Podcasts about kate so

Guck mal Kate: So geht Bildbearbeitung. Von Uli Winters.

In the studio today is David Leon, Director of Workforce Programs at the Virginia Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services (DARS), and Kate Kaegi, Project Manager for the DIF. In recognition of Disability Awareness Month, the second podcast of our DIF series includes David and Kate explaining how Virginia's DIF grant was initiated, implemented, and adjusted to best reach their initiatives of placing 750 individuals with disabilities in STEM and healthcare careers, registered apprenticeships, and State, County, and City jobs. Learn about the challenges they navigated and what they recommend when applying for a DIF grant.   Listen Here   Full Transcript:   {Music} David: Don't be afraid to apply for a diff grant. It is an amazing opportunity to infuse energy and enthusiasm into your workforce. It is a chance to stretch, learn new skills, try new programs. You get to see staff flourish and more importantly, get some really cool outcomes for the clients we serve.   Kate: I was a little intimidated with the idea of RSA, but what I have found is this RSA is there to help us. They want us to succeed.   David: You can accomplish some great things.   Speaker1: Manager Minute brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management, Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Here is your host Carol Pankow.   Carol: Well, welcome to the Manager Minute. Joining me in the studio today is David Leon, director for workforce programs at the Virginia Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services, or DARS, and Kate Kaegi, project manager for the DEP. So David, how are things going at DARS?   David: They are great. We are plugging along, working on our grant. A colleague has a SWITZI grant, so it's been neat to really try a bunch of new things here in Virginia.   Carol: Very cool. So how are you Kate?   Kate: I am doing spectacular. Thank you for having me here today.   Carol: You bet. So, David, you and I had a chance to visit in a podcast on work incentives counseling in April of 22. And just so you know, you were one of my top five downloads. And when I think of Virginia, I always think of you and all the amazing things that have been cooking all the time. You guys always have something in the hopper and this is no different. So I started a series of podcasts focused on the diff grants and career advancement, and you are the second in my series and happened to fall in October with a nod to Disability Employment Awareness Month. So I want to just give our listeners a little snippet again about the diff grant. And so this particular round, the grant activities are geared to support innovative activities aimed at improving the outcomes of individuals with disabilities. And the Career Advancement Initiative model. Demonstrations were funded in federal fiscal year 2021. They were intended to identify and demonstrate practices supported by evidence to assist eligible individuals with disabilities, including previous served participants in employment who reenter the program to do the following. They were looking at advancing in high demand, high quality careers like science, technology, engineering and math, or those Stem careers to enter career pathways in industry driven sectors through pre apprenticeships, registered apprenticeships and industry recognized apprenticeship programs to improve and maximize competitive integrated employment outcomes, economic self-sufficiency, independence and inclusion in society, and to reduce reliance on public benefits like SSI, SSDI, or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and State or local benefits. Now, I remember reading in the announcement some of that sort of I thought it was disturbing data that provided the base for why RSA picked this particular area and chose to fund it. And they based it on the program year 2019, RSA 911 data. And some of the things that they said were participants that were exiting the program in competitive integrated employment reported a median wage of 12 bucks an hour and working like 30 hours a week. And the top ten most common occupations were reported. They were like stock clerks and they were order fillers, customer service reps, janitors, cleaners. I call it the whole Food, Filth and Flowers. So I know through this initiative they were trying to do more. So let's dig into what you guys have cooking in Virginia. David, tell our listeners a little bit about yourself. How did you get to VR?   David: Thanks, Carol. Started as a job coach years ago. We won't say when. It'll make me feel old, and I worked for a private nonprofit. I then assisted in Virginia, working with individuals, exiting a training center and moving towards community living. From there, I came back to the Richmond area to work for a community service board and again was a job coach and then worked within a sheltered work and day services program before coming to DARS, where I started with the Ticket to Work program and now have that the work incentives and a few grants and the workforce programs.   Carol: You and I have very similar backgrounds. I too was a job coach. I did work in a sheltered workshop for a while as well and all of that. It's always interesting how people find their way to VR. Kate, how about you? Why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and how you got to VR?   Kate: I kind of fell into this. A lot of times, similar to other people. Unexpectedly, I found out about East Carolina's rehab program and that they had a scholarship for people who wanted to get their master's. And I'm like, Oh, free money. So I jumped into that. Absolutely loved it. I did my internship at the Wilson Workforce and Rehabilitative Center. It was called something or a different title when I started back in the day. As I tell my kids, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, I was there, started off there as an evaluator and then kind of moved across the state, became a rehab counselor in the field, have done transition counseling, substance abuse counseling, went back to Boca Vale for a little bit, even dipped my toes into the world of job coaching and worked with David for a period of time at the CSV, came back to DARS, worked with the Department for the Blind and Visually Impaired, and also, as an aside, also had joined the military during that timeframe on the reserve side. So I'm out of that at this point. So I have quite an eclectic background. As a supervisor once said that I couldn't make up my mind what I wanted to do, but it was all overall 24 years of work working with individuals with disabilities in a variety of areas. So it really kind of dovetailed well for me to work in the first dif grant that we received prior to this grant where I was a VMA or Virginia Manufacturing Association liaison for our grant. And when we were working on this Phase two grant, it was just pulling from what we've learned previously and growing from there. And so here I am.   Carol: I love it, it positions you really well for the work under this new grant. Very cool. Thanks for sharing that. So, David, why don't you paint us a picture of Virginia DARS How many staff do you have? About how many people are you all serving?   David: Okay, DARS comprises the Division of Rehabilitative Services, the Disability Determination Services, Aging Services. We have roughly 28 to 30 offices around the state and are currently serving just around 18,000 clients. If you include Pre-ETS in those totals.   Carol: that's a bunch., holy cow. I didn't realize you guys were that big.   David: Yeah, and that doesn't include however many cases DDS is handling or our aging or the other units. But that's a little bit about DARS, and I like to say we stretch from the Atlantic Ocean all the way to almost as far west as Detroit. If you go down to Bristol, Virginia, which is technically a little further than Detroit. So lots of types of environments and communities and very unique challenges in different areas.   Carol: Yeah, so you're definitely facing different geographical issues and I'm sure probably even economic differences. You know, if you're talking the coast versus maybe more of a rural area. So I'm sure there's probably some challenges there with even getting providers or how you're providing services.   David: It's interesting. One of the things we've been able to see in, for instance, Southwest Virginia, there is an economic center that's only 16 miles away from an office. But to get there, you go over three mountains and it could take two hours. So are those jobs really accessible to someone without a vehicle? On paper from Richmond, it might look like, why aren't we placing folks in this community out of that office? Well, it's a two hour drive each way, and that's the only way to do it. You mentioned at the beginning those top ten job areas. And one of the things we're really trying to challenge ourselves with now is giving people the information to make an informed decision about a career choice. But if they choose a career that might not look as great, what is the best potential version of that job? What is the job within that sector that actually could become a career? So at the beginning when we were starting to work on this, our agency had been in order of selection for years with categories closed and with the pandemic. That all changed. But the clients we were seeing didn't change and their goals didn't change. I think that's going to be a longer term conversation. But if we can do things to promote the best version of a position. And so I'll just give you one example. And our commissioner, other folks would probably say, why do we have so many folks who want jobs in food service or in this? Because typically they're low paying. Typically there's a lot of turnover. It's hard to become stable. One of the first projects we worked on in this grant was a partnership with a school nutrition program, and we've been able to help a few individuals enter into work in a kitchen at a school where they have the same hours. Monday through Friday. They have the opportunity for benefits. In one case, we couldn't find transportation. That school system was allowing the individual to take the school bus for that person. That's a really stable job and it's somewhere they can grow and thrive for years. So I do want to just say we have to think a little bit differently about what Kate or I or others might think of as a career. How do we find that best option for someone where there is room for growth, but equally important room for that time for stability to get to mastery, to then look at other skills and hopefully down the road they'd come back, not because they lost that job and need it again, but because they've learned so much that they want to go on to the next thing of their own accord.   Carol: Yeah, I like that you said that because I remember that when we visited before talking about that best version of that job. So not to mean that no one can work in kind of food, filth and flowers. I know I say that and it sounds sort of condescending and it's not meant to be. But we typically relied on kind of those occupations, really entry level. But I like that you're taking a spin on that and really looking deeper because we need folks to work in those occupations too. And there's people that love doing that work. But how like you say, can you do the best version of that? So you have benefits and you're looking at those long term like working in a school district, you can get retirement and all these different really awesome things that go with that. So, Kate, I'm going to switch to you. So big picture, break it down for us on your grant proposal and what you're hoping to accomplish with I know you had said you have three core components. Talk a little bit about that.   Kate: Sure. I do want to make a caveat that I love about this grant is it is a demonstration grant, meaning we have the opportunity to try out innovative products and projects across the state. I just want to put a caveat on that to keep that in your mind as I'm going forward here. So our main goal is to place 750 individuals with disabilities in federal, state, county, city jobs and or registered apprenticeships or also Stem and health careers. So we have those three main components on that. And when we looked at this grant and David worked on the development and the proposal for this, we really wanted to touch individuals that had been kind of missed in the first grant. And this I think, is something as we're doing a grant, you're learning all the time. And we wanted to make sure that we were hitting those unserved and underserved across the state. So individuals that aren't as plentiful in different areas. So say like Winchester has a large Hispanic population, does that reflect the number served in the actual DARS office? How do we get Spanish speaking individuals more involved in DARS? How do we get women who may only recognize those areas that you talked about that flower filth? And because that's what they're aware of, that's the work they've done in the past. So I just need another job in that area. How can we open up some possibilities? Have you thought about the IT field? Have you thought about advanced manufacturing and can you see yourself doing that? So providing those opportunities, it's a way for us to look at those unserved and underserved across the state. And we're defining that as we're going and we're looking at the census data, we're looking at who we're serving within each state. And then we're also looking at our plans, the plans that the rehab counselors are creating. What are those plans? What is the main goal? Overall we see a lot of customer service because it's kind of a catch all. What does that mean? Is that customer service as a helpdesk technician as opposed to just somebody as a receptionist? So we're really helping both the VRC, the counselor, and the candidate explore possibilities like that.   Carol: I like that. I just love what you guys are doing and really fundamentally getting down, digging in and really focusing on those folks that have been underserved or unserved and just taking that twist on the occupation because there's a wide range like within customer service, you have the job from here to here.   Kate: Exactly.   Carol: Yeah, that is very cool. Now, I know you all had some really weird hiccups in the beginning when you were starting out with this particular grant. So what were some of those kind of hiccups and how did you overcome that? And Kate, I'll probably shoot to you first on this.   Kate: So part of the thing that I didn't mention was is that the roles that our team players have. So we have a liaison with Department of Labor and Industry, specifically the registered apprenticeship side. So they have their foot in the DOLI world and the foot in the DARS world. We also have a team member who has their foot in the Department of Human Resource Management Liaison, and then also her toes are also dipping in the DARS. So we've had some different team members on that. We also have a quick response, counselor, somebody who can go in and respond to immediate needs of employers, of an individual that might be working with them, that has a disability, that might need some help, whether that's in a registered apprenticeship or on that particular job. During the first year we hired and we had everybody up and running and we had two team members, one had a medical emergency and had to move away from the position because there was some driving involved. And then unfortunately, we had Lisa Hanky, who passed away unexpectedly on us. So, you know, you get all getting that hiring going and then all of a sudden we lost two individuals, so we had to restart that process.   David: But Kate, if I can add to that, and I believe this is true for everyone in our round of this DIF funding, I believe we were told two days before the beginning of the project, it was about a day after that that, you know, many agencies coming out of the pandemic have had challenges with staffing and we had those challenges in our procurement division. So getting contracts signed, getting those staff replaced. But the other thing that has been a challenge and we're finally coming out of. We created three positions that this agency has never had, and it had meant that we had to learn how to provide quality support to two other state agencies in the context of working with DARS and similarly with our quick response counselors. So we created these positions that we had an idea of how they could work. But once someone got into those roles and was learning the other agency, we've had to be flexible in understanding how they can actually benefit our clients and our agency. And that has been a learning process.   Carol: You guys bring up a really good point because I think sometimes when folks are applying for the DIF grant, you're not recognizing off the get-go That first year can be a struggle because like you said, you found out two days before and then you get the money. And then as we know with any state government, it takes time to hire and like to get through all those processes. And so RSA may be on one hand going like spend the money and you're like, we're trying, but we've got to get through all our HR processes and all this crazy stuff. So it takes a little bit to get rolling in that first year. And I know we often on the TA world are talking with people as they're applying for grants going just know as you're going into it that first year, you're probably not going to spend the amount of funds you projected originally because there's just is a time factor and getting through all of that.   Kate: Absolutely. That was the one thought that David and I, if you know, we apply for another one down the road, maybe making that first year a little bit less intensive and spreading it out from year 2 to 5 because that's where the major work will be done.   Carol: Yeah, that's smart. Very smart. So I know you guys were talking about some challenges. What are some other particular challenges that you're experiencing right now?   Kate: Well, I'll get started on that piece. One of the things we have found similar to the staffing, the challenge that we had when we first started of hiring individuals, we're finding a turnover in staff in DARS. And so we are having a lot of younger counselors that have, in some cases don't have a rehab background. They might have a social work background. So we have a lot of training that we're doing and then redoing on that. We're having a training coming up in October for the VOC rehab counselors and we're getting kind of back to basics. What makes a good referral for our Pathways Grant, looking at those possibilities of not just that receptionist job, let's look at helpdesk. What are the opportunities that are out there? And so that has been kind of a challenge, is just retraining. And I think this is kind of normal across the board. But these rehab counselors are busy. They have a lot more documentation they have to put in Aware. There's a lot more individuals coming through their door because we have the rapid engagements, so they are overwhelmed. And how can we dovetail our services to best support them, how to make the referral process as easy as possible for them, what supports make the most sense for them? So that's been one of the interesting challenges.   Carol: So, Kate, have you guys done anything around just the way in which your staff or the support of those counselors, do you have like other staff that are kind of wrapped around them, whether you call them maybe a rehab tech or some sort of a case aide or whatever it might be that can help the counselors with sort of all the documentation requirements and that kind of thing. Have you done some work in that?   Kate: Actually, here in Virginia, we do have support. We have vocational evaluators, placement counselors and what they call employment service specialists that run the job club and things like that. And they can help support with some of the paperwork. But similar to other states that actually have like a rehab tech that would do some of the counseling or the that kind of thing, not as much. And each office is run a little bit different. That's part of the appeal. And what I mean by that is, is some of the offices might not have a vocational evaluator, some might have a placement counselor that might be covering more than one office so that there is enough differences on that piece. But yeah, that has been a struggle for keeping all of that work and getting it done for them.   Carol: Yeah, You're definitely joined by your colleagues across the country on that. I keep hearing that over and over. David did you have anything else you wanted to add to that about any of the particular challenges?   David: Yeah, I think we wrote this knowing we needed to do some things better and serve certain populations differently to get to where people had the same outcome regardless of gender, race, ethnicity. And that is still a challenge. We are learning that we have a long way to go to effectively serve those folks who have English as a second language. And when we started the project, we started with like a counselor advisory board to help not only create buy in, but inform us what the counselors needed. We have now shifted to an advisory board geared towards helping us do better with the Hispanic Latino population, and that English is a second language. So we're hoping over this next year, working with members of our state who are representative of those groups will actually help us figure out what services are going to be most likely to bring people in for help. What supports we will need to think about providing for those individuals to be successful. And again, it goes back to how do we help people see for themselves greater opportunities and careers than they might have.   Carol: So are you linked in then with your like your WIOA partners on your adult basic ed side? Like under that, you know, the English as a second language, Like they're more expert than us in working with that group?   Kate: Absolutely. One of our key partners is the Virginia Adult Learning Resource Center, who teach the adult ed, they help support them across the state when we get further along I'll talk about some of the projects that we're working with with them.   Carol: Yeah, that's excellent. I love that. So I know you guys are seeing some exciting results. What kind of exciting results are percolating up?   Kate: So one of the things that we found as we're moving forward is we actually had working with adult Ed, we had a program that we were doing Intro to IT, where we're starting a basic starting platform for accounting fundamentals, and we were ready to go. We had seven individuals in this first cohort, and one of the things we found was the individuals that we met, even though we just came through Covid with all of the tech training, we had individuals they knew enough to get on to Zoom and to do some items, but we really needed to step back and do some basic tech training. So, they had enough gaps in their knowledge that they couldn't move forward without some major help. So what happened on this is, is we stepped back and started to do some digital literacy training and they moved forward with that. And each of those individuals are now moving forward with the accounting fundamentals this summer. So stepping back, we're actually looking at what we're calling digital work skills training, which is really exciting opportunity for individuals to get started with North Star digital literacy. We're working on goal setting some soft skill development just to get them started on that end. So we have individuals that would typically not be able to go to a virtual training actually get started there. And what we're finding with that end is, is that we have some individuals, you know, those customer service people who just want to do clerical, they're getting introduced to IT. And so we've had a few individuals that have moved on to our next training, which we call the Max Career Lab. And Max Potential is an employer here in Virginia. And I think they go into other states as well, several other states. And what they are, they're a temp agency for IT employment. So they hire individuals to work with Dominion, to work with, you know, with all these employers doing various IT. But they have a unique hiring model. They actually have an opportunity where individuals come in and they go through a career lab five day, three hours a day, 15 hours of a career lab. Then they do an interview. During those five days, they do an overview of data analytics, networking, all these different career areas. So they'll do an hour and a half of overview of the career, and then they do an actual interactive activity that they break out in groups for. So it's a great way to explore the IT field. So we've hired them to actually run career labs for us. They do the 15 hours, then they get homework and then they have an interview assessment. So the interview is just like a typical interview that they run, but they follow up with what activities that they're interested in. So this has been a wonderful way for us to explore different IT areas and to help individuals determine what area of IT they want to do. Here in Virginia, we're blessed. We've got Nova, we've got a lot of IT careers, but counselors and vocal evaluators don't always know how to direct somebody into the right avenue because technology is always changing. You know, cybersecurity, cybersecurity, that's always a great one, right? Because we're right here in Nova. However, not everybody wants to do cyber. Have you thought of data analytics? Have you thought of the different networking positions? Have you thought of machine learning? You know what, all is out there? And so it's an opportunity for us to do a hands on career exploration and next steps with an actual employer running the sessions for us.   Carol: That's cool. Yeah, I hadn't heard about a career lab before like that. That is very intriguing because so many people learn much better, you know, by actually experiencing seeing what that's about because it can sound cool. You read about something like the cybersecurity was the big deal, but then you get into it and you're like, Oh, I don't really want to do that, you know? So giving them that opportunity, I think that's fabulous.   Kate: Yes, and we have had our first cohort. We had 25 people sign up. We had 22 complete the whole piece. That includes the interview.  Of that group we had six individuals. So they compare the group together, but they also compare them to the other public groups that they have across the board. So of those individuals, six are encouraged to look at direct work experience. The rest have been encouraged to do a few other activities, like maybe develop more professional skills or develop more tech training, possibly, you know, accounting fundamentals. We had one that decided they did not want to do IT training. And I'm thinking, what a great opportunity you now know what you don't want to do. And for us, that can be great, right? So we're looking at some other options for that young man. It has been a wonderful opportunity. We're now in our second cohort and our hope is, is to keep continuing this as we're going through this grant and to see how we can set this up once the grant is over.   Carol: Very cool. Have you had any surprises kind of as you've started this. I know you're in year two. Are there any surprises?   David: I think there are always surprises. This is right. Staff and surprises some of the opportunities that have come up. I don't think we anticipated. So we've shifted to take advantage. One of the big pieces of this grant is our focus on state hiring and the individual we hired for that aspect worked diligently during the first six months with them on an alternative hiring process through the legislation, had a go live date, whether we were ready or not. And what we didn't understand is during the first year, this process, it wasn't available to current state employees who may be disabled. That created a lot of issues for folks who were upset that they couldn't access this to move up within state government. We weren't able to change that ourselves, but it was changed in legislation. And starting in July of this year, we were allowed to offer a certificate of disability to someone who was currently employed and that has seen an increase. We've had roughly 1500 people request certificates of disabilities. I think part of what was surprising is what a great opportunity that has become as a referral source for DAR's. Roughly 300 individuals have chosen to get more information and receive VR services, and we are seeing that as a really nice piece of the process. Additionally, I think we finally had our first individual who went from what we call part time wage employment to full time classified, which was one of the intents of the process we developed. So it's nice to begin to see that work. But for Kate and I, we have to remind ourselves some of this might take two, three, four years before we really actually see these things that could be possible in action. And I think the other big surprise there is just how great of a partner our Department of Human Resource Management has been. They recently allowed us to present to 120 hiring managers and we will be a regular part of their monthly recruitment network action meetings. They've bought into our use of windmills training. They advertise it every month and we are co-sponsoring a job accommodation network training in October for them that they will heavily market to state hiring managers. So I think that's been really great. And then the other surprise, it turns out that our division of registered apprenticeship within the Department of Labor and Industry is moving to a new state agency. So we will see what that does. You know, you think things are pretty stable and static in certain ways, but they can change. That's been a surprise. But it's not a good or bad. It just, you know, might be a chance to actually work with more of our partners more directly.   Kate: And David, another surprise that we had was the use of data. We have been doing some trainings with the field and they you know, when you bring numbers involved, people get a little, oh, I don't know if I want to touch this, but what we found was the counselors, the evaluators, the placement, they enjoyed looking at this data. They ate it up. So the use of data as a tool to look at who we're serving, how are we serving them, has been an eye opener. At least it was a surprise for me. Now I'm a vocational evaluator, so I love data and I thought I was, you know, unique. But I'm not you know, everybody is, you know, surprisingly likes that data.   Carol: Yeah.. Well, and definitely how you present it to the field, you know, if you're just like blah, blah, blah, whatever, they really are interested because it's the culmination of their work, you know, so they see what's happening. It really helps to paint that picture and then they can react and respond and do things in a different way in response to that data. So I think that's smart that you guys are doing that. Now. I know you both had talked about shifting the conversation around employment and shifting that whole narrative on barriers to advancement and employment. Talk a little bit about that.   Kate: So one of the things that the counselors are really good at is, is when somebody comes in the door and they say, hey, you know, I need help finding work. But when we look at the definition of what we do, it's getting and but it's also keeping or advancing in your career. So what is that advancement look like? So if you have somebody coming in who I need a job right away, maybe this is where somebody is going to go for a stock clerk. But what about the idea of doing a quick training so that they can get a credential in the Certified logistics associate and then moving from there, maybe when they do that interview, now that they have that credential, maybe they can ask for a little bit of a raise. And what is the next step on that piece? So we've definitely looked at that. How do we make, as David said, the most of the career that you're looking at or the other areas that we've already talked about? Let's look at other areas.   David: One of the things that actually came from one of our offices that they wanted was we've heard more and more about attrition and attrition from application to plan, but also attrition from plan before employment or before successful closure. And we have created a group called Work Wise, which is designed for individuals who have just become employed to meet once a week in the evening, talk about their jobs, have an opportunity with a staff person to talk through issues, challenges. It's been really a powerful group, and I've been pleasantly surprised at how the individuals who choose to participate in a couple of cases did not want to stop going when their case was closed because of how valuable it was to in close to real time talk through things that were happening at work with someone with a VR counseling background. And that has been a really powerful group because it's also given folks to learn from each other and get to that stability and confidence to maybe also look for future opportunities. I know we're getting ready to also hold a salary negotiation training for folks. So again, let's help people think through and have those skills now that they may use now or they may use later when an opportunity to move up comes around. And similarly, we've started a group that we're calling money wise where we've partnered with a local credit union with that hope of how can we help make sure folks maximize their the benefits they choose to take advantage of from an employer. How do we help someone make sure that if there's a 401 match and it's X amount, that they do that much at the very least, Right. Those things that everyone is told, Well, if there's free money from an employer, you take it or if there's tuition assistance or some other thing, maybe there are things to plant some seeds. So someone would continue to move forward.   Carol: I can see how so much of this work that you are doing is so foundational and will be of benefit to, you know, your other colleagues across the country with the things you've uncovered and the things that you are working on, these different classes and groups and all of that. I'm sure other people are going, Gosh, I want to do that too. I think this will be amazing to help plant the seeds across the country. Now, David, I know you were concerned about implementing something that could withstand the test of time. And I know DIF grants are meant it's a demonstration grant. You're trying something out, but you want to also be able to carry forward these ideas into the future. So how are you guys structuring this to make that happen?   David: We really are thinking about sustainability and to Commissioner Hayfield's credit, that's been one of the things that she and Dale Batten have really stressed to us. It's great to do great work in a period of time, but how can we make sure that the things that have the potential to be value add or transformative continue and don't just end the day the funding stops? And we've really thought through many of the activities that we are creating, we are working on from at the beginning. What would this look like when there's no funding? How will we continue these? It's part of our partnership with Valray. We're working to get some of these pieces put into Canvas and set up through that learning management system. But within some of the positions, you know, one of our hopes is that the DHRM VR liaison could become its own full time non restricted position at the end. Similarly, we would hope that for the others, or at least those activities become a part of multiple staff strategically throughout the state. And that's one way we're looking at it.   Kate: And yeah, we're looking at the train, the trainers, also the tools that we're using. One of the pieces for vocational evaluators would be English language acquisition and knowledge. So there are assessments that are out there that can test somebody's English language, which is important for us to know if we're working with individuals and we're trying to place them on the job. So how do we get the tools necessary into the hands of the individuals and trained up for that so that that can be moving forward? So we're being proactive for these individuals that we hope to come into our doors a little bit more often.   Carol: That's excellent. So what do you guys see as your next steps? Where are you going from here? The point you're at right now, what are the next steps?   Kate: So a lot of our programming that we're doing right now is in partnership with adult ed. We see a great marriage between DARS and Adult Ed because Adult Ed works with a lot of individuals with disabilities already. They're adult educators. They can provide a little bit more support for our learners for credential training. They've got different things that are across the state. I'm working with our rehab center, Wilson Workforce and Rehabilitation to really figure out how can we marry these? Right now I'm coordinating all these trainings. Is there a way that the center can provide this? And this gives the center an opportunity to look at a virtual environment? What does this look like? We're not sure what it looks like, but we're giving a try to see for that next piece so that max potential with the employer, can that be run through Wilson so that it is open and able to run after the grant is over.   Carol: So for our listeners that would want to apply for a grant, but they've been afraid to do so. What advice would you give to other people?   David: Don't be afraid to apply for a grant. It is an amazing opportunity to infuse energy and enthusiasm into your workforce. It is a chance to stretch, learn new skills, try new programs and get some great outcomes. If there are things you've wanted to try and you don't necessarily have the budget to do or don't seem to fit a demonstration grant is a phenomenal opportunity, and when I came into this agency under grants and special programs, usually we had to worry about things like a match component. And if you have the chance to apply for a grant where there isn't a match and you are willing to be patient with that work, you can accomplish some great things. You get to know your partners better. You get to see staff flourish and stretch and more importantly, get some really cool outcomes for the clients we serve.   Carol: Love that infuse that energy and enthusiasm. I wrote that down. That was a great. You're like giving a commercial for the RSA DIF Grants, that's awesome.   Kate: One thing I would add on this too is when I first came in eight years ago on the other grant, I was pretty much kind of a newbie in the grant world, and I was a little intimidated with the idea of RSA. But what I have found is, is RSA is there to help us. They want us to succeed. And if you have a solid grant application and know what you want to do, they will help you give you some ideas. They invited other states to meet with you to kind of talk about different things. So they have been very good about sharing knowledge and they want to see us succeed.   Carol: That sounds so great. Well, I am going to definitely tell our listeners like they should reach out to you too, if they've got some questions to reach out to David and Kate, because you all have a lot of very cool stuff cooking, and I'm sure you're willing to talk to others about what you've been doing as they're thinking about maybe applying some of this, even though they may not have a DIF grant, but applying some of the things that you're learning into their own work in their states?   Kate: Absolutely. We're here.   Carol: Excellent. Well, I appreciate you both. Thanks for spending time with us. And I look forward to circling back with you a little bit in a couple more years as time flies on this grant and see where you're coming in at and those good results. So have a great day.   David: Thank you very much.   Kate: Thank you.   {Music} Speaker1: Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time, brought to you by the VR TAC for Quality Management. Catch all of our podcast episodes by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening!  

Join us as presenter, author and farmer Kate Humble guides us through magical ancient woodland near her remote Wales home in the Wye Valley. With infectious enthusiasm and occasional impressions, she tells us about the plants and animals along our route as well as the story of her accidental career, becoming host of nation's favourite Springwatch having never wanted to be a TV presenter! Kate also talks worldwide travels, access to nature and planting trees with the Woodland Trust on her smallholding. Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk Transcript You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant trees for people, for wildlife.  Adam: Well, in early spring I went on a woodland walk in Wales with presenter, author and farmer Kate Humble, who was taking me around what promised to be some amazing woodland with her dogs. But as is increasingly common in these podcasts we of course had to begin with me getting absolutely and entirely lost.   This is an absolute disaster. Although I am bad at directions, this is not my fault *laughs* So Kate sent me a pin, she said look this is going to be hard to find my place, she sent me a map pin. I followed the map pin. Look I'm here I don't know if you can hear this you probably can't hear this. This is the gate that's locked, which is across some woodland path. So I can't get there. And of course there is no phone signal, so I'm going to have to drive all the way back to some town to find a phone signal. And I'm already late.   OK. I have managed to find a village where there is a phone signal. I've managed to call Kate and Kate *laughs* Kate has clearly got the measure of me and told me to give up and she is now going to get in her car and find me in this village and I will follow her back. In the meantime, we have passed Google map pins back and forwards, which apparently tell her that I'm sitting outside her house. But I really am nowhere near her house, so I seem to have broken Google which well, that's a first. Anyway I've got a banana here, so if she's a long time, I have dinner and I'll just wait. This will never happen. This will actually never happen.   Well we've found Kate. We've found a whirly country drive lane. Feels a bit like rally driving. It's like, I mean, I don't understand why my map wouldn't find it, but this is certainly a bit of rally driving we're doing here getting to her house. My goodness. We found her house.   OK. Well, we're here. Which I never thought I I really thought it was really lovely. The idea was nice, and next time I'm in Wales, I'll give you a call so really, it's it's better than I thought better than I thought. Anyway, so you're leading me off with your two dogs.  Kate: I am. I am. I'm leading you off into one of the most beautiful I think I mean, obviously I'm a little bit biased but it is one of the most important areas of ancient woodland in Britain. This is the Wye Valley. We're the lower Wye valley, so we are the the the the bit really where the River Wye is in its sort of last bit of its journey. It's risen in mid Wales, about 136 miles from here. I know that cause I've walked the whole route.  Adam: Really, we're not doing that today, are we?  Kate: No we're not no I promise. I promise Adam. So yes and we are basically about 5 or 6 miles from where it flows into the River Severn and then out into the Bristol Channel and the woods around here are a lovely mix of broadleaf, so we're walking through broadleaf woodland now and this is literally this is what I walk out of my front door. Aren't I lucky?  Adam: You are lucky.  Kate: I'm so lucky. So we've got a lovely mix of broadleaf woodland now and we're just coming into that time of year. Which is the time of year that makes everybody's spirits lift, because we are coming into spring, and if we actually just stop just for a second. You can hear that's a blue tit calling *imitates sound* and I mean, this isn't the perfect day for birdsong, but the birdsong was really picking up. And that's the lovely thing about living alongside woodland. So even in the winter, even when you don't think there are any birds at all, what you hear in these words is *imitates sound* that's a very, very bad impression of a great spotted woodpecker.  Adam: OK, I'm glad you. I I was guessing it might be a woodpecker, but I didn't want to.  Kate: So they start to drum around about sort of late January, they'll be drumming. And and then as the and we also have tawny owls, lots of tawny owls in these woods. We've got an owl box and we used to have an owl that we called Percy who we have no idea whether it was a boy or girl.  Adam: I was gonna say it was, a reason it was called Percy?  Kate: Don't know, just it just it looked like a Percy.  Adam: Just fancied the name. Fair enough. Yeah. Yeah.  Kate: But we have lovely tawny owls here. So, you know, at dusk and and when when I take the dogs out sort of last thing at night round about 10 o'clock 11:00 o'clock at night we walk down this track and and you stand here and you hear this wonderful and everyone thinks you know, tawny owls go toowit toowoo. They're the classic toowit toowoo owls, but actually you've got 2 owls calling, so you've got the male going *imitates noise* and then you have the females going *imitates noise*. And they're calling each other, establishing territories or going ooh I like the sound of you, there's a bit of flirting going on. So these are, as I say really it's it's just the biggest treat to live with this on my doorstep.  Adam: Right, so fantastic. You you clearly I mean, you've launched into a sort of fantastic description and detailed knowledge, but you are not a country girl by birth are you?  Kate: No, I am a country girl by birth.   Adam: Oh you are? I though you were born in London?  Kate: I am. No. Well, I was you're right, I was I was  Adam: Sorry, do I know where you were born and you don't.  Kate: Well, being born and where you were brought up is different.   Adam: Yeah, OK. OK, fair enough.  Kate: So I was, you're absolutely right, I was born in London. I was born in well, I was born in Wimbledon in fact. This is my neighbour by the way.  Adam: Right. Right. Wow. I didn't, we're in the middle of nowhere I didn't know there'd be a neighbour.  Kate: I know, but I know. But there are other people mad enough to live in these woods, and he's particularly mad.  Adam: OK. Does he mind you saying that?   Kate: Not at all. Not at all. No. He's absolutely used to it. Hello. Come and say hello to the Woodland Trust podcast.   Adam: No. OK, I'm just checking. OK. Hi, I'm Adam. Hi. Nice to see you. Yeah, I hear you're her neighbour.  Kate: This is this is this is writer Mark Mccrum and his dog Jabba. Yes. So I'm just dragging Adam down to take a look at the ponds and talking about the ponds down there.  Mark: Oh lovely. Which ponds?  Kate: The ponds down there.  Mark: Oh those ones? Yeah, very good. I might see you on the reverse cause I'm gonna go all the way round.  Kate: Oh you're gonna go round. OK, fine. Lovely.  Mark: These are lovely woods cause you never see anybody here. *all laugh*  Adam: I'm sorry.  Kate: Apart from you   Adam: I was gonna say, and me, I've ruined it.  Kate: Yeah we're the only people who see each other aren't we.  Adam: So you were telling me you are you are born in Wimbledon, but you you grew up in the country then?   Kate: Yeah. So I was I was born in Wimbledon and yes. So after about, I think I was about six months old, my mother always says that she realised that London was clearly not the place for me and   Adam: From six months? Outward bound baby were you?  Kate: Yes! She said she said there basically wasn't enough space in London for me. So so yes, so I was brought up in Berkshire, right? And I was brought up next to a farm. So I was always a sort of vicariously farming kid. Even though my parents weren't farmers and and spent my childhood looking after various animals of various descriptions, and I think the wonderful thing about being the age I am, so everyone bemoans being old, but I think I just I I am so thankful that I was born in the sixties.  Adam: Why?  Kate: Because no one had invented health and safety, climbing trees, no one had climbing frames, you climbed trees. And I think the trees enjoyed it, and so did you. And if you hadn't fallen out of quite a lot of trees by the time you were 10 and had various, you know, scars or broken bits as proof of a proper childhood, it wasn't a proper childhood.   Adam: Right. OK.   Kate: So I had a lovely proper childhood of, you know, not being plonked in front of a screen of some description or another. We're going to cut off piste a little bit and head down here.  Adam: OK, I'm is this a precursor warning that I'm about to get bumps and scrapes and?  Kate: This is a precursor warning that you might yes, you might. It's quite a steep descent.  Adam: OK just as long as my, my face is my fortune though, as long as that's safeguarded throughout this, that'll be fine. OK. Well, that's good. Yeah. Lots of leaves around. Yeah.  Kate: Of course it will be a soft landing whatever you say. Lots of leaves. One of the nice things again about broadleaf woodland. And as you can see, I'm sure your leaf identification is brilliant, but we've got a lovely mix of oak here and beech, as well as the evergreen so the hollies and lovely, lovely mosses. But yes, what you're walking on is is a sort of glorious mulchy carpet, but we have a profusion of bluebells.  Adam: Already they've come up?  Kate: Well the bluebells, the the plants themselves have come up so the leaves are up and there are one or two I'm going to show you, is it, will it be your first bluebell of the year?  Adam: It, almost, almost we we can pretend it is for dramatic purposes. Let's let's go along.  Kate: OK, OK. They are, they're just, they're just starting to come here now and and you get that lovely moment. It'll be about probably about three weeks or a month's time, slightly depending on on what the weather does, where you get the, the unfurling of the beech trees. So that glorious kind of neon green which when the light goes through you get that sort of wonderful, almost disco light effect show.  Adam: And aren't they in Welsh, aren't they called cuckoos? The Welsh translation for bluebells is cuckoo clock. I think it's because it's like it's a harbinger of spring along with the cuckoo.  Kate: Oh, I didn't know that.  Adam: Oh my God, I found something you didn't know.  Kate: You know, you know, you'll know lots, I don't know, but  Adam: No, no, let's hope that's true that's that's I'll have to go check that. Do check that before you tell anybody.   Kate: Well, I'll just blame you.  Adam: But no, I do think in Welsh the translation for Bluebell is is cuckoo clock or something like that because it is this harbinger of spring and I think that's it's a really nice I I won't even try the Welsh but in Welsh it sounds very so I mean, I thought we were going to chat about your conversion to nature and everything, but actually that's a lot of nonsense. This is this has been a constant in your life?   Kate: Well, it's been, I mean, coming to Wales, so I did live in London, you know, after I left home.  Adam: Except, I mean, you didn't choose a a nature career, did you? I mean, you you're involved now we can talk about that. But first, what was your first career?  Kate: Well, I mean. Career always seems such a grand word and that you've planned it.  Adam: Yeah. OK, so your accidental career.  Kate: So my accidental career, well, I had this idea that that I that I wanted to work in television, although again I don't really know where that came from. We're going just down here. Part of me also wanted to be a a safari guide.  Adam: Good. I can see the appeal of that.  Kate: I went to I when I was 19 having never really been abroad at all, because again, our generation didn't really go abroad as a matter of course. So I went to Africa when I was 19 and.  Adam: Sorry we're not talking on a holiday?  Kate: No it was a well it was a it was probably a rebellion.   Adam: Right. You went as far away as your your parents as you could. I'm not going out for the evening I'm popping off to Africa?  Kate: Yes, yes. I'm popping off to Africa and I don't know when I'll be back. One of those.  Adam: Right. Yeah, good. Good exit line. So where, where, where in Africa were you and what were you doing there?  Kate: So I I started in South Africa. I ended up in Egypt.  Adam: Right, just bumming around doing sort of bar work or doing something more serious?  Kate: I did I did I was a waitress for a little bit, but I was very, very bad and was sacked. I I was a model for a little bit, also very bad, very bad at that too.   Adam: Why were you so bad at that?   Kate: Because because I really don't like having my photograph taken and I really like food.  Adam: Yes, OK well I would I would have guessed I could have advised you that wasn't the career for you.  Kate: So so the two things, yeah, didn't really weren't terribly compatible to that. But I then got a job as a cook and a driver on a safari, and I drove a truck aged 19, having never really been out of Berkshire, from Cape Town, through Botswana and into Zimbabwe. And and then I hitched back to Cape Town. So I had a a real adventure. But what I what it really did for me was, having had this very sort of unconsciously wild childhood, I don't mean you know lots of parties and taking drugs I mean, a natural wild childhood, I then went to a place where the natural world was was so extraordinary and so mindblowing, and on a scale, you know, everything was was was like technicolour. You know, the birds were amazing. The the you know the the the size of the animals, the proliferation of the wildlife, the size of the landscapes, the emptiness and I think it was that journey that turned my mind to really re-look and re-examine the natural world and think it's, you know, it's extraordinary, it's it's mind blowing in every way and so even though I then came back and thought I want to have this sort of career in telly what I really wanted to do in my career in telly was work for the natural history unit.  Adam: Right. And is that what you did?  Kate: No. Not initially anyway.  Adam: OK, but you have done, I mean you've done nature programmes, lots of nature programmes. What did you first start doing?  Kate: We're going down here. I have. So I first started sweeping streets in the East End.  Adam: In EastEnders?  Kate: No, in the East End, no. I was a runner so I basically got jobs wherever I could get jobs and I got a job on a commercial that happened to be shooting in the East End and they needed the streets swept and so that was one of my jobs. But had no plans to be on the telly that that really did happen by mistake.  Adam: I think you know my first job in telly. I don't know if you remember That's Life with Esther Rantzen. Do you remember they she always had rude, funny vegetables?   Kate: I do, yes  Adam: That was my job to find them, yeah so only only marginally above the street sweeping.   Kate: Oh my goodness!  Adam: So you got how did you get picked there? I mean, we gotta get back to the natural world. But you've had such such a fantastic life. So I mean, I think people will be fascinated to know you have not much of even a vague plan about what you're doing. You're fumbling about a bit.  Kate: None, yeah. Living in a squat. Eating crisps.  Adam: So yeah, right. So not many models will be will be living like that and eating crisps, I get that You're sweeping streets as your way into telly, all of a sudden you're on telly. How did that happen, was that more of a plan or did someone just turn around and go, hey, you, street sweeper, you'll do?  Kate: No, it wasn't. So I had I had graduated from street sweeper, so it took about probably four four or five years I have become by now a sort of senior researcher. And I got a job at the BBC. My first job at the BBC on a programme called Animal Hospital.  Adam: Right. Yes. And you were still a researcher there or presenter?  Kate: Yeah, as a researcher. And and I think the reason that I got the job was actually my childhood. Because I think it was the first series, in fact, I think the only series that they did of Animal Hospital in a rural practice. So we went to a practice that didn't just do small animals, pets type animals, but also bigger animals like farm animals and horses and I think the only reason I got the job was that I was the only person they interviewed who knew what to do with something bigger than a hamster.   Adam: Right ok great.  Kate: And I had my own wellies.  Adam: Oh good. Always important for a career in telly, your own wellies, see these are the secrets people wanna know. Good. So you've got your wellies?   Kate: Always really, really important. They are. So I got that job I got that researcher job. And at the end of it, the BBC do this appraisal thing. And they said we thought you were alright, you did OK, will you come back and do the next series and I said I'd absolutely love to. I'd really loved it, absolutely loved it. Can we just pause here a minute because this,  Adam: A sea of wild garlic?  Kate: No, these are bluebells.  Adam: These are bluebells? Oh, sorry. Look at the ignorance here.  Kate: These are bluebells. Well, those white flowers let me show you these because they're beautiful.  Adam: I thought like I I think that's what I thought was wild garlic shows you *unintelligible* OK, we've got a proper safari expert.  Kate: No. So look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, first bluebell starting to unfurl except my dog's just walked all over it. Come on you're not supposed to walk on there.  Adam: So this is, all of this is bluebells?  Kate: So all of this will be bluebells and in about 3 weeks time you get this absolutely, it's so blue it's like the colour actually detaches itself from the flowers and floats above it in this sort of glorious mist, it's beautiful. But this these flowers here I love. And these are these are one of the flowers along with celandines which are the kind of waxy yellow flowers that people will see in woodlands and even in their gardens at this time of year, these are wood anemones. And they are lovely, very delicate white flowers with these slightly sort of hand-like leaves and the lovely thing about these, they're not looking at their best at the moment because it's been quite a wet day. But when the sun's out, they open to the sun like these brilliant white stars. And sometimes there are areas around here where you'll see carpets of wood anemones and they're one of the first I've seen these as early as January, although not this year because we had lots of frosts.  Adam: It's funny you, you, you, you use the word magical I'm just looking at this tree with covered in moss and everything, there is something magical about these sorts of places, a sort of sense of, sense of, a Tolkien type moment isnt there?.  Kate: Absolutely. Absolutely. I've I I don't think it is a coincidence that lots of fairytales are set in woodlands because there is something otherworldly about them. We're going to head keep heading down just so that you have a really good climb on the way up.  Adam: Yeah, I was gonna say I'm fine going down, I'm assuming you're sending a car to pick me up? It's well a little, a little Uber will just I'm sure,   Kate: Nice try, Adam! Lots of Ubers around here. Look, look, look.   Adam: Oh look now that is OK that's a proper bluebell.  Kate: That is a, a, a bluebell that's a proper bluebell.  Adam: Yeah, that is my first proper bluebell of the year.  Kate: And you can see all the others are just starting to come.  Adam: And that's and it is lovely because clearly so few people come here that's the problem often with bluebells is when people trample all over them. And we've got just one clean path down here and it's completely undisturbed for as far as the eye can see. So yes, we OK, we we did a little pit stop for bluebells. We're back on and the what was the programme, animal?  Kate: Animal Animal Hospital.  Adam: Animal Hospital. So they wanted you back as a researcher. I'm interested in the jump from behind the screen to on screen.  Kate: So so they basically said lovely we'll see you in four months and I said oh well, I've got a landlord and rent to pay, I can't not work for four months. I'm going to have to get another job and it may mean that I'm not available. And they said ohh well, maybe we can find you something else within the BBC as a stopgap. And I had also at that point, so this is the mid 90s now, started writing. I was writing travel. And I'd spent at the the a end of a a, the second Africa trip that I did between 94 and 95, I'd spent the last two months of that in Madagascar.  Adam: Right.  Kate: Madagascar was a place that I was obsessed with because of its wildlife because it has unique flora and fauna. I came back and got an article commissioned to write about it, and it was the first,  Adam: Your first commission?  Kate: Yes, my first commission and my first article, and it was in a broad a broadsheet newspaper, and I was very excited and very proud about that. And so when I was asked by the series producer of the BBC Holiday programme, whether I would consider coming to work for them because I was a travel writer,  Adam: Right OK, yeah, you're now a travel writer because of your one article.  Kate: I am I am now a I am now a travel writer on the strength of one of one article.  Adam: Whoa oh Kate, I'm so glad you were the first person to sort of go over *Kate laughs* That was before me I just want that on record.   Kate: Yeah.   Adam: OK so I haven't gone over yet.   Kate: You haven't got over yet.   Adam: OK. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah.  Kate: Yes. So I got a job on the BBC Holiday programme. Anyway the next day I got called into the big boss's office. And I assumed that my short lived career at the BBC Holiday programme was about to be ended because I wasn't quite sure why, but perhaps because I hadn't been taking the producers guidelines as seriously as I might and that also I had smoked on a fire escape, which probably wasn't a good idea. And instead I was asked to do a screen test and I assumed that this was the sort of common test that the Holiday programme did and I tried to say I really don't want to be a presenter thank you, I love doing, I love making the programmes, I love the research, I love talking to people, I love putting things together. I'm quite, I like logistics. I'm quite, you know, I like all that stuff I don't want to be a presenter. And they went well do a do a screen test. So at this point I just thought I've just got to get out of this office because I feel very embarrassed by the whole situation. So I will just nod smile say yes, do it, it'll be a disaster, and then everything can go back to normal. So that's what I did. Three weeks later, the boss came into the office,  Adam: Sorry, we have to stop. This is a story that's gonna last all day, cause I keep stopping because your dog is posing or it was posing beautifully by this river.  Kate: Well, so this river is an important, one of the sort of parallel streams that run into the River Wye for this is the Angidy, we are in the Angidy Valley, surrounded by amazing woodland on both sides, it's a very steep sided valley. This river is particularly good for dippers, which are those lovely chocolate brown and white birds, they look like little waiters.  Adam: Right *laughs*  Kate: And they and they, they're called dippers because that's exactly what they do. So we'll keep an eye out because we might see some, but they'll sit on a stone like that exposed stone within the waterfall there and they will jump into the water and literally completely submerge. They'll disappear completely and they're looking for things like caddisfly larva, which is what they feed on, and then they'll bob up and come back up and they're they're just these wonderful, perky, very smart little birds.  Adam: Brilliant, OK.  Kate: They're the only British songbird that is also a water bird.  Adam: Wow, OK, good. All right.   Kate: There you are, little bit of, little bit of,  Adam: No, I like these these these sorts of diversions we take, it's it's almost like doing a stand up routine, so we're gonna go gonna go back to the story now. So you thought everybody in the world gets a screen test. So I'm just doing this and then they'll leave me alone.  Kate: Yes, yes. And and then the boss came into the office about 3 weeks later. And she said, can you go to France tomorrow? And I said yes, of course, assuming that they needed somebody to carry the heavy stuff. Bhcause carrying heavy stuff is the other thing that I am good at. I can whistle very loudly and I can carry very heavy things and those are really the only two things that I can offer the world.  Adam: OK, I I you, you have set yourself up for a big whistle at the end, so we'll we'll wait for that then let's hold out.  Kate: It it will blow your ears well, that's all I'm saying. So she said, we want you to present a film on a barge in Normandy, could you please do something about my hair, she said. My own hair.  Adam: I see she didn't ask you to be a hairdresser? Also could you cut my hair?  Kate: Yes could you cut my hair *laughs*. No, could you do something about your hair, she said. I thought she's been talking to my mum, who constantly despairs of my lack of my lack of grooming.  Adam: Right, also right at this point of hair hair disasters, we have to pause because we've come across as you may hear an extraordinary small waterfall, it's a weir, really, isn't it?   Kate: It is really.  Adam: I'm gonna take another photo of this before we get back to the life and misadventures of Kate Humble. So I'm just gonna take a photo. You'll find that, no doubt on one of our Twitter feeds. Oh, I know beautiful, oh no the dogs disappeared, the dog doesn't like posing for me. But all right, so now, you're off to France. You need a haircut and,  Kate: So I'm off to France. I need I need I need to basically smarten myself up. Off I went to France and presented my first film.  Adam: Right. And that was, I mean, we could talk about this forever, but that was the beginning of that was the beginning of this, the story. OK, well, amazing.  Kate: Yes. My first job for the natural history unit came in 2000. And I was asked to do a programme, which was a sort of, was made in response to Blue Planet. So the very first series of the Blue Planet, which I think everybody watched with their mouths open because we had never seen the oceans in that way before, particularly the deep ocean. And there was a phrase used which I have used many, many times since, which was that more people have been to the moon than there have been to the deep ocean. And people were fascinated by these, they were they were creatures that looked like they might have been designed for Star Wars. They were so extraordinary.  Adam: These sort of angler fish which have which have this light don't they.  Kate: That sort of thing, and these these, you know, these astonishing, you know, plankton with flashing lights, there were Dumbo octopus with, you know, little octopus with these sort of literally did look like Dumbo the elephant, you know, deep water sharks that people had never seen before that were really slow moving and and, you know astonishingly well-adapted to live at depths and in in at water pressure that no one thought anything could exist in and come on dogs we're gonna keep, do you wanna have a,  Adam: And so yours was a response, in what way?   Kate: So we did a live,  Adam: The dogs keep looking at me like they want me to throw something for them is that what's going on?  Kate: They do, and I'm going to just try and find a, here let's try let's try this, here we are.  Adam: Look, they're very, oh you've thrown it into the river?   Kate: Go on, in you go.  Adam: Oh, look at that go!  Kate: Come on Teg, do you wanna go in as well? Here you are. This one's going to sink, go on. Ready? Go. Good girl. Where's it gone? Teggy, it's just there. That's it. Well done, well done, dogs.  Adam: Oh they like that.  Kate: Well, I can't go and get it, you have to bring it here, that's the deal with sticks *laughs* So we did a live programme from a boat in Monterey Bay. I made some films to play into that live show. So I went to the Cayman Islands, which is a rotten thing to ask anybody to do, can you imagine?  Adam: Terrible, terrible. You wanted to be back in the East End really.  Kate: I did really, sweeping streets and instead there I was, doing films about coral reefs and this is the one of, this is the wonderful thing about the natural history unit or just about making films with animals is the lengths that you have to go to to be able to capture the natural world in all its wonder. And so I was asked to go and film a shark called a six gill shark that lives very deep and only about 10 people in the world had ever seen. And I was sent to go and find this creature. You know, I can't I can't even now I can't really believe that I was asked to do that.   Adam: And did you find it?  Kate: Eventually. We had to do two, we did one trip we failed to find it,   Adam: How how long was that?  Kate: So that was, we did 6 dives. It was an amazing trip. We didn't get the shark on the first trip. We went back for another trip. We didn't get it. We didn't get it. We finally got it and it was incredible. Incredible moment. And that was the first job that I did for the natural history unit and there was then somebody who came up with the idea of doing British wildlife life live at kind of springtime, like kind of now.   Adam: And this was Springwatch was it?  Kate: This was the precursor to Springwatch.   Adam: Oh I didn't know there was one.  Kate: There were two!  Adam: What were they called?  Kate: So the first one was called Wild In Your Garden. So I'm just going to put the dogs on a lead here. Hold on, poppet. Just hold on my poppet. That's it. We've got to take Adam up the hill now. So yes, so the first one was called Wild In Your Garden and it was Bill Oddie and Simon King and me. And we did two shows a night, from gardens in Bristol, and it sort of worked as an idea.  Adam: Right. OK.  Kate: It worked well enough or it wasn't so much of a disaster that there wasn't a thought of let's try it slightly differently, maybe on a farm instead of in the garden, and we went to this wonderful organic farm in Devon and basically made camp for three weeks. And made a series called Britain Goes Wild. And Britain went a tiny bit wild. And so the following year we thought, well, we'll do it again, but maybe we'll just call it something different.  Adam: Right.  Kate: And someone came up with the idea of calling it spring watch and everyone said, and it always went out at the same time as it does now, sort of end of May and people go, it's not really spring though is it? And we're like, well spring enough, still spring things happening and Springwatch seemed to capture everybody's imaginations and and I presented that for 10 years.  Adam: And you presented that for how many, how many years?  Kate: Ten.  Adam: Blimey! That's a long,  Kate: Yeah, I know. I've just grown old on telly and then Autumnwatch came into being and then Winterwatch and I did Seawatch. So I did a series about British Britain's seas and and marine life. Yeah. So I did eventually get my wish of working for the natural history unit.  Adam: Oh, that's very good. The fairy godmother in the form of the BBC descended and granted your wish. And now from all of those adventures abroad and on TV and everything you then said, I'm gonna move to this really quite, there's another car coming, quite quite remote parts of Wales. Why that?  Kate: We're going to head up here. Hold on, dogs. There we are.  Adam: Oh there's some steps. Hallelujah.  Kate: OK, only for this little bit.  Adam: Look, stop stop taking away the hope.  Kate: *laughs* So so I we moved,  Adam: Yes so you you picked up sticks and then moved to Wales. Perhaps it's not such a big move because the natural world has seemed to be always the centre of things for you. So but why Wales in particular?  Kate: Well, that is a curious question. I had no connection with Wales as far as I was aware. I honestly honestly can't tell you why I felt this extraordinary pull to live here. But it really was it was like a magnetic pull. There is actually a a Welsh word and I'm not sure I'm really allowed to use it in my context, but I can't think of a better word to use for the feeling that I had. And it's hiraeth and is a word that it's sort of more than home sickness. It's like a deep longing for the place that you belong. A yearning, a pit of the stomach emptiness for your home.  Adam: You felt this was a spiritual home, did you?   Kate: I don't know I really don't know, Adam. I, as I say I just had this extraordinary pull to live here. And yeah, I would look at the, there are these old fashioned things called maps, and I would look at the A to Z of Great Britain. And you know, there I was in the South East and if you look at a thing called a map,  Adam: Yes, sorry is this a point about me getting lost on the way to you.   Kate: No no not even remotely. No, it's the fact that no one uses them anymore, and yet, they're the greatest treasures we have. So if you look at a map, the South East of England is just this chaos of colour and roads and towns and names. And it's just, you know, there's not a square millimetre that hasn't got a name in it or something in. The further west you go, the browner the map becomes, and when you go over the border into Wales, it's mainly brown and green and it's got beautiful lyrical names like Abergavenny and and it's got mountains and mountains, when you've been brought up in Berkshire mountains are the height of exoticism. To live in a in a country that had mountains all of its own just struck me as being remarkable. I still, 15 years on, find it remarkable that I can I can get up at breakfast, not go terribly far, and climb a bona fide mountain. I love that. And that's what I love about Wales.  Adam: And and you've done more than, I mean, people might feel that and move to a beautiful part of the country and live there and more or less carry on with their ordinary life. But you've not done that. I mean, you're not just you don't just go for walks, the natural world is something you've created a a new career out of as well. Is that fair?  Kate: I wouldn't call it a career.  Adam: OK but you're very much well, but you make money from it and it fills your days.   Kate: Well, no, no, I don't think I don't know I don't I don't think that's I don't think that's true at all. I think you know I my working life is peculiar. I've I still am involved making television programmes, some of which involve the natural world. I still write, some of that's about the natural world, but not all of it. The natural world for me is nothing to do with making a living. Making a living. But it is about living. And it was one of the things that I was acutely aware of when I lived in London was I felt cut off from the seasons. This year you know, I know I can tell you that I didn't hear a skylark until the middle of March last year it was Valentine's Day. I can tell you that because that's what I'm experiencing. And I love feeling that instead of the natural world being something I watch on the television or I read about in a book that I am able to be part of it. And that's one of the big problems I think that we face now with trying to engage people with the importance of things like biodiversity, species loss, habitat loss. None of those things sound very sexy, and none of those things appear to matter to us because we as a species so weirdly and inexplicably view ourselves as a species separate from the natural world and the natural world has become something that we just watch for our entertainment. But we are just another mammal in this amazingly complex, beautiful, brilliant web that is the biodiversity web, where everything fits in and everything works together, and one thing feeds another thing and you know, until we feel properly part of that, immersed in it and and wrapped up in it, why are we ever going to worry about the fact that it is now a biodiversity net that's full of holes, and those holes mean that the net becomes less and less effective and the less effective that net becomes, the more it affects us, but we see ourselves as somehow immune from that process and we're not. And what I love about living here, what I love about walking in this area every day, twice a day, is the fact that I feel that I can, I'm I'm more in tune with our natural world and that is sadly, it shouldn't feel a it shouldn't be a privilege, but it is.  Adam: And do you feel, I mean, you're you feel passionate about it. Do you feel evangelical about it?  Kate: Yes.   Adam: So what do you, do you have a prescription to help to bring others on side?  Kate: I wish it didn't, I wish you didn't have to ask me that question. I wish it didn't have to be an on side.  Adam: Do you do you feel that's an unfair question? Or do you think there's?  Kate: No, I don't. I think it's a very fair question because lots of people don't feel or don't perhaps don't experience it experience the advantages of the natural world, or they haven't been they haven't been given the opportunities to properly understand the impact that it can have on us and all those impacts are positive. I mean, there's loads of science. And you know, it was talked about endlessly during the pandemic about how green spaces are good for our mental health, blue spaces are good for our mental health, being outdoors, being in nature, listening to birdsong, sing plants grow, all those things are good for us. But we've got to a place where we've been so divorced from it, where we look for our pleasures in shopping malls and online and and we forget that actually all we need is right here. And, you know, it's a hard sell for some to to somebody who's never experienced this, who hasn't had the privileges I've undoubtedly had, you know who have not grown up in the countryside, who find it fearful or boring or inexplicable, don't understand where they fit in.  Adam: And I think one of the perhaps growing debates, I think or interesting ones anyway for me is is the balance between trying to either scare people or make them aware of the environmental challenges and potential for disaster. And then so to sort of go engage with the subject it's really it's really newsworthy, it's it's it's imperative people do things and actually turning people off going well we're we're all going to literally burn, enjoy the party whilst it lasts. So what what do you feel about that?  Kate: Yeah, yeah. I mean, all all, all you have to do, all you have to do is watch Don't Look Up. Have you seen that film?   Adam: Yes.  Kate: And and and that, you know, absolutely embodies what you have just said.  Adam: So what do you think about that? Because I think there's a balance between going, offering hope, the power or audacity of hope is a phrase one hears as opposed to the sort of potential to frighten people into action. Actually the opposite, don't frighten them into action. Offer them hope of change. And I wonder where you feel that, if we've got that balance right, or whether,  Kate: No, we haven't got it right and I, but I don't know what the balance is because I think there's a real, I think that a lot of programmes that are made about natural history now have become so glossy and so beautiful and and so almost otherworldly that they don't actually reflect the reality of the natural world. And a lot of them again show the natural world without the context of people. And of course, that's sort of how we want to see it, we don't want people muddying those pictures. We don't want, as you say, the kind of the awful stories of the litter and the, you know, the the, the, the negative impact that human have humans have had on the natural environment. So we kind of don't want to see it, but equally if we don't see it, we don't engage with it and we kind of can watch one of those documentaries and even if David Attenborough is telling you that, you know, this is a habitat that's in peril or this is the last animal of its type that you will ever see, you don't really take that in because you're looking at these really stunning pictures and you think it's kind of OK. But I don't know what the answer is because I also know that as you say, if all you peddle is hopelessness and helplessness, no one's going to engage, they're going to stick their heads in the sand and just hope that it all goes away and pass it on to the next generation. So somehow we as communicators need to find a way that really does cut through. That really does make people feel, genuinely feel part of the natural world, that it isn't just another thing. I had the great joy of interviewing Tim Peake not that long ago, and I was interviewing him for a book that I'm writing about the concept of home. And I thought he would have, of anybody, a really unique idea of home having not just left home but left the planet. And he told me that he did a spacewalk, he was out in space for over four hours, and he said the blackness is like a blackness you cannot imagine. But he said, you know, you see Mars and Jupiter and Venus and you see Earth. And he said, when you're there, amongst the planets in that way you see that Earth is, as far as anyone's experience, and any telescope has been able to tell us, unique. You look at it and he said there it is, this colour, this blue and green planet, whereas everything else is, you know silver and and ghostly, ours is a living planet and he said he had this, he had this sort of feeling when he was there looking at Earth and imagining somebody, some other being coming up and tapping him on the shoulder and saying hey, hi,  who are you? I'm Tim. And he'd say oh hello so where are you from then? And Tim said I felt this enormous swell of pride to be able to point to our planet and say I'm from that planet there. I'm from Earth. I'm an earthling and I thought if all of us had that experience, could understand what it was like, how special our planet is in a universe that is infinite as far as we know and that we have, we have no idea what's out there, but what we do know at the moment is that our planet is unique and I think we would treasure it that much more and have moments like this of just standing amongst the trees and midges coming out, the drizzle, the mud and go, this is our home, this is where we live. It's really special. Aren't we lucky?  Adam: You're taking me uphill again aren't you.  Kate: I am taking uphill, but you've done the worst bit and you and and actually you marched. I was impressed!  Adam: Oh OK good. You know I'll fall apart after, I'm just doing it so I don't embarrass myself too badly.  Kate: *laughs* I'm afraid it is going to get very, very muddy, so you're going to have wet socks, mud up to your knees, you know, that's why I spend six months of the year in wellies.  Adam: Right OK. But you know, that is the privilege of being an earthling, isn't it?   Kate: It is it is.  Adam: So you've been you've got involved with the Woodland Trust.  Kate: I've been involved with the Woodland Trust for quite a long time, but it really started when we took on a farm near here.  Adam: What's this an arable farm?  Kate: No, it was a small council farm. It belonged to the council and people are not really aware that there are such a thing.   Adam: I've never heard this one.  Kate: No, but there used to be about 16,000 council farms throughout Britain and they were set up as part of the 1906 Smallholdings and Allotments Act and they were there, low rent, small areas, usually 30, 40 acres that sort of size and they would be available to rent for farmers who for whatever reason, didn't have a farm of their own. And over the years, as farming practices have changed as economic models have driven farmers to need to to produce things on a bigger scale, small farms have been basically relegated to either hobby farms or they've been broken up and sold to land that's been added to bigger farms. So we've lost an enormous number of these small farms and with them an enormous opportunity for people with farming skills to stay on the land and produce as food. And that's what was going to happen to this farm. And for whatever reason, I just felt this was not the thing to do and to cut a very, very, very long story short, we ended up taking over the farm and setting up a rural skills centre o prove that a small farm, ours is just over 100 acres, could still be viable. It supports itself and that's really important. But one of the things that we wanted to do, we were really interested to do when we took it over was to add more trees. It's it's got some wonderful ancient trees. There's an oak tree on the farm that we call Old Man Oak, as did the tenants before us. They introduced us to him and we think he's about 600 years old. And but we wanted to plant more trees. But we had this conundrum of how do we increase the tree cover on the farm without taking away the pasture because obviously we needed the pasture for the livestock and it was the Woodland Trust that helped us with that conundrum. So they looked, together we walked round the farm and we identified either areas where there were small copses or where there was a bit of a hedge. So what we did with the Woodland Trust's advice and input was to put in trees as shelter breaks, so not actually impinging on the pasture, just or very much, but adding a kind of a thicker bit of hedge if you like, or making a copse a little bit bigger and in that way we've planted over 1,000 trees on the farm in the last decade that we've had it. And then at home we have a four acre small holding and and so at the beginning of last year I started thinking maybe it's an age thing, you start thinking about legacy and when you when you take over a piece of land, what you start to understand actually very quickly is that you will never own it, that you are simply the caretaker of it for the time that you are around. And I think we've got cleverer now. Our knowledge has become greater. We understand that just planting trees isn't the answer. We need to think about we need to think of landscape as a mosaic and so what we wanted to do was to create a little mosaic. Plant trees, create water or make a space for water, make sure that there was going to be areas that had glade that was good for insects, that was good for wild flowers. And so I talked to the Woodland Trust and said, are you going to be into this idea, because it's not just planting trees and they went, that's exactly what we're into. That's exactly what we want to do. We want to create habitat. It's not about blanketing a landscape with trees. It's about planting the right trees in the right places at the right density to create something that you know, in a generation's time will have real lasting value, and that's what's been so wonderful about working with, you know, an organisation like that that sees big picture, sees longevity as as an advantage rather than as a disadvantage. And and that's what's been so lovely is that, you know, I can go to them and say so I've got this plan. I mean, I'm not even going to be alive to see it kind of come to fruition but do you care? And they went, we don't care, do you care? No. Let's do it. And that's wonderful.  Adam: Wonderful. OK sorry, this is a bit, this is the bit where I'm going ohh well, I'm swimming effectively swimming now.  Kate: Sorry. This is a very wet bit.  Adam: Hold on a second. OK. Right. That's a very Norman Wisdom walk I seem to have. OK. Yeah. OK, so ohh sorry, hold on.  Kate: It gets, that's the that's the wettest bit now, now we're now we're more or less home and dry.  Adam: Oh well you know what we we might be home, but we are not dry. That would be inaccurate at this point. So well, that's a neat story to bring us back to home with isn't it. So you know things are looking good. It's all hopeful. A a long journey and a long one ahead, you know, not just for you, but for that natural world you're creating.  Kate: Well, I hope that you know the the I I think going back to to what you said about how we can, we can help us all feel that we are actually, you know part and parcel of the natural world rather than observers of it or visitors of it and things like planting trees or being aware of the seasonal joys of the bluebells coming through, or, you know the leaf fall in the autumn and the colour, all those things if if i you know if we can build that awareness that brings with it huge joy and reward, then maybe we'll start to cut through again and people will start to feel more like the natural world is their world and not just another part of the planet that they live on.  Adam: Well having arrived back at Kate's home, let me just say there are lots more woodland walk podcasts for you to enjoy wherever you get your podcasts from. And indeed, if you want to find an actual wood near you well, you can go to the Woodland Trust website www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/findawood. Until next time, happy wandering.  Thank you for listening to the Woodland Trust Woodland Walks with Adam Shaw. Join us next month, when Adam will be taking another walk in the company of Woodland Trust staff, partners and volunteers. Don't forget to subscribe to the series on iTunes or wherever you're listening to us and do give us a review and a rating. And why not send us a recording of your favourite woodland walk to be included in a future podcast? Keep it to a maximum of five minutes and please tell us what makes your woodland walk special or send us an e-mail with details of your favourite walk and what makes it special to you. Send any audio files to podcast@woodlandtrust.org.uk. We look forward to hearing from you. 

Meet Kate Bruns:She is a lifelong writer, who spent 20 years working in the higher education communications world. She was living in Des Moines, Iowa when her husband took a new job and the family moved to Neenah Wisconsin in January 2020. After a short time as a very reluctant pandemic homeschool teacher dabbling in freelance marketing communications work, she jumped at the opportunity to embrace her first love, magazines. So she became a writer-editor at insight publications, a regional business magazine serving Northeast Wisconsin. Today, her primary responsibility is editing the BI monthly magazine insight on manufacturing. Lori: In this digital age, is there still room for long-form print magazines and what are you hearing from your readers about that?Kate: So inside our manufacturing has been around for 15 years. We serve 18 counties of Northeast Wisconsin covering manufacturing. And yes, over those 15 years, the internet has exploded. It's gotten noisier digital communications are definitely the thing. But over that amount of time, the appeal of a tangible print product has actually sort of come back in some ways. Our audience is pretty broad-ranging in terms of age. But obviously, some of the folks who've been around a little bit longer are still pretty big fans of holding something in their hands and reading it kind of really diving into a topic, which is what we do at Insight. So, you know, yes, there is still room for print publications to advertisers like it. But we are evolving, just like every other business into doing more digital and insight. But really our flagship, our heart, and soul is still in that print world with the glossy photography in the color and the tangible magazine that people can sit down and have their coffee and read on a Sunday morning or whatever.Lori: Was it intimidating jumping into this new job setting of manufacturing?Kate: It definitely was intimidating. I mean, I had my father was an engineer. And until I was probably 12 years old, I thought he drove a train. I love it. So I was like, Oh, my God, he makes tractors, I don't really know what else is involved in that. So you know, growing up, it was not something even though he was in the space, I didn't really understand all the nuances of manufacturing. And then when I went to journalism school, I was very focused on sports media and the human interest type of journalism. So yeah, when I'm offered this job to be editor of IOM, I'm thinking oh, my gosh, I'm not a thought leader on manufacturing, I'm going to ask stupid questions. But you know, like I said, it really doesn't matter. If you have that expertise yourself. I'm looking for the experts. I'm not I don't have to be the expert, I have to make what they say sounds good. And, and helpful in connecting people. So it's really been really pretty awesome to learn so much about manufacturing in the process of having this job. And I'm just so inspired and sort of awed by this concept of making, right? You know, this area of Wisconsin has one of the largest concentrations in the country, for manufacturing, and you don't see that everywhere. And you kind of take for granted that people are actually making things here. And it's really, really cool.Kris: What have you grown to love or appreciate about manufacturing since you started there?Kate: There are so many stories to tell. And the community is actually really collaborative. I think in my brain, I thought, you know, these are competitive, proprietary enterprises that don't want to talk about their problems or share their secrets. And in some respects, that's definitely true. But the competition is global. For most of these manufacturers in Northeast Wisconsin, the collaboration ends up, you know, being pretty localized. And we're just so much stronger, versus a region in Northeast...

This week, we look at a few of the macro trends shaping both the labor market today and the future of work — such as the Great Resignation and collective bargaining — and examine how tech-driven business has both brought them about and potentially given workers more freedom and leverage. We also consider what all of that means for you if you're the one tasked with managing workers or leading a workplace forward, as well as what these trends might mean overall for humanity. Guests this week include Giselle Mota, Christopher Mims, Dr. Rumman Chowdhury, Dorothea Baur, John C. Havens, and Vanessa Mason. The Tech Humanist Show is a multi-media-format program exploring how data and technology shape the human experience. Hosted by Kate O'Neill. To watch full interviews with past and future guests, or for updates on what Kate O'Neill is doing next, subscribe to The Tech Humanist Show hosted by Kate O'Neill channel on YouTube. Full Transcript: Kate: The global workforce is experiencing an unprecedented level of change. The Great Resignation may look like a direct result of the COVID Pandemic, but the drivers behind this large-scale trend come from deep-rooted and centuries-old issues in employer-employee dynamics that have been amplified by evolving technology. So in this episode, we're exploring the lessons we've learned from the technologization — the impact of technology on work, as well as how the changing work landscape is pushing people to crave and demand more agency over our work and our lives. I recently had the opportunity to speak with Giselle Mota, Principal Consultant on the Future of Work at ADP, who offered some insight into the emotional human factor behind these changes. Giselle: “I think it's more about us realizing that work is not all that we are. Some people have left their very high-paying roles because they had stress about it, or because they need to be at home caregiving, or now they have issues with their own healthcare or mental health that came up, and they're prioritizing self over this idea of ‘I live to work I live to work I live to work,' right? The value system of humanity globally has shifted a lot, and people have been reassessing, ‘how do I want to spend my time?' ‘How do I want to live my life?' Work should not be driving all of that, our lives should be driving work experience. The ability to think about choosing when you're gonna work, ability to work from different places, how long is my work week, can I come in and out of my shifts throughout the day, can I work on projects, can I destructure and break down what work is and work at it my way? I think that's what we've been seeing.” Kate: Before we can fully understand why this is happening, we have to look at where we are and how we got here. Trends like the Great Resignation follow many years of jobs being automated or shipped overseas. Fewer people are needed to fill the remaining roles, so demand for workers in certain markets is disappearing, while in other markets, the supply of workers for a given job is so high that people aren't paid a living wage. With the rise of the ‘gig economy,' it's becoming less clear what level of education is needed to attain a well-paying job that will still be around in 5 years. Not that this is an entirely new phenomenon. Since at least the dawn of the industrial era, automation caused certain jobs to go out of favor while other jobs sprang up to fill the void. In the 21st century, with the advent of the Internet, algorithms, and ‘big data,' this cycle has been significantly accelerated. More jobs have been “optimized” by technology to prioritize maximum efficiency over human well-being, which is part of what's causing—as I talked about in our last episode—a global mental health crisis. And while the overview sounds bad, there is good news. As long as we can stay open-minded to change, we can work together to design solutions that work for everyone. And if we can do that, the future of work has the potential to be much brighter than the realities of today. To get there, we have to ask ourselves, what assumptions were made in the past to create the modern work environment, and which of those no longer serve us? Rahaf: “If we're gonna move to a more humane productivity mindset, we have to have some uncomfortable conversations about the role of work in our lives, the link between our identity and our jobs and our self-worth, our need for validation with social media and professional recognition, our egos…” Kate: That's Rahaf Harfoush, a Strategist, Digital Anthropologist, and Best-Selling Author who focuses on the intersections between emerging technology, innovation, and digital culture. You may have heard the extended version of this quote in our last episode, but her insight into how questioning our assumptions about work is playing into the changing work landscape felt equally relevant here. Rahaf: “We really have to talk about, ‘growing up, what did your parents teach you about work ethic?' how is that related to how you see yourself? Who are the people that you admire? You can start testing your relationship with work, and you start to see that we have built a relationship with work psychologically where we feel like if we don't work hard enough, we're not deserving. We don't ever stop and say, ‘does this belief actually allow me to produce my best possible work, or is it just pushing me to a point where I'm exhausted and burnt out?” Kate: Outside of our own personal assumptions about our relationship with work, there's also the relationship businesses and technology have with us as consumers, and how their assumptions about what we want are equally problematic. John: “I've read a lot of media, where there's a lot of assumptions that I would call, if not arrogant, certainly dismissive, if not wildly rude… You'll read an article that's like, ‘This machine does X, it shovels! Because no one wants to shovel for a living'!” Kate: That's John C. Havens, Executive Director of the IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems. Here he's talking about the current belief held by a lot of the people creating modern technologies that everything can be automated, no matter the cost. John: “We've all done jobs that, elements of it you really don't like and wish could be automated, but usually that's because you do the job long enough to realize, this part of my job I wish could be automated. I've done a lot of, y'know, camp counseling jobs for the summer where I was outside, y'know I was doing physical labor… it was awesome! That said, you know, I was like, ‘this is great for what it was, I kind of don't want to do this for my whole life.' Yeah, a lot of people would not be like, ‘give me 40 years of shoveling!' But the other thing there that I really get upset about when I read some of those articles is what if, whatever the job is, insert job X, is how someone makes their living? Then it's not just a value judgment of the nature of the labor itself, but is saying, from the economic side of it, it's justified to automate anything that can be automated, because someone can make money from it outside of what that person does to make money for them and their family. We have to have a discussion about, y'know, which jobs might go away. Why is that not brought up? It's because there's the assumption, at all times, that the main indicator of success is exponential growth. And a lot of my work is to say, I don't think that's true.” In many ways, our society has failed to question the assumption ‘if something can be automated, automate it.' But as the great Ian Malcolm said in Jurassic Park, “your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.” While automation of jobs is frequently thought of in a manufacturing context, more and more we're seeing automating creep into other areas as well, like decision-making and workplace management. The same factories where machines are replacing physical human labor have now been optimized to replace human thought labor and managers as well. Christopher Mims, tech columnist at the Wall Street Journal and author of Arriving Today, on how everything gets from the factory to our front door, calls this phenomenon “Bezosism.” Christopher: “Bezosism, it's like the modern-day version of Taylorism or Fordism… the bottom line is, this is how you optimize the repetitive work that people do. This isn't just Amazon, Amazon is just the tip of the sphere. Amazon is the best at doing this, but every other company that can is trying to do the same thing: make workers more productive by managing them with software and algorithms, kind of whatever the consequence is. Emily Gindelsberger talks about how, whether it's an Amazon warehouse, or any fast-food restaurant you can name, or a call center… all of these places are now managed by algorithm, and the workers are monitored by software. Instead of a boss telling them to work faster, it's the software cracking the whip and being like, ‘you're not working fast enough, you need to pick packages faster' in this Amazon warehouse, or ‘you need to flip burgers faster' if you work at a McDonald's. But this is becoming the dominant way that work is organized if you don't have a college degree, if you're an hourly worker. You know, the whole phenomenon of the gig economy, the rise of part-time work, subcontracting, the so-called ‘fissured workplace'—all of that is, as one person put it, do you work above the API, like, are you a knowledge worker who's creating these systems? Or do you work below the API, where, what's organizing your work and your life—it's a piece of software! I mean, it's designed by humans, but your boss is an algorithm. And that is becoming, other than wealth and income inequality, one of the defining characteristics of, almost a neo-feudalism, ‘cause it's like, ‘hey! we've figured out how to organize labor at scale, and extract the most from people and make them work as efficiently as possible… we'll just let the software do it!'” Kate: The acceleration of this style of management is a big part of the driver pushing people to question our assumptions about work and begin to demand more agency. If you've been following my work for a while, you've heard me say, “the economy is people”, and that means we can't talk about the future of work without talking about the future of the worker. The idea that people, especially those doing what is considered ‘unskilled' labor, have little agency over how they work isn't new. AI may have exacerbated the issue, but the problem goes back as far as labor itself. Labor unions arose in the early 19th century in an attempt to level the playing field and allow workers to express their needs and concerns, but as we've seen with the recent Starbucks and Amazon unionization stories, the battle for human rights and agency in the workplace is far from decided. And it isn't just factories and assembly lines—it's happening in every industry. In the tech industry, there's a subset of people known as “Ghost Workers,” a term created by anthropologist Mary L. Gray and computer scientist Siddharth Suri to describe the usually underpaid and unseen workers doing contract work or content moderation. They frequently work alone, don't interact with one another, and often aren't even aware who they're working for, so the idea of collective bargaining feels farther out of reach. Dorothea Baur, a leading expert & advisor in Europe on ethics, responsibility, and sustainability across industries such as finance, technology, and beyond, explains some of the human rights issues at play in this phenomenon. Dorothea: “If you look at heavily industrialized contexts or like, heavy manufacturing, or like, textile industry, the rights we talk about first are like the human rights of labor, health and safety, etc. But I mean, trade unions have come out of fashion awhile ago, a lot of companies don't really like to talk about trade unions anymore. So when we switch to AI you think, ‘oh, we're in the service industry, it's not labor intensive,' but the human factor is still there. Certainly not blue collar employees, at least not within the own operations of tech companies, and also maybe not as many white collar employees, in relation to their turnover as in other contexts, but there's a lot of people linked to tech companies or to AI, often invisible. We have those Ghost Workers, gig economy, or people doing low-payed work of tagging pictures to train algo—uh, data sets, etc., so there is a labor issue, a classical one, that's really a straightforward human rights case there.” Kate: Algorithms have worked their way into the systems that manage most of our industries, from factory workers to police to judges. It's more than just “work faster,” too. These algorithms are making decisions as important as where and how many police should be deployed, as well as whether bail should be set, and at what amount. The logical (but not necessarily inevitable) extreme of this way of thinking is that all decisions will be relegated to algorithms and machines. But if people with the ability to make decisions continue to give these types of decisions to machines, we continue to lose sight of the human in the equation. What little decision making power the workers had before is being taken away and given to AI; little by little, human agency is being stripped away. The question then becomes, what if an algorithm tells a worker to do something they think is wrong? Will they have the freedom to question the algorithm, or is the output absolute? Dr. Rumman Chowdhury, Director of the Machine Learning Ethics, Transparency, and Accountability team at Twitter, elaborates. Rumman: “So if we're talking about, for example, a recommendation system to help judges decide if certain prisoners should get bail or not get bail, what's really interesting is not just how this affects the prisoner, but also the role of the judge in sort of the structure of the judicial system, and whether or not they feel the need to be subject to the output of this model, whether they have the agency to say, ‘I disagree with this.' A judge is a position of high social standing, they're considered to be highly educated… if there's an algorithm and it's telling them something that they think is wrong, they may be in a better position to say, ‘I disagree, I'm not going to do this,' versus somebody who is let's say an employee, like a warehouse employee, at Amazon, or somebody who works in retail at a store where your job is not necessarily considered to be high prestige, and you may feel like your job is replaceable, or worse, you may get in trouble if you're not agreeing with the output of this model. So, thinking about this system that surrounds these models that could actually be a sort of identically structured model, but because of the individual's place in society, they can or cannot take action on it.” Kate: The jury — if you'll pardon the expression — is still out on these questions, but we do know that in the past, worker agency was a key element in the success of our early systems. In fact, in the early days of creating the assembly line, human agency was fundamental to the success of those systems. Christopher Mims again. Christopher: “The Toyota production system was developed in a context of extreme worker agency, of complete loyalty between employer and employee, lifelong employment in Japan, and workers who had the ability to stop the assembly line the instant they noticed that something was not working, and were consulted on all changes to the way that they work. Honestly, most companies in the US cannot imagine functioning in this way, and they find it incredibly threatening to imagine their hourly workers operating this way, and that's why they all—even ‘employee-friendly' Starbucks—uses all these union busting measures, and Amazon loves them… because they just think, ‘oh, god, the worst thing in the world would be if our ‘lazy' employees have some say over how they work. It's nonsense, right? There's an entire continent called Europe where worker counsels dictate how innovations are incorporated. You know, that's how these things work in Germany, but we have just so destroyed the ability of workers to organize, to have any agency… Frankly, it is just disrespectful, it's this idea that all this labor is “unskilled,” that what you learn in this jobs has no real value… I think companies, they're just in this short term quarter-to-quarter mentality, and they're not thinking like, ‘how are we building a legacy? How do we retain employees, and how do we make productivity compatible with their thriving and happiness?' They all give lip service to this, but if you push as hard as Starbucks for instance against a labor union, honestly you're just lying.” Kate: Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, Unions were an imperfect but necessary solution to ensuring workers had access to rights, freedoms, and safety in certain workplaces. According to a 2020 report from the Economic Policy Institute, Unionized workers earn on average 11.2% more in wages than nonunionized peers, and Black and Hispanic workers get an even larger boost from unionization. However, it looks like the changing nature of work is changing unionization as well. Unlike the Great Depression, which expanded the reach of labor unions, the Great Recession may have ushered in a period of de-unionization in the public sector. From the 1970s to today, the percentage of U.S. workers in a union has fallen from 25 to just 11.7 percent. In a piece of good news for Amazon employees in New York, they successfully voted for a union in their workplace on April 4th of this year, marking the first victory in a years-long battle for Amazon employee rights and agency. Looking forward, it's hard to say whether unions will be the best solution to worker woes. As more jobs become automated and fewer humans are needed in the workplace, there may be a time when there are only a few employees in a given department, which makes it harder to organize and empower collective bargaining. At the same time, being the only person working in your department may in fact give you more power to influence decisions in your workplace, as Christopher Mims explains. Christopher: “If you reduce the number of humans that work in a facility, it's like a tautology—the ones that remain are more important! Because in the old days, you could hire thousands of longshoreman to unload a ship, if one of them didn't show up, like, who cares? But if you're talking about a professional, today, longshoreman who's making in excess of 6 figures, has these incredibly specialized skills, knows how to operate a crane that can lift an 80,000 lb. shipping container off of a building-size ship, and safely put it on the back of a truck without killing anybody—that person doesn't show up to work, you just lost, y'know, a tenth of your productivity for that whole terminal that day. This is also an example of this tension between, like, it's great that these are good-paying blue-collar jobs, there aren't that many left in America, however, their negotiating power is also why the automation of ports has really been slowed. So that is a real genuine tension that has to be resolved.” Kate: So far in this episode, we've talked a lot about factory workers and the types of jobs that frequently unionize, but the future of work encompasses everyone on the work ladder. In the past, all of the problems regarding lack of worker agency has applied to ‘white collar' jobs as well. The modern office workplace evolved in tandem with factories, and the assumptions about how work should be organized are just as present there. Vanessa: “Our work environments, with who was involved with it and how they were constructed, is something that has been done over a long period of time. And the people who have been involved in that who are not White men, who are not sort of property owners, who are not otherwise wealthy, is a really short timeline.” Kate: That's Vanessa Mason, research director for the Institute for the Future's Vantage Partnership. Here she's explaining how workplace culture evolved from a factory mindset—and mostly by the mindset of a particular subgroup of people. Offices may feel like very different places from factories, but when you look at the big picture, the organizational structures are guided by many of the same ideas. Vanessa: “I think that a lot of organizations and offices are fundamentally sort of command and control, kind of top-down hierarchies, unfortunately. You know, the sort of, ‘the manager does this! Accountability only goes one direction! There's a low level of autonomy depending on what level you are in the chart!' All of those treat humans like widgets. I think that we have to keep in mind that history and that experience, like I still bring that experience into the workplace—basically, I'm in a workplace that was not designed for me, it's not meant for me to succeed, it's not meant for me to even feel as socially safe and as comfortable. There's a lot of research about psychological safety in teams. Like, our teams are not meant to be psychologically safe, they're set up to basically be office factories for us to sort of churn out whatever it is that we're doing in an increasingly efficient manner, productivity is off the charts, and then you receive a paycheck for said efforts. And it's only right now (especially in the pandemic) that people are sort of realizing that organizational culture 1) is created, and 2) that there's an organizational that people didn't realize that they were kind of unintentionally creating. And then 3) if you want your organizational culture to be something other than what it is, you need to collectively decide, and then implement that culture. All of those steps require a sort of precondition of vulnerability and curiosity which people are really frightened to do, and they're trying to escape the sort of harder longer work of negotiating for that to occur.” Kate: And that's what's needed from our managers and leaders as we navigate to a brighter future of work: vulnerability and curiosity. The vulnerability to admit that things could be better, and the curiosity to explore new ways of structuring work to allow more room for agency and decision-making to bring out the best in everyone. If the idea of a union sounds scary or expensive, perhaps there are other ways to allow employees the have more agency over how they work. A world in flux means there's still room to test new solutions. Lately, one of the changes business leaders have tried to make to their organizations is to bring in more diversity of workers. Women, people of color, neurodivergent minds, and people with disabilities have all been given more opportunities than they have in the past, but as Giselle Mota explains, just bringing those people into the workplace isn't enough. Giselle: “I read a study recently that was talking about, even though a lot of diverse people have been hired and promoted into leadership roles, they're leaving anyway. They don't stick around an organization. Why is that? Because no matter what the pay was, no matter what the opportunity was, some of them are realizing, this was maybe just an effort to check off a box, but the culture doesn't exist here where I truly belong, where I'm truly heard, where I want to bring something to the forefront and something's really being done about it. And again it has nothing to do with technology or innovation, we have to go back to very human, basic elements. Create that culture first, let people see that they have a voice, that what they say matters, it helps influence the direction of the company, and then from there you can do all these neat things.” Kate: If you're managing a workplace that has functioned one way for a long time, it may not be intuitive to change it to a model that is more worker agency-driven. How can you change something you may not even be aware exists? Vanessa Mason has a few tips for employers on what they can do to help bring about a new workplace culture. Vanessa: “And so what you can do, is really fundamentally listening! So, more spaces at all hands for employees to share what their experience has been, more experience to share what it is like to try to get to know co-workers. You know, anything that really just surfaces people's opinions and experiences and allows themselves to be heard—by everyone, I would say, also, too. Not just have one team do that and then the senior leadership just isn't involved in that at all. The second thing is to have some kind of spaces for shared imagination. Like all the sort of popular team retreats that are out there, but you certainly could do this asynchronously, at an event, as part of a celebration. Celebrating things like, y'know, someone has had a child, someone's gotten married, someone's bought a house—all of those things are sort of core to recognizing the pace and experience of being human in this world that aren't just about work and productivity. And then some way of communicating how you're going to act upon what you're hearing and what people are imagining, too. There's a bias towards inaction in most organizations, so that's something that certainly senior leadership should talk about: ‘How do we think about making changes, knowing that we're going to surface some changes from this process?' Being transparent, being accountable… all of those sort of pieces that go along with good change management.” Kate: A 2021 paper in the Journal of Management echoes these ideas, stating that communication between employers and their workers need to be authentic, ongoing, and two-directional, meaning that on top of listening to employee concerns, managers also needed to effectively communicate their understanding of those concerns as well as what they intended to do about them. A professional services firm analyzing a company's internal messaging metadata was able to predict highly successful managers by finding people who communicated often, responded quickly, and were action-oriented. Of course another thing many workplaces have been trying, especially in the wake of the COVID pandemic, is allowing employees to work remotely. Giselle Mota again. Giselle: “I think all we're seeing is we're just reimagining work, the worker, and workplace. Now that the pandemic happened, we learned from like Zoom, ‘wait a minute, I can actually work remotely, and still learn and produce and be productive, on a video!' But now, we can add layers of experience to it, and if you so choose to, you can now work in a virtual environment… people are flattening out the playing field. Companies that used to be die-hard ‘you have to work here in our office, you have to be here located right next door to our vicinity,' now they've opened it up and they're getting talent from across the pond, across the globe, from wherever! And it's creating new opportunities for people to get into new roles.” Kate: Although COVID and Zoom accelerated a lot of things, the idea of people working from home instead of the office isn't actually a new one. AT&T experimented with employees working from home back in 1994, exploring how far an organization could transform the workplace by moving the work to the worker instead of the other way around. Ultimately, they freed up around $550M in cash flow by eliminating no longer needed office space. AT&T also reported increases in worker productivity, ability to retain talent, and the ability to avoid sanctions like zoning rules while also meeting Clear Air Act requirements. As remote work on a massive scale is a relatively new phenomenon, the research is still ongoing as to how this will affect long-term work processes and human happiness. It is notable that working remotely is far less likely to be an option the farther you drop down the income ladder. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 9.2% of workers in the bottom quartile of wage-earners have the ability to work remotely. The availability also varies depending on the job you're doing, with education, healthcare, hospitality, agriculture, retail, and transportation among the least-able to work remotely, and finance and knowledge workers among the most-able. Because we aren't entirely sure whether remote work is the best long-term solution, it's worth looking at other ways to attract high-value workers—and keep them around. One idea? Invest in career planning. Technology is making it easier than ever for employers to work with their employees to plan for a future within the company. AI has made it possible to forecast roles that the company will need in the future, so rather than scramble to fill that role when the time comes, employers can work with a current or prospective employee to help prepare them for the job. In my conversation with Giselle Mota, she explored this idea further. Giselle: “A lot of companies are now able to start applying analytics and forecast and plan, ‘okay, if this is a role for the future, maybe it doesn't exist today, and maybe this person doesn't yet have all the qualifications for this other role. But, they expressed to us an interest in this area, they expressed certain qualifications that they do have today, and now AI can help, and data can help to match and help a human, you know, talent acquisition person, career developer, or manager, to help guide that user to say, ‘this is where you are today, this is where you want to be, so let's map out a career plan to help you get to where you should be'.” Kate: She went on to explain that employers don't need to think about jobs so rigidly, and rather than looking for one perfect person to fill a role, you can spread the tasks around to help prepare for the future. Giselle: “I was talking to someone the other day who was saying, ‘y'know, we have trouble finding diverse leadership within our organization and bringing them up,' and I was talking to them and saying, ‘break down a job! Let people be able to work on projects to be able to build up their skillset. Maybe they don't have what it takes today, fully, on paper to be what you might be looking for, but maybe you can give them exposure to that, and help them from the inside of your organization to take on those roles.” Kate: All of these changes to work and the workplace mean that a lot of office workers can demand more from their jobs. Rather than settle for something nearby with a rigid schedule, people can choose a job that fits their lifestyle. As more of these jobs are automated, we are hopefully heading for an age where people who were relegated to the so-called “unskilled” jobs will be able to find careers that work for them. Because it is more than the workplace that is changing, it's also the work itself. I asked Giselle what types of jobs we might see in the future, and she had this to say. Giselle: “As we continue to explore the workplace, the worker, and the work that's being done, as digital transformation keeps occurring, we keep forming new roles. But we also see a resurgence and reemergence of certain roles taking more importance than even before. For example, leadership development is on the rise more than ever. Why? Because if you look at the last few years and the way that people have been leaving their workplaces, and going to others and jumping ship, there's a need for leaders to lead well. Officers of diversity have been created in organizations that never had it before because the way the world was going, people had to start opening up roles like that when they didn't even have a department before. As we move into more virtual experiences, we need creators. We're seeing organizations, big technology organizations, people who enable virtual and video interactions are creating layers of experience that need those same designers and that same talent—gamers and all types of creators—to now come into their spaces to help them start shaping the future of what their next technology offerings are gonna look like. Before, if you used to be into photography or graphic design or gaming or whatever, now there's space for you in these organizations that probably specialize in human capital management, social management… To give you a quick example, Subway! Subway opened up a virtual space and they allowed an employee to man a virtual store, so you could go virtually, into a Subway, order a subway sandwich down the line like you're there in person, and there's someone that's actually manning that. That's a job. And apart from all of that side of the world, we need people to manage, we need legal counsel, we need people who work on AI and ethics and governance—data scientists on the rise, roles that are about data analytics… When Postmates came out and they were delivering to people's homes or wherever it was, college campuses, etc., with a robot, the person who was making sure that robot didn't get hijacked, vandalized, or whatever the case is—it was a human person, a gamer, it was a young kid working from their apartment somewhere, they could virtually navigate that robot so that if it flipped over on its side or whatever, it would take manual control over it, set it right back up, and find it and do whatever it needed to do. So that's an actual role that was created.” Kate: While many people fear that as jobs disappear, people will have to survive without work — or rather, without the jobs that provide them with a livelihood, an income, a team to work with, and a sense of contribution — the more comforting truth is that we've always found jobs to replace the ones that went out of fashion. When cars were invented, the horse-and-buggy business became far less profitable, but those workers found something else to do. We shouldn't be glib or dismissive about the need individual workers will have for help in making career transitions, but in the big picture, humans are adaptable, and that isn't something that looks like it will be changing any time soon. Giselle: “Where we're seeing the direction of work going right now, people want to have more agency over how they work, where they work, themselves, etc. I think people want to own how they show up in the world, people want to own more of their financial abilities, they want to keep more of their pay… If you just wade through all of the buzzwords that are coming out lately, people want to imagine a different world of work. The future of work should be a place where people are encouraged to bring their true full selves to the table, and that they're heard. I think we've had way too much of a focus on customer experience because we're trying to drive profitability and revenue, but internally, behind the scenes, that's another story that we really need to work on.” Kate: The more aware we are of the way things are changing, the better able we are to prepare for the future we want. Even in the face of automation and constantly-evolving technologies, humans are adaptable. One thing that won't be changing any time soon? Workers aren't going to stop craving agency over their jobs and their lives, and employers aren't going to stop needing to hire talented and high-value employees to help their businesses thrive. Hopefully you've heard a few ideas in this episode of ways to lean into the change and make your business, or your life, a little bit better. Even more hopeful is the possibility that, after so much disruption and uncertainty, we may be entering a moment where more people at every stage of employment feel more empowered about their work: freer to express their whole selves in the workplace, and able to do work that is about more than paying the bills. That's a trend worth working toward. Thank you so much for joining me this week on The Tech Humanist Show. In our next episode, I'm talking about why it behooves businesses to focusing on the human experience of buying their product or service, rather than the customer experience. I'll see you then.

About KateKate Holterhoff, an industry analyst with RedMonk, has a background in frontend engineering, academic research, and technical communication. Kate comes to RedMonk from the digital marketing sector and brings with her expertise in frontend engineering, QA, accessibility, and scrum best practices.Before pursuing a career in the tech industry Kate taught writing and communication courses at several East Coast universities. She earned a PhD from Carnegie Mellon in 2016 and was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship (2016-2018) at Georgia Tech, where she is currently an affiliated researcher.Links: RedMonk: https://redmonk.com/ Visual Haggard: https://visualhaggard.org Twitter: https://twitter.com/kateholterhoff TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Couchbase Capella Database-as-a-Service is flexible, full-featured, and fully managed with built-in access via key-value, SQL, and full-text search. Flexible JSON documents aligned to your applications and workloads. Build faster with blazing fast in-memory performance and automated replication and scaling while reducing cost. Capella has the best price-performance of any fully managed document database. Visit couchbase.com/screaminginthecloud to try Capella today for free and be up and running in three minutes with no credit card required. Couchbase Capella: Make your data sing.Corey: This episode is sponsored by our friends at Revelo. Revelo is the Spanish word of the day, and its spelled R-E-V-E-L-O. It means, “I reveal.” Now, have you tried to hire an engineer lately? I assure you it is significantly harder than it sounds. One of the things that Revelo has recognized is something I've been talking about for a while, specifically that while talent is evenly distributed, opportunity is absolutely not. They're exposing a new talent pool to, basically, those of us without a presence in Latin America via their platform. It's the largest tech talent marketplace in Latin America with over a million engineers in their network, which includes—but isn't limited to—talent in Mexico, Costa Rica, Brazil, and Argentina. Now, not only do they wind up spreading all of their talent on English ability, as well as you know, their engineering skills, but they go significantly beyond that. Some of the folks on their platform are hands down the most talented engineers that I've ever spoken to. Let's also not forget that Latin America has high time zone overlap with what we have here in the United States, so you can hire full-time remote engineers who share most of the workday as your team. It's an end-to-end talent service, so you can find and hire engineers in Central and South America without having to worry about, frankly, the colossal pain of cross-border payroll and benefits and compliance because Revelo handles all of it. If you're hiring engineers, check out revelo.io/screaming to get 20% off your first three months. That's R-E-V-E-L-O dot I-O slash screaming.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. Every once in a while on the Twitters, I see a glorious notification. Now, doesn't happen often, but when it does, I have all well, atwitter, if you'll pardon the term. They have brought someone new in over at RedMonk.RedMonk has been a longtime friend of the show. They're one of the only companies that can say that about and not immediately get a cease-and-desist for having said that. And their most recent hire is joining me today. Kate Holterhoff is a newly minted analyst over at RedMonk. Kate, thank you for joining me.Kate: It's great to be here.Corey: One of the things that's always interesting about RedMonk is how many different directions you folks seem to go in all at once. It seems that I keep crossing paths with you folks almost constantly: When I'm talking to clients, when I'm talking to folks in the industry. And it could easily be assumed that you folks are 20, 30, 40 people, but to my understanding, there are not quite that many of you there.Kate: That is very true. Yes. I am the fifth analyst on a team of seven. And yeah, brought on the first of the year, and I'm thrilled to be here. I actually, I would say, recruited by one of my friends at Georgia Tech, Kelly Fitzpatrick, who I taught technical communication with when we were both postdocs in their Brittain Fellowship program.Corey: So, you obviously came out of an academic background. Is this your first excursion to industry?Kate: No, actually. After getting my PhD in literary and cultural studies at Carnegie Mellon in 2016, I moved to Atlanta and took a postdoc at Georgia Tech. And after that was kind of winding down, I decided to make the jump to industry. So, my first position out of that was at a digital marketing agency in Atlanta. And I was a frontend engineer for several years.Towards the end of my tenure there, I moved into doing more of their production engineering and QA work. Although it was deeply tied to my frontend work, so we spent a lot of time looking at how the web sites look at different media queries, making sure that there were no odd break points. So, it certainly was an organic move there as their team expanded.Corey: You spent significant amounts of time in the academic landscape. When you start talking about, “Well, I took on a postdoc position,” that's usually the sign of not your first year on a college campus in most cases. I mean, again, with an eighth grade education, I'm not really the person to ask, but I sit here in awe as people who are steeped in academia wind up going about the magic that, from where I sit, they tend to do. What was it that made you decide that I really enjoy the field that I've gotten a doctorate in. You just recently published a book in that is—or at least tangentially related to this space.But you decide, “You know what I really want to do now? That's right, frontend engineering. I want to spend, more or less, 40-some-odd hours a week slowly going mad because CSS, and I can't quite get that thing to line up the way that I want it to.” Now, at least that's my experience with it, for folks who are, you know, competent at it, I presume that's a bit of a different story.Kate: Yes. I considered naming my blog at RedMonk, “How to Center a Div.” So yes, that is certainly an ongoing issue, I think, for anyone in [unintelligible 00:06:15] any, you know, practitioners. So, I guess my story probably began in 2013, the real move into technology. So, getting a PhD, of course, takes a very, very long time.So, I started at Carnegie Mellon in 2009, and in 2013, I started a digital archive called Visual Haggard. And it's a Ruby on Rails site; you can visit it at visualhaggard.org. And it is a digital archive of illustrations that were created to accompany a 19th century writer, H. Rider Haggard.And I became very interested in all the illustrations that had been created to accompany both the serialization of his fictions, but also the later novelizations. And it's kind of like how we have all these different movie adaptations of, like, Spider Man that come out every couple of years. These illustrations were just very iterative. And generally, this fellowship that I saw really only focused on, you know, the first illustrations that, you know, came out. So, this was a sort of response to that: How can we use technology to showcase all the different types of illustrations and how maybe different artists would interpret that literature differently?And so, that drove me into a discipline called the digital humanities, which really sort of, you know, focuses on that question, which is, you know, how to computers help us to understand the humanities better? And so, that incorporates not only the arts, but also literature, philosophy, you know, new media. But it's an extremely broad subject, and it's evolving, as you can imagine, as the things that technology can do expands. So, I became interested in this subject and really was drawn to the sort of archival aspects of this. Which wasn't really my training; I think that's something that, you know, you think of librarians as being more focused on, but I became acquainted with all these, you know, very obscure editions.But in any event, it also taught me how to [laugh] use technology, I really—I was involved in the [RDF 00:08:08] export for [laugh] incorporating the site on Nines, which is sort of a larger agglomeration of 19th century archives. And I was just really drawn to a lot of the new things that we could do. So, I began to use it more in my teaching. So, not only did I—and of course as I taught communication courses at Carnegie Mellon, and then I moved to teaching them at Georgia Tech, you can imagine I had many students who were engineers, and they were very interested in these sorts of questions as well. So, the move felt very organic to me, but I think any academic that you speak to, their identity is very tied up in their sort of, you know, academic standing.And so, the idea of jumping ship, of not being labeled an academic anymore is kind of terrifying. But I, you know, ultimately opted to do it. It certainly was, yeah, but you know, what [laugh] what I learned is that there's the status called an affiliated researcher. So, I didn't necessarily have to be a professor or someone on the tenure track in order to continue doing research.Corey: Was it hard for you?Kate: So, the book project, which is titled Illustration in Fin-de-Siècle Transatlantic Romance Fiction, and has a chapter devoted to H. Rider Haggard, I wrote it, while really not even being an instructor or sort of traditional academic. I had access to the library through this affiliated researcher status, which I maintained by keeping a relationship with the folks at Georgia Tech, and was able to do all my research while you know, having a job in industry. And I think what a lot of academics need to do is think about what it is about academia that they really value. Is it the teaching?Because in industry, we spend a lot of time teaching [laugh]. Sharing our knowledge is something that's extremely important. Is that the research? As an analyst, I get to do research all the time, which is really fun for me. And then, you know, is it really just kind of focusing on historical aspects? And that was also important to me.So, you know, this status allowed me to keep all the best parts of being an academic while kind of sloughing off the [laugh] parts that weren't so good, which is, um, say the fact that 80% of courses in the university are taught now by adjuncts or folks who are not on the tenure track line. Which is, you know, pretty shocking, you know. The academy is going through some… troubles right now, and hiring issues are—they need to be acknowledged, and I think folks who are considering getting a PhD need to look for other career paths beyond just through modeling it on their advisors, or, you know, in order to become, ostensibly, a professor themselves.Corey: I don't know if I've told the story before in public, but I briefly explored the possibility of getting a PhD myself, which is interesting given that I'd have to… there's some prerequisites I'd probably have to nail first, like, get a formal GED might be, like, step one, before proceeding on. And strangely enough for me, it was not the higher level, I guess, contribution to a body of knowledge in a particular direction. I mean, cloud economics being sort of an easy direction for me [laugh] to go in, given that I eat, sleep, live, and breathe it, but rather the academic rigor around so much of it. And the incentives feel very different, which to be clear, is a good thing. My entire career path has always been focused on not starving to death, and how do we turn this problem into money, whereas academia has always seemed to be focused on knowledge for the sake of knowledge without much, if any, thought toward the practical application slash monetization thereof? Is that a fair characterization from where you sit? I'm trying not to actively be insulting, but it's possible I may be unintentionally so.Kate: No, I think you're right on. And so yeah, like, the book that I published, I probably won't see any remuneration for that. There is very little—I'm actually [laugh] not even sure what the contract says, but I don't intend to make any money with this. Professors, even those who have reached the height of their career, unless they're, you know, on specific paths, don't make a lot of money, those in the humanities, especially. You don't do this to become wealthy.And the Visual Haggard archive, I don't—you know, everything is under a Creative Commons license. I don't make money from people, you know, finding images that they're looking for to reproduce, say, on a t-shirt or something. So yeah, I suspect you do it for the love. I always explained it as having a sort of existential anxiety of, like, trying to, you know, cheat death. I think it was Umberto Eco who said that in order to live forever, you have to have a child and a book.And at this point, I have two children and a book now, so I can just, you know, die and my, you know, [laugh] my legacy lives on. But I do feel like the reasons that folks go into upper higher education vary, and so I wouldn't want to speak for everyone. But for me, yeah, it is not a place to make money, it's a place to establish sort of more intangible benefits.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at ChaosSearch. You could run Elasticsearch or Elastic Cloud—or OpenSearch as they're calling it now—or a self-hosted ELK stack. But why? ChaosSearch gives you the same API you've come to know and tolerate, along with unlimited data retention and no data movement. Just throw your data into S3 and proceed from there as you would expect. This is great for IT operations folks, for app performance monitoring, cybersecurity. If you're using Elasticsearch, consider not running Elasticsearch. They're also available now in the AWS marketplace if you'd prefer not to go direct and have half of whatever you pay them count towards your EDB commitment. Discover what companies like Klarna, Equifax, Armor Security, and Blackboard already have. To learn more, visit chaossearch.io and tell them I sent you just so you can see them facepalm, yet again.Corey: I guess one of the weird things from where I sit is looking at the broad sweep of industry and what I know of RedMonks perspective, you mentioned that as a postdoc, you taught technical communication. Then you went to go to frontend engineering, which in many respects is about effectively, technically—highly technical and communicating with the end-user. And now you are an analyst at RedMonk. And seeing what I have seen of your organization in the larger ecosystem, teaching technical communication is a terrific descriptor of what it is you folks actually do. So, from a certain point of view, I would argue that you're still pursuing the path that you are on in some respects. Is that even slightly close to the way that you view things, or am I just more or less ineffectively grasping at straws, as I am wont to do?Kate: No, I feel like there is a continuous thread. So, even before I got my PhD, I got a—one of my bachelor's degrees was in art. So, I used to paint murals; I was very interested in public art. And so, it you know, it feels to me that there is this thread that goes from an interest in the arts and how the public can access them to, you know, doing web development that's focused on the visual aspects, you know, how are these things responsive? What is it that actually makes the DOM communicate in this visual way? You know, how are cascading style sheets,allowing us to do these sorts of marvelous things?You know, I could talk about my favorite, you know, selectors and things. [laugh]. Because I will defend CSS. I actually don't hate it, although we use SASS if it matters. But you know, that I think there's a lot to be said for the way that the web looks today rather than, you know, 20 years ago.So there, it feels very natural to me to have moved from an interest in illustration to trying to, you know, work in a more frontend way, but then ultimately [laugh] move from that into doing, sort of, QA, which is, like, well, let's take a look at how we're communicating visually and see if we can improve that to, you know, look for things that maybe aren't coming across as well as they could. Which really forced me to work in the interactive team more with the UI/UX folks who are, you know, obviously telling the designers where to put the buttons and, you know, how to structure the, you know, the text blocks in relationship to the images and things like that. So, it feels natural to me, although it might not seem so on the outside. You know, in the process, I really I guess, acquired a love of that entire area.And I think what's great about working at RedMonk now is that I get to see how these technologies are evolving. So, you know, I actually just spun up a site on [unintelligible 00:16:27] not long ago. And, I mean, it is so cool. I mean, you know, coming from a background where we were working with, you know, jQuery, [laugh] things have really evolved. You know, it's exciting. And I think we're seeing the, [like, as 00:16:39] the full stack approach to this.Corey: I used to volunteer for the jQuery infrastructure team and help run jquery.net, once upon a time.Kate: Ohh.Corey: I assume that is probably why it is no longer in vogue. Like, oh, Corey was too close to it got his stink all over the thing. Let's find something better immediately, which honestly, not the worst approach in the world to take.Kate: I'm so impressed. I had no idea.Corey: It was mostly—because again, I was bad at frontend; always have been, but I know how to make computers run—kind of—and on the backend side of things and the infrastructure piece of it. It's like I tend to—at least at the time—break the world into more or less three sets: You had the ops types, think of database admins and the rest; you had the backend engineers, people who wrote code that made things talk to each other from an API perspective, and you had frontend folks who took all of the nonsense and had this innovative idea that, “Huh, maybe a green screen glowing text terminal isn't the pinnacle of user experience that we might possibly think about, and start turning it into something that a human being can use.”And whatever I hear folks from one of those constituencies start talking disparagingly about the others, it's… yeah, go walk a mile in their shoes and then tell me how you feel. A couple years ago, I took a two week break to, all right, it's time for me to learn JavaScript. And by the end of the two weeks period, I was more confused than I was when I began. And it's just a very different way of thinking than I have become accustomed to working with. So, from where I sit, people who work on that stuff successfully are effectively just this side of wizards.I think that there's—I feel the same way about database types. That's an area I never go into either because I'm terrible at that, and the stakes over their company-killing proportions in a way that I took down a web server usually doesn't.Kate: Yeah, I think that's often the motto, well, at least at my last company, which was like, “It's just a website. No one will die.” [laugh].Corey: Honestly, I find that the people who have really have the best attitude about that tend to be, strangely enough, military veterans because it's, “The site is down. How are you so calm?” It's, “Well, no one's shooting at me and no one's going to die? It's fine.” Like, “We're all going to go home to our families tonight. It'll work out.” It having perspective is important.Kate: Yeah. It is interesting how the impetus—I mean, going back to your question about, you know, making money at this field, you know, how that kind of factors in, I guess, frontend does tend to have a more relaxed attitude than say, yeah, if you drop a table or something. But at the same time, you know, compared to academia, it did feel a little bit more [laugh] like, “Okay, well, this—you know, we've got the project manager that is breathing down our neck. They got to send them something, you know, what's going on here?” So, yeah, it does become a little bit more, I don't know, these things ramped up a little bit, and the importance, you know, varies by, you know, whatever part of it you're working on.It's interesting, as an analyst, I don't hear the terms backend and frontend as much, and that was really how my team was divided, you know? It was really, kind of, opaque when you walked in. Started the job, I was like, “Okay, well, is this something that the frontend should be dealing with or the backend? You know, what's going on?” And then, you know, ultimately, I was like, “Oh, no, I know exactly what this is.”And then anyone who came on later, I was like, “No, no, no. We talk to the backend folks for this sort of problem.” So, I don't know if that's also something that's falling out of vogue, but that was, you know, the backend handled all the DevOps aspects as well, and so, you know, anything with our virtual boxes and, you know, trying to get things running and, you know, access to our… yeah, the servers, you know, all of that was kind of handled by backend. But yeah, I worked with some really fantastic frontend, folks. They were just—I feel like they we could bet had been better categorized as full stack. And many of them have CS degrees and they chose to go into frontend. So, you know, it's a—I have no patience for, you know—Corey: Oh God, you mean you chose this instead of it being something that happened to you in a horrible accident one of these days?Kate: [laugh]. Exactly.Corey: And that's not restricted to frontend; that's working with computers, in my experience.Kate: [laugh].Corey: Like, oh, God, it's hard to remember I chose this at one point. Now, it feels almost like I'm not suited for anything else. You have a clear ability to effectively communicate technical concepts. If not, you more or less wasted most of your academic career, let's be very clear. Then you decided that you're going to go and be an engineer for a while, and you did that.Why RedMonk? Why was that the next step because with that combination of skills, the world is very much your oyster. What made you look at RedMonk and say, “Yes, this is where I should work?” And let me be very clear. There are days I have strongly considered, like, if I weren't doing this, where would I be? And yeah, I would probably annoy RedMonk into actively blocking me on all social media or hiring me. There's no third option there. So, I agree wholeheartedly with the decision. What was it that made it for you?Kate: I mean, it was certainly not just one thing. One of the parts of academia that I really enjoyed was the ability to go to conferences and just travel and really get to meet people. And so, that was something that seemed to be a big part of it [unintelligible 00:21:27] so that's kind of the part that maybe doesn't get mentioned so much. And then especially in the Covid era, you know, we're not doing as much traveling, as you're well aware.Corey: We're spending all of our time having these conversations via screen.Kate: You know, I do enjoy that.Corey: Yeah. Like in the before times, probably one out of every eight episodes or so of this show was recorded in person.Kate: Wow.Corey: Now, it's, “I don't know. I don't really know if I want to go across town.” It's a—honestly, I've become a bit of a shut-in here. But you get it down to a science. But you lose something by doing it.Kate: That's true.Corey: There's a lack of high bandwidth communication.Kate: And many of my academic friends, when they would go to conferences, they would just kind of hide in their hotel room until they had to present. And I was the kind of person that was down in the bar hanging out. So, to me, it [laugh] felt very natural. But in terms of the intellectual parts, in all seriousness, I think the ability to pull apart arguments is something that I just truly enjoy. So, when I was teaching, which of course was how—was why they paid me to be an academic, you know, I loved when I could sit in a classroom and I would ask a question. You know, I kind of come up with these questions ahead of time.And the students would say something totally unexpected, and then I'd have another one, say something totally out of the blue as well. And I get to take them and say, “You're both right. Here's how we combine them, and here's how we're going to move forward.” Sort of, the ability to take an argument and sort of mold it into something constructive, I think can be very useful, both in, you know, meeting with clients who maybe are, you know, coming at things a little bit differently than then maybe we would recommend in order to, you know, help them to reach developers, the practitioners, but also, you know, moderating panels is something that a lot of my colleagues do. I mean, that's a big part of the job, too, is, you know, speaking and… well, not only doing sort of keynote talks, which my colleague Rachel is doing that at, I think, a [GlueCon 00:23:14] this year.And then—but also, you know, just in video format, you know, to having multiple presenters and, kind of, taking their ideas and making something out of that sort of forwards the argument. I think that's a lot of fun. I like to think I do an okay job at it. And I certainly have a lot of experience with it. And then just finally, you know, listening to argument [unintelligible 00:23:30] a big part of the job is going to briefings where clients explain what their product does, and we listen and try to give them feedback about how to reach the developer audience, and, you know, just trying to work on that communication aspect.And I think what I would like to push is more of the visual part of this. So, I think a lot of times, people don't always think through the icons that they include, or the illustrations, or the just the stock photos. And I find those so fascinating. [laugh]. I know, that's not always the most—the part that everyone wants to focus on, but to me, the visuals of these pitches are truly interesting. They really, kind of, maybe say things that they don't intend always, and that also can really make concrete ideas that are, especially with some of this really complex technology, it can really help potential buyers to understand what it accomplishes better.Corey: Some of the endless engagements I've been on that I enjoy the most have been around talking to vendors who are making things. And it starts off invariably as, “Yeah, we want to go ahead and tell the world about this thing that we've done.” And my perspective has always been just a subtle frame shift. It's like, “Yeah, let me save some time. No one cares. Absolutely no one cares. You're in love with the technical thing that you built, and the only people who are going to love it as much as you do are either wanting to work where you, or they're going to go build their own and they're not going to be your customer. So, don't talk about you. No one cares about you. Talk about the pain that you solve. Talk about the painful thing that you're target customer is struggling with that you make disappear.”And I didn't think that would be, A, as revelatory as it turned out to be, and B, a lesson that I had to learn myself. When I was starting o—when I was doing some product development here where I once again fell into the easy trap of assuming if I know something, everyone must know it, therefore, it's easy, whereas if I don't know something, it's very hard, and no one could possibly wrap their head around it. And we all come from different places, and meeting people wherever they are in their journey, it's a delicate lesson to learn. I never understood what analysts did until I started being an analyst myself, and I've got to level with you, I spent six months of doing those types of engagements feeling like a giant fraud. I'm just a loudmouth with an opinion, what is what does that mean?Well, in many ways, it means analyst. Because it's having an opinion is in so many ways, what customers are really after. Raw data, you can find that a thousand different ways, but finding someone who could talk on what something means, that's harder. And I think that we don't teach anything approaching that in most of our STEM curriculum.Kate: Yeah, I think that's really on point. Yeah, I mean, especially when some of these briefings are so mired in acronyms, and sort of assumed specialization. I know I spend a lot of time just thinking about what it is that confuses me about their pitch, more so than what, you know, is actually coming through. So, I think actually, one of the tools that we use—writing instructors; my past life—was thinking like someone with an eighth grade education. So, I actually think that your reference to having [laugh] you know, that's sort of chestnut, that can actually be useful because you say, “If I, you know, took my slide deck and showed it to a bunch of eighth graders, would they understand what it is that I'm saying?”You know, maybe you don't want them to get the technical details, but what problem does it solve? If they don't understand that, you're not doing a good enough job. And so that, to me, is [laugh] actually something that a lot of folks need to hear. That yeah, these vendors because they're just so deep in it, they're so in the weeds, that they can't maybe see how someone who's just looking for a database, or a platform, or whatever, they actually need this sort of simplified and yet broad enough explanation for what it is that they're actually trying to do what service they actually provide.Corey: From where I sit, one of the hardest things is just reaching people in the right way. And I'm putting out a one to two-thousand word blog post every week because I apparently hate myself. And that was a constant struggle for me when I started doing that a year or two ago. And what has worked for me that really get me moving down that is, instead of trying to teach everyone all the things, I pick an individual—and it varies from week to week—that I think about and I want to explain something to that person. And then I wind up directing what it is I'm about to tell—what it is I'm writing—to that person.Sometimes they're a complete layperson. Other times they are fairly advanced in a particular area of technology. And the responses to these things differ, but it's always—I always learn something from the feedback that I get. And if nothing else, is one of those ways to become a better writer. While I would start by writing. Just do it, don't whine—don't worry about getting it perfect; just go out there and power through things.At least, that's my approach. And I'm talking about the burden of writing a thousand words a week. You wrote an actual book. My belief is that, the more people I've talked to who've done that, no one actually wants to write a book; people want to have written a book, and that definitely resonates with me. I am tempted to just slap a bunch of these—Kate: Yeah.Corey: —blogs posts together and call it a book one of these days as an anthology. But it feels like it's cheating. If I ever decide to go down that path, I want to do it right.Kate: I guess, I come at it from the perspective of I don't know what I think until I write it down. So, it helps me to formulate ideas better. I also feel like my strength is in rereading things and trying to edit them down to really get to the kernel of what it is I think. And a lot of times how I begin a chapter or a blog post or whatever is not where it should begin, that maybe I'm somewhere in the middle, maybe this is a conclusion. There's something magical, in my view, that [laugh] happens when you write, that you are able to pause and take a little bit more time and maybe come up with a better word for what it is that you're trying to communicate.I also am—I benefit from readers. So, for instance, in my book, I have one chapter that really focuses on Harper's Weekly, which is an American newspaper. I'm not an Americanist; I don't have a deep knowledge of that, so what I did is I revise that chapter and send it to American periodicals and got feedback from their readers. Super useful. In terms of my blog at RedMonk, anytime I publish something, you can bet that at least one founder and probably at least one other analyst has read it through and giving me some extremely incisive feedback. It never is just from my mind. It's something that is collaboration.And I am grateful to anyone who takes the time to read my writing because, you know, all of us have so much time, of course. It really helps me to understand what it is that I'm trying to dig into. So, for instance, I've been writing a series for RedMonk on certifications, which makes a lot of sense; I've come from an academic background, here it is, you know, I'm seeing all these tech certifications. And so, it's interesting to me to see similarities and differences and what sort of issues that we're seeing come up with them. So, for instance, I just wrote about the vendor-specific versus vendor-neutral certifications. What are the advantages of getting a certification from the CN/CF versus from say, VMware and—Corey: Oh, I have opinions, on all of [those 00:30:44]—Kate: I—Corey: —and most of them are terrible.Kate: —I'm sure you do. [laugh]. It came naturally out of the job, you know, sitting through briefings and, kind of, seeing these things evolve, and the questions that I have from a long history of teaching, but. I think it also suggests the collaborative aspect of this, of coming to my colleagues—you know, I've been here before, for what, four months?—and saying, you know, “Is this normal? Like, what are we seeing here? Let me write a little bit about what I think is going on with certifications, and then you tell me, you know, what it is that you've seen with your years and years of expertise,” right?So, Stephen O'Grady's been doing this for longer than he really likes to admit, right? So, this is grateful to have such well-established colleagues that can help me on that journey. But, you know, to kind of spiral back to your original question, I think that writing to me is an exploration, it's something that helps me to get to something a little more, I guess, meaningful than just where I began. You know, just the questions that I have, I can kind of dig down and find some substance there. I would encourage you to take any one of your blog posts and think about maybe where they—or using the jumping off points for your eventual book, which I will be looking for on newsstands any day now.Corey: I am looking forward to seeing how you continue to evolve your coverage area, as well as reading more of your writings around these things. I am—they always say that the cobblers children have no shoes, and I am having an ongoing war with the RedMonk RSS feed because I've been subscribed to it three times now, and I'm still not seeing everything that comes through, such as your posts. Time for me to go and yell at some people over on your end about how these things work because it is such good content. And every time RedMonk puts something out, it doesn't matter who over there has written it, I wind up reading it with this sense of envy, in that I wish I had written something like this. It is always an experience, and your writing is absolutely no exception to that. You fit in well over there.Kate: It means a lot to me. Thank you. [laugh].Corey: No, thank you. I want to thank you for spending so much time talking to me about things that I feel like I'm still not quite smart enough to wrap my head around, but that's all right. If people want to learn more, where's the best place to find you?Kate: Certainly Twitter. So, my Twitter handle is just my name, @kateholterhoff. And I don't post as often as maybe I should, but I try to maintain an ongoing presence there.Corey: And we will of course, put a link to that in the [show notes 00:33:04].Kate: Thank you.Corey: Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. Kate Holterhoff, analyst at RedMonk. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice—or if you're on YouTube, smash that like and subscribe button—whereas if you've hated this podcast, please do the exact same thing—five-star review, smashed buttons—but then leave an angry, incoherent comment, and it's going to be extremely incoherent because you never learned to properly, technically communicate.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble. 

In episode 228, we talk with Edmond Memorial High School Esports Coach Kate Swearingen about the teams playing against others across the state. You can find their games on https://www.twitch.tv/memorialbulldog (Twitch). Transcript: og228 Michael: Greetings and salutations my fellow geeks and welcome to episode 228 of the Okie Geek Podcast brought to you by Okie Comics I'm Michael Cross. Students at Edmond Memorial high school are enjoying the ever-growing community of e-sports. Their coach is chemistry teacher, Kate Swearingen and she joins us now, Kate, welcome to the show. Kate: Hi, it's so great to be here. Michael: So just tell me first off e-sports at Edmond Memorial High. What's going on with that? Kate: Yeah, so we have a great program. We run three different games. We have Rocket League, League of Legends and Smash Brothers. A ton of kids are involved. So it ranges because we have a club and a class we have about 30 plus kids in the class, and then we have just extra kids in the club, but we're hoping to even grow more next year. But yeah, it's, it's really exciting stuff. Michael: What made you decide to start this thing? Kate: So I've always had a passion for making sure that kids have a space that they feel like they belong. And I used to work at a middle school where I started an animate club and I would DM, Dungeons and Dragons as well. For a group of kids there. And then when I moved to the high school, I knew I wanted to coach e-sports because I played a MOBA at that time called heroes of the storm, which isn't really around anymore. But then, well it's around, but it's just not the same as it used to be. But then a kid approached me cause I kind of let them know, you know, Hey, like I like this based on like this to a kid approached me. He's like, I really want to start a League of Legends team. And I knew about League of Legends because in the same genre that I played so I was like, yeah, this would be great. You know, like some of my stuff will transfer over. So it kind of took him the rest of the year to get the club going. And then last year we had our first team League of Legends team. And then this year we have it as an actual class. So we have even more e-sports now than we did last year. Cause each of each of the own games are their own e-sports so, Michael: , And there's a community like a whole competition going on. Correct. Kate: Right. , we participate in two different tournaments right now. We're a part of OBSL which is the whole global e-sports league. And there are several high schools in Oklahoma that participate in that one. And that's our state tournament. And our playoffs will be April 3rd, but we're, we're sort of finishing up the regular season. We have just a couple more games of that to go. And then we're a part of a nationwide tournament. That's called play BS. So we, we play in that as well. And those, those real games, we have pre-season games right now, but we're starting our real games for that. At the beginning of March. Michael: That's amazing. And so how are you guys doing so far? Kate: We're doing really, really well. We haven't started our real play yes games but for our ESL games right now, we're undefeated. So in all of our sports, Michael: That's amazing. , Who else is in this  league, The major players that you would know would be maybe union or broken arrow, Jenks Okay, C grant and then there are some smaller schools too. Like we played Stillwell, not,  Stillwater Stillwell, and then we were supposed to Salina today, but that got moved around. And so, yeah, there's, there's just a whole range of schools, depending on which e-sport, it is some S some of these sports are a little bit cheaper to get into than others. Kate: So they're a little bit more accessible. Michael: Right. Do you travel to these places too? Or... Support this podcast

Kate Anderson is a leader in generating change and gender equality within the private fundraising space. As Co-Founder and Operations Director of iFundWomen, she has driven millions of dollars into the hands of female founders. The flexible crowdfunding platform combines a pay-it-forward model, expert startup coaching, professional video production and a private community for its members, all with the goal of helping female entrepreneurs launch successful businesses. Learn more about Kate Anderson and iFundWomen. Learn more about The Passionistas Project.   FULL TRANSCRIPT:  Passionistas: Hi and welcome to the Passionistas Project Podcast. We're Amy and Nancy Harrington and today we're talking with Kate Anderson, a leader in generating change and gender equality within the private fundraising space. As co-founder and operations director of iFundWomen, she's driven millions of dollars into the hands of female founders. IFund Women's flexible crowdfunding platform, combines a pay it forward model, expert startup coaching, professional video production and a private community for its members. All with the goal of helping female entrepreneurs launch successful businesses. So please welcome to the show Kate Anderson. Kate: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy to be here. Passionistas: What's the one thing you're most passionate about? Kate: I have a lot of passions but I think one of the things I'm most passionate about is representation of women. I'm seeing women represented in boardrooms, seeing women represented in movies, seeing women represented in books. I think the more we can see ourselves in women in media and on television magazines too, the more we can imagine that we can be there. And that's really one thing I find women is working hard to do is promote more women's businesses, help women to elevate their businesses more so that we can see more women in boardrooms and more women as CEOs and more women on the cover of Forbes and fortune. Passionistas: So talk about how iFundWomen came to be and your role in that. Kate: Yeah, so um, iFundWomen was a pivot. My two co-founders, Karen Cahn and Sarah Summers. We worked together at another company, our CEO, Karen Cahn was the, uh, was the CEO. Then Sarah and I both worked there and it was a conversation platform for women. Karen had built it and did kind of a lot of the things that we now realize are mistakes, mistakes for start-ups. So we built it without talking to a lot of people about it, without getting a lot of feedback, being really precious about the idea. And we realized after making mistake and all good growth comes from making mistakes, that that's not the right way to start a business. The right way to start a business is to get a lot of people onboard to, to beta test to see if people are interested to build an MVP, which means minimally viable product. It's creating a product that is not perfect, but they get the job done. And um, so anyways, we had this old company, um, and as a last ditch effort we did a Kickstarter campaign and it was through there that we realized that crowdfunding was a great way for women to raise capital for their businesses to not give away equity did to tap into their own, um, their own great networks and their own ability to be good storytellers. But there was no platform that was speaking specifically to the needs of women that was coaching women through the process of, it's giving them the tools they need to prepare. And that was creating a community. So we decided as a beta to see if people were interested in it. We sent out surveys to various communities that we're all a part of saying, is this something you'd be interested in and what would you look for in that? And we launched in November of 2016 with a beta of about 25 campaigns. We had hundreds apply, but we accepted 25 for the first beta to test it out. And that is a way better way to start a company. Passionistas: So what were you doing before you started iFundWomen? Kate: So we are working together on this, on our other startup and then prior to that I worked in commercial real estate development. So really like pivoted my career but, but um, I worked for a company called Heinz, which is a major uh, premier real estate development company. Worked there for about four years right out of college. And it was such a great place to come up because, um, it was really old school and I think that there's a benefit in starting your career at a place that's really old school and established and has a clear guidelines and clear protocols and uh, and it was not casual. I think that the, it really taught me a lot about how to be a great operator, how to be a great employee and less how to be a great manager. I'm learning how to do that now, but it taught me a lot of those things. And I think that there's a real benefit in starting at a place that's um, that's really corporate versus a place that's really good casual. Passionistas: And what's the vibe at IFund Women? What's the culture like at that company? Kate: We're a startup so it's way more casual. Um, it's at, uh, Heinz where I work. Nobody talked about personal lives at all. Like you kinda didn't, if you heard about someone's personal life, it almost felt like seeing your parents naked. Like it was so personal and intimate. Um, and, and IFund Women and I think this is true of many startups. Um, you know, everything about the people that you're working with. And I like that. I like that. Um, that is definitely more my nature. It, um, to be open with people, to tell people what's going on in my life. I don't like kind of feeling like that's not something to be able to talk about. But then you have this like fine line of, um, what to share and what not to share. And when Karen, Sarah and I started at the company, right, three people that are great friends, we can share everything. But then as you bring more people in that you can't share everything, just the three of us can. Passionistas: So what's the mission of iFundWomen? Kate: Our mission is to close the funding gap for female entrepreneurs. We really want to provide access to capital, coaching and community. That is our core mission. That's our North Star and that is what we work day in and day out to do. Passionistas: How is iFund Women different beyond that from other crowdfunding websites? Kate: Yes. So we're the only crowdfunding platform, first of all, speaking specifically to women, but beyond that, um, we are the only crowdfunding platform with expert business coaching tied into our business model, with a network of women business owners that work together to accelerate knowledge and ignite action. We have a pay it forward model that you were talking about that, um, at the end of every month, we, uh, invest 20% of our standard crowdfunding fees back into live campaigns on our platform. So we're actually paying for the revenue that we're making from campaigns. Um, and then we also are offering sponsored grants. So we broker grants on behalf of generous partners who really want to put their money where their mouth is by supporting women entrepreneurs raising capital on our platform. Passionistas: Talk a little bit more about why that's so important. And the current state of funding for women owned businesses. Kate: The current state of funding for women owned businesses is not where we want it to be. Um, and I think people are familiar with these stats, but women received 3% of venture capital financing and women have a harder time getting loans. That um, when they do get loans, they get smaller loan amounts and higher interest rates. We know women are starting 1500 net new businesses every single day in the US right, too. You're a woman in the US you have a great idea. You're starting a business. Well, what do you do? How do you get funding for your business? The first thing most people do is they bootstrap and bootstrap means spending your own money to grow your business. And that works r really well if you have money to spend. But if you don't, how do you get your business off the ground? And um, we are the place where women could do that. We don't think that you should go into debt funding the earliest days of your startup. Um, and even if you do qualify for a loan, that's what you're doing is you're going into debt funding the early days of your startup. And the fact that the matter is most startups fail. And it's important that when you're growing it, you do it in a way that's smart and you're smart about the capital that you take on so that you don't have a failing startup. And then loans to pay back or debt to pay back, credit card debt, whatever it is. Passionistas: So what makes a successful campaign on iFundWomen? Are there elements that you find that help people succeed? Kate: Really, first and foremost, if I had to just say one word, it would be grit. And that's probably what makes any successful entrepreneur and business, right? Anybody can have the best idea for something, an amazing idea that's going to make everybody's lives better and everybody is going to be so happy about it. But if you never tell people about the idea, if you're not ready to like put it all on the line, if you are not constantly promoting what you're doing to people, no one's going to find out about it. The specific type of person that's successful on iFundWomen is a person with drive, with commitment and a person that really won't give up, that continues to promote their campaign, continues to get the word out there. And um, and won't stop at anything until their campaign gets funded or their business gets moved to the next phase, whatever that might be. Passionistas: Let's take a little step back and just explain to a crowdfunding is for someone who's listening and doesn't really understand the concept. Kate: So crowdfunding is when an entrepreneur raises small increments of money from lots of people that they know in their personal professional social networks. That adds up to just enough money to get their project off the ground. So crowdfunding formally as we know it has been around for about a decade, which is the idea of raising money online from lots of different people. But historically crowdfunding has been around for a long period of time. Um, the Statue of Liberty is a project that was crowd funded. Bringing the base of the Statue of Liberty over was crowdfunded by many people contributing pennies to see something happen. And I think that people really liked that story because it resonates with the idea that lots of people can give amounts of money that feel comfortable to them to create something that's awesome and spectacular and has lasting value, right? Like I think we all wish that we could contribute to see the statue of Liberty or whatever that kind of iconic project is for us. But crowdfunding, there are two different types of crowdfunding. There's rewards-based crowd funding and equity crowdfunding. Equity crowd funding is a newer concept that came out of the jobs act where you can raise, um, you can have people contribute to your business in exchange for equity. So that's ownership in your business. IFundWomen as a rewards-based crowdfunding platform. Um, so, so people are funding your campaign in exchange for physical or digital reward that they're getting. And the reward is really can be your product, services, unique skills. It's really your opportunity to thank people for contributing to your campaign but also entice them to back your campaign and support your campaign. But because you have awesome rewards that you want to take part in, Passionistas: What do you find, or do you find, there's a common reason that women hesitate to do this kind of thing? And how do you help them get past that? Kate: We don't necessarily see that women hesitate to do this. I think in general, people feel uncomfortable asking other people for money. I think that that is kind of a, um, that can stall people, right? I don't want to go out and ask my network and, and what I always pushed back on that I'd say is, well, what happens if somebody else does this idea? How passionate are you about this idea that if somebody else did it, would you feel okay with that? And, and with scaling businesses, and this isn't true for all businesses, not all businesses need capital to grow. Some can be generating revenue from day one and be fine with the revenue that they generate. But many businesses do need capital and you will always have to ask people for money, right? So maybe that's a banker, maybe, um, a venture capital firm, maybe that's uh, an aunt, maybe that's a spouse. Kate: Um, you don't have to ask a credit card company, but at some point they will ask you to pay the money back. Um, but, but what I think is so empowering, powerful about crowdfunding is it allows you to continue to hone your pitch and your messaging every time you ask people and continue to change it, right? So you might practice your pitch on lots of people and tell them and they say, you know what? I didn't totally get what it is you're raising money for. So then it allows you to say, Oh, you know what? Maybe I wasn't so clear. Let me try to rephrase this so it makes sense to a broader audience and being able to kind of alter and pivot and adapt your pitch in real time is really powerful. Passionistas: What's been the highlight of iFund for you so far? Kate: We have been around for over three years so it's been really exciting to see those initial beta campaigns to see what they've done now. We have been one of the premier crowdfunding platforms for co-working spaces, female-focused co-working spaces and it's so cool to see coworking spaces that raise money on iFundWomen open up. Like that to me is like, you know, you kind of feel like that's your baby taking their first steps that you facilitated them being able to do that. It has been a million little things. I wish I could say. There's like one great thing that's come out of it, but it's so many. It's getting handwritten thank you notes in the mail from entrepreneurs that we've helped on iFundWomen. It is getting feedback when I've coached entrepreneurs say you really helped me get on stock and it's seeing products launch I support a lot of the campaigns on iFundWomen and it's supporting and then getting a product in the mail that you supported maybe a year ago and saying, Oh my gosh, I love LOHO tights or Mini Lila or fem power, beauty. I love all of these brands and now I'm getting their products and, and now I'm a lifelong user of it. Passionistas: Is there a story of like one woman in particular that you've helped or you personally have funded that stands out to you? Kate: There are so many women on this list. Um, uh, one campaign I particularly love is Lauren Beasley who is an entrepreneur out of Nashville. She, uh, has a company called Move Inclusive Dance. She wants to create a dance studio for children with special needs or a dance camp for children with special needs in Nashville. She put up her campaign and within a week or less it was funded. And then about a year later, her audience said, okay, a dance camp is great in the summer, but what about a dance studio? What about year round dance classes for kids with special needs? So she came back to iFundWomen to raise $100,000 for a dance studio. She raised about $45,000. And at that point she had gone through, I've been IFundWomen's coaching program and one of the things we tell entrepreneurs to do is list out everybody in your network or people that you know, you might have six degrees of separation. One of those people was Carrie Dorr, who's the founder of pure, uh, Pure Barre, which is a fitness studio. And Lauren reached out to her and said, I'm a Pure Barre instructor. I love your company. Would you check out my campaign? Uh, Carrie Dorr wrote back and said, yes, can you fly out to Denver? Long story medium, she flew out to Denver and Carrie Dorr contributed $50,000 to her campaign and funded her campaign. And why I love this story is Lauren's doing such good. She's creating lasting change, which is so awesome. She's creating something that not a lot of people maybe thought that there was a need for, but there was a huge need for, she made the ask, but she also had data to back it up. Right? So she wasn't cold emailing this person and she had $0 million in her campaign and zero back. Or if she had $45,000 or $42,000 in her campaign and hundreds of backers and she emailed that person then to say, look at what I've done. She, and she told me she was expecting like $50 from her and got a magnitude more than that. But I love that. I love that that's like so forward facing. So public and obvious. I think that that's just like, and I love what she's doing to make the world a better place. Follow her on social media, Move Inclusive Dance. It is really, really inspiring. Passionistas: So you mentioned this earlier and like to talk a little bit more about it. You mentioned that iFundWomen reinvests 20% of your fees into campaigns on the site. So talk about why you made that decision and what kind of campaigns you guys back. Kate: When we started iFundWomen we knew that we wanted to have a give it back model. We knew we had this idea of lifting women up constantly. So if one campaign gets funded, we wanted that campaign to help another campaign get funded and create this virtuous cycle of funding and supporting female entrepreneurs. The way we manifest today was we take iFundWomen takes a 5% fee on any amount of money that you raise. And then at the end of the month, we take 20% of the revenue from those fees and directly reinvest them into live campaigns on the site that are actively raising money. We do not pick them algorithms, pick them, but um, but it's been awesome to see, and it varies every month from maybe one campaign that will be picked or five or six campaigns that will be picked. But those campaigns that are way more, um, way more likely to get funded and it's a great opportunity for them to say that their networks, like, my campaign is so good that the iFundWomen team believed that I should be the recipient at this. And then the money just gets them that much further to their, um, or that much closer to their mark. It's a, it's everybody's favorite day of the month. Passionistas: How can a woman that's listening to this podcast take advantage of all the iFundWomen has to offer? Kate: If you head over to, iFundWomen.com and you will see a big suite of resources that we have to offer to people. We have a lot of free resources. It is important to us to educate entrepreneurs before they launch a crowdfunding campaign. Until we don't ever want us to someone to launch a campaign and say, Oh, I thought it was this. Or I thought I would just put a campaign up and magical money elves would come and back my campaign. We wish there were magical money elves, but it doesn't seem like they've really exist. We want people to know that you have to put the work in, that you have to have a plan, that you have to have clear messaging and a direct ask. So we have bundled that all into a free crowdfunding eCourse. It takes about an hour and a half to watch that you could watch on iFundWomen. We have a free webinar every Thursday for an hour that really talks about what crowdfunding is. And then for people that want more hand holding and really are looking for personalized coaching, we have a coaching program. It's a monthly coaching model where you pick the topic of the calls that you want and can get help with anything from your crowdfunding campaign to marketing, to social media, to sales, so that you can really not only elevate your crowdfunding campaign, but at the same time elevate your business. Passionistas: We're Amy and Nancy Harrington and you're listening to the Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Kate Anderson. To learn more about crowdfunding for female founders and get experts, startup coaching, visit ifundwomen.com now here's more of our interview with Kate. Do you have a daily routine or is it always different? Kate: No, it's always different. And you know what, honestly, I kinda like to operate that way. I have, I start off my day at work every day with the same thing. I have a checklist of things that I go through and then the day starts and um, I really have a lot of calls throughout the day. Then I block. So maybe I do, I block out time. Like at three o'clock I've have an education block and that is a time for me to read. Like those articles that people send me or um, things that I saw online that I haven't had a chance to read. I have a 30 minute block in my day to do that. I close out my day between 4:30 and 5:30. So I tried to do that as much as possible. But then I need to get better and having a daily routine cause I think in every other aspect of my life that helps to optimize and helps to just not have to make decisions. Passionistas: That's such a good idea. That education block, I love that. I need to do that. I'm gonna work that into my schedule now. Kate: And I think the best thing to do too is to copy the links of, okay this article I saw or this one someone sent me copy the links into the calendar invite. So you open it up and you say, go ahead. This is what I'm reading right now. It's 30 minutes and we all have that time in our day to do something like that. And if you're not, I am kind of maniacally focused on being curious, growing, acquiring new skills, reading. Interesting. And if you don't kind of block that time and then sometimes it gets lost. Passionistas: Do you think you have a particular personality trait that has helped you succeed? Kate: I am very skilled at putting myself in other people's shoes and, and that really comes from how I was raised. That was always the position that we were taught is, you know, you never know what someone has going on at home or in other aspects of their life. And that has really helped me in dealing with people, right? All jobs are dealing with people, it's dealing with customers, it's dealing with your team. Um, and if you don't have good skills with that, if you don't have the ability to, to put yourself in other people's shoes, you kind of can't grow. And then I think in addition to that is self awareness and it's a quality I really like in people is really being self aware about what you're good at, what you're not good at. And um, and being honest about that I think is really, really huge. Passionistas: Is there one lesson that you've learned on your journey so far that really sticks with you? Kate: Working at a startup is, is really challenging. There's no roadmap of what you're doing. You're constantly having to change. I think like a great lesson is really just being open to change and being curious and not being fixed in your thinking and knowing when to ask for help. And knowing when you can figure things out yourself. But working at a startup is really, there's just a constantly moving target. You constantly change, adapt, learn new things. And that is, I think can be hard for some people. But for me it's been, it's been exciting and I feel like I every damn like have a new skill set that I'm working on. Passionistas: So what is the most rewarding part about working at a startup? Kate: I think the really, the most rewarding part from coming from like a corporation is making, like having a suggestion that gets inputted in real time. Like saying, okay, I think we should do this. All right, let's do it. And now our website looks different because of someone's that guidance and advice that is so powerful. And I think if you never had that before, then you're, you're so surprised when you do have it and really appreciative of it. That's been really, really an awesome thing to, to do and see and be able to just see how your suggestions can, can really form, can improve people's lives, can streamline the process, can make things easier. I've been really grateful for to be able to be in a position to do that. Passionistas: When you were a girl, what lessons did your mother teach you about women's roles in society and what do you want to teach your own children? Kate: I grew up with a mom who stayed at home until I was in middle school and then she started working and now has her own company and works entirely too much. Um, but my parents were equal partners and, and even though my dad worked, it was very much both people were equal parents. And I think that it's sometimes hard to say what are specific things. I think sometimes you can comment on things that you didn't like. But like one thing I loved my parents did is we would occasionally just be kind of jerky kids and would say something like, that's dad's money. We're just such a jerk thing to say. Right. And it's so, I don't even know where we came up with that, but it was always clear in our household. Like my dad worked and my mom stayed at home and this was the family's money. Nobody was, there was no hierarchy between my parents at all. And that like largely impacted most of my thoughts about relationships. I worked, both me and my husband work. So that was different than my experience was growing up. But it never felt like that was something I couldn't do because I didn't see that behavior modeled. I saw a relationship between my parents that was, um, that was largely, uh, based on respect and that has been what my relationship has been based on and it has made it easy to be easy enough to be a working, uh, team, raising kids and trying to grow our careers. Passionistas: Did you have other influential female role models when you were growing up? Kate: I have so many. I have so many aunts that are absolutely phenomenal. Um, that I'm very, very close with. All my grandmothers are still alive and they are so influential for me. I feel really lucky to always have had like strong women figures in my life. And the idea of like a meek female, that archetype would never existed. And any woman that I've ever had a relationship with but really like the people that had the biggest impact of light my life for my family. And I am so lucky to have three grandmothers that are strong, very funny, very witty, opinionated women who had cool lives. Um, and, and same with, I have amazing aunts and I still have amazing aunts and I'm really fortunate for all of them. Passionistas: What about professional mentors? Have you had professional mentors and what do you admire about them? Kate: Yeah, so I've had fewer professional mentors. That's definitely something I am like kind of seek out. I have a lot of people on the same level of careers, me or maybe a few stages ahead and being at a startup and not kind of having like a, um, you know, it's not a big corporation where you have a bit, a huge hierarchy. It's something I definitely seek out, but I have a lot of women that are at the same stage of my careers, like great friends and people who have become great friends who have helped to kind of sir like solve, uh, that mentorship role. And to me, mentorship is not like, Oh, will you be my mentor and guide me in the process. It's having somebody to gut check things. Like really, as I said, I live in Boston, my best friend in Boston is, has been such an amazing asset for me. And gut checking, um, career questions and kid questions. But, but having kind of people serve in that role of, uh, being advisors to you. I think that can come from just having great friends and not just having one person in a mentorship role. It's surrounding yourself with amazing women and men that can provide guidance for you. That to me is kind of how I, um, how I fill that role. Passionistas: What's your proudest career achievement? Kate: There's an organization I love, uh, a media company called Rebel Girls and they write children's books called Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls. I love them. I've been such a fan of theirs and we had partnered with them on iFundWomen and I got two for international day of the girl, uh, speak publicly on a panel to, to young girls about representation of women. And my daughter got to see me speak and it was my first paid speaking engagement and that was like my proudest mom moment. My daughter thought I was crushing it. I felt like I was crushing it and she got to watch it. And that really just made me feel like so proud of, of being able to be in a position to do something like that. Passionistas: What's your dream for women? Kate: My dream for women is to not have to work so hard to get what we deserve. I kind of, you know, those signs from in the women's March that said like, I can't believe we're still marching about this stuff, is to not have to work so hard is to just be able to exist. And I'm not up to pipe for things that I think that we deserve to have and I think that we deserve to have like 60 years ago. And I think that's largely an inefficient use of time. I would love to see more women in positions of power. I went to a speaking engagement the other day at Harvard, a male physicist was speaking and a woman introduced him and they said, she is the first tenured physics professor at Harvard. And I turned to my husband and I was like, it's 2020, like you've gotta be kidding me. And we kind of had like a discussion about it and I said like, I find that so problematic that it's 2020 and she's the first tenured physics professor at Harvard and it seemed like she was recently tenured. I would like that to not be the norm. Um, that I would like there to stop being the first woman. Right. Like just not the first woman president, not the first woman, you know, anything. I would just like it to be that's expected. Um, and I think that we're getting there and I think that progress is really slow and I wish that it wasn't so slow. Passionistas: What's your secret to a rewarding life. Kate: Balance. Having interests surrounding yourself with interesting people? Um, measuring success not by one metric. Right. So I think when people, their success is just tied to their job that it's not, that's not how I view success. Um, being outside to me solves most problems of life unless, unless there's um, fires happening and we're experiencing global warming. But I think that that can solve a lot of things. But to me it really is, is balance. And then choosing what that balance is for you. I think that work life balance is a term that's overused and misproperly used. But it is to me it's having different things that fill your tank. It's getting up every day and having different things that will get you jazzed to go. So that might be worked. It might be an exercise class, it might be coming home to your kids. It might be like for me it's like reading a really good book but having different things that get you excited and going. That to me is, is like the most important thing. Passionistas: Thanks for listening to The Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Kate Anderson. To learn more about crowdfunding for female founders and get expert startup coaching, visit ifundwomen.com. Please visit ThePassionistasProject.com to learn more about our podcast and our new subscription box filled with products made by women-owned businesses and female artisans to inspire you to follow your passions. And sign up for our mailing list to get 10% off your first purchase, and be sure to subscribe to The Passionistas Project Podcast so you don't miss any of our upcoming inspiring guests.

What can startup founders learn from the marketing strategies of high growth, silicon valley tech companies? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Traction Hero founder Kate Walling talks about her experience helping VC-backed tech startups develop marketing and business strategies, and the specific things she recommends they focus on to achieve exponential growth. Highlights from my conversation with Kate include: Kate advises early stage tech companies on their marketing and business growth strategies. When she starts working with a new company, the first thing Kate looks at is the product and business model to determine whether there are opportunities to use product-led growth. After that, she evaluates the company's brand and positioning within the industry, and then focused on the sales team. One strategy that Kate has seen several companies use successfully to drive growth is community, and specifically building a community of their customers, users and fans and allowing that community to mostly self-moderate. To be successful, Kate says marketers need to be a part of the larger corporate strategy conversations around what the product is, how it will be positioned, what the tech stack is, and how sales will go to market. Another effective way to raise your brand profile is to work with industry influencers. Kate says that these do not always have to be paid relationships, and that its important for your marketing team to be aggressive in building relationships. If you have a small budget, one of the best ways to gain early traction as a founder is through a personal email newsletter. This is a strategy employed by many of the accelerators. Send it to friends, family, former colleagues, etc., but NOT clients, and share your journey as a startup founder. You can also use this to ask your audience for help and introductions. PR is another good way to get the word out at a low cost. While you can always hire a PR agency, there are plenty of opportunities for you to directly pitch yourself to local media, and you can subscribe to HARO and respond to those pitches at no cost. Tools like Canva are handy for making marketing collateral that looks like it was created by a designer but really uses templates to look professionally made. Kate's advice to founders is not to try and take on too many things. Find a few channels and platforms that are a good fit with your audience, do them well, test and iterate. Resources from this episode: Visit Kate's personal website Check out the Traction Hero site Email kate at kate[at]katewalling.com Following Kate on Twitter @katewalling Listen to the podcast to get specific strategies you can use as a startup founder (whether you have a big budget or a small one) to hit your growth goals. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth and today my guest is Kate Walling, who's the founder and CEO of traction hero. Welcome Kate. Kate Walling (Guest): Hello Kathleen. I love your podcast. Kate and Kathleen recording this episode. Kathleen: Thank you. I'm excited to have you here. I am going to do a little bit of an announcement for my listeners before we dig in. Um, if you have listened to my last few episodes, you might've heard this, but it's late March, the coronavirus pandemic is happening. We are recording on Zoom and Zoom is having some bandwidth issues. So just saying, if you're listening, be patient with us. If the audio gets a little funky from time to time, we're going to do our best and hope that Zoom holds up for us as we go. But, these are interesting times we're living in. Lots of people working remotely, lots of people using video conferencing software. So it is what it is. But with that said, welcome Kate. Can you please tell my listeners a little bit about yourself and Traction Hero? About Kate Walling and Traction Hero Kate: Absolutely. So let me try to make this the short version of the story. I've been an entrepreneur since a really young age. I started my first startup at 23, which was a consumer facing startup. I've kind of been an entrepreneur since then, although I've had a corporate stint. I'm in the middle because at one point I realized that being an entrepreneur from a young age means that you don't understand corporate structure and you just hit some walls because you have a lack of understanding. So I've also worked in a public tech company here in Silicon Valley and now I'm back with Traction Hero, which is a marketing agency for startup companies where right now we provide a lot of tech companies with on demand services just as they need it. So basically they can email with a quick project they need done and we turn it around in a couple of hours. So it's really good for companies that have large budgets, but not enough team. Basically there's a lot of those. And then we're also slowly building out services that are really focused on the deliverable so that startups can say, "I need a market research study done" or "I need a new identity." Everything is focused toward what needs to happen to get that done. So as you know, when you're doing a lot of projects, you've got to have a writer, a designer, a printer, all these different people, and it's very stressful for marketers. There's not really been a solution so far where they can just cross that thing off the list and know that the whole thing is getting done. So that's what we're working toward, is really solutions that help marketers get stuff done as they need it.  Kathleen: I love that you personally have been a startup founder and that you've done a lot of work with startup founders because I'm personally passionate about that. I have been a business owner. I've started a couple of different businesses. Having walked in the shoes of the founder, I think you described it so well where there's so many things that need to get done. And that's just from a marketing standpoint, right? You're wearing all the hats when you're in a startup. You could be the owner, the chief salesperson and the marketer as well as other things. And in those early days it can be really hard to zero in on, what are the most important things I should be doing in order to gain traction? That is one of the reasons, FYI, that I love your company name. You stay focused without falling victim to shiny object syndrome or you know, working so much in the business and not on the business, et cetera. It's a challenging, challenging time. Kate: It is. And I think, you know, marketing's been already challenging for a number of years because the MarTech stack keeps getting larger and, and Silicon Valley, the budgets keep getting larger, but your team size doesn't. But marketing is getting more and more responsibility for profit and loss. So there's a lot of pressure and I think what I hear from clients is, what you're saying, is that this was a different style with Traction Hero. And that's because I've personally been through the technology accelerator programs. I am on my fourth startup. I really know what it's like. The interesting thing is that I started this agency model in Seattle. I built an agency in Seattle before I came down to Mountainview California and the model works so well, so it's called scrappy face and it was scrappy, right? And we just went in and we helped these funded tech companies and we just moved as fast as we could. And we had a great team. I closed the agency because I went through a divorce and growing a company really quickly in the middle of a divorce in a city that was always raining is brutal to say the least. But the model was so interesting and when I went into corporate tech, what I realized is that I kind of thought their needs would be different. What I saw was just maybe limited, but it really wasn't, it was pretty much the same concerns of "I've got money, I don't have enough people to spend it." You know, "I don't have enough hands." And then marketing has gotten so specialized that you can't possibly hire enough people to do all these things well, like they can't be experts at everything. So, you know, I'm a big proponent now of having smaller marketing teams, but knowing how to get more done quickly and having whatever workforce you need, that's really fluid. Kathleen: I love that.  should take a step back because this topic, when you talk about startups, I feel like it's a Rorschach test because the word "startup" can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people. And for some people, they hear "startup" and they think little, you know, two or three person company. And yes, of course every startup has to start somewhere. But then there are startups that are incredibly well funded, VC funded, that go from being one or two people to 20 to 30 people within a span of a month. When I think the conversation we're having, it's more around that high growth startup, not that little company that's gonna slog along for five years. We're talking about, you know, startups that have a lot of potential that need to move fast. I think that's really key here. That's the experience I've had working in startups, is that it's all about speed, especially if you're looking for investment. Because as soon as you bring on investors, there are high expectations. There are benchmarks you have to hit. There are thresholds that you need to get to. And all of that needs to happen really quickly. And you're right, you know, you couldn't possibly hire enough people to do that and you can't have a team that includes the world's best in everything, right? Because you'd need to segment out each little thing you do and hire a different person for it. So what's the best way to move ahead? And the other element of that that, I think, is so interesting is this need to balance brand with demand generation because those are two really important components. And especially if you're in a high growth startup, you absolutely need demand generation. There is no company that doesn't, but brand is really important these days. How early stage startups can quickly gain traction Kate: So like, yeah, how do you do all the things? It's so hard and I mean, you bring up a great point first. Defining "startup" is important. I think right now I do tend to concentrate on the tech startups that are scaling and have money. I also tend to help entrepreneurs that are somehow very well resourced and there's an opportunity that needs to move quickly. Those were the fun ones. That can be anywhere. It's like there's been a regulatory or legal change and so it's presented this opportunity and you've got to go fast to take advantage of that opportunity. So that looks different different ways, but it's typically those two categories in terms of entrepreneurs who are working on a smaller project or evolving it. There's so many tools now that they can use that would save them so much money that I think just having that right tool stack is a better situation. But back to your question about balancing brand and demand gen. It's super hard and I think what I used to do is go month by month, quarter by quarter in my corporate role and say "What are the business objectives here? And so what does what makes the most sense?" So if all of a sudden the sales team is growing from 40 to 90, right? I've got to get the demand gen up and going. I've got to get tools in place to deal with that. And that evolves into other things like what type of sellers are they? How are these tools going to work together? Whereas if the brand is newer or there's been a change in the industry or there's some kind of potential in terms of content or positioning, you go on the brand side. I think you just have to kind of reevaluate it every several weeks when you're, when you're at scale, when you're trying to work with scale. Kathleen: Yeah. It's funny that you say that because I think the last month or two have been the best example of why it's important to reevaluate every few weeks because I can speak for myself. I had a beautiful 90 day marketing strategy that I finished at the end of January. I'm a big believer in planning in quarters and adjusting in months. And so I had the strategy put together and I was starting along my merry way, implementing my strategy and then coronavirus hit and blew it all up. I feel like I, I, you know, I want to do air quotes, "go into work every week." You know, I'm not going anywhere. I'm working out of my house right now. And the priority is constantly changing based on the current fire. And I say that not meaning that like, the house is on fire and the company's in jeopardy. That's not our case. In fact, oddly we have an increase in demand because of what our product does. But, it's about pivoting and shifting and recognizing now it's all about remote work and you know, that sort of thing. And that's different than what I had planned out, but when things are moving fast, you gotta be able to go with it. Kate: You do. And I think, you know, in terms of the virus, it's the emotional roller coaster for us personally. It's the same with business. And I think it's that way with most parts of businesses, right? It's like, "Oh, I don't know if I have enough toilet paper. I don't know if I have enough this or the National Guard is moving in," you know? So it's like, every day, assessing where things are and what your needs are. And I'm seeing that with my clients. The first week was about "What should we be doing? Should we do a campaign?" So we do an email and alert people of what services we're changing. Now it's moved to, "Okay, competitively, what do we need to do? What's going on in the industry? What's the overall campaign, you know, with our overall strategy here?" And that strategy ends up being not just marketing, that's the whole business offering. We need to move products. But marketing from my observation right now, which is, you know, limited in the grand scheme of things, marketing is driving some of those business questions, right? Because you can't go to a marketer right now and say, "I need you to do something about this virus." The marketer has to say, "Well wait, what are we, what are we offering here?" You can't just throw together some kind of campaign or ad without meaning. I mean, this is not a, um, you know, "throw a graphic on it" type of problem. How do VC-backed startups approach marketing? Kathleen: Yeah, absolutely. So let's put the pandemic aside for a minute because I feel like we could have an entire episode on that and I may need to do that at some point soon. My curiosity has been peaked by what you said about how you tend to work with these well-resourced, need-to-move quickly, but potentially bandwidth-constrained companies. I think what is really interesting about that is that a lot of marketers see those kinds of companies that do grow really fast and they think, "What are they doing? What is the secret sauce? What's happening behind the scenes that's enabling them to go so quickly?" Maybe I'm wrong, but I suspect it's not that they're just throwing money at the problem. It has to be more of, yes, you need money, but what are you going to do with that money that supports a really high growth kind of scenario? So maybe you could talk a little bit about that and pull back the curtain on, if somebody does come to you and say, you know, we just got VC funding, we've got to triple the size of this company in a year. We've got the budget to do it. As a marketer, what kinds of things are you doing and looking at for them? Kate: The first thing I look at is, is there anything in their model that should be evaluated overall for marketing in terms of distribution or influence? For scalability, like you said, it's demand gen and brand. However, for a lot of things it's, is there something that needs to be built into the product from a marketing positioning standpoint or differentiation to make sure that that scale can happen with the brand and demand gen tools? That's one of my favorite parts and that's where your puzzles come in. So if you're a SaaS company, do you need to be offering some kind of certification program because you need more people using the software? What are the different channels? How is that working? I think getting a grasp on, is there something from a business model perspective that needs to happen? The other thing is, a lot of companies at that point have some juggernauts, right? Like, we're seeing churn is hitting here and it's too high, or we're seeing these little scenarios happen with customers, or our lifetime value is off. So we start trying to troubleshoot some of those things so that, that first step is really about marketing and the product and the operations of the business, and then also what needs to be worked out before you scale. There are usually some major learnings there. Once those kinks have been ironed out, we start looking at where are we positioned in the industry? Where is brand awareness? And then what is the plan with the sales team? So if you've got two sellers and you're going to hire maybe one more, that's a pretty basic stack because you don't want to build anything too complicated until you understand, are these relationship-based sellers, are these more tech savvy sellers? There's a difference in the tools required. So you can do something more basic in the meantime, just getting them basic collateral, making sure they have that stuff on the brand side. You start wanting to do more PR, more on positioning and really claiming your spot in the industry landscape. Then, as your sales team picks up, so when you start getting to like 20, 40, 50 up and up sellers, you're looking at a lot more sophisticated systems. You're usually looking at a change of how sales works. So if you have inside sales reps, how are they working, how are they using your marketing software? You get into really complex software decisions, and that's usually driven by marketing. How can startups use product-led growth? Kathleen: There's so much there. I have so many questions I want to ask you. Let's go back to one of the first things you said, which is that you actually begin in many cases by looking at product. So it sounds like what you're talking about is product led growth, and really going in and looking at what are the opportunities to bake something in -- the product that we have that can itself be a growth driver. I would love it if you could just talk a little bit more about that. Kate: It's both from a positioning standpoint, and distribution comes up. That comes up with SaaS companies a lot. And positioning can come up with B2C, right, of like what is this particular opportunity here? With direct to consumer you see it because you'll see, like, consumer products that are extremely well designed or they're really hip or something like that. So that's where you'll see that brand move play in really big. And, and usually with D2C, that's part of the initial product development. But sometimes that can come in as like, how do we do that? Sometimes it can be, with B2C, how do we build a community around the product, right? So some companies are doing a really good job of using Facebook groups. I think Facebook groups are amazing for marketers right now of, we're going to liberate our whole community and let them build with one another. But what are the rules of that? So I think there's just a lot there in terms of B2C, it depends. If it's a commodity-based business, it's harder. A lot harder, right? You're looking at, how do we feel different to the buyer? How do we provide a different experience? If we're not really offering something different, can we deliver it different? Is there really strong brand value that can go throughout the whole company and how would that be protected? So it really has a lot of different shapes. Think of channel partners or technology partners who are taking our API and installing it. But is there something more? Is there a way to even scale it bigger than that? Right? Like get like a whole group of individuals selling this thing for you. So I think it's really out of the box type thinking. And generally at this point, you know, the startup's been going for awhile, they've had some success, they're ready to, you know, commit, and they're ready to scale. They're leaning that way. So it's a really good time to do this work. How marketers can play a role in the broader business strategy? Kathleen: You're coming in as a marketing advisor. At the same time though, it goes to the core of the business strategy. It's not just a marketing strategy. If you're talking about putting an evangelist program in place or changing elements of the product or building a certification program, some of these are business strategies. So how do you navigate that conversation? Because I think often marketers are really challenged with, we're really comfortable staying in our marketing lane. But a lot of the times, when we get out of that lane -- and sometimes it manifests as, you know, we're starting to make recommendations about sales software, other times it's like the things you're talking about that can get rocky if you don't do it right -- how do you approach that? Kate: Yeah, that's a great statement. It's so true with this early stage stuff that I'm talking about. It's typically before a startup has hired a CFO or a senior level marketer. And so you're working directly with the CEO and they have some marketing resources. They'll have a small agency, they'll have a couple freelancers, right? Part of their problem is that they don't know who to hire. And most of the time what I tell them is you can't make that hiring decision yet. We don't know what the marketing is, so we don't know what type of marketer to hire, you know? So I'm a huge proponent of fractional CMOs because I think it's just too early and you don't want to get the wrong person. There's a lot at stake. And I think a lot of startups at that base, they've got revenue coming in, hire a CMO to come in four hours a week and figure this out slowly. And who realizes that you're going to hire for that position when you know what the direction is? So that's more early stage. And the company usually has maybe five to 10 employees, but marketing's not built out yet at all. Later on is where you get really more tricky. You've got someone in charge of sales and they have a particular way that they're hiring. Then as a marketer, you're supposed to bring in demand gen, right? And the demand gen you need to bring in is a different skillset than the sellers have. And the sellers were not aware of the software that you have to do. In my corporate role, it was a rollout plan. I started with HubSpot and got people used to this idea, this is what's going on and why. Then I moved into Marketo, which is super hard. Kathleen: I just went in the opposite direction. I went from a company with Marketo to a company with HubSpot and I'm like, "Thank God. It's so much easier." Kate: And then with Marketo, the sales team was growing. We had to do much more sophisticated type rules and stuff too, because all of a sudden you can have a sales team and you start bringing in all these leads and a sales team does not care. They don't care. And they're not gonna answer them. And you've got a cultural problem of you have to educate them toward how do you deal with these leads, what it means, their job and that it is, and you have to have support from the management team that this is going to be required. There's a whole lot and it just really depends on who you're working with and what their background is. You have to take it one step, one day at a time. So I think it just depends on the team. It depends on where people are. You have to be pretty fluid marketer. You have to be able to say, "This is what I need and it's going to be a process and I'm going to have to get buy in. And so how do I do that?" So you have to be patient. Kathleen: I think you raised something really important, which is, when you're coming into the job, you're at an advantage because you're working with a CEO. But just one thing I've learned is that when you, when you're in those hiring conversations, you have to, you have to have a conversation about that. I might be making some recommendations that are outside of what you might think of as marketing. How are you going to feel about that? Are you open to it? Are you willing to keep an open mind? You know, really, really figuring out that the personality type of the founder, the CEO, and whether they're willing to listen and, and consider other things I think is so important at that stage of a company. Kate: Critical. Specific strategies that startups can use to drive exponential growth Kathleen: Moving onto something else. You said you started talking about community and I love that topic. I could talk about it forever. And I guess this is, this is part of a bigger question I have, which is, I'd love it if you could share some examples of what you have seen work really well to fuel fast growth in some of the companies you've worked with. And maybe we could start with community because I came from a company a few jobs ago where we built a very large community and it was huge for us and it was a Facebook community. Through that experience I became really passionate about that. So that's just one example but, but there may be others. So, specific things that you have seen really deliver for the companies you've worked with. Kate: It's different for B2B and B2C. So I'll start with B2C because it's the easy, fun one. What I'm seeing right now that I love are these Facebook groups around certain products. This is not a client of mine, but it's actually a product I use. There was, what's it called, the meal delivery company that I was using for awhile when I had really busy days. It was all plant-based food and then they had this Facebook group and you could join it and people were just sitting there and they let people post whatever they want. They can sit there and post like "I really hate this smoothie. How am I going to get through this or am I supposed to do this later or not?" And it's super interesting to watch how that worked because the community moderated the community members for the brand. Brilliant. People will say, you know, "I did lose weight, I did not lose weight. This is really more about health." And so you start seeing these advocates come up and then they would use those advocates for their Instagram stories and other things. So that organic way of building a community that moderates itself is really interesting. Now initially, you have those questions about when do we step in and when do we not, and how do we moderate? I think if you can get by with moderating lightly, but you know, the feel of the brand is so positive, right? So that's a brand value that you have less of those issues but they're going to come up. But I think you have to have a very careful strategy about how to moderate that. The other thing that people are using a lot on B2B is obviously these micro influencers. There's some startups paying a lot of money for this and it's all over the place. Traction on that sort of slowed down the end of last year and now I'm starting to see clients pick back up on interest in that because everybody's at home and online, right? So we're starting to feel like there's opportunity there. I'd say if you can build your own organic community, that would be ideal, right? If you can't, you can use these micro influencers and that's great content as well. I talked to someone last week and their product's working and they're sold out, and they've gotten all this influencer marketing and that helped. But then all of a sudden years later, they don't have brand values. And so when you're needing to do more, you're needing to build content, you're needing to build demand and you're needing to build, you know, other parts of marketing, if you don't have those brand values built out, then all of a sudden you're like, well, who are we? We were using everyone else for the voice. So you'll run into that for B2B. It's true here. I think some of this comes to hiring. So what I've seen work really well is that you become friends with all the influencers in the industry and you sponsor their podcast and you appear on their podcasts and you go to their events and you just kind of make sure the team knows who the influencers are. And then you do everything you can to get involved with people at every level. You'll have local events and you'll bring the people in that you know, in that city and have them share their stories. And so it's a constant kind of industry networking. I've seen that work really, really well on the B2B side. But it's definitely different. Kathleen: It's so interesting that you say that because I've seen that work really well too, where people have formed strategic relationships with industry influencers and sometimes, not paid as you say. It doesn't always have to be paid. It could just be really showering them with love in the form of, you know, having them on your podcast or going on theirs or commenting and sharing and making introductions. I worked for a marketing agency for awhile and they did this exact thing and their way of forming those relationships was by offering to make personal branding websites for influencers. That was a great way to get to know them. Then you've done them a favor. So there are a lot of different ways that that that can be done. I think that's really smart. How to hit big growth goals on a small budget Kathleen: You work with well-resourced companies that are able to do a lot of these things. Any lessons learned or suggestions for companies that don't have those giant budgets? What are some things they can do in the early days? Kate: Oh yeah. I love the scrappy brands and helping startup founders. So I advise a lot of startup companies. I love this part of the work cause I obviously identify with it a lot. Being an entrepreneur for so long, I think, you know, when founders are trying to grow a brand unlimited budget, one thing I always bring up is never forget about email, because if you create an email list of your friends and family and colleagues and anyone that you meet with, those people become very loyal to your process. If you share with them where you are and what you're going through and what you need help with, they will help. It will absolutely help. I've seen that be really successful. Now your tone has to be right because nobody owes you anything and you want to be entertaining and kind of make them feel a part of it. And that's part of the email structure, right? Of like, "Here's what's happening and you know, these exciting things are happening, these challenges are happening. Here's how you can help." That is the basic format that does incredibly well. And that is one of the main marketing tricks that comes out of the Silicon Valley tech accelerators. They have all their founders do a weekly email and it works. I, on my own, I've had open rates of like 90% or higher, very high. Kathleen: I want to talk about that for a second because I'm fascinated by this. I also believe strongly in email. I also think that people think of email as this old, tired, dead strategy, but there's some really interesting things being done in the world of email right now. So you're talking about founders doing a weekly email. Can you peel the layers of that back a little bit for me? What does that look like? Who does it go to? Kate: Sure. So this is not client facing or customer facing. My personal list is maybe 200 people and it's my closest friends, my family members, colleagues I've worked with for years, people that I've met with on this journey. So it's people that know what you're up to and what you're striving for basically. But not clients. Clients and customers would get something different. They don't need to understand the process. So that email list is specific for friends and family colleagues. And what you do is, every time you send, you add more people that you've met along the way. I usually start it with like "Hi friends" or something like that. And then I usually say something seasonal about what's happening in the world and that I'm thinking about them because I am. All these people, they're cheering you on. And then I'll typically say, if you're new to the list, here's a link to the previous email, right? So that there's some sort of context in there drawn into the story correctly. And then I'll put some kind of update about where I am or what challenges are happening. And it's usually interesting stuff because when you're building a business, you hit all kinds of things in the world that are happening. So for example, with Traction Hero, there've been changes in California privacy law, changes in California employment law that have really changed the model. And that stuff is interesting. If you're not in it all day long, it's pretty interesting. So share the challenges you have. And then I usually say, "Here's the ways you can help. So if you just open your social accounts, we're now on Instagram. Would love if you would follow," and people will, they'll do it. Or "If you happen to know a friend who knows anything about X, Y, or Z, would you mind connecting me?" They will. This technique is straight from accelerator programs and it is a good one. Kathleen: Do you add these people to the list or do you ask them if they want to opt in? How does that work? Kate: I add them. I often will mention it to them. Like, "I'm going to add you to my newsletter. Let me know if it's okay." You're not doing it for a business so the rules are different. This is actually a question I'm curious to know. I mean I still send, so my recommendation is, I send it through MailChimp, their most basic template. And the reason why is people can unsubscribe. It does hurt your feelings a little bit more when someone does that you know. It's also interesting because if sometimes there'll be like a vendor or somebody and if they offer, I've actually had this happen, someone unsubscribed and I was like, then you're not interested enough in my story for me to pay you. Kathleen: Yeah. Right. Kate: Like, if you're not interested enough in this email because this is just basically what's happening with my business, if you're not interested in that, then I mean, I don't think that we'd be a good fit in terms of working together. I mean, I'm not bothering you. It's like once every six months, I mean slow, but I used to try to do them once a month. MailChimp's most basic template is perfect. And just text. I mean I throw in, maybe, you know, if I done a new logo design or something, throw it in. But keep it pretty simple. And that way people can unsubscribe. Kathleen: I'm a big fan of not overly designing emails. I mean these days, most people have the images in their emails turned off by default. And so if you've got a lot of design in there, it just doesn't get seen half the time anyway. And it looks crappy to have a lot of those image boxes. Like, "Turn your image on," you know, it just doesn't look good. So simpler is better all around with email in my opinion. Kate: Yeah, I know, I totally agree. And that MailChimp basic template's nice. The fonts big, it works well on mobile. It's, it's a nice one. These emails still take, I'm going to say it like if I'm fast, two hours. They still take time. You don't want to bother anybody and you want it to be entertaining and you want it to be, you know, uplifting, even if you're talking about your challenges. The most important thing is tone. I've seen some of these founder emails and if you use the wrong tone, people are like, "No thanks." Kathleen: So what is the right tone? Kate: I think it's friendly and I think it's engaging. You know, I don't think it's like, "Hi friends, hope you're enjoying this day. Please like my Facebook page, please sign up, please send me people who should be customers." It's not about a million asks. People have a lot going on in their lives. It's more of like, "Here's what's going on with building this startup right now. Here's what I'm trying to do. Here are the challenges I'm having. And that's interesting to people, because a lot of people haven't gone through it or want to go through it. And you know, entrepreneurship is never a straight line at all.  Kathleen: I love that idea. I mean, that's something that really any founder in any industry can do. I think for some it's going to put them in a place of discomfort because a lot of the founders I've met don't like talking about themselves that much, which is kind of funny because you're going to have to at some point as a founder.  But I think that's neat because that's something you can do that doesn't take really any money, that just takes your time. Kate: I'd say founders who have marketing backgrounds definitely have a hand up on this one. In tech accelerators, what would happen is I would send in mine first and then whoever in my batch would typically take mine and copy it. So people need examples of this. Email me and I'll send you one of my past ones because it does help to see some kind of, you know, formula that's worked for people and it's so much easier for marketers. Kathleen: I love that. So maybe we'll put Kate's email in the show notes and you can email her and say, Hey, I need your newsletter so you can see what it looks like. So you had, you said you had some other things to be on that and I took you on a tangent with that one.  Kate: So other things on my list. Definitely write industry articles on LinkedIn so that you're showing industry expertise and what you're learning. I think that's very important just to start showing industry expertise and that you're connected to the industry. The other thing I'll say is look for media stories where you might fit in and ping the journalists. So a quick side story, do we have time for that? Kathleen: Yeah, go for it. Kate: When I started my Seattle agency, I had just been through this issue of what's called domain front running, which is when you go in and you're buying a domain and before you can hit checkout, someone takes it from you. So they're capturing it on the domain register thing. Well, King Five, the big news station in Seattle ran a story about how these guys were making all this money on domain names and how it was such an innovative business. Well, I got the journalist name and I sent them an email and I said, "I totally disagree with you. This is really bad for entrepreneurs. It's, you know, it's not right. There's some negative things happening that are just unfair." So they came to the office and filmed me talking about the story about how someone stole my domain name and then sold it back to me for a lot more money than if I'd just been able to push the button. And that was a great opportunity. I've had a lot of luck. You know, my first startup was around printing cookbooks and I had a lot of luck just calling local news stations and cooking on air. Free PR. I've gotten a lot of clients placed, um, if you have a consumer based business, there are a lot of news stations that their lunchtime, they'll have like a third hour, they have a third hour. It's usually lifestyle and you can get pretty easily placed on it if you have some sort of presence and something to talk about. They need people for that lifestyle hour. So always look for PR and media opportunities. Kathleen: Yeah. And I would say a great resource for that also is help a reporter out -- HARO. I mean that's a no brainer. It doesn't cost anything. You subscribe to it, you get an email, however many times a day with reporters looking for sources for stories. It can be overwhelming, but it also is full of opportunity. Kate: Yeah, if you have gmail, you can put on a label and then go in and look when you have time. But yeah, that's an awesome recommendation. Podcast interviews are great. You find people like yourself and you have similar topics and interests. There are websites like Canva that make building marketing collateral so easy and you look like you know what you're doing design-wise and it doesn't cost you extra money. So by all means, make your decks, make your one pagers, make collateral for all these different use cases. Think about collateral. Kathleen: Oh my God, I have to stop you and just say, I am the biggest Canva fan girl on the planet. I am not a designer. I do not know how to use the Adobe suite to design anything. That's the one thing I've just realized. I'm not, I don't have the aptitude for it, but I can go into Canva and make the most beautiful things and I do it probably four times a day. I love it. Yes. It's amazing. Kate: Yeah. Canva, huge. When you get later on in your startup and you have to have brand differentiation and you know, you don't want to use simple stuff, that's different. Early on, use Canva, print this stuff, have leave behinds for customers. It doesn't cost that much money to just really work on your marketing collateral. I think also when you're on the topic of press, look at your local press opportunities, where can you talk at local events, whatever works locally. We'll end up working in different geographies and at larger scale. So learn locally first and that stuff is free. It just takes time. And also work on your industry. So look, so look at this stuff in terms of, are you being, are you B2B or B2C? So where does that fall in? Then look at your media, look at it local and look at an industry as well. And then you want to start growing your community in terms of media. I see entrepreneurs, it's kind of painful to see that they're trying to do all the platforms and it's terrible on all of them. Just choose the ones that are most relevant and a couple to start and just start figuring it out. There's some great tools. A lot of people are saying, "Well, I don't want Twitter because it's not working." Okay. But the thing about it, the people who are on Twitter right now are really passionate and they stay on it. They're a very, very, very passionate bunch. My favorite Twitter tool for growing a Twitter audience is called Jooicer, which is J. O. O. I. C. E. R. Have you seen it? It's awesome. It's like 30, 40 bucks and will grow your Twitter audience for you beautifully. So you know, find tools like that. And again, like we were saying with Canva, you can make beautiful social media posts in Canva since you now have to have more designed content. Use Canva for that.  Kathleen: Yeah, I love this and I will tell you right now as the head of marketing at a startup, I use Canva, I use helper a reporter out. I totally, totally agree with you on those suggestions. Those are great. Kate's advice for startup founders Kathleen: Well we are running low on time. So any last words of advice for startup founders out there who really want to take that fast path to growth? Kate: Yeah, I think the important thing is to try to not get overwhelmed. And so what I recommend doing is, do a list of 10 to 15 different things. You can try figure out a small test for that, that's feasible. Like, if it's an ad unit, put enough money so it's actually worth the test and go through and test them and concentrate on one thing, like one thing a week, step by step by step. If you try to do it all at one time, you get really overwhelmed and it ends up not diluting the quality of it. So, one foot in front of the other is what I always tell people. Kathleen: Yeah. That's good. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: Now changing gears because I have two questions I always ask all of my guests. We're all about inbound marketing on this podcast. So when you think about inbound, is there a particular company or individual that you can point to that you think is really doing it well? Kate: The first thing that popped in my mind was not what you asked. It was a company that helps people do it well. I really like Unbounce for landing pages. I think you can get a very beautiful landing page up quickly. I would have to think on that. I think, sorry, I was not prepared for this one. Kathleen: That's okay. Unbounce is a good suggestion actually. I can just keep that. Kate: Okay. I'm a huge proponent of Unbounce. There are other cheaper tools, but I really like the quality of Unbounce. Kathleen: Yeah, they're a great company. Second question, the biggest pain point I hear from marketers is that they can't keep pace with all of the different ways that digital marketing is changing. So how do you personally stay up to date with all of it? Kate: Being an agency owner, I've spent a lot of time and resources going through MarTech tools and organizing them. If anybody wants these reports, just please email me. And that helped organize my brain a lot and help me understand if I was doing the right thing or not. So we've done reports where we analyze CRM tools. There's one on website development tools. We've got one on email marketing and one on marketing automation. What those reports did, because in my head I just couldn't keep it all straight, was say here are the solutions, here are all the features that they all have comparatively. And then here are the integrations they have. Because I think what's so hard about MarTech right now is it's not only like I like this product, so I've got 20 products I have to put together. And when you're going out to buy, it's, it's not a great way for marketers to have to spend time of like, which tool, and having to analyze this themselves. So one of my goals to help marketers is to say, here's some reports. Go through everything that you need to know and hopefully you can pick a tool or at least narrow it down to two or three that you should get a free trial on before you commit to it. So I think any website like that, save yourself time on evaluating tools. Find people who've done the research for you. I think that that is really overwhelming. Kathleen: That's so true. It is. It's a lot. There's so many MarTech tools now. How to connect with Kate Kathleen: All right, well we're just about out of time. So Kate, if somebody's listening and they want to learn more about you or traction hero or they want to reach out and ask a question, what's the best way for them to connect with you? Kate: Katewalling.com is my personal website and Tractionhero.com is for the agency. It's a very landing page type website. Right now we're kind of building, um, by doing the work first. You can always reach out to me on my email, which is kate[at]katewalling.com or Twitter, which my handle is @Katewalling. You know what to do next... Kathleen: All right, fantastic. If you're listening and you liked what you've heard or you learned something new, please head to Apple podcasts and leave the podcasts a five star review so we can get in front of some more folks just like you. And of course, if you know anybody else who's doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me @workmommywork, because I would love to make them my next guest. That's it for this week. Thank you so much, Kate. Stay healthy. Kate: Thank you so much for having me.

Batching? What the heck is batching? ...and why is Kate SO obsessed with it? Let me share, friends, because this is one of the best tips I've ever learned and that I continue to leverage in my business every day. Exclusive Content & More @ DitchBusy.com Leave a rating & review! 

SEASON 2: EPISODE 4 Meditator Kate Johnson explores the connection between car horns and anonymous comment sections. ABOUT THE GUEST Kate Johnson teaches classes and retreats integrating Buddhist meditation, somatics, social justice and creativity at the Rubin Museum in New York, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, Spirit Rock Meditation Center, the Kripalu Center and the Omega Institute. Kate works as a culture change consultant, partnering with organizations who are pursuing noble goals to achieve greater diversity and sustainability. She is also an utterly unprofessional dancer and performer who earned a BFA in Dance from The Alvin Ailey School/Fordham University and an MA in Performance Studies from NYU. ABOUT THE HOST Neil Goldberg is an artist in NYC who makes work that The New York Times has described as “tender, moving and sad but also deeply funny.” His work is in the permanent collection of MoMA, he’s a Guggenheim Fellow, and teaches at the Yale School of Art. More information at neilgoldberg.com. ABOUT THE TITLE SHE'S A TALKER was the name of Neil’s first video project. “One night in the early 90s I was combing my roommate’s cat and found myself saying the words ‘She’s a talker.’ I wondered how many other other gay men in NYC might be doing the exact same thing at that very moment. With that, I set out on a project in which I videotaped over 80 gay men in their living room all over NYC, combing their cats and saying ‘She’s a talker.’” A similar spirit of NYC-centric curiosity and absurdity animates the podcast. CREDITS This series is made possible with generous support from Stillpoint Fund.  Producer: Devon Guinn  Creative Consultants: Aaron Dalton, Molly Donahue  Mixer: Andrew Litton  Visuals and Sounds: Joshua Graver  Theme Song: Jeff Hiller  Website: Itai Almor Media: Justine Lee Interns: Alara Degirmenci, Jonathan Jalbert, Jesse Kimotho Thanks: Jennifer Callahan, Nick Rymer, Sue Simon, Maddy Sinnock TRANSCRIPTION NEIL GOLDBERG:  My favorite New York biking experience is going over the Manhattan Bridge into Brooklyn. There's that long, gentle curve as you exit into Brooklyn, and you also don't have to pedal because you're ... KATE JOHNSON: Going down a hill. NEIL:  ... going downhill. KATE: I know what you're talking about ... NEIL:  I live for that. KATE: ... down to Jay Street. NEIL:  Yeah, exactly. And I also love that moment, especially at night, coming from Brooklyn into Manhattan on any of the bridges, and when you reach that midpoint where you can stop pedaling, you're over the water, and you can basically just glide all the way back into Manhattan. KATE: Yeah, from the peak, right? NEIL:  Yeah. KATE: Oh yeah, that is beautiful. Yes. I actually crashed my bike once on that because I was just having this peak moment as I was looking out at the water, then I hit the side and scraped my knee and hobbled the rest of the way. NEIL:  Hello. I'm Neil Goldberg and this is SHE'S A TALKER. Today, I'll be talking to meditation teacher Kate Johnson. But first, here's the premise of the podcast, and I like to say it's better than it sounds. I'm a visual artist, and I have this collection of thousands of index cards on which I've been jotting down thoughts, observations, reflections for a good 20 years. They were originally meant just for me, maybe to hold onto something I wanted to remember, or maybe to use in a future art project. But in SHE'S A TALKER, I'm using them as prompts for conversations with some of my favorite New York artists, writers, performers, and beyond. NEIL:  These days, the cards often start as recordings I make into my phone here and there throughout the course of the day. Here are some recent ones: English. Double letters are okay, triple letters are too much. I'm kind of surprised Trump likes Sharpies. Have to get home to feed one animal to another animal. NEIL:  I'm so happy to have as my guest, Kate Johnson. Kate teaches classes and retreats that integrate Buddhist meditation, social justice work, and creative practice at places like the Rubin Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philly, Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and the Kripalu Center, among others. She also describes herself as an utterly unprofessional dancer who earned an MA in performance studies from NYU. We talked in January at a recording studio at The New School near Union Square in New York City. NEIL:  I'm so happy to have Kate Johnson with me today on SHE'S A TALKER. Thank you, Kate, for being here. KATE: Oh my gosh, thank you so much for having me. NEIL:  I want to start with a couple questions I ask everybody. The first question would be, what is the elevator pitch for what it is you do? KATE: Oh my God. I am a mediation teacher and organizational consultant, and I often work at the intersections of spirituality, social justice, and creativity. NEIL:  Whoa. That is an elevator pitch. KATE: Right? NEIL:  That absolutely is. KATE: I pulled it together. NEIL:  I can really see how that triad could inform each other. Spirituality, social justice, and creativity, yes? KATE: Yeah. I mean, I also feel like those are the things that I just like and am good at, so there's not a whole lot else, I think, that's for me in this world. I try to just make them go together whenever I can. NEIL:  Right. Oh, isn't that what we're all doing? Just make the things that we like go together. Do you have parents, grandparents who are still around? KATE: Yeah. I have parents who are still around. NEIL:  What, let's say, would your parents say to their friends when their friends ask what you do? KATE: Oh. My mom would say that I'm a spiritual teacher, and my dad would say that I'm a writer. NEIL:  Oh, that's interesting. What's that split about? KATE: Well, my dad was a writer. He was a journalist, and so I think that he always really supported my love of language and saw that part of me. Then my mother, recently she started getting really into meditation, so she practices twice a day, she comes to mediation retreats that I teach. I don't know, I also feel like there are certain people in life where when you talk to them, your wisdom kind of comes out, and I think that my mom and I are that for each other. NEIL:  Oh, that's wonderful. KATE: So I see her as a spiritual teacher, too. NEIL:  Do you get nervous when she comes to a meditation retreat? KATE: A little bit. I mean, partially because I kind of have an internal commitment, even when I'm in meditation spaces, to really be honest about the way that I hope that our spiritual practice can inform our political lives. So oftentimes that means talking about my experience as a black, mixed race woman, and I have a white mommy. And so part of, I think, what's spiritual about our relationship is the willingness not to give up on each other as we have these conversations about what it means for me to be a black woman in America, what it's like for her as a mother of black children, and the ways in which, as a white woman living in kind of a middle-upper class area of Chicago, the things that she doesn't see or the attitudes she unconsciously picks up she didn't mean to. And so I think it's amazing. It's also frustrating in some ways to be in this long-term relationship with this person where we're not going to give up on each other because we have different views. KATE: But just to go back to your question, I'll often look out and be talking about experiences of racism, both within meditation centers and outside, and I'll look out at her and just wonder, "What's she thinking?" Does she feel bad that she couldn't shield me from those experiences? Is she feeling like, "Is Kate making this up? I don't know what she's talking about." So sometimes I'll try to read her face, but most of the time I'm just happy she's there and that she's ... I mean, she raised four children pretty much by herself, so I'm happy she has a little time to relax. We probably terrorized her. NEIL:  You mentioned not giving up on each other. I mean, that's such an interesting way to put it. KATE: Well, every family's different, everyone's relationship with their parents is different. A lot of the people that I interact with often in my social life, they have a relationship with their parents, and I think sometimes with the elder generation in general, where there's a sense of ... I don't know, kind of objectifying them. Like we might have seen them once and then saw a mixed bag, as we all are, someone who in some ways has it together or is loving and in other ways maybe carries outdated notions of themselves or other people, or uses embarrassing language to describe a particular ethnic group. Then we just kind of ... There's this dulling of the perception that happens after that where we no longer are seeing that person, we're seeing our memory projecting it out and then reacting to our own projections. And so- NEIL:  Oh my God. Story of my life. KATE: So I think not giving up is being, in some ways, willing to allow each other the grace that is actually offered to all of life, which is that we're all always changing and to be awake to each others' evolving experience and to be willing to be honest about what our experience is and shape each other. I think that's the other way in which I've seen friends give up on parents, is that they stop really telling the parents who they are. We fear we may not be accepted or parents just don't understand, that kind of thing, and sometimes that's true. Sometimes we have that fear and it's confirmed, and that's really hard. So it's like you can't have your whole sense of worth wrapped up in what a parent thinks, but also what if they couldn't see us once and then one day they could? And we kept kind of showing up and allowing ourselves to be seen, if that's not dangerous to who we are. I like to be surprised. NEIL:  Shall we go to these cards? KATE: Cool, yeah. This is actually the part that I'm most excited about, so ... NEIL:  All right, well. The first card I have is, "Patience always feels somehow wrong." KATE: The wrongness. I relate to the discomfort of patience. I think one of the blessings of Buddhist meditation training is it kind of gets drilled into your bones that just because something is uncomfortable doesn't mean it's wrong. I think to the point where it can even go a little too far and people can become scared of pleasure, and that's also not the point. In the Buddhist tradition, the word that's translated as patience is called khanti. It's K-H-A-N-T-I and it's one of the virtues, and so it's not different than other traditions where patience is a virtue. We often translate it as patience, but it means something like forbearance, also. KATE: So for me, when I learned patience as a child it was like holding on like hell until you get what you want, like, "If you're good, then you can have this treat when you get home." And so you just hold your little hands, you just sit on them and wait until finally, "Oh, I get what I want now that ..." I have a sense of relief and the patience that is talked about in the Buddhist teachings, which I also relate with ... and it's a little bit of a perspective shift, but it's like not just patience until I get what I want, but the patience that one has when we may never get what we want, or whether what we want is gone and will never return. The kind of patience that we have with our bodies as they get older and we go to do something that we used to do effortlessly. The suggestion, I guess, is that we can meet that experience with patience. NEIL:  Yeah, there's so many different types of patience, too. For a long time, I supported myself in a day job that involved a mix of computer graphics and IT work. Working with people around computers brings up, for me, the deepest level of patience or challenges to patience. KATE: Because they're not going fast enough? Is that- NEIL:  You could take the keyboard and mouse out of their hands and just do it absolutely in two seconds, but it is important to develop that muscle memory of using the mouse and the keyboard and da da ... going through the steps and having it be imprinted on your body in that way. KATE: Yeah. I mean, we're talking and I'm like, oh, so much of patience for me is about pace. It's about I either want a task to go faster than it's going, I would like time to go faster than it's going, and the frustration that it's actually not ... It's difficult. It's difficult. I don't know, would you say it's wrong? NEIL:  That really segues, interestingly, into a card I have about honking. "People honking are not where they want to be." KATE: That's deep. I mean, that's really deep. Yeah, I mean, gosh, to just be able to make a noise and be like, "I'm here and I don't want to be." NEIL:  Right, exactly. KATE: It makes me want to have a horn to just carry around and be like ... NEIL:  Oh my God. KATE: Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I think it's like they don't want to be here, but also, "I want someone to know that I'm here and I don't want to be. I want to make that heard. I want to make that visible." I can relate to that feeling. NEIL:  Oh my God, yeah. God, that horn would be on frequent blast in my life. KATE: Yeah, yeah. Or when you see a child have a tantrum and it's just like, that's them honking their horn being like, "Something is not right." NEIL:  Right, right, right. That's so true. Oh my God, the horn is metaphor. But I bike a lot, and I was stopped at a light where someone was honking the horn, and the biker next to me ... I love the conversations you'll have occasionally at a stoplight with someone else in the bike lane. He said, "Car horns should be just as loud inside the car as outside." KATE: Yeah, that's a cool idea. I mean, I can't imagine any car manufacturer picking that up, but you know. NEIL:  I know, right. I think that's also a connection between honking and vulnerability. As a bicyclist, do you ever kind of make that connection? I often feel like when people are honking at me, they're actually expressing a fear of hurting me. KATE: Oh, oh. NEIL:  Have you ever had that, or ... KATE: Yeah. I guess it can be like that the same way a parent will yank a kid, like, "Why'd you do ..." When they're doing something that they feel is dangerous. Yeah, I think the feeling of being in this giant metal thing that's hurling through space that could totally kill somebody is really kind of jarring. NEIL:  Absolutely. KATE: I mean, I love that you're giving people the benefit of the doubt like that, like, I startled them and they don't want to hurt me. I think that's a wonderful attitude to take. I didn't often think that. I often felt like there was so much protection or something that, I don't know, they felt they could do whatever they wanted. I often would pull up next to a car at a stop light and look over and when the person looked at me, the impression that I had is that they forgot that they could be seen inside this compartment. NEIL:  Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. KATE: So it almost is like an anonymous comment section or something where they can say whatever they want with their ... and then no one has to know it was them that trolled this nice biker. NEIL:  Honking is like the anonymous comment section. That's fucking brilliant. The card says, "Childish laughter at Buddhist lecture." You know what I'm talking about? Any kind of spiritual lecture ... First of all, the teacher will often embrace a kind of, "The bird doesn't worry about da, da, da." You know, say something kind of like that. KATE: Oh God. Yeah. NEIL:  And then in turn, the audience will laugh but it's not funny, and it's a childish kind of laughter. KATE: I was talking with a friend about this recently because we were talking about the kinds of Dharma talks or spiritual teachings that become ritualized to the point that this person is telling a story that they have actually told many, many times. You've heard it on a podcast and you've heard them say it at last year's retreat and they're telling the same story and there's the same punchline and you laugh again and it's like, "Why?" We were wondering if it's less about novelty and more about familiarity, kind of like there's a sense of, "Oh, I know what's coming and it's comforting to me and I laugh because I know what to do here." NEIL:  I hear that. It's why we like sitcoms. You know the joke's about to come ... certain types of sitcoms. KATE: Right. And it also depends on what's coming before it because sometimes I think that Dharma talks can also bring up heavy stuff, like death and aging and heartbreak of various kinds. And so it builds up a kind of energy that can actually be difficult for us to contain, and so there's this sense of it's powerful, but it's almost uncomfortable because it's building up this energy, then wanting it to release in some way. So even if the joke is bad, just being excited that there's a release valve that you can pull. NEIL:  Next card. "How I sometimes keep my shoelaces untied as a kind of mindfulness reminder." I'm aware that my shoelaces are untied as I'm walking. They become untied, it's not like I purposely don't tie them. They become untied and I kind of hold off on tying them just as a way to be like, "Got to walk mindfully." KATE: Oh wow. What effect does it have, or how does it work? Does it help your mindfulness? NEIL:  Absolutely because it's like you don't want to trip. It then becomes a walking meditation. But also, it really makes you aware of how many people will tell you, "Hey, your shoelace is untied." Which is why New York is great. KATE: I was thinking about that. I was like, "Oh my God, do you know what you're doing to people? NEIL:  Right, exactly. KATE: For me, I get so scared when I see someone with their shoelace untied. I'm like, "You're going to fall." But I kind of love that. I also think it's ... Walking meditation can be kind of boring. I mean, all meditation can be kind of boring, so it's like ... NEIL:  Right, exactly. KATE: ... juicing it up a little bit, living on the edge, walking meditation. I like it. NEIL:  Because you could trip, as mindful as you're trying to be. KATE: Right. The wind blows a different way, it swings that little lace underneath you're other foot, and then you're just- NEIL:  Exactly, you're down. KATE: Yeah. But I'm glad you haven't fallen yet. I think that's cool. NEIL:  May you not fall. KATE: May you ever be upright. NEIL:  Do you have any little tricks like that, like meditation hacks? KATE: Yeah. I mean, I think Thich Nhat Hanh's tradition is really amazing for this kind of thing because they talk about mindfulness bells and the way that you can ... And bell is a metaphor, it's something that makes you remember, and so you just ... It can be a bell, like every time your phone rings, you take a deep breath, feeling your feet on the ground before you pick it up. Or every time you touch a doorknob, you allow yourself to begin again, whatever that means. There's ways to do that. NEIL:  Oh, I love that. KATE: I think for me now, a lot of my mindfulness bells are internal. I'll actually notice a disturbance in the field. I'll notice that my chest tightened up a little bit or my belly kind of swerved, or I feel something inside and use this moment to kind of actually pause and notice what happened there, and if necessary, to care of it. I'm big into letting my body talk to me these days as a practice, after having really ignored it for many, many, many years. I'm like- NEIL:  As a dancer, or in dance work? Or just as a human being, or ... KATE: Yeah, definitely in dance work, although ... I was going to say, although I don't know if it started there. I might have ... But in dance for sure, there were ways of moving my body that didn't feel good, but then I thought, "Well, this is what the choreographer wants, so I'm going to do it." There's an element of dance training that is about don't pay attention to what you're feeling and just get it done, and that is capitalism. That's not- NEIL:  Dance is capitalism. That is hilarious, oh my God. KATE: I think, right? It's like what matters is production and not necessarily your human feelings and needs, and so as humble as it is, actually paying attention to what your body is feeling and being willing to attend to that ... at least with your attention, if not with your actions ... is kind of this radical anti-capitalist act. NEIL:  I love it. KATE: For some reason, from a early age I was really drawn to these European concert dance forms. I was really into ballet and then I was really into Martha Graham technique and some parts of the Horton technique, which I ended up in when I went to The Ailey School. They're not actually meant for everybody ... NEIL:  Yeah, everybody. KATE: ... and I'm not even sure if they're meant for anybody. It's kind of this idealized form that we're all ... So anyway, I don't know if feeling or feeling good is always a part of dance for the dancer. I think sometimes it's helping other people feel something. But I don't think that's what dance has to be and I don't think it's what it is at it's best, but I think somehow that's the kind of dance that I end up doing most of the time. NEIL:  That's an interesting way of thinking of it. It's almost like this Christlike thing of, "It doesn't feel good for me, but it makes someone else feel good." KATE: Feel amazing. NEIL:  Right, yeah. "I could imagine thinking as I'm dying, 'Here we go again.'" KATE: Where did this come from? NEIL:  I just had the idea it could have a sort of familiarity to it, in the same way that falling asleep has a familiarity to it or something. I mean, of course, the beauty of it is I'll know but I won't be able to have a followup podcast episode about it. I think. KATE: You'll just have to send us a sign or something. NEIL:  Yeah. And it's not even for me about necessarily believing in reincarnation, which I don't know if I believe in. But I don't think beyond that. KATE: The thought that I had just now was like, I hope I'm familiar enough with death by the time I experience it myself that I can think, "Oh, this is normal, this is natural, this is the way of all things," instead of, "Oh, why is this happening to me?" Which, I think, from talking to people who volunteer in hospice and stuff, that can be the thought. Like, "Why me, doctor? Why me?" And it's like, "Well, you're 90." NEIL:  "Why not you?" KATE: But yeah, so there's a lot of Buddhist practices that are preparations for death and dying, and some of them are visualizations, some of them are reminders. There's one that's, "I am of the nature to grow old. I am of the nature to become sick. I am of the nature to die. Everything and everyone I love will be taken from me and I am the owner of my karma, it's my only true inheritance." KATE: I mean, I think that one of the things that make Buddhism a hard sell is that it can feel like a downer to be like, "Okay, we want to talk about suffering. We're going to talk about impermanent." The paradox is that somehow being in touch with those things lends a sense of, "Oh, I'm actually alive now and this is what life is," and maybe even a sense of urgency around understanding, "This will not always be the case, so I don't just have forever to bumble along until I finally decide I'm going to do the thing that I need to do." And that leads to a kind of freedom and happiness that denial of death and denial that things are changing actually ... We will never win that game. NEIL:  Right, oh wow. Yeah. KATE: We will never succeed. This is a setup, actually, but it's a setup that you can buy a lot of products and goods on the way to realizing that's possible. So it's good for the economy, but it's not necessarily good for our spirits. NEIL:  Capitalism again. What's a bad X you'd take over a good Y? KATE: A bad X I'd take over a good Y. So first thought is a bad day sober I'd take over a good day drunk. NEIL:  Are you in recovery, can I ask? KATE: Yeah. Almost nine years, which means I was definitely meditating before I got sober. I was trying to become less attached to wine without actually having to stop drinking wine. But that didn't work out as well and I think that the meditation practice helped me to get real enough with myself to be like, "Oh, this is actually never going to work out. No matter how I dress it up or dress it down, it's never going to work out for me." Yeah. NEIL:  What is it that keeps you going? KATE: Oh man. I think it changes. A couple of answers came to as I was letting your question resonate, and one is a sensory sense of smell kind of thing, like being able to smell a different future that's ... I think it's something ... What keeps me going feels like it's something in a future that is looking back or calling to me from a future moment, saying, "You really want to get here, actually. Keep going. I love you. Keep going. You're doing great." NEIL:  And that connects to smell for you? KATE: Yeah, it's like a whiff. Having a whiff of something that is just kind of like cooking. I genuinely want to see what's going to happen. Like, "What's going to happen today?" It's very close to anxiety, but it's not anxiety. I know that there is kind of a way that anxiety can get people up in the morning for momentum, and I had that experience also, and this one is just a half-step back from that and it feels a little bit more sustainable for my system just to be like, "I wonder what's going to happen?" NEIL:  That seems like a beautiful place to end it. Kate Johnson, thank you so much for being on SHE'S A TALKER. KATE: Thank you. Thanks for inviting me. It's been awesome. NEIL:  Thank you so much for listening to this episode of SHE'S A TALKER. Before we get to the credits, there were some listener responses to cards that I'd love to share. It's a new thing we're doing in season two. NEIL:  In my conversation with artist and baker Andy Hawkes, we talked about the card, "Leftovers as a kind of embodied memory." In response, Lex Brown wrote, "More than memory, leftovers make me think of the seemingly endless future of packing my lunch in middle and high school. I thought it would never end. Gladware, monotonous future food, foggy plastic lids, leftovers for school night dinner or for lunch the next day." John Pilson wrote, "I feel like the leftover with teeth marks deserves its own category, probably a name other than leftovers. Maybe evidence?" And finally, [Com and See 00:27:59] wrote, "One of my uncles in Hong Kong as a personal rule never keeps leftovers, even if he's making lobster or crab or abalone or delicious meats. It's so ruthlessly unsentimental, it breaks my heart every time I eat at his table." NEIL:  Thanks to everyone who wrote in. I loved all the responses. If you have something you'd like to share about a card on the podcast, email us or send us a voice memo at shesatalker@gmail.com or message us on Instagram @shesatalker. And also, as always, we'd love it if you'd rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or share this episode with a friend. NEIL:  This series is made possible with generous support from Stillpoint Fund. Devin Guinn produced this episode. Molly Donahue and Aaron Dalton are our consulting producers. Justine Lee handles social media. Our interns are Alara Degirmenci, Jonathan Jalbert, and Jesse Kimotho. Our card flip beats come from Josh Graver, and my husband, Jeff Hiller, sings the theme song you're about to hear. Thanks to all of them and to my guest, Kate Johnson, and to you for listening. Jeff Hiller:                       (singing

Do you have disturbing thoughts about your own death? Or horrific daydreams where you play out different scenarios involving your own death, or that of your loved ones? I think of it as the "elephant in the room" when we’re talking about spirituality and our souls. We’re probably all having these thoughts a lot more than we’re talking about them … You Might Die Tomorrow is Kate Manser's life’s work dedicated to helping you live urgently, love openly, and enjoy your life — by thinking about your death. It’s about an inspiration to live today. GUEST LINKS - KATE MANSER www.youmightdietomorrow.com Deathbed Meditation You Might Die Tomorrow Facebook Group MENTIONED ON THE SHOW Heather Alice Shea HOST LINKS - SLADE ROBERSON Slade's Books & Courses Get an intuitive reading with Slade Automatic Intuition FACEBOOK GROUP Shift Your Spirits Community BECOME A PATRON https://www.patreon.com/shiftyourspirits Edit your pledge on Patreon TRANSCRIPT Kate: Yeah, I was just like everybody else. I didn't really think about death very much, other than thinking that I was totally invincible all throughout high school, doing a lot of dangerous things. But at the time, what precipitated my shift, from going from not thinking about death to embracing death, which is where I am today, was a period of intense death anxiety. I don't know if you've ever been there, Slade, but I was just consumed by death anxiety. At the time, I was in a marriage that was very unhappy and I was just in decision paralysis agony, didn't know what to do, and then I had three people die around my same age in unrelated tragedies in a span of six months. So that just sent me into a tailspin oh, Ohmygod, I could die at any moment. I need to be scared all the time. Slade: Mmm... So tell me, what are some of the components of death anxiety? What are the thoughts and the voices that you're hearing? What are they saying? Kate: It was like there was a movie in my head all the time of a really gory, not fun movie happening where like, if I was driving into an intersection, for example, which you do, we do all the time. I would just have this quick snap vision of a Mack truck coming and taking me out as I went through the intersection. And then it would just continue. That movie would continue and I would think, oh, what would happen? The paramedics would come, then my family would have to be notified. All down just this dark tunnel of mortality. And then the same thing would apply for other people in my life. I would imagine getting the call that my mom had died unexpectedly. And I think the phone was kind of a trigger for me because I had gotten a couple of these unexpected calls when three of my friends died. I had that negative association. And so I was just afraid of death all the time. It was just this mysterious unknown thing that I couldn't control but put all my energy into trying to. Slade: Okay, so it was much more visceral violence, suspensful gory movie kind of stuff for you. It wasn't even more the existential stuff. It was actual... Well I've heard before that that's kind of a PTSD thing? To, in the moment, be struck with flashes of anxious violence. I mean, anything can cause you to have PTSD. You could have it around the trauma of those phone calls. You know what I'm saying? The ones that had happened in the past and that was some kind of lingering energy that was getting triggered. Kate: Oh yeah. And it was the gory moment of death, for sure, but it was also.. My mind was very preoccupied with all the things that would happen after the death occurred. Because that's what's unknown. We don't know if we're going to be like the stoic, you know, if we lose someone in our life that we really care about, are we going to be the stoic survivor or are we going to be like crumbled under the circumstances? So I would have trouble sleeping at night because I would imagine the whole scenario. What would happen if my husband had died unexpectedly, and calling his family and going to Brazil to have a funeral there and all of the things that would happen. It got to the point that, I had always been someone who was like, pretty much a lover of life, but during this period, which lasted about a year and half, I was putting all my energy into death anxiety and it had completely clouded the beauty of life. Slade: Okay, so I have to tell you. There was this synchronicity involved with our meeting. The day before I was introduced to your site, a woman had posted in our Facebook Shift Your Spirits community asking if anyone else had obsessive thoughts about death. Kate: Wow... Slade: And she was really quick to say that, it wasn't really negative, it wasn't violent. She wasn't contemplating suicide or anything like that. She was just kind of putting it out there that she thought really often about death. But more from an existential place. That's why I was surprised that you were talking about these kind of violent scenarios, the actual death itself. She was kind of talking more from a place of like, being really profoundly aware, like this clock ticking and having this limited amount of time on earth and she just put it out there and said, you know, that she was thinking about it in a contemplative way. She found it odd that more people didn't talk about it, right? It's like this elephant in the room, especially in a community like ours where we're talking about spirits and communication from those who've passed. That kind of stuff. She was asking if anyone wanted to chime in and say how they felt about it. And it was weird because it was one of those posts where a lot of people were liking it or responding to it without commenting. So I said, "Yeah, I really do think those thoughts actually, and I wasn't sure what to say though in support of that other than... I feel you. Kate: Yeah. Slade: And then the very day, there you were with your message and I thought, okay, this is obviously a conversation that I need to have for everyone who was probably seeing that post and thinking, I don't even know what to do with this. So help me reframe this in a positive light. How did you get to a place where you could embrace your death? Kate: So believe it or not, it was another tragic and unexpected death of someone around me, same age, so it was like the fourth. A year and a half had passed since that six months where I had three in a row. I believe it was, yeah, about a year and a half went by and then a friend and coworker of mine at Google, Dan Freedenburg, was climbing Mount Everest and he died in the Nepal earthquake, in an avalanche, when he was up at base camp. Man, I was so angry initially when I heard that he died, because he was a really vibrant, adventurous, goofy, very intelligent person, and very well liked among Google and his friends. He dated a celebrity and what my first reaction was, was just anger. That he had taken part in an elective sport, really, and took his life in his own hands and ultimately it was his choice to climb Mount Everest. That ultimately took him out of this world, away from all of us. I was so mad at him at first. But then as I thought more about it, I realized that climbing Mount Everest is something that you don't just like do on a random Saturday. It's something that requires a ton of mindful energy. It's very expensive. You have to train really hard for it and it's a choice that you make over a long period of time. I realized that he was a very smart and vibrant person and he had put a lot of thought into climbing Mount Everest. He accepted the risk that came with that because, as I looked back on his decision, I came upon this realization that he HAD to climb Mount Everest in order to truly live. That if he had stayed on the ground, he also would have died in a way as well, because he would have been living out of his system of values and not living his authentic life. That was when I suddenly saw death in a new perspective, which was that I have no control over when I die. Dan had no control over when he died and he decided to live vibrantly and take calculated risk. I could die climbing Mount Everest if I ever did that, which I probably wouldn't. I could die in that intersection that I was so afraid of going through all the time. Or, I'm a very clumsy person! I could probably die climbing the stairs, and I'm putting so much of my precious energy into worrying about death when I could be putting that energy into living while I'm still alive. That was really the main turning point for me, was just like, hey, I could die tomorrow and whereas when I was with the death anxiety, that was the most terrifying thought. Suddenly, a light had been shown on it and I was like, oh! I could die tomorrow! And that's the most freeing concept I've ever experienced. Slade: So that's interesting. The fact that we could make that a freeing concept. So how do you recommend, as we're listening, we're all probably now really feeling the anxiety about it. So how do we manage that? Kate: Yeah. I'm actually doing some research right now for this for the last chapter that I'm working on for my book. Like, psychologically we manage our fear of death. I believe that fear of death is... And many, many scientists and psychologists believe that fear of death is like the one universal fear that all humans share. We're not all afraid of snakes but we're all afraid of death. The research shows that the best way to manage our fear of death is two things: Number one. To live life in accordance with our values, which then bolsters our self-esteem. And number two, to invite mortality awareness into your consciousness, as opposed to keeping it on the fringes, because I'd be very curious to talk to the woman who posted in your Facebook group what her contemplation has been and the arc of that. Because, I know I can say for myself that the more I invite death into my life, the more I think about it and meditate on it, the better I feel and the more vibrant I live while I'm still alive. Slade: So how do you think we can use this sense of our mortality to empower us? To help us make decisions about what we're doing in our lives? Kate: Man, in death, everything seems to just fall away and become clear. Death is this... There's something about it. There's something about the finality of it that we have so much going on in our lives that when we look at it from the perspective of death or the end of our life, we realize how little of it really matters to us. That's what I've found is the best way to help me make decisions in life is, I actually do this thing that I call the Deathbed Gut Check, which is that when i'm faced with a decision that I'm having trouble making, I don't know what to do. I get decision paralysis with the best of them and I'm frozen and trying to figure out what the heck I want to do with my life. I do the Death Bed Gut Check, which is, I will close my eyes and imagine myself on my deathbed. I'm on my deathbed and I'm looking at the present moment or the tough decision that I'm trying to make, I'm looking BACK at it from the perspective of being about to die. I am given a sense of clarity and I imagine myself thinking, like, ok, I'm on my deathbed, how do I feel having done Option A. I observe the visceral reaction in my body. Do I feel a lightness of being, or do I feel a pit at the bottom of my stomach? I do the same thing for Option B. Because it's so loud in our lives, with all this stuff that swirls around, and it's difficult to focus on... get that perspective of what matters. I use that sense of mortality to get perspective and help me make decisions in life. And that five second Deathbed Gut Check has helped me make some really, really important decisions and also really simple ones. And it's something that, death is accessible to all of us and it's a tool that is radically underused. Slade: I have to share with you that several months ago, I was working with a healer around some creativity blocks and I was really struggling with the book that I was working on. Part of my struggle was that I had another book that I really wanted to be writing instead, and I had this HUGE sense of guilt about abandoning one to work on the other, and abandoning all that work and etcetera etcetera. I was just angst thinking about it, as authors do. You know, just ridiculously blown up into this existential crisis. The woman I was sharing all this with came back to me with just a really simple question: If you had only enough time to live and produce one of these books, which one is it? Kate: Wow. Slade: And it was INSTANTLY... Kate: gasp It was! Slade: You know what I mean? The answer was like, Oh. Kate: Lightning bolt. Slade: Yeah! It was like, so just flashed through your body. Like, all the thinking and worrying and pros and cons list just fell away. Kate: Yes! Slade: Yeah, so I will now call it the Deathbed Gut Check. Kate: Yeaaaah. Slade: It's a great way to think about it. Well, so you also have something called the Deathbed Meditation. Tell us about that. Kate: The Deathbed Meditation actually came from the Deathbed Gut Check, because I had observed these positive effects of imagining myself on my deathbed and helping me make decisions in life that... I became curious about the deeper effects of meditating on mortality. So I started googling around and I learned a lot about how pervasive death-awareness is, particularly in the Buddhist religion. But I couldn't find an actual meditation similar to what that Deathbed Gut Check is, from the perspective of our deathbed, looking back over our lives, and so I wrote one. I've been facilitating it now for I think two and a half years and it's of course morphed over that time but it's essentially a guided meditation that's anywhere between 20 and 30 minutes. That's appropriate for novice and experienced meditators alike, in which I safely guide you to imagine yourself on your deathbed, wherever that is for you. It's different for everybody. It could be your grandparents' house. It could be a shack on the beach. It could be, one guy actually, for him, his safe place, where his deathbed was, where he imagined it in this meditation, was a place that he had been on in a psychedelic trip and he said, "I never thought I'd be able to get back there and the meditation took me there." So from the perspective of your deathbed, wherever that is, we go through and we look over your life. You growing up. We look at the decisions that you made in the time that you had. What you did do, what you didn't do. And we observe, again, those visceral feelings that come out. But again, it's without judgement because at the end of your life, there's nothing you can do. But then at the end of the meditation, we close with a call to act, because unlike on your deathbed, at the end of this meditation, you DO have more time. And with that, we have seen some really beautiful personal transformations occur. Slade: What kind of feedback do you get from the people who are doing this meditation? What are their takeaways? Kate: Oh, so many amazing things and I have to tell you, when I first started doing, even when I first started, with the whole concept of, you might die tomorrow, and the Deathbed Meditation, it had radically shifted my life for the better. I'm telling you, I made changes in my life. I quit my job. I went travelling for a couple of years. Like, those things are awesome, but it was really the daily impact that mortality awareness had in my life, that just made me want to share it with the world. But there were incidences where I was like, oh, this is talking about death. There are some people or some instances in which people may not accept it with open arms, and it will be hard. And the two incidences that I thought were, one, people who were actually dying. People with terminal illness or the elderly or people who deal with death every day in their lives, like doctors for example. I was like, oh, I don't want to talk about you might die tomorrow with them because it's so real for them and I think it's inappropriate. It turns out, over time, that those people, and particularly those with terminal illness, are the OG fans of you-might-die-tomorrow. And what I realize is like, unlike the rest of us, they can't push death under the rug. So from there, I gained a new sense of confidence in my message for everyone. And then regarding the Deathbed meditation, just recently I, when I was doing workshops and things, I wasn't always including it. But when I got the call from Facebook a couple of months ago and they wanted me to perform, or facilitate, the Deathbed meditation at their corporate office here in Austen, that was when I knew that this is a message that I should not be afraid of. This is a message that people want to hear. And some of the transformations I've seen are people who, like, one woman is a scientist and she was working testing soils for the government. She left her job and is now pursuing her dream to become a nutritionist. There are a lot of people who packed up their things and are now travelling in various parts of the world as a result of the meditation. But really, what I hope is that, these big changes are fantastic in living life in accordance with what's meaningful to you. It is fantastic. But it's the little ways that death can positively impact your life, which is what I hope people take away from the Deathbed Meditation. Just loving more vibrantly, living more urgently, and making it a priority to enjoy our time while we're still here. Slade: So, this may be a little bit obvious question. It may just be a continuation of what you're just saying. But what do you hope that you can contribute to our collective understanding into the greater conversation about spirituality and our experience being human. What do you hope your legacy is? Kate: Mmm... my legacy. I hope that people can embrace their death. That is my message. But really, at the end of the day, I found that you might die tomorrow and thinking about my death is a means to an end. Thinking about my death has positively impacted my life. But what I want people to take away at the end of the day is to live in accordance with your values and I have no idea why we're really here. We're like, what is that saying? We're meat sacks gravitationally stuck to a rock spinning in a galaxy greater than our comprehension. We don't know why we're here. And so, to prioritize enjoyment in life, I think that's what I really would want people to take away, is just have fun. And you have no idea, just enjoying your life, how far that ripple effect will go to that which you don't even understand. Slade: It occurs to me that I should probably ask you, what are your feelings about the concepts of life after death, of the spirit surviving this lifetime? There's no right or wrong answer. I'm just curious what your personal feeling is about all that. Kate: I'm actually weirdly a fan of conspiracy theories. And I definitely don't think the afterlife and spirituality is a conspiracy theory but I say that because one of the things that I'm grateful for in my life is that I believe anything is possible until it's proven otherwise. And I really like the idea of, in our consciousness, living on in spirituality. So I believe in the possibility of the afterlife. I absolutely believe in spirituality and if you look into the experiences of people who have actually had near death experiences, one of the key things, the key aspects that many of these experiences share is an understanding of the Oneness of humanity and shared consciousness, and the idea that our lives do go on. And again, I think that death is the greatest teacher, and if that's what they see and it brings me comfort, then I'd absolutely believe in it. What was your experience of mortality awareness? Slade: You know, I think mine is more of the existential stuff, and part of what I contemplate a lot, because I am surrounded by a community of people. Here's the weird thing - my brand is all about bringing spirituality down to earth. Like fewer hearts and flowers is my tagline... Kate: Yeah. Slade: Yeah, yeah. So what that really means is it doesn't do anything for me if I can't apply it to my actual life. If spirituality and personal development go hand in hand, for me, and all this great new age vocabulary and tools and concepts only really, where's rubber hit the road kind of thing. So I'm always looking for that for myself, and that's sort of what I share and put out into the world. Like, okay, well it's great that you can talk to your spirit guides. What can we do with that, you know? Kate: Yeah. Slade: But it's interesting because I still attract an audience that is much more woo woo than I am. Sometimes I look at the conversations going on in my own Facebook community and I'm like, man these people are out there! And I love it! I love it because I don't... I'm not there to debunk anything. And like you said, you know, if there's something that I don't really, if I can't disprove it... My favourite quote is actually from Marilyn Monroe. She was being interviewed by someone for a newspaper article and she made an offhand remark about somebody's astrological sign and the reporter said, "Do you believe in that?" And she, with this totally like, Duh, look on her face, was like, "I believe in everything a little bit." So I kind of have that feeling. Like, I believe in everything a little bit. So one of the things that I notice in my own deathbed meditative contemplations is, I have a lot of friends who are mediums who spend... their entire jobs and career and purpose revolves around the concept of speaking to people who have passed away. And I'm not a medium. All mediums are psychic but not all psychics are mediums. Kate: Yeah. Slade: And I don't specifically have that experience. So I have a big "Huh... okay, that's interesting." So what I find my contemplations being is, I'm led down all of these super phenomenal paranormal conversations with people all the time. I'm inundated with the concept that, you know, our souls are infinite and all that kind of stuff. And I can visit people here, talk to them after I'm gone. And then I'll have these moments where I am like, wait a minute, that's what everybody else thinks. And I'll reel it all the way back in and think, what do I really think about that? And I have this concept that I've only spoken about with a few people. I actually did... Remember when I said sometimes my conversations with new people are more interesting than any other? I spoke with this woman named Heather Alice Shea once on the show and we were set up through a mutual friend. "You guys should do an episode!" She and I talked for 50 minutes before we started the interview and it was all around an offhand comment that I had made about the fact that sometimes I think about being an atheist. And I test out my beliefs in terms of like, can I still be a psychic and be an atheist? Can I still explain some of this phenomenon without having to believe in a higher power or like a bearded man in the sky kind of thing. So I have this whole concept of spiritual atheism that I play with. She and I just went down this rabbit hole about that, right? Again, it's not about debunking anything or disproving anything, but is there this place that you can be comfortable in where you don't know? Kate: Mmm... the ambiguity. Slade: Yeah! Are you okay with the thought that, you know, this could happen or something else could happen? I could be totally surprised. It could all be over and I wouldn't even know, you know? So those are the kinds of things that I think about. I don't know if that answers your question, but... Kate: Yeah, that's beautiful. I mean, that really hits on what helped me is getting comfortable with that ambiguity and mindfully channelling my energy elsewhere. It's like, oh, I don't have control over when or how I die. But I have 100% control over how I live until that time comes. Slade: Yes. Kate: And I love that spiritual atheism. I met a guy who now has a retreat in Thailand and man, he's very passionate about his concept of spiritual atheism. Slade: Really! Kate: Oh yeah, yeah. I should connect you guys. Slade: Yeah! Who is it? Kate: His name is Pierre. He is American but he studied Zen Buddhism for many years in Japan and how has a retreat in Thailand. He's just very outspoken about this idea that you CAN separate them. You can separate the woo woo from the spirituality. And that you can make it whatever you want. And very specifically about the spiritual atheism. Slade: I have this fantasy. Like, you know you have your play out the - ooo what if this happened, kind of thing. And this is the comment that I made that Heather picked up on. I did an episode once about how I fantasize about just one day becoming a born again atheist. Kate: Wow. Slade: And announcing to everyone, I've worked my way through the list and I've found a way that I can philosophically justify all of this. For myself. Who would be okay with that? Who would stick around? Because I don't... I actually think that we can have all of this stuff. I think there's a lot of biological explanations that will exist in the future understanding. I believe that a lot of the things that we experience as psychic phenomenon is literally just a part of our biology and the miracle of our brain. And it doesn't mean that it's not happening. It just means that we're just equipped to do it in mortal form. You know what I mean? Kate: Wow. Slade: I think that there's a lot of science that could explain some of the phenomenon that we experience. That's not a psychic prediction necessarily. It's just this thing that I contemplate a lot, which is, can we have all of this? And is it okay if you choose to populate your spirituality with supernatural concepts? Because I kind of think, at the end of the day, people who have faith, even if it's a different faith system, I have found, are more open in general. They're more compassionate, they're more likely to believe other people's beliefs. They're more likely to leave other people alone to be whatever they want to be. They are less likely to need to convert everyone to their way of thinking. You see it in elderly people in particular, who really talk in purely fundamentalist Christian vocabulary. But their philosophy and their vibe and their true wisdom is super open minded and extremely liberal. I kind of feel like there is a place. There is a happy spot. I think that maybe it's what your message is about. That there's a place where we can exist in uncertainty. And because of the uncertainty, be motivated to make it all amazing now. Because what good is it, again, if it's not useful to us right now, what good is it if I'm gonna be able to contact my loved ones after I'm dead? That's great, but what kind of impact can that have on people's experiences here and now in the moment? Can we do something practical? Can we be okay with the concept that what some people talk about is spiritual entities to a more clinical, intellectual mindset? We can talk about the archetypes as kind of psychological programming that all our brains kind of carry, like apps on our phone or whatever. Kate: Yeah. Slade: So I like to contemplate the place where all those things end up in a big chaotic mash and I think at the end of the day, it's a little bit of a choice. And as long as the choice is life and happiness and I'm gonna get off my ass and DO something, then I'm cool with whatever you want to bring. Kate: Yeah. Wow, you had a very insightful observation there about people who have a sense of spirituality being more open and accepting. There's actually scientific, or psychological basis for this. It's the research that I'm doing now is basically like, it really all comes down to security. And if you have a sense of security, which religion very often provides, you have the space to be more open. Because you don't feel threatened. Whether it is Christian fundamentalism or whatever the belief in, that everything's going to be okay, that you're part of a group and things are stable. That bolsters self-esteem. But one of the things that I argue in my book is that spirituality is amazing. And I absolutely believe that people should do whatever makes them feel good. I think you can also create your own personal religion of what is meaningful to you. Whether whatever you're practising religion is, you can kind of personal religion of, okay, these are the things that are important to me. And I'm going to actually live in accordance with those, and then that, therefore, provides that security that allows people to be open and... Man, that was a beautiful observation. Slade: Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me about this today. Tell everyone where they can go to find you online to explore this more. Kate: Yeah! Come hang out with me. My website is www.YouMightDieTomorrow.com. Pretty easy to remember. And I am finishing up my book now. It's going to hopefully be coming out this summer. And if you're interested in joining our community on Facebook, or inquiring about the experience of the Deathbed Meditation, I do those in person and online and groups and corporate workshops. I just love to hear about what your experiences are and what thinking about your death has done and impacted your life. Slade: That's wonderful, Kate. That's for coming on the show. Kate: Thank you, Slade.

How Kate Fisher found herself at the brink of death, having to choose between this world and the next. Plus one of the best foods to feel grounded: for keeping a level head and making good decisions(!) Hi everybody, I'm Barbara Fernandez, the Rocking Raw Chef, here with my Clean Food, Dirty Stories: one to entertain, the other to inspire.I help people stamp out stress, depression and fatigue over at RockingRawChef.com, and today's title is:This world...Or AnotherIn addition to this story, at the end of this episode I'll share with you one of the best foods to feel grounded – in other words, to help us stay clear-headed and even make better decisions in our lives.OK enough hints from me, I'm sure you have no idea what that food is...or maybe you do, so let's get on with the story.Our guest, Kate FisherI am super excited to be joined here today for our story by Kate Fisher. Kate is a shamanic practitioner who specialises in helping others to connect with the power that is already within them. She is also an artist, and she works with drums, paint and clay to create shamanic tools, paintings and ceramics. And she works with people not only face to face, but also at a distance which I think is very cool. She has a pretty incredible story to share which I think you're going to love!So Kate, welcome to the Clean Food, Dirty Stories podcast!Kate: Thanks Barbara.Me: Yeah, it's great to have you. I'm looking forward to sharing your story.Kate's storySo you work in Norfolk, you live in Kent, but do you have a lot of trees surrounding you now? Because I know that you spent a lot of your childhood in trees, is that what you told me? Is that where your story begins?Kate: Yeah, it kind of is, I was much more into sitting in trees and hanging out there and not really with the other kids. It just felt calming and I later found out that what was actually happening was that I was speaking with the tree deities and the tree spirits themselves. Me: So like when most kids had imaginary friends, like little playmates and stuff, then you just had your playmates that were like in the trees and nature spirits and everything.That's really cool, when I was little actually, I didn't play with the other kids either. I was with them but I was a tiger roaring and crawling on the floor. So there were no nature spirits for me, just a bunch of crawling around.On to herbalismAt one point you studied herbalism, is that right? How did you come to study that?Kate: Well, I began studying it. After doing my art degree, I actually got a job in Neal's Yard Remedies in Norwich. And so that just kind of brought me back to plants and their uses. The medicinal uses were the sort of thing I was drawn to. I was going to move to Australia to do the whole course of naturopathy. There was something still missing from that for me. So from that I actually found magical herbalism.Me: Okay.Kate: Yeah, so that's kind of like hedge witchcraft. It's understanding that everything has an energy and you can use that energy to help heal and help rebalance.Me: I know about wild plants, you know, and collecting wild plants and just eating them because they taste really good, and I know that nettles for example are really good for arthritis, just little things that you kind of pick up. But that's kind of all I know. So is it like making teas for people and poultices and things like that out of plants and stuff?Kate: No, no, it's purely energetic, so it's basically like spellcasting.Me: OK.Magic herbalism, then on to the PhilippinesKate: So you would use certain herbs and plants that have certain attributes and they often correspond with the medicinal uses as well. And you'd kind of enchant them and then you'd make them into little sachets to hand to people and once they'd got their use from it, they would bury it. It was always just for an energetic purpose.Me: Oh OK.Kate: It's like the old wives' tale of putting certain things above the door so things can't come in.Me: I get it. OK. So you were doing herbalism but then I think you stopped, is that right, and you moved to the Philippines? Is that right?Kate: Yeah, that's right. So magical herbalism still wasn't doing it for me and I still felt there was something more. And I came across a book and it was called Chance Spirit Shamanism, and this just sent me off! I knew that I had to do something with this because it would take me deeper into that plant realm. The way I actually got to the Philippines was through my ceramics, with a job as a teacher over there.Manila and the Saturn returnMe: How did you get that job? That's really cool.Kate: A Filipino lady, her family ran the college there and she approached me and asked if I would teach there.Me: Wow!Kate: Unfortunately it was in Manila and for me that was just too busy. It's a really built city with really rich and really poor areas. I found this place called Bahay Kalipay which means the House of Happiness. So I went there, I volunteered and from there I taught this process called The Inner Dance, and this was precisely when my Saturn return hit. I had just turned 28 and I decided to drop everything, I sold everything that I owned in England basically, and I decided to move to the Philippines.Kate's Saturn ReturnMe: Wow. So can you just...sorry, can you explain to people, some people that may not know, what is a Saturn return and why does it just – cause I've experienced one too – what is a Saturn return and why does it turn your life upside down?Kate: Yeah, well, OK. The Saturn return is...Saturn's in a certain place in the night sky and what happens is when that then comes around which obviously it takes 28 to 30 years to come round in your astrological chart, that changes everything. You're then kind of pushed or encouraged onto a path that you should have been taking that you may have been diverted from. Some people's is really turbulent, other people it can be quite free flowing depending on what their life path life has taken. And then this happens again normally in women's time, it's normally around the menopause.Me: Well it would be like 28 years later, right?Kate: Exactly, yeah, it's on that time scale. So it really can turn your life upside down because Saturn's known as the teacher. If you haven't learned your lessons, you're gonna learn them!Why the PhilippinesMe: Yup! I've experienced that so I know exactly what you mean. Yeah, so it can be quite big life changes and stuff, right? What made you decide to move to the Philippines?Kate: Well, in all honesty a man.Me: (laughs) As so often happens...Kate: And he worked at the retreat center that I went to. Yeah, I kind of knew that it wasn't gonna work out but I'm always this kind of romantic person, I'm just gonna follow my heart...I loved it there anyway because it was just so beautiful and I felt so held there, just on the land.Me: Yeah. So you moved to the Philippines, so if you moved because of him, did you stay with him and then, like, what happened?Releasing inner blocksKate: Well, I think I moved in with him to begin with, him and his family. And then I went back to work at the retreat center for meditation and the inner dance which is kind of meditative. It allows the flow of energy and any blockages to come out, it can be quite cathartic and transformative in itself. So I went back there and lived there, and I did that for 8 months. I was looking for land to buy as well.Me: So you were gonna buy land in the Philippines? That's very cool. You said at one point that you had a kind of like dark night of the soul, was that related to the guy? Or...Kate: It was all, you know, a whole lump of stuff rolled in together (laughs). That's what happens, isn't it?Me: All at the same time, of course, yeah.Crying in paradiseKate: All at the same time. So yeah, for me, I was in paradise but I was crying my eyes out every day.Me: Oh!Kate: Yeah, and it was just this kind of ultimate depression, but this was something different, it was a transformative kind of time. And I ended up not really seeing the point in life, so I went from, you know, being on a real high and feeling the connection between all things and all of this and then just fell apart and thought, “Well, if everything is nothing and nothing is everything, then what's the point?”Me: Oh, yeah, I've felt like that before so I can relate, yeah. Wow.From the Philippines to PeruMe: And so from there, how did you...you said that you then went to Peru, right? So how did you go from the Philippines to Peru? Did you just one day up and decide to leave, or was there a specific incident where you thought 'OK I've had enough, I'm going to leave now'? Or...Kate: Well I, I'd gone to America to visit my friends over there and then while I was there I phoned this person...Me: Somebody in Peru?Kate: No, sorry, I phoned my boyfriend at the time. Yeah, and he ended up going “Oh I've decided I'm going to be a Peace Pilgrim”.Me: A Peace Pilgrim? What's that?Kate: So it's someone who walks around without anything, but just goes spreading peace and basically relies on anyone around them to support them. He said “This is my highest excitement”. So I was like, “OK, fine”. Obviously I was a bit heartbroken because I'd just travelled the other side of the world, but it made me suddenly realize that I wasn't following my highest excitement. So I thought “OK, what's happening right now? Where's the mother of all plant learnings?” And it's happening in Peru, with Ayahuasca, with Huachuma... Ayahuasca and HuachumaMe: What's huachuma? I mean, I know Ayahuasca and in fact I spoke about that in a previous episode, but what's huachuma?Kate: Huachuma is also known as San Pedro. San Pedro was the Catholic name they gave when they kind of came over to the South Americas. Huachuma is the original name for it. It's a cactus that is mescalin-based, so it's similar to the peyote which is a mescalin-based medicine.Me: Oh OK. So it's a similar kind of experience with...like a journey like you would do as if you were taking Ayahuasca but you're taking Huachuma?Kate: It's similar, yeah. Huachuma's much more about the earth and less cosmic. Ayahuasca is out there, attaching to everything that is. Huachuma's about the heart, about connecting back to the earth.Me: Wow. OK, so you did both of those when you were there?Kate: Yeah, that's right, so I spent 6 months being an apprentice to both of those plants.Me: Oh wow! So now are you able to perform Ayahuasca and Huachuma ceremonies for other people?Kate: I believe I can hold ceremony for Huachuma for other people. With Ayahuasca I decided that I'm just always going to be her apprentice (laughs). I just don't see how people hold space for that, it's such a powerful thing.Temazcals (sweat lodges)Me: OK. So you did those, and you also mentioned temazcals, you know, the sweat lodges, what were those like?Kate: It's really magical.So for somebody who doesn't, who doesn't know about a temazcal, can you say a little bit about like what it is? Because I've done one, but not everybody knows about it, right? Could you say a little bit about like what it is and what happens and why you might want to do a sweat lodge?Kate: OK. It's a really sacred ceremony and our ancestors have always used it to cleanse, to rebirth. To go into those sweat lodges is like going back into the mother's womb. You go in there with thanks, knowing what you want to get rid of or what you want to transition into. And you bless the rocks which are put into a sacred fire.Me: Sacred fire?Kate: Yes. They then heat those for several hours and then you will go into the lodge. You normally go through about four, yeah, four rounds. They'll bring in a certain number of rocks, and then water is poured onto the rocks once the door is closed.Me: And it gets really, really hot, I remember.Kate: It does. But it builds, it's not like going into a sauna. Your body gradually kind of gets used to it until it gets so hot that you're just like “Oh no I can't do this!” But quite often, we always say that the heat is your friend. Because that heat is sometimes not physical heat, it's sometimes you know, coming up against maybe a blockage of the energy of the thing that you're trying to shift, so if you can, stay in.The eyebrow of the Peruvian jungleMe: And so how did you...how did you go from doing the sweat lodges and the Ayahuasca and Huachuma ceremonies to the jungle? Cause you said that you were...I know that you mentioned to me that you were in the jungle with some friends and you had a pretty scary experience there. Can you say a little bit about like how you came to be there, and what happened?Kate: Yeah, definitely.I was a, I suppose an assistant to the woman that owned the retreat center. And we'd become really good friends because we obviously worked really closely together. We were offered a piece of land possibly in a part of the jungle called Manu which is known as the eyebrow of the jungle of Peru. So we went to visit, and our friend who also went with us, he was also an Andean priest. He went and hired a boat and took us to this special island which had quite rare breeds of certain animals, mammals and things. So he takes us over there and we're just so excited to see a different part and see rare species. Onto the land, you know you just start walking around and admiring things and I think it was about a third of the way around this island and all of a sudden something hit me.When the jungle gets angryKate: It felt like I'd suddenly started menstruating but it wasn't that time, it felt like all of my guts were just turning around. I just suddenly went white. Me: Wow!Kate: Literally it just felt like, I don't know, I could have eaten something that didn't agree with me, all that kind of stuff. So my friend tried to do an echo cleansing on me. Now all that did - this is the dirty part of the story – was give me diarrhea. It was awful. My body was emptying, everything was too heavy. I was getting rid of everything. It was really quite scary as it progressed.And then this feeling came over me that the jungle was angry. There was always this element of kind of doubt, skepticism I guess.Getting lost in another worldBut I was about to get lost in another world. The jungle felt like it was pulling me. The world that I knew, that part of the jungle that I was seeing with my physical eyes was disappearing. Me: Wow! That's scary!Kate: Terrifying. And interesting at the same time.Me: Yeah, kind of like 'this is really scary but this is really cool!'Kate: I mean I got really scared up until the point where I thought, 'OK, maybe I'm going to leave this other world that I know and I'm gonna be taken to another world'. And when I reached that level of acceptance, you know, that strange place of like 'OK this is just happening', I told my friends to go on without me. I said, “This is where I stop”. And it was like, it was, I don't know, it was like I was disappearing.Me: Wow.Kate: Yeah, I...after feeling scared it was suddenly this peace that took over. But then my friends became scared because they realized how real this had become. You know, they couldn't just leave me in the jungle.Me: Yeah.Kate: And the Andean priest, he was suddenly panicking around me. He was saying in Spanish, in Quechua, panicking about “Oh I haven't done it, I haven't done it, I haven't done it!” He was going on about the ritual or the ceremony that we were supposed to do when we arrived at this land.A hurried ceremonyKate: And so all of a sudden he's scrambling in his pockets to get things out and I was just flopped on the ground at this point and I had no idea what was going on around me other than his scrambling. He got out the cocoa leaves and he made like a little fan of these and he started doing ceremony. And he was doing all these different things around me but I didn't have any awareness to be able to learn or witness or anything, it was like I was being absorbed into the jungle floor.The next thing I know he's yanking me up off the ground saying “Stamp on the floor! Stamp on the floor!” Like this. And I was just like “I can't do it, I can't even lift my leg,” like I had nothing left, no physical ability whatsoever. But he was so persistent I just went and I just, I just kind of just flopped my foot on this space and I later found out that he'd buried the cocoa leaves there.And as I touched my foot down, something happened and I felt a little bit stronger. So then he went, “Again!” I stamped again a little bit harder with the strength that I'd found. And he said, “Again!” I stamped my foot even harder, and every time we did this, my energy started coming back and my color started coming back and I felt myself being drawn in, like my energy bodies being drawn back into this physical body. Until we'd done it enough that they felt comfortable with us making our way away from there.Me: Wow. Yeah, and then you just left at that point? Were you supposed to stay longer?Kate: I had to lay there while they went off in the boat for a while so I had to lay in the jungle for a bit and stop. Just to kind of recoup and make sure that I'd gathered all the parts of me back together I think. Me: Yeah, of course, yeah.Fear as teacherKate: And I gave my thanks and you know, and I said, “Sorry for not knowing better”. I should have known better, that's what I was there to learn, you know. How to respect these places.Me: Yeah, but you were there to learn. I would have thought the Andean priest would have... I mean, I would have been blaming him! (laughs) Right? Wasn't he kind of there to, you know, to guide you and look after you? I mean I would have been like, “Dude you forgot something! Look what happened to me!” No?Kate: Well, I suppose, but I didn't see things that way at that time. I kind of overtook responsibility if that makes sense. But I gave my thanks to the jungle at that point because that's when my skepticism left and I really started to trust that Spirit is there to guide. And it really showed me its strength, and the only way it could do that was through fear.Me: Wow.Kate: Yeah, I was really, really grateful to have learned that lesson because without that I wouldn't be able to practice, you know, the techniques that I do today.Me: I bet the Andean priest learned a lot too, right? I bet he never did that again! (laughs) Right?Kate: (laughs) I don't think so!Me: Almost killed a tourist, can you imagine? Oh my goodness. Wow!What Kate does todaySo then you said that that experience helped you do the techniques that you do today, so how? Like, how come? What was it about that particular experience and what did you take from there I guess is what I want to ask, that you now use? Yeah, that you use now?Kate: Well it's just the level of trust.Me: Ah, OK. That makes sense.Kate: When I'm doing the healings or ceremony or anything, I endeavour obviously – I mean sometimes ego gets in the way and makes you feel small. But that's quite rare these days. I just allow Spirit and the ancestors to guide me.Me: Yup. Yeah, because you have that trust now thanks to your experience in the jungle. I get it, yeah. Wow!So then, yeah, what do you do now to help other people? Because I know you do lots of different things, do you want to say a little bit about that?Kate: Yeah, well the main thing that I endeavour to do, like anyone that I come across I try and support and empower. Even if it's the smallest thing. And give people that different perspective on themselves. I think we're so made to feel belittled and that we think that, you know, to think good of ourselves is to be arrogant. But actually we need to come to a space where we can be comfortable and love ourselves without that. Me: Yeah.Kate: It's really hard to explain! I lead retreats and...Finding the Wild WomanMe: So what kinds of things do you do at the retreats? For example, do you take people on shamanic journeys as a group? Kate: So for the retreats, what I focus on at the moment is women. And I do this alongside a lovely lady called Amy who runs SoulShine social enterprise and we, well we call it Finding the Wild Woman. And it's all about rewilding, so finding that part of you that's been repressed through, you know, all the things that we should and shouldn't do and expressing your authentic self.Me: Oh I like the sound of that, yup!Kate: So we do all sorts of things.Me: Wow, that sounds quite fun.Kate: Yeah, we use all the different elements as well. So you know, we run through kind of water, earth, fire, air, spirit...so people can connect back with those. The very base elements of this world.Me: Wow, that's very cool.Individual help, even at a distanceMe: So you do those at the retreats, and then I think you said for individual people you help them find balance and things? Like what do you do for individuals? Because I know you also said you do some things at a distance as well. Kate: Yeah, so whether it's distance or whether people are there, I'll connect with them and I'll allow Spirit and ancestors again to work through me. I use my drum, rattle, feathers, anything. I always ask if the person's comfortable with it. Yeah, and then I use the vibe to kind of realign, as everything's made of vibration. The intention is to realign those things, on any level that person wants to work.Me: OK. So do people normally come to you...yeah I would imagine people would come to you with a really specific problem, right? Can it be any kind of problem? Like, I don't know, like everything from physical problems like physical ailments to maybe emotional problems or mental problems? Kate: Yeah, definitely.Me: So a bit of everything. Super! OKKate: The most common tends to be physical or emotional, but actually you find out that they're all interlinked so you just follow that path until...Me: Yeah, I know what you mean. Training for the Celtic sweat lodgeMe: So do you run sweat lodges? Do you use that tool in your work at all?Kate: I'm not running them yet, I'm gonna do another 2 years learning the Celtic lodge.Me: So how long does it take then to train to learn the Celtic sweat lodges?Kate: Well, I'm taking three years to do it.Me: Three years, OK. Is that your choice to do it over a longer period?Kate: Yeah, I know that you can learn the practicalities in a couple of weekends, but to have the experience of actually supporting people through that process...Me: Oh yeah, that's the biggest bit, yeah.Kate: It's a very different ballgame.My own experience in a sweat lodgeMe: Yeah, of course, cause I know, I mean I know for me that when I did a sweat lodge, yeah it was years ago now. And at the time I was...I was a total mess!And so when it got really, really hot, I could feel that kind of...how can I describe it? It was kind of like as if there was a well at the bottom of my being that was filled with all these like dark stuff. You know, fears and things like that that never got to come up to the surface, you know? That never got acknowledged.Just like really primal stuff, you know, almost as if you could tap into your most primal fears because there was no cultural barrier. There was no mental barrier, you know.You were just so hot that your mind...I mean for me my mind almost just left my body really because it was just so hot. And I thought that was...that was quite an amazing experience.I mean for me I was like wow! It was scary but it was also really cool and I can imagine that for some people... I mean, I like to think that I'm a pretty strong cookie but I imagine it would be scary for people to come to grips with what they find and to have to kind of, yeah, deal with that. I mean if they uncover something they didn't know about themselves before, maybe something that's super scary, then yeah I would imagine you have to have the tools to deal with that, right?Kate: That's right, yeah. You've got to be able to support people after they've kind of gone through the sweat lodge process. Like you say, sometimes people are left with things that they need to kind of then kind of speak through or go into a bit more.Me: Wow, yeah. But I'd definitely say better out than in, right? All that stuff.Where to find KateKate thank you so much for coming on to share your story. There's a friend of mine that also mentioned that when you hold any kind of retreat or workshop or any kind of event in nature, she said just ask the spirits there for permission so you're on their terrain as it were. So that's a really good example of what can happen if you don't, right? I'll have to tell her about it. Well, I'll have to get her to listen to the episode.But thank you so much for sharing that, I really appreciate it and I'll link to everything that you do below, but do you just want to say where... Where can people find you? What's the easiest way to find you?Kate: Yeah, it's easiest to find me on Facebook at the moment because I'm still working on my website but that's at kfheartwisdom.Me: Super! OK. I'll put the link to your site as well. Is it katefisher.co.uk? Is that right?Kate: Yeah.Me: Thank you so much, I really appreciate it, and I think I'm going to dive into our food tip.Foods to feel groundedAnd it's really funny that there was all this stuff about stamping on the ground and everything because...I mentioned at the beginning of this episode that I would share one of the best foods to feel grounded. And first I do want to kind of emphasize what I mean when we say grounded.When we feel grounded, we feel more connected to the earth. Now this might sound airy-fairy, but it's actually really important. So you can think of feeling grounded as the opposite of scatterbrained. In other words, instead of feeling confused, all over the place, not knowing what to do, when you're grounded you actually have a clarity of purpose. It enables you to not only get things done but to know what those things actually are that you need to do for your own happiness.And believe me, this is really, really important. I speak from very personal experience. The other way that you can think of being grounded is eating foods to feel grounded. It's kind of like getting the benefits of comfort food without gaining weight, if that makes sense. You do get that, yeah, that sense of comfort from these particular foods, but you're eating good food, you know? Rather than junk.And for those of you who want to do some of your own shamanic journeys as Kate did, this particular food that I'm going to talk about can help you stay connected to this world too.So although there are many foods to feel grounded, the ones that I want to mention here, or the one specific one is...squash!Benefits of squashAnd when I say squash, this actually covers a variety of vegetables: so you've got spaghetti squash, summer squash, zucchini, marrow and pumpkin. Those are all types of squash. Gourds as well, those are squash.Squash is one of the oldest foods around – it's been cultivated for at least 10,000 years, and it may look kind of ordinary, but it has a lot of health benefits.Now you may not know this, but squash is listed as anti-fungal, antibacterial and anti-inflammatory! It contains vitamin A, several B vitamins, folates, magnesium, potassium, iron, copper, zinc, manganese, calcium, and beta carotene among other antioxidants.So it's insanely good for a whole host of things, including managing our blood sugar, keeping our lungs healthy, helping keep our eyes sharp and strong, having strong bones, and reducing the risks of many diseases including lung cancer, emphysema and glaucoma, and that's just to name a few.Squash has many other benefits and I'll link to an article in the show notes if you'd like to read more about it.Now however before you decide to start eating bushels of squash, I do have to warn you about one thing. Squash is very good at lowering blood pressure, and if you have low blood pressure already, squash could lower it even further. So if that's you, best to eat other veggies instead. Fortunately there are lots of other alternatives that I do mention in other podcast episodes!How you eat squashNow as to how you eat squash, well there are so many ways to eat it! Most people puree it and make pancakes, or they slice it and fry it. My favorite way to eat it – and if you know me you'll know what that is – it's to spiralize it! I'll link to an article in the show notes where I show you how to do just that. You can make great pasta using squash, and you don't even have to boil it. Plus it's naturally gluten-free, so everyone can eat it!I've also got some delicious recipes that use squash in my 5-Minute Mains recipe ebook that I'll link to as well.So I hope you've enjoyed our story this week!Have YOU got a story to share?And if you've got a crazy, true story to share (and you'd like to know what food could have saved the day or enhanced your particular situation), I'd love to hear from you! Email me at barbara@rockingrawchef.comIf you enjoy my stories and want to hear more, join us and subscribe! I share one amazing, true story a week. And if you've got any questions, just pop them in the comments! And if you're listening on iTunes, do give me a review, that would be awesome.I hope you have an amazing day, thank you so much for being here with me to share in my Clean Food, Dirty Stories. Bye for now!RESOURCESHow to spiralize veggies: http://rockingrawchef.com/what-is-a-spiralizer-and-what-can-it-do-for-me/5-Minute Mains and other recipe ebooks: https://rockingrawchef.com/5-minute-recipes/Foods to feel grounded: https://www.sarahpetrunoshamanism.com/blog/12-foods-for-feeling-grounded/Benefits of squash: https://www.organicfacts.net/health-benefits/fruit/squash.htmlKate's bioKate has studied many esoteric and spiritual practices to a basic level from an early age (13). When her Saturn return began (age 28), Kate moved abroad to study different healing techniques with healers and shaman of Philippines and Peru. She learnt that to know and embrace all parts of yourself is where true healing happens. With a holistic attitude to life and endeavouring to approach life from the heart, Kate believes that all aspects of the self - mind, body and spirit - play a part in the health of the person. Finding balance in all these aspects, we can live to our full potential.Kate's website: http://katefisher.co.ukKate on Facebook, YouTube​

Now we've got all the players back on the board. They may not be as close together as they'd like (we're all looking at you, Bram), but all Bowmans are definitely taking turns at playing games. Will: Will got a new partner this week in one-time Jennifer investigator, Bob Burke. Bob wasn't putting on an act for Jennifer's benefit apparently. He must always act like that. Although being the "good soldier" is Will's only play right now, the department he returned to only resembles the one he left because they inhabit the same space. Question of the week: Now that Will has to bow down to a new dress code, do you think they'll make him cut his hair? Kate: So much for being the "good citizen" half of Team Bowman. I guess throwing your state appointed tutor out of the house isn't technically bad citizenship, but it may be bad colonist...ship. The big questions surrounding Katie's erratic behavior revolve around where the heck WAS she? Both awkward Charlie/Lindsey interactions came while Katie was away or busy. I don't want to stick up for a weirdo like Lindsey unnecessarily, but was she -really- out of line for asking a child that was distracting her student to go be busy elsewhere? If we enforced Katie's rule today, teachers would be getting booted left and right. Broussard: Still hanging out with Team RoboBee (emphasis on the BO). I would so hate these guys if I were him. They must still have some future story importance, because Broussard would be better off without them. Plus, why go through the trouble and expense of hiring a known actress like Thora Birch (Morgan last season), just to replace her? Weird. Proxy / Bram: Proxy needs to learn a little subtlety when it comes to showing Bram favoritism. It's so obvious Maya noticed it and force Bram to reveal his snitch status. It is interesting to wonder though, is Bram working for Proxy (for real), or is he working for Maya (bad move)?