Podcasts about kathy it

Summary Kevin and Kathy discuss the concept of 'soul care' and practices to nurture one's soul. Their discussion explores the importance of solitude, silence, and stillness as means to connect with one's inner self and find peace amidst the distractions and noise of daily life. Interspersed are helpful personal anecdotes, practical tips, and a poem that encourages slowing down and appreciating the present moment. Kevin Hi everyone, welcome back to another episode of Coping. We took off a few weeks ago, giving you all a vacation and we also took a vacation ourselves. Kathy Yes, and we thought it was a great time to begin a new series we're calling Summer Soul Care. I wonder, Kevin, what comes to your mind when you think about soul care? Kevin Well, I work in a hospital, and our department is called the spiritual care department. So I actually spend a lot of time thinking about spiritual care, soul care, and how to do that effectively, especially for those who are sick and in the hospital setting. So the first thing that comes to mind for me is something that's active, to make sure that when you care for either your own soul or somebody else's soul, it's an action that you do, a practice that you take, something that you offer that's tangible. Kathy Hmm. Yeah, that's a good and easy, practical way to think about it. And especially as we're thinking about our souls, we can link it to something that we'll be doing. So let's get started. Kathy So one of our favorite podcasters and authors, her name is Ruth Haley Barton. She writes this quote, I really love this thought provoking quote. She says, "losing your soul is sort of like losing a credit card. You think it's in your wallet or purse, so you don't give it much thought until one day you reach for it and you can't find it. Kathy The minute you realize it's gone, you start scrambling to find it, trying to remember when you lost it or last used it or at least had it in your possession. No matter what is going on in your life, you have to stop and look for it because otherwise there could be major damage done. Kathy Some of us know that we are losing bits and pieces of our souls every day and we are scared to death that we might be very close to going over an edge." So as a chaplain, how have you experienced this with those you serve? Kevin Yeah, this is something I help patients wrestle with on a daily basis. The reality is most people don't give a lot of thought to their spiritual life, to their souls. It's only when we are sick, when we are ill and in pain, that we look for strength and often look inward for that strength to be able to push through and to cope with whatever we're going through. Kevin And so what happens, like that analogy that's so vivid and so true about the credit card, if you haven't been investing into that fund, you don't have the funds to tap into on that card and that soul, then you find yourself not being able to use it when you need it most. Kevin And, you know, my belief is that we never lose our soul, we never go to a point where we don't have it. But if we're not investing in it, then it's certainly not going to be valuable to us when we perhaps need it most. And so when we encounter somebody who has deficient funds on their card or in their spiritual life, it's a chaplain's job to come alongside them and to help them tap into their strengths in their life, to help them connect to their faith practices, their rituals, the things that give their life meaning so that they could begin to cope with their illness and then find a pathway to healing that encompasses not just their physical body, but their emotional, spiritual mental selves as well. Kathy Yes, that sounds very practical and helpful. And like you said, it often doesn't happen until the body begins shutting down. A part of ourselves is not working, that we then begin to think about that. Kevin For sure that's exactly it. Whenever one part of ourselves feels deficient we tap into the other parts of ourselves to find what we're missing. I wonder for you as a coach where do you see this in the lives of your students? Kathy Well, I think they're like most people not thinking about their souls, like they don't have time to or they don't know what that looks like or what that means. And so if there's no awareness about soul care and practices, then you can't move forward. You can't, like you said, you won't have anything to show in those times where you need it the most. And so today we want to discuss the first three S's of soul care in hopes of beginning this discussion. Kathy So the first S is solitude. And we're going to define solitude as uninterrupted alone time in a distraction free environment. Uninterrupted alone time in a distraction free environment. It's kind of a joke where we think, what? Which environment is distraction-free these days? But what are your thoughts on solitude and how do you think that we can find this in the busyness of our world? Kevin Yeah, what you pointed out in that definition is what stood out to me is the distraction free environment. I can't think of an environment that is distraction free. Likewise, we fill our lives with a lot of positive distractions as well, friends, family, hobbies, things that we like to do. Kevin But solitude is that practice that we are intentionally letting go of those things that keep us busy, that keep us distracted from what's actually going on inside. And it becomes the way that we cope with our pain and our lives being the way that they are so hectic and crazy is by continually moving from one thing to the next to keep our mind busy so it's not flooded with those deeper, harder feelings that are conjuring inside. And so it's definitely a hard one. But something that comes to mind is the need to sacrifice something to find that solitude often will require saying no to things or to people and creating that intentional space for that solitude. Kathy And in our community, what we talk about that might be helpful is to actually schedule in times of solitude. One homework assignment – and our listeners can do this – this week is to schedule a soul date for themselves where they can enter into the solitude. I would say that doesn't have to be long. It can be 20 minutes. It doesn't have to be, oh, I don't have an entire day. It can be a short period of time. It could be 20 minutes. And the best thing about entering into solitude, the best benefit we have from solitude is that it allows us after we've been in solitude to be more present. Kevin And that leads us well into our next S of soul care, is silence. And so we define silence as abstaining from speaking, reading and noise in order to be quiet. Gosh, I'm thinking about how noisy my work is, how noisy the world is, the freeways are, the news is, my phone can be, gosh, Kathy, how do we find silence in this day and age? Kathy Another good question, the first thing I would say is I think everyone needs to stop and think about how they feel about silence. Does it make you nervous if things are too quiet? Are we okay with there being no noise or background music or background TV? We turn on all of these things to avoid the silence, so I think it's important to have a little conversation with ourselves to determine how we feel about the silence, and if we're giving ourselves permission to enter the silence, then silence practices will be beneficial to us. Kevin That's so true. And I think just from personal experience, learning to be comfortable with silence. For most people, I think they're adverse to being in silence because the silence isn't silent. When you're starting off trying to be silent, that's where all the noise comes up with your thoughts, your feelings, all of those fears and concerns, the worries, the to-do list, everything starts to rush in when you create that space and that silence. And so if you find yourself struggling to find that silence, even when you're being intentional about it, my encouragement is to keep trying. Kevin Keep creating that space for silence. You can keep a pad of paper next to you so that if thoughts and things that you need to remember flood in in those moments of silence, write them down and then move back to your silent place again. It's so important that we continue to practice silence, knowing that it's a hard thing to do and continue to go back to it again and again because after we move through all of that noise that floods in when we are silent, on the other side of that is that peaceful silence that I think that we're all craving. Kathy 100% true. And yeah, the notebook is a really good idea. And then if you like to be active when you're trying to enter the silence, this is one that I do often is you can go on a walk without any music. But what you can do is listen to the sounds that you hear on your walk. You can start counting them. You can start cataloging them. Really what you are doing is you are entering silence, even though it sounds like you're not because you're hearing noises, but you're allowing the natural sounds to enter in instead of what we typically have are the distracted noises of the world entering in. Kathy So if you're going on this walk, it's a very good way. Maybe it's like a bridge to entering silent places. This is like a really good way to do it as well. And the main benefit from entering into silence when you do these practices is that then we're actually attuning our ears to listen. Kevin And attuning our ears to listen to self, all of those things that we push down and we're moving away from, those difficult feelings and thoughts. But when we learn to listen to self, we then are better able to listen to others and what their experiences are and be present to them in their pain and their story. And that leads us into our last S for this episode. And our third S is stillness. How are we defining stillness? Kathy Stillness is defined as "to stop, cease, desist, and disconnect from the outside world". Kevin Man, these are getting harder and harder, aren't they? They seem to also be building on one another. How do we get to this third S of stillness? Kathy Well, there's I think something that's been the theme of our discussion today is that there needs to be a lot of intentionality around this practice. So believe it or not, you may or may not know about this feature on your phone. It's called Do Not Disturb. And guess what? We can turn it on. And one practice that you can do is to turn it on on your phone for an hour a day. Put on Do Not Disturb on your phone and allow the stillness to come in as you disconnect. Kathy It doesn't mean that you're just going to be still during that time, but you're disconnecting from that usual hustle, bustle, chaos, noise. You could do something else in the stillness. It's not that you have to sit still. Notice that's not what we said. But the major benefit from entering into stillness is that we can become better engaged after being still. Kathy So out of these three, solitude, silence, or stillness, which one do you think is easiest for you? Kevin Gosh. I've had a lot of practice with silence, learning to be silent, and to tune into that silence. So I think that that's probably the one that's easiest for me. It's the hardest to find, but when it's there, I feel very comfortable with it, if that makes sense. What about for you? Kathy Uh, the easiest, and again, these aren't easy, but they come more naturally if you keep practicing, um, I would say is solitude because I really now look forward to times when nobody is at home, like, um, I think it was an hour today of no one being here so that I can enter into the solitude. Kevin Right. And which one's difficult for you? Kathy I think stillness is still hard for me. I'm the one telling you to put on do not disturb. The reason is, is I am such a breaking news type of person that, and especially these days, we've had a lot of breaking news that has been very important to our world that I don't want to miss out. It's the FOMO, that's terrible. But like, you're gonna miss out on hearing something or a text message or someone was trying to call you, but in the days when we didn't have technology, we all just waited. Kathy I lived during that time period. It was totally fine that we didn't find out for three hours about the breaking news or whatever it was, nothing happened. And it was actually all better because then we were all more, we weren't on this 24 hours a day, seven days a week, nonstop, chaotic, stressful rollercoaster of what we all are living on right now. Kevin And so to end our podcast today, we'd like to invite everybody to take a moment to do their own soul check-in. And so I'm going to hand it over to Kathy, who will lead us through that. Kathy Yes, I just invite you now to think about the words of this poem and check in with your soul. It is called "On Time" and it's by Ruth Haley Barton. There have to be times in your life when you move slow. Times when you walk rather than run, settling into each step. There have to be times when you stop and gaze admiredly at loved ones, marveling that they have been given to you for this life. Times when hugs linger and kisses are real. When food and drink are savored with gratitude and humility, rather than gulp down on your way to something else. There have to be times when you read for the sheer pleasure of it, marveling at the beauty of words and endless creativity in putting them together. Times when you settle into the comforts of home and become human once again. There have to be times when you light a candle and find the tender place inside you that loves or sorrows or sings and you pray from that place. Times when you let yourself feel, when you allow the tears to come rather than blinking them back because you don't have time to cry. There have to be times to sink into the soft body of yourself and love what you love simply because love itself is a grace. Times when you sit with gratitude for the good gifts of your life that get lost and forgotten in the rush of things. Times to celebrate and play, to roll down hills, to splash in water or make leaf piles, to spread paint on paper or walls or each other. There have to be times to sit and wait for the fullness of God that replenishes body, mind and soul. If you can even stand to be so full, there has to be time for the fullness of time or time is meaningless.

Zukunft Denken live im tollen Ambiente des Museumsquartiers in Wien! Wir diskutieren an drei Abenden die Schwerpunkte: Wissen: Was wissen wir, was bestimmt Wissen in der heutigen Zeit? (Vorige Episode) Macht und Ohnmacht: Wissen schafft Möglichkeiten, Wirkmacht über die Welt, aber auch Ohnmacht. Wie können wir mit diesem Konflikt umgehen? (Diese Episode) Verantwortung: Wer entscheidet in einer von Technik und Wissenschaft geprägten Gesellschaft über den Einsatz dieser neuen Möglichkeiten? Wer trägt letztlich die Verantwortung? Donnerstag 20. Juni im MQ in Wien Im zweiten Teil der Veranstaltung, dieser Episode, stelle ich mir mit John Haas die Frage, wie Wissen wirkt. Ist Wissen Macht oder Ohnmacht? Wie steht der Mensch in diesem Verhältnis? John Haas ist Diplompsychologe und Fachhochschullektor an drei österreichischen Fachhochschulen und unterrichtet u.a. Digital Media, Data Science und Future Studies. Er ist stv. Leiter der Arbeitsgruppe Digitalisierung und E-Mental Health des Berufsverbands der österreichischen PsychologInnen (BÖP) und publiziert regelmäßig in dessen Fachzeitschrift „Psychologie in Österreich“. Sein Buch »COVID-19 und Psychologie« aus dem Jahr 2020 konnte mehr als 100.000 Leser gewinnen. Im Jahr 2014 legte er mit der europaweit ersten Frauenhilfe-App „fem:help“ den Grundstein für einen psychosozialen Online-Service, der von der Republik Österreich eingesetzt wurde.  In dieser Episode stellen wir die Frage: Ist Wissen Macht? Was haben wir erreicht? Wer möchte lieber im 19. statt im 21. Jahrhundert leben? Netflix Dracula 2020: Dracula appears in England in 2020 (after being trapped for more than 100 years under water) and comes to a house of a redneck family. House in very bad shape, unorderly, ... First, he eats the husband, then the wife (Kathy) comes home; Dialogue between Dracula and Kathy: Dracula: "What's wrong with your servants? Is it their day off? I am assuming you have staff. You are clearly very wealthy." Kathy: "Wealthy?" Dracula: "Yes. Well, look at all that stuff. All this food. The moving picture box. And the thing outside. Bob calls it a — hm — a car. Is that yours?" Kathy: "Yes" Dracula: "And this treasure trove is your house." Kathy: "It's a dump" Dracula: "It's amazing! Kathleen, I have been a nobleman for 400 years. I've lived in castles and palaces among the richest people of any age. Never have I stood in greater luxury than surrounds me now. This is a chamber of marvels. There isn't a king, or queen, or emperor, that I have ever known (or eaten) who would step into this room and ever agreed to leave it again. I knew the future would bring wonders. But I did not know it would make them ordinary." Entwickelt sich Technologie vom Spielzeug zur systemischen Abhängigkeit? Wie gehen wir damit um? Können wir die Effekte technischer Entwicklungen überhaupt abschätzen/vorhersagen? Hilft hier Zukunftsforschung? Am Beispiel der künstlichen Intelligenz diskutieren wir die Effekte neuer Technologie auf das Zusammenspiel von Wissen, Deutungshoheit von Wissen und menschlichen Lebens. Und zum Abschluss stelle ich die Frage, was der Rechenschieber von Lise Meitner (ein Faber Castell 375 aus dem Jahr 1934) mit unserem zukünftigen Umgang mit Technologie zu tun haben könnte. Referenzen Andere Episoden Episode 100: Live im MQ, Was ist Wissen. Ein Gespräch mit Philipp Blom Episode 98: Ist Gott tot? Ein philosophisches Gespräch mit Jan Juhani Steinmann Episode 97: Untergang der Titanic Episode 92: Wissen und Expertise Teil 2 Episode 80: Wissen, Expertise und Prognose, eine Reflexion Episode 90: Unintended Consequences (Unerwartete Folgen) Episode 74: Apocalype Always Episode 61: Digitaler Humanismus, ein Gespräch mit Erich Prem Episode 51: Vorbereiten auf die Disruption? Ein Gespräch mit Herbert Saurugg und John Haas Episode 44: Was ist Fortschritt? Ein Gespräch mit Philipp Blom Episode 27: Wicked Problems John Haas John Haas auf LinkedIn John Haas, COVID-19 und Psychologie, Springer (2021) Fachliche Referenzen Dracula, Netflix (2020) Lise Meitner Rechenschieber

Summary This episode of “Coping” discusses the concept of courage and introduces seven daily acts of courage as outlined by Robert Staub in his TED Talk. Kevin and Kathy engage in a thoughtful dialogue exploring each of the seven acts and share personal experiences and insights on how these acts manifest in their lives as well as the importance of practicing courage daily. At the end, you'll be given the opportunity to rate yourself on each act of courage to determine your overall 'courage quotient'. Kevin Oh, hi, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of “Coping”. Kathy Yes, welcome back, everyone. Today, we want to continue our discussion on courage that we started our last podcast. And I have a question for you, Kevin: would you consider yourself a courageous person? Kevin Well, based on our last podcast episode conversation, I've been rethinking my definition of courage, the models and myths that I've developed over the years. I would say that I am a risk taker. I like to take risks, I like that feeling of taking a leap of faith, and then that leap being met with some success or improvement. So I don't know if I would say I'm courageous, but I definitely am open to taking calculated risks. And what about you? Do you consider yourself to be a courageous person? Kathy I think the same applies to if I consider myself to be a creative person. The answer is traditionally no. But I think that if I look into my life, I see lots of acts of courage and risk-taking. So others would say that about me. So I think this discussion today is really going to widen and round out our view of what courage looks like. So let's get started. Kathy So as you all know, in a recent spring retreat, I shared about this topic of courage. And I also introduced executive leadership coach speaker Robert Staub, who did a 2016 TED Talk called Daily Acts of Courage. And there he talks about how we can practice small acts every day to strengthen the courage of our hearts. It's such an interesting concept. And there are actually seven everyday acts of courage we can all engage in every single day to build up our courage. Kathy So the first act of courage is the courage to dream and express it. Do you have visions, goals, and dreams, Kevin? How's that for you? Kevin Yes, ever since a young age, I was a dreamer, had big plans for my life, envisioned my goals and went after them. I would say I erred on the side of dreaming and didn't always have a plan to accomplish those dreams and goals. In our relationship, I'm definitely the dreamer, but you're the person that helps make those dreams and goals become a reality. So that's why I think we partner well together. What about you? How do you express your dreaming and goal setting in your life, knowing that you're a very practical person? Kathy So I would say, and I often say to students, it's okay not to be a dreamer, not to have a dream, but what happens though is that we do have to have a plan for our lives moving forward. And if you look into my life, you see lots of dreaming, lots of ideas being carried out. There's two sources. We have to tap into the sources of where our dreaming can come from. For me, it has been my faith, where I actively am listening. That would be the number one source. And the second place is for the needs of those people I serve, I'm always dreaming for them. And that is how the dream comes true for me. I personally still to this day don't have any dreams, but if I dream for those that I'm helping and serving, there's lots. And I can then take steps toward that, courageous steps towards that. So it's very untraditional. Kevin Yeah, and I think that that leads us to the second act of courage, which is the courage to see current reality. This is something that I see you do particularly well, especially for the students that you work with. Do you have the ability to see the truth and not have blinders on? How do you have that unique and innate ability to see current reality? How do you do that? Kathy This is a really hard one, especially in light of how difficult our experiences are, the world around us, the reality, the harsh reality that we all are living in right now. I think first of all is that the ability to see reality is to admit truth to yourself, to be open to truth. I think it's a gift. I think discernment is a gift that we are given. So I've had that from a young age, the gift to see things as they are. But that doesn't mean that I wanted to always step into that. There was a period of time in my life where I shut my eyes to the harsh reality and I lived in a fantasy world and a dream-like state of like, oh, everyone's helpful, everyone's nice, everyone has my best interest at heart. Kathy I don't believe that any longer, sadly. But I know that now we live in a broken world, but we're here to help redeem the broken places. So that helps me to embrace the truth of things because only when we can see broken things as they are can we actually move in to try and come alongside to help fix, support, et cetera. Kevin Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Kathy And what about you? Do you feel like you have the ability to see truth without the blinders on? Kevin I've had to learn how to do this. I think the practice of seeing current reality and accepting it and not getting lost in the dream world like you said, is a practice I've developed in my work as a chaplain with other people, especially those who are sick and in pain in the hospital, getting new diagnoses. There's a sacredness and the ability to be present to somebody in their story and in their pain and not try to silver line their difficult and challenging experience. And so to support somebody who is struggling is the ability to see them and their pain and not trying to fix it. So I've, I've practiced that quite a lot in my work and gotten pretty good at it. Even though it doesn't come as naturally to me. Kathy Yes. To sit in the present reality with them, which is very bleak at times. Kevin Right. Right. Kathy And you know, that leads us to the third act of courage, the courage to confront. You know, truth has a lot to do with courage. So first we're talking about the truth of acknowledging reality. And then the second part is the courage to confront. And this one, as we know, is especially difficult. One I've had to work on over the years to be able to not only see the truth, but then confront it when necessary. I would say that I'm okay at doing it. I just know it's part of leadership now. And it's just one of those things, skills that you can have. It doesn't ever make it any easier, I would say, but I do have that skill now in my tool bag, but it's still really hard. How about you? Kevin Yeah, I think that when I think about confrontation it makes me a little bit nervous. I don't like hurting other people's feelings. I care way too much about what people think about me, how they perceive me, and I want everybody to like me. And so confrontation is a hard practice when you care a lot about those things and for me a little bit too much about those things. But I've learned in my life that the most meaningful relationships, the most meaningful experiences, are the ones where I'm willing to speak the truth, to tell the truth to somebody, to endure confrontation, and to face things head-on. And so I don't like to be the one to initiate the confrontation, but if somebody has something they want to tell me about that I've done, something that I did or said and wasn't aware of, I want somebody to point it out to me because I don't want to be, you know, hurting other people's feelings or to be doing something that I haven't given a lot of thought to so, yeah, confrontation is hard, but I've I've learned that there can be some good that comes from healthy confrontation. Kathy Yes, that's actually the fourth act of courage that you're talking about. So the third one is the courage to confront and the fourth is the courage to be confronted. Kevin Yeah, I think I find this one to be much easier for me. What about for you? How do you feel about confronting and being confronted? Kathy Yeah, so again, I think both these areas have had to work on a lot as a two on the Enneagram -- helper -- I didn't like other people's perception of me and that was very hard. I was very sensitive as a young child to criticism, to people saying things. As I grew older I began to understand the value of standing up for truth. I am an advocate. So being able to confront others, but then also having to be confronted. It works both sides of the coin -- If we can confront we have to be able to be confronted. So it's hard But I would say again, it's something that I'm used to doing fairly often. I had someone do it this week about an experience that they had in one of our programs and they're like, "Oh, sorry to tell you this" and I was like, "No tell me. I really do want to hear because I desperately want to improve and for us to get better." Kevin Yeah, and that leaves us perfectly into our fifth act of courage and that's the courage to learn and to grow. And so like you just said, we're open to confrontation because you and I both share a value of always learning and always growing, being open to new ways of seeing things, new perspectives. We want to know those hard truths so that we can improve all of the ways of being in the world. Have you always been the kind of person courageous enough to always want to learn and grow? Kathy No, I'm not a risky person. I don't like change. I don't like risks. I don't like things changing, no. And I think that's surprising for people who see the outer view of me, because they're like, "You're always changing. You're always pivoting." And I'm like, yes, but I had to, again, step into that. And for me, it is faith. That's the core of it, that if I feel like it's a faith move, then I can step into learning and growing, because I know that my faith is empowering me and those around me. Kevin Yeah. It's so interesting to hear you say that you're not the kind of person that likes change and risk. I know that to be true about you, but I also see it as somebody that does want to always learn and always wants to grow and is always taking in new information, new perspectives and so I wonder if you could say a little bit more about how you wrestle with that tension in your own life. Kathy Yeah, I was gonna say that just like we talked in our last podcast about fear and courage existing in the same moment -- Is this the same, right? It's okay to not like risks. It's okay to not like change but know that all of the change and the growth and dreaming is necessary to move us forward to higher versions of ourselves, our callings our service and so if you're not wanting to do that. That's okay. I don't think I want to do it either. I would rather just stay home all day and watch my favorite Netflix shows and not take risks and not move forward. Yeah, like we all -- I want everyone to understand. like even people like us that you all see that are doing that, I personally, it's not my favorite. But again, it's about in the end you have to determine what kind of life do you want for yourself? If it's a life of stagnation or a life of growth and a life of growth involves work, investment, constant sowing and discipline. So whatever life you want, you know, if you want to live a courageous life, you have to put the work into it. So that's just the bottom line. You don't have to like it. I don't necessarily like it all the time, but I know that it's necessary. That's where the tension exists. Kevin So what's number six? What's the sixth act of courage? Kathy So you already mentioned this one, but this is one that's I think is really interesting. Staub says that the sixth act of courage -- courage is the ability to be vulnerable with others and living the truth of your story and also asking for help, being able to ask for help. You shared a little bit earlier about the vulnerable piece. What about you? Kevin Yeah, I love the correlation between living your truth but also asking for help. I have learned over the years that vulnerability comes naturally to those who have had a lot of hardship and challenges in their life. And so that pain is very present to me in all of my experiences, even when I'm having my most joyous moments, that sadness is lingering right there. When I'm sitting with people in their pain, I'm feeling my own resonance with that pain that they've had because of my own history of pain and loss. And so I think vulnerability is that ability to tap into my own experiences of pain and express some compassion for people who are experiencing that themselves. But true vulnerability is not suspended on its own. Kevin And so true vulnerability is coupled with good systems of support. When I'm just vulnerable, I'm just feeling pain and feeling the person's pain that I'm with. But the ability to show up courageously and to be vulnerable with somebody is recognizing that, yes, I do have my pain, but I'm also walking down a pathway of healing. And because I know that healing from that pain is possible, I can convey that to the person that I'm with. So vulnerability is not just a feeling. The courage of vulnerability is asking for help and having systems of support in place to support my pain so that I can support others who are in pain as well. Kathy It's interesting that you're talking about vulnerability isn't a feeling, it's an action because that leads us to the seventh act of courage, which is the courage to act. In the end, courage is not a word, it's not a feeling, it's not a label, it's an action. So if you have practiced the ability to step up and follow through in your life, then this is what he says: the seventh act of courage is the courage to act. Kevin And I love how each of the acts of courage build on one another and lead to action themselves. When we think about courageous people and how they're brave enough to make change in their lives, to take those leaps of faith, we can see it's not just one isolated decision, it's a series of decisions, a series of acts, if you will, that lead to even more action in their life. Kathy Yes, I love that he's built this bridge of courage for us in these seven acts, and they're so practical. I just have loved learning about this. And to sum up basically what we've done today, one of the quotes he says, he teaches, "small daily acts of courage can develop the cardiovascular system of your soul". Small daily acts of courage can develop the cardiovascular system of your soul. So I wonder today, how is your soul doing with regards to courage? We thought we would help you figure out your courage quotient today. Kathy We're going to review the seven acts. And what I would like you to do now, if you'd like to join us, you would grab a piece of paper. I'll let you do that. While you're grabbing your piece of paper, you want to number from one to seven. The one to seven is going to represent the seven daily acts of courage that we just talked about. So you're numbering your paper one to seven and then here's what we're going to do. When we talk about each act, I want you to think about on a scale of one to seven, one being the weakest, seven being the strongest, you're going to rate yourself to find your courage quotient. Kevin Number one, do you have vision, goals, and dreams? Then you may have the first act of courage, the courage to dream and to express it. Kathy So go ahead and rate yourself on the courage to dream. Kevin Number two, do you have the ability to see truth and not have blinders on? Then you may have the second act of courage, the courage to see reality. Kathy Rate yourself from one to seven on the ability to see truth. Kevin Number three, do you have the ability to speak up, speak truth to power and confront? Perhaps you have the third act of courage, the courage to confront. Kathy What's your score on the courage to confront? Write it down. Kevin Number four, maybe you are able to take critique and constructive criticism well. Then you may have the fourth act of courage, the courage to be confronted. Kathy Rate yourself on how well you can be confronted. Kevin Number five, are you able to step into the unknown and take risks? Then maybe you're able to exercise the fifth act of courage, the courage to learn and grow. Kathy How do you score on stepping into the unknown and taking risks? Kevin Number six, perhaps you have the ability to be vulnerable with others, tell the truth of your story, and also ask for help. This exercise is the sixth act of courage, the courage to be vulnerable. Kathy Rate your vulnerability score now. Kevin And number seven, maybe you have practiced the ability to step up and follow through. Then you are exercising the seventh act of courage, the courage to act. Kathy Rate your score for the seventh act of courage, the courage to act. So good job, everyone. What's your overall courage quotient? As you score yourself, which act of courage came easiest for you? And which one do you need some work on this week? Thanks so much for joining us for another episode of "Coping" and whatever you may be coping with, blessings to you.

Join us today on “Coping” where Kathy and Kevin discuss the value of exploring personal and family origin stories. Learn how understanding where we come from fosters connection, perspective and empowerment to overcome current challenges and practical ways you can discover your origin story to help you adjust the path you may be on now as an adult. Kevin Well, hi everyone. Welcome back to another episode of "Coping". We're excited to continue our conversation from our last episode. Kathy Yes, welcome everyone. Last podcast, if you remember, we began to discuss this interesting topic of story and the story myths that hold us back. And in this episode, we want to continue discussing the idea of how our past stories shape our current stories. Kevin That's exactly right. Our past reveals where we came from. In movies and comics, this idea is what's called an origin story. And some of the best movies are the movies that delve into those origin stories. What makes the character today who they were and that's where they came from. And so what's so fascinating is watching these backstories can actually provide us with insight into how the hero of the story or the narrator of the story acquires their superpowers, how they face loss and overcame that. And when they were dealt hardship, how they came out on the other side. And what caused them to become who they are today, flaws and all. Kathy Yeah, that's all so fascinating. I personally love all things history, past origin. So let's get started. Kathy Well, like I mentioned before, I have a fascination and love for things of the past and history. I loved history when I was a student in high school and college, almost considered majoring in it. I'm obsessed, sad to say, with ancestry.com and going through, clicking on those of you who know ancestry .com, you click on these leaves that are of the tree. You just keep clicking and clicking and I don't really allow myself to go on anymore because I'll just spend hours delving into the history. And a few years ago, we took a trip to New York City. Kevin Yeah, and I know that you love my family history because they came through Ellis Island. So there's a lot of documentation about their travels, clicking on those leaves and then being there, standing in Ellis Island, looking at the records where my great, great grandfather on my father's side traveled from Ireland and then signed his name in the book, for the records coming over to America. And then on my mom's side, my great, great grandfather also came over from Italy. And so, just to go from a website where you're searching and, you know, creating links for my family tree and then to stand there and to see the signature written and to see the pictures of the ships that they traveled on and to create literally stand exactly where they would have stood in line. Kevin There's something really powerful about that and how it becomes so real and so vivid. And for me personally, to connect my story back generations, fills me with a lot of meaning and connects me to my past in a way that I just didn't know existed. Kathy It's really quite powerful stuff. Yeah. We remember, those of you who have been to Ellis Island, there's a ferry that takes you and to think that we were seeing the Statue of Liberty just like they would have, was a very moving experience for both of us. And yeah, it just, it's about the power of connecting to your past. Kevin That's right. And I have a, you know, interesting family, immigration story of my grandparents coming from Italy and then also from Ireland. But you also have a really fascinating immigration story. Can you speak a little bit about that? Kathy Yeah. So my family did not come through Ellis Island. My parents immigrated to Florida in 1971 and that's how we came to America. They came by way of plane to this country. My dad had a new job at a brand new university and I was 18 months. So I am actually an immigrant as well. I was not born in this country and I became a citizen when I was 18. Why do you think, exploring the past is so important? Kevin Well, you are the history buff and I am the story buff, if you will. I think there's a few different things that make looking at our past and knowing our origin story so important. And the first thing is connection. Understanding our stories did not begin with us makes us feel less alone and helps connect us to the bigger story that's unfolding. And that's exactly what happened for me. I recognize that a lot of the struggles and hardships that I face in my life are generational. And I had a renewed sense of hope that if my ancestors were able to overcome the transition from what they knew to a new world and were able to build a better life to put me in the position that I am, surely I can overcome and deal with transition and hardship much like they did, that it's somehow in my blood, that it's in my lineage, that if they did it then I can do it too. Kevin And that story made me feel far less alone and really proud of what they did for me and that what I can then do in their honor in my story as it unfolds. Kathy Absolutely. The power of connecting to the past, that connection that you mentioned, is so crucial. We're all right now feeling like we're so disconnected and this is a very tangible way to try to find some connection in our lives. Currently we are in a story class journey with Be Well and we're reading Leslie Leyland Fields, "Your Story Matters". She has a very powerful quote about the past. She says, "the past is not done. It lives on in us no matter how cleverly we disguise ourselves, no matter how fast we try to run from it. When we don't turn and look behind us, we lose our way, even our very selves." Kathy And so I think the second thing that exploring our past does for us is it gives us perspective. So as you talked about connection, I'm sure part of that was also perspective. I mean looking into the story of my family gave me a lot of perspective. It's almost like looking into an old mirror. We see ourselves in an old mirror, but we also can see those who came before us and their experiences give us a new lens from which to look at our lives. How does it give us a new lens? Kevin Say more about that new lens. Kathy So for example, if I look through the lens of my life right now through the lens of my parents, again, it's a story of overcoming. It's a story of a new life, a new hope, a new future for the next generation. It's exactly what we hope for our children that my parents hope for us. And so this perspective is now connected to the story, the greater story of my family. And when I looked behind me, immediately I could see a lot of links that could frame my current perspective now. It helps diminish the feeling of being all alone and disconnected and it can provide, this new perspective can provide a lot of strength as well I would say. Kevin Yeah, and that leads us into the third thing that we gain when we take time to look at our past, and that's empowerment. Empowerment is all about getting us re-engaged with how our story unfolded and how it's still unfolding. And so what that did for me really is helped me to recognize that although in my past things happened to me when they were out of my control when I was young, as an adult, I can take my story, all that has happened, and be an active participant in writing my story going forward. And so there's a sense of empowerment that if this is what has happened behind me and I look at my life that's still ahead of me, if I want my life to be different, I can make those changes. And that's really empowering to recognize that the story is not over. What has been written is not gone. And if it's not gone, if it's still with me, I can continue to write a new story for myself going forward and reframe what has happened and how I got to where I am today based on where I end up. Kevin And that's what the origin story is all about. No matter where you came from in the hardship that you've endured, those things can propel you into the kind of future you want to have and give it that much more meaning. Kathy Yes, absolutely. It just is unlocking a lot of things for us when we go back into the past. And we want to be mindful that we understand that delving to things of the past can be hard. It can be painful. It can bring up a lot of trauma. As we embark on this journey to write our stories in our journey class, we have encountered that this past week when we began to map our stories. So mapping is this process of basically putting down all the highlights and the events and the key memories and it was hard. It was challenging. Our group was saying that they wanted to give up at some point and said they wanted to shut those doors. They didn't want to delve, go there, basically. Kevin Right. It's hard to look back. The origin stories are often filled with darkness. And like I said before, there's a sense of disempowerment that happened to you when you were too young to recognize that it didn't have to be that way. Kathy Right. Kevin And too young to have any sort of power to affect change. Often when you are delving into your origin stories, that kind of work is best done with, and within a therapeutic relationship that you're sitting with somebody who has the training to do some meaning-making, some conversational processing with you so that you can make sense of your past and you can delve through it in a healthy and safe environment and to gain the type of perspective, connection and empowerment that we're talking about. Kathy Yeah, absolutely. It is work that, what we wanna say is this isn't work that can be done alone. In our community, we are doing it together and we were able to reconvene and decide that we're gonna continue to move forward in finding a way to our past. We're gonna unlock those doors again, but we're just gonna find a different pathway there this next week. And what we have found so far is we have found these three keys that we just talked about, connection, perspective, and empowerment. Kathy And as I mentioned, from Leslie's book, "Your Story Matters", she has this quote which I think really sums up why, again, this is so important. It's a great summary for our discussion today. She says, "writing the stories from our past enables us to live them again, but this time we live them wiser and better." Kevin So good. And so we have these three keys, these three things that we gain when we look at our story and we know that we can live our stories again wiser going forward, but how would you suggest our listeners do that in their own origin stories? Where's the starting point for that? How do you begin that work? Kathy Yeah, this is a great question. This is a practical step that you can take if you're listening today. One would be if you do have any living relatives that have some stories that they can share with you about the history of your family. If you don't have any living relatives, you can go on to ancestry .com. This is not a commercial for them, but we wish they would reach out. But if you go there and you know some dates and names, and if your family has been here a couple generations in America, that would be the other thing I would say, at least two generations here in this country, you could just log on. And in the free version, you can find out a lot of discoveries. Everything from marriage certificates to census reports, ships registries; that's what Kevin found at Ellis Island. They're all online. Kathy It's so fascinating. So those are the two things that I would say is, reach out to a relative who can share stories, or you can also go online and look through that. Kevin Yeah, I think the other way that I mentioned before is, if you start diving into your story and you recognize that there's more darkness than you may be able to face on your own, turn to a therapeutic relationship, initiate a therapeutic relationship if you don't have one, or bring some of those stories to your therapist to help have a trusted person walk you through some of those difficult stories. I would also say, too, take your relatives' stories with a grain of salt. If you come from a family like mine, where there's divorce and division within the family, there's different versions of the same story that are being told. And so it's hard to know what is the truth. And the reality is that whatever story is being told by that person, that's their truth. Kathy Their perspective. Kevin And the work I've done with my therapist is to take parts of those stories to form my own. And know that the greater truth is that all of those things are part of who made me who I am and to work through each of those things individually, but then to make sense of them for how I want my story to unfold going forward. Kathy And I would say a final way for those of you who want to dive into your stories, in addition to what we said is a couple of episodes back when we were going through grief, we talked about this process of listing. And we are using it in our current class as mapping. So basically what you do is you take some sticky notes and a poster board and you are going to map out the different time periods of your life. It's a brainstorming exercise where you're able to list memories, events, highlights. Kathy We will be able to give you a link to a resource called Life Events that might be able to jog your memory. We'll attach that to this episode notes. And I just, I'm excited for you to dive into this because we just see the value of it so much. Kevin Yeah, so just to recap, we want to encourage all of you to take some time to delve into your origin story. What makes you who you are? Where have you come from? All of those things will inform where you are going next. We hope that as you delve into those stories you'll find some connection, you'll find some perspective, and gain some empowerment in that. Kevin And so to conclude our podcast today, I'd like to offer a traditional Irish blessing for the journey that you still have ahead. “May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face. The rains fall soft upon your fields. And until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His hand. May God be with you and bless you. May you see your children's children. May you be poor and misfortune, rich in blessings. May you know nothing but happiness from this day forward. May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the warm rays of sun fall upon your home. And may the land of a friend always be near. May green be the grass you walk on. May blue be the skies above you. May pure be the joys that surround you. May true be the hearts that love you. Amen.”

The first episode of the 4th season of "Coping" discusses practices for celebrating Thanksgiving and carrying gratitude through the entire year. Kathy and Kevin love Thanksgiving for the food, family gatherings, and chance to reflect on blessings because reflection can bring about new direction and understanding. Practices like daily celebration and reflection can build gratitude. Learn how you can turn your Thanksgiving into Thanks-living and join us on December 7th, 2023 for our "Review Your Year" workshop. Kevin: Well, hi everyone. Welcome back to a new season of coping. Kathy: Yes, today we're pausing our series on rest to have a special Thanksgiving podcast. Kevin: Yes, we hope that you all are enjoying your Thanksgiving week. If that's when you're listening to this episode. We wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving. Kathy: What's your favorite part of Thanksgiving? Kevin: Good question. Okay, so this is going to surprise you a little bit. My favorite part about Thanksgiving is how much food is made and that it gets spread out over many more meals after the holiday itself. Which -- you know me really well --it's strange because I don't actually like leftovers other times of the year. It's really only Thanksgiving that I enjoy having the same food multiple days after the big feast. Kathy: And I'm the opposite. I love leftovers and I love spreading out all my meals. So I'm excited to talk about Thanksgiving, leftovers, pumpkin pie, I'm getting hungry already. Kevin: Yes. Kathy: Let's get started. Kevin: So this week we celebrate Thanksgiving and I know it's one of your favorite holidays. Why do you love Thanksgiving so much? Tell me about it. Kathy: Yes, I think I love Thanksgiving. Of course, it's always about the food on the foodie. But I think the deeper celebrations of gathering around tables, it is a holiday celebrated by most everyone. I like the inclusive nature of the holiday. And I love the focus on gratitude, celebration, Thanksgiving, and the gifts of this year. Kevin: I know also that your birthday, especially this year, falls really close to Thanksgiving. And so in our household, it's a really fun time of year where we get to do a lot of celebrations for you and then lead us right into Thanksgiving holiday meal and time with family. Kathy: And so let's revisit this concept of the leftovers that we discussed earlier. Talk to me a bit about that. What is this Thanksgiving leftover theory that you have? Kevin: You know, when I think about Thanksgiving and gathering with friends and family, and food being the centerpiece of that, the thing that gathers us together. And I love that idea that we have one big elaborate feast with friends and family for fellowship, but what we take with us is not just the food and a carryout, to-go bag, but we take with us those memories that shared time together, and then it rolls itself into the rest of the weekend, into the rest of the end of the year. And it's just a, I think, a great opportunity for us to remember that giving thanks doesn't have to be just one time a year, that we should have a practice of giving thanks. Kathy: Yeah, I really love this. One of my favorite authors Ann Voskamp says that, "our goal is to turn our thanksgiving into thanks-living." And we have done one of our previous podcasts on this, and we had a guest, Anleisha, who told us her story about that. But I think today's podcast, we wanna give some practices that will help turn this Thanksgiving into Thanks-living. Kathy: The first is celebration. How do you use celebration as a spiritual practice? Kevin: Yeah, oh, absolutely. Celebration is a big one. So let's start with the definition. Oxford Dictionary tells us that celebration is the action of marking one's pleasure at important events or occasions by engaging in enjoyable and typically social activities. And so we all do this in really natural ways, right? We have our birthdays and anniversaries and, you know, the holidays, it's on our minds, it's on our calendars. We gather and we celebrate these things. I think perhaps this year, more than most, the practice of celebrating in the midst of so much chaos in the world, so much upheaval in our personal lives, celebration may not feel like a natural thing. It may not be our natural inclination this year. And so what I want to call to mind is another type of celebration, another type of Thanksgiving in the midst of so much chaos. And I'm reminded of a quote from a dear friend of mine, Father Mark, who always likes to say, "it's always important to balance the bitter with the sweet." And what he means by that is to remember the sweetness of life when life feels especially bitter. And the best way to do that is with a piece of cake, a piece of pie, a little bit of ice cream or some candy, something just to savor and to enjoy in the midst of very unenjoyable times in our lives. And so I think maybe this Thanksgiving is where we take time to balance all the bitter in the world with a little bit of sweetness. And that's the food that's on the table, the friends that sit around the table with us and the fellowship that we get to share. Kathy: Yeah, that's such a wonderful practice, an idea. Speaking from my recent celebration experience of this past week, which was my birthday, it was a great pause in the midst of a very chaotic and difficult month, I would say, to focus on joy and gratitude. And it was uplifting. It didn't seem natural. It didn't seem like, "oh, let's stop and celebrate." But we did anyway. And we were all better as a result. I love Adele Calhoun in her book, Spiritual Disciplines Handbook. She speaks of celebration as one of those disciplines. And she says, “when we're able to set our hearts on this joy, it reminds us that we can choose how we respond to any particular moment.” When we can set our hearts on joy, that will remind us that we can choose how we can respond to any particular moment. Kevin: That's right. If we can choose to celebrate in the midst of chaos, that also teaches us how to respond in times of crisis. So we have this practice of celebration, and we know the importance of celebrating daily and weekly and monthly as we just talked about. What is another practice that we can do to extend thanksgiving to every day of the year? Kathy: Sure. The next one we want to discuss is the practice of reflection. So we just talked about celebration. And that is a pause. Reflection is also a pause, but it's the intentional practice of pausing to remember. We are doing the looking back in order to figure out how to move forward. And this could take the form of written, where we're doing like journaling, that sort of thing, or it can be oral where people are, even like if you think about reflection happens in memorial services, where we're doing a reflection back -- Kevin: Telling stories. Kathy: Telling stories. Correct. You and I do a year-end review with our family, where we actually look back. Kevin: Yeah. So we've developed this booklet, it's called Year in Review, that we do every year and as the kids have gotten older we've included them in this and it's kind of a fun ritual that we do in our family. But basically there's these questions that we look back on the year and talk about and write the answers down and some of the questions that come to mind are like your biggest accomplishment this last year, best new purchase -- Kathy: Favorite movie, best vacation -- Kevin: Best new hotel, best new restaurant, things like that. Kathy: Hardest challenge. Kevin: Yeah, there's a lot of really good questions to reflect on and to remember and I'm always surprised at the end of the year, the amount of things that we did. The year goes by so fast and I think I have developed a practice of forgetting in order to cope with all of the challenges in life. But when we choose to reflect and then remember the good things in the midst of all the hard things that have happened, it's always such a meaningful practice. And I always feel like the year feels a little bit more meaningful because we take that time together as a family. Kathy: Yeah, I love what you said about the forgetting part, right? So much is happening. We need the pause. And that reminds me of Emily Freeman's quote, where she says, "the problem isn't that we aren't learning. The problem is that we forget." So I think what happens is we're just going 24-7. And we're consuming a lot and we're never pausing to digest it and then also figure out what we have learned. Kevin: Right. Kathy: So if we don't take these pauses for reflection, we're not making the most of the opportunities that come our way when we can't reflect back on that. They just are just sort of like passing us by. So let's just say that we go through the whole we go through a year, years, not journaling or making note of or highlighting things. Then we turn around and years have passed and we're like, what did we even do? And what are we doing it for? Kevin: I know for me, especially in my line of work, I go from one crisis to the next. And the next thing you know, you look up and it's like the end of the year or like the middle of the year. And I'm like, wait, how did that happen? And what I hear you saying is that reflection helps get the control back of the time that feels like it slips away so quickly. But more than that, it's an opportunity to learn and to grow from all of our experiences so that we're living life, not just trying to cope and survive and deal with all the problems that come our way. We can actually take some of the control back, some of the slow the time down. just a little bit through taking that time to reflect. Kathy: It lifts us out of reflection, will lift us out of survival into significance. Kevin: Yeah, that's really good. So how do we do that though? Like life is chaotic, there are hard things. What does that look like to take time to reflect? Kathy: Yeah, so we can do a daily reflection practice, the practice of the examin, some of you may be familiar with, and that is a daily practice of looking back on your day. You're asking the questions, basically what happened in my day today? And where was I present? Where was I not? Oh, what happened at that moment? It's such a good reflection practice to do that daily. And then you can also go on to do this, of course, weekly and monthly. And it is just about stopping, pausing, recognizing the gifts of these days. Kevin: Yeah, so in chaplaincy we have this philosophy "Action Reflection Action", meaning with everything that you do, especially when you're first learning like clinical pastoral education, that everything that you do, you take time to reflect, to learn from and to improve the practice. But it's certainly a philosophy that extends beyond a residency into a full-time chaplain role, that you're taking time to reflect, to make meaning, and to improve your practices going forward. And I think for me, reflection is simply looking in the mirror. And instead of just seeing yourself in that reflection, you get to see your soul. And so reflection can be something that we do looking backwards, because a mirror only reflects backwards, it doesn't reflect forwards. But when we look backwards, that's the way that we're able to make sense of where we've come from, so we have a better idea of where we want to go. Kathy: Excellent. So, to sum it all up, we have some celebration and reflection practices that we're all going to begin to utilize. We hope that this has given you some small steps toward having thanks -living this year, instead of just Thanksgiving. And speaking of reflection, we have our annual Review Your Year workshop coming up on December 7th. Everyone is invited to this. It is a time of celebration and reflection, where we get to look back on this year, all that it brought to us. We talk about our word that we had, and we're also setting an intention. So if you are interested in that, please sign up on our website at BeWellResourcesLA.com, and we'd love to have you. To close our time today, Kevin:, would you lead us in a Thanksgiving meditation? Kevin: Yeah, I'd be happy to do that. Meditation: We're going to start with me asking just a few questions that I'd like you to reflect on. If you want to write your answers down, that'd be great, but if not, you can just call them to mind as well. So the first question is, what are two attributes of God you appreciate most today? The next question is, what's one thing you're celebrating today? The next question, what's one thing you're reflecting on today? And finally, name three things you're most grateful for today. So this meditation is a fill in the blank blessing. As I read this blessing, reflect on these things that you're grateful for. And when I pause, fill in your own words to complete the blessing. Let's pray. God, thank you for being _________. Today, I will choose to celebrate __________. Because I see this as a gift from you. Today, I will take time to reflect on __________. Because I'd like to remember __________. I thank you for all the blessings in my life, but today, I'm most grateful for these three. The first is _________. The second is _________. And finally _________. And so I conclude by simply saying, "thank you."

In this episode of "Coping," Kevin and Kathy delve into the concept of labeling emotions productively and destructively in the context of grief. They introduce a helpful tool, the Feelings Wheel, to aid in identifying and expressing emotions, which can help you to explore and acknowledge feelings related to grief. Kathy: Welcome back for another episode of “Coping”. Kevin: Last episode, we talked about ways we can begin to get our grief out, and we talked about the method of linking, linking our losses and the way that our brain naturally does that. Kathy: Yes, if you recall, we discussed the benefits of linking as well as externalizing our inward grief. And in this episode, we're gonna talk about another way we can begin to get the grief out. Kevin: Recently, we purchased a gift for our daughter and that gift is a label maker. She's become so preoccupied with this label maker, assigning all the different things in her room, especially her desk area, making sure everything in her room is neat and tidy, and she knows exactly where it is because of these labels that she's making. So in today's episode, we're gonna discuss this idea of labeling and see how it relates to our grief. Let's get started. Kathy: Yes, so when we were thinking about ideas for our daughter's birthday, she had come across a vintage label maker at her work, and then became very interested in an idea of having one herself. So that's what she's been doing since she's gotten it, making labels and labeling everything like around her room and all of that. Kevin: That's right. And you may be like our daughter obsessed with cleaning and organizing and even own a label maker yourself. I guess the question really is, "how does labeling relate to our grief?" Well, let's start with the definition of labeling. Kevin: Labeling is the simple act of noticing and naming something. I'll say that again. Labeling is the simple act of noticing and naming something. So for example, our daughter, she labels a bunch of things in her office. Like what? What do you see her labeling? Kathy: So she's labeling boxes and just items so that she knows what's in different things and then creating labels for all of us to put on our things as well. Kevin: Exactly. So the label maker is making it easy for her to know at a glance where something is. She knows what it is. She can notice it, name it and grab it right away. Kathy: Right, exactly. I have a question for you. Do you think labeling is always helpful? Kevin: You know, when it comes down to it, I think there's really two types of labeling. First, there's this productive labeling, which we'll call "naming", where you're naming something. This is pretty common in talk therapy where you're encouraged to name the emotions that you're having by noticing them and naming them and helps you get some. control back over those emotions perhaps, but there's also a destructive labeling and we'll call that "shaming." Kevin: So the biggest difference between naming and shaming is its effect on us and how we're using what we're labeling. So destructive labeling or shaming, Webster's dictionary says it's "assigning something to a category, especially inaccurately or restrictively." So this kind of labeling leads to prejudice and marginalization of entire groups of people, where we're using the labeling as a way to marginalize people. This is really like the root of racism, sexism, any anti-LGBTQIA views. It's really at its core, naming something or a people group as a way to shame and to "other" them. This shaming as it relates to grief is called grief shaming. Kevin: Grief shaming is the act of blaming, minimizing, or judging one's expression of grief. And this is pretty common in society. We've all heard this or experienced this in some way, but let's take some time to break it down a little bit. Kathy: I know we've all experienced some of these moments and phrases of grief shaming. Some of them sound like, "well, you weren't even married." "I thought you'd be over it by now." "Miscarriages happen all the time" and "you're still wearing your wedding ring." "Why are you so upset? You didn't even get along with your mom." Or simply grief shaming of silent treatment when a statement is made and there's dead silence. Kevin: What you can see from these phrases, not only does somebody who's grieving have the difficulty of the loss and the grief experience, they also have on top of that the negative experiences of others' negativity and comments or distance that can build their experience of shame and grief being harder than just the actual experience itself. Kathy: Right. Kevin: What I think it's also important to name here is that grief -shaming can also be initiated by us, that we shame ourself in the midst of our own grief, that we judge and blame and criticize ourselves for our experience of grief. Now, self -shaming is the act of blaming, minimizing, or judging one's self -expression of grief. So, you can take those same phrases that somebody's directing at you externally, and you can externalize those things and say things like, "why do I still feel this way?" "I just need to move on. We weren't even that close. Why am I sad that they're gone? Wait, am I sad enough?" Or "others had it way worse than me." My grief is nothing in comparison to what they've been through. Kevin: That type of labeling, it can be unproductive and really stunt your healing experience. You're placing this judgment and criticism on it, which really can stunt it and prevent it from being processed, as we've discussed in other episodes. Kathy: Yeah, both seem to be a cutoff, a cutting off of either you're being cut off by someone or you're cutting yourself off, not allowing yourself to process or have the feelings. You're not giving, there's no permission. Kevin: Yeah, it leads to unresolved grief symptoms in the body, in the mind, the heart, and the spirit. Kathy: Right. So when it comes to loss, what's the other side of this? What does productive labeling look like? Kevin: So one way we can productively label is by naming our feelings. Like I said before, naming feelings is something that we learn in therapeutic relationships where we're called to notice how we're feeling, how something made us feel, reflect on it, and name the emotion attached to it. Kevin: This term in psychology is referred to as affect labeling. In other words, putting feelings into words. Studies have shown that affect labeling reduces activity in our brain's amygdala. That's the part of the brain that has that fight or flight response. It really helps lessen the intensity of any experience, especially as it relates to grief. There's this one psychologist, Dr. Matthew Lieberman. He's a professor, but also an author of a book called, "Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect". Kevin: He says, “putting negative feelings into words can help regulate negative experiences. In other words, naming our feelings won't put the brakes on that emotion, but will help us get into the driver's seat of the experience.” I love that quote. So good. Kathy: It's very helpful. But I know as an introvert that I always have a hard time naming my feelings. So that all sounds excellent, but for most of us, I think that we don't know how to access that tool of naming our feelings. Do you have any tools or strategies? Kevin: Yeah, I think that's a good point. I think whether you're introverted and you're not really sure what you're feeling, because the emotions are so intense. For extroverts like I am, sometimes you're feeling so many different things you can't quite pin down one feeling. You feel like you're feeling all of the feelings all at once. And so in our workshops we have used a tool called a Feelings Wheel. It's been such a helpful tool for us in our own individual lives, but also in the times that we've taught on the Feelings Wheel to help you articulate the specific emotion that you're having and then describe for yourself how you're feeling, but then also use that language to connect with other people to name how you're feeling. Kathy: Yeah, this Feelings Wheel is fantastic. It really helps. You go from that -- you start in the center and it will give you some main feelings and then you can work your way outward to identify more specifically what you're feeling and it really helps to name what we're talking about today, the feelings. Kevin: Yeah, exactly. And we've found this to be so helpful in our workshops. We want it to be a resource for all of you. So we're gonna put a link in the notes of the podcast so that you can get to it pretty easily but you can also just Google Feelings Wheel and I hope that it can be as useful of a resource to you as it has been for us. Kathy: Yeah, that would be excellent. Kevin: Yeah. All right, so let me just give a summary of what we talked about so far: When we notice and name our feelings, we connect our head, our thinking selves with our heart, our feeling selves. And this language, the naming of our feelings, the productive labeling, gives us language that allows us to articulate our experience to ourselves, but also to others. But most importantly, it gives us language to affirm the experience that we're having. When we can see the words on the page that describe exactly how we're feeling, it can be a very affirming experience. Kathy: Thanks, Kevin. This is super helpful. So to end this episode, we wanted to give you some time right now to think through your feelings as related to your grief. So would you pause with me a moment? Take a few moments to pause. Kathy: And I want you to narrow in on one particular loss for this exercise. Which loss is most prominent for you right now? in your life. I want you to begin to think now how it makes you feel. Why is the loss so heavy for you? Does the loss make you feel sad, angry, fearful? Sit with your loss for a moment and think about the main feelings that arise for you. you It's okay to have more than one feeling as you think on this loss. Kathy: Finally, give yourself permission to sit with the loss and the feelings that come up for you. you. If you need extra support and help with this process, feel free to reach out to us at Be Well, and most of all know that you're not alone. Thanks so much for joining us for this conversation, and whatever you may be coping with today, blessings to you.

Sometimes "reality" TV takes it one step too far.  Sometimes two steps.  Sometimes a flying leap. WARNING:  IMPLIED VIOLENCE AND TORTURE Written and Produced by Julie Hoverson Cast List Announcer  - Frankenvox Alison - Beverly Poole Bart - Michael Faigenblum Carl - Mike Campbell Debbie - E. Vickery Ms. Sheldon - Sharon Delong Tanya - Tanja Milojevic Mom - Shayla Conrad-Simms Dad - Reynaud LeBoeuf Son - Eli Nilsson Fred - Joel Harvey Bob - Glen Hallstrom Helen - Helen Edwards June - Shelbi McIntyre Kathy - Kim Poole Additional Voices - Russell Gold; Julie Hoverson Music by Brian Bochicchio (Seraphic Panoply) Show theme:  Kevin MacLeod (Incompetech.com) Editing and Sound:   Julie Hoverson Cover Design:  Brett Coulstock   "What kind of a place is it? Why it's right here, right now, can't you tell?" ************************************************************************ IDIOT BOX Cast: [Opening credits - Olivia] TV Announcer Alison, chipper Bart, sullen Carl, upbeat, hearty Debbie, nervous, angry underneath Ms. Sheldon, executive producer Tanya, in the sound booth Family - mom, dad, teenage son Bar - Fred, Bob, Helen Dorm - June, Kathy OLIVIA     Did you have any trouble finding it?  What do you mean, what kind of a place is it?  Why, it's right here, right now, can't you tell?  MUSIC SOUND     THEME MUSIC ANNOUNCER    last week, in the record-breaking debut of The Box, we were introduced to our four contestants: ALISON    [chipper] I'm Alison, from Santa Monica.  Hi, mom! CARL    [hearty] Carl, from Atlanta - home of the Cartoon Channel!!  DEBBIE    [nervous] Debbie, from Salem.  Uh, Oregon.  [quickly] Salem Oregon. BART    [sullen] Bart, Minneapolis [disgusted sigh]. ANNOUNCER    The rules are on the screen now for all you viewers out there, to cover the formalities.  They are also available on our website at [spelled out superfast] w-w-w-dot-s-k-i-n-n-e-r-i-d-i-o-t-b-o-x-dot-com.  AMB    FAMILY LIVING ROOM SOUND    CHIPS EATEN FROM BAG ANNOUNCER    [TV] And after this brief message, we'll show you the results of last week's voting. SOUND    CLICK OF REMOTE SOUND    POPCORN POPPING IN MICROWAVE MOM    [off] You better not have turned that off, hun! SOUND    MICROWAVE DINGS DAD    Just muted.  Sick of all these ads for freaking erectile dysfunction.  If anything's going to give a guy man-trouble, it's having to watch all those damn ads. SOUND    POURING POPCORN INTO BOWL SON    Ew, dad.  T-M-I. MOM    [coming in, munching popcorn] The one I hate is that smiling guy.  His wife just looks so scared all the time.  Almost as creepy as the King. SON    Am I adopted?  Please say yes. DAD    Ooops, back on! ANNOUNCER    [TV]  Did everyone vote? MOM    I certainly did! SON    Mom?  [disgusted noise] Why? ANNOUNCER    [TV] The voting is closed, the tabulations have been made, and the scores are coming up on the screen now. MOM    [over the announcer] Why not?  I want that nice young girl - the blonde - to win.  She's very wholesome. ANNOUNCER    [TV] And it looks like today Alison has been selected!  MOM    [satisfied] There! ANNOUNCER    We have Alison in the studio now - let's see how she takes it. SOUND     LIGHT MUSIC, ON THE TV SEGUES INTO REALITY ANNOUNCER    Hello Alison!  Say hi to everyone!  ALISON    Hi!  Hi mom!  Dad! ANNOUNCER    How's the first week been treating you? ALISON    This place is great! ANNOUNCER    Throughout the show, we'll be showing some of the fun you four have been having.  Now, why don't you tell me what you think of your new friends? ALISON    Oh, wow - everyone's really great.  ANNOUNCER    Don't you find Bart a bit... isolated? ALISON    He's just self-contained.  I'm sure he's a good guy, he just doesn't open up real easily. ANNOUNCER    And Debbie? ALISON    She's shy - a lot like my sister.  Hi Vickie!! ANNOUNCER    [chuckles] That's great. ALISON    And Carl - well, he's a blast.  He's always thinking up great stuff to do. ANNOUNCER    Yesterday you had sole access to the Dairy Dan Amusement park. ALISON    Oh, man - that was awesome!  They closed the gates and we got to ride all the rides all day long - no lines, no crowds!  Woo! ANNOUNCER    You've been chosen. ALISON    Woo!  [stumbles] I - What?  What? SOUND    CONTROL BOOTH ANNOUNCER    [TV]  Please step into the box. ALISON    [TV - gasp, then steels herself]  Right.  [somewhat bitter] Thanks America. SHELDON That's the shot - tight in on 2, now 3 - yes! Keep her face centered until she shuts the door. TANYA    Got it. SHELDON Okay, keep the volume low on that. It's early yet - don't want to wear out the viewers... SOUND    [TV] ELECTRIC SHOCK NOISE, SOMEWHAT BRIEF ALISON    [TV - short scream] ANNOUNCER    [TV] We'll be right back after the break to find out what today's challenge will be. AMB    DORM ROOM JUNE    Omigod!  Omigod!  Did you see that? KATHY    [distracted] Hmm?  No but I sure heard it - did they just do what I think they did? JUNE    They just shocked the crap out of the blonde chick! KATHY    Was there actually crap? JUNE    [duh] She was in the box.  Shh.  It's coming back on. SOUND    TV TURNS UP ANNOUNCER    [TV] We'll be right back with more of The Box after these messages. SOUND    SOUND DOWN AGAIN JUNE    I hate when they do that. KATHY    Shock someone? JUNE    No, have the logo come up and make you think the show is back on. KATHY    Yeah, that's much worse. JUNE    You know what I mean!  It was totally mean that they shocked her - she's the one who got the most votes! KATHY    Isn't that what everyone was voting for? JUNE    No!  At least, I don't think so - I mean, I thought it was voting for who would win something cool.  I ...voted for her. KATHY    You actually voted? JUNE    On the website, yeah. KATHY    Of course there's a website.  Maybe you should read the fine print. JUNE    Oh, oh!  It's back on!  Jeez, look at her poor hair! SOUND    TV UP ANNOUNCER    [TV] Back to the interview room, to hear from Alison. ANNOUNCER    [real] Before we go on, I need to point out, this is the only time you can choose to leave the show.  Are you prepared to stay? ALISON    [gulps, then quiet]  Yes.  [clears her throat, louder]  Yes.  [very shaky] That wasn't so bad. ANNOUNCER    Excellent.  Now I believe you recently graduated from college, Alison.  What did you get your degree in? AMB    BAR ALISON    [TV]  I'm a liberal arts major, with a minor in art history. FRED    So she's unemployed, eh? ANNOUNCER    [TV]  And you are engaged to be married? BOB    Too bad.  All the cute ones are taken.  Even with that weird hairdo. SOUND    TV SWITCHED TO SPORTS FRED    Hey, we were watching that! HELEN    Why?  It's awful, letting them mess with people on TV like that! FRED    [scornful] It's not real.  BOB    Course it is - it even has a website! HELEN    Puh-leez.  Lots of things have websites that aren't real. BOB    Name one. HELEN    Pamela Anderson's boobs. FRED    She got you there, pal. BOB    C'mon - just switch it back long enough to see what today's challenge is?  Please? HELEN    Ya big softie, you. SOUND    TV CHANGES BACK ANNOUNCER    [TV] Carl, you got the second most votes this week - Do you have anything to say to the viewers at home?  Obviously you're doing something right, to get so many votes. CARL    [TV]  I think it's just my sunny personality, Bob.  People like winners, and I am a winner. AMB    LIVING ROOM SON    Weiner. MOM    Language! SON    [dismissive noise] Doesn't that dipstick know that most votes gets zapped? DAD    Maybe he doesn't - they might not tell THEM everything, either.  Makes sense.  Why else would they be so excited? SON    But that sucks!  That sucks big time!  Here they are, trying to be all cool and get people to vote for them, and they're like masterminding their own torture or something. DAD    It's just a game,  No one really gets hurt. MOM    Well, I was kind of upset that Alicia-- SON    Alison. MOM    Yes, that she got shocked.  I didn't know that voting for her would do that.  I kind of feel bad now. SON    Well, don't vote for her next time. MOM    I certainly won't! ANNOUNCER    [on TV] Well, we've spoken to two of our four contestants, and the voting is open for the halftime winner.  Go on line now or text to-- SOUND    TV MUTES, AMB/DORM SOUND    COMPUTER KEYS KATHY    What are you doing? JUNE    Voting. KATHY    Vicious much? JUNE    No! I - I just don't want her to have to get shocked again.  Damn!  It only lets me choose one of those two - not the other guy. KATHY    So you want to see him get shocked? JUNE    Well, no, but I like him the least. KATHY    Just cause you don't think he's cute. SOUND    ONE LAST KEY JUNE    Um, there. KATHY    So who'd you vote for? JUNE    The guy - the nice one - of course.  I like him, too, but I don't want her to get shocked again. SOUND    TV UP AGAIN ANNOUNCER    [TV] Regular text messaging fees apply.  And now‑‑ SOUND    OMINOUS MUSIC ROLLS IN ANNOUNCER    [TV, ominous] The moment in the spotlight.  Will it be Alison or Carl?  The voting closes in three minutes, so hurry up and make your vote count - if the lines are overloaded, make sure and try back - but be quick.   [normal] While we wait, let's watch some clips from the preliminary interviews with the other two contestants. MUSIC ANNOUNCER    [TV] And what are you studying? DEBBIE    [TV] I'm - um - a poli sci major. FRED    So she's gonna end up unemployed too. BOB    Whatever happened to good old trade schools? FRED    They're still around - just the trades aren't.  You seen any cobblers in the U.S. of A recently?  Nope.  It's all farmed out to Pakistan and Koala Lumper. HELEN    Lumpur. FRED    Sez you. HELEN    I can turn it off, you know. BOB    Yeah - see now Helen here's got a job that can't be farmed out - long as there's guys like us, there's always gonna be bars, eh? FRED    Until they invent a mixology robot. BOB    Hey, the lights are flashing on the screen, must be something important. SOUND    TV TURNED UP. SOUND    OMINOUS MUSIC INTENSIFIES ANNOUNCER    [TV; evil "suspense" pacing]  And the one who got the most halftime votes.  Will it be Alison, our stoic liberal arts major? JUNE    Yes, yes - come on come on!!! ANNOUNCER    [TV] Or Carl, who tutors children with learning disabilities. MOM    Oh, that's awful! SON    Awful? That he works with retarded kids? MOM    [almost a whisper] That I voted for him. ANNOUNCER    [TV] And the one who got the most votes in the 8-minute half-time poll was-- SOUND    HEAVY DRUMBEAT ANNOUNCER    [TV] Was-- SOUND    HEAVY DRUMBEAT KATHY    Look at how much she's sweating! JUNE    You'd sweat too if you just got shocked! ANNOUNCER    [TV] is -Carl! JUNE    Whew! KATHY    Shh.  Let's see what happens. ANNOUNCER    [TV] This means that at the end of tonight's show, Carl will be up against the second half winner in a showdown to see who gets a million dollars sent to the charity of their choice. HELEN    Waitaminute - she gets shocked and he gets a chance to win big bucks?  That's so not fair! FRED    That's the way it is.  Women always getting the short stick. HELEN    Especially when they're dating you, eh? BOB    [laughs, tried to stop] FRED    Yeah, yeah - you can joke now, but I'll give you 70-30 odds that the other winner is that other guy. BOB    The grouch? FRED    Yup.  Is it a bet? BOB    Fifty bucks? FRED    Whoah, whoah!  Let's not get carried away here, now. MUSIC - OPENING THEME, PLAYS FOR A MOMENT ANNOUNCER    Entering week five of The Box, you can see the ratings posted for our four contenders.  [hushed] Last week, it looked as though Debbie had finally broken-- DEBBIE    [TV] I hate it!  I hate you all! You can all just go and-- SOUND    LONG SERIES OF BLEEPED WORDS SOUND    ZAPPING AND SCREAMING UNDER NEXT LINE ANNOUNCER    But after her trip to the box, she refused to cry off. DEBBIE    [TV] [breathing heavily and gulping] No [gasp] way! [gasp]  You don't [gasp] get rid of me [long shaky breath] that easily. [sob] ANNOUNCER    And now, a new week - and what was this week's challenge? STUDIO AUDIENCE Fasting! ANNOUNCER    Yes, fasting.  Whoever could go the longest without eating even a single bite of food got a free pass this week‑‑ ANNOUNCER    [TV] --and we'll find out who managed that in just a moment - after a few words from our sponsors. SOUND    CLICK, SOUND OFF JUNE    [urging] C'mon Debbie! KATHY    Debbie?  Hah.  She's got no body fat to start with.  Bart has a much better chance of surviving-- JUNE    Don't say that!  You just like him cause you know I don't! KATHY    I root for the underdog.  It's a principal. And no one likes that poor bastard. JUNE    If no one likes him, how come Debbie's the one always getting shocked, huh?  [almost a sob] Huh? ANNOUNCER    [TV]  Let's bring our four contestants out on stage to hear who's going to be free and clear for another week.  Alison-- SOUND    MUSIC UP, DOOR OPENS, SHAKY FOOTSTEPS ANNOUNCER    [real] Alison, how are you feeling? ALISON    [trying to be perky] Not too bad.  I made it almost three whole days on nothing but water.  ANNOUNCER    But then you lost it? ALISON    [heavy sigh] Yeah, I had to give in and get something.  [resigned] I figured fine - just put me in the box.  At least that eventually ends.  ANNOUNCER    Thank you, Alison.  Now go over to the isolation booth while we talk with each of your friends. ALISON    [venomous] Friends?  Hah! ANNOUNCER    [TV, confidential] She needs to learn to be careful about trading today's pain for tomorrow's - what she doesn't know is we've [ramping up] turned the voltage up another notch! AUDIENCE    [TV, CHEERS] HELEN    This just keeps getting worse.  It has to be against the law. BOB    Oh, come on.  They signed waivers, didn't they?  Plus, it's all fake - like wrestling.  Seriously.  Even if they did do this stuff, they have to have doctors and all on staff - make sure no one really gets hurt. SOUND    UNWRAPPING AND OPENING A FORTUNE COOKIE FRED    Hey, listen to this - "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." BOB    Figures the Chinese would think of that first. FRED    Nah.  The Chinese didn't make that up. HELEN    Then who did say it? FRED    [immediate] Thomas Jefferson. BOB    I don't think so. FRED    Yeah?  And who do you think it was? BOB    Some Greek philosopher or other.  [idea] Julius Caesar! HELEN    You guys make your bet, I'll call Jonesy on the next commercial and he can google it. SOUND    TV TURNS UP ANNOUNCER    [TV]  So Bart, you made it the longest without eating - you have any special tips for the viewers out there on how you did it? BART    [real] Huh? ANNOUNCER    Any tips?  We'll give you a minute - these moments of uncertainty are just further proof that our show is live and unedited.  While Bart ponders this, I'll recap - Alison gave into her craven need for food first, followed by Carl and Debbie - in a virtual photo finish, where Debbie held out for one millisecond longer than Carl.  Good going Debbie! BART    I hate you. ANNOUNCER    Hmm?  What's that? BART    I hate you and all you stand for.  ANNOUNCER    Do I hear an opt-out coming?  For those of you just tuning in, during this episode and this episode alone, any of our four contestants can opt out at any time - not just immediately following a trip into the Box.  So Bart, are you-- SOUND    A BEEP TRIES TO CUT HIM OFF ON THE FIRST WORD BART    Fuck you!  You can't get rid of me that easily.  BART    [TV] I don't care how many times you drug me and try to get me to bow down to the corporate machine!  You and all you people at home - you are sadistic bastards, but I'm here for the long haul - And when I finish, whether I win or not, I will be traveling around the country demanding the pound of flesh each and every one of you bastards owe me!!! KATHY    For god's sake, turn it off. JUNE    No, he's making a valid point.  We shouldn't be party to this. KATHY    The very act of watching it validates it. JUNE    No.  I'm only doing this to bear witness. KATHY    The advertisers don't care.  They just want to you to watch. JUNE    Well, I won't vote any more. KATHY    Then you can't complain when your favorite gets zapped. JUNE    [upset] Oh hell! ANNOUNCER    [TV]  Well, that was very enlightening.  Before you out there start emailing and phoning - please refer to clause 42 slash 8 slash F, subsection I-I-I, paragraph y, where it sets out the game's rules covering mental illness or defect.  Thank you, and good night! SOUND    TV TURNED OFF HELEN    Anyone checked out the big pools? FRED    What do you mean? HELEN    There's huge bets all over the place - everyone guessing who's gonna last the longest. BOB    Well, no one's washed out yet. FRED    They're a tough bunch of kids, but I bet I could make it on that show.  Age does bring wisdom. BOB    To who? FRED    You're too young to remember this, but I was a P-O-W in nam [rhymes with "ham"].  I been through it all.  Torture, deprivation, brain washing. HELEN    They sure got yours squeaky clean. SOUND    DRINKS WHOLE BEER DOWN. BOB    Ahhh. MUSIC    ANNOUNCER    This week, week 9 of The Box, we might just lose a second contestant.  ANNOUNCER     [TV] Alison, you've spent three days in this jacuzzi - brought to us courtesy of Big Joe's cut-rate pools and spas.  Now, people might think this was fun, but of course, you can't fall asleep or you might drown!  ALISON    [TV, parched, delirious]  You suck, Bob. FRED    Friend of yours? BOB    You wish. ALISON     [TV]  Get me out. ANNOUNCER    [TV] You do know that whomever leaves their jacuzzi first goes directly into the box? ALISON     [TV] No!  I want out!  OUT!  I can't - you can't make me stay here! JUNE    They can't, can they? KATHY     How much you wanna bet she signed something that says they can? JUNE    That's illegal! KATHY    Being stupid and greedy?  Nah.  They'd run out of prisons.  Unless you subscribe to the idea that our whole world is a prison. JUNE    [very upset] Don't talk like that - look at that poor girl!  They're just dragging her across the stage! KATHY    Wow.  I wouldn't'a thought it would take three guys to handle her, after all the crap she's been through. ALISON    [TV - screaming weakly and struggling] ANNOUNCER    [TV] It is understood, under the rules, that the clemency episode has run out and, once again, the only time you can opt out is right after a session in the box-- SON    If she's all wet, wouldn't that make the shock worse? DAD    At least her hair doesn't end up all weird since they shaved her head after that challenge last week-- SON    Three weeks ago. DAD    Really?  Anyway, they probably compensate somehow. MOM    Are you sure? DAD    [unsure] Well... They can't really hurt her - that would be... ANNOUNCER    [TV]     Oh, and - I've just got a word from the producer!  We've got a three minute vote - so grab your phones!  ANNOUNCER    [real] Now this will cost one dollar per vote, so make yours count!  Dial the studio number and hit 1 if you want us to let Allison forfeit and leave now, push 2 if you think we should hold her to the rules.  And voting opens [beat, then TV] Now! SHELDON Start the positive counter. TANYA    On it.  Running. NARRATOR     [TV] The positive votes will tally right here on the corner of the screen, and if, after the vote closes, there are more positive than negative votes, Alison will  immediately leave the studio - damper but wiser... BOB    Man, I wish I was in Vegas. FRED    Nah - you know what's going to happen.  The odd's'll be crap. HELEN    Course.  They'll let her go. FRED    You gotta lotta faith in people, babe.  Nah.  I'll give you 10 to 1 she's gonna ride the lightning. BOB     [incredulous] "Ride the lightning?" FRED    You know - old sparky. The electric chair?  Man where have you been? BOB    Considering no one's been executed in an electric chair in this state for - um - help me out Helen-- HELEN    50 years. BOB    50 years. FRED    Really? HELEN    How the hell'm I supposed to know? BOB    Well, whatever - a long time.  HELEN    Actually, I think this state always hanged people. FRED    Hung. BOB    The countdown! 5 - 4 - JUNE    3-2- MOM    [almost breathless] One. ANNOUNCER    [TV]  All votes are in, and as you can see, we had a regular landslide of support for our dear friend Allison here.  we have 4 million six hundred seventy two thousand, three hundred and forty-two votes for clemency.  Good for you everyone!  We'll show the other side, right after this-- SOUND    TV OFF DAD    No way! MOM    You can't    ! SON    I won't watch any more of this.  This is brutal. MOM    [angry] Don't you dare!  How can we not ... find out? SON    No. MOM    Just until they announce it - we don't have to watch ...if she... SON    Gets it? SOUND    REMOTE THROWN ONTO TABLE SON    You do what you want.  I'll be in the garage. SOUND    [after a moment] TV CLICKS ON COMMERCIAL    [something] KATHY    I bet the commercials for this cost top dollar.  Like superbowl ads. JUNE    How can you just be so snarky - that girl could die! KATHY    Nah.  They can't do that.  It would be illegal. JUNE    Not normally, but remember when that guy had a stroke on "Danger Island" last year?  The family sued, but the waiver made it perfectly legit.  KATHY    And that wasn't even that exciting. ANNOUNCER    [on TV]  For those just tuning in, we have perky little Allison in the Box, awaiting your verdict.  [continues under] Does she take the next shock, or have you tipped toward clemency for this poor girl? SHELDON Give them the split picture. TANYA    Before and after? SHELDON Uh-huh. [grim] Show them what they did. ANNOUNCER    [on TV] The negative votes have been tallied.  SOUND    DRUM ROLL, OMINOUS MUSIC ANNOUNCER    [ON TV] And we had 4 million six hundred seventy two thousand, three hundred and forty-two votes to let her go.  BOB    I'm still saying they'll let her off.  FRED    Nope.  You already lost that twenty, pal. HELEN    Shh! ANNOUNCER    [TV] The negative count is seven million three hundred-- SOUND    TV OFF KATHY    Did you vote? JUNE    Yes.  [beat]  Twenty times. KATHY    [shrug] You can't beat the bastards. JUNE    But if everyone just voted a few more times... KATHY    Three million more times. JUNE    How can people be so horrible? SOUND    [NEXT DOOR TV] SCREAMING PEOPLE    [laughing] SOUND    POUNDING ON WALL JUNE    [yelling at them] How can you be so horrible?? KATHY    They're drunk.  Didn't you see the sign? JUNE    [half a sob] Sign? KATHY    The one that said "come to gary's room, get drunk and watch The Box"? JUNE    [down] No. KATHY    Look, turn it on.  You'll see she's not dead or anything, then you'll feel better. JUNE    But what if she's not?  I mean, what if she is?  I mean-- KATHY    [sigh] Then you'll know. SOUND    [beat, then] TV TURNS ON SOUND    [on TV] AMBULANCE SIRENS JUNE    [sob] MOM    [sob] Her poor parents! DAD    Don't worry so much - she's not dead. MOM    She was for 43 seconds. DAD    That doesn't even count these days - happens all the time on House. MOM    [very upset] But this is real! SOUND    [on tv] MUSIC UP ANNOUNCER    [tv]  And we'll be checking in with Allison as soon as she regains consciousness to confirm her wish to opt out.  For now, the game comes down to Bart and Carl.  ANNOUNCER    Don't forget - no matter what happens, the game's big final episode is in two weeks.  SOUND    CAMERA OFF SHELDON Nicely done. ANNOUNCER    It's really wearing me thin. SHELDON Almost over. And after today's vote, there's no way the station can afford to cancel us. ANNOUNCER    [sigh, then grudging] Two more shows.  SHELDON [with meaning] And then we announce the results. MUSIC - OPENING THEME, PLAYS FOR A MOMENT AMB     NOISY BAR BOB    [ordering] Another one. FRED    Packed tonight. SOUND    DRINK SET DOWN HELEN    It's the finale. FRED    [tired] Oh, yeah.  That. BOB    Bottom's up! HELEN    Slow down, or I'm gonna have to pour you into a cab. SOUND    CAR KEYS SLAPPED ONTO THE BAR, SCOOPED UP SOUND    GLASS SET DOWN HARD BOB    Ahhh. CROWD    ROAR OF EXCITEMENT HELEN    Hold on!  I'll get it. SOUND    TV SOUND UP MUSIC    FANFARE ANNOUNCER    It's the night we've all been waiting for.  The night the final results are announced.  And we will have an ultimate winner.  Let's recap what the winner will walk away with.  SOUND    VOLUME DOWN SOUND    DOOR OPENS KATHY    Oh, you're not watching that, are you?  [sneer] I thought you decided it wasn't worth it! JUNE    [shell shocked] I can't not watch!  I have to know! KATHY    Look, let's go to the library or something. JUNE    No!  I would die of suspense! KATHY    It's not-- SOUND    TV VOLUME COMES UP KATHY    [sigh] I'm not staying. SOUND    DOOR CLOSES ANNOUNCER    And the contest comes down to our two finalists, Bart and Carl.  They have endured amazing hardship to make it this far.  Do you have anything you want to say to the people at home, Bart? BART    You still suck and you always will.  Every single one of you!  Every person who just sits by and supports this shit! ANNOUNCER    [still jovial]  And yet, you have continued to play our sick little games - as you call them - despite being offered chance after chance to leave. BART    Hah!  I don't plan to fucking let you win, you scumbags! ANNOUNCER    Well said.  And you, Carl, do you have anything for the audience? CARL    [mumbles] ANNOUNCER    Speak up? CARL    [vague, reciting] We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.  Sitting by lone sea-- lone sea....  the sea.  The sea.  See see oh playmate, come out and play with me.... [fades out] ANNOUNCER    There you have it, folks.  And now we go to our man in the street interviewer, Tanya.  Take it away! TANYA    Thank you.  I'm in a major metropolitan center here, asking people on the street what they think of the Box. ANNOUNCER    If they're outside right now, instead of glued to their sets, they must not think much of it. BOTH    [fake laugh] SOUND    TV OFF SOUND    EATING MOM    What?  Don't you dare! DAD    Hey, we were watching that! SON    Are you enjoying this? MOM    Enjoying? DAD    What do you mean? SON    All this shit they've put those people through!  You can barely tell them apart now, after they've been starved and had their heads shaved.  They look like concentration camp victims! MOM    But - but this is the last show! DAD    What does it matter if we watch or don't watch? SOUND    THROWING DOWN A REMOTE SON    Do what you want.  I'll just hope for a six-car pileup.  Maybe you'll trade up. SOUND    DOOR OPENS AND SHUT SOUND    REMOTE TAKEN, TV ON ANNOUNCER    And for tonight, the big surprise is-- SOUND    DRUM ROLL, OMINOUS MUSIC ANNOUNCER    Two boxes! SOUND    CANNED CHEERING ANNOUNCER    One for each of you.  While we get them all set, here's a word from our sponsor! AMB    BAR CROWD    Buzzing "two boxes?" BOB    [slurry] Whaddaya think they've got up their shleeves? FRED    They're gonna kill one of those boys. HELEN    [confidential] I heard that girl Allison is in a private clinic, barely alive. FRED    Where'd you--? HELEN    Internet.  BOB    [sarcastic]  Yeah.  Then it's probably true. SOMEONE    Turn it up! HELEN    Got it! SOUND    TV UP ANNOUNCER    And now.  The moment of truth!  All the votes have been tallied.  As you can see, we have Bart over here in the red box-- SOUND    CANNED APPLAUSE ANNOUNCER    [tv] --and Carl over there in the blue. SHELDON close up on Bart, camera 2. Yeah, baby, clench that jaw.  Now cut to that trickle of sweat on Carl's face.  Nice. TANYA    Back to the announcer? SHELDON One more second, and - yes! ANNOUNCER    [tv] And now, with the votes tallied, we will find out who you out there have selected as the big winner, and who has to take the big penalty.  ANNOUNCER    [real] But first, we caught each of our contestants here on secret camera last night.  Let's see what they were doing on the penultimate night. SOUND    QUICK JAB OF STATIC VOICE    [tv] ...need to get out now.  You don't understand what they have planned for tomorrow.  It's so much worse! AMB    BAR BOB    Who the hell izzat? BART    [TV] [scoff] Worse?  Worse how? HELEN    Don't know.  FRED    Look at that announcer fellow - he's surprised too.  HELEN    [half a chuckle]  Serves him right. ANNOUNCER    [tv] Sorry - we should have screened that clip before playing it.  Let's go over to Carl's shot. CARL    [tv] Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall--[cuts out suddenly] ANNOUNCER    [tv] And that's all the time we have for that.  And now the moment of truth.  Carl or Bart?  You held their fate in your hands. SOUND    COMMERCIAL COMES ON UNDER MOM    [coming in]  Where's Kyle?  Have you seen Kyle? DAD    [mesmerized]  He'll be back.  Just ... went out to a friend's house.  Probably. MOM    You should turn that off and find him! DAD    We can look in ten minutes just as easily as we can look now! MOM    This is our son! DAD    It's almost over! SOUND    OMINOUS MUSIC ON TV ANNOUNCER    [tv] And now.  The final countdown. MOM    Five minutes. SOUND    SHE SITS ANNOUNCER     [tv]  This has been quite a journey for everyone - and we would like to thank you all for your support and participation. BOB    Support?  I'd shoot that stupid bastard if I had a chance.  And a gun. HELEN    You're not the only one, but a lot of people paid a lot of money into that damn show. ANNOUNCER    [tv] --making us the highest rated network series ever-- FRED    yeah, and even WE count for ratings, since we happen to be watching it. BOB    [steaming into an alcoholic rage] Then let's not watch it! SOUND    SLAMS GLASS ON BAR, LIQUID SLOSHES FRED    Calm down, pal. BOB    No! Is this what our world has come to?  This crap?? SOUND    THROWS BEER GLASS AT TV, TV DIES, BUT OTHER SET PLAYS ON IN THE BACKGROUND CROWD    [Shocked silence] FRED    Great, one down, only seven hundred million TV sets to go. HELEN    I'll put it on your tab. CROWD     [chatter begins again] ANNOUNCER    [tv] --will definitely be returning for a second season, starting next fall-- SOUND    DOOR OPENS ANNOUNCER    [tv] --and we're looking at celebrity contestants.  TANYA    [tv]  That will be a whole new ballgame. KATHY    Sorry, didn't know it was still on. JUNE    [distraught] Stay.  Please. KATHY    Ugh.  Why? JUNE    Because I don't think I'll make it otherwise. KATHY    Make what? ANNOUNCER    [tv] And now for the final outcome.  MOM    Yes? DAD    About time. ANNOUNCER    [tv]  the final results. FRED    Don't call the police.  I'll get him home. HELEN    Yeah.  This time. ANNOUNCER    [tv] What we've all been working toward. JUNE    [crying] Can't they just say it? TV, MUSIC SWELLS, THEN CUTS OUT SUDDENLY JUNE    What? HELEN    Shit, must have blown the circuit. DAD    The electricity's still on! KATHY    Is there something wrong with your TV? MOM    No!  It's practically new! FRED    Come on.  Quitting time, pal. SOUND    TEST PATTERN NOISE, THEN MUSIC SUDDENLY CUTS BACK IN ANNOUNCER    Thank you all for participating in our experiment.  MOM    [gasp] ANNOUNCER    As you can see, all of our actors are in perfect health. JUNE    [sob]  How could they--? KATHY    Bastards. ANNOUNCER    We would love to hear your reactions to this show.  Please feel free to leave us a message at www-dot- SOUND    TV SWITCHES OFF HELEN     [last call voice] Allright.  That's it. CLOSER   [NOTE:  George Santayana, author of the quote.]

See all the Healthcasts at https://www.biobalancehealth.com/healthcast-blog/ Kathy: Today we are welcoming back Brett Newcomb, the co-author of our book,   Got Testosterone?, as well as co-author of our first book The Secret Female Hormone to announce the release of our third joint project, and our first audio book, Got Testosterone? Brett: Our audio book, Got Testosterone?  has just been made available on Amazon books, Audible, and dozens of other audiobook access points. Our book Got Testosterone? is dedicated to men, to help them get through the aging process by choosing the one most effective treatment, testosterone pellets.  We felt the need to write this book because there is a subterfuge that keeps this information from men and keeps them sick and sexless as they age.  We want men to know that the replacement of one hormone testosterone can both treat their symptoms and prevent the second half of their life from being non-productive, sexless, and filled with illness.  This book tells the truth to men and offers a plan of action for them to prevent the diseases of aging by taking Testosterone replacement with long-acting pellets. Kathy: We are proud of this work because it is wholly ours…we wrote it, and Brett is the voice of the book as well.  In that way, we can offer our listeners a wholly homogenous work for their listening pleasure. Brett and I tried at every turn to talk to men in this audio book like they wish to be talked to—concise information, delivered in a logical fashion with a limited number of examples to make our necessary points. I was asked many times by my patients why we would spend 3 years writing each book, and another year producing an audio version of our book for men, Got Testosterone?. I explain that with all the confusing information out there, I think it is important to  tell the truth about testosterone replacement, so men can make informed decisions about their health as they age. When I am in my office seeing a male patient, I hand our book, “Got testosterone?” to them to read.   Many wives have told me that their husbands probably won't read it, but they would listen to it when they are driving.  I made a decision to record an audio version of our book so that men would listen to it and receive the truth about testosterone. Brett: We are very proud of this book.  The year it was released, 2019, Got Testosterone?, won the first place  award for men's health books, from International Independent Publishers.  This recognition was very big for us, and it recommitted us to increasing the number of men who would access the information in our book.  Recording the audio book was the way we arrived at to bring our findings about testosterone replacement for men. Brett: People all learn in different ways, and our audio book is for those people who learn by listening and like to listen to books as they drive or listen as they do things around their yard or as they exercise.   A book must be read or heard to educate so we decided to cover both the access points for our patients. Kathy: It is not typical to ask one of the authors to record the voice for the book.  I chose Brett to read our book for many reasons, but the over-arching reason is that his voice is distinct and memorable. This fact was obvious when we attended medical Anti-aging conferences, and men and women alike came up to Brett to tell him how they loved listening to his voice during our Healthcasts.  That sealed the deal for me…if both men and women admired his voice..who would be better to tell our story? Brett:  I have had quite a lot of experience in broadcasting, TV and radio.  This audiobook was an opportunity to use my experience as the voice of our book. Kathy: Other than working with the company that distributes audiobooks, I did not do the woman's work on the audiobook of Got Testosterone?  Brett and our audio Specialist performed the complicated task of recording, re-recording, and editing the audiobook. Brett, can you explain how an audio book is composed? Brett:   The book professor, Nancy Erickson, ( thebookprofessor.com) referred us to an audio genius,  Aaron Reppert  (www.AaronReppert.com) of Travsonic Studios (www.travsonic.com/aaron-reppert/) , who is an expert producing audio books, and who did all the tech and editing and many, many other processes that take hours, days, and weeks of work over the past year and a half.    I got together with Aaron of Travsonic at his sound studio and spent many hours reading in a soundproof room with Aaron critiquing all the time.  He had an impressive array of screens and sound editing machines around him and he coached me, and edited and retaped sections of each chapter. He edited everything to comply with distribution requirements and did his magic, and voila! We have an audio version of our book Got Testosterone?. Kathy: Nancy Erickson also was integral in our process of distributing the book.  She put us in touch with a distributor, Lantern Audio Distributor, who brought our audio book to the public through many outlets, including the most well-known Apple Books, Audible, Audiobooks, Nook Audio, Google Play, Walmart in the US and throughout the worldwide with audio-press. There was even more work that had to be done to publish our audiobook.  The book cover which was created by the COO and art director of BioBalance Health®, Joe Baalmann, had to be redrafted to fit the DVD discover dimensions.  He also made sure all the requirements of the distributor were carried out.  Behind the scenes work is often painful and unrecognized, but we were thankful for his work and talent.  Brett: The audio publishing world has stretched our experience with communication methods farther than we had imagined we would go.  Previously we successfully worked with social media, You Tube, Traditional Book Publishers and Independent Book Publishers.  The audio book was a unique experience for us.  We hope you all take advantage of being able to listen to the information we have compiled and have made available to everyone. The goal is a healthy life for men after age 40, and to prevent the symptoms and diseases of aging. Kathy: Our goal has always been to bring patients and other doctors and Nurse Practitioners the un-tainted truth about the best and healthiest treatment for men over 40 as they age.  We think prevention of disease is the way forward in a world that is saturated with an expensive pill for every symptom, and a questionably effective treatment advertised on the internet, and on TV. being healthy throughout your life is the only way to avoid illness and the expensive, painful, and often ineffective treatments used once you are sick.  If you are over 40 and a man, or the woman or man who loves a man over 40, then please stop listening to commercials and get some truthful answers, and listen to our book, Got Testosterone?. Thank you for joining Brett and me for this healthcast about our new audio book for men, Got Testosterone?  

Using Strategic Planning to Recession-Proof Your Business With Kathy Bowman Atkins Josh: G’day everyone out there in podcast land, we’ve got Kathy Bowman Atkins from Lattitude group who's going to be talking today about how to recession proof your business via strategic planning. A lot of people have felt a bit of pressure of recent with some of the different evolutions that have been happening around the globe and pandemics and whatnot. And this is by far one of the most relevant podcasts episodes that you should all be listening to. So, Kathy, tell me, what is the step one, what is step one when it comes to strategic planning, especially in a time when there's 100 other things that you juggling? Kathy: Well, step one for strategic planning, whether it's in crisis time or good times, is to get the leadership on board. A lot of people think you know, it's hired this consultant, use this process, you know, XYZ, you know, elements, cover these things. If you don't have the leadership on board, the owners and so forth, and they're not behind it. I don't care who you hire, how good they are, how good the process is, you have to have the leadership on board. That's step one. And we talk to business owners and leaders about that very thing, Josh, when they talk to us about helping them. We have to get their commitment or it's a no go. Josh: That makes a lot of sense. So you want to obviously make sure that you have the planning and you have the right model there. So when you are bringing that into place for full leadership. If you've got a business where you've been running it for many years, and you think that you're a leader, but you may not notice the signs of micromanagement, and you think you've got a healthy team and a lot of people don't change things because they're not aware that they need to change things. How can you see the telltale signs that maybe you're running, running a business, wearing suspenders and using the fax machine or you’re living in the 1980s, early 1990s? And maybe you need to change the way your mindset is, how can you sort of start to pivot that without destroying the relationships you have in the business? Or the way you're working? Kathy: It's a really great question. And we've done that more than once. And we feel like that that's one of the things that people hire us for. It's not just to pump out a strategic plan is to tell them the hard truth, tell them the things that they need to do to make the progress they need to. So the way we do that is that there's a few ways that we do that. When we begin, we talked to key players in the business, not just the owners, not just what we call the sponsors, the people who have hired us, who've signed on the dotted line, okay? We want to talk to people across the business, okay, at every level in the business. So we conduct interviews with those folks. And we conduct interviews with all of the leaders individually, all the people that are going to be directly involved with the strategic planning process, because the truth of the matter is, no matter how open an environment, how open a culture that a company may have, or may think they have, there are things that the owners and the leaders don't know that people in the organisation can tell them. We're pretty honest brokers. And it's very important to be authentic. So we can develop trust and rapport with folks pretty quickly. And by the time we get ready to even put together the process for that strategic plan, that we have the tools, but there's certain customization depending on the company, we have a pretty good idea of where the big warts are, quite frankly, where the big problems are in the company. And so we go and sit down and talk to people and even leaders and say, Hey, here's some things that we've heard, here's some things that we're going to need to work on or you're going to need to work on to make this work. We're willing to work with you, we can help you, but you have to be willing to do it. So we have to have those honest conversations up front to make that happen. Now, what we have found over time, which is really interesting, Josh, in the early days of doing this, when we would come across that situation, my business partner and I, one of us in Canada that first would look at the other and say well we need to do this, but we're probably going to get fired today, you know, they're probably going to let us go. And it's not happened yet. Because people, for the most part, really appreciate that now you don't walk in there and tell them how lousy they are, etc. Because that's not the case. You know, these people have done a lot right to, you know, to form companies or to become leaders of companies. And so we're telling them in in a way that keeps the whole what they need to do. I mean, we've literally had conversations with business owners who started a business and ran them 20 years and said, if you don't step aside, and let us help your new leadership, you're not going to achieve the things that you say you want to achieve for this company and for your future, etc. And it's happened. So, you know, that's the way we do it. So, most of the time, it happens just from that upfront due diligence that we do and talking to people, Josh, and honestly, but as we get into the process, you know, by that we work with companies, we absolutely develop strong relationships with these folks, and I think that's really important. We really get ingrained in those companies. So we know what's going on. And we have that kind of trust. So that as those things come up, we can apart, you know, deal with them, and talk to them about them. So that's what's really key, in my opinion. Josh: S o you brought up a lot of good points there. For you and any of your listeners out there. A lot of what we do is around trying to find inefficiencies in business. So we do that for allowing them to automate tasks or create procedural documentation that allows them to have systematized tasks that betters their processes. We do it definitely more with a technology twist on it rather than anything else. And we find people that are dead wood in the business, and a lot of businesses big businesses or businesses that have been around for a while people get lazy if they haven't had KPIs to it to adhere to. And you end up having this issue with dead wood. How can you pivot that deadwood or does it come down to sort of a bit of a hard truth? Kathy: Well, there's not a one size fits all answer to that question, Josh. But there are multiple answers and all of which can work. I'm gonna start with the end in mind. And the end in mind is if someone is deadwood, you have to resolve that issue and you have to resolve that issue and keep people home. Okay? There's no benefit to doing that in a way that demeans people, degrades people, etc., etc. So, we take a look at, okay, is it a capability issue? Is it an attitude issue? Is it a fit issue? In other words, that they don't fit where they are? Could they fit somewhere else? And whatever that issue is, we look at what are the answers? Is there a way to help them to change that attitude to find that path? What's in it for them to do that, to make an attitude change? And if none of those things are possible, then it's about sitting down and having the honest conversation And, you know, I find nine times out of ten that people want to have the honest conversation that says, You know what, this is not working out. We don't see a good place for you here, we don't see you being happy here. Okay? Being your you know, your best and highest use, you know, reaching your potential here. And so you know, we think it's you know the right time for us to part ways. We'll help you in any way we can, you know, to transition out of this, but that's the best thing for everybody. And if you do that way, keep people home and treat them as human beings and as people not objects of the business, nine times out of ten, they end up saying you're right. Occasionally they don't but after the fact they do, I mean I say this all the time through the years I have walked plenty of people out the door, unfortunately. And I still get Christmas cards from many of them. I still go to lunch with several of them because it was the best thing for everyone. And that's the end that you want to get to, what's the best solution for everybody. Josh: I completely agree, you should be treating your team like family instead of assets or liabilities. I'm happy enough to say that I have a team of unicorns and it didn't happen easily. But in the latest situation that we've had with the pandemic, we've managed to have had some of those hard conversations around what direction do you see this business going? How do you feel should be going with you? And with the intention of other reducing hours or standing people down? And it was a very, very difficult conversation to have with people that we've been working with for years. And their results in the answers they gave to us brought a tear to my eye, I'm actually getting a bit teary even thinking about it anyway. But they said we want to do anything possible to better the business and to put the business entity advantage even if it means we're working full time, but we're not working for full pay. And one of the employees even said that they're in a position where they don't need the money, particularly, they're happy to work for free until we can get out of this hole. And I thought that's a fantastic team where we were all running in the same direction. We're all pulling in in the same direction, everyone's blowing wind in the sails to get us to the same spot. It made me feel good. And it really came down to the attitude of the team. And I think what you're saying there about that, it's all about shifting attitude and making sure that everyone's goals align with the business goals. So I'd imagine there's a few different bits and pieces that you guys use to sort of test and allow for people's emotions and their characters to come out. So do you use the same sort of tools when trying to align the staff and leaders and everyone's mindset with the same common goals? Kathy: We do. We've used Myers Briggs, we have used this and a couple of others. And it just depends on what the situation is in the company, you know, and what the culture and the nature of the organization is. Finding the right tool. There's two things finding a valid tool, all assessments out there aren't valid, and finding the one that fits the culture, that organisation. And the third one is, you know, being a facilitator or consultant that knows how to debrief that and to help them to use that appropriately. Because that's important too. You just can't do a Myers Briggs and hand the report out to everybody and say, okay, there it is. Josh: What do I do with this? Everyone needs to be sharing their results, they understand the emotions of how to talk to people. There's a book that I read called the five love languages, unless you're really close to the stuff probably not relevant. It still lets you to understand how two different parties are talking and communicating together. And I think that's really important, to make sure that if you're dealing with someone that's talking in a for instance, I'm not detail oriented. If someone says the job is finished, and this is and you've been out to achieve the objectives of what the original goal was set out, that's awesome. If they spent 10 hours doing the doing the spreadsheet and I've got the number out that I wanted at the end, awesome, but I don't need to know every single formula, the pivot tables, and everything else to it to achieve that. But some of the staff love telling me all about it. And so of course, of course I'm going to sit there and make sure that we're all lining in that regard, because you don't want to sort of just offset all their hard work and say, I don't care. Okay, good, I got the number, cool. And then you walk off, it sort of completely deflates them. So it's, I guess, about understanding how to communicate with people. And I guess, again, coming down to attitude. Kathy: It is, and, you know, this really ties into something that you and I talked about. I know that our staffs talked about in booking this, you and I talked about a little bit before this, how that strategic planning ties into this topic. You know, we all should be as business owners and leaders looking to put together teams that have aligned goals and values, correct. I mean, that's what really makes it work. We can think differently, we can process differently. But if we have aligned goals and values, having that kind of diversity of thinking and approaches is really powerful for us. And for a business, it's the same thing. Having a strategic business plan gives us that roadmap for everyone to align around. Okay? And know what they are applying in a you know, their own goals, how that ties to the company's goals, the direction we're heading. And how that helps everybody in the mix. Helps you, helps me, helps the company, the owner, whoever it is, and I. And so that's part of where, you know, strategic planning for business is just as important as having individual goals for all the individuals in the business. And, you know, having the KPIs, the key performance indicators or the metrics to manage too, you know, to see how we're doing. So it's kind of the same concept on a business level. Josh: Okay. So when you say strategic business plan, a lot of people I know will say I've got a business plan or a freak out of it. I know myself, I'm great at making a very simple thing over complicated. When I was younger, many, many years ago, maybe 20 years ago, I was developing something in my bedroom, which allowed me to open and close the bedroom door with a remote control. So I clicked the remote controller unlocks the door, opens the door, let someone in, click another button that closes the door and shuts it and my brother said that would take you 120 to 150 hours to build that. He's an electronic engineer. I said yeah. And he goes how many times could you have got up and open and close the door. Yeah, okay, that's right. I've automated something that doesn't need automating. And that's sort of what my first sort of aha moments with automation. So how do you make sure that you're focusing on the right things, you don't overcomplicate it, I know some people say a business plan to start off with doesn't need to be longer than half a page. But obviously, to really dive into some details, and ours is 16 pages long for the basic business plan and 70 for the longer business plan. But again, as I said, I go to too much detail. Kathy: But that's an excellent question. And this is where a lot of people fall off in a table with regard to strategic planning. You know, the key to strategic planning, we have tools and processes that we use, they're tried and true, and they're good, but they are a framework. What's really important is understanding upfront what the owners want, okay? They put in the sweat, equity, etc. They're here now, they want to get here and based on their business, their culture, okay, their values, what they're trying to accomplish their goals, right? Putting together the plan that's right for them. A lot of times people say, oh, you know, we're going to talk about processes, right? And you're going to bring in a list of processes, you know, 20 processes and try to cram down our throats? No, that's not the right thing to do. We're going to sit down and look at it with you, and you know the business better than we do. But we have a tool to be able to say, what processes should you have? Now, what are the key processes you should have in the business? And do you have them? If you have them, are they working or what needs to improve about them? That's pretty simple. At the end of the day, Josh. Now they're having the right tools to get people to do that. So we're starting with that. So we're looking at things that way. And we have a process that starts up here and says, these are all the things we you know, this big funnel, these are all the things we need to work on. There's processes and their systems, right. And there's some people issues, and there's equipment issues and you know, all kinds of things. And then we start whittling that down through our process that says, what's the most important thing? You know, what are the biggest obstacles? And we look at that through, you know, internal assessments and external assessors. So that all sounds very complicated, you know, but we do that with tools. People do a lot of work up front, so that by the time we walk in, in two days, we come up with a comprehensive strategic plan. And I don't care what size the company is, for a 12-month plan, which is what most of the detailed plans are. Now we look out five years just say Where do you want to be five years for most businesses, so we know what the long haul is, so to speak. But we do a detailed plan for most of the time for 12 months out. And we look at that company and say, you know what, we really don't want there to be more than eight goals for the company for that 12 months, because then we get a flight we have to flush those goals out into who does what by when what role the steps to achieve that. So that gets big enough, correct? Josh: Absolutely. Katy: And the other thing that we do, rather than handing people some big book to put on the shelf to collect dust, because that's what generally happens, we do two things. We give them their plan on one page, okay, and all of the relevant information about that plan that everybody in the company should have and be looking at, and understand it and understand how what they do ties into that. They have one page that they can look at, and it can be their barometer, the rudder, whatever you want to call it, any day, anytime making a decision. And then behind that, we use project management software, we set up a portal for their company, where they manage those goals and action plans. And we meet with them every month. So we insist that if they want to work with us that they have to agree to our change management accountability aspect of this. In other words, we're not going to go through this whole process and put it on the shelf. We're going to have a schedule meeting every month and we're going to look at this plan. We're going to use a signal light approach, what's working, what's not, we're going to make adjustments because I can tell you the minute that he drives on that proverbial plan, something's going to change. And we're going to make adjustments, we're going to look at the financials, and see how that's going and where we need to make adjustments. So we're continually doing that change management. So that's how you whittle it down. That's how you manage it. But that's why you need leadership. As I said, right at the top of the program, if people if the leaders inside the business aren't making sure that everybody knows the strategic plan and monitoring it and executing on it appropriately adjusting it is not part of their job, guess what? It doesn't happen. Josh: So, from what we've been speaking about so far, if I was to sum up in one sentence, a strategic plan is about accountability, timelines, infrastructure and goals, tying them together with small tested improvements, monitoring it over time. What else would you add to that to make that more true? Or how did that sound? Kathy: That’s really good. Would you like to come to work for us? Josh: Hahaha. We are just a small flight away. Yes, we'll jump on and get that happening. That's the elevator pitch, I guess, on the strategic plan. So, that's cool. Okay, so that that makes it very easy to break down. And you did speak quite a bit about tools, and a lot of people that are going to be listening to this, they're gonna be wondering, okay, what tools can we use? So, if you were to pick the top two tools that anyone can jump into right now, to gain more visibility into their business, or to start heading in the right direction, even if that's making up a back of handkerchief example, of a strategic plan, what tools would you say they could jump into and check out? Kathy: Well, you know, the very first thing is to figure out, this isn’t a tool. This is, you know, where's it that you want to take your company? Now, what's your purpose, what is it you want, what's your vision? Where do you want to take it? You have to know where you want to get to, in order to figure out how to get there. So if you are doing the back of the envelope thing, as you mentioned, you don't want to hire someone, you don't want to go through some big process. We have a lot of great processes, but there's one that you can't go wrong with. And that's a SWOT analysis, the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, okay. It's probably the thing that covers most elements of a business, if you do it well in a single process. Now, we have a lot of other processes that focus on things, but that one is tried and true. And it can cover a lot of ground. Josh: Most people should be pretty familiar with them, if you're not. What are you doing? Get into it! I think this is kind of like a should be a clear cut answer. But what size of businesses should be looking to strategic planning? Should this be something that they're obviously looking at the start before they've even turned over $1 when they're looking to throw it to the boss and say, now I'm going out on my own or is this something that they should be waiting until they've got some structure in place? Kathy: Well, every business even as they're looking to start up, they need a business plan. They need a plan that says, okay, what do I need to start this business in terms of resources? Okay? And to start it up with the resources and get me through the first couple of years. The kind of strategic planning that we do, which is with established companies, we're not really working with startups so much at all, quite frankly, Josh, that's a little more comprehensive. And that can range from having one strategic planning team that has some folks across the business and is pretty comprehensive. Okay. We will get strategies too. Larger companies where we do something with an executive team and then we cascade down through different organisations and they do their own strategic plans to support the company, goals and direction. So it depends. So everybody should be doing some planning. You know, we started this talking about recession proof strategic planning. The thing that is to make you recession proof is to do your planning upfront. It is strategic to have a plan. So that's one thing. Now how strategic you want to be in that planning process is a different matter. And that depends on where you are. So, you know, a good way to think about that and wrapping this up right now we're breaking things down into six months. Okay, module so to speak. Most people don't know what's going to happen. So we got to survive for six months, we have to get through this. Okay? And that's really pretty much a cash and opportunity exercise. It's not very much strategic from the standpoint of what our strategy is, you know, and all this kind of stuff. And so we call that emergent strategic planning. Then there's the next six months, which is resurgence. Okay. So we've survived, we've gotten through this. How do we now start, you know, going back up? What do we bring back? When do we bring it back? And what does it look like? What lessons did we learn from all of this, right? And so we're putting that in a six month chart. And then we're talking about a six-month chunk of convergence planning. What that means is, people are going to start figuring out what the new reality looks like. Or they're going to make their assumptions about what it looks like and we can get more strategic and start looking a little bit further out. And taking advantage of these lessons learned and what the new realities are. Josh: Emergent strategic planning, I guess it's all about when things change. To make sure your emergent emerge from crisis and out to be stronger, would that be fair to say? Kathy: Yes, our mantra to everybody right now. Thank you for reminding me. We're saying to my business, and to every business, you had better come out stronger as people and as a business on the other side of this than you did going in? Josh: Cool. Well, I definitely think this is more relevant now than ever before. And for anyone out there that is listening and thinking, man, this sounds like too much. I've already got too much on my plate. There’s so many government incentives that I'm looking at or new stimulus packages, and I just want to keep myself with a head above water. And there's a place you can go. And Kathy Bowman Atkins from Lattitude Group has a fantastic offer here for one hour consultations. Would you like to tell us a bit more about how that can help small businesses? Kathy: Well, it's interesting, you know, people call us up and they say, Okay, this is where things are now. And I might say, what are the biggest obstacles? You know, top of mind, if we could only cover one thing in this hour? What's the biggest thing that is bothering you that that we could help you resolve? So we start there. Now generally, what happens is we can cover two or three things at an hour, you'd be amazed at how much ground you can cover. If they don't know, they’ll say, you know, I'm just really paralyzed. I don't know what to do. Right, then we start asking them some questions. Yeah, have you availed yourself to all the resources that are out there? Have you looked into them? Do you know what's out there? Okay. Let's make some assumptions about the worst possible case, okay, for the next six months, and that's what we have to look at, what is the absolute metric or two that you have to manage to over the next six months? For some people, it's pretty simple. Cash flow. I have to be able to maintain positive cash flow. Josh: That's mine.] Kathy: And so whatever we have to do, that we can help them to say, okay, in order to accomplish that, what are the steps we have to take? And what metrics do we have to be looking at all the time, because in this case, volume is going to be your leading indicator. In normal times, it isn't always your leading indicator. We're going to wait for the volume to materialize before we make moves like, you know, bringing people back because that we've had to lay off for certain vendors are no different things that we've put on hold. And that's the way we're doing it. So it depends, but those are the kinds of things that you do. So there's all kinds of things that can happen. We know … we need to know how to tap into these resources. Okay, we need to know how to furlough people, or what's the best approach to take. And we can, you know, we can help them with all of that. Josh: Well, anyone that's interested to have a consultation with Kathy, we're going to be putting a link in the description here for the podcast, as well as on the blog. Keep an eye out for that. And I think you're going to find that in one hour, you're going to completely revolutionise the direction of your business. Totally worth your time. And one thing I want to sort of say, in closing to ask you in closing is if there was to be one book they would say is your Bible, so to speak, is going to be the first step towards better leadership and strategic planning. What would be that one book that people should read or one resource that people should be listening to? Whether that be a news outlet or something like that? What should people be tuning into? Kathy: Gosh, there are many Josh, but I will tell you my go to book and it's not a new one. But I think in terms of leadership and self development, which is the key to all of this, it really is the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And that book goes way back, but I'm going to tell you, it's tried and true. And if people will adopt those and make those habits as leaders, it's really significant. Josh: For anyone out there that obviously is listening you can't see next to my bed, but it's sitting next to my bed right now. And, I've picked it up for a second time and rereading through it. So it's definitely worth its weight in gold. And it's a reasonably sized book. So that's saying a lot, it worth its weight in gold. It is. That's right. Well, Kathy, it's been lovely having you on the show. And is there anything else that you would like to cover off on before we pathways? Kathy: The only thing that I would say is, you know, even as a company that prides itself, and myself on being, you know, a strategic planning guru and all that kind of thing and you know, a purist when it comes to strategic planning. And I think all the businesses have to think about this no matter what business they're in that may be passionate for you. Right now you have to think about what's realistic and what can really help people. So you know, we're doing these six months module strategic planning things in a day or you know, prep for a week and then go in for a day at the end day and making them very reasonably priced. And we've never been a company that our value proposition was priced. We're not, you know the low cost option. But you know, you've got to remember where people are right now. And I think that's key for business leaders and owners right now. Josh: I completely agree. We've released a new product range that we're calling the dollar IT club which is focusing heavily on helping businesses out in the time of crisis, not putting more pressure on a saw that they've already got there. And I think that building and nurturing that relationship at the start will build a bigger and better things and show your worth. Kathy: Exactly! Josh: If anyone has enjoyed this episode. Make sure to jump across to iTunes, leave us some love. Give us some feedback. We'll put all Kathy's details here in the in the episode so you can get in contact with her, and stay healthy and stay good. Kathy: Thank you so much, Josh.

Kathy: Welcome to Kathy Santo’s Dog Sense, I'm your host Kathy Santo and I'm here to teach you everything I've learned in my over three decades of training dogs, their families, competing in dog sports, writing about dogs, and being a guest on radio and TV shows. And I am with one of my trainers, Sarah out in Colorado and we are doing an episode on traveling, because I don't know about you Sarah, but I've traveled a ton with my dogs.  Sarah: Yeah. So specifically, we'll be talking about if you were to go on a long road trip with your dog. We'll touch on a little bit of if you are traveling on an airplane with your dog, but mainly we'll go over our tried and true tips. I mean I've traveled halfway across the country with my three dogs multiple times, and I'm sure you've done a ton of traveling with your dogs as well. Kathy: I have. And back in the day when I was competing a lot, there were a lot of airline flights as well. So yeah, a lot to say about that. And I think that this topic came up because we hear it really two times of the year. One is over the holidays. Everybody wants to travel with their dog on the holidays, but another popular time is during the summer. You guys get that vacation. And the first thing I always say to people is, “How much traveling has your dog done?”  Sarah: Exactly! Kathy: So you get the dog who maybe comes to class once a week or he goes to the vet once a year and now they want to go on a road trip. And I'm like, “No, you have to teach your dog to get used to traveling!” Because it's a lot. And I'm like, “Are there some dogs that'll roll with it?” Yeah, absolutely. But it's an experience they have to get used to.” People have dogs who are fearful of cars, they get that. But people who haven't had that experience don't understand that a dog who loves a trip down the block or to the dog school may not be comfortable with something that is that long in one space. So you’ve got to get them used to it. Sarah: Yeah, and they don't think about all of the safety, kind of, like, the preparations that you need to take. Not only just safety, but also, if it's a really long road trip, all the prep that goes into, like, their food, the water, making sure you have proper identification, emergency vet contact information. We're going to go over all of that. But there is so much prep for safety as well when traveling with your dog that's really, really important. People just think they can throw their dog in the car and go. And some dogs might be okay with that, but most of them need a little bit more prep than that. Kathy: Yeah. And if you think you’re going to do that and you do, you find out pretty quickly that you made a big error in judgment. Alright! So the first thing I think we would both agree on is that if you're going to take a road trip of any great length, and for me, I think anything over two hours is going to be something that a lot of dogs need to get used to. So I'm not saying go on two hour trips, but I am saying go beyond the comfort zone. If your dog only goes to pick up your kids at school, you know, you got to get some longer trips going. So that would be my first thing. Prepare your dog with the length of travel and, also, prepare them for the different environments. You know, if you're going to a hotel and they have slippery floors, or your dog's going to be in an elevator. Like these are the things that you need to get the dog comfortable with before you decide to take them out and about. Sarah: And also just being in the car, too. So of course, we're going to touch on this as well, but safety, whether they're in a crate or in a crash proof harness. Also, so I don’t know if you've noticed this, but my dogs, when they're in their crates in the car, they go into kind of like a trance. Like, they just go to sleep. Even if in the rare case they are in the backseat of the car and not in their crates, they lay right down and they go right to sleep because that's kind of what I've taught them to do in the car. So, if you have a dog who is not used these longer road trips, a lot of times what you'll see is a lot of heavy panting, there'll be a lot of drooling. Like, they'll have those anxiety responses to it because they're not used to it. Kathy: When I was a kid, we had a great Pyrenees, Teddy, and we used to go down the shore, and this is before seat belts. Sort of before any car safety. She's in the back of the station wagon, panting the entire two and a half hours down the shore, panting and drooling. And did I mention it was the summer? And it was, she's a great Pyrenees and the hair and her breath, windows were down, she gets carsick, she vomited at least three times before we were out of our town. Sarah: Having the supplies to clean up the vomit too. Because sometimes, like what my senior dog Jakey does, when we're on a winding roads, is he will vomit right where the seat belt attachment is and he'll vomit just right in that hole. So it goes to the bottom of the car and we got to pull to the side of the road, rip the car seats out to get all that vomit out. Lots of fun. Better to be prepared for those kinds of things than be surprised by them. Kathy: Yeah, and I was always the vomit cleaner upper.  It'd be like, “You wanted the dog. It's your dog.” Sarah: Yeah. So I'm always the one cleaning up the vomit or the diarrhea. Kathy: Our dogs like their crates, because at home they like their crates. It's a safe spot. It's a cozy spot. And they're used to traveling in a crate in the car.  And some dogs like their crates at home, but you put in the car they're like, “What the hell?” So there's that acclimation period where you start putting a crate in the car and feed them and going for trips. It's like, I'm a crate proponent, and if you don’t do a crate, you do a seat belt. But I feel like, you have to keep your dog safe and you safe in the event of a crash so that they don't catapult into you or your passengers. Sarah: Yeah, and the way that you can prep for that is, you know you have the road trip coming up even, and I understand, you know, it's a pain in the butt to have the crates in the car all the time and in the trunk or in the backseat, whatever it is. But the week before, maybe two weeks before, put the crate in the car and every time you need to go somewhere with your dog, whether it's class at the school, the vet, the whatever, you're going out for a hike. For that week or two beforehand, practice being in the crate when traveling so that the crate doesn't have to be in there all the time. I understand it can be a pain, but at least set your dog up for success and have him practice it a week or two before you need to go on that long road trip. Kathy: Especially if your dog is used to getting in a car and going to the vet or someplace they don’t like to go. So do some road trips where it winds up being a field, or going for a swim in the lake, or just getting out and having steak or a hamburger. Like, go to the drive-through, because I want the dog to say, “There is a very good chance that this is going to end in something awesome!” Versus what they think now, which is, “This is going to end something terrible.” Also, when I’m using a crate, I cover it with a sheet. Obviously there's airflow and it's not summer and there's still getting AC. But I just like to take away their sight of things because I had a border collie he made himself carsick because he'd watch the cars go by and he’d whip his head around, and he’d be, like, “Waah!” All right, so there's so many things to talk about. Let's talk about what's in your wallet. Remember that commercial, “What's in your wallet?” What's in my wallet is a recent photo of my dog, a copy of his health certificate. I don't get them in sooner than 10 days, so I have that. I also have the emergency 24/7 vet that's going to be in the area that I'm visiting. Sarah: Yep. Super important. Kathy: Prep that ahead. And I, well it's not in my wallet. It's in the glove box in an envelope or it's zip tied to the crate in a clear plastic, sheet. You know those binder sheets for kids at school? And that's the emergency contact info. And that is something that everybody should get in the lesson sheet library. Sarah: Yup. We have it in there. If you guys can't find it, let us know. We'll send you it. But that has all that information on both the front on my crates. It has a dog's name, four different emergency contact people, any medications, any behavioral issues that if a first responder needs to know if your dog is really fearful, you know, if they should be left in the crate if possible. And it also goes into saying, “Please don't bring my dog to a shelter or a pound, please bring them to the nearest boarding facility. I will pay all fees...whatever,” has their normal vet's information. So that, if there is an injury, they can call your vet and get all the information they need. I think that’s all. Kathy: And about a zillion people that he can call. Sarah: Yeah! There's like four or five, I think there's four different spots for contact people on there. I would make sure that you have people in your home area and then people where you're going as well, depending on where you are in the road trip, where you might need help for your dog. Kathy: And I do crates too. I mean, I do seat belts as well, so it's on the front of the crate. If your dog is gonna seat belt, it goes in the glove box, it goes in there and it's in an envelope marked Dog Emergency Info, because first responders will look in your purse and your wallet and your glove box for information on you. I also crate my dogs with their leash on. They’re in a crate with a leash on, they're in the seat belt with leash on,  because, again, in the event of an emergency, I know that the first responders are not going to be able to find the leash and put it on my dog’s collar. I want the dog ready to go and get out of there as fast as possible. This all came really clear to me when I was down in Florida. I would say it was 1990 I had a student and she had two cattle dogs. They were amazing, and her favorite was Wanda. And Wanda sat in the front seat with her and then her other dog, it was a puppy, the naughty puppy, he was in a crate. And she was in a very bad car accident. So bad, as a matter of fact, that they had to airlift her to a trauma center, but they couldn't, because her dog was guarding her. And the dog that was in the front seat, not in a seat belt, not in a crate. And so what they had to do was they had to noose the dog. They had to wait for animal control, it was about a half an hour, it’s on I95, it's crazy traffic, and they can't help her because this dog is trying to get to them. So they have to wait for animal control to noose the dog and take the dog out, and then get her. Sarah: Not only to delay her getting medical care. But think of how terrifying that experience was for the dog who was stuck in the front seat. All these strangers in, like, fire suits are trying to like touch her owner. The dog was guarding the owner. I mean that could have been resolved with the crate. The puppy in the crate in the back was fine. If that dog had been a crate, yeah, it would've still been really scary experience, but it would not have been THAT traumatizing. Kathy: Yeah. It was terrible. And having gone to a lot of dog shows, because when I competed, it was in obedience, and I've seen the rollovers, I've seen that crap. I mean, basically you're in the car, there's some degree of risk. I wear a seat belt, my kids wear a seat belt and so my dog is going to wear something to keep them safe as well. And I'm just, I'm really strong about it. And I have a lot of students who are in law enforcement and they always say, “I wish every single person who traveled with a dog understood this and followed this protocol because it would make our jobs so much easier.” Because, honestly, if the police officer or the EMT wants to go in the car and your dog is growling, like, they're going to have to choose themselves. Because what are they going to do? Get bitten? Sarah: Yup. And with that goes the ID tags and if your dog is micro-chipped, making sure that information is up to date before you start traveling. Because a lot of times, you can do, like, the yearly update on the microchips each year. But call them and double check, because if for some reason the dog's collar breaks, the leash comes off, whatever, in an accident and they don't have the tags on them, the only way a local vet or shelter is going to be able to ID them is with that microchip. Kathy: Exactly. And make sure the collar says “Reward” and has the cell number on it. And I was talking about that in another podcast. I don't want somebody to know my dog's name, because my dogs are really well trained, and they're super cool. I think. Yeah, like, if somebody was like, “Hey, I think I want a dog and look, this is so convenient!”  Sarah: No one would want my dogs. Kathy: Well then, you just put their real names Sarah: I’ll put their real names. Kathy: One number off. Sarah: Sure. If you can pick up the leash, you can have them. Good luck! Kathy: It's the Jack challenge. I love that! Hashtag (#jackchallenge)! So we put “Reward” because I feel like it motivates people to call you and give the dog back. And, again, a microchip, if you have one in...the guy who gets your dog doesn't have a microchip wand, so I want somebody to call me in real time and not wait until a vet office opens the next morning, or on Monday if it's a weekend. And the reason I have a picture in my wallet is because you think you're going to have it on your phone, but if you lost your phone, or the phone is dead, right? You’ve got to have something physical or I'm sure you could get somebody's computer and go on Facebook and get a picture of your dog, but how much time are you losing? And that's I think another show that we should do, Sarah, on how to recover a lost dog. It's a good topic. Write that down as one of the next ones we do. I think that's going to be great. Sarah: Absolutely. All right, so the next one is something that you can maybe talk from experience on if you've ever done this, but, so the bag etiquette. So traveling with your dog, if they are, I know you did a lot of work with, if the dog was in like a small carry on bag, like a traveling bag. What is the etiquette for that? Kathy: My dogs have traveled both ways. The majority of my competition dogs we're flying under the plane. And travel back in the 80s, a little bit different. I mean it wasn't, there was no TSA. It was, like, you could bring a chicken or two or five. Nobody really cared, you could do whatever you want. But there were rules that I followed for myself about my dogs, and so the first thing was I made sure that they didn’t have breakfast on a morning flight. I also chose a flight because I was in Florida that was the coolest part of the day. So, making sure it was a cool part of the day where I arrived. So a lot of times I was going out to the West Coast or there was a national in Vegas, I picked a night flight out of West Palm, so I would get into that area at night. It wasn't so much your destination temperature as where you were going to take them. The dog would be on the tarmac, and you didn't want them to overheat. Plus, there are regulations about how hot or how cool it can be in order to fly dog. On top of the crate I would put a FedEx clear pouch and I put a note in it that said, “My name is Cookie,” and I taped cookies on top. And the reason I did it, because none of my dogs were ever named Cookie, but the word cookie to them was really interesting. And I didn't want to have their name because it would be like, “Rover, Rover, Rover, Rover,” and it might be negative, right? So my dogs got treats, everybody's saying cookie, and that they loved it. I didn't put water in a bowl, it was like water, liquid water. I would freeze these little plastic things that they had in the crates if I had a dog who wouldn't eat it and I pop that in right before they took the dog. I would not board the plane until I saw the crate loaded. And a lot of times I would get into it with the desk agents, or at the gate agents, they'd be like, “You need to get on the plane.” And I'm like, “Not until I see my dog.” And they're like, “Oh, it’s going to leave without you.” I'm like,”Well then you'd be leaving without my dog.” And then I show him a picture of my dog and they're like, “Oh!” Then my next stop, once I got on the plane was a hard left and go to see the captain because again, back then, you could basically try to fly the plane. They were, like, “Yeah, go for it. Sit in the cockpit, take a picture!” It was crazy. And I'd say, “Hey, my dog is on board and here's a picture.” And they would be, like, “Oh, my God! I have a dog, too!” And they’d make sure that the dog was down there and the temperature was right. So your dog is the last thing to get loaded and the first thing to come off. So I’d make sure my seat was an aisle, so I could, you know, whip up some tears and get them to let me out first “That’s my dog! I’m so worried!” So that's how you fly when your dog is going underneath. It's completely stressful and it never gets better. And if you have a dog who's bomb proof, they can go. Oh! Also I would put cotton in their ears because you see the guys up on the tarmac, they have those heads cause it's really loud for your dog. So you pop those in and get them a little bit of relief. I also did a really big blanket, so they can hide their head under it. And my dogs flew like pros. They loved it. They were, they came out with like “Eh, it was a great flight, didn't get any in-service stuff. I'm okay.” Some dogs are not suited for that. So then, if I'm going to fly a dog, like on book tour, I took a dog named Danny with me, and I had a Sherpa bag for him, and that is a brand name, and I really like that brand, very sturdy. And a week before a book tour, which meant that I had to fly to a different city for two weeks and I took him, he was seven months old. It was crazy. He was just perfect, but I was crazy for taking someone’s dog.  Sarah: Barely potty trained! Kathy: And then I just had him at his house with his owners. He would jump in and out of that bag and great things would happen. So he's acclimated to it. I had them carry him around the house and then he gets used to it. Being carried in it. Sarah: That sensation of being carried in it, yeah. Kathy: If they just go in a stationary, that's one thing. But when it's over your shoulder and they're jostling around, that's a whole different thing. So you've got to make sure that you get them to that as well.  Sarah: Yep. Kathy: Alright. So that is what you have for ID. That is how you get them in a Sherpa bag. Let’s talk about barking. Because I’ve been on a flight where dogs were in bags barking. We're not even going to cover the service dogs.  Sarah: Yeah, let's not go there. They're not on this episode. Kathy: Not on this episode, but we will. If your dog is going to be on a plane and in a bag, and I know it's not a service dog, it's just traveling in the cabin, your responsibility is to make sure your dog is a good traveler. Barking the whole four hour flight ,or six hour flight is not okay! Sarah: It’s awful  Kathy: And if it's barking that long, it's not happy. So do your homework and get better at doing homework and maybe make the decision that your dog doesn't have to travel with you. I'm like, unless you're moving. Maybe they stay home and you have your vacation and then they're much happier that way. So that's how I feel about that. I just got a Gunner Kennel. Sarah: You did?! Oh, we didn't talk about that,  Kathy: I know you’re someone who appreciates that. Sarah: Oh God, it's okay. One day, one day. Right now what I've got is all right. So basically what I have for my two dogs are Ruff Tuff Kennels or Ruff Land Kennels. Another really great brand for if you're looking for a crash proof crate is a Gunner Kennel, like Kathy just mentioned. There's also Impact Cates. There are a bunch of options. Kathy: Vario Cages Sarah: Vario Cages. Yep, that's another one.  Kathy: Orion.  Sarah: Orion's are good. Do your research. Don't just get a plain wire or a plain plastic crate. They'll just crush with your dog in it. So make sure that if you are looking for a crash proof crate, you do your research and you make sure that you find a kennel that can withstand a crash, basically. Kathy: Now let's talk about sticker shock. Yeah. You're probably in your mind saying, “Well, the Midwest Wire crate was like a hundred bucks,” and the plastic Vari kennel, not Verio, Vari Kennel. That two piece looks like a clam and you put together little screws that was like $89, like, “Oh, maybe we can invest in this.” And then you go and you find out that your a medium G1 Gunner Crate is going to be $579. Now, once you pick yourself up off the floor, I want you to be realistic and understand that if you're in a crash and your dog is injured, you are walking in the door to an emergency vet clinic with $1,000 on the table. And it just goes from there. Like, I am telling you, we're not making this shit up. Like, it’s expensive to have a dog with an injury! Plus, forget the finances. This is the beloved pet for you and your family, and your responsibility is to keep it safe. So, no pressure. But yeah, when you get something it should be... like, I see people all the time with wire crates in the back of their car and those, those fabric tent crates, they...don’t even pretend! Sarah: It's not the safest thing. Insider tip! So if you are going to get the Ruff Land Kennels, they're probably the most cost effective version of all the crash proof ones. L.L. Bean puts them on sale for like 20% off every once in a while. So if you scroll about their website, get an email notification for when they go on sale, you can get them for 20% off. Another great place is Facebook marketplace. Or, you know, eBay, Craigslist, you can find used ones as well if you are looking for them. But it is like Kathy said, it is so worth the investment not only because, like, I love my dogs so much and I don't ever want them to get hurt in an accident, but also, like she said, like when you walk into the vet's office, if you did have them in a wire crate or a plastic Vari Kennel that just crushed them inside of it in the accident, your expenses are going to be beyond what it costs to get the crash proof kennel. Kathy: Easily. Sarah: Easily. If you’re smart and have pet insurance. Even with that. Kathy: There is a Facebook group that you should all join. It's called Dog Sport Vehicle Ideas and Setups. Dog Sport Vehicle Ideas and Setups. It's amazing. And they talk about this stuff they talk about how to set it up. They even have, by car model, files where you could see what people did in their cars to put in the crates and still have room for people in the car. Sarah: Yeah. Facebook is a huge resource for that kind of thing. So we've gone over, alright, so you'll say you got the crash proof. Great. Or you've got the same thing with the seat belts. Just do your research, make sure that they're safe. So let’s go into it when we go into car trips now, what to do on the road? Kathy: Yeah, let's go into car trips. Hopefully you've taught your dog to potty on leash. The bane of my existence is people with yards who've never taught their dogs to potty on leash. And then they go on a trip and the dog won’t go to the bathroom and they're at the, you know, the side of the road, pull over and use the bathrooms. And then there's a field for your dog to go and their holding the leash and the dog won't go. And the dog, he's like, “You need to move over there for me to go.” And we talked about this in the puppy potty training podcast, too. Boy, that's hard to say. Where we talk about the first nine months of your puppy's life, most of his potty experiences should be on a leash. So he gets used to going six feet away from you. Sarah: Water intake. Kathy: Yes. Let's talk about what type of water. Like, if I'm traveling, every dog show I went to, I got bottled water, distilled water, because I know that some dogs are sensitive to what water they drink and you don't want to go, especially if you're on holiday. Right? So your going to your aunt’s or your cousin's house, and they're all so happy to see the dog. And then your dog has diarrhea for four days. And it's because of the water change. So I always get distilled water. Sarah: Yeah. It's not something a pet owner would necessarily think of. Oh, you know, the water's making their stomach hurt, not something you necessarily think of. Definitely bring some bottles of water, like you said. Don't rely on, like, using your mother's dog's food for your dog. An abrupt switch in the dog's food like that. You will have stomach or GI issues without it. It's a very rare that a dog can switch food like that quickly like that. So absolutely bring your dogs food with you. So depending on what you feed them, whether it's kibble or raw, kibble, obviously, is an easy way, is an easy thing to bring. If you do bring raw, what I like to do is I bring a specific cooler just for their raw food. A lot of times I'll shove it all into Kongs or any kind of food toy where you can freeze the food in there so that when we are traveling, if we're doing multi-day trips, it gives them something to do in a crate and kind of earn their food and makes them work for it. So having those frozen in just a cooler in the car is a really easy way to keep your dog busy. What other food tips do you have? Kathy: You know, if you wanted to bring enough food for the trip on the first day and you had previously scouted out where you can get this food. Or maybe you have somebody you're going to get the food for you. You could also ship food. So if it's dry, so you can have a bag of it. I feel like the raw thing, it's so mainstream now, or almost mainstream that you could look at the brand that you use online and find out where there's a dealer near the person you're going to be with. I'd also get your vet recommendation on things you should bring in case of that emergency. Like, diarrhea or vomiting or whatever, because there's gotta be a first aid emergency kit with you in the car and you should also move that into when you're at somebody's house. Sarah: Yup. Okay. So let's say if you were staying in a hotel room, what are some things that you had to, I think that you've, you've told me a pretty good story about making sure to check under the beds when you go into hotel rooms. Kathy: Yes. This I learned from my dog show time, because it was every weekend we were at a different sleazy hotel. My favorite one, remember there was a chain called Ramada?  Sarah: Yeah.  Kathy: Is there still a chain called Ramada?  Sarah: Might be. I don’t know. Kathy: Ramada Inn. Anyway, apparently this, this particular one went under and the owner just unplugged a few of the letters of the sign. And so it was the “Rama” Inn.  Sarah: Oh, my God. Kathy: That's what I pulled up to at night. I like the, “Oh, this is gonna be bad.” So one of the things I would do is, before I take my dogs into the room, I would have them in the car with whoever it was traveling with me and I would go up in the room and I had a flashlight because we didn't have cell phones with lights on them...or cell phones at all. And I would get on my hands and knees and I would flashlight the entire room. Not just the ceiling lights but the flashlight. Because you would be surprised how many pieces of medication I would find in hotel rooms. I'd find them at the nightstand next to the bed. I’d find them in the bathroom, under the bed. I'd find rat poisoning. I'd find insect traps. Like, so much crap you cannot believe, because housekeeping, I mean unless you're at the four seasons, is probably not up to the standards of keeping your dog safe.  Sarah: Yep.  Kathy: Also, when I was in the room, if I had to take a shower, my dog would be crated. I'm just not going to risk it. And that goes for somebody's house, too, because, you know, you go to visit your sister and maybe she had a friend over. Maybe they take Xanax or Prozac or whatever the heck they take to get through these kinds of visits. And so they're going to drop stuff, too. Blood pressure medication. I have a friend who's an emergency room nurse and she's hard to talk to because she's seen everything kill something. Like, “Oh, see that paper clip? Somebody choked on that!” I'm like, “Stop talking to me!” But I am that... I'm the equivalent of that in dog world, because I've seen it all. And even though it's a fluke, one is too many. So do your due diligence, whether it's a hotel room, whether it's your family's house, you've got to be alert for this stuff because it happens. And I've seen it happen. I told you we're going to start a show. There's a show called Adam Ruins Everything and he blows up myths. I'm going to make one, Kathy Ruins Everything. Sarah: Everything About Dog Ownership That Could Go Wrong, Kathy's Seen It. Kathy: Yeah. Yeah. Kathy Ruins Trips With Your Dog. Sarah: Here are all of the things that could go wrong when on a trip with your dog. But I mean, I'd rather, I'd rather know from like, you've been in this for 30 years. Like, I'd rather know from someone, all the things that could go wrong so that when I go to travel with my dog, I'm doing everything I can to keep them safe. Yes, there could still be like some crazy unicorn thing that happens, but at least I know that I checked under the bed for that, you know, leftover medication or whatever, and my dog didn't find it and get sick. Kathy: Okay. Wait, how about this? Bring multiple leashes. Sarah: Yeah. What if they chew their leash? Or what if it breaks or you know, there could be 10 million things that could happen. Alight, you and I, we're about to go down a rabbit hole. You and I could go over all the things that could go wrong. You know, you've seen my training bag. I have extras of everything. Kathy: Yeah. I've seen people take belts off their body and put it through a dog’s collar. I saw a guy with a shoelace! Sarah: Yeah. We're not even, yeah. We're not even going over like how you should be training your dog while traveling with them. We're just going over basic, basic, like, safety stuff just to make sure you and your dog make it through the trip successfully. Kathy: Everything to keep your dog safe. We have so many topics out. We're just going to sit there one day and do a 12 hour recording session. Sarah: Yeah. I'm coming up again first week of December. So maybe we'll bang out like six or seven of them. Kathy: Yeah. And it’ll be great because it'll be in the same room. Yeah. And then our audio, will only be one file.  Sarah: Yeah, exactly. Kathy: You get ideas, I get ideas from this and you're writing them down, I know. But we want to hear ideas from people who are listening to, so we want to know if you'd like this format. What your suggestions are, what your topics are, what do you want to hear about? And we'll talk about it. Because, I always like to say my brain, as far as dog stuff, it's like this giant library and I don't always go down all the aisles, but the books are still there. And if you remind me, I'll remember and I'll go down there and all this stuff will pop up more than you thought was possible.  Sarah: Exactly.  Kathy: Alright, so we're good? Sarah: Yeah.  Kathy: As always, if you like what you hear, jump over to whatever subscription service you downloaded from and like, rate, subscribe, tell a friend, and share this episode somewhere to help spread the word so we can continue to create an awesome community of dog lovers and learners. Happy training, everyone!

Transcript Kathy: Welcome to Kathy Santo’s Dog Sense. I'm your host Kathy Santo, and I'm here to teach you everything I've learned in my over three decades of training dogs, their families, competing in dog sports, writing about dogs and being a guest on radio and TV shows. And I'm here with one of my trainers staff in Colorado. And wait, did you guys get snow?  Sarah: Oh my God, we got like two feet of snow right now. It's awesome. Kathy: Oh my gosh, I'm glad you said “Aw”, I was thinking “ful”, she said awesome. I'm like, that's why she should be in Colorado and I should be here in Jersey where it was like 52 today. Sarah: I know you guys have some nice weather. I got some of the pictures from the teams today. It looked really nice there. Kathy: Yeah, it's, it's really great. And the dogs are loving it because if it feels like spring and, you know how we have a few dogs who definitely don't like the cold weather, so we're planning some extra indoor activities at daycare for them. Fun, warm activity. What else did we do today? Oh, we did our last day of Thanksgiving photo shoots. Sarah: Yeah, those have been coming out amazing. Kathy: Aren’t they great? Wait ‘til see the holiday winter one. Oh my gosh. I'll send you pictures. Sarah: I can't wait for that.  Kathy: It's a big surprise. All right. So anyway, today we are tasked with talking about potty training. Sarah: Not only is potty training but realistic expectations for potty training. So of course, like, we go over what the kind of general process is, but real life training your puppy potty training is a little bit different. Kathy: It is. And I think I really feel like people have unrealistic expectations. My personal feeling is that it takes until the puppy is six months old to be, like, done with it. Now that said, I've had puppies much younger, be perfect. As I a matter of fact, I've never had a puppy take that long. But I'm a trainer, you know, and that's our, it's my jam. Like, I'm watching the, I know what to do. So, but I think a realistic expectation for someone who's not a trainer would be by six months you are done, and there's a lot of things that you could do to make that work easier and there is a lot of things that you could do to make it take much, much longer.. Sarah: Exactly. Kathy: All right, so let's start back at the breeder. All right. So my breeder, one of my breeders, she has a litter of golden puppies and, I think, they are now seven, eight days old and she's, maybe there are two weeks old...Anyway, I think they're two weeks old, and she's introducing the concept of potty-ing in a certain area right now. So they had wee pads down and they're learning to look for that to go. And then from there there'll be moved to, in a couple of weeks, they’ll be moved to a different surface and then learn to go there. And that's one thing she really values is sending a puppy home from the litter box who already has the idea started.  Sarah: That is incredible. I didn't realize that they were doing it that young.  Kathy: Yeah, it's amazing. And that's where I got Indy from and he, I didn't have to do any housebreaking he gave into my life an 8 week old puppy, he's like, “Hey, I go outside, this is the door?” I'm like, “Oh yeah, sure dude, like, let's go outside.” When I also did was I took the same materials she used to housebreak them and I got a bag of it. So I had an area in my yard and that's where he went. So that’s, you know, your best shot is you're having a breeder who is working on that for you. Now the worst case scenario is you have a dog who's already learned, whether it's a puppy or a shelter dog, rescue dog, learn to go anywhere.  Sarah: Yup.  Kathy: Pet store dogs. It's terrible because they're in a cage, they have to go and that's where they go. And then we want you to housebreak your dog and use crate training, and the dog is like, “Oh cool. The indoor potty”. So that tends to be a challenge too. So those are the best case and the worst case scenario, but we can get it done no matter what's going on. Let me tell you an interesting story before we get into what you would do for it, a more typical dog. So I had a client come to me and the dog was peeing and pooping in the crate, it was complete reverse housebreaking they take it out, they'd monitor it, it wouldn't go. The minute that dog went into crate, and they did all the things correctly. They tried a plastic crate, they tried a wire crate, they tried a smaller crate, like, they did everything right, and this dog, this dog could be against a wall in a crate and go to the bathroom. So we use the hay trick. Now I learned about the hay trick back in the eighties, I didn't invent it. I can't remember who did. We'll give credit when I remember. Do you remember who it was I told you about the other day? No? Anyway, so basically I got some straw, it was around Halloween so it was great. Broke down a hay bale, put it in the crate up to like hip level of this dog and I put him in there. And because the hay was around him, sort of like hugging him like a nest, he stopped going to the bathroom in the crate. And I made it a bigger space so I get more hay in it and the dog didn't go. So it's hard to get people to get on board with that because, obviously, when you take the puppy out, hay is going to come out the front. But I prepped it. I put down like a big trash bag and a sheet and then I put the crate over that, and then after four or five, six days of perfect, no potty-ing in the crate, then I started taking the hay out by the handfuls. Morning I take some out, at night I take some out, until we were just down to a crate with a few pieces of hay in the bottom and it was done. That was it.  Sarah: That's incredible.  Kathy: You can also use it for anxiety, for dogs who freak out in the crate.  Sarah: Yeah. Kathy: Alright! So now you have a good example and a bad example and what to do in an extreme example. Let's start more with your typical puppy.  Sarah: Yep.  Kathy: So I believe in crate training and I know you do too. So when I'm not home, when I'm sleeping, when I can have my eye on my puppy, it is in a crate.  Sarah: Yep.  Kathy: It's appropriately sized. I am monitoring to make sure that I have met all my puppy's needs. Like he is potty before I put him in, and  know how long I can keep them in. Sarah: Do you want to touch on the size of the crate really quick? Kathy: Yes. So I would like something that the dog can stand up and turn it around in comfortably, but I don't want them to be able to use one end as the bathroom and the other end as the TV room.  Sarah: Got it. Kathy: That'd be just one area. And again, I'm counting on the fact that your dog is uncomfortable being next to his waste. Some puppies come from what we call a dirty litter. And the mom wasn't cleaning them because you know, the mom has to clean them for the first two weeks. She licks them to stimulate them to go to the bathroom. They don't have the reflexes to do it on their own. And so some moms weren't great at that and when the puppies actually went, she wasn't cleaning up after them either and they would just got used to laying in it. So if you have a puppy like that, it's a little more challenging. And then I would try the hay trick. Of course, making sure your dog doesn't want to eat the hay.  Sarah: Yeah, exactly. Kathy: So it's a nice small area. And I also feed my dogs in their crates. So if they're going to have a meal in a crate, it's going to be there and traditionally dogs won’t defecate or urinate where they eat. So you kind of have that on your side as well. So yeah, it's a nice tight space.  Sarah: And then I think a really important thing too is when you are going into potty training your puppy is just think proactively. So think about how much food he’s getting. Think about what time of day he's getting it, how much water and then you want to take the puppy out before they need to go as well. So that's why the schedule is really important. So what do you do for a puppy potty training schedule? Kathy: So I, you know, my life is the way it is. It's semi erratic.  Sarah: A little busy. Kathy: A little busy. Yeah. And so I'm going all the time and I really value a puppy who's not locked into a routine, like, not having to eat at this time a day and not at me to potty at this time of day, but yet I will tell my students to give some sort of loose routine to their dogs or their puppies for housebreaking. So I kind of look at the day that's ahead of me and I say, “Alright, well I'm up at five and I'm going to let the puppy to potty right away. I'm going to carry it, I’m not going to walk it, and carry it to the potty area, which we’ll talk about later, and then I'll bring the puppy in, a little playing, a little training with food, probably another visit outside and then back in the crate. Now my rule of thumb is, one hour for every month of age plus one as the amount of time my puppy can spend in a crate. I don't take that through month six so that's silly, right? Your six month old puppy probably shouldn't be in there for seven hours. Could be, but it shouldn't be, and that's during the day. At night your dog goes into nocturnal mode so they can sleep a little bit longer without having to go out. But I'm guaranteeing you with a puppy that is really young, like eight to 12 weeks, you're probably still getting up at least once a night. I put my puppies to bed at like 11 that's their last walk. I don't want to stay up till 11 but I do, cause I don't want to really be up at two and if I get up at 11 I'm probably stretching that to like four, but I'm also not tanking my puppy very frequently. I will take their dinner meal, take a little bit of it and put it into lunch and breakfast because those are times where I'm awake and then I'm putting less in the belly at night. I do cut off food and water for young puppies at five. That's pretty much my only, schedule that I always hold to that 5, 5:30 mark, because I feel that's enough time for the dog to get it out of their system and give him and me a very nice night's sleep. Sarah: Yeah, exactly. So, stopping the food and water at about five o'clock and then, so, and then you have about the hours in between. And you said by about six months, they should be pretty well potty trained. Kathy: Yeah, absolutely. One of the things, too, I talked to people about is measure your food. Have you ever asked one of your clients how much they feed their dog and they can't give you an accurate answer. They're like, “You know, like this much.” Sarah: Yeah, like a handful. Kathy: They show you their hand! You’re like, “What is that?” They’re like, “Like, a cup.” And then you say the magic question, “What kind of a cup?” They rarely say measuring cup. They're like, “Oh you know, the cup you get, someone gave me.” Sarah: The scoop. Kathy: Oh the scoop. The scoop is deadly. Cause that's like, yeah. So you have to measure your food. You have to know what you're putting into that dog so you know what to expect to come out of the dog. And if you're training, hopefully you're using the food. If you have people in your house giving the dog treats or you have company over and it changes how much is going in, you've got to adjust your schedule for all of those possibilities. Sarah: And another thing for realistic expectations is also to understand that your puppy, like as they're growing and changing, they're going, it's not going to be like a linear path to potty training. They may have some accidents here or there. So what, what would you say is the best way? Like, let's say you just missed it and the puppy peed on the couch or something like that. What would be your steps to kind of helping make sure that that doesn't derail the rest of their potty training? Kathy: Well, the first thing you do is you pick up the puppy and you walk to the bathroom and you look in the mirror and you say, “Why did I let my puppy dog out? I suck because I didn't listen to anything Kathy and Sarah said.” I would pick the puppy up. I would snap a leash on it, take it outside of the potty area, put it down and say, “Hurry up.” I firmly believe that if a puppy is mid pee and you scoop it up, it will stop peeing, probably not pooping, but peeing. I know that if people were on the potty and somebody lifted them up midstream, they would probably stop. I want to try and have the puppy finish outside. And so I can accomplish that, awesome. Then I put the puppy in the crate and I cleaned it up. And some people say, “Oh, don't let the dog see you clean up their accident ‘cause they'll think that they're in charge.” I'm like, “Hello?”  Sarah: The most important part of cleaning up an accident is making sure that you actually cleaned it all up and got the smell out.  Kathy: It's not about letting the puppy see you. The puppy doesn't think, “Oh, you’re my housekeeper.” Like, that’s just ridiculous. Sarah: Well again, that's adding human emotions to training another species. Like, this is a dog, this is not a child.  Kathy: We should do a podcast on weird things that people have told you. Like I heard somebody said, “Oh, you know how you teach your dog that you're in charge, you spit in their food before you give it to them again.” What?! Sarah: Again, that's like a weird human thing. No. Kathy: Yeah, no. There's others we can’t talk about them now. I’m thinking of all of them now. Okay, anyway...So yeah, and you clean it up completely. Now this doesn't mean with water. Please don’t use ammonia, because a component in urine is ammonia. So all your Pine Saul, pine scented ammonia things are just going to draw the dog back. I would use something that gets rid of the odor and breaks it down completely. And we use Fizzion. And I always tell people, “If the dog school uses a product, you better get on it.” Sarah:  Yeah, we use it for a reason. Kathy: Yeah! We see all these dogs, we know what works. Fizzion works. There's others that really don't work. We don't want to say a name, but they're not really the miracles that they say they are. Sarah: That they claim to be.  Kathy: There you go.  Sarah: No, tried and true. We use Fizzion. Kathy: And then some of them are like, “Oh my dog keeps going back to this rug to pee on.” Okay, supervise better and keep him away from the rug, or get rid of the rug.  Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. The biggest thing is don't let them go back to there and potty again.  Kathy: Right, right. And again, it comes down to supervision. Like, I think the biggest thing to tell people is, “You've got to supervise your puppy.” Supervise it like it's a nine month old baby walking around pulling crap down off the counter on their head with the chords, and sticking their fingers in sockets. Like, you understand that. That you have to supervise that. And yet people after like a day or two of no accents they're like, “Oh, my puppy is trained.” And the hardest puppies to train are the small grade ones, because the big breeds in real time, like, your shepherd takes a crap behind the couch. Like, you know it. You walk around, you’re like, “What is that?” Your Pomeranian does it, you don't find it in real time. You find it like when you go to put up the tree, six months later, you pull the couch out, you're like, “Oh my God, what's that?” And see that's why the dog isn't housebroken because he's pottied in so many places that you don't even know it. And that's rewarding, because relief is really rewarding. And you can't come back and show them the fossilized poop and fuss at them. As a matter of fact, you can never fuss at them for accidents cause it's all your fault.  Sarah: Exactly. Kathy: I had a student, and I know I've told you this story, who I went to her house and she had a 10 week old puppy and I walked in and the housekeeper was there and I had to wait for the owner to come. And while I'm there, the housekeeper’s bragging that the 10 week old puppies perfectly housebroken and I totally don't believe it. And then the owner comes. I'm like, “So tell me about the housebreaking.” She's like, “Oh, we don't need to worry about it. He's perfectly housebroken. He just doesn't come when I call him.” I'm like, “Oh, really?”  Sarah: 10 weeks old? Kathy: 10 weeks old. It was a little multi-poo.  Sarah: Yeah. Kathy: So the housekeeper opens the gate to leave the kitchen. And what the owner said was, “The only thing he doesn't do is he doesn't come when he's called. And if he runs out of this room, he'll never come back.” I'm like, “Okay.” So, of course, the housekeeper opens the gate to leave. And what happens? Dog runs out and they're like, “Oh, my God! He’s loose!” And they're running through this, you know like 32 room house and I'm just by the front door and thinking, “This is going awesomely.” So while I'm there, I turned to the right and I see the dining room, which is right off the kitchen and what I'm struck by is the fact that the dining room has snow white carpet. And I look a little harder and I'm like, ‘Wait a minute.” And I squat down and I see like 500 silver dollar size pee stains. The dog had been peeing in the dining room, and I'm sure he pushed out that gate, got out, and got back in without anybody knowing. And I'm like, “I am going to have to tell this woman and she's...her head is going to blow off her body.” I'm like,  Sarah: How’d the housekeeper not find it though? Kathy: Apparently she wasn't doing her job either! It was the formal dining room. So they come back down, they had them, they're like, “Oh my gosh! He didn't do anything.” And I'm like, “You know what? I kind of have bad news about the house. Frankly, he’s peeing in your dining room.” And she was really, like, “He key is not!” And I'm like, “No, he is.” And she's like, “Oh, I don't believe it.” I'm like, “Well..” I had to help her to the ground to crawl into the dining room. Now we're both on our hands and knees and she's so mad. She smacking the ground, “I can't believe it.” Yeah, the housekeeper magically disappeared. And so then we had to talk about better gates and better management and yeah, it was...but then it took twice as long, right? Because the dog said, “Why can't I get to my indoor potty area?” Everything had to change. Supervision had to go through the roof.  Sarah: Yeah! Inadvertently you had house-trained your puppy, just on your white rug in the formal dining room.  Kathy: Had she had a Great Dane puppy. He would've had one accident and they would have seen it. There's a river coming from the dining room. Because he weighed three pounds, he got away with it. Oh my gosh. It was awful. It was terrible. Sarah: Yeah. Supervision is, and management is a huge piece of the potty training. Kathy: It is. It is. And, and realistic expectations. Like you should know and if you don't, now you do, that a 10 week old puppy is probably not really housebroken.  Sarah: Nope.  Kathy: Something is amiss. Sarah: Any other, like from working with clients with potty training and like that, that time period before six months, like any other things that have happened that where you fixed it or where it was like as like a kind of specific issue? Kathy: Yeah, I, when I have people who we lovingly call “noncompliance,” and they're non-compliant for a lot of reasons, their life is crazy. I mean they shouldn't go, the dog may didn't want a dog. Maybe they've decided the kids are going to be in charge and it goes badly. So if they're non-compliant or non able to be compliant, we find that we give them these guidelines. If your eyeballs can't be on the puppy, they're crated. If you can 100% supervise, they're gated in a small room with a leash on and if you can supervise pretty much but not 100% they can be X-penned or tethered in a room with you. In addition, if you want really high level security you can tether them. I told a student today at the home. So it was a perfect example at the lesson I was at today. The puppy moved away from us and peed and it was right about the time he should have, and he had just drank water. But if he had been tethered to her body she would have felt him pulling away like a fish on a line trying to get away. Sarah: Yeah. That's a really, that brings up a good one. So what are some of your like tried and true cues that a puppy will give you that they have to potty? Cause a lot of times new owners, they don't know what to look for. They don't know that if the puppy tries to, like, leave you and create distance from you, they probably need to go to the bathroom. So what are some other kind of physical cues that a puppy will give you that they have to go potty? Kathy: They're sniffing and circling is the big one. Definitely becoming disinterested in your play or training or snack or belly rub session. You feel like you're playing and you’re playing and dog's into it and then suddenly they walk away. Like, “What do I smell?” And then they go, right?  Sarah: Yep, yep.  Kathy: If they're really engaged in something and suddenly disconnect that, that's your cue. And they all have different ways of telling you. Right? So, my Border Collie, both of them actually, would run to me, run to the door, run to me, run to the door. And I'm like, “I guess you have to go.” My golden barks, you've heard, “Oh, gotta go.” My doberman would just stare at me. Like, I'd be on the computer and I feel this. I'd be like, “What is going on?” Sarah: Yeah. They’re tethered to you, you'll learn it that much more quickly because like you'll, you'll be a pattern. You'll notice after maybe one or two times you'll see one of those indicators and take them out and then you'll know their cue. If they weren't tethered to you and they were just loose in the house, you missed it. Kathy: Exactly. And you know, it's interesting when they hit a certain age, they don't give you cues anymore because they're housebroken, and you're taking them out a sufficient amount of time. I can't remember the last time one of my dogs asked me to go out because I think I just take them out. Sarah: Yeah. You get into a routine with your dogs and once they get older, they know when they're going to be able to go. Kathy: Yeah. And you just manage what goes in, what comes out.  Sarah: Yeah. Kathy: I think we should talk about the DPA: Designated Potty Area, and this is a huge thing and this is, we did a Facebook live on it, on chicken rock. Sarah: We have the video for chicken rock. Kathy: Chicken rock is...it was very popular. So, basically I want my dogs to be able to go out the back sliding door, obviously if you're an apartment, this is not valid, and run to the back of the property and pee and poop in the area that I want them to so they're not on the grass. And the way I accomplices is I put out an X pen and I leave it unattached, so there's an opening in it. That X pen, I choose to put wood stove pellets because I want the difference in the texture between grass, mulch, and where I want them to go. Although, side-note, I teach my dogs once the potty training is going well, I make the multi-surface pottiers. They go on pavement, they go on grass, they go on stone, they go everywhere because I don't want them to say, “Wait, where's my wood pellets?” What do wood pellets do for you? They're stove pellets. They’re made out of wood. You could use anything you want. If I went somewhere with a potty that was different than my yard, like a friend's house, I could take a baggie of those, maybe even a baggie of used ones and then dump them in a place in her yard. So anyway, in addition to the wood stove pellets, I put a bowl in the back of the crate, so in the pen. So you would have to walk all the way into it and continue going to that to the side of it and that bowl  is upside down ,and on that bowl I put a piece of chicken, you can use anything you want that the dog never gets. Hence the name chicken rock and when I was doing it with values to rock. So it looks like this. I know that puppy has to potty. I get up in the morning, I go into the refrigerator, get a piece of chicken, put it on that rock. Yes, I have to make two trips, go back in the house, get the puppy out of the crate, clip on a leash, walk outside all the way to the potty area. I put the puppy down in the potty area. They go to the back, they eat the chicken and they say, “While I'm here, might as well go.” Sarah: Big key to that is you carry that  is, in the beginning you carry the puppy out to the rock so that they're not able to go on the way out. That's a big part of it. Kathy: Huge. Huge. Because they’re puppies, their bladder is the size of a moment, so they're going to go at some point on the way to that. Then as they get older and the months go by, and I hopefully can still carry them for a little bit, I put them down farther and farther away, and I'm adding from day one, “Hurry up,” and down they get the chicken and then I say, “Hurry up, hurry up,” and then what happens next depends on the puppy. A lot of owners make the mistake of bringing the dog right back in the house. Now it's important to note that when I'm holding that, when I'm in that X pen, I'm holding the leash. My puppy is not loose, because the first nine months that I have a puppy, they are potty-ing on a leash. People that are lazy, and let the dog out, and then when they have to take the puppy somewhere and they can't let them loose and they're on the lease, the puppy looks at them like, “Can you give me some privacy and space?” Because you taught them to go 50 feet away from you. Now, people who live in the city don't have that issue, but it's a suburban. Once my puppy has gone, I can either take them in the house or I can put on a long leash and then we can play in the yard because I'm so boring in that X pen. I don't give them any fun. And a lot of times people make the mistake of taking the dogs on a walk and then when the dog goes, take them inside. And what the dog knows is that, “If I poop or pee, I'm going back in the house and I love being outside so I'm going to hold it.” But some puppies are outside they’re like, “I gotta go in the house,” and then those are the puppies that you do take in right away. But the puppies are more outward bound, adventurous, energetic, pop on a light line and let them run in the yard for awhile. Give them that as a reward.  Sarah: Yup.  Kathy: Speaking of the reward, I do reward at night for emptying themselves, Like, they get chicken from being there, but I will start adding the food reward. Not every time, but when they are squatting and pooping, I will give them food in that moment. I don't give it to them when they run out of the pen because they’re, like, “Oh I should run out of the pen to get them food.” And we have great housebreaking sheets. I think we have a couple. We have one with the challenging housebreaking. Sarah: Yeah, we have those. So those are all in the lesson sheet library for you guys. If you need them, just drop a comment when we post this. We can direct you right to them.  Kathy: Let's talk about the puppy who suddenly is peeing all the time. I'm thinking about the girl puppies.  Sarah: Yeah.  Kathy: Normally it's a UTI and they just show up. They don't catch them. They just get them. No. And so then what your vet wants is a urine sample. So let's talk about how to get a urine sample. YAY! You get a short, not high sided, Rubbermaid... I want to say Rubbermaid, it's like saying Jello. You don't say “gelatin,” you say Jello, right? A container, a plastic container. Boiling water goes in, up and out or dry all day. Then I go outside and I hide it. Not going to be flashing it in front of my dog's face and think it's food or get interested in it. So it's behind my back. As soon as the dog squads, I sled that sucker in, get a sample and then take it out. Go in the house, pour it in my sterilized pill bottle or vitamin jar as my sample. Masking tape. Pre-do this right? Put masking tape around the bottle with your last name on it and the dog's first name, then you don’t have to do it when you are full. Now my daughter, who's pre-vet, and has worked at a vet for years, confirms what I always knew when they want a urine sample, they don't want a cup of urine. Okay? When they ask for a stool sample, they don't want a bag, a poop. They just need a little, little bit. So don't go crazy with that. And then you either refrigerate it until you get it to the vet that day or you take it right over to the vet. And I would call ahead and say, “Hey, I'm bringing a urine sample. Can you test it?” Some vets will test it and then give you Clavamox, or whatever they're going to give you for that, or some bets that, you know, “Bring the dog in. I need to see.“ So it just depends on the relationship and the type of vet that you have. But that's how you get a urine sample with very little dramatics. I mean, and people are like, “Should I use gloves?” Yeah. You know what? Knock yourself out, wear gloves. I don't, but you can. Yeah. Sarah: Yeah. Then the indications for that, so usually it is the female dog, like you said. If they're peeing, like, excessively. You know, like,  way more than what's normal, then that would be when you could take them to the vet to get that checked out. Kathy: Although sometimes there are other factors. Aww! Hey, Jack and Nev! Sarah: That was Jake. Kathy: There are other factor-that was Jakey? ​Sarah: Yeah. He was just saying, “Hello.” Kathy: Hey, Jakey! One of Sarah's dogs. So I had a student and it was, like, July and she's like, “My puppy is not a puppy, she's 10 months old. She was housebroken and now she's peeing throughout the house”. And of course the first thing you think is a UTI.  Sarah: Right. Kathy: And like, all right, it sounds like UTI. However, let me ask you, are there any new sources of water that she's getting into? Is she drinking out of the toilet? Like is there a water cooler that's liking? She's like, “No, no, there's nothing. There's nothing”. I'm like, “Are you sure?” She's like, “Yeah, no.” She said, “I, you know, we opened our pool last week.” I was like, “ Wonderful! Hello! Big dog water bowl right out in your yard.” And she's like, “Oh, you're right.” The dog is drinking from the pool when she’s swimming!” I'm like, “Yeah, I know I’m right” Sarah: Jesus. Kathy: Yup. And some people have decorative fountains. Like that's what I mean by other sources of water outside the box. Sarah: Yeah. I always ask too, like, you know, “Is the husband or the kids sneaking the dog water when you're not looking?” Something like that. Or, “Are they giving the dog water when you don't know about it? So you don't know that they need to go again?” Looking for those saboteurs. Kathy: I had a student, Oh my gosh, she had this refrigerator brand new and it was gigantic ones and it was leaking and so she called the repair people and they came out and they said it was leaking. And, like, three or four times! And she finally called the company, got the head of the company’s phone number wrote this nasty email, like, RIP customer service. She wanted the company to take it back. She was going ham on them and she was so mad, and this is actually why she wound up calling me. She said one morning she went downstairs, it was off, her schedule was early, and she's in a robe and she hears (whirring noise)  Sarah: Oh, God. Kathy: And she’s like, “Now I'm going to see what's wrong with this thing?” Oh no. It was her lab, who learn to jump up and push the button, and drink from the stinking refrigerator.  Sarah: Oh, my God Kathy: She said, “Should I call and apologize to the people I ripped?”  I’m like, “You just do what you need to do.”  Sarah: Send a holiday gift basket. Kathy: God, yeah. And that's what we had to work on and you know, we did unplugged the water. Unrewarded behavior extinguishes itself.  Sarah: Yep.  Kathy: We plugged it back in, and start on the ice cubes.  Sarah: The refrigerator's going batty. Kathy: Yeah, that's great. When again, dogs are invested they discover themselves and people get all twisted that the dog isn't learning Down or Place. I'm like, “If you did it the right way, they'd learn it really fast because they are problem solvers and they are brilliant.”  Sarah: Yep. All right. Kathy: Let's see. We covered crate. Oh, I know puppies who pee in their crate! Sometimes, you know this, clients want to leave a blanket or a towel in there and the puppy just bunches it up and pees on it and pushes it back. So I like them, if you have that issue, I like them to have a naked crate. That way. If they pee in it, there's a consequence in a lot of times I had to do that and they also will pee on stuff. Toys, don’t do that. Sarah: Yeah, anything that can absorb the urine, they'll use it. Kathy: I had a student whose dog, see, this is like story time with Kathy and Sarah, but we never, we never say names. So we like the idea that you cover a crate because we feel like it takes the visual interest away from the dog or the puppy, and they settle down better. And I had a student who has, she's struggling with housebreaking. As soon as we took the towels out, the dog was perfect. Until one night, it pulled the blanket through the crate bars that was covering the crate and then peed on them. So like, yup.  Sarah: Yeah. We always try to get the caveat like make sure that the sheet or the blanket is thick enough that they can't pull it into the crate.    Kathy: And my doberman, when they used to pull it in, it didn't matter. It could be like a mattress and they’d pull that sucker in. The thing was, I put boxes on top of his crate, and then I put the sheet on it and I pulled it out like a tent, and I secured it. Ask Eric, he remembers this. I had books and an end table, and he's like, “Catherine, what is happening?” I'm like, “NO!” Sarah: He can't pull the sheet in! Kathy: Oh man, poor Eric. That should be our hashtag, “poor Eric”. Yup. Sarah: Well it worked didn’t it? He wasn't able to pull the sheet in. Kathy: Damn right it worked. It was great. I felt victorious. I may have even snuck out at two in the morning to see if it worked. I'm not going to lose another blanket. So let's see. Got diet, got the time of the night out, we have the schedule, you have the signals, crate size, potty area outside has to be on leash, when you go somewhere new, you can take, if they’re using that method of having a different surface, you can take it with you, and at some point, you want to teach the dog to be variable. Become a variable surface peer. Sarah: Yeah, it's not linear, right? It's going to be a roller coaster when potty training your puppy. He has an accident, deal with it. Like you said, go in the bathroom, ask yourself what you did wrong and then go back out there and just next day start over Kathy: And realistically say, “At six months it'll be perfect if I do everything right. And so I'm not going to delude myself into thinking of typical puppy with an acorn bladder is able to hold that at all.” Sarah: Yeah, exactly.  Kathy: Oh! Can we talk about one thing. When you say, “I told my wife when I was going out to watch the puppy,” “I told my husband to watch the puppy,” “I told my kids to watch the puppy,” nobody's going to watch the puppy like you are going to watch the puppy. So if you can't trust the people that you need, you’re better off crating the dog so you don't set yourself back. Cause that's the worst part. And holidays, cause we're recording this the day before Thanksgiving, holidays are the worst because you get distracted and you get busy and you have company over and somebody's like, “Oh my God, there's poo in the living room!”  Sarah: Or someone steps on it on your carpet. Kathy: And they don’t know it and then they track it.  Sarah: Or barefoot! In the middle of the night, you get up on Christmas morning and you step in dog poop on your barefoot. That's happened to me way too many times. Kathy: Yes. Yes. So that's why you should have people over for the holidays. No, just kidding.  Sarah: Puppy goes in the crate. Kathy: We have really good examples of managing and monitoring your dog on the holidays and that would be in the Thanksgiving podcast as well. Sarah: Yeah. Alright, so we think that we've covered pretty much everything. Any other questions let us know and we'll be happy to answer them. Kathy: Yeah, we'll put our answers to your questions in the comments. Is there a comments? There should be. If not, we’ll just record another one Sarah: Yeah. I'll post the link of this in all the groups and then they can comment underneath any questions they have. Kathy: All right, awesome. Great. Thanks for hanging out with me.  Sarah: Absolutely.  Kathy: Always fun. All right, I'll talk to you later. Bye, guys!  Sarah: Happy potty training everyone.  Kathy: As always, if you like what you hear, jump over to whatever subscription service you downloaded from and like, rate, subscribe, tell a friend, and share this episode somewhere to help spread the word so we can continue to create an awesome community of dog lovers and learners. Happy training everyone!

Welcome to Episode 17 of #TrueJoyRevolution. Today I am chatting with Kathy Jamison, North Texas Cookie Jar. I love Kathy's honest perception of starting the business. With only a year under her belt, she's sharing what mindset shift's she's faced, the learning curve, and the boundaries she had to set.   There are so many golden nuggets of wisdom in this episode.    Powerful Insights from Kathy: “It was hard because I was having to trust myself more because it was all me. I had no one else that I can lean on. This is pretty much all me. I am doing the baking. I have to sell myself. So that part of it was a huge obstacle.  Just believing in myself. And I didn’t really have to do that before because I knew I could do the fundraising I knew I could plan events. it was just natural so it  shifted in a way that now I’m just trying to get people excited about what I personally can do for them."   “I was in complete control of my destiny. Someone else wasn’t. If I want to become something bigger and better, it’s up to me and it’s on me. I’m the only person standing in my way. Whereas the old 9-to-5, it wasn’t just me…There was always someone else determining that for you…If there is a future someone else’s planning that out for you those you know spots need to become available. For me it’s endless. It’s what I want to happen to my future. It’s in my control.”    “You always want to protect yourself as far as financially….Know what you’re getting into and be a hundred percent sure that that’s the decision you want to make and of course if it’s been a dream and aspiration, you know in your heart that you want to make that decision, so chances are it’s a go.”   “Follow Your Heart.”   “Be strong and if you have a good support system behind you…they’re gonna be there to back you up. Don’t give up on yourself. The thing is, it’s not gonna be that perfect road. You’re gonna have failures. You’re gonna doubt yourself. It’s inevitable, but to keep with that…stick with it because if it’s something that you’ve wanted, you can make that a reality this.”   “You can overcome just about anything, so just have faith in yourself and your abilities.”   “Just keep going. It’s more about the consistency than perfection. And set realistic goals whether they’re monthly or you know more long-term.  How much time am I going to give this to succeed.  Before you realize ‘I need to tweak something or take a different path’.”   “It’s gonna be slow and know some months are gonna be heavier than others so just “being very realistic of those expectations.”   Here are Kathy's top tips for those looking to start a business:   “Always be your research before you make that big jump” to quit and start a business. Know what you are getting into. Look at financing, what your business idea will take, the work that goes into it, the time, the lifestyle, what you need to set up the business. “Follow Your Heart.”  If it is tugging at you and feeling right, then go for it. Make sure you have a passion for it. And keep following your heart even when the going gets rough. You are less apt to quit if you are passionate about your business. There are going to hiccups, learning curves and hard days, but keep at it!     3. Set Realistic Goals.  Don’t aim too high at first. Set goals based on what you know and what you are capable of right now, not on how you want your business to look 2-10 years down the line. There is a long runway to starting a business. Have realistic goals at the outset because it is about trial and error. It is about getting to know your audience, how to build a business, how to market, what you market it looking for, what are their buying habits.  Plus you are starting out so you have all those mindset challenges to get over like we talked about earlier.     Connect with Kathy: www.instagram.com/northtexascookiejar www.northtexascookiejar.com   Connect with Katerina and True Joy Experience On Instagram On Facebook www.truejoyexperience.com   Ready to transform your life? Join the True Joy Experience Inner Circle and receive weekly inspiration, resources, and VIP and early bird access to workshops, trainings, masterclasses.  Or join the The Joyful Business Society and start taking action to becoming the CEO of your life and business!   Did you hear something you loved today? Leave a review, so others know what to expect from the show!   And don’t forget to Subscribe to the podcast so you receive the episodes right to your phone when they launch each week.    Had takeaways from this week’s episode? Share it on Instagram or Facebook and tag me @truejoyexperience

James: Yeah listeners, this is James Kandasamy from Achiever Wealth Podcast.  Achieve Wealth podcast focuses on commercial real estate investing; across all asset classes. Today I have Kathy Fettke from real wealth network. Hey Kathy, you want to introduce yourself?  Kathy: Hi there, sure. I'm the founder and CEO of Real Wealth Network. We've been around since 2003 actually. And we've been helping people, mainly in high priced markets, find cash flow properties nationwide. And then over the past 10 years or so, we've helped people get into syndication; a lot of our members just wanted totally passive. So we partnered with developers and we build single family homes, one to four units, and then also some apartments and now the opportunity zones, so we're excited about that.  James: Oh, cool. Yeah, Kathy runs one of the top podcasts in the nation and what's the podcast name, Kathy?  Kathy: Real Wealth Show and then I have a news show that's just seven minutes for busy people, but loaded with information; The Real Estate News podcasts.  James: Yeah, I've listened to both real estate news, which I like, because it's pretty short and it just give me the high level things; sometimes we're really just so busy. And I've listened to [01:25 inaudible] So let's go a bit more details into, how do your company or your group helps the investors? Let's start with investors, so are lot of them passive investors or do they still manage the property at all in single family?  Kathy: Well, you know, most of our members are busy Silicon Valley workers or their Hollywood people in the industry, that is pretty unforgiving. Both industries, Hollywood and Silicon Valley, you're working a lot; sometimes people are working 70, 80 hour weeks. Even if you're making a lot of money, what you don't have is a lot of time. So they can't be, managing their own properties or flipping; people who try to flip when they're that busy, it’s just tough to do a good job at it when you've got all these other things. And then to add a family or just trying to be healthy and exercise; there’s only so much you can do. So, we really decided about 15 years ago, both my husband and I decided we wanted to invest where there was cash flow and we couldn't find it in California.  So I had the Real Wealth Show then and Robert Kiyosaki was on it back then and he said, I'll tell you what, I am selling everything I own in California because it's a bubble. This was in 2006 when nobody else could see that; everybody thought it was just going to be this incredible boom forever. And he said, no, no, these loans are going to melt down and he was selling everything and exchanging it for a high cash flow, low cost properties in Texas because that's where the jobs in the population and we're going; so we did that   I talked about it on my show, on the Real Wealth Show, and our listeners wanted to do it; so we said, well, you can use all the team that we set up. You can use the property manager, they're great, and you can use the agent that we use, the contractors; and then we realized, this is really a need; we can make this a business. And that's really what real wealth network became; it's just finding these different resources nationwide to help people find deals that you just couldn't find on your own; and have them managed for you.    James: So is it a fund, or is it like a property, buy property or how does it work?   Kathy: We have both. I mean, for the first five to seven years it was basically brokering. We have a real estate brokerage, helping people sell their California properties and exchange them for really high cash flow.  I had a woman come to me back in 2007, somewhere around then, and she was desperate to retire; she had bought these three properties in Stockton thinking that would be her ticket and they were just a pain; always needing repairs. They were old properties and not very good parts of Stockton. And all the cash flow was just going to repairs, so she wasn't able to retire; her dream of real estate was turning into a nightmare.   And she listened to my show and I said, well look, let's sell these; they were $420,000 each. They rented each for $1,200, not a good deal. So we helped her sell those three properties at the peak and then buy in Texas at basically the beginning of their boom; we got her nine brand new homes in Rockwall, Texas. It was an hour outside of Dallas but we knew a new freeway was coming that would make it just a 20 minute, 30 minute drive to downtown. And she ended up quintupling her cash flow.  She was able to walk in and hand that resignation letter to her boss; she was able to retire. And about 18 months later, the market crashed; the home she sold for $420,000 each, these little dumpy homes, they were worth about $75,000 after. So she saved herself from complete disaster and in fact, her properties in Texas have tripled in value since she bought them. So ever since then, that's really what we do. We help people see; look, you need an asset that's performing, whether there's going to be a market collapse or not; a $420,000 piece of junk in Stockton that rents for $1,200 a month, is not a deal. We've been helping people understand the fundamentals of investing. James: It's so crazy because I think a lot of people thinks that, oh the house price is going up and they're getting richer. Actually, you're not getting richer? It's a dead equity; your equity is trapped in your house.  And I see a lot of people with a lot of money, who buys properties in high class neighborhood where they want to live. Which is completely opposite from how the whole cash flow should be; because the rent doesn't really jump up by that much, compared to your price on the house.  And it's just so crazy, they don't realize it and they keep on buying two or three houses in their neighborhood and they say; I have all these houses. Some people have gotten used to that appreciation play rather than a cash flow play.    Question for you is, I know every market has cycles. So I know from California to Texas in 2008 was an awesome, brilliant move. So what about today? Where would you invest? And where do you think both California and Texas market is?  Kathy: Excuse me.  I didn't mean to cough at the question but it's a big question... So it would appear that today is very similar to 2006; prices have gone up dramatically, in some cases they've doubled in value, tripled in value since rate recession. So people have made a lot of money and they've heard other people have made a lot of money by buying a property and doing nothing with it. So, it's tempting to think that that will continue, that is just not possible. You have to understand the metrics and people can only afford a property that's about three times their income. So if your monthly income is $5,000; you can only afford a property around $1,300 a month with the mortgage and the taxes and insurance.  So, there's only so high prices can go. Prices were very depressed for the past 10 years, they’re not anymore, they're way past their last peak; salaries are not going up as quickly. So to buy a property thinking that you're just going to get a bunch of equity gain,  I think you missed that. However, will there be another housing crash? That's what people want to know, right? My answer is, I don't think so, because in the last 10 years you have had people have to really qualify for a loan. They also got very low interest rates, some as low as 2% over the last 10 years; and values have gone up.  So they're locked into low interest rates, they have equity, salaries are going up. Even if we had a recession and jobs were lost, I don't think people are going to rush to dump their properties, when they're locked into low payments, just so they can pay more in rent; I don't see it happening. Plus 10 years ago there was no Airbnb, you didn't know that you could just rent out half your house, I did. Rich and I actually did that when we were having a tough time back in 2003. We rented out a bunch of rooms in our house to get by; we had to use Craig's list and that was crazy, you never know who you're getting, very different today. And, add to it that households are forming, yet we're not building enough supply. Where anything that we're building, that builders and developers are building, is higher end because permit fees have gone up, labor costs have gone up. You cannot build the same house today for the same price, certainly not for the price that most people own their property; they couldn't rebuild it. I live in Malibu where there are a bunch of fires and people are not able to rebuild their houses for what they had an insurance; so make sure you have really good insurance. So no, I don't think there's going to be a housing crash. There's just not enough supply, there's so much demand. We've had 10 million more renters in the last decade than we have before; we have probably another 10 million over the next decade. There's again, not enough supply in the affordable rang, so even though you're probably not going to see a lot of appreciation over the next 10 years, you're going to see a lot of cash flow.  James: Okay. Just because of the demographic shift, I guess, that you’re seeing in terms of the renters and all of that? Do you think it will continue in Texas? Because you’re looking at it from California; at that time when you bought in Texas, Texas was early part of the whole cycle. I came during the downturn and I didn't really feel there was an economic downturn here.  But now it has gone up so much, do you think that taxes will continue to grow?     Kathy: Well, it is very scary when you look at a chart and you look at the home prices in Dallas, it just goes, whew, and that is scary. But you have to understand that when we were buying in Texas, it was 26% undervalued, so that the houses were so cheap compared to income. So just to bounce back, the most important metric to look at is affordability and what we know is that there's just a massive amount of jobs in the Dallas, Fort Worth region. I don't think prices are ever going to go back to where they were, it’s the new reality there. Will they go up much more? It just depends on salaries and jobs. I certainly don't see any kind of crash or decline there. But we were never buying in Texas for appreciation, we got it and that was wonderful; but that's not why we were buying.    It all comes down to cash flow and there are parts of Dallas where we still think there's opportunity for cash flow and appreciation. But it's getting harder and harder to find, like it's harder and harder to find anywhere. There are still deals, especially in the opportunities zones. These are areas that are going to be gentrified, there may be higher crime, not as good as schools, but a lot of that is going to be changing; there's going to be more jobs coming in because of all the tax incentives. So, whether or not you’re getting those tax incentives, if you invest in those opportunities zone areas, you could see some appreciation along with cash flow.    James: Yeah, opportunities and some new incentive, compared to the 1031 and some other gentrification that's happening. So, you talk about Dallas, what about other markets in Texas, what are the other markets that you're excited?  Kathy: Well, one of the people I follow for my economic advice is John Burns. He does consulting for builders and we have developments all across the country and he's advised us on quite a few of them. He does an economic analysis annually, probably quarterly, he's constantly consulting. And one of the slides he showed recently was where the jobs are going. A lot of my California members of real wealth network say, what about Portland? What about Seattle? And based on the graphs that John Burns shows, that is the area that is having the least job growth in the country. So that should give you the answer you need. In addition to that, you've got all this rent control stuff happening in Portland and Seattle; it's like, no. If you're going to own a rental property, you don't want to be in a place where people hate landlords.   So I would skip the northwest, I'd skipped the west coast entirely, in my opinion, for that reason. Because whenever housing gets expensive, it's on the west coast where they decide it's our fault, when it's not; it's the fault of politicians who don't allow you to build anything, so it's frustrating. But where we're seeing the growth go 100% is the southeast. That's in Florida, Georgia, Texas certainly; these are no income tax or low income tax states. When you've got 10,000 people turning 65 every day, trying to figure out how they're going to retire, they're going to go to areas where they don't have to pay a lot of state tax. So that's one reason, plus the jobs are going, I believe the Orlando area, central Florida area is the fastest growing area in the country at this time. So yeah, we’re all over it, we’re building houses there and we're renovating houses and we're providing lots of done-for-you ,rental properties to our members.  James: So what about Phoenix and Las Vegas? I know that seems to be the last leg of boom, I guess. Because they are the ones who's recovering the last, but it seems to be a lot of people trying to look at that market as well.  Kathy: You know, I always get a little sick to my stomach when I think about Phoenix and Las Vegas because....   James: Positive experience, right?   Kathy: I had the opportunity, we were in contract on two properties before the collapse and we got out of them in time and got our money back. But oh boy, we would have been pretty upset. But no, I'm more upset that I didn't take action after the crash in Phoenix, there were so many foreclosures that just freaked me out, but obviously it would've been good to buy.  So it's hard to buy today when prices have doubled, if not tripled, from when we were able to buy; but at the same time, Las Vegas and Phoenix continue to grow, they will probably continue to grow for a long time. The problem is the cash flow is not quite as good as in some of the other areas in the south east, so I haven't been active in those markets. But if we had a really good team there and they were able to find us good deals and renovate them, and get them rented, and good property management; we'd probably still go in.    The problem with the Las Vegas is you have very low paying jobs, so the rents kind of cap there. But that could change if different kinds of jobs come in, but you've got a lot of people in the hospitality industry, who don't make a lot of money.  James: And also I would say a luxury, it's basically depends on luxury, right? If the economy tanked, nobody is going to go to Las Vegas to spend all their money and that's where the swing will come, I guess.  Kathy: Lots of people are moving there for affordability. My sister just bought her first house; she's 57 and bought her first house. But it’s in the Phoenix area because she could afford it.  They bought it, they rent it out and they hope to retire in it in 10 years. So you're seeing a lot of that type of thing.  James: Okay. Got it, so when you say cash flow, you're talking about single family turnkey cash flow, am I right?  Kathy: For a lot of our members, they want to max out that 10 conventional loans that you can get through Fannie and Freddie.  So even though they might invest in multifamily and other people's deals and syndication, they definitely invest in our syndication. Nothing really compares, in my opinion, to maxing out those Fannie and Freddie loans that you can get at 5%, five and a half percent. Are you kidding? Fixed for 30 years and you could get one to four units. We have a lot of our clients buying four-plexes in Florida and so you can get 40 units with those 10 year loans; and you're locked in at that rate for 30 years. You know rents are going up, I know a lot of people aren't fans of single family, but to me it just makes so much sense.  You can take all that cash flow and pay off the first loan, the second loan, the third loan; You could have all 10 loans paid off from the cash flow in 12 years, so many of our members do that. Then they have 10 properties free and clear, cash flowing. Again, multifamily is great; it's just a different animal. I think having a good mix of both because it's so easy to get in and out; a single family, it can be challenging, I've had massive challenges. We had a 92 unit building in Indiana that had a gas leak, in the middle of the night and the city required everybody to move out. We had to pay, we had an empty building, and we went from fully occupied to empty overnight literally, because of a gas leak.  And then we had to pay these people off to go find a new place, we had to fix; multifamily can have the same problems that a single family can have, only times a hundred.   Don't think that there are no problems, but it's a different animal; there’s different upside, there's different downsides. But, for people starting out,  just getting into some single family rental homes; just single, one to four unit, it's a great way to start to really wrap your hands around it and understand it and lock in those low 30 year fixed rate loans.  James: Yeah, you make a good point.  I'm a multifamily guy but I started in single family. So the cash flow in single families is unbeatable. I usually buy really good deals, so I usually make 30, 40% cash on cash, on single family. I buy by direct marketing and we rent it out. And we have that equity and you have that Fannie Mae loan, you just can't beat it. The biggest problem that we have in our single families is the 10 loan limit. That’s the limit, after that where do I go?  Kathy: That's as far as you can go, unless you both, you and your spouse can qualify; you can each get 10 but yeah, then you're stuck. Then you got to get to commercial, [20:19 inaudible] or something, you’re going to run out of money. But, for people just starting out or if you've got one property in the Silicon Valley that you bought for $400,000 and now it's worth 2 million; you might want to take that and do something else with it.  James: Yeah, correct.  I think the biggest challenge in single families is managing the property. So we were managing it, it takes up a lot of time, especially in the first few years because things are being stabilized. So once you get a renter, which doesn't leave, then everything is cash flow. So, does your company provide turnkey property management for single family?  Kathy: Yes. So what we've done is basically what we did in Texas. We'll go to an area where we think there's a lot of growth, a lot of job growth, a lot of population growth and it's landlord friendly and low taxes; Texas isn't low taxes, but we still have. And there we'll find people, like you said, people who know how to wholesale, they know how to get these deals. They do direct marketing and then they'll maybe look at a hundred deals to find one; but then they'll find that one deal that has a lot of potential. They'll fix it and get a tenant in place, have property management in place and sell it ready-to-go rental, to somebody who's busy and doesn't have the time to do all of that.  But we ask that there's still be some equity in there, it's getting harder and harder to do because prices have gone up and there's so much competition. There are E-buyers everywhere [21:58 inaudible] an E-buyer now; E-buyer meaning that they've raised billions of dollars to buy a house, sight unseen; instantly, instant offer. So, that's making it a little tougher on wholesalers but with that said, we still have boots on the street in 15 different markets that have either really high cash flow and prices are still undervalued; like Detroit and Cleveland, or in areas where there's just massive growth and people want to get in the path of progress and watch the sun rise.  James: Got it. I want to go back to the 92 units multifamily, because I think it's a very interesting story. Everybody tells all the good stuff about multifamily, how much they make? And there are a lot of people who doesn't tell all the bad stuff or deals that are losing money or what deals are under water. Kathy: Nobody wants to talk about it, I'll talk about it.  James: Yeah, I want to talk about that because I think it's a very good learning. So, you talked about 92 units where there was a gas leak, the city said you have to leave and you went from a 100% to 0%.  So what was the key learning from that experience?  Kathy: The key learning would be to make sure you've got the right insurance in place. A lot of people get their insurance policy but maybe don't really understand it; so, get an attorney to read it through and make sure you’ve got everything you need for that kind of situation. If you have the right insurance, then you can get through a situation like that. Unfortunately, in our case, the city made us do all kinds of things that were not necessary, before we could get a certificate of occupancy and  bring people back in; so, it took years to be able to occupy it again. And on top of that, when you have a vacant building and you got vandalism, so we'd have vandalism. And again, insurance can cover that, but it was hard, it was really hard.   So have plenty of reserves, really good insurance. Make sure that somebody, a professional, has looked at that insurance, to make sure that it will cover everything. And then you can get through those hard times. And if you're syndicating, if you brought in other investors into your deal, make sure that you have key man insurance or D and O insurance; because you’re responsible for your investors' dollars. I was able to go to the lender because we were sitting there vacant, no income and still having to pay that mortgage. And it was just cleaning me out, it was so difficult. It was so difficult; so we just stopped making the loan payments and I didn't know what to do. I had a million and a half of investor funds in there. So I just went to the bank, I flew out to Indiana, I met with the president of the bank and just said, here's the keys;  it's empty, it's vandalized, the city won't let us do anything with it, you can have it. And we were probably $1 million in arrears. And they say, I kind of knew they were going to do this, but I didn't know for sure, and it was a really scary moment; but they are like, you can have it. They cut the loan by over a million and it was still very difficult.    And so I think it's important that people understand the risk because there are so many young investors syndicating deals. They don't have the experience, they're taking other people's money and I literally talk to these young people and they are like, what's the big deal? It's easy, it's easy.  But their Performas are  only accounting for rents going up,  what if they don't, you know?  James: Correct.    Kathy: You just don't know. So you've got to have run that stress test on your Performa, understand that rear-ends can stabilize. That if there's a recession, a class property is the hardest to fill because people have lost their jobs; so they start discounting and then now someone's got the choice to live in a or a B class property for the same price, they're going to go with the A. So then to get tenants, you've got to lower your prices on the B property and that trickles down to the C. Whereas nobody's really accounting for that and I don't want to say nobody, a lot of new investors aren't accounting for the possibility of that scenario.     James: Yeah. And I can bet you that none of the gurus out there teaching about key man insurance and D and D, and E and O insurance, which you just mentioned this now. Because I know a lot of gurus and even they do not know because they just do teaching, a lot of them.   Kathy: There's a lot that going on and it's kind of terrifying. On the one hand, I feel like wow, there could be a whole lot of really good deals in about five years, but I don't want to think that way.  I wish everyone success, if you're really young and you're following a guru, so to speak, who's telling you how easy it is, just make sure you have someone on your team who's a little seasoned, who's got a little gray hair; you don't want to jump into an airplane with two young guys. If you're going to jump into an airplane and you know that it's blue skies, okay, fine. A couple of inexperienced pilots might be okay, but if you know you're flying into a storm, don't you want that old guy?    Just know that we are in turbulent territory right now, this is not the beginning of an expansion, and this is the middle or the end. So it's, it's, it's different. It's not as easy. So it's, different, it's not as easy; there's clouds, there's potentially a storm coming. Get that person with experience, who knows how to ride through storms, to be a part of your team, whether they're on it in an advisory position or you give them a little bit of shares so that they're invested in it. But just get that wise person with experience to help guide you.  James: Yeah. It's, interesting on how much deal is being done at this peak market cycle. Actually, if you look at the latest data by Dr. Glenn Mueller, we are in hyper supply state nationwide for apartments, we already passed the expansion cycle.   Kathy: Really? Oh, I haven't heard that. You know, I hear so many different things, I've heard that we're over supplied in Seattle and maybe Dallas and New York. James: Yeah, I mean that is national data, national data and then there's another data which shows each cities and where they are. And if you look at a lot of cities, a lot of cities are in hyper supply stage And the last batch of cities, which is at the last part of expansion, there's like 10 different cities, which is the last part of expansion; so even that cities is going to go into hyper supply. So, that's the data that is being published, I think we are [29:03 inaudible] if I remember correctly, Dr. Glenn Mueller is like 50 or 30 years, who has been doing analyses, research, on all commercial real estate asset classes. I follow him closely and since last June, we already in hyper supply, nationally.    Kathy: That's terrifying but I guess there could be deals for you and me in about 2 or 3 years James: Well, I still have my properties, but I usually buy value, that way we can try to push income. So if you're buying at  low prices, we are pushing income so that we have buffers, so in case it turns down, hopefully, that buffer is not eaten up.  But there are a lot of people who are buying deals which doesn't have any buffer, there's no real value added component to it. They just buy because they're getting a good loan, cash flowing, there are a lot of investors who want to invest; and there are a lot of gurus out there also telling that there're still deals out there and people are just jumping, it's fear of missing out.  Is it a similar sentiment that you see in 2006, 2007?  Kathy: The thing that feels similar, is a whole bunch of people giving other people advice,  who don't have any experience and people with no money and no experience, doing deals; that's what scary. And lenders coming in and so much money, they'll just lend on just about anything, so that feels familiar. What's different is that there are fewer people who can afford a property; you really have to qualify, to live in a home. I don't see a single family housing collapse. In multifamily, there's just going to be rental demand for years to come. So it's really only the people who make bad decisions, who buy the wrong property, who don't calculate the repairs adequately or overestimate rent increases; those are the people who get hurt. They over leverage, anyone who over leverages that's concerning. or in ballooning short...  James:: Short term loans, Like bridge loans and all that, got it; so coming back to that insurance issue on the 92 units. So I'm trying to understand the root cause; I know we didn't get the right insurance, there's something were not covered. What was your insurance selection process in the beginning? Did someone recommend you to this insurance?  Kathy: I trusted my partner. I didn't have enough experience; everything I'm teaching is really from my own experience. I certainly didn't know how to look at a multifamily insurance policy and know that it was enough; I should have run it by an expert and I do that now on everything, we have experienced experts that look at it. But at the time I didn't know and  insurance companies are always going to take advantage when they can, so it's difficult to know what to look for; especially when you'd never in a million years expect something like that. If you're buying an older building, which many people are because they're doing the value adds, these are things that can happen. You have old pipes, the city ended up making us replace all the water lines, all the gas; it was, like having to build a whole new building. It was just a nightmare.    James: Yeah, and what kind of loan did you take? Was it an agency loan or was it a small bank loan kind of thing?    Kathy: Small bank, yeah…    James:   I recently had one of my buildings under fire. So, I did look at insurance in the beginning when we bought it, but there are so many details behind that policy coverage.    Kathy: Yeah, how could you know? No you can't   James: I didn't know, until the fire happened when I was talking to the adjuster, he said, oh the good thing is I have really good solid insurance.  But the amount of details in terms of coverage, it's just shocks me, that so many things that cannot be covered if we don't get it.   And in multifamily, just for the listeners education, the insurance is one thing that people can play around with, you can't play around with taxes because taxes by  the county and all the expenses is pretty small. Payroll is something it's a bit hard for you to control; you need good staff to run the property. So you have to budget it properly, taxes, you have to budget properly. But the insurance is, yeah you can pick around here and there; get slightly lower premium and that contributes to your LTV; which is how much loan they're going to give or how much loan proceeds. So, sometimes it's very tempting to do deals to get higher proceed by compromising insurance. And insurance is one thing that always comes at the end of the whole loan commitment process.  Let's say you're closing in two weeks, the bank is going to give you a loan commitment and insurance is the last one that comes, as the final price. And if the insurance agent messed up or if the syndicators or the sponsor messed up, in estimating that amount; the deal can fall through at the end. So what happened is people, there's a lot of possibility that people take shortcuts in insurance because they didn't want to deal to fall through, so it’s crazy.  Kathy:  It is just so important to have good insurance.  I have a friend who is a big fund manager, a multimillion dollar fund and he's savvy,  very smart investor and he owned a bunch of buildings, commercial buildings, I believe apartments in Houston before the floods. I don't know if you know this, but if your insurance doesn't specifically say it covers named storms, and of course what hurricane doesn't have a name, if that's not specified, then it's not covered. And he did not have, I don't know specifically, but he was not covered in that storm. Which again is, an insurance company is going to do what’s best for them? So make sure you've got an attorney who specializes. I've got a neighbor who that’s his job; He’s a specialist in making sure your insurance is what you think it is, because it would be just so easy to change one little word. James: That's interesting, I didn't know that. Good thing I don't have anything in Houston, but it can happen anyway, whole Texas.. So, did you try to hire a public adjuster and tried to fight for you and they gave up on it just because it's not covered?  Kathy: We hired an attorney to help us find it and it didn't get anywhere. I think we got money for the vandalism, but even that, you have to make sure when you have a vacant building, whether it's a single family or multifamily, you have to make sure your insurance company is aware of that and there's a different policy for that. So, there's just a lot to understand, when managing these properties. But, now I know what it's like to manage other people's money and be in a situation like that; I couldn't sleep for years.  I think you could probably hear me on the balcony crying. I would have investor calls where I would just burst out in tears halfway through and these lovely people just worked with me through it, because they knew it wasn't my fault; but I will never go through that again, that's the worst feeling, it's terrible.    Nobody sued me, but they could have maybe, I don't know. They've been very understanding. But today when I do syndications, we eliminate as many risks as is possible. One of them is we do a lot of building subdivisions and it was really the builders and developers who got wiped out in the last downturn. Because a few banks just failed, they couldn't pay their construction loans; even if you had $20 million construction loan to finish your project that was gone. So, you literally couldn't finish your project, so builders just went out of business left and right, and land became dirt cheap, cheap as the dirt that it was on. We were able to buy a lot of that land because I was just getting into syndications back in 2010, we bought some incredible land; 4,200 lots in Tampa for a 10 cents on the dollar and things like that.  But we didn't want to be on the other side of that this time around. So the way that we have handled all of our developments is we raise all the money, believe it or not, we raise all the money to acquire the land, and title it, get a horizontal construction, the utilities, the roads and everything and build the first phase. We raise all the money for that, we don't take any bank financing because we do not want to get stuck in that situation; which again, took down the biggest of builders. National builders went down because of their loans, because they're financing. So we just own it with cash, we take all the money from the first phase, use that to build the second phase and our investors get a nice 15% preferred return in a situation where there's no leverage.    Now I love leverage, I love leverage. And it's different on a multifamily and certainly on one to four units; I’m all about leverage. Just make sure that it's the kind of leverage that you could live with. On a single family home, just make sure, again, you've got the right insurance on that property too. I do know somebody who owned a single family home in Houston, didn't have that named insurance, their house flooded and insurance didn't cover it. So even for a single family up to a big multifamily, you really need advice on your insurance.     James: Interesting,  I just learned something new, that construction loan and how the builders, because we always wonder how did the building not happen. So now it makes sense because the construction loan, the bank doesn't have the money and they just said, no more, already done.    Kathy: You're done. You had everything you need, it all lined up. But even people who had their money in the bank, they couldn't access it. For a lot of people our equity lines, they were just gone. In 2009, I had a developer come to me with somebody who actually listens to the real wealth show and he said, you're just not going to believe the kinds of things I can pick up from the banks, from the REO departments. And these asset managers don't know what they've got; they don't know how to value it. But there were these subdivisions one after another that literally could not be completed because the loans were gone. And I didn't know that I could raise money, but I tried it and we raised $3 million dollars in one event. And we were able to buy 27 waterfront town homes in Portland, in the Pearl district, the hottest part of Portland. They were 70% complete, they were totally built; the only thing that wasn't done was the interior. All we had to do is put in the kitchens and the bedrooms and the carpets and finish it off; and, so we were able to buy it for $3 million, all 27 units, when the loan alone had been 13 million. And then we just finished them off because the builder couldn't do it.  James: That's the opportunity you get in the downturn I guess, if you've got the cash and you know how to do it kind of thing, very Interesting. So, let's go to a more personal side, Cathy because you have a big network of investors and you have a big presence on the radio and also on the podcast side of it. So why do you what you do? I mean, what's your big why in your whole venture?  Kathy: That's a great question. It started out more self focused. My husband was told in 2003 that he had melanoma, that it had spread, and the doctor thought it spread to his liver and metastasize and told my husband he had six months to live. No one should put a timeline on your life and the doctor was wrong, and Rich is fine today. However, 16 years later, he is fine. Although he gets regular checks, make sure his skin is okay because he's a surfer and a rock climber; and he's still out there in the sun. So in the beginning it was like, I got to figure out how to make money. I don't believe the doctor is right but if he is, I've got two kids, I've got a house, I've got to figure this out. So I just changed my radio show to, how to make money. So in the beginning it was a passionate desire to take care of my husband and my children and learn the secrets of the wealthy and that's how the real wealth show started.  Then when I learned the secrets, and found out that people are willing to share them, people like Robert Kiyosaki, he was willing to come on my show and tell me his secrets; that's how we ended up investing in Texas.  I just couldn't believe what I was hearing; I just couldn't believe that there was this way to build wealth that no one had told me.  I just couldn't believe it and all the ins and outs of how to get loans and how to clean up your credit and the tax benefits and the leverage; there’s no other way to build wealth. I just couldn't believe it.   So it opened my eyes, gave me hope. We followed, we made mistakes, but even with mistakes and even with losing our money and other people's money in the beginning, we got back up on our feet and it works. And now when I help people, I see, I have people who've been following me since then. And I just had someone on my show last week who said, I did everything you said and I'm retired now, it worked, it worked; 10 years later. So I know it works and  so I'm passionate about helping other people who were in the same situation I was in, which was absolute terror. How was I going to take on the payments of our big house and raise these two little children as a single mother, if the doctor was right? We blew through our medical bills. What was I going to do? I wasn't going to go get a job and be away from my kids for 10 hours a day. So to learn the secrets of the wealthy, to learn passive income and to be able to share that with other people and see their light bulbs go on and like, oh my gosh, this is incredible, how is this possible?  I don't know, I don't know why we're not taught it in school? That’s my why.  James: Yeah. I realized with my first single family, when I start getting that monthly cash, [44:07 inaudible] actually, this really works.  Kathy: It works, it works. James: Yeah. Somebody else paying for your mortgage and cash flows and you buy it right, all kinds of things, it definitely works. It's amazing. Correct.    Kathy: I got my daughter, when she was 24; she got a job right out of college, worked for two years, was making pretty good money. She lived in Chico, which is northern California, and  you know the  home prices there aren't totally inflated like they are today, but they weren't two years ago when she bought. She's only 24 years old, and she came to me and said, hey mom, I'm going to buy a new car. I said, no, no; before you buy a car, because that's going to affect your debt to income ratios, let's just talk about buying a house. Oh Mom, I'm too young, I'm too young to buy a house. I'm like; do you know who your mother is? We need to talk. So we went to a mortgage broker and sure enough, she could qualify for a house up to $300,000; she was blown away.    It turns out that her payment was less than what she was paying in rent for a two bedroom; she could get a three bedroom. So we went house shopping, she found a house that needed a little bit of work, so she got a good deal on it right across from Bidwell Park, amazing location. And then when she bought it, she realized there was a lot of work and then she got real mad at me for about six months. She's like, mom, I'm 24 I'm too young for all this, I don't want to be settled down, I'm a millennial. I'm not supposed to be settling down, it’s too much, I hate this house. I said, honey, just trust me.  Well then the fires happened, right? And Paradise got completely wiped out an entire city, suddenly. She had put her house on Airbnb to rent out a couple of rooms on certain holidays and so forth. All of a sudden her Airbnb app was just blowing up with people saying, I'll pay $4,000 a month for your place. And her rent is $1,600, not her rent, her mortgage, PITI, taxes and insurance, $1,400 and she was getting people willing to rent for 4,000. So she took that offer, she rented it to a very nice family who lost their home and she went cash flowing incredibly. And she's like, I get it now, mom, this is better than a car, I get it.    James: And she can buy a car with that money, right? And be comfortable paying for it too.   Kathy: That's right, she can buy a car.   James: Can you name a few of your secret sauces that you have grown this big, in terms of popularity and getting known by people? What's your secret sauce? Kathy: You know, everybody has their thing. I happen to love broadcasting, that's my background. I went to school in broadcasting, so radio and podcasts that was just something I love to do.  I love to write, I love to educate, so I just followed my passion.  I know a lot of people want to start podcasts right; maybe they're not suited for that. For me, it was just passion and bullishness and desire to learn. And I think because I was on a major San Francisco station, I got invited to speak at a lot of [47:29 inaudible] before I knew anything about the business. It was terrible; I'd stand in front of the room, I don't know what I'm talking about. But that's when I realized, a lot of people don't know what they're talking about.  So I just made it my mission to understand and to read as many books and to truly become an expert because I started to see that people who were being treated as experts, really weren't, and that was upsetting because they were guiding people in the wrong direction. So I guess you could say that's part of what... another thing is, I'm just really bullish. If I want to go to an event and I don't want to pay $2,000 for it, I'll just call and ask if I could be a speaker and a lot of times they'll say yes; sometimes it was just for personal reasons.  James: Okay, that's interesting. When I hear you on your podcast, it's like a newscaster, like Fox or CNN, you know? Its like, is that Kathy? Oh, it sounds really good. You have a really good voice and a presence on the radio and podcasts, that's awesome. Is there any proud moments in your life that you think it's going to be with you until the end? Do you think, I am very proud of this moment, related to business? Kathy: Related to business? Wow, there's been a few.  I would say it's our ability to raise money.  I'll tell you one, a developer that we love came to us and said he'd been working on entitlements on this land for 10 years; it had been very difficult to get the entitlements, but he wouldn't bring us in, until he had them. Which was great and we wouldn't do the deal until he had them. Well, he got them, but he was in a hard money loan because it took so long. It was actually a friend of his, lent him the money for six months and he was at the five month mark, and he thought his friend would extend it and his friend said, no. The loan was for 4 million, the property was worth 9 million. So this friend lent the money for six months, knowing that he would probably foreclose and take the 4 or 5 million in equity, from his friend. So he came to us and said, I just can't believe he's doing this, can you raise the money in a month? And I said, I don't know? So we did, we did an event, we raised the money, we paid off that hard money loan the day it was due. And that guy already had come to the property telling everybody he was their new boss.  James: Wow. So he was really wanting to take it, I guess  Kathy: He was a shark, yeah. And so to be able to come in and save this developer, because we had built a network of people who are willing to write a check so quickly, it really meant a lot. He invited us to a dinner once we closed and he had 50 employees there, all who would have lost their jobs, if we hadn't been able to do that. So, I would say that was a moment that I was very proud of; and our investors are going to be the ones who benefit from all that equity, not this guy who is just a shark.  James: Got It. That's very interesting. I can't resist asking you one question because you raise a lot of money from investors. So, who would you invest with? What kind of sponsor or syndicator that you would look for? What are their characteristics? You don't have to have no names, but what are the character types or characteristic that you would look for, if you want to invest. Because you have seen the whole gamut of our real estate cycle and what people do and all that.   Kathy: Well,  and I am investing in other people's deals. What I look for is kind of what I told you. Track record, experience, a deal that favors, I don't want to say favors the investor, but is very fair, investor friendly. I don't like seeing deals where they're fees here  and fees there, so you get a piece of the profit, but there's no profit at the end because they've charged so many fees along the way, there's nothing for you. So just investor friendly projects, but mainly it would be people with a tremendous track record and who has been through several cycles, at least someone on the team has several decades of experience. At this point, I think a lot of people are looking for cash flow, though a lot of our deals have been development, it's not cash flow, we just get a big check at the end once the project's done. But the ongoing cash flow, there’s only a few that really know how to keep that cash flow going in any kind of cycle. So those are the people for my retirement that I would want to be investing with.  James: Okay, awesome. All right, Kathy thanks for coming on the show. Can you tell the listeners how to get hold of you?  Kathy: Sure. You can go to Real Wealth Network. Real as in real estate, wealth as in your money and network as the network we have nationwide; Real Wealth Network.com. You can join for free and it just opens up all these portals in our website. It gives you data on different cities, where the job growth is, the demographics; you get a session with one of our investment counselors and ongoing education. It's all for free@ realwealthnetwork.com And then of course, my podcast, Real Wealth Show.  James: Awesome. It's really nice to have you on the show and I'm sure you add tons of value, so happy to have you here.  Kathy: Thank you so much.    James: Thank you.    Kathy: Take care. Bye.

Kathy Koontz is the Executive Director of the Analytics Leadership Consortium at the International Institute for Analytics and my guest for today’s episode. The International Institute of Analytics is a research and advisory firm that discusses the latest trends and the best practices within the analytics field.  We touch on how these strategies are used to build accurate and useful custom data products for businesses. Kathy breaks down the steps of making analytics more accessible, especially since data products and analytics applications are more frequently being utilized by front-line workers and not PhDs and analytics experts. She uses her experience with a large property and casualty insurance company to illustrate her point about shifting your company’s approach to analytics to make it more accessible. Small adjustments to a data application make the process effective and comprehensible. Kathy brings some great insights to today’s show about incorporating analytic techniques and user feedback to get the most value from your analytics and the data products you build for the information. Conversation highlights: What is The International Institution of Analytics? What is the analytics leadership consortium? The “squishy” parts of analytics and how to compensate for them. The real value of analytics and how to use it on all levels of a company. How beta testers give perspective on data. The 3 steps to finding the ideal beta tester. Learning from the feedback and implementing it. How to keep ROI in mind during your project. Kathy’s parting advice for the audience. Resources and Links: The International Institute of Analytics Kathy Koontz on LinkedIn Surf Camps Thank you for joining us for today’s episode of Experiencing Data. Keep coming back for more episodes with great conversations about the world of analytics and data. Quotes from today’s episode: “Oftentimes data scientists see the world through data and algorithms and predictions and they get enamored with the complexity of the model and the strength of its predictions and not so much with how easy it is for somebody to use it.” — Kathy Koontz “You are not fully deployed until after you have received this [user] feedback and implemented the needed changes in the application.” — Kathy Koontz “Analytics especially being deployed pervasively is maybe not a project but more of a transformation program.” — Kathy Koontz “Go out and watch your user group that you want to utilize this data or this analytics to improve the performance.” — Kathy Koontz “Obviously, it’s always cheaper to adjust things in pixels, and pencils than it is to adjust it in working code.” — Kathy Koo Transcript Brian: I’m excited to have Kathy Koontz of the line. She is the Executive Director of the Analytics Leadership Consortium at the International Institute for Analytics. That’s quite a mouthful. Did I get that totally right? Kathy: Yeah. You did. I tell people, “Yes, it is a real job.” Yeah, you got it right, you nailed it. Brian: Tell our listeners, what does that mean? What do you do? Kathy: The International Institute for Analytics is an organization that was founded by Tom Davenport, one of the early readers and using analytics for business performance. We are research and advisory firm that helps companies realize value from analytics. Brian: How do you work with them in your leadership capacity there? What’s your specific role there? Kathy: I lead the product line that’s called the Analytics Leadership Consortium. What that is, is a group of analytics executives from different companies who are in non-competing industries that meet of a regular basis to better understand trends and best practices in analytics to vet ideas with one another and ensure that they’re doing the best that they can to deliver analytics value for their organization. A really great opportunity for leaders in this field of analytics that’s changing a lot and has a lot of emerging practices, have regular time to get together in a confidential setting to understand what’s working and what’s not, and how they can improve analytic values for their company. Brian: You mentioned trends, I obviously try to stay on top of what’s going on in that industry and that’s actually how I came across you, originally, I think was you guys had put on a webinar on five trends and analytics going on right now. At the end of that, you had mentioned that one of the things that’s starting to change now is the importance of design and user experience as we move beyond designing reports which is one of the most difficult deliverables, so to speak, of analytics—as we move into the user experience it’s becoming more important. That’s what I was like, “Oh, this could be really interesting to hear what you have to say about what’s changing. Why is UX now relevant? How is capital D design relevant to the world of analytics?” that’s what I was curious to learn about. Can you talk about that a little bit? Kathy: I think as analytics mature in organizations, the need for design is what’s going to drive adoption and utilization of those analytics. In companies that are just starting their analytics journey, it’s a little bit easier to realize analytic value by doing a couple of really big data science projects that don’t really require a lot of design thinking. It’s a powerpoint to an executive group that has some higher level of organizational level thinking that the executive lean in, understand the analytics, understand the value of making their decisions in line with the analytics and then move on and do their regular roles. But as the organizations try to make analytics more pervasive, particularly into front-line associates or individual contributors who are really using analytics to make a lot of small decisions within the execution of their work or as they try to integrate analytics into processes that are monitored, that design thinking taking an approach as user experience, can really break down a lot of barriers that organizations encounter when trying to have people who are not necessarily used to using analytics in their decision-making process, use them so that they can make a better decision for the organization. Brian: Got it. Is the trend that people are recognizing the problem because they went through some pain of maybe they delivered some big multimillion dollar platform, and like you said the front line associates didn’t use it. As I always use the example, it’s like, “They’re out driving a truck. They don’t have a laptop. They’re not going to go download a report and change the columns or whatever.” It’s like the wrong mechanism, you didn’t fit it into their job; you try to get them to change their job to accommodate your tool. Is the awareness because they went through a failure or is it like, “We already know this isn’t going to work if we don’t get the UX right,” just because companies are a little bit more design aware these days? What drove that to change? Why is it now? Kathy: I think there’s two things. First of all, they’ve failed, they invested millions of dollars in some sort of decision-support sort of application that may have millions of dollars and data integration work that we’ve done to build it and purchased a lot of really advanced software that can help users slice and dice the data and dive in and understand it. But they really took more of a data-centric approach rather than user-centric approach. They really didn’t take that extra step to say, “How does this person go through their normal day in their decision making. Where do they need this information in that decision making, and how should it be best presented so that they don’t have to do any cognitive task switching, that it just fits into how they go about making the decisions.” I think those failures are one big driver. But then I also think as organizations move up the analytics maturity curve and move from BI reports to predictive analytics to prescriptive analytics. Those prescriptive analytics are going to be much more pervasive across the organization. I think it’s this analytics maturity that’s also driving this need to put more design thinking into this creation of analytic products. Brian: Do you have any specific examples of a company that may have like, “Version one was X, and we didn’t get what we wanted. Version Y or X.2—we then went back and tried to fit this in better with that employee, and we saw some kind of change of result.” Can you cite any examples of how design allowed the data to actually be insightful and create a meaningful change? Kathy: One was a project that I was involved in at a large property and casualty insurance company. We were trying to alert our franchise insurance agents if they had somebody in their book of business who was likely to not renew. It was based on really good data science and model scores with different, clear […] that showed significant likelihood to a trait between them. It was originally deployed in a separate application with some general groupings of how likely they were to leave. The utilization of it was more of a curiosity at that point. There were some adopters, but not as broad as it would be hoped to really be able to substantially move the needle on this. As the design was redone and integrated into their overall CRM system—was legit on their CRM system that came up when they logged in in the morning, they didn’t have to go look to see, it was there for them. As we moved from groupings and scores, into one star to five stars, five star is they’re likely to go–you really need to work those. So just very simple little changes that drove a significant change in the utilization of that capability. Brian: Do you know what the blockers were such that it took a redesign? If someone was listening to this and they’re like, “I’m that person right now. We don’t want to go through the learning experience that your company went through.” What do you do to prevent that? Like, “Here are some roadblocks to watch out for.” Kathy: The thing is, these products are usually developed by folks within a data science group. We have the data, and we know this is a business problem, and we’ve done the analytics. That is expected but not sufficient. Then the next step is to really use just basic research techniques from consumer companies. Go out and watch your user group that you want to utilize this data or this analytics to improve the performance. See how they do their job, what tools do they use, where would this information be most relevant, how can it be presented in the context of their general activities, where it’s not a separate thing, where it’s integrated into the stuff that shows up of their performance evaluation. That’s the way to really avoid some of the deployments that may have really great data and science behind them, but don’t get user adoption that’s needed. Just take that extra step and really understanding the user and where this information is going to be most relevant for them. Brian: Do you think the appetite from executives and people that are at the top of the reporting chain for these things support the time and the effort to go out and do that type of research or to try to fit it in and not so much focus on “When are we releasing code? Show me some progress.” They want to see a glee. “Just show me some proof that these millions of dollars is doing something,” versus this kind of squishy. It can be squishy—at least in my experience with certain executives, especially qualitative stuff. “How many people did you talk to?” It’s like, “Oh, we talked to eight so far.” It’s like, “We have 10,000 employees.” It’s hard for certain ones to understand the value of qualitative research in these things. Do you have any experience or thoughts about that? Kathy: It can be squishy, but I think really analytics especially being deployed pervasively is maybe not a project but more of a transformation program and you have to take the transformation program perspective to it which includes such squishy things that change management and business process redesigned. Somebody using those analytics within their decision-making process is really where the organization gets value from. That code that gets released and deployed, it is an interim step. But it is not the final step to that organization getting value, maybe you’re just a data scientist of the company, trying to deploy a great app that could help a group of marketing folks better invest marketing, or supply chain folks better manage costs to suppliers. It doesn’t have to be this big concerted professional effort. One way to do that in a very agile, low-cost way is to find a couple of folks that seem to really jazzed about getting this and use them as some beta testers. Maybe you start out with just the information on a spreadsheet and say, “Hey, does this make sense just from this information that you would use?” And then have them walk you through, “Where would you use this information? How would it be best presented to you?” And then think about working within the constraints that you have of maybe you can’t change the screen for this digital marketing […] that somebody uses, but how can you make that information as accessible as possible, where it really is more of a push of information at the right time, as opposed to pull of information that a human being has to remember to go get when they’re in the process of executing their “day job”. Brian: You hit on some great stuff there. I talk about this to my list frequently which is understanding tasks and workflows and people’s day-to-day jobs that the goal is to fit your solution into their existing behavior as much as possible. It’s really hard to change behavior. “Oh, I got to go remember not to load this other screen and pull out those number of page two and paste this into the other screen and then hit enter and then it does some analytics.” These are the kind of stuff why people don’t bother to do it. It’s like, “Well, my guess is good enough. I’ve been doing this for 20 years. I’m this good. Whatever. No one’s going to know if I did that or not. They don’t know where that number came from.” They don’t want to do that. First of all, it’s to understand their pain, and then another good technique there is if you’re going to improve a process and we want people to use this tool in order to realize this new value, first of all, understand that benchmark of what their existing workflow, their playbook is and then ask them to do the same playbook using the new platform. This is a great way to uncover the things that you don’t know to ask about necessarily because if you first get that model of how they do it now, it’ll help elucidate those gaps that we can’t see. I just read an article, there is an example like, “Let’s imagine designing a new hotel room.” and you might take for granted that that hotel room has a bathroom. […] is talking about this. You’d be really surprised if you walked in and there was no bathroom because no one stated that was a requirement, and because everyone just took it for granted. It’s those kinds of things that you won’t see as a data scientist or product manager, perhaps because you don’t know what these front-line workers are necessarily doing all day. But I love that you talked about getting into the minds of what people are doing and fitting your solution into them. One problem I see is that in some places, it’s really hard to get access to customers. I think sometimes, this is more on enterprise companies that are selling a product that has a data-specific part of it, it can be hard to access them. You would think companies doing internal analytics that this would be easier. Do you think that comes from leadership? Do think that comes from the ground up? Any comments on how do you get access to the right people? What if they’re not being like, “Hey, I’m a call center. I get paid hourly by the number of calls I do, and you want me to go work on your new software?” How do you incentivize that so that they become a design partner which ultimately, is really where you want to go is to have a team of partners from subject matter experts, and product managers, the data science people, whoever it is that is going to affect the solution that comes out. What needs to change in order to incentivize that participation? It takes time to get these things right. Kathy: Yeah, for sure. We see that a lot just because as you noted, the breath of the organization or the different incentives and priorities that other groups might have. I hear companies all the time, senior leaders, we are going to be an analytics competitor, we’re going to do analytics. They think if they hire 200 Ph.D., data scientists that they are now an analytics company. I do think you’ve got to have somebody at a leadership role at least over the data science group say, “Look, this company gets value from this when we are making better decisions because of this analytics.” And those better decisions are going to come from people accessing the analytics. When they’re in their decision-making process, and really working more leader-to-leader. But that can’t be where it stops. You’ve got to create a peer relationship that all levels, number one. And then number two, if you get the leadership of the other group engaged early on—as this is a problem that they feel they have ownership in and that they are a co-creator with you, and starts at the leader level, and then works its way down—then, I think you’re going to have greater access and more ability to do that. Finally, in the absence of that, if you don’t get it right, then I would at least, as you’re deploying the new app, say, “Our next step is to watch the staff members use it and identify how to better integrate it.” So that at least you’re showing some leadership in your thinking that, “I know this is going to be a problem because I didn’t have access to them. I’m already teeing it up.” We’re going to have to come back and see how people are using it and how we can utilize some user experience and design thinking in the subsequent phase after […] is reached. Brian: Sure, sure. I think some of my clients in the past, they have to go through a failure first in order to decide that they don’t want to do it. We don’t want to do the build-first, design-second, process on the next one. There’s a certain level of convincing that can happen, and then at some point, you got to move forward because typically, IT or the business, they have been tasked with, “Deploy this new model and this software into the survey,” and they’re going to do that no matter what. They’re not going to stop and wait for design if that organization doesn’t have a matured design practice. So you might have to go through that. I would say, obviously, it’s always cheaper to adjust things in pixels, and pencils than it is to adjust it in working code. The more you can get in front of these decisions, and then form the engineering and the data science prior to deploying a large application, it’s a lot cheaper, and it’s a lot easier, and you don’t have all the change costs associated with that, both time, money, labor. No one likes to do it twice, most people want to work on new problems, they don’t want to redo the same ones. Engineers usually don’t like doing this, so getting in front of it is good. Kathy: I think what you’re touching on there is, maybe if you haven’t done your user design work, then you think about this release as a beta release. You plan this release, and you plan this app, and you manage your code knowing it’s going to change at some point, and knowing it’s going to change at some point, and knowing it’s going to change soon. The second thing is, key point is to decouple the analytics insight from the application. There is an analytic insight, whether it’s a number, or a recommendation, or some score, or something, is it is just loosely coupled to the delivery mechanism than it is easier from a code engineering perspective to have to it delivered in a different way. Brian: Right. No, that’s great. A part of that is that the attitude and culture of change and not falling in love with our first versions of stuff. To me, that has to be ingrained in both the engineering–all of the teams that are touching the product that the service that’s being put out there. A lot of companies say they’re doing agile. A lot of them are skipping one of the most important parts which is getting some customer representation involved, and actually, iterating and not just doing incremental design where you keep adding more, “Add another feature, add another data point,” that’s incremental design, that’s not iterating and changing as you get feedback. That’s something to watch out for as well. At some point, you need to get some stuff out there, and it costs to have come down obviously, to deploy software. It’s overall cheaper to get something out there quickly and to start getting feedback of it, but it’s very easy to no get the feedback and to let the working code feel like success. Until someone at the top is like, “Where is all the bang we’re supposed to get for this?” Kathy: I think the approach there is, get it deployed, so that’s great; it’s out there, and it’s working. But again, build into your deployment plan, use your feedback, and change from there. If you are not fully deployed, until after you have received this feedback and implemented the needed changes within the application, then I think that’s another way to prevent that falling in love with your first design. You know that this is just deployed so that people can use it, and that getting user feedback and making those needed changes is an expected part of the deployment process and is not a failure that the application was not sufficient. Brian: I think that should be part of any software development process to have a loop of test design, refine, deploy in the circle. For the most part, for larger applications, you’re never really done with it. It’s a process of getting better and figuring out the ROI like, “Have we hit the market? Is it worth spending more time and money on this?” but yeah, those are great insights. I’m curious in terms of the roles, I feel like someone that’s at the top of the responsibility chain here needs to have a healthy dose of skepticism about their own stuff, especially when it comes to prescriptive and predictive analytics or any service where it’s custom software they’re deploying into the organization have a healthy dose of skepticism about how great it really is. Maybe you deployed on time, bug-free, you can see the stats and all of these. But is that responsibility primarily falling into the data science realm because companies are investing in that area right now and so they become the de facto, what we would call a product manager more in the SaaS world? Did they become that and is that the right place for that responsibility to be? Kathy: I see that happen really, not necessarily through design and intention. But just because if a data scientist wants to take this great science that he’s discovered and make it accessible, in a lot of organization they have to do it, and so it’s put upon them when they’re probably not well prepared for that. I do think that that’s the problem. And then as a lot of different tool and capabilities make it easier for data scientist to deploy an application, if there’s not a really good user design construct within whatever application they’re deploying, in their data science application, then they need to be the one to take the extra step. As I said earlier, often times, the data scientist sees the world through data and algorithms and prediction. They get enamored with the complexity of the model and the strength of its prediction and not so much with how easy it is for somebody to use it. I think that’s probably a reorientation with training that should happen within data science groups around design,  best practices, and user experience design. They’re not going to evolve into great user experience designers, but they are going to be able to recognize something that’s really bad and perhaps ask for help and guide to make it better. Brian: Do you think that’ll stick then that that role will continue to live there? This person that needs to understand the business value that needs to be obtained, the user experience side of it and the technology side is trifecta there. Do you think that’ll stay in that data science world? Kathy: I don’t think so. I do think there will be a separation between the data application design and the creation of the data science that informs that […] in that application. I think as we talked about as some of these companies get more companies get more mature and need to have more pervasive deployment of data science insights, they are going to realize that they need to take a different approach. I often said that between data and analytics, I see the industry mature along the lines of software development. That design focus was not a big part of software development early on. I think it’s just going to have to happen within data science. Brian: I look at it this way, product owners can take many different titles. I have had all kinds of different clients, but ultimately, the box stops with everybody that’s working on it. But it helps to have someone that’s at that intersection of, “What do we need to do? What’s the overall picture of this?” and they understand the tech, the business, and the user experience side. Whatever the title of that person is, that role to me is really critical so that technology doesn’t run with everything. You have to have all three of those ingredients to deploy successfully, at least in my experience. It seems like that’s pretty critical to have that. Kathy: Yeah, for sure. A number of organizations that ask us about how do we show the value of our data science investments, how do we demonstrate our data science ROI. I think if more data science groups really looked at how their data science products were being consumed and started quantifying those, and then using some of the business metrics that are involved with that business process, whether it’s optimizing a spend or reducing average handle time at the call center, that would give them a great task to be able to validate their ROI to the organization, but I don’t see a lot of data science groups doing that. Brian: I’m curious, who ask that question? Is that the data scientist themselves or is it the business stakeholder who’s hiring the data scientist? What role asks that? Kathy: Usually, it’s a data science leader who has a large organization in large enterprise organizations. If you have a large organization with a lot of expensive resources, there is that continuing need to show the value that this organization brings to the overall company, especially when the output of that organization is not well understood or has not then a traditional part of that company. A lot of senior executives, C-Suite executives at large organizations, didn’t have data science when they were coming up through the ranks. This is something new that they don’t really understand, they know how much money they spend on it. A lot of data science organizations will need to demonstrate, “Here’s the hardline benefit that this company has gotten for investing in data science capabilities.” Brian: This blends nicely into my next question which is about obviously, AI, and machine learning are hot topics right now in technology. I hear this from people I talk to frequently which is, “Oh, the board knows we’re supposed to be doing some AI.” They’re asking me, “How many sensors do we have installed? Do we have digital transformation?” they ask these really high-end questions, and they want to go spend some money on it because they’re so afraid they’re going to miss the boat on that. From a design standpoint, we would say, “That smell, it reeks of possibly putting a cart before the horse.” The tool comes out, “We got to go buy this hammer because everyone else is buying this hammer. We have no idea what you hit with it, but we got to have it. We got to go spend some money on it.” How do you ensure that you don’t waste money? You want to invest in this. You don’t want to miss the boat. Maybe there’s potential for a project to deploy machine learning. It’s just pretty much what a lot of these companies are doing in terms of AI right now. How do you make sure that the desired investment from the business is actually going to have some ROI? They have heard this tool is hot. Kathy: It’s what I call the hype cycle mandate. Whatever is the new thing, it was a big data, it was AI and machine learning, with data sciences right, we have to have them, we have to tell the board we’re doing this. I think that is where executives earn their money, is being able to manage the message to the senior leaders who may not understand what’s needed and how you use it so that they can say, “Yes, we’re using it.” But the leadership than the executive leadership or the ones who has to go out and figure out where are the business problems and what is actually needed within our operating environment and our company to really deliver value from this capability. I will say, oftentimes, I see executives making the right call in that way. I have seen cases where folks have gone out and bought a lot of a software, and hardware and stuff that they have no idea of how they’re going to use, and that’s the shame. Brian: Do you think the right step there is to take on a small project, find a small win, show a small value and you can at least satisfy the, “Are we doing something?” “Yes, we’re doing some machine learning or whatever.” Do you think that’s the way it starts? Kathy: I am big just in any data […] investment, a big fan of used case-based development. Come up with a used case that requires this type of capability to execute it at the scale and precision that’s needed and then do some pilots to prove out the value, show the value, and then that then builds up a business case for the larger deployment that way. Yeah, I totally agree with that, Brian. Start with a used case, start small, understand, have an eye towards scaling as you start small, but get a small win, show that you’ve done it, the CEO can, in all honesty, say, “Yeah, we’re doing machine learning, and we’re going about it in a way that is physically sound but will also put us in a position to be able to compete with this capability in a quick amount of time.” Brian: That’s great. I think that I don’t know if I’ve said it, but this concept of falling in love with the problem and if you and your team, the people I work for you, or whoever it may be can fall in love with the problem and then weaponize your machine learning against that. That’s always a great thing, it’s to get everyone jazzed about the problem so that you know, especially if you can line it up with that technology not that the goal is to do that, but that’s when big wins happen to me, at least in my experience. This have been awesome. Do you have any advice, overall what will we talk about in terms of data product managers, data science managers, data science leaders, analytics leaders in terms of design, experience, what they should be looking for, going forward and just, in general, bringing more value to the customers. Is there a theme or something on your mind right now that needs to get mitigated to them? Kathy: My theme is a data science is about big complex data and a lot of technology and really advanced math, but they’re still human beings who have to use it. Don’t forget the humans. Focus in of how great this data set is that you created or how advanced this analytics technique that you’re using, but remember, the humans are your last line to realizing value from all of the stuff you’ve done before. Make sure you keep them in mind as you go through all of those other stuff as well. Brian: I think that’s great advice. And it sucks, those pesky humans. Kathy: I know, I know! They just get in the way of all those greatness! Brian: This is awesome. I have one last question for you and that’s have you ever surfed on a river? Kathy: I have not. Brian: I’m just curious. That came up in the webinar. I just saw this article on The Times about river surfing and I’m like, “I got to ask Kathy about this.” Kathy: Yeah. I’ve seen a lot of videos around that. I think it’s like this bore tide where the tidal action creates like this perfect wave that you can surf like forever. There’s some really good videos of folks doing that down in Brazil with some of the rivers that are draining out into the Amazon and other rivers that are draining out. It looks really awesome, but there’s this surf ranch in California that has this man-made wave. Kelly Slater, I think worked to create the engineering for this technology. That’s exactly what it looks like for those river-bore waves. But I’ve seen actually somebody in Munich surfing one of those […]. It’s on my bucket list, Brian. Brian: Sweet. I’m going to put a link to the surf camp, but where can we put some links to you? Where can people find you on the interwebs? Kathy: You can find me on LinkedIn, I am, Kathy Koontz. You can also find me at the International Institute for Analytics, it’s iianalytics.com, that’s our website. My LinkedIn name is customerjourneykoontz because that’s always been my passion is using data and analytics for customer journey. That’s where you can find me on LinkedIn. Brian: Cool. I will put those links in the show notes. This was super awesome. Thanks for coming and talking to me today. I’m sure people are going to enjoy listening to this. Thank you. Kathy: Thanks for having me, Brian. Have a good day. Brian: Alright, see you.

A reactive dog can be a heartbreaking situation for someone who has big goals. Especially when that dog is supposed to be an agility superstar and ends up biting someone out of fear. What do you do when something serious happens? How do you turn that around? Cindy joins Kathy on this episode of Enlightened By Dogs to share Lyric’s story of trust, and triumph!   In This Episode A dream that turned into a reactive nightmare When all of the typical things don’t work, what am I supposed to do? Revisiting the baby steps and building trust Taking the pressure off and getting into the ring Advice for new dog lovers and trainers, and the impact of a strong relationship   “All my hopes and dreams were going down the drain” - Cindy “I was trying so hard to help her and I couldn’t help her” - Cindy “We have to work really hard at forgiving ourselves” - Kathy “The trust comes when your dog knows that you understand them” - Kathy “No matter how positive the reinforcement is, it’s still pressure” - Kathy “It’s a way of life rather than a training program” - Cindy “We can’t fix anybody else but we can certainly control how we react to things and how we approach things” - Cindy “You gotta let go and trust your feelings” - Cindy Register for Kathy’s free Brilliant Partners Workshop!   Dog Behaviour Breakthrough: A Relationship Revolution http://dancinghearts.link/bpaworkshop