be financially stable, how much could they come up with today? All right. They wanna know how liquid you are or can you even afford to do this? Next, can you afford to live until this gets up and running, whether it's a McDonald's or a brand you've never heard of? Either way, it takes time, build out, ordering, setting up employees. What other things did you see? Cadie: Well, so my question is, let's say that I really liked this brand, I think I would be really good at running this business, but you know, I got debt out the wazoo, how does one go about...is it better to wait until you've established, you know, to have those assets in place, find an investor, go to a bank? How can you start a franchise money-wise? Karen: I think the most aggravating answer is it depends. And it depends on is your neighbor or your uncle an investor and you can have an investor? Well, they're not gonna let you on the ticket, so you're gonna run it. It's your work, blood, sweat, and tears and you don't own it. Well, this, when you work a deal so that over so many years and to make sure he or she gets their money back because it has to be a win-win situation. Another one is hold out, work your butt off, and save up. You know, get your life in order, get out of debt. And that said so easily and it's not that easy. And that's another show. Cadie: When getting a franchise started, what kinda price range could someone expect to pay? I know it depends, however, just a general answer what to expect. Karen: It really goes back to supply and demand again. You know, usually, in general, they'd like you to be a couple of hundred thousand dollars liquid. When you get up to where they know you're gonna have to be able to afford the outlay, you know, you were talking about Jim's earlier. If you are gonna have a big outlay or build out of a restaurant or, you know, you have to go buy their brand, buy their stuff, their equipment, then is gonna be the liquidity. They're gonna want you to have more and be more financially stable because they know what you're gonna have to come out of pocket and they want you to be able to be able to do that. Cadie: And some brands require you to be operationally involved in the business. So let's just say you wanna take the investor route and you just want to invest in a brand. Some like Chick-fil-A, the owners have to be involved in the operations of the business. So that's another thing too is how involved you have to be. Karen: Well, and that goes back to what we've been saying the whole time in that you take a piece of paper and you put pros on one side and cons on the other side and you do it for each franchise that you're looking at until you find where there's more on the pros than on the cons and you can stomach and live with the cons. Cadie: It should not be a quick decision. Karen: Do not make it a quick decision, no. Everything is back to long-term. First, pay the franchise fee, eat while you build it, eat while you grow it, and then slowly it starts to pay off because never in my life have I have seen a good payoff come in the short term. It's always a long term. Cadie: I think people don't see the long term though. That's a common thing to discuss is overnight success. Well, you didn't see the beginning. The beginning isn't really touched on. No one brags about not having money for three years. Karen: Yeah, I think, you know, 2016 was actually a good year for me that I don't really wanna go into right now, but it was a good year. And people would come up, "Oh, my gosh, you're having the year. It's just amazing." And I said, "It took me 20 years to get here. It took 20 years of family, especially family, helping out clients." I mean, I couldn't have built what I have without you. One common thread I can see in all that we've talked about today is people. We talked about it in the first show of how we got here and why we're doing this and I think that the people around you, the people who have done it, the people who are gonna help you are one of the most important things in your life. Cadie: So to sum it up, really, Franchise 101, do your research, talk to people. Karen: That's right. And it cannot be a quick decision. It's not about dollar or a quick buck, but it's about having an emotional connection with what you're trying to do with your life, what you're trying to sell, because no one else is gonna buy into it unless you're emotionally connected. If you don't believe in it, nobody else is. Cadie: Perfect. Karen: Everybody that's listening to us today or thinking about, "Oh, that sounds intriguing. I'd like to look at what kinda franchise..." You know, so where do you go for the source? Cadie: There's a couple different websites to research franchises. There's the Franchise Business Review. There is the International Franchise Association. Karen: Which she won the award last year. Cadie: IFA. Karen: Proud mommy moment. Cadie: Okay. I don't know. Those two resources are really probably the best to start off with. And then once you kinda get some ideas of brands that you wanna work with, go check out those companies directly. Karen: Read between the lines and read the little print. That's where they get you.

Karen recently was a presenter at a large industry conference, and it inspired her and Cadie to want to discuss how to get the most out of conferences, trade-shows, expos, and meet-ups. Karen is the "life of a conference" and Cadie tends to be the listener and "wallflower," learn how both of these different types of conference attendees prepares, manages time, retains information, implements new ideas, and networks at these functions. These events can be expensive and usually involves travel costs and time away from work. Are they really worth all the capital and time investment? What makes a good conference? What makes a bad one? What is the value of being a presenter? And, what are the best techniques to make meaningful connections during and after the big event? So relax, sit back, pour yourself a glass of your favorite wine (or coffee, tea, or soda) and enjoy the show. Learn more about Karen Simmons & Cadie Gaut Sponsors: Karen C. Simmons, P.C. Payroll Vault - Mobile & Baldwin Counties About Cheers To Business Cheers To Business is a seriously casual business and entrepreneur podcast that discusses starting, running, refining and growing your company, or excelling at your current job with two or your soon-to-be friends - over a glass of wine. Please subscribe, review and rate Cheers To Business on iTunes, SoundCloud & Overcast. You can contact and stay connected with us by LIKING our Cheers To Business Facebook page. Thanks for listening and as always, CHEERS to you! FULL SHOW TRANSCRIPT: Karen: Hey everybody. Welcome to our third episode. Today, we're gonna be talking about conferences. Are they worth going? Are they worth the investment? What do you take away and what can you use? I'm Karen and I'm a CPA, entrepreneur, with big ideas, and I'm the mom. Cadie: I'm Cadie. I'm a payroll specialist, business owner, and detail-oriented person that makes things happen, and I'm the daughter. Welcome to Cheers to Business. There's a ton of knowledge out there that you can find online, so what's the point of really even going to conferences? Karen: The investment that I've seen in the past, and they're not all good, so you have to find the right one, but a lot of what I take away from it is actually talking to my peers. People that are going through the same things that I'm going through, have experienced the same things, or have already worked through things that I'm trying to get through now. By actually talking with someone and building a connection with people from around the country, I think it's easier to me than reading a book where that person may not have even ever experienced what you're going through. Cadie: I think the real-life scenarios, a lot of times books, it can be kinda "Here's how to do something." Whereas when you meet those people at conferences, it's more of a, "Hey, here's how I handled that situation."  Karen: Yeah. A lot of times in books I think it's so, to me, Mary Poppins, that this is the way it always works and you do one, two, three. That's not life. Whereas if you get in front of a person making eye contact and sharing experiences, that's when some of the truth comes out of, "Well, yeah, we've kinda really screwed that up, but this is how we learned to do it a different way." Cadie: If you had your pick of a conference, would it be industry-specific or how do you pick a conference? There's so many. Karen: If I'm going to learn, then I want to go to an educational, you know, about my software, about the industry, whether it's tax or employee benefits, mainly tax, especially when you have new tax laws come out, you want to be able to find out what's going on. Not only that, it's other people's interpretations. Cadie: Do you go to conferences to not learn? Because you said if I go to a conference to learn, so that's why I asked that question. Karen: Well, that was a Freudian moment because sometimes conferences can be fun and there's nothing wrong, I think, with taking a business trip to a city you've always wanted to go to but haven't been to yet. But in your question, it was a two-fold question. You said which kinda conference is best and I think it is what's your end goal? What are you trying to take away and you need to have that figured out before you go so you don't waste your money. Because if you're going to learn, that's a different conference than going to sell or be sold, for example, trade shows. Cadie: Expos. Karen: Expos, everyone there is trying to sell, you know it when you walk in the door. Expectations, what do you expect to get out of a conference? What do you expect to give? You can't just take. You know, you gotta be willing to go up and shake people's hands and say, "Hey, my name's so and so. I do what you do." If not, you're not gonna get a lot of feedback. Wallflowers. People can be wallflowers anywhere, but if you're a wallflower at somewhere that you wanna learn, you're not gonna take as much away. Cadie: Well, I think, you know, the stereotypical conference, you imagine this big room, everybody's just sitting there, and there's one presenter or you'll have several presenters throughout the day. That's kinda what I initially thought conferences were. And then you start going and you realize, no, it's more than just gaining the knowledge and listening to someone stand up there and talk for an hour. Karen: I think to me, the presenters, there's a couple different kinds. There's one that's trying to educate you and there's a kind that's trying to sell you. All right. So you have to make a choice when you walk in the door. If you know which kind you're going to, and lot of times you do because you can tell by the company they work for, so you've got to choose to take the high points and know when you go in that I'm not here to buy, but I wanna hear how this person got to this place knowing what they know and what can I take away from it. At that point, it's about you. It's about me. You know, what can I learn to take back. The other kind as far as the educational ones, if it's somebody...say, take a doctor's conference. If you have a surgery conference, you gotta master surgeon up there, somebody is telling them how they did the procedure. That's totally different than what I did at a conference a week ago was presenting to inform the people that I want to buy my product. I was educating them, but it's because I want them to buy my product. Cadie: So you were selling but it wasn't blatantly selling, I guess. Karen: No, it's probably pretty blatant. Cadie: Use my business. Karen: Use my business. Why? Because I know about my business and I can help you do better at something that you don't do. Cadie: And it will benefit you. That's the key. Karen: Value. It's no different than any other show we've done it, and probably any other will do in the future. It's about the value that's given. Now, there's conferences I haven't gone back to. There's one in particular. Now, I take a staff member and we go every year and we've been...this will be the sixth year in a row. Its attacks in software, because they throw it all in there. I know they're trying to sell me. I know how to say no. Cadie: I know which conference you're talking about, it's quite expensive. So what makes it so valuable? Karen: I think sometimes not just the presenters, but the round tables. When you do round tables, and what that is in case anybody's not sure or hasn't been to conferences, is that at night, your peers, you have different tables with different topics on them. Sometimes you fight like a Black Friday sale to sit at the table you want to because that particular item may be so popular. For example, one year, it was converting from one software to another. They were making us convert to a higher software. Everybody wanted in on that because we all wanted to know how to do it. But that's when you have one expert at the table, but you and your peers are sitting around asking questions. There's no way that's feasible that you will ever ask the right questions. Cadie: So I think that's important is when you do go to a conference, specifically one that's over multiple days, it's so easy once the conference is over, the introvert in me, I just wanna go back to my hotel room and decompress because of the mental energy that's taken place that whole entire day. But that's not where business happens. Business happens, you know, if you're there to network and connect, especially if it's industry specific, you need to form connections with those people who are in your industry, you know, especially if they're in a different area because it's someone to brainstorm with. Karen: Why don't you tell them the game we play at conferences when we go together? Do you remember? Cadie: Yes. Karen: Tell it. Cadie: I don't like that game. Karen: I love that game. Cadie: So basically, what we do is she picks out someone, "Hey, go talk to this person." And so then... Karen: And, of course, she does it to me, but we pick out the most unlikely talkable person ever, ever at the conference, the least likely person to be able to have a conversation with. Usually, that person ends up being the most interesting person you've ever met in your whole entire life. But why do it? One, because get out and talk to somebody. Don't follow behind me with your clipboard. Get out there and talk and learn and do it without me necessarily. Cadie: It can be overwhelming. Conferences are huge and there are so many people and it can be overwhelming. I have been a wallflower so many times where I just, "Let me stand back, just wait for the conference to begin. I don't wanna talk to anyone. I'm just here to learn." But to kinda help bypass that, I just usually pick out one person. Let me just get to know this one person really well and then that's my priority for the day and that kinda helps me, makes me feel better. Karen: That's a great practice. That is a fantastic practice. You know, and then it depends on personalities. I'll probably go up to 10 people and say, "Hey, my name's Karen and I'm from Alabama." Cadie: You're drawing enough attention that people are coming up to you, which is not a bad thing. We have two different approaches. Karen: Yeah, and at that last conference when you were sitting in the audience, when you were doing the signal for "wrap it up" while I was presenting, why did that lady come up to me afterwards and say, "Your daughter said you're crazy?" Cadie: I have no comment. Karen: Yeah, I heard it, but that's okay. I'm okay being the way I am and that's why you and the listeners should be okay the way that you are. It doesn't matter. It's just different personality. But what do you wanna get out of it? Sometimes you just gotta suck it up to do it a little different way to get what you want. Cadie, do you think you could ever be a presenter at a conference? Cadie: If you weren't there. Karen: That's an honest answer. Cadie: Just because you make me nervous. You're intimidating. It's like taking your driver's test. Karen: But I'm just trying to help you. Cadie: I would love to present, if it's a topic that I feel comfortable with. Karen: But say you have presented, you've been a speaker at the University of South Alabama, you're with the Junior League program with... Cadie: I'm not with Junior League. Karen: Junior Junior league. What is it? Cadie: No. Karen: Didn't you do something at Davidson High School. Cadie: Yeah. Karen: What was it? Cadie: Junior Achievement. Karen: See, Junior...all right. But you got up in front of people. You do it all the time. You do it at Southwest Mobile Chamber of Commerce. Cadie: Two people came to that one. Karen: You've done it at others with the supporting star student. You've done it with different things. Cadie: No, in the moment, I'm fine. The anxiety leading up to it, I feel like I'm having a heart attack. But once I'm up there, I'm fine. Karen: Right. See, I fall apart afterwards. Cadie: Okay. Well, to each their own. Cheers. Karen: Cheers. Cadie: So I would want to be a presenter, and you've been a presenter many times before. What do you get out of it, being a presenter? Karen: It depends on the message I'm trying to get across. If I'm trying to inform, like talking at a Chamber of Commerce, then it cannot be articulate enough to be able to get my point across more slowly, informative, where they understand what I'm saying. Versus if I'm trying to sell something and talk somebody into something, it takes on a little different facet. I think I do, because I am the big dreamer, big ideas type that I sometimes squirrel and I go off a little bit because I cannot go by a script. It drives me insane. I get so nervous. I can't even talk. Cadie: With new businesses trying to grow that brand, be involved in the community, it is a lot of who knows who. So how do you go about doing that? Karen: You know, it depends on if you're in your community or if you're at a conference. You know, at a conference, if it's a Payroll Vault conference, for example, then everybody knows what you do. Then you're talking about processes. How do you make this happen? Cadie: The nitty-gritty. Karen: The nitty-gritty. If you're at a general, you know, the tax and accounting software conference that I go to, there are 1,600 CPAs and their staff at one of the Gaylord Hotels. That's a lot of people. Then it's different. You have to search out the right fit for you and your peers. If you're doing something at your community, then they know who you are. They know what you're supposed to know. And a lot of times, they expect you to know more than you do know. So it's finding the right target locally of what they need to hear and wanna hear because sometimes they're not the same thing. Cadie: So when I travel to these fancy Gaylord Hotels, is that a business expense that I can write off, CPA? Karen: I'm getting a CPE. I've gotta have continuing education. Yes, it is a business expense. I'm learning for my business. Now, let's say you go to the Gaylord in Orlando and you go to Disney World or Walt Disney, the tickets to that are not deductible. Cadie: Okay. Karen: Balance. Cadie: You know, a lot of networking happens at the bar afterwards. And what about those drinks? Can I write those off, meals and entertainment? Karen: Well, meals and entertainment, only half deductible. But, you know, if you're talking about your kids and grandkids, just be reasonable with it. But just remember that if you take a friend or spouse or a non-spouse that their airplane ride is not deductible, but if you're staying in the same hotel room, you can write off your hotel room. Cadie, you've been going with me to conferences and then it seemed kinda weird when you started going out to conferences without me. I think you even texted me from an airport. It feels weird to be without you in an airport. It wasn't that? Cadie: You texted me, "I miss you." Karen: Oh, well, whatever which way it started. But anyway, what do you take away from them now? Why do you keep going? Cadie: I think it's easy to get caught up in the online world. You know, I've got people that I follow on Instagram that I look up to and I feel like I'm friends with them but I've never actually met them and it's easy to just keep doing that. I can find webinars online all day long. However, going to a conference, you're able to really sit and connect with people. You cannot be a genuine connection and I'm a big believer in energy and vibes and sitting with someone after the conference talking about what we just learned over drinks, and then later connecting with them online to stay connected. I think that's just so much more valuable. Karen: Well, everybody looks perfect on social media except the ones who want to make money from not being perfect. So, you know, I take a lot away, what you said, from that, but also what do you learn about how to put these things in place once you get back? Cadie: Oh, that's a good point because it's so easy to just go to a conference and you're taking all these notes page after page and you're so motivated. And let's say you get home on a Saturday, well, by the time Monday rolls around and the team asks you, "How was your trip?" You're just, "Oh, it was good." You know, and it's almost like you lose that momentum. Or you've taken so much back that you don't even know where to start. It's like when you go to the grocery store and you buy $200 worth of groceries and then you stop at Taco Bell on the way home you. So when you go to a conference, it's so important to have that idea of what am I going to take out of this? And even if it's just three tactical items to implement when you get home. Karen: Can I tell you a trick I do? Cadie: Of course. Karen: Thank you. I like 10 things. Cadie: Ten? Karen: Ten, yes. Cadie: No, too many. I disagree. Karen: No, minor. Not all of them are major. But, for example, you know, alphabetize something like this or change the routing sheet up like that or whatever. But if you take 10, but you have one piece of paper, if you have that notebook that you have, leave that one sheet clean and every time you run across something that...and go ahead and put 1, 2, 3, 4 through 10, and every time you're in one of those classes or talking with somebody and you go, "Oh, that's a take home." Go to that front page and write about...and don't worry about what's the number one. Number one is just your starting point. Number 10 is not the worst, it's just where you ended up. So take those ideas. When you have those aha moments, write that moment down. You've got the rest of the notes to follow back up later. You have the information to follow up. Cadie: I will agree with you to take notes, like, actually physically, old school write. When you have your laptop taking notes, one, you're almost limited to writing vertically. Whereas when you are having those aha moments, there's nothing better than a piece of notepaper to really just kinda go crazy with your notes. Karen: You know, when I take my pencil and I underline it three times because I mean it's really important to me, that's a lot different than going and finding the underline thing in Word. You know, I can't make that happen, but I'm older. Cadie: I mean the computer is the distraction. That's a big thing. It's just when you're at a conference, stay focused on why you were there. You're investing your money. Karen: You know, and sometimes when you're taking notes, I have my own system of how big an explanation point is. Something's really important to me, it's a big explanation. So thing's just eh, okay, just a little one. It's the little things. Cadie: Tidbit for the day. Karen: One of them. So today, we've talked about conferences, good, bad, educational, trade shows, why do it, where do you go? We've also talked about some tax deductions and, you know, how this can work in your favor, but whatever you do, and whatever you decide, please save your receipts. Y'all, thank you so much for listening and being here with us today. I'm Karen. Cadie: I'm Cadie. Please be sure to subscribe to "Cheers to Business" podcast on iTunes or anywhere else that you get your podcast. Visit our Facebook and be sure to give us a like. And if you have any questions or topics you'd like us to discuss, shoot us an email from the website cheerstobusiness.com.    

KAREN: Thank you for joining me for another episode of House Talk. I’m so fortunate to have this show where I get to interview the best people in the real estate business, and they help simplify the complex world of real estate transactions and home ownership. This helps you come to every transaction informed and […] The post The Benefits of Buying a Home Versus Renting appeared first on NestBend Real Estate.

The Trump presidency has led to a major increase in ICE immigration enforcement. It's critical for business owners to both comply with and know their rights when it comes to an ICE audit or raid. Nasir, Matt, and Pasha Law attorney Karen McConville discuss how businesses can prepare for potential ICE action and how to properly respond if ICE shows up at your door. They also discuss the different types of action ICE can take and distinguish between a judicial and administrative warrant. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to the podcast!My name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.Well, usually two attorneys here with Pasha Law, practicing in California, Texas, New York, and Illinois, but we have a special surprise guest for this episode. NASIR: Surprise!Yeah, we have our third attorney at Pasha Law here, Karen McConville, based out of the Bay Area, Northern California, and she is our business corporate attorney with a nice little twist of a legal background of immigration and criminal law which is perfect for today’s episode.Karen, welcome to our podcast!KAREN: Thank you, Nasir! Thank you, Matt! NASIR: This is where, of course, we cover business in the news and add our legal twist.Today, we are talking about – I was going to say ICE audits, but it’s a little more deeper than that. I would say an ICE raid to your local business or your business.This is something that is kind of heating up, especially in the Bay Area, but pretty much across the country with the new administration. MATT: Right, and we’ll get into a couple of the specific stories that have really caught our eye here. But, like you were saying, it’s really with this new administration – the Trump administration.I’m sure people have seen a lot more of these instances in the news and it’s obviously adversely affecting businesses and I want to be sympathetic to the fact that, you know, we’re not just thinking about businesses necessarily.It obviously affects individuals’ lives, but just understanding that the bulk of today’s discussion will be focused on, from the employer’s perspective, how you handle these sorts of issues when ICE comes knocking. NASIR: You’re right. It is kind of a delicate subject. But the reality is that a lot of small businesses, a lot of large businesses depend upon a workforce that may be undocumented, and the impact on the economy, the liability of these employers is an issue that I think many may not be aware in the sense that small businesses may not realize the liability they may incur if they are hiring undocumented workers. They also may not be aware what to do in the event that ICE comes a-knocking.So, Karen, tell us, I mean, this is something that’s going on in particular in the Bay Area, right?KAREN: Yes, this is something that’s happened quite recently. You may have seen articles, seen the article where I had sadly sat in businesses in Northern California and most of those were in San Francisco, some of them were in Sacramento.But, you know, I had an employer call and say, “You know, ICE is two blocks behind from my worksite. What should I do?” which is the reason why we’re talking about it today – because our employers need to be advised on what they can do, what they can’t do, and what they should do. NASIR: A lot of people would say, “Okay, it’s the Bay Area. They’re notoriously known as a sanctuary – San Francisco in particular – a sanctuary city.” California, I think maybe even considered somewhat of a sanctuary state. I’m not sure if they’ve self-labeled that or otherwise. But it’s not just limited to those areas.7-Elevens across the nation, including here in Texas, have been also targeted for these raids.It shows you it’s not just the mom and pops. These 7-Elevens also have to deal with this issue as well.KAREN: Right.You know, there were arrests that resulted from those 7-Eleven raids. So, there’s two ways they’re going in about it. It’s through the employer and, also,

New years always bring new laws. Effective January 1, 2018, California has made general contractors jointly liable for the unpaid wages, fringe benefits, and other benefit payments of a subcontractor. Nasir and Matt discuss who the new law applies to and how this affects all tiers in the general contractor-subcontractor relationship. Click here to learn more from "Can My Business Be Sued for Something an Independent Contractor Did?" Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to the podcast!My name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.Well, usually two attorneys here with Pasha Law, practicing in California, Texas, New York, and Illinois, but we have a special surprise guest for this episode. NASIR: Surprise!Yeah, we have our third attorney at Pasha Law here, Karen McConville, based out of the Bay Area, Northern California, and she is our business corporate attorney with a nice little twist of a legal background of immigration and criminal law which is perfect for today’s episode.Karen, welcome to our podcast!KAREN: Thank you, Nasir! Thank you, Matt! NASIR: This is where, of course, we cover business in the news and add our legal twist.Today, we are talking about – I was going to say ICE audits, but it’s a little more deeper than that. I would say an ICE raid to your local business or your business.This is something that is kind of heating up, especially in the Bay Area, but pretty much across the country with the new administration. MATT: Right, and we’ll get into a couple of the specific stories that have really caught our eye here. But, like you were saying, it’s really with this new administration – the Trump administration.I’m sure people have seen a lot more of these instances in the news and it’s obviously adversely affecting businesses and I want to be sympathetic to the fact that, you know, we’re not just thinking about businesses necessarily.It obviously affects individuals’ lives, but just understanding that the bulk of today’s discussion will be focused on, from the employer’s perspective, how you handle these sorts of issues when ICE comes knocking. NASIR: You’re right. It is kind of a delicate subject. But the reality is that a lot of small businesses, a lot of large businesses depend upon a workforce that may be undocumented, and the impact on the economy, the liability of these employers is an issue that I think many may not be aware in the sense that small businesses may not realize the liability they may incur if they are hiring undocumented workers. They also may not be aware what to do in the event that ICE comes a-knocking.So, Karen, tell us, I mean, this is something that’s going on in particular in the Bay Area, right?KAREN: Yes, this is something that’s happened quite recently. You may have seen articles, seen the article where I had sadly sat in businesses in Northern California and most of those were in San Francisco, some of them were in Sacramento.But, you know, I had an employer call and say, “You know, ICE is two blocks behind from my worksite. What should I do?” which is the reason why we’re talking about it today – because our employers need to be advised on what they can do, what they can’t do, and what they should do. NASIR: A lot of people would say, “Okay, it’s the Bay Area. They’re notoriously known as a sanctuary – San Francisco in particular – a sanctuary city.” California, I think maybe even considered somewhat of a sanctuary state. I’m not sure if they’ve self-labeled that or otherwise. But it’s not just limited to those areas.7-Elevens across the nation, including here in Texas, have been also targeted for these raids.It shows you it’s not just the mom and pops. These 7-Elevens also have to deal with this issue as well.KAREN: Right.You know, there were arrests that resulted from those 7-Eleven raids. So, there’s two ways they’re going in about it. It’s through the employer and, also, through the use of the tanners if they find anybody who’s there illegal.

In today's podcast we're going to talk about defining your target audience, so you can properly target your advertising, pricing and positioning your product. A lot people struggle to figure out pricing and product positioning when they first launch their business. We've found that a lot of the time it's because you haven't properly defined your target audience, and really found the right prospects to go after. In this conversation we help Karen and John really define exactly what they're selling and who they're selling it to, making a pivot from what they originally thought. [Tweet "Your product solves a problem.  It's your job to find the person with that problem."] You will learn How we leveraged SEO to build our audience. Why we would be buying ads from day 1. How to target a great audience on Facebook. How to set pricing for your product. Should you do memberships or one time payments? How to sell to school districts. (or any government entity) Links and resources mentioned in today's show Google Adwords Keyword Tool Jocelyn's website Elementary Librarian. Podcast on Paid Traffic Rick Mulready and Facebook Advertising Course Our Last Live Event Fresh Books Gravity Form Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what's possible for your family! Click here to leave us an iTunes review and subscribe to the show! We may read yours on the air! You can connect with S&J on social media too!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post. See y'all next week! Can't listen right now? Read the transcript below! JOCELYN: Hey y'all! On today's podcast, we're going to help Karen and John take their online business to the next level. Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. Join us, each week, as we teach you how to flip your lifestyle upside-down by selling stuff online. Are you ready for something different? All right, let's get started. SHANE: Hey y'all, welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast! We have got another flipped podcast for you today; that is where we bring in an audience member and we give them a free consulting call and help them take their online business to the next level. And we let you guys listen in so that everyone can learn from the information that we share. Today's guest is Karen Aachen [phonetic] and her brother, John Hodgeden, [phonetic] I hope I said that right. Karen, John, welcome to the show. KAREN: Thank you. JOHN: Thank you for inviting us to the show. SHANE: We have a brother and sister partners in crime here today, so let's keep the sibling rivalry down a little bit. First of all guys, tell us a little bit about your online business and what you are trying to do to make money online. KAREN: Okay, this started about ten years ago when I had come out of a position where I was teaching social skills for a year and then I went into teaching a regular classroom and realized that teachers really need to incorporate both social skills training in as many lessons in the classrooms so it's kinda seamless in the way they teach because it has really been my belief that ability may get them to the top, but it takes character to keep them there. So we wanted to train students in character development as well as self-managing skills. SHANE: And what level are you teaching at? KAREN: Well, actually my first year teaching, I was in the high school level which gave me the impression that really you need to prepare them in the elementary level, and that is where I am now. Most of what I do is laying that foundation in ele...