Podcasts about katie how

 It's a new year! But you are anxious about facing another year because you feel like you have failed the last year. You had a target, and you just did not hit it. Hop in and join Katie on Part 1 of a 4-part series that will show you how to hit your goals for 2024!Tune in to learn Katie's tried and tested, unexpected but powerful steps to hitting your goals.Key Takeaways from this episode:Getting to know Katie: How did she get started?Feeling disappointed and terrified after achieving successFailing even when succeedingStep 1: Needing a new planIf you'd like to apply to Katie's Compass Sketch program, click here: https://brich.typeform.com/to/hZgFEo63About Katie Richardson:Katie, once a girl who just liked to have fun, transformed into a globally recognized designer and entrepreneur. With expertise in woodworking, welding, drawing, and sewing, she crafted her own path. Despite initial doubts and imposter syndrome, Katie defied expectations by establishing Puj, a business that now boasts its products in 2,000 US stores and 26 countries, delighting over 1 million customers worldwide. Her greatest aspiration is to inspire women across the globe. Renowned shows like the Ellen Degeneres Show, Rachael Ray Show, Today Show, and Entrepreneur Magazine have featured her, while influential figures like Martha Stewart, Matt Damon, Camilla Alves, Mario Lopez, Robert Downey Jr., Kourtney Kardashian, Bill & Giuliana Rancic, and Pam Beesley have embraced her products. Today, Katie is a coach, mother of four, wife, author, and powerful speaker. To connect with Katie:Website: https://katierichardson.com/CASE STUDIES: https://now.katierichardson.com/casestudyLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katie-richardson-creator Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/whats-working-now/id1515291698BuzzSprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1847280Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2kV8cL7eTZ70UAXMOtcBbr

Special Guest Host Ken Hensley addresses an email from Steve who is seeking advice on remarriage after his ex-wife cheated on him and left him and their eight kids for someone else. Ken delves into the importance of seeking an annulment before entering into another marriage, as the Catholic Church upholds marriage as a sacramental bond intended to be lifelong. We also explore an intriguing excerpt featuring a professor of bioethics at Princeton University who identifies as an atheist. The professor discusses the challenges facing the concept of human dignity in a secular world and acknowledges the foundation provided by the Judeo-Christian belief in humans being created in the image of God.  Marlene - My mom was in a similar situation with a man when she was older. I want to encourage the caller to stay virtuous and wait for marriage. Steve (email) – My ex-wife cheated on me and left the marriage and our 8 kids. We divorced. Do I need an annulment even though she's the one who cheated and left? Email – Should I have my bible blessed? Carmen - In the Spanish translation of the Gospel they said 70x7, but in the English it says 77 times. Why are they different? Katie - How can we show appreciation to our Guardian Angels?

In this podcast, I am joined by Steve, the AmericanKilljoy and Ryan Bratley from Spinnerproof as we talk our way through the third episode of BattleBots Champions! Joining us for this episode is Kyle Miller, Katie How, Anthony Moody & Romy Mastel from the Glitch team!   Be sure to check us out on iTunes and Spotify too! Simply search “The RoboCast” on either of those platforms, and listen to us on the go!   Let us know what your thoughts on the third episode of the BattleBots Champions Episode? Remember: be civil and respectful, if there's anything I deem to be too much, you'll be sure to know about it

Todd: OK, Katie.Katie: Yeah.Todd: Let's take an international test.Katie: Oh, OK.Todd: How international are you? Let's find out.Katie: Let's find out.Todd: First, have you ever eaten Greek food?Katie: Greek food? Ah, I've eaten, how do you say it, falafel.Todd: Oh, is that Greek?Katie: I think so. I've had that, but apart from that, I've never eaten Greek food. How about you?Todd: Ah, I think I have. Like, I've eaten Greek yogurt. Does that count?Katie: That counts.Todd: That counts?Katie: That counts.Todd: OK, have you ever eaten Russian food?Katie: What's Russian food?Todd: I think, Russian food, is it borscht? Borscht is like a cabbage soup.Katie: Hmm, I've never eaten Russian food.Todd: Yeah, maybe I haven't eaten Russian food either. OK, last one, have you ever eaten Vietnamese food?Katie: Ah, I see it written down. Is it pho?Todd: Pho, the noodles?Katie: Yeah, I've eaten pho before.Todd: Yeah, I've been to Vietnam so I've eaten Vietnamese food a lot. And pho the noodles is really good.Katie: Yeah, it's delicious.Todd: I've had that too.Katie: OK, now let's talk about languages.Todd: Oh, OK. Have you ever studied French?Katie: I have. I studied French for five years.Todd: Oh, can you still speak French?Katie: Nope. Not at all.Todd: Yeah, me too. I once studied French years ago, but I haven't spoken French in so long I can't remember anything.Katie: I can't remember anything either.Todd: Have you ever studied an Asian Language?Katie: I've studied Japanese. I can still speak it a little bit now, and I studied a little bit of Korean, but I don't speak Korean.Todd: Oh, really. OK. Wow, like I've studied Thai because I lived in Thailand for five years, and like you I've studied Japanese, but my Japanese is terrible.Katie: How about your Thai?Todd: My Thai is OK. It's OK. I can talk a little bit. OK, so have you ever met a Spanish person?Katie: A Spanish person? Actually, I don't think I have.Todd: Really?Katie: I don't think I have met a Spanish person.Todd: Oh, interesting. I've been to Spain so, I've met a few and we have a Spanish teacher at our school.Katie: Oh, maybe I have met a Spanish person then. Maybe, I've met a secret Spanish person.Todd: OK, have you met a Chinese person?Katie: Oh, yes, I've met lots of Chinese people.Todd: OK, and have you met a Brazilian person?Katie: I feel like if I say no, then I have. Probably. Probably, I've met a Brazilian person.Todd: Yeah, I've met a few people from Brazil, so they're always very nice. Very friendly people.

Todd: OK, Katie.Katie: Yeah.Todd: Let's take an international test.Katie: Oh, OK.Todd: How international are you? Let's find out.Katie: Let's find out.Todd: First, have you ever eaten Greek food?Katie: Greek food? Ah, I've eaten, how do you say it, falafel.Todd: Oh, is that Greek?Katie: I think so. I've had that, but apart from that, I've never eaten Greek food. How about you?Todd: Ah, I think I have. Like, I've eaten Greek yogurt. Does that count?Katie: That counts.Todd: That counts?Katie: That counts.Todd: OK, have you ever eaten Russian food?Katie: What's Russian food?Todd: I think, Russian food, is it borscht? Borscht is like a cabbage soup.Katie: Hmm, I've never eaten Russian food.Todd: Yeah, maybe I haven't eaten Russian food either. OK, last one, have you ever eaten Vietnamese food?Katie: Ah, I see it written down. Is it pho?Todd: Pho, the noodles?Katie: Yeah, I've eaten pho before.Todd: Yeah, I've been to Vietnam so I've eaten Vietnamese food a lot. And pho the noodles is really good.Katie: Yeah, it's delicious.Todd: I've had that too.Katie: OK, now let's talk about languages.Todd: Oh, OK. Have you ever studied French?Katie: I have. I studied French for five years.Todd: Oh, can you still speak French?Katie: Nope. Not at all.Todd: Yeah, me too. I once studied French years ago, but I haven't spoken French in so long I can't remember anything.Katie: I can't remember anything either.Todd: Have you ever studied an Asian Language?Katie: I've studied Japanese. I can still speak it a little bit now, and I studied a little bit of Korean, but I don't speak Korean.Todd: Oh, really. OK. Wow, like I've studied Thai because I lived in Thailand for five years, and like you I've studied Japanese, but my Japanese is terrible.Katie: How about your Thai?Todd: My Thai is OK. It's OK. I can talk a little bit. OK, so have you ever met a Spanish person?Katie: A Spanish person? Actually, I don't think I have.Todd: Really?Katie: I don't think I have met a Spanish person.Todd: Oh, interesting. I've been to Spain so, I've met a few and we have a Spanish teacher at our school.Katie: Oh, maybe I have met a Spanish person then. Maybe, I've met a secret Spanish person.Todd: OK, have you met a Chinese person?Katie: Oh, yes, I've met lots of Chinese people.Todd: OK, and have you met a Brazilian person?Katie: I feel like if I say no, then I have. Probably. Probably, I've met a Brazilian person.Todd: Yeah, I've met a few people from Brazil, so they're always very nice. Very friendly people.

Katie: So what do you think is a good age for girls to start wearing?Aimee: I think it depends on the kind of that they're wearing and the purpose, you know, because to me, it seems like there are two different kinds. You know, there are young children, young girls, young children, who wear play, you know.Katie: Yeah.Aimee: It's a toy. It washes off easily, garish colors, very mild on the skin, and you know, it's literally just coloring in their face. It's not, you know, enhancing their features or trying to look as society thinks beautiful, you know. They're not covering up any pimples or spots, you know. It's not like that. It's just coloring in their face, trying to look more like a princess.And I have a six-year old daughter and she loves. She has her own, like, young like toyand she asks permission to wear it, and I let her wear it. I bought some for her. I make sure that she can only do it if she has a clean face and clean hands and that she washes off properly at the end. And that she tidides it away afterwards.Katie: That's good.Aimee: She's actually on her final warning because she used to leave it out – and I've warned her I will throw it in the bin. Because I have a toddler and she wants to see what her big sister is doing and she wants to play with it, so she grabs it and makes a mess everywhere. So yeah, six-year old is on her final warning.So I guess to answer your question, my six-year old is wearing her play make-up already. So it doesn't, yeah, it doesn't bother me. Young is –Katie: How old were you when you started wearing?Aimee: Well, I love, and that's probably where my daughter got it from. I wanted to wear from a young age, the way my daughter does. I wasn't allowed. It was forbidden. And I first actually managed to buy a secret when I was about 9 or 10.Katie: Secret.Aimee: Yeah. I had to hide it from my mom, and she would only let me wear lip gloss when I was that age, and I wasn't allowed to wear any lip sticks, soI had to buy a secret one. And I was always so interested in my grandmother's and my mom's as well. But she never really wore much. She has a very simple sort of beauty routine.I'm much more interested in it than she is – she ever was. So I don't know where I inherited that from, but my daughter has definitely inherited that from me. So maybe because it was forbidden for me that's why I was drawn to it more.Katie: Makes it more tantalizing.Aimee: I think so. That could be it, but yeah, it's a real hobby for me. I really, really love it. I wish I had more money to purchase more. You can never have enough.Katie: You can never have too many.Aimee: I know. It's true.Katie: What do you think about boys wearing?Aimee: If they want to wear, then they should. Like it annoys me this horrible idea and concept of like men and boys have to be manly, like what is manly?For me, is an art. It really is. It's artistry. And, you know, if they want it, if they're feeling bad about their skin the way I feel bad about my skin, right. If I have pimples or spots, I'm lucky. I get to just cover up with like foundation and concealer, a bit of blusher. It makes me feel better.But, you know, if there's like a boy who has, you know, going through teenage years and he's got bad skin and he wants to cover up, and his macho friends catch him wearing it or whatever people in school catch him wearing it and it can be a really bad situation for him. And I think that is awful. It is really, really terrible. I think boys should wear as they like.I actually follow quite a lot of artists on social media. And I look at many, many pictures of different products and the art that they produce, and I follow male artists as well. And the skills they have are unbelievable, honestly. The blending skills.Katie: Their contouring.Aimee: Yeah.Katie: Oh my goodness.Aimee: The blending skills and like covering up, you know, basically just like covering up their whole face and putting a new face on top of it.Katie: It's pretty impressive.Aimee: It's really impressive. It's so amazing. I would really enjoy a lesson from some of the artists that I follow on different sites.Katie: Absolutely.

Katie: So what do you think is a good age for girls to start wearing?Aimee: I think it depends on the kind of that they're wearing and the purpose, you know, because to me, it seems like there are two different kinds. You know, there are young children, young girls, young children, who wear play, you know.Katie: Yeah.Aimee: It's a toy. It washes off easily, garish colors, very mild on the skin, and you know, it's literally just coloring in their face. It's not, you know, enhancing their features or trying to look as society thinks beautiful, you know. They're not covering up any pimples or spots, you know. It's not like that. It's just coloring in their face, trying to look more like a princess.And I have a six-year old daughter and she loves. She has her own, like, young like toyand she asks permission to wear it, and I let her wear it. I bought some for her. I make sure that she can only do it if she has a clean face and clean hands and that she washes off properly at the end. And that she tidides it away afterwards.Katie: That's good.Aimee: She's actually on her final warning because she used to leave it out – and I've warned her I will throw it in the bin. Because I have a toddler and she wants to see what her big sister is doing and she wants to play with it, so she grabs it and makes a mess everywhere. So yeah, six-year old is on her final warning.So I guess to answer your question, my six-year old is wearing her play make-up already. So it doesn't, yeah, it doesn't bother me. Young is –Katie: How old were you when you started wearing?Aimee: Well, I love, and that's probably where my daughter got it from. I wanted to wear from a young age, the way my daughter does. I wasn't allowed. It was forbidden. And I first actually managed to buy a secret when I was about 9 or 10.Katie: Secret.Aimee: Yeah. I had to hide it from my mom, and she would only let me wear lip gloss when I was that age, and I wasn't allowed to wear any lip sticks, soI had to buy a secret one. And I was always so interested in my grandmother's and my mom's as well. But she never really wore much. She has a very simple sort of beauty routine.I'm much more interested in it than she is – she ever was. So I don't know where I inherited that from, but my daughter has definitely inherited that from me. So maybe because it was forbidden for me that's why I was drawn to it more.Katie: Makes it more tantalizing.Aimee: I think so. That could be it, but yeah, it's a real hobby for me. I really, really love it. I wish I had more money to purchase more. You can never have enough.Katie: You can never have too many.Aimee: I know. It's true.Katie: What do you think about boys wearing?Aimee: If they want to wear, then they should. Like it annoys me this horrible idea and concept of like men and boys have to be manly, like what is manly?For me, is an art. It really is. It's artistry. And, you know, if they want it, if they're feeling bad about their skin the way I feel bad about my skin, right. If I have pimples or spots, I'm lucky. I get to just cover up with like foundation and concealer, a bit of blusher. It makes me feel better.But, you know, if there's like a boy who has, you know, going through teenage years and he's got bad skin and he wants to cover up, and his macho friends catch him wearing it or whatever people in school catch him wearing it and it can be a really bad situation for him. And I think that is awful. It is really, really terrible. I think boys should wear as they like.I actually follow quite a lot of artists on social media. And I look at many, many pictures of different products and the art that they produce, and I follow male artists as well. And the skills they have are unbelievable, honestly. The blending skills.Katie: Their contouring.Aimee: Yeah.Katie: Oh my goodness.Aimee: The blending skills and like covering up, you know, basically just like covering up their whole face and putting a new face on top of it.Katie: It's pretty impressive.Aimee: It's really impressive. It's so amazing. I would really enjoy a lesson from some of the artists that I follow on different sites.Katie: Absolutely.

Aimee: So your favorite age group is the junior high school age.Katie: Yeah.Aimee: Do you have much experience teaching younger children?Katie: Younger children like toddler age?Aimee: Well, how about elementary school?Katie: Yeah, elementary school. I've been teaching for about five years, five or six years. They're fine. You just have to be a bit silly with those kids.Aimee: Yes.Katie: Have a good time. Can't really be too serious when you're teaching young kids because they're still kids.Aimee: That's true. So how about younger than that? How about the kindergarten age? How are they for you?Katie: They're probably my archilles heel. I'm not great with kindergarten students or younger than that because they don't respond to reason.Aimee: Right.Katie: Yeah. So they – I mean, yeah. They're difficult for me to teach. I prefer teaching older students.How about you? What kind of age range do you like teaching?Aimee: I think I appreciate all parts of all age groups. Every group has its pros and cons. Recently, I've been teaching university students, and I think I'm remembering how much I enjoy it because, you know, they are adults and you can teach them like adults. And you can still have a bit of silly, fun with them, too.Katie: Yeah.Aimee: So these days, I think I prefer teaching the older students, university age students. You can, you know, you can really go into topics quite deeply.Katie: Yeah.Aimee: And you can get some interesting answers from some students. Other students, of course, you can't.Katie: Everyone is different, right?Aimee: Yes. You just have to find a way of teasing, teasing their potential, of all of them, I think.Katie: Is there a group that you don't like teaching?Aimee: I'm not used to junior high school children, junior high school students. I don't have any experience with them. So that would make me nervous, I think.Katie: How do you think they would be different to university students?Aimee: I think, from what I mentioned before, the teenagers, the hormones. I think that would be different. There's, you know, it's bubbling inside them, all of these changes of feelings and emotions. And they have so many things to deal with; pressure of growing up. And I think that can be more challenging.But I think it's important as a teacher to try to remember what it was like when you were that age.Katie: Yeah.Aimee: I think that's the biggest thing that will help you.Katie: Absolutely. So what do you think about teaching younger children like babies? How are you with that?Aimee: I do really enjoy that. Babies are awesome. They have their own set of needs. But usually, the very young classes come with, you know, the parents are there, too. So it's kind of a group-led situation, teacher-led group. And yeah, it's good fun for me. They're very cute and squishy. And very – not uncontrollable – what's the word?Katie: Unpredictable?Aimee: That's it. Completely unpredictable. You know, one day they can be in the best mood ever, and then the next day, they're just a nightmare.Katie: I think that's why I'm terrified of them, because they're so unpredictable. I don't like it.Aimee: Yeah. That's true. And the bodily functions too, you know.Katie: Yeah, no thanks.Aimee: There's all of that.Katie: Yeah. I'm not prepared to deal with that. No, thank you. No, thank you. No bodily functions.

Aimee: So your favorite age group is the junior high school age.Katie: Yeah.Aimee: Do you have much experience teaching younger children?Katie: Younger children like toddler age?Aimee: Well, how about elementary school?Katie: Yeah, elementary school. I've been teaching for about five years, five or six years. They're fine. You just have to be a bit silly with those kids.Aimee: Yes.Katie: Have a good time. Can't really be too serious when you're teaching young kids because they're still kids.Aimee: That's true. So how about younger than that? How about the kindergarten age? How are they for you?Katie: They're probably my archilles heel. I'm not great with kindergarten students or younger than that because they don't respond to reason.Aimee: Right.Katie: Yeah. So they – I mean, yeah. They're difficult for me to teach. I prefer teaching older students.How about you? What kind of age range do you like teaching?Aimee: I think I appreciate all parts of all age groups. Every group has its pros and cons. Recently, I've been teaching university students, and I think I'm remembering how much I enjoy it because, you know, they are adults and you can teach them like adults. And you can still have a bit of silly, fun with them, too.Katie: Yeah.Aimee: So these days, I think I prefer teaching the older students, university age students. You can, you know, you can really go into topics quite deeply.Katie: Yeah.Aimee: And you can get some interesting answers from some students. Other students, of course, you can't.Katie: Everyone is different, right?Aimee: Yes. You just have to find a way of teasing, teasing their potential, of all of them, I think.Katie: Is there a group that you don't like teaching?Aimee: I'm not used to junior high school children, junior high school students. I don't have any experience with them. So that would make me nervous, I think.Katie: How do you think they would be different to university students?Aimee: I think, from what I mentioned before, the teenagers, the hormones. I think that would be different. There's, you know, it's bubbling inside them, all of these changes of feelings and emotions. And they have so many things to deal with; pressure of growing up. And I think that can be more challenging.But I think it's important as a teacher to try to remember what it was like when you were that age.Katie: Yeah.Aimee: I think that's the biggest thing that will help you.Katie: Absolutely. So what do you think about teaching younger children like babies? How are you with that?Aimee: I do really enjoy that. Babies are awesome. They have their own set of needs. But usually, the very young classes come with, you know, the parents are there, too. So it's kind of a group-led situation, teacher-led group. And yeah, it's good fun for me. They're very cute and squishy. And very – not uncontrollable – what's the word?Katie: Unpredictable?Aimee: That's it. Completely unpredictable. You know, one day they can be in the best mood ever, and then the next day, they're just a nightmare.Katie: I think that's why I'm terrified of them, because they're so unpredictable. I don't like it.Aimee: Yeah. That's true. And the bodily functions too, you know.Katie: Yeah, no thanks.Aimee: There's all of that.Katie: Yeah. I'm not prepared to deal with that. No, thank you. No, thank you. No bodily functions.

Listener questions today. Katie – How do I raise my rates with 3 pricing options and establish my retainer & daily rate?  Sal - How do I handle pricing questions when you’re on a group call with several prospects? Jeffery – How does one wrap their mind-set around getting 100% upfront when they wouldn't pay a general contractor or roofer 100% up front for a job? Kyle - How do I price when showing a minimum or “starting at” fee?   If you would like to get a PDF copy of the Pricing Template Example that I sent Katie, Just email me a Pricing or Business Question that I can use on the show at paul@paulklein.net and I will email a copy to you.    Show Links Referenced: Episode 002: Using Options & Anchoring in your pricing Episode 003: Increase Your Rates And Quit Wasting Time With Long Proposals Episode 016: Yes/No pricing - How to leverage up your brand Episode 049: Terms & Getting Paid.....How About 100% Upfront? Episode 005: 5 pricing arrangements and pricing for expertise not by the hour   Connect with Paul: FREE Pricing Quiz Web: www.paulklein.net LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulkleintv/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/paulkleintv Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/paulkleinTV/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/PaulKleinTV YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoQRkgXR4ClPAub12lXgPwg Send your pricing questions to paul@paulklein.net    *** EPISODE CREDITS: If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment. He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com   

TRANSCRIPT:Ashley: My name is Ashley Hart and our family did the growing Christmas tree in Goshen project.Katie: Alright so you worked on getting to know your neighbors last year through this project? And talk me through that year, what did it look like, what did it take for you guys to put all that together?Ashley: Well it started off with me getting really excited about creating something new. So I came up with a list to my mentor of all the fun ideas I had. Then evaluating how those ideas matched with the community that we lived in and what would be a gift to them and something that we could make memories together with them. So we kind of spent time connecting with neighbors in a different way than we had before. So we might go on a walk and stop over and say good evening to our neighbor or call them over and invite them over for dessert or whatever. And that kind of got the relationship frequency enough that we were able to have more conversations.Katie: Yeah, and were you bringing the idea of this Christmas tree project to them right away or how did you start on that path to get to that project idea?Ashley: So I think one of the things that I realized for myself and took that to the way I was connecting with our neighbors was that I in my own life wasn't prepared for a big ask and so I didn't want to throw a big ask at someone else. Really I was still putting feelers out to see if the idea that we had could even happen. So our neighbor happened to be a landscaper, so I didn't even know if he would plant Christmas trees in December or not, or if that was like not going to work. If the trees were going to die or the ground would be too frozen or whatever.Katie: Because you guys did not have Christmas trees on your property when you started this?Ashley: Correct.Katie: But you had how many acres?Ashley: Eleven acres.Katie: Eleven acres and what are you going to do with it, how are you going to make that an asset to the community?Ashley: Right, and we had always kind of had a vision even on our wedding day we invited people to our property and invited people to spend time there. We wanted it to be a hospitable place but I don't think we had the tools and the permission that we were given to make it kind of an official thing to start inviting people and doing something unique for the community.Katie: So it took some permission seeking?Ashley: I think so, which is weird, but yeah. I think someone saying here's some support and here's some encouragement and start dreaming. And I was desperate for the idea to be dreaming about something other than being concerned about what's going on in our day to day experience.Katie: Right what was your main concern at that point, what were you worrying about?Ashley: I think I was really focused on ensuring that our daughter would be prepared to engage in her community and the way that I thought I was going about that was through therapy and appointments and things like that because that required so much energy I just didn't think I had anymore energy to start something new. Katie: So you were trying to pave the way for your daughter to be part of the community some day, but you weren't really sure about how to go about it. And meanwhile you had other day to day appointments and things that you had to be doing that were taking up time, energy and effort and that that permission that you go to do something off the scope of the therapy list.Ashley: Oh yeah it was like it was such a gift. Yeah it was just you know you get stuck in the grind of doing what's best and the idea to imagine creating something that intrinsically you already know what is good for you, and what is good for your family and what is good for the community. And just someone saying ‘Go for it' it's really.. I've talked about that you're getting to lift your eyes off a problem or what is perceived as a problem and getting to lift your eyes to bringing beauty into your world and your community.Katie: Yes, so before you started this, was it a year long project, about?Ashley: Yeah.Katie: Ten months, year long project, before you started the year long project to plant Christmas trees in your yard and invite your neighbors to, can you explain actually a little bit more about what that Christmas tree project was in the end?Ashley: Yeah, so the goal was, we started the project in July, and because of the event, our event was in December. So we had to kind of move quickly once we decided what we were doing but the idea was to invite families in the community, so because it's a rural community that's a wide area, but invite community members to come and to plant a CHristmas tree on our land. And we wanted it to be a healing experience to everyone who came so we talked through what's healing for community and individuals. So we brought the five senses into the experience. So we had art, lighting, lumineers, paths through the fields and Christmas music anda baker came and baked Christmas cookies that's from Goshen and hot cocoa and a bonfire. So we tried to make it as memory making as we could by sealing in those five senses and then families are invited to come back each year and they can either take their Christmas tree if it's tall enough for them or they can just check on it and take a picture with their family. So that's been really fun to see families bewildered in the generosity. Families would call us and say, “ok so what are the rules around this?” or like ‘well how do we sign, and ensure that this is ours.” And so they've just been really surprised by the generosity.Katie: They also are seeking permission.Ashley: Yeah.Katie: To just show up and have a Christmas tree party?Ashley: Right. Right.Katie: Yeah it kind of shows that we've lost a little bit of our muscle for community building. We don't really know what to do in the face of something as ordinary and simply beautiful as this, it's kind of like there's a catch. Where's the marketing here?Ashley: Right, exactly and we have a friend here at Starfire mention that really we're just returning to our roots as rural people. Who used to sit on one another's porches and play music and eat together, so we talked about that that evening that we want more of that. And we really got a sense from our neighbors that they did too. So people would come by and talk to me about it like, “Oh I have this idea or I have that idea.” So we're hoping that fosters more and more of that. Katie: Did many people know your family who came to the event? How did you make connections and make that neighborliness happen?Ashley: So it was funny because several days before the event we had no one signed up for the event.Katie: Seven days before?Ashley: Several, several so like three or four days before. We had like signs up, we had advertised.Katie: So really quickly describe your neighborhood real quick because when you say you have signs and things up it's at like the one library and maybe like…Ashley: One coffee shop.Katie: Yeah.Ashley: There's one coffee shop, there's like two fast food restaurants or three and two gas stations and a library. Otherwise it's a very rural community. So we had posted things on Facebook, on the Goshen Facebook community page but then we had also put it in a coffee shop. So we really had no idea how many trees we needed so we picked thirty, I'm not sure why but it was crazy because somebody called like three or four days before and was like I know it's really late but is there anyway our family could sign up? And I was like yeah we've got some room.Katie: You hang up and were like woo-hoo!Ashley: Yes totally, like we got one and her friend wanted to sign up too so that made two families and what we didn't know which I think is really important is having people invested in the process, so our neighbor Dan brough him and everyone he knew to that event. He was excited about it because he had done so much in giving advice and shopping around for trees and going to get thte trees, that he was invested enough to want it to be a good event and want his people to come and experience it.Katie: And is this the landscaper you had mentioned? So you had a neighbor, I mean you have eleven acres how many acres are around you?Ashley: We have one to our right and one to our left then we have one across the street, so yeah. Not a lot.Katie: So you have three neighbors in the vicinity of you and neighbor Dan was one of them. What a gem.Ashley: I know he is a gem.Katie: How did you meet him? Did you already know him?Ashley: Yeah, he has been friends with my husband's parents who live right next door also. So he's been a friend of their families for a while and you know in rural communities if there's something wrong everyone shows up. But otherwise you kind of naturally keep to yourself and sometimes you might stop over and say hi but this just was really nice because we got to spend more time together and got to use one another's gifts in a way that brought people together so that was great.Katie: Yeah. So this was not the first time that you've been part of a community in an intentional way. This experience that you had in your neighborhood with your family was sort of precluded by your own youth living in intentional community being part of living with a family, so you've tried community in various forms?Ashley: Yeah it's always been important to me.Katie: Can you talk more about that?Ashley: I think I've always experienced more joy when I'm doing life with other people and yet when you're doing life with more people it can be complicated too. So that's just being with other people. Katie: That's a good thing to know going into it.Ashley: Yeah I think so.Katie: You had seen some of the pitfalls of it but you had also lived some of the joys of it and knew I want this for my family now too?Ashley: Right and you know even having your own family that's having a small community. So yeah I've experienced it in multiple different settings and really just treasured the gift of letting people be beyond the veils of their front doors and back doors and getting to spend real life with one another.Katie: Yeah so you've sought it out in that way. You've been seeking it. How were those experiences that you've had in the past in the intentional community that you have been different from the one that you experienced when you reached out to your neighbors and kind of had this project type experience where you're connecting over a shared idea, a creation versus like all living together in the same house?Ashley: Yeah, well it's nice because you have a goal and it's accomplishable and you're kind of bringing everyone in so that's different I would say. Then just all doing life together. You have an event and then it's done.Katie: Yeah, you've all achieved something together and like you said earlier and it's a way for everyone to use their specific gifts like you had the baker that came, neighbor Dan brought the trees, there were other people who probably set up the decorates and had ideas around where to plant the trees. Even the people who showed up that day, their gifts were their presence and getting enthusiastic about what's going on. And everybody can kind of have a role there and doing something that's kind of out of the ordinary.Ashley: Very out of the ordinary for Goshen. Yeah we had one experience where it was like an art installation where we zig-zagged rope through the trees and everyone brought a little lantern out, different sizes of light lite lanterns so by the end they had created this beautiful art piece and we talked about you've all brought your gifts here tonight, just being together and this is just a display of what could be as we spend time together and do life together.Katie: Yeah I love that imagery. So we're going to segue. To the time you decided to move away from this place. The moment you made the decision after all of this goodness had been created to say you know what we're going to try a new neighborhood. Take me to some of the decision making and what was that like? Was it difficult? Where you anxious about leaving? Did you feel like what if we regret this because we've made all these connections. What was your motive there?Ashley: Sure, yeah well I think one important thing to talk about as far as the project goes is we were in the midst of deciding while we were doing the project. So I asked my mentor should we do it in Goshen? Should we do it where we think we're going to go? And we kind of ended up deciding to do it now and do it where you are and I think there's a lot of lessons in that.We don't have to wait until we think everything is right to start building community and to start creating spaces of belonging for our neighbors and memory making moments for each other those are always good and always can be healing, so I'm glad we didn't wait. Katie: And you also have a two year old, three year old?Ashley: Three year old now.Katie: A three year old. So as parents too it's like well I'm going to wait until my kid gets older, things are less hectic. So doing it in the midst of all of it and what's the value in that that you found at the end even when you guys were packing up your bags and deciding to leave?Ashley: Well I think the biggest take away for us was that we built the muscle to like we now have the muscle to build community. And I”m just naturally looking for it all the time going like ‘oh what could we do here?' So we've done a couple of things in our new neighborhood not for any project per say but because we now have the muscle and we want community where we are. Katie: Yeah tell me what were some of the first few things that you did when you moved to the new neighborhood that maybe you didn't do when you moved to your Goshen neighborhood?Ashley: Yeah, so our new neighborhood before we had actually bought the house but we were pretty sure that was where we were headed it was trick-or-treat so we were like ok how often are you invited to every single person's house at the same time. Like this, we can't miss this.Katie: Yeah that's a good point.Ashley: Yeah like never.Katie: Yes please come knock on our door and we'll give you things.Ashley: So we went to that neighborhood that night, just to introduce ourselves and said we are probably going to be living right there and we're eager to connect with you guys.Katie: Wow so even before you put money down on the house, even before you closed on the house?Ashley: Yes, yes.Katie: Wow, ok.Ashley: Yeah, so we were excited about building community there and we really wanted to take what we were learning and not just leave it in Goshen, but bring it along with us for all of us. So that's one thing that we did, that was in late October and then in February we made jars of hot cocoa and put our picture on them and our address and we said we're your new neighbors and our daughter was in a little red wagon and just saying hello and that inspired lots of conversations and people coming to our house and bringing us stuff. So that kind of got the wheels spinning in the neighborhood I think.Katie: Were you writing down names after each one?Ashley: Yes, my husband actually was really intent too which was a fun dynamic to see him to start getting invested in the idea of community building because he didn't grow up building community like I did as much.Katie: And he was the note taker he was the one, yeah?Ashley: Yeah, wanting to know his neighbors.Katie: So I think what you just touched on which is really important is we think sometimes we need to be the ones welcomed in and instead you guys were the welcomers to your new neighborhood to your new neighbors to say hey we're here and we want to know you. So taking the first step doesn't always have to come from the other person.Ashley: Right, and I think that's kind of fun for the neighbors to be like ‘wait she flipped the switch, like what just happened there?' Yeah, and it was totally fun for us so we said we would do it again in a heartbeat because we got to go in people's houses and visit and people came in our house, it was nice. Katie: Yeah when you left your neighborhood behind did you have any lessons that you were taken from what you learned over that year with the Christmas tree project that you were like we're going to do it differently this time. We tried it that way and now let's try it this way. Was there anything that stood out where you're like…Ashley: Lessons learned?Katie: Yeah.Ashley: Yeah, I think the big lesson, my big takeaway from growing Christmas trees in Goshen was with a new event, a new project no one knows what to expect so it's really hard to get people invested unless they're a part of the creation of the idea, and so we only had a couple people that were involved with the creation of the idea. And so that ends up meaning that you're doing a lot of the creation and administration of the event, so my take away in the future is that I want our neighbors there with us like what should we do with our community what would be something that our community needs or wants that would be fun for everybody. So bringing everyone into the decision making piece..Katie: From the beginning?Ashley: From the beginning. Now we're trying to back track and go like maybe we do a Christmas planning in July so we get everybody to come together to start working towards the goal for the event.Katie: Yeah and it's what you said before neighbor Dan was invested from the beginning and he was somebody who brought a lot of people with him, so the people who come it's hard to sometimes invite the whole neighborhood if it's just your family. But the more people who come, the more networks they have and everybody's networks kind of show up too. But also you're saying just the excitement piece and getting it all together, it's not all on you as a family to plan it all and dream it all up and there's more shared ownership.Ashley: Right which means there's more presence at the event too. There's ten families that are excited about it and they're bringing all their gifts and networks there. So that's a big help, so I think that that would be if I was doing that again when we tried to do that but I think we're all just learning as we go and I think we did it by inviting a group of people, we weren't good at explaining this is what we're thinking about we just said come plan with us we're going to do an event and they were like i have other things going on so..Katie: Yeah, sounds like work.Ashley: Yeah, exactly, so eventually they came to the event and they're definitely a part of our community but not bringing people in early to help ideate and create it.Katie: What about just in terms of knowing neighbors and interacting with them differently are their things that you do as part of your lifestyle now that maybe you didn't do you know in your former neighborhood that know you can kind of.. I guess I'm asking that because you can reinvent yourself when you move somewhere, you can be a new person in a way. So there's a benefit in showing up as this new neighbor and being like ok this is the type of neighbor I want to be now, I might not have been that in my neighborhood prior but now I can show up and nobody knows me and I can start new right?Ashley: Yeah I think the big thing that we've done differently is just at the outset let people know that we're interested in being together. So a lot of people I've learned that in suburban neighborhoods like to play and do outdoor life in their backyard with their privacy fence and so we've spent a lot of time in our driveway and in the front yard and going for walks and interacting with people that way so some of it is just relearning how to be in a new environment too. Katie: Yeah I love that so you're spending time in the front yard so that when people get home from work and they pull in their driveway you can be like ‘hey'!Ashley: Right.Katie: Privacy, there's a value of privacy that we have as Americans.Ashley: For sure.Katie: But we aren't necessarily happy in our private lives we'd rather spend it with other people we just don't know what that looks like any more. So do you think that you have a different mindset than you started this with and in what way?Ashley: I definitely, I have a huge different mindset yeah. In so many different ways I mean it's like so many different layers, my mindset during community building I'm still super excited about community building in our new neighborhood and I'm also so grateful that i now see people who are neighbors with their gifts. Like that I think is different than before which is surprising to me because I thought that I saw people that way always but I think you know as we were getting to know people in our new neighborhood we were like ‘oh my gosh this is amazing we have this person across the street that does this or that's interested in that' and before I think we were just trying to do our own thing and then relating to people asit happened where as now we're much more intentional about making it happen that we connect with those people and creating spaces where we can do that together.Katie: So seeing those gifts as an avenue for ‘this is how we can connect with them, wow' let's learn from that person or is that the difference?Ashley: Yeah and I think even outside of our neighborhood I'm just learning how other people we're connected with have their gifts and who they are, connect with us and vice versa.Katie: Like the common?Ashley: Commonality, yeah the things we share and care about. For example, my uncle is a musician and piano tuner and everytime he and my daughter get together they just love doing music together. And so I asked can we do this quarterly even though you live two hours away, can we like break bread together and do music together and so we've been doing that for two and a half years since we started getting involved here. So I think just being more intentional and making it happen putting it on the calendar and dreaming in a different way.Katie: Yeah and you brought up your daughter and I think I want to bring it back to this idea that in the beginning you were like I need to prepare her to be part of the community. In what ways do you see her now as a part of the community and was there preparation in that or did it sort of did she, did she just get immersed in this way through gifts?Ashley: Yeah I think I've been really intentional about not putting her up on a stage to be engaged with but instead just being a part of our family and people engaging with us and with her. If that makes sense. Katie: Was that a shift for you to think of it that way?Ashley: I think possibly yeah I think I had an intrinsic sense of her belonging and her belonging in her community but I think I had to learn what things I want to bring our family around and to fuel and what things I want to invest in with our family, if that makes sense.Katie: Time-wise even?Ashley: Yeah.Katie: Where you're spending your time?Ashley: Yeah, we did study with our congregation with families and the number one asset the number one deficit that they had was time. That's your number one thing, right, you have to spend it where it counts and so for us we really decided that we look like being together as a family and being with our extended family and being with our neighbors.Katie: Yeah. I guess that part of it in the beginning you were looking at therapy and things to get her ready for people and now you're just like you're doing those things still.Ashley: Yeah, and I guess my answer is I always had a sense intrinsically that she belonged no matter what and I think that having conversations with my mentor affirmed my intrinsic sense of her belonging, does that make sense?Katie: Yes, do you think that hearing that from somebody who is in the disability field to say something as ordinary as like go get to know your neighbors, was that.. Because it's playing into your instincts as a parent that you already know and it seems like most places aren't playing into those instincts they're telling you ‘we're experts and this is what we know that you don't'. And for someone to give you something that you already know as a way of life, you have taken that and it's caught on so quickly and so rapidly.So I guess that was kind of part of my question was like in the beginning you were waiting maybe on ‘well we've got to get these things done, we've got to line this stuff up and then maybe we'll find community or maybe there will be a way to be connected to people, maybe there will be a better time' and then hearing from somebody who's in this role to say no it's now, that you do it the best time is now.Ashley: Yeah, I think it was helpful that my mentor also was involved with their neighborhood, like they're doing it, I've been involved in community and i know the fruits of it. It's helpful to be reminded that it's good and my eyes were just stuck on ensuring that I did everything that I thought I needed to do to support her. It was kind of like with blinders on just missing like the biggest piece of providing her abundant community now and making those connections.Katie: Well what I love about this too is that it's a metaphor for most people's lives, whatever that thing is that you're trying to do the best at, do right at is preventing you from just living and usually that is all you need to be doing. But we're going, we're trying to succeed or we're trying to reach these different heights that have these requirements and steps along the way.Ashley: And then we reach those and there's more. Yeah, we're on like the treadmill of the institution and instead of getting invited out of that and saying ok I'm also going to look for something outside of those boundaries to build my life on is huge.Katie: So what is at stake for you for your family if you don't make an effort then to get off the treadmill? If you don't make this effort to connect to the people around you?Ashley: My daughter being isolated as she gets older and I mean for a girl who is in my bones to know the joy of community that's just not an option. So it makes me really sad to think of her facing isolation when it's not in her bones either.Katie: Were you getting a glimpse of that already? I mean she's really young, were you already feeling like that was part of your lives or becoming part of your lives?Ashley: Well interestingly I was going to a lot of different community things, events and stuff and we were the only ones there who had a child with a disability and I was like I know that's that is not always the case but in the unique places that I was that was the case. So one I thought it was important that I was there and two I just hate that that's the culture that that's set out for families for anyone that's marginalized, right?Katie: The culture being we don't go to ordinary places in the community.Ashley: Yeah being like, well the culture being you're welcome if you are a certain way.Katie: Yes so the culture speaks more towards the families of and unwelcoming sense to say like there's a group for that and it's over there.Ashley: Yeah I think one thing was we belong and we're going and she was really young so I mean when you go to a six month old story time it's fine. Difference is more evident as kids age but I think so kids get older it probably would be more challenging to face that head on for the first time without having some understanding and foundation in kind of what do we believe about this what do we believe is true.Katie: As you grow into connections in your neighborhood do you think you're kind of heading off that uncomfortable feeling in the community when you, as your daughter does get older?Ashley: Yeah it's interesting because we have two or three intervention specialists in our neighborhood. So you can always tell when people have a predisposed idea and so you know you just meet those in conversation and bring to the conversations what you believe in small snippets over time. But yeah I think we have work to do and I think our daughter will lead the way in that with our support. So I think the biggest thing I think maybe it was a quote I read from Starfire, you guys were quoting someone that talked about when you toddle, have people who have known you since you've toddled. Do you remember that quote?Katie: David Pitonyak, “Who holds your story?”Ashley: They'll be like that's.. You know we know her, yeah?Katie: Yes. Ending on a piece of hope what is one hope that you have for your family in the next ten years that has to do with your community building work?Ashley: I hope that we establish rhythms with our neighbors that go on year after year and that we know one another's stories. And when my neighbor is sick I know what to make him because I know what he likes, you know, just the good life of community. And if my daughter is out and she isn't supposed to be out then they know me and they know where to bring her, or that she gets invited to the pool party across the street. Just the basic stuff, nothing extravagant but maybe extraordinary in this time, yeah. Katie: Yeah that is extraordinary, is there anything else you would want to say?Ashley: I don't think so.Katie: Ok I love that, thank you.

TRANSCRIPT:0:00 – 0:44Bridget: I'm Bridget Vogt and I have worked at Starfire for twenty years in a variety of ways.Katie: That's two decades. So that's a long time. What has been all the variety of ways?Bridget: When I first started it was just office help and doing the outings that we had during the evening and weekends. You know a few years after that we started a day program so I started that, doing the day program. A few years after that we started StarfireU, so I worked in both and then just StarfireU and now I am doing one-on-one work with people and their families.0:45 – 2:46Katie: What do you think has changed in the way that you show up to work from then and now, and what has stayed the same?Bridget: Well I'd say there's just a different way of showing up when you're starting your day with a room of 12 people or 15 or 20 people with disabilities versus showing up and talking to one person at a time. There's a much different energy, there's a different effort, there's a different priority that is just the reality of probably day program life. You know, you're hoping that everybody gets along and that they can say they had a pretty good day and I think the days of working with a group of people at a time it is more about being an entertainer and showing them a good time and keeping them happy and building them up. Now working just with one person at a time it is still about building them up and making sure they're confident but it's not quite the same, the word entertainer keeps coming to mind. The people who were really successful in the day program that keep coming to mind were the staff with big personalities who drew people in with just who they were naturally and they could almost perform, if that makes sense. They were a good storyteller or funny, all those things, and that's not necessarily as useful or needed with just one person. So you're still building into the person to help them understand who they are and that they're a good person, that they have gifts to give, what are they, and figuring all that stuff out. And that's kind of the biggest difference is working with one person and thinking.. You know.. Where do you belong... what do you do? Where are you going to be happy doing?Katie: Yeah, so it's a little bit more of an in-depth conversation when you're sitting with somebody, you don't need to be the entertainer. You need to be the deep listener and over-shadowing a person by being too enthusiastic or too much of the entertainer could give the opposite effect than when you're working with just one person at the time.Bridget: Yeah, I think that's possible. Like I definitely think that's happened, you know we're working to help people meet people and if you kind of take over and don't let that person who you're working with shine more than you than you're not doing a very good job.2:57 – 4:30Katie: Yeah, so you stayed through this change, and you've had to turn on different parts of you or skills/strengths that you have during the change, and so what's been really consistent about the work? Obviously, it's kept you here, doing it.Bridget: Well I think we have, one way or another, throughout these times — we did what we thought was best and that's still the case. I care a great deal for all the people we've met with disabilities out there. And to recognize that appealing to a group of people doesn't change what happens in their lives in ten years. Letting that sink in and figuring out how to do something that hopefully will mean something in ten years with or without my presence is the bigger key too. So I think that's what keeps me here, is the belief that what I'm doing is going to matter in ten years to these people that I know. Katie: So obviously like a deep well of love or care for people with disabilities is consistent in you, you showed up in both worlds with that, with that intention.Bridget: Yeah, yeah I'd say so. There wasn't a whole lot of outside forces drawing or keeping me. There are plenty of potentially simpler things to do out there in the world definitely probably more lucrative things to do out there in the world but that's not where my heart was or what I felt called to do. Annd Starfire seemed like a good place at the time when I started here.4:31 – 6:30Katie: Yeah, Starfire had something different even back then twenty years ago than other places, it was founded by family members who were looking for a better way and so that thread of intentionality and family driven-ness has kind of carried through.One of the things you told me before this podcast around building community was that If we want other people to learn how to build community or do it on their own we have to really learn how to do it ourselves. Take me back to when things did try to shift to Starfire being more of a community building place for people with disabilities to connect to the community — and what was your involvement in the community when that change started to happen?Bridget: You know, before anyone saw any changes at Starfire before it started to change Tim and I, mainly Tim, started doing a lot more learning around topics like asset-based community development (ABCD). And being introduced to some concepts that we had not heard of or knew anything about and kind of working through those and wrestling with some of the things we were learning with. You know if there was a belief that the community is the answer, it sounds great that the community can be the answer but we don't always see it. But part of why I think for us what we had to acknowledge was well our community is not our answer, we've lived in Bellevue for three years and we don't know anyone, we only know two of our neighbors and that's probably about it. And we go to work and then we come back and then we had some old friends from like college and high school and those are who we see and not our neighbors.That was sort of the beginning of noticing, we don't really know our neighbors so this idea of community being the answer is just ridiculous. But is it ridiculous or is it that we just haven't tried? And if this is possible, if community is the answer, then we probably need to figure out what community it is, and what does it look like and what are we doing to be active in our community. 6:31 – 7:06Katie: Describe Bellevue, describe what that neighborhood is like.Bridget: It is one square mile, in Kentucky, on the river.Katie: Is that it?Bridget: Yeah, one square mile.Katie: Oh wow.Bridget: You didn't know we were that little? So it's pretty small, what else would you say about Bellevue. It's overall a working class neighborhood.Katie: How many people in the one square mile?Bridget: I don't know.Katie: It's pretty concentrated, like there are a lot of houses.Bridget: Yeah, I mean it's urban. You know houses are very close together there's not a lot of yards.Katie: There's a big.. There's a great little main strip there with coffee shops and...Bridget: Yeah like your typical main street.Katie: Kind of on the river.Bridget: Close to it, yeah.7:07 – 9:16Katie: Ok, so when you're thinking back to that time and you're just learning these new concepts around community building and you're looking in you're neighborhood and you're like ok there's.. We don't have any connections here.. Did you have any revelations at that time or what started to shift and how did you start building community?Bridget: Tim was a little more, I know he had been to Peter Block and John McKnight and they had been talking about neighborhood interviews. Truly going and finding people and interviewing them and Tim did that. He was like, “Alright the challenge is I've got to meet five different people, I'm going to interview them on their gifts and talents,” and then he was like, “you should too.” And I said maybe in a more informal way.Katie: What was your hesitation around that?Bridget: Yeah, well it's weird right, like this is an awkward beginning of like ‘hey stranger' or someone that I've just seen in passing, ‘Could we sit down and I'll interview you?' I think anyone would say once they've done it it's not weird at all it's just the hurdle of asking. Because I think I did talk to a few people but I didn't… I would just kind of talk to them instead of like scheduling it. I would just kind of be in a conversation and kind of work my way through what the interview probably would be.Katie: So like what are your talents, interests, passions, skills?Bridget: Yeah what do you like to do?Katie: So you kind of start with the low hanging fruit, I already know them..Bridget: I started with the easy-peasy, ‘Hey friend that I already know' and then we started talking about doing a starting a community garden in Bellevue, I wanted to do it, one of the people we like already knew was interested in doing it and then that kind of grew out of there. Like ok throw it out to the masses, who would want to start a community garden?Katie: So once you started talking to neighbors you start to kind of plot ideas? I feel like that's kind of a natural thing that happens just with people, is once you get to talking you start talking about what would be great in our neighborhood? And that conversations just kind of naturally evolves right like, probably pretty informally like the way that your conversations evolved.Bridget: Yeah I think so, like what would you want to do? Oh do we have this here?9:17 – 12:36Katie: So did you find that there are people who are really driven/motivated to get something created off the ground like ‘ok we'll do all the plans for the garden' and then there are the people who step in once it's there and say ‘yeah we're going to establish this and make it set'?Bridget: I don't know, there were some people who were interested in the beginning but they had some pretty… They were randomly enough when I went to community garden training there were two other people that I never met from Bellevue.Katie: Is that how you got started was just to go and learn how to do it?Bridget: That was one of my commitments, is I said I'm going to well I thought that I would get one I would interested helpful practice probably. And all the like powers that be were very supportive like the neighborhood association the people that were there at the time, had talked about it but they've never done it and I'm like I'm really going to do it, I've already signed up for the class. And they were like sure, go for it, you know we'll support it and you can do it under the neighborhood association umbrella.Katie: Had you gardened before?Bridget: Just in the backyard a little bit, I mean I still would say I'm not an expert gardener. Whatever, you plant seeds that grow, maybe they don't, and that's ok you just. You just keep going and that's what's great about it because the weather is unpredictable, the season is unpredictable. There's no guarantee that just because you did it well last year you could do the exact... You could think you're doing the exact same thing and it's not.Katie: I like that approach, I really like that because I think there's a lot of wisdom in that for people who want to do something that they don't know how to do and maybe think they'll never know how to do or be experts at, and for something like gardening that can be really intimidating. And what you're saying is that's ok even if it fails. The whole point isn't necessarily...Bridget: Well, and that would be my perspective on it and what I bring to the community garden. I think I was talking about how there were two people at that training who wanted to grow their own food. They had plans to make a community garden, they wanted to sustain their living, they wanted to plant enough food to last their... They wanted to eat off their land. But it wasn't going to be their land it was going to be some neighbor's property that as an empty lot. And we kind of parted ways because they were very serious about, like we will be producing enough food for ourselves and the difference between the lot they already thought they could use and some of the lots like empty some vacant property that we were looking at they were like “oh there's not enough room, not enough room” and I was like “not enough room for what?” But like my idea was not going out to produce enough food to support all of Bellevue.It was always going to be a community garden, a place to meet, a place to garden, a place to enjoy each other. And hopefully get some vegetables out of it. So meeting those people at first was exciting and then it was like this is a struggle, they were not interested in the community aspect of it.Katie: The community aspect of it is what.. And that's what you went to people with.. It wasn't do you want to grow vegetables it was do you want to be part of a community that is growing vegetables?Bridget: Right. Yeah like bring your kids, it won't matter, we won't care. No hard core rules no you know some of the strict regulations.12:37 – 15:18Katie: That's the key. So then how did the potluck evolve?Bridget: There was ourselves and another family, the Salzmans, who I guess we just decided we should try it. There wasn't a whole lot of planning involved other than like we all do it once a month, we'll have it at the city building and that's it. And we don't know what will happen, I think it was just mainly them and just saying like well it might just be the four of us - and kids who show up and we'll just see what happens from there.Katie: And so during this time, you guys are starting to shake a little bit of your patterns about how you live in your neighborhood, can you talk about some of those smaller micro-things that you've done to build community and ways that you've also met neighbors. Because you know it helps to have that form of communication where it's not just a flier going out. What were the ways you got to kind of know more neighbors so you could make those invites?Bridget: I think a lot of it was, one the coffee shop became much more of a hub. So there were people coming and going and just running into people and saying hello. There were programs that our kids did, like there was a basketball program with young kids and we walked around, I think we went around to a few different people and talked to them about, ‘hey would you come? You'd be welcome.” There was a neighborhood group started on Facebook too.Katie: And I love that you guys do stuff in your front yard too.Bridget: Yeah we usually have our fire pit out there, so we'll sit out there. Halloween we sit out there with a fire and hot dogs or just anytime and there's quite a few kids in our neighborhood especially at this point, that just kind of wander around, hang out looking for stuff to do. So if we're doing that they can come and hang out and sometimes their parents come with them. Sometimes it's a formal ‘hey we're having a fire pit who wants to come?'Katie: And the same spirit happens at the garden. Right where people just kind of walk by and they see it so that's an invitation?Bridget: Yeah and I have gone to the school and done, like with the after school program, pretty much since the beginning brought a group weekly or however often works in their schedule. So there were a lot of kids then that I got to know who I would meet their parents somewhere in the grocery or wherever and be like ‘oh hi I know you' and then they'd have to explain who is this lady? And then there is stuff like when people walk by, still like ten years later like ‘What is this? We have a community garden?' And the community garden was communal, that was the other thing that we did, it's not as if you pay a membership due and get so much property or square foot bed, it's just everybody gardening together, so that if somebody is to come once, they don't have to wait until next year to get their bed or whatever. They come and they can do whatever we're doing, like everybody works on it together, same thing with kids and everything.15:19 – 16:44Katie: So I mean taking it back to when you guys were first looking at Bellevue and saying this is not a place where we can build community to today it just seems like...Bridget: I don't think we thought that we couldn't build it but we just hadn't.Katie: Yeah or I guess..Bridget: We just didn't know what community was, like to sit back and be like ‘oh yeah when we grew up we could talk to all these neighbors and we did run.. Like I did run around with my neighbor friends, there were five or six kids I was allowed to go around the block... I just think we as adults had not even attempted. Like we were just the people coming in and out our front door, parking, getting out and going out to work, coming home and staying home or going out somewhere else. And we just had that shift of well what is going on here in Bellevue?We should be a part of this. If this is where we are going to live, let's live here. It shifted from work and people we know from work or old college friends that we're going to go visit and see to shifting to like well who are our neighbors? You know maybe we thought that the neighborhood itself wasn't very welcoming like when I look back nobody welcomed us what the heck. But we've been here long enough we are the people who have lived here, we should be the “welcomers” so I think we just kind of recognized our own role. If we want our community to look a certain way we've got to do it. We can't wait and think well nobody else did that, so I guess it doesn't exist.Katie: That's just not part of our neighborhood.Bridget: It's just not a thing.16:45 – 18:41Katie: And that's also something that you almost don't want to impose on people its like ‘well nobody else is doing that here so maybe that means people don't want it and if we tried we'd be imposing' or we'd be asking people too much. But I'm wondering too is there something to the rhythm of the garden and the potluck that has allowed for this to take shape?Bridget: I don't know I wanted to make a community garden. I think that as far as where is your energy best, where gives you energy, what makes you happy is a big factor. So if it's going to make you miserable to garden then you're probably not going to be the person that starts the community garden. Like you might help with some aspect of it but going to the garden overall is a fun time for me, I enjoy it, it makes me happy. I love when new people come I love when old people show up versus trying to do something just because I think it's a good thing to do, if that makes sense. There's definitely been times and roles that I have taken on because ‘oh wouldn't you, would you be willing to do this for us, you'd be really great at that' ..Ok, I can do that, you know I'll commit to that role… and then realizing this is killing me.. Like this just makes me miserable, why would I say I'd do this and now I say I've done it so I'll do it but I've got to step out quickly. And I think that's more like there are plenty of ways to build community and plenty of things that you can do, I think it's just making sure you're enjoying them. And then it's also possible to make sure you're enjoying them with the right people. You know some of those..Katie: Keeping an eye out for who is going to be in the same.. Who has the same motivations as you.Bridget: Versus being like, oh if you're willing. You know sometimes you agree just to have help, to have anyone on board to do something but if its... You know what you want and you're going the wrong direction you might be really disappointed.18:42 – 21:04Katie: You can be discerning when you build community and it doesn't mean you're not a good neighbor.Bridget: Yeah, I think the other things we've done like the potluck we were very conscious of doing things that are simple, keeping it simple, don't make it complicated, don't promise gourmet meals. We have never said that we are going to... You know the tables will be set up by 5:30 and we will have brought the main dish, anything like that. It's kind of, the more people come the more comfortable they are, like “oh it starts at five o'clock and that means we just get here at five o'clock and we start setting tables up and chairs and arranging the room it doesn't mean at five o'clock dinner is served and you've walked into like a dinner party with tablecloths. It's very laid back, we make sure there are plates which actually on Sunday we ran out but oh well. People figured it out, they reused some, ate off the cake plates.Katie: Yeah, that's the part that stresses me out about potluck, when I hear it and I think of hosting it I think I have to bring the main dish, I have to be the one to set up everything and you figured out a way to make that low key.Bridget: You just kind of set it up with the expectation of 1) there's not really a host, like Ryan will put it on the Facebook group and he'll set the events, it's every fourth Sunday and that's kind of done for the year actually. Between a few of us we throw in paper plates and forks every once in a while, so yeah and just kind of knowing we could have put the bar really high from the beginning but I think at that point we were aware enough to know that that would wear us down. We wanted to make sure it would be nothing any of us dreaded going to and that's not going to keep it going.Katie: Yeah, and how could you ever go on vacation or have a missed week?Bridget: Yeah and if we're not there what do you do? You know luckily there's not a key, the way Bellevue works is we just call the police and they have a key to the building and they let us in. Now anybody, the early birds know that. So if we're not the first one there the other first person knows ‘oh I just call this number and they'll come and let us in and we can get the tables out and start moving things around.' I mean that all took time you know, but I think just to be cautious or thoughtful about if it's something that you want to do for a long time, what is it that you enjoy doing and it won't drain you over the long-haul?21:05 – 23:13Katie: And how often do you go to the garden? How often are you..Bridget: In the season I'll go twice a week.Katie: Ok, and are you going at a set time when everyone else is coming too?Bridget: Yes, Wednesdays 6:30, Sunday at 9:30.Katie: So you have set hours?Bridget: Those are the established.. They kind of shift from year to year but usually it's like Wednesday night and Sunday morning.Katie: Ok. How many people would you say are showing up to these different things, does that even matter? How important is that to you?Bridget: It's great when there is a crowd. There's probably like 30-40 people plus kids, and then some kids at the potluck.Katie: Starting out it was just you and the Salzmans right?Bridget: Well a couple more people came and even then obviously in the time that we've been doing them, who shows up and who is still showing up has changed. The same thing with the garden, some people who were really helpful and got us you know came and did some hard work at the beginning, you know one couple's moved out of Bellevue another one is still semi-involved, actually a couple of people have moved out.. You know so some people who were involved are gone. And now it's a different wave of people almost. And then there's people that for some of those people that were a part of the community garden they never came to a potluck, that wasn't their scene. We even though it is kind of close.. Bellevue is pretty small, so you could be conscious of — ‘oh they've never shown up once' but it's not their thing. So I think to just keep that.. Because when you first.. When things first get started and they're sort of in that fragile state of beginning, it is sort of fragile right and you think ‘oh how come they aren't coming to the garden, I thought they'd help and they've never shown up.' And you can take it personally but then again another part of living in a neighborhood for your life is expecting you to live by these same people. So if you want to hold a grudge about the fact they said they'd show up and they didn't you probably aren't going to be great neighbors, you know like this is a lifetime of living so let's not hold a grudge about the time they said they'd show up or why didn't they and all that kind of stuff. Because that's not necessarily going to help build community either.23:14 – 24:18Katie: One of the things that I'm wondering now is if it is a new neighbor and they want to get involved in the garden, do they contact you? If they do want to come to the potluck is there a main person there to kind of coordinate things or..Bridget: I think the Facebook group is a pretty big communication device for everyone, and that shows the times and then if somebody asks a question then the person tags my name or somebody else in there and say “hey they want to know about this” or you know I think Facebook is a big driver as far as communication that I've had and then it might be a personal message or text from somebody whose met, you know maybe they live next door to somebody who had that question and they say ‘oh here's her phone number or I'll text her or email her.'Katie: So you are the main contact for a lot of these questions for the garden?Bridget: I mean for the garden I am, I don't know that anybody really reaches out for the potluck as much as they would just show up and be like ‘what is this, who should I talk to?' And then people would probably point out a few different people to talk to there.24:19 - 26:40Katie: So when people talk to you I guess they see you as a coordinator of the garden especially, and they come to you and they have a brand new idea for the garden or they want to implement something, being in that role as the main contact how do you deal with that how do you respond?Bridget: Usually it's that sounds great, you can do it. Just recently we had a big, one of our neighbors was part of Crossroads and she was leading a go global effort in Bellevue and she wanted to do it at the community garden and she was like, “I've got some ideas” and I was like “I'd love to hear them” and they wanted to put in a pergola and a grill. The grill didn't happen but the pergola is up and it was like that would be amazing, that would be great, and they did it. There have been many suggestions like at the potluck we should use silverware, all this plastic and I was like, “I hear ya I bring my own.” My answer to that is me and my family, we have the dishes we come here with and we take them home.Katie: So you bring your own set of dishes and silverware?Bridget: I do.Katie: Oh that's smart.Bridget: But I provide the paper ones as well, but one of the people who comes says we should really.. Or shouldn't we all.. We should just have silverware here and I'm like, “if you want to bring it and take it home and wash it I would love it.” But I am also making it clear that I'm not volunteering to do that.Katie: To clean everybody's dishes.Bridget: I am taking home these five plates and these five forks because I would really probably resent everyone as I washed their dirty dishes.Katie: Oh my gosh yeah.Bridget: But I would love it if somebody really was motivated and was like I'm going to do this, this is my thing I'm going to do every month, I would totally support that.Katie: Yeah it goes back to do what you want other people to do, sort of be the change by living it. I think people forget what an individual looks like versus what an organization looks like. It's like an organization who runs a potluck would probably take that and implement a new system of dishwashing because they could but an individual or a family..Bridget: Or organize like it's your month. Like could you imagine the rotating..Katie: No.Bridget: Who knows.. Who knows what any organization would do.Katie: But that's the slipery slope of it getting really entangled and emmeshed in this sort of process, agenda, structure that ends up killing the spirit of it.26:41 – 34:21Katie: Now when you look at your neighborhood, Bellevue, what does community look like? What would be like a key image?Bridget: There's a few that come to mind, like one is the ability for my... like Patrick who is old enough and friends live with he just walks around and finds friends. Like that's a pretty great image for me, like that's kind of his classic line at this point is “I'm going to go out and find some friends, I'll be back.” That's a pretty big deal for your kids to be able to go out and find some friends to play with. I don't know there's a lot of images, you know we just had the memorial day parade and we weren't in the parade but knew.. Waving at all the groups that were walking by, how many people we knew or as people go to sit down or as we go to sit down talking to so many of the people that are around that's pretty great.. That's a big day for Bellevue I feel like Memorial day parade but pretty great.Katie: Do you ever feel the need to go back in time to this hidden life in pulling in from work and going in the house and not talking to any of your neighbors, is there ever a time when you not regret but wish you could be more under cover in your neighborhood?Bridget: I don't think so, no, like I said I think there is the things you learn about being in community and being around your neighbors of knowing how far to take of personal feelings right, “oh you hurt my feelings.” And kind of working.. Being aware of who you are and why that hurt your feelings, like don't hold onto that forever because I could find a way to probably be upset with a lot of people if I wanted to, right? Like we could find hurts everywhere or slight grievances whether they're real or not, whole other story, but if I wanted to take that as a personal afront to what they said or not showing up..Katie: Or even just differences in political opinions.Bridget: That would be a big one right now. Like stuff like that, Facebook profile what somebody said on Facebook or on the group page you know, like how much do you engage in those conversations that people get started. So no I don't, at the same time there's been moments of struggle where you have to sit down and say “ok this is what community is about, it is about you can be this person and we can still talk about our kids being friends even though we have the.. We are not alike in a lot of ways.Katie: That part of it is what I think is the most magical. Is when you can actually get to a place where you can be common with people who you are so different from and you can feel connected and familiar with them even though you might never have chosen them but they're your neighbor. It's kind of like family but in a different way.Bridget: It is, and it's not to.. You know to paint this picture there are plenty of people who don't want to know me. It's not as if the whole neighborhood is all sharing.. You know there are those people who think a community garden is a waste of space, that's fine. There were people when we first started who thought we were taking away a place for kids to play, we can win them over or just ignore them. You know they'll either be won over all with time, I mean its not our intent, it's not as if we're hiding some intention other than.. I don't know if some people are suspicious like “why are you doing this” “what's your end goal?” And I think they're have been some people who have asked me that and I was like “um what do you mean? End goal? We're going to get to know each other isn't that enough?” But that's not enough some people just don't.. I don't know people have suspicious nature sometimes, sometimes they don't understand that you can just be doing it. I don't know how many times Tim has been asked if he is going to run for mayor. He's not.. Or city council.. Like are you running for something. Some people thought I worked at the school, “well you're a teacher there right?” “no, no I just live in Bellevue.” But like people's concepts of why people do things, you know it's your job to do them versus no this is just what I do for fun. This is my hobby.Katie: Yeah and it.. I think the intrastent motivation behind why you're doing something or if you were trying to get something out of it even if it wasn't this is my job or I'm trying to run for city council, if it was something less tangible than that like “I want to do this so I am.. So that people like me so I'm a good neighbor.. I'm going to do this so everyone thanks me and loves me for this garden at the end of it I'm going to be well renowned” so even that gets you in trouble because there are people that say, “you took away my this this or this” by doing it, you can't make everybody happy, you can't win everybody over so your motivation has to be pretty.. I would even think it gets whittled down to being just a pure motivation of “the only reason I would do this is because I love it and I want to be with the community. The community doesn't have to all of it but if some people do and we can enjoy it together than that's enough. I can see though where that would be really hurtful to be like “but wait a minute, wait I'm not trying to hurt anyone why is this being misconstrued?”Bridget: Why, why would you mock my garden? What do you think this is? But yeah. So you know that's one of the learning, take your toys and go home or stick it out and see what happens, see who comes around, all things with time. Sometimes its hard at this point to be like “wow it's been ten years” ten years of growing and what did it look like then, what were the struggles when we started versus what are they now? You know, I think overall the struggles now.. There's not really.. We kind of went over some of the hurdles and now it's just like I don't stress about it a lot. You know if people's expectations when they come to the potluck are let down because there wasn't a greeter at the door or there wasn't assigned seats, or whatever they had in their mind when they come in the door they may come and be disappointed because it wasn't organized enough and they really think it should be organized. And they probably don't come back and that's too bad I wish they would but at the same time this is maybe not where their energy is fulfilling, like they would be really stressed out by our lack of..Katie: So loose structure just kind of lends itself to anybody being able to fit in at the same time..Bridget: But there are people who come to the potluck who do not always bring a dish for whatever reason, they don't cook maybe they can't afford the meal, nobodies checking at the door. We can all show up differently and bring a different gift and that ties pretty directly to our work right and all that we have done. Not everybody.. The stricter the ways are the more exacting and perfect you have to be. At the community garden it would be really hard for groups of kids to show up at our community garden if you can't touch this and you can't touch that and if you step there.. I knew I wasn't going to organize.. I wasn't going to manage ten plots and ten people's opinions on how each plot should look. I was like heck no. That's one of the things garden managers.. Community garden managers do.34:22 – 36:18Katie: Ok so it has a lot of your spirit in it and whatever community effort is built has the person who starts it spirits in it. So let's take it back to Starfire's work real quick. Where is this type of community building that you do in your own life where does that show up in your work at Starfire and how is it influencing your work with disabilities one on one, do you think you'd be able to do some type of job if you weren't doing this at home?Bridget: Yeah, I think I could. I can definitely.. I know I believe in the community building work. I know it, I've seen it I've lived it in my own live and seen how if we had not changed or shifted what we were doing around our own neighborhood I don't know what our kids would be doing. Because of how we've shifted and lived I know that there is a lot of good things a lot of potential out here for communities to build up around. So I think that helps motivate the work but I think I could do it even if I hadn't. I wouldn't quite understand all the ins and outs I wouldn't have had the experiences to understand or think through some of the things but some have probably played off each other too.Katie: So your work at Starfire has kind of informed your role in your neighborhood and vice versa?Bridget: I would say it has.Katie: Yeah, how could it not.Bridget: I don't know how it wouldn't have at this point but I'm sure they've definitely influenced each other.Katie: That's the work life blend I think that was talked about at the beginning of this change at Starfire. It's not that we have to take our work home and do our work at home it just means that our work is actually is a way of life and we do it everywhere. We do it at our work but we don't clock out and go home and be sucky neighbors because it kind of just influences the way you live everywhere.36:19 – 38:14Katie: Why do you think it's important for you to do this work in people with disabilities lives?Bridget: Well I think the.. What I've seen in our own world and I think with some of the people that have started projects as families too is that it kind of spurs on the next thing. So by starting something it kind of opens another door, it's a ripple effect of all of it. So I think that is somebody starts something in their neighborhood and then you know you don't necessarily have to do it all, there will be other people who are motivated to something else then maybe you just show up to support them or tell them they did a great job later on. It's not you for everything, but I definitely think for more people to know each other is good for everyone, for sure.Katie: So what is your hope for the next ten years, in the next ten years, let's say ten years from now what is your hope for Bellevue?Bridget: I think that's pretty hard because I think Bellevue is pretty great right now it doesn't need to change anymore, but I'm sure there will be change in ten years and hopefully it will all be good change. My hope is that it is just a welcoming happy community for everyone and continues to be that and in ten years my sons will then be young adults will want to be there too. That this is a place where they want to be and feel as strongly connected to as they do now.Katie: And maybe carry through with some of the work that you guys have set?Bridget: Maybe I can't imagine.. In their own way they'll be doing something else. I have no doubt they'll be doing something.Katie: Maybe they'll run for mayor. One of them will run for mayor.Bridget: No, well maybe who knows. We'll see.Katie: Alright well thank you, I appreciate it.Bridget: Thank you Katie.

Scott: One of Kyle's big interests is birds. So what we did was created a birding weekend, and invited a bunch of guests who were connected with the Audubon Society, Cincinnati chapter, Cincinnati Bird Club. People along that line those who share the same interest in birding as Kyle does.Katie: Yeah and this interest in birding is more than just - I like to be outside and in the woods, right? Tell me about that interest that Kyle has and what that looks like.Tammi: When Kyle was born we had two acres in the woods and my husband is the biggest Audubon-nut known to man. And we had every bird in our yard. So Scott had all these CDs from Audubon and from Cornell University of bird calls.Tammi: What we didn't realize is Kyle's gift is audio memory and at age 2, age 3 he was putting those CDs in our old stereo and memorizing, we didn't realize, he was memorizing all those bird calls by track. We're thinking three hundred, four hundred, or five hundred bird calls he has memorized, and he still knows them to age 20. Katie: That is incredible, I didn't realize that it was something that started that young. So when you chose what to do, you were thinking around Kyle's interests. Why were you looking at Kyle's interest in particular?Scott: Well we want to get him integrated, involved in the community - trying to link him up with like-minded people. People with the same interests, shared interests.Katie: So let's unpack how you came up with the idea to eventually have a retreat, what was your initial concept around what you would do?Tammi: My initial thought was a running event, Kyle ran cross country in eight grade and he wants to run again. But Scott and I don't run long distance. So I thought I thought we would set some kind of annual running event. And that was mom, all on my own, in my own head, I get caught in my head.Katie: What do you mean by that? Why was it like being caught?Tammi: When we came to Starfire and started learning different strategies. Taking people to lunch, taking other runners, birders, artists, taking even neighbors, just taking people to lunch and pick their brains, I just call it getting out of my own head.Scott: Yeah the cool thing about some of this was when we first started thinking about this we thought well we can do this, we can do this with no input from anybody else you know we'll come up with the idea and then we can help execute. And then talking to a particular person at Starfire we were told to just talk to people, see what they think and let them kind of run with the program. Don't plan everything for yourself, this is not about you, this is about Kyle integrating into the community. Don't even make the event about him, just make an event of which he is an equal part of and let people volunteer and get the buy in from that.Katie: How important do you think those coffees were and those plannings were over time?Tammi: They were critical.Scott: Critical that's the word I was thinking too.Tammi: It was fun and it was critical to get everyone's feedback and to brainstorm with others. The synergy of getting all our ideas together.Scott: Yeah, simple conversations and getting buy-in, otherwise you're going in cold asking people to do something when they don't even know who you are. It just, you have to.Tammi: And we took a few birders to lunch and they said, well why don't we rent a cabin out in rural Adams County and go birding? And that had never crossed our minds. Scott: And then all the pieces, well what would we need to do for this and this and and it just kind of fell in place in some ways. It still look a lot of planning.Katie: And did it fall in place because the people who helped come up with the idea were helping with some of the logistics and thinking through what to do?Scott: Yeah.Katie: Some shared ownership there, and that's kind of what you were saying that you might get caught in your head, that the original idea didn't have anyone else owning it and so that's the shift where some other people being part of this and feeling just as passionately is what drives the whole ship.Tammi: Absolutely.Katie: And then so everybody who participated in the planning of it how did you work with their schedules to make sure they were involved?Scott: Our event was more of a regional draw, it's not people who live on our street. So our meetings were one on one, they were through email, phone calls things like that. It wasn't like a collective group of people meeting all the time. Turned out there was a bigger interest than we really kind of expected so we had to kind of pull back on it because the place we were getting for the weekend wasn't large enough to hold everybody. So their enthusiasm made things so much easier. The worse thing you can do is throw a party and nobody shows up.Katie: That's really neat. And what was Kyle's role in the project planning itself?Tammi: Excellent question.Scott: I won't say Kyle initiated any of the plans himself, what we would do is we would always ask Kyle if he wanted to do this, get his sign-off essentially.Tammi: Is it ok to have a sleepover with ten people in a cabin? And he would give us a thumbs up or thumbs down. He would come on all the lunches with us or the coffees we would have with people.Katie: Once you came up with this idea together and you landed on your theme, you came up with what you were going to do, you probably set a date, picked a location, were there any other things logistically that you really had to work through that were big parts of this?Tammi: We had to watch the weather, and it rained, which actually turned out to be a good thing because the birds like the rain.Scott: Yeah, it was migration season for the warblers, it was in May, so a nice spring rain kept them calm and singing.Tammi: Picking trails that were accessible and worthy of seeing lots of birds. Picking a trail that was near a lunch picnic shelter, because we provided lunch.Katie: Did anything come up during the process where you felt like, oh no this is never going to work?Tammi: Oh big time.Scott: YesKatie: Can you name a couple of those?Scott: Well, we had a spot all picked out, it was an hour and a half east of the city of Cincinnati, and was it a week or two before? They said, there's — I'll just call it an environmental issue. They had some wild animals on the premises, and we cannot have you come to this. Katie: What type of wild animals?Scott: Feral hogs.Katie: Oh of courseScott: Feral hogs were loose on the property and we need to trap them and we can't have humans at the facility because it'll spook the feral hogs. So we had to scramble, Tammi actually did, scrambled and found a place that we then rented for the weekend.Katie: That must have been just.. How did that feel, gut wrenching?Scott: (Laughter)Tammi: Gut-wrenching except that the rental I think turned out to be a better option for us.Katie: So it was a good thing, hogs feral hogs who would've thought can actually be the best part of your project?Scott: Yeah and then we walked into the place we rented and the first thing we see is the mounted head of a hog on the wall, and I was like, this is perfect, it was meant to be.Katie: So take me to the day of the birding event. It sounds like a lot of the planning happened with you all and you were the connection but maybe having everyone in the room at once was kind of an exciting thing. Where everybody's like, now we're all here. Tell me about the day, how did it feel?Tammi: It was May and it was rainy and we all met at a trail head and that's how we got our day started with a hike.Scott: And we turned the hike procedures and all that over to one of the birders, who was familiar with the trail. So they led the hike and we just participated like everybody else.Tammi: It was exciting, everyone showed up.Scott: Everyone showed up.Tammi: We had 17 on the hike and I think 14 came back to the cabin for dinner. That was exciting to finally get inside and out of the rain. We had a lot of fun stories to tell. And then ten people, that's the limit on the cabin for spending the night, so we had ten conversations to midnight.And what Scott and I noticed too, Kyle being such a (I don't want to say expert) but the audio memory, he can hold his own in that group of experts.Katie: Were they impressed by the level of knowledge that he has?Tammi: Absolutely.Katie: After all this your goal to help Kyle get more integrated into the community, and also as a family to connect more socially with people who share the birding interest, what has happened since? What is a result of this project that you want to share?Scott: During that weekend one of the activities we did was we had a little contest where we would play a bird call and the avid birders had to identify what the bird was. We had fifteen birds and Kyle ended up winning the competition. It was pretty cool in and of itself. Then a few months later there was a bird outing, and the person that was leading the birding walk - we had never met. And when we introduced ourselves to him he said,“Oh Kyle I've heard about you, you're the one who knows all the bird calls.” So we decided to take him to lunch just to make the connection with him. Over lunch he said he would like to do that, he heard about the birding weekend, he actually knew of the place we went and said that was one of his favorite places to go birding ever. And he would like to do that same weekend if we'd be interested in doing it with he and his buddies. So great yeah, we'll do that. And then at lunch he decided I have about an hour, I'm going to go birding, Kyle would you like to join me? So we all went birding and it was kind of interesting because Josh kind of took Kyle. And they went birding and Tammi and I were kind of behind them watching it was pretty cool because it all came out of the birding weekend. It was that connection, he knew about the weekend, he knew about Kyle's skills, he knew of where we went birding, it was just this perfect puzzle that was put together.Katie: And you didn't even have to put that out there?Scott: He did it all. It was his idea, and it's his guest list, so we're connecting Kyle to a whole other group of people he didn't know before.Katie: That's incredible, thank you guys anything else you want to say?Tammi: Well, I was going to say, I felt as the non-birder, you know the big let down after the big weekend… Birders all go away for the summer and I thought, oh my gosh we did all of this and there's no connection. And then a month later they go on that hike and then — there's Josh.Katie: Pretty awesome.Tammi: It was awesome.

Your Marriage Has An Impact!!! Join the Marriage After God movement today. https://marriageaftergod.com"A husband and wife chasing after God knows every aspect of their marriage is for proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ, they are not ashamed to share about it, and they are confident in the impact they are making in the world around them." - Marriage After God book"The two of you serving God together will always make a greater impact than the two of you could make alone striving for your own accomplishments and happiness."Marriage After God bookPrayer:Dear Lord, Thank you for the gift of companionship. Marriage is such an intimate friendship that blesses us. We desire to draw closer to each other and to use this intimate bond to bless your name. Thank you for being intertwined in our relationship and at the center of it. You are the reason we are stronger together. Please continue to strengthen us as a cord of 3 strands. We pray that you would use us to do hard things as we build up your body and build up your kingdom. Be our strength as we persevere. May we be intentional in encouraging each other in marriage so that we do not grow weary. We pray against the enemy. We pray against his evil ways. Thank you for being our refuge and our shield. Thank you for equipping us and empowering us to stay strong and to fulfill your will. May your will be done in us and through our marriage.In Jesus’ name, amen! READ TRANSCRIPT- [Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God. - Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. - [Aaron] And today, we're in part 15 of the Marriage After God series and we're gonna be talking with Adam and Katie Reid about how we are stronger together. Welcome to the Marriage After God podcast where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after. - [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as Unveiled Wife. - [Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as Husband Revolution. - [Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade. - [Aaron] And so far, we have four young children. - [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media. - [Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith everyday. - [Jennifer] We believe that Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one, full of life. - Love. - And power. - [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God. - [Jennifer] Together. - [Aaron] Thank you for joining us on this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together. - [Jennifer] This is Marriage After God. Thank you guys so much for joining us on this podcast today. We wanna encourage everyone listening to just leave us a star rating review, that just helps the podcast get out into the world. And so, if you wanna support this podcast and you've been inspired by it, would you take a moment just to leave that review? Because it helps people find marriage after God. - [Aaron] Also, and we also wanna let you know the whole reason we've been doing these interviews, the whole reason this podcasts exists is because we wrote a book called Marriage After God, my wife and I and we're excited to get it in your hands. If you would take a moment after this podcast is over or take a pause in between and just go shop.marraigeaftergod.com and pick up a copy of the Marriage After God book. It's our newest book, we've written it together and we wrote it for you and your marriage and we're excited to get it in your hands and hear what you think about it. - [Jennifer] So, today, our special guests are Adam and Katie Reid. Hi you guys, thanks for joining us. - [Adam] Hey, thanks for having us. - [Katie] Thanks so much, we're glad to be here. - [Jennifer] So, why don't you just take a moment to introduce yourselves to our listeners, I'm sure a lot of them already know who you are, Katie, and your book. But just touch on that and then how long you've been married, how many children, what you guys do together, that kinda thing. - [Katie] Yeah, well, we're Adam and Katie Reid. I mean, Adam can probably share some things about himself too. But he's the lead pastor at our church, I'm a speaker and writer and we have a marriage show we do together called Stop Hammock Time on Facebook Live. And we have five loud and wonderful kids, we are not usually bored. - Awesome. - [Adam] Yeah, no, we stay busy and did you say that we've been married for 17 years? - [Katie] No, I did not. - [Adam] Yeah, we've been married for 17 years, it'll be 18 this summer and five kids ages ranging 14 to 2 1/2, almost three. And so, yeah, we definitely stay busy. - [Katie] Lots of life experience. - [Aaron] Yeah, that's awesome, we're aspiring to that. We're on our way, we're at year 12 and we got-- - Four. - Yeah, four kids. So, we're on our way. - Yeah. - Okay, guys, so, we always like to start with an icebreaker, this just helps everyone get to know you just a little bit more, so we're going there. What's your guys' most embarrassing marriage moment? - [Katie] Oh, man, so-- - [Adam] How do we choose? - [Katie] How do we choose? So we were part of a discipleship program at a Christian camp and there was a guy on staff that looked a lot like Adam and sometimes Adam let his twin, named Matt, borrow his vehicle. And one day, I was at the grocery store and I saw Adam's vehicle there. I'm like oh my goodness, I am going to totally pull the best prank. So I climbed into the back, like the trunk area of the car. And I'm like I'm gonna jump out, like maybe after he's driving, this is gonna be so funny. Well, all of a sudden, I'm kinda peeking and it's taking forever, it's really hot. And all of a sudden, I see our friend Matt walking towards the car and I'm like oh, this is gonna be awkward. And so, I'm like how do I get out of the truck area before he gets there? And so, I can't get out but I'm like hey, I thought you were Adam and I was gonna jump out. That was definitely embarrassing. - [Adam] Yeah, that was-- - [Aaron] That's really funny. - [Jennifer] What a terrifying prank. - [Adam] It was a great story to hear when she got back to the house. But another one that we just had happen just a couple days ago, we've been getting a bunch of snow and ice here in Michigan. So a lot of ice the last few days and I was watching something online teaching you how to walk on ice. And how when it's icy out, you should walk differently than your normal stride and keeping your center of gravity over your feet. And they said you should walk like a penguin because the penguins, they kinda have things figured out and they're on ice and snow often. And so, we were going to a funeral, Katie and I and we dropped our kids off at our in-laws. We walked out and the driveway was really slippery and so, I said, hey Katie, walk like a penguin. And so, we're both kinda waddling with our heads down and our center of gravity over, our toes turned out walking like penguins. And we look up and there's a guy walking his dog right at the end of the driveway and he kinda looked at us like we were really nutty. And Katie says, we're trying to walk like a penguin, trying that technique out on the ice. And he just kinda like okay. Just kept walking. - [Aaron] No context, no context. - [Adam] Yeah, we got in the car and laughed really hard about that one. - [Jennifer] That's awesome. - [Aaron] That would have been awesome to see. - [Adam] You guys gotta be able to laugh at yourself. - [Aaron] Yeah, being able to laugh is joy, that's joy. Being able to laugh at yourself, that's good. So, we're gonna go into, thanks for sharing those embarrassing moments. Adam, I just really wanna, I think that was an awesome prank you played on your wife, that you-- - [Adam] Best prank. - [Aaron] In the car when she was with, that's funny. - Yeah-- - So, we're gonna go into-- - [Adam] Didn't know if she said but it was a Jeep. And so, she wasn't climbing in the back of a car and closing the trunk on herself but it was the back of Jeep and it was so hot and she was dripping with sweat and that made it even more funny. - [Aaron] So we're gonna get into a quote real quick from the Marriage After God book in chapter 15. So we're gonna share a quote from chapter 15, Stronger Together in the Marriage After God book and this is the quote, the two of you serving God together will always make a greater impact than the two of you could make alone striving for your own accomplishments and happiness. So, real quick, we can just talk about that for a second, do you feel like this, do you see this in your own marriage? - [Adam] Absolutely, yeah, I look back at my life before marriage and completely different person, different way of doing life and different way of ministering and that definitely comes from learning and growing because of being married to Katie. And I think, I don't wanna speak for you, but I think you can say the same thing, Katie. She has strengths that I don't have and I have strengths that she doesn't have and that's the beauty of marriage and God's design For that is making each other better and not really making each other better, I think, but the husband and wife combination there, not just husband and wife but male and female combination there, I think, gives a much clearer and more accurate picture of God's character and who He is. And so, there are things that Katie is very good at that I am not and she fills in those gaps there and vice versa. We are much better person together than we are apart. - [Katie] Well, I think we learned this over time too because at the beginning, I'm a very driven person, semi-organized, getting more organized since we're trying to implement some of the tidying up techniques in our home. It used to drive me crazy that he wasn't like me in that area, it's like I just thought you see the world through your own lens. And so, to me, the thought of not turning a paper in in time in college stressed me out so much that I think I wrote his paper for him because he's just gonna turn it in the week it was due. - [Adam] It may have happened once. - [Katie] Just one time. But then there's things that he is really good with people. I can sometimes be too blunt, he has a great way of making people feel like they're important. And so, we've learned over time to appreciate the strengths in others instead of just trying to wish we were more like, they were more like us. I think we've looked at, okay, I have weaknesses and strengths, you have weaknesses and strengths and how can we blend these together to be more effective? - [Jennifer] I love that picture of complimenting each other in that way. And how God, He has a mission for all of us to do and work for all of us to do and each one of our marriages is so unique and yet, paired together, we compliment each other for all of those things and to be able to fulfill them. - [Aaron] Yeah and your guys' marriage doesn't seem anything like ours. I'm making a joke 'cause I, Jennifer is always like why won't you just, I do it this way, why don't you do it that way and we've had to get to this point of, well, I might do something differently and that's gotta be okay sometimes. Now-- - Learning to appreciate, knowing the value of that is really important. - [Aaron] Yeah. - [Jennifer] And I think that a marriage after God definitely has their eyes open to those differences and sees the value in them. - [Aaron] Yeah and also growing in them like there's some things that we do need to change in, for sure. But that's a really good testimony. Has there been any standout moments in your marriage? We're talking about this stronger together, the unification, us moving in the same direction in one mind, one spirit in our marriage, has there been any standout moments in your marriage where you realize the two of you were stronger together? Any personal stories-- - Well, for us, we are in vocational ministry, I know that's not the case for everyone but we have led multiple camps together, like a youth camp. We do cousin camp with our nieces and nephews and just being able to tag team. If I just did it by myself, I'd be completely burned out by the end of the experience and same with him. But learning, I think, to let each other lead and we are not perfect at this by any means, we're both first borns and a lot of times, stubbornness or determination, how ever you wanna spin it, comes with that. - Determination, so. - Yeah. So there are times when we butt heads and somebody bends so the other can lead but we kind of do this clumsy dance and learn how, are learning how to do that more and more. So I think, for us, ministering to kids has been a way that we've been able to do that. But I was just telling someone the other day, now that Adam is lead pastor, there are some changes we're implementing at church but we also need mindful of the culture. But my tendency is like sweet, we can change a hundred things at once, won't this be great? Well, it won't be great because there's a culture and you wanna respect that. And so, Adam's help reminded me let's celebrate the one thing that we're doing right now. And so, for me, kind of my side writing and speaking thing gives me creative outlet to drive and go and get it done without driving him crazy that I'm putting all that energy into what he and I are doing together. - [Aaron] I like that. You guys have recognized that in the pursuit of what God's doing, you're stronger together when you allow the other person to operate in the strengths and gifts that they've given them in that proper order, I love that. And you also finding out, as a team, ways that you can have the other outlets in ministry so it's still working together but even if it's in different ways, does that make sense? - [Katie] Right, and like if I'm gonna go speak somewhere, do something outside the home, like a lot of times, Adam will watch the kids. And so, sometimes I think ministering together doesn't always look like side by side, we're both doing everything together-- - [Adam] In the same physical space, yeah. It can be her, the things that God has called us to as a family, when she goes and speaks, we are ministering with her by allowing her to go do that and vice versa. Katie and the family allow me to go and minister to people by picking up and doing things that need to be done. And so, ministering together, again, I think that's a good point. Ministering together doesn't always mean that you are right side by side with each other but more allowing each other to minister within the calling that our family has and within the good things that each of have individually. - [Jennifer] That's great, so for people listening, just as an encouragement to them, could you guys share maybe like one or two practical ways that a husband and wife can support each other in whatever thing that God is inviting them to do? Specifically, like how can a wife support her husband, how can a husband support his wife, practically? - [Adam] I mean, I think we're walking through that right now, Katie writing and speaking is a relatively new thing over the last few years, three years maybe. Me and the kids supporting her looks like allowing her to have the time to go write and it's our expectations, we take those expectations on, we take those things on so that that frees up her time to be able to go write. And there were multiple times when she was writing the book that she would just go away for the weekend and she was able to accomplish a lot of things and it was really time for her writing when she was able to do that. So trying to pick up some slack and take some of the responsibilities on so that she was allowed or able to go do that. And then also with her speaking now, it's hey, we'll be home, I've got the kids while she's allowed to, she's able to, not allowed to. It's not like I'm giving-- - That sounds-- - [Adam] I'm giving permission to go do this. But she's able to go do that and not have to worry about getting kids to soccer practice and swimming and these types of things where she can just go and focus on what God's called her to do ministering to other people through the book and through speaking. - [Katie] And I think a big part of it is communication. It's sitting down together as a couple and saying, what does God want our family to be about? I mean, Aaron, Jennifer, you guys are a great example of this, of you clearly know the mission God has put before you, it takes different forms at times, whether through podcast or encouraging people one on one or retreats or books or all of those kind of things. But I think asking God to help give you a vision for your family where He comes first, your marriage comes right under that, right? Marriage after God and-- - Yeah. - [Katie] And communicating what is God calling us to and how do we pursue that in this season? I think there are different seasons in lives too where it can look differently. We've had an elderly friend and they had a vibrant prayer ministry and they did it from their recliners in their living room. And would call people and wish them a happy birthday and they were literally side by side in their living room doing that. But earlier on-- - [Jennifer] That's awesome. - [Katie] When they were younger, it looked like doing that in person. So I think knowing the vision for your family and then communicating what does this look like practically? If we're gonna do this, what are we gonna say yes to and what are some things we're gonna say no to so that we can serve together? - [Aaron] So, what you guys are saying right now is so perfect in the whole message of what we're talking about in Marriage After God. And I just wanted to go back to, you were talking about how right now, this new season, and we love the seasonal mindset knowing that there's gonna be seasons and like the Bible teaches us this and learning how to operate within seasons. And you guys were talking about right now, Katie, you're writing and speaking, and Adam, you'll stay home and let her go do that. And that only works, and I'm assuming 'cause, Katie, you brought up communicating but you guys sat down and said, what is that God wants to do? But then, are we in agreeance? It's not like, Katie, I'm gonna be a speaker and a writer, let me do my thing. And, Adam, I'm gonna be doing this ministry over here, let me do my thing. That would conflict, you guys wouldn't be able to get anything done which goes back to the quote of you guys being on the same page, communicating what's the Lord doing right now this season? Writing and speaking and Adam's like Amen, I agree and I'm gonna participate where I can to make that happen. Versus you both pursuing your ministries-- - [Jennifer] Individually. - [Aaron] Individually in this heart of you're in my way. And I love that you brought that up because some might be listening right now thinking God's put this thing on my heart and I need to do it. And I don't care if my husband, if he's drug along or is out of the way or vice versa. No, I'm doing this thing over here and I don't care what my wife's at. Rather, hey, let's lay it on the table, what's God doing and let's be on the same page with each other. 'Cause then you can work as a team, right? - Yeah. - Yeah. And we just had a conversation yesterday, right outside the door here at church. And I had felt like God was leading me to write another book but Adam and the kids were not ready for that. And so, that was hard because sometimes you do feel that pull of God, sometimes it's like I think God wants me to do this. But I talked to some mentors in my life and they said, you know, Katie, you have a Godly husband, Godly family, I don't think that he's gonna ask you to do something if your family's in opposition. Like that doesn't follow the model that God has laid out. Not to say that there's definitely, everything's not black and white. But so, my friend encouraged me like with Nehemiah, right? When he saw that the wall was broken down, he went and fasted and prayed before he went to the king. And so, my friend encouraged me like Katie, if you're really feeling like God is wanting you to write this book, why don't you fast and pray and then when you feel clear what God's saying, go to your husband and talk to him about it, ask him what he thinks. And so, we just had this conversation yesterday because if your family isn't on board, you are not gonna be stronger together, it's going to be divisive. But when you're on the same page, I mean, there's a difference. There's been times when we had adopted our fourth child and, I, again, felt from the Lord like we're supposed to do this. But Adam was praying, he's like I just don't have a peace about it yet. For us to just go ahead and do that, like we would have been divided and disjointed but when the time was right and Adam's like yes, I'm confident that we should do this. It was so much sweeter because we had that unity and that's a picture of Christ and of the Trinity and what, He once used marriage as a picture that the world will know Him. - [Aaron] Yeah and I just, it's perfect, it's a beautiful illustration of what we're talking about. Because to be honest, God could have put on your heart, might have put on your, did put on your heart that He wants you to write another book. But at the end of the day, He wants us to do the things He's given us to do His way. - [Jennifer] And in His timing. - [Aaron] And in His timing. So it could have simply been, you're gonna go this but I want you to walk this out well. And so, His challenge to you is to do it right versus, no, God's told me to do something, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it my way, I'm gonna do it and everyone's gotta get outta my way or jump on the train. And any one of us could do this, Adam could be walking this, I could be walking this, Jennifer could be walking this but God's like just because I have something for you, doesn't mean I have that thing for you right this moment. And we see that all throughout the Bible with Moses and the people of Israel. With all of the prophets not being able to see what they were promised. - [Jennifer] David anointed-- - [Aaron] David and his anointing as a king. Like we see like, so it doesn't mean it's a no, it might mean it's a yes but later. And I love the process that you guys walk through and we can all take from this example. Saying, okay, Lord, I feel this is something You put on my heart but even though You put it on my heart, I'm still going to offer it to You and ask that You show me how You want it done and when You want it done. And a part of that is getting counsel like you said and then going to your spouse and saying here's what it is, what are we gonna do about this? - Fasting and praying. - Let's pray about this together, let's be on the same page. I wanted to encourage you, that was really good, I love that. - [Jennifer] So you've given us this picture of unity, you said being on the same page with each other makes us stronger together. Can you guys just talk a little bit about oneness and unity and how that makes us stronger for the ministry that God has for all of us? - [Adam] I mean, again, I think unity is so important in marriage, the enemy uses little things to drive wedges between us. And in Song of Solomon, I'm loving the Song of Solomon right now, that book is fantastic. There's this message of catch the little foxes, it's sometimes just the little things in a marriage that the enemy uses to drive a wedge between us and it's important that we are communicating often and on the same page. Recognizing little things that we say, hey, this is something that we might wanna look at and pray about and talk about and maybe even we gotta get rid of this because it's driving a wedge between us. There are things that we need to recognize and remove or at least be aware of and be communicating about to be able to stay unified. The other thing I was gonna say is, again, marriage being a picture of the church and Christ. And Christ being the bride/groom and the church being the bride and Christ wanting perfect unity between Him and the church. And, again, we're sinful people. And so, that some day will be accomplished but that unification, that pure unadulterated unity is something that like Katie said before, the world is going to see Jesus by the way we do our marriages. And if we're divided, that says something to the world about God and about Jesus and vice versa. If we're unified and we're on the same page and we're communicating, that communicates something very important as well. - [Katie] I was just gonna add too, the other day, we had a really hard conversation because honestly, we are both tired, we have busy lives. And so, we would just kinda zone out on our phones at night and we are kind of slipping into this pattern of kind of coexisting, doing things during the day, kinda saying a few things and then like zoning out, escaping on our phones and then going to bed. And we had a hard conversation where there was lots of tears. Honestly, Adam, he's a go with the flow guy but I know when he brings up something that I need to work on, it's a big deal 'cause he waits a long till we have to say it. But we were just realizing like I could almost see this path we are going down of like had we kept going down that path, we would have lost a lot of that unity and oneness. Because honestly, unity and oneness is hard work. We have the Holy Spirit, obviously, to help us but it's those hard decisions that aren't always convenient and aren't always comfortable but they bring him the most worry. - [Aaron] So, I was just thinking, Jennifer and I literally just had a conversation similar a couple nights ago. And with this book coming out and the podcast and all the things that we're trying to be obedient in lately and with God. I was just mentioning to her, I was like hey, Jennifer, we need to be extra protective over our intimacy, over our time alone. Because in these seasons of us walking in obedience and chasing after these things, this is where we're gonna be attacked, this is where we're gonna lose focus. Is in our physical intimacy, in our spiritual intimacy, in our times alone when we should be recharging each other, being recharged in the word. And so, I just mentioned to her, I was like we need to be extra vigilant in protecting this part of our unity because if that goes, it doesn't matter what else we do. And so, it sounds like we were on the same journey. - [Jennifer] Well, I think everyone listening too can relate to this 'cause as you were talking, Katie, I think I can picture all the listeners on their end looking at each other if they're listening together as a couple. Well, with these downcast basis, like yeah, that's us. Everybody has access to social media and their phones and other things too that get in the way of that intimacy-- - [Aaron] That take our attention from each other. - [Jennifer] That take our attention away from each other and I love that you brought that up just as a reminder. So if everyone can just drop this note down, it would be to get our eyes off of our phones, off of the things that draw attention away from each other, look to each other and look to God of what He is doing. 'Cause He is doing something in this world and He's doing it through His people, He's doing it through us. So I love that you brought that up and I appreciate the encouragement to other people. My next question for you guy, oh, go ahead. - [Adam] That's not something that is kind of a one time conversation either, that's something where sometimes-- - Right. - It's continual. - [Adam] Those conversations happen often because we can easily slip back into old patterns, we can easily slip back into things that are just easy and avoid the tough conversations and honestly, tough change and tough challenging. Katie, part of the reason Katie is in my life is to challenge me and make me better and vice versa. I believe that God brought me to her to make her better and together, we're better. But changing the way that we are and changing the things that are easy takes work and it's not fun. And so, a lot of times it's easier just to escape into something else and just avoid those conversations. And that is a conversation, obviously, that could probably happen more often than it even does and would make us better, so. - [Aaron] Yeah, so, thinking about those conversations, those corrective course changing conversations that need to happen often. Our pastor always says in conversations about raising our children, 90% affirmation, 10% correction, those 10% corrections need to happen. Like you said the other night, you just were like hey, we're at a point where this needs to be addressed and changed tonight. But the 90% affirmation side, how important and how integral has affirmation played a role in the building of unity in your marriage and for those listening that we need to be recognizing that affirmation is important? How does that look? - [Katie] Well, one example that comes to mind is actually with our kids, so I'm not the most tidy housekeeper as I may have alluded to early on. And so, when it's time to clean, I kind of turn into like housezilla. It's just like I'm barking orders, I'm like come on everybody! 'Cause I'm so stressed by the amount of what needs to get done. So, my son, he's 12, sometimes he'll just stop and go, mom, you're so beautiful. And later on I thought he's being manipulative because it would change my attitude and all of a sudden, I would stop and realize how horrible I was being and when he pointed that out, it made me feel good inside. And so, the picture when, if Adam sends me a text just saying I appreciate you, I love you, period. It does, it builds into that and I'm more guilty of saying, hey, could you pick up this on your way home? And hey, how about this? But even when he goes and cashes his paycheck, trying to say thank you for working hard to provide for our family, just those little things in texting can be great with that. Sometimes even when you're at your house, of course you wanna talk face to face but if you're in the other room, just say, hey, I love you. I think that's huge because those corrective things, if that's happening all the time, it wears us down and we get discouraged. But building into our marriage in those ways, I don't think can happen enough. - [Adam] That's a good point, I think we can put so much weight and a burden on each other when we're heavy on the corrective side of things and vice versa. We can really lighten things up and make things more alive and life-giving when we're heavy on the affirmation side of things. And so, yeah, I think we both, that scenario, we can both grow in, for sure. - [Aaron] Yeah, us too. And it makes for, and so, affirmation is proaction and I see correction as reactive. So it's the thing like well, when it's necessary, we should do it 'cause correction needs to happen. But the affirmation makes a lot of the correction much less because we're being affirmed in the correct directions. We're being affirmed in the word of God, we're being affirmed to continue in the faith and to continue in what we believe and what's true. And how, like you said, you're beautiful. And you're like oh, I am beautiful and I need to be acting like what I am. Yeah, the affirmation is so important to us, just continue to move the right direction and keep our marriages and our ministries full of life and full of love and peace and joy. So, Jennifer, why don't you ask this one last question and then we'll get to the last last question. - [Jennifer] The last last question. Okay, so, in this chapter of Marriage After God, we share this idea of contrasting, what the world says about love. That you and me against the world so it's kind of like internalized love versus God's picture and desire for the mission of our marriage which is you and me for the world. What does this look like in your guys' marriage? - [Katie] Well, first of all, I just love that idea, it's powerful. And it reminds me of like let's say you're trying to push a big wheel, like if we're pushing against each other, we're gonna get nowhere. But if we get on one side of that wheel and push it, like my kids were helping me push my van that was stuck in the driveway this morning. - Oh no. - Oh no, 'cause the snow. - [Katie] You're combining your strengths and I think there's so much hostility and division out there in the world. I think, again, back to Nehemiah when they were trying to rebuild the wall, they said fight for your families. And I love the picture, it was all the people that were building this broken down wall, were doing it, it said, shoulder to shoulder. And I love that picture in marriage, are you serving shoulder to shoulder? Again, whether you're in the same room or not, are you going towards one goal which is to honor God? - [Aaron] Yes, yes. - [Katie] Because we've had friends recently die, like several and it's reminding of how fleeting life is. And God has given each marriage a purpose and that purpose could look different but all of purposes combined are to advance the kingdom. And like you said, husband and wife for the things of God. - [Adam] I think what I would say to that is it sometimes take a change of mindset as well. Because we as Christians, it can be very easy to slip into a mindset of oh, the world is attacking my faith, the world is attacking my God, the world is attacking me, the culture is doing these things. And so, it can be very easy to get defensive and put walls up and say, okay, you're attacking me, I'm coming after you. When really the mindset that God has given us is He said don't be surprised when this stuff happens, they hated Me. Jesus said they hated Me and they're going to hate you because you're aligned with Me. But He also said lay down your life for those people, sacrifice for those people, serve those people. And so, it could just take, again, conversations, how are we becoming more passionate to be like Jesus in loving and laying down our life for the world? As opposed to how do protect ourselves against the world? - [Jennifer] I love that perspective. And I also can't get that imagine of pushing a wheel out of my mind, I love imagery. And so, that's really powerful to me and I just think of husband and wife on either side like you said, Katie. And as pushing with all of our force and using all of our strength and then feeling super defeated because it has not moved at all, it doesn't work. And so-- - Well, actually, to take that analogy further, when one does get weak, what happens? The wheel rolls right over 'em. And so, we harm our marriage and instead of working in the same direction and actually getting somewhere, we also don't destroy our marriage. We don't destroy our partner, our spouse, the one that God's given us to be one with, so those are great-- - Perspectives. - Perspectives, yeah. So let's get to this last question, we've asked this to everyone. In your own words, what is a marriage after God? - [Katie] Rock, paper, scissors. - [Adam] We're both playing it to tell ya, hey, you take the part of this one. But I think, again, I love the duality of the title there, a Marriage After God, meaning we're seeking to follow God, we're seeking to be in alignment with His design for marriage, we're seeking to be in alignment in His purpose for marriage. But we're also, lost my train of thought there, but-- - [Katie] Well, that we want our marriage to be, go ahead. I was just gonna say, we want God to be first, right? Our marriage comes after God but then we also want our marriage to pursue God and the things of God. 'Cause like bed, this life is but a vapor and there's eternity if we are in Christ, we will live eternally with Him but we really have a limited time on this Earth. And there's so many petty things, I think Elizabeth Elliot, I've heard through the grapevine she had said this. That I think Jim Elliot, her husband who is martyred, he used to snore. Well, that could have been the thing that just drove her crazy but then afterwards, when her husband wasn't there, she missed that snoring. I always joke with Adam that he's gonna miss when I'm gone because I fall asleep during movies and he's not convinced that he will miss that. But I think it's do you want an internal perspective-- - [Aaron] Jennifer, you fall asleep during movies too. - [Katie] Is God the head of our marriage? Is He giving us our directives and are we going after the things He's laid before us? - Amen. - Amen and amen. That is so awesome, thank you so much for answering that. And just so you guys know, we're super encouraged by you and the ministry that is coming out of your marriage. You guys compliment each other so well and the Lord's using it to impact this world for His kingdom. And so, we're cheering you on and we just wanna give you an opportunity to share a little bit more about where people could follow along, you guys do these awesome interviews together. So why don't you share a little bit about that. - [Katie] Well, first of all, thanks so much for having us and I hope everyone gets a copy of Marriage After God, I know it's gonna be a wonderful resource to strengthen marriages, so-- - Thank you. - You're welcome. So we do a live show called Stop Hammock Time, 9:00 p.m. on Wednesday evenings on Facebook Live and you can find that if you go to Katie M, M as in Martha, Reid, R-E-I-D on Facebook. And we do those, and sometimes it's just Adam and I, sometimes you interview people. We have a great interview with you guys on there but it's a way to encourage marriages. And then we also have a Facebook group called Hammock Time Hangout Hub and we just kind of go a little deeper with the people in that group and share things like about your guys book or about an article we read or a question. But we just wanna encourage couples to grow closer in the relationship with the Lord and the relationship with each other. - [Aaron] Awesome, we thank you guys and we're gonna go into a time of prayer for a second and then we're gonna close out. - [Adam] Yeah. - [Aaron] Dear Lord, thank you for the gift of companionship. Marriage is such an intimate friendship that blesses us. We desire to draw closer to each other and to use the intimate mind to bless your name. Thank you for being intertwined in our relationship and at the center of it. You're the reason we are stronger together. Please continue to strengthen us as a chord of three strands. We pray that you would use us to do hard things as we build up your body and build up your kingdom. Be our strength as we persevere. May we be intentional in encouraging each other in marriage so that we do not grow weary. We pray against the enemy, we pray against his ways. Thank you for being our refuge and our shield. Thank you for equipping us and empowering us to stay strong and to fulfill Your will. May Your will be done in us and through our marriage in Jesus' name. - [All] Amen. - [Aaron] Hey, so we just wanna thank you guys for joining us. And we wanna thank everyone that has been listening. We pray that this conversation has blessed you and your marriage and we pray that your conversations will be fruitful from this conversation. And you know what, we have one more episode in this series. So please stay tuned and we look forward to having you next week. Did you enjoy today's show? If you did, it would mean the world to us if you could leave us a review on iTunes. Also, if you're interested, you can find many more encouraging stories and resources at marriageaftergod.com and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.

This podcast is all about redefining the word “bitch” from a derogatory one to the acronym Being In Total Control of Herself. Katie Boyd will teach you how to use the very stones thrown at you to power your purpose and build your empire. You and only you can create and curate a life of happiness, abundance and magic. Join Katie for some truth bombs, life tools, laughs and spiritual smack talk. If you want personal empowerment with respect to your lifestyle, spirituality, health, fitness, and nutrition this is the podcast for you! Katie welcomes her husband Matt Babine to talk about relationships Katie reviews the deal makers and breakers What does Mr. Boyd have to say? How did they meet? What first attracted Matt to Katie? How long did it take until their first date? How did that first date go? How did the wedding planning go? What went on in their lives after the wedding? Is it hard for them to work together? To join Katie for Living Your Best Life in 2019 at Kripalu, click on the following link: https://kripalu.org/presenters-programs/living-your-best-life-2019-motivation-today-tomorrow-and-forever All this and more on this week’s Ambitchious Podcast recorded this and every week at the Studio 21 Podcast Café and proudly hosted on the United Podcast Network.

Learning how to dive deeper into God's Word doesn't happen by accident. It takes work, discipline, and a willingness to invest that time in the Lord.  Last week on the podcast, we covered going deeper with Bible study when you have no time. Today we are going to be continuing that conversation with a Q&A time. We cover a ton of fabulous topics today, so tune in!!  Listen to the Podcast: We also recorded this blog post as an audio podcast. If you want to listen in instead of reading, click play below or do a combination of both  And don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.  Right click here and save-as to download this episode to your computer. Bible Study Q&A: "Do you have a list of books you read, in order, if doing the book a month study?" - Elise Elise is referring to my simple Bible reading plan that Jason and I have been following for a few years now. With this plan, we read the same book of the Bible everyday for 30 days. See the link above for a full explanation of the plan.  But to answer Elsie's question: I don't. We just alternate between a big book and a little book. It's not that hard. When you get to the next month, just pick one! So I don't have a list for you, but don't make it overly complicated ;)  "How long do you devote to quiet times vs general study times or are they the same?" - Jennifer I think our culture has done a bit of a disservice surrounding our Bible study time with all our different lingo: "quiet time, devotional, Bible study, etc". It can be confusing as to what we are supposed to be doing!  To answer this question, we have to first ask the questions "What is the purpose" and "Why do we study the Bible?" We must first recognize why we study, why we spend "quiet time" with God. Ultimately, we study God's Word to know him more. We want to learn his character, his commands, his love, and what he excepts of his disciples. We study God's Word because he commands us to and we want to learn more about our creator, to love Him more.  When we approach it from that standpoint, we can more easily see that all of these things tie together - our bible study time, devotionals, etc. But the unifier is: We need to be in God's Word. Other books, devotionals, sermons and podcasts can be helpful in our knowledge of God. I know I have been mentored from afar from hundreds of books, but God's Word still needs to remain the core.  So whatever you call it: other books, especially devotionals, shouldn't be the meat of what we study, God's word directly should be.  Breadth versus depth: there are times for both in our study. Sometimes we read through entires books at a time, sometimes we hunker down and study one single passage.  If you have never done so before, I highly recommend you: Read through the entire the Bible. Go through Genesis to Revelation. This gives you a good overview of the Bible. Then go through studies where you learn to study God's Word on your own. Katie Orr and Jen Wilkin's studies are both ones that do this wonderfully.  Resources:  Katie Orr's newest study on Philippians Jen Wilkin's newest study on Genesis Podcast by Katie: How much time should I spend when I study my Bible?

Learning how to dive deeper into God's Word doesn't happen by accident. It takes work, discipline, and a willingness to invest that time in the Lord.  Last week on the podcast, we covered going deeper with Bible study when you have no time. Today we are going to be continuing that conversation with a Q&A time. We cover a ton of fabulous topics today, so tune in!!  Listen to the Podcast: We also recorded this blog post as an audio podcast. If you want to listen in instead of reading, click play below or do a combination of both  And don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.  Right click here and save-as to download this episode to your computer. Bible Study Q&A: "Do you have a list of books you read, in order, if doing the book a month study?" - Elise Elise is referring to my simple Bible reading plan that Jason and I have been following for a few years now. With this plan, we read the same book of the Bible everyday for 30 days. See the link above for a full explanation of the plan.  But to answer Elsie's question: I don't. We just alternate between a big book and a little book. It's not that hard. When you get to the next month, just pick one! So I don't have a list for you, but don't make it overly complicated ;)  "How long do you devote to quiet times vs general study times or are they the same?" - Jennifer I think our culture has done a bit of a disservice surrounding our Bible study time with all our different lingo: "quiet time, devotional, Bible study, etc". It can be confusing as to what we are supposed to be doing!  To answer this question, we have to first ask the questions "What is the purpose" and "Why do we study the Bible?" We must first recognize why we study, why we spend "quiet time" with God. Ultimately, we study God's Word to know him more. We want to learn his character, his commands, his love, and what he excepts of his disciples. We study God's Word because he commands us to and we want to learn more about our creator, to love Him more.  When we approach it from that standpoint, we can more easily see that all of these things tie together - our bible study time, devotionals, etc. But the unifier is: We need to be in God's Word. Other books, devotionals, sermons and podcasts can be helpful in our knowledge of God. I know I have been mentored from afar from hundreds of books, but God's Word still needs to remain the core.  So whatever you call it: other books, especially devotionals, shouldn't be the meat of what we study, God's word directly should be.  Breadth versus depth: there are times for both in our study. Sometimes we read through entires books at a time, sometimes we hunker down and study one single passage.  If you have never done so before, I highly recommend you: Read through the entire the Bible. Go through Genesis to Revelation. This gives you a good overview of the Bible. Then go through studies where you learn to study God's Word on your own. Katie Orr and Jen Wilkin's studies are both ones that do this wonderfully.  Resources:  Katie Orr's newest study on Philippians Jen Wilkin's newest study on Genesis Podcast by Katie: How much time should I spend when I study my Bible?

I Just Launched My Podcast, How Many Downloads Should I Have? This question has no "Set" answer. It depends on a couple of things: How much value do your episodes bring to your audience? (is it any good) How much promotion do you do? What is your niche (a podcast like this - about podcasting - will never have 5000 downloads) Right no 50% of podcasts get less than 200 downloads per episode after 30 days (and 50% get more) with the average being around 2000 (listen to The Feed Podcast for updated stats) Think of Your Podcast Like A Train A steam locomotive has an engine. The engine has to go to where the other boxcars are an connect. So do you. You need to go to where your audience is, and connect. A train announces where it is via the whistle, you need to promote your show to let people know you exist. A train starts off slow, very slow, and build momentum over TIME. So they are slow to start, but once started, hard to stop. My Dad drove a truck, and once had a wreck where the momentum of a couple of tons on his trailer went off the road (he blew a tire) and he was knocking over giant tree's like they were toothpicks, so momentum can do great things. However, it takes time. Today we have Katie Krimitsos on the show, and he is doing great with her show that she has been producing three years.  So when you start your podcast, the more you focus on your audience (not the tech, not the stats on an hourly basis) you will build up momentum in your show. Katie Krimistsos on Building a Community With a Facebook Group Katie has been running the Tampa Bay Business Owners group for five years. Together with her husband Chris Krimitsos, they help business owners grow their businesses and connect with the right people. Katie has been podcasting for three years at http://bizwomenrock.com In today's interview, we learn the following with Katie: How to avoid the common mistakes of creating a Facebook Group The Different types of groups and what each type offers. How she makes her Facebook group feel special How she maintains control of her group and keeps them engaged. Why she had a successful relationship with a sponsor, and quit using them. How she grew her coaching business with a strategy that anyone can use. How her podcast fuels her Facebook Group, the Facebook group fuels the podcast, and they both fuel her coaching. Why she almost quit, and what stopped her from walking away from podcasting. Check out Katie's tools for growing your community with a Facebook group, taking that group on a retreat, as well as her private coaching to help you grow your business by going to www.bizwomenrock.com and check out her podcast on iTunes (as well as on her site) Mentioned in this Show Banner Poll - Are you Interested in a Banner Exchange for Podcasters? Ready to Start Podcasting? Join the School of Podcasting Podcast Movement - Use the Coupon Code sop10 to save 10%

This week, we have a brief discussion about how third party ad networks affect performance on news sites before talking with Sophie Shepherd. Sophie is a Senior Designer at Ushahidi, a non-profit software company that develops free and open-source products for information collection, visualization, and interactive mapping. We discussed the challenges of designing for international users with minimal data speed, how Ushahidi brings data and information to regions with nearly no connection, designing with task completion in mind, and more. ##Show Links: Sophie Shepherd Follow Sophie on Twitter Ushahidi Lara Hogan - A List Apart - Showing Performance Global Mobile Book Eric Meyer Crisis Design Rust Belt Refresh ##Transcript Katie: Welcome. You're listening to Episode 8 of The Path to Performance, the podcast dedicated to everyone to make the web faster. I am your host, Katie Kovalcin. Tim: And I'm your other host, Tim Kadlec and yeah, you nailed it; this is Episode 8. Well done! Katie: I was like, oh yeah, I totally know which episode it is. Wait: no, I don't. This is Episode 8. Tim: I mean, it's understandable; the numbers are getting higher, it's getting harder and harder. Katie: Totally out of control it's on more than one hand now! Tim: Yeah, once you've thrown that second hand, things get really complicated. It gets worse when you have to start taking off the socks and using your toes as well! That's where I always get hung up! Katie: You can wear flip-flops and then you don't have to worry about it. Tim: True, true. Katie: How are you, Tim? Tim: I'm doing OK; I'm actually wearing flip-flops right now! Yeah, I am! Katie: It's warm in Wisconsin? Tim: It is warm, for once. Yeah, I'm doing good; enjoying my day. And you? Katie: I'm good as well. The sun is shining here, which is a very rare thing in Ohio this summer and I feel like I have been whining about it for so long but today, I'm not whining. Tim: That's good! That's good! I'm guessing, we could maybe one of these times maybe we'll have an episode where we just kind of whine all the way through, but otherwise I think people probably enjoy the non-whining better. Katie: We can just have a bummer episode! Tim: Yeah, just a downer of an episode where we just air all our grievances about everything… Katie: We just talk in emo voice, just like…mwww…yeah, the web does actually kinda suuuuck… Tim: Yeah, exactly! I think this goes over well, I think this is maybe like a special Christmas edition. Katie: That is a really good idea. Tim: Right in time for the holidays. Katie: Christmas Bummer Episode! Tim: This is brilliant. That has to happen; I'm writing this down. Anyway, but glad to hear you're doing good now on this totally not Christmas at all episode. That's good. Katie: Yeah, on this summer-sunshine flip-flop fun-time episode! Tim: Yay! Katie: So, on the note of cool things, there's this episode from the Washington Post where in kind of a similar fashion, I know we talked a couple of months ago about Vox sort of declaring performance bankruptcy, Washington Post kinda did the same thing and talked about in an article the other day and that was pretty cool. They mentioned it sort of being in response to the instant articles and talking about just ads on news sites generally kind of sucky for performance, but I really liked this quite that it ended on that we have very little control over ads that load late or slowly but we wanted to make the core use experience as solid as possible because that is what we have control over and that's kind of a cool way to think about performance, just focusing on making good the core part that you do have control over. Tim: Yeah, and I think that's just generally awesome advice for anybody, because the ad work stuff comes up a lot and you have very little control over those third party ad networks and unfortunately a lot of them are super-slow right now but also essential for business but I like that they made the clear distinction between their core experience and understanding that the ads is just something you're going to have to tack on afterwards but mitigate the issues as much as possible. I think that's just really solid advice for any publisher. Katie: Yeah, absolutely. It's a nice article, it's a quick read; I recommend giving that a little skim or browse. Tim: Definitely. And then of course, Lara Hogan, who has made a habit out of writing good things over and over and over again or providing good performance advice in general, she wrote a post for A List Apart about showing performance; basically getting into some of the things she talked about way back in Episode 1 with us and also in her book about the importance of making performance visual: going into the dashboards and things like that, that they have up at Etsy and making sure that people can actually see the difference in performance. Katie: Yeah, she tweeted a little quick video a while ago and it might actually be in that article, I haven't had a chance to read it yet; it's on my to-do list but she posted a video of their video systems and it's really cool, it's really awesome to see that. Did I tell you that Lara, she talks about donuts all the time and donuts being her reward for good performance, achievements, good things like that, and when I saw Lara in New York a couple weeks ago, she took me to The Donut Spot that's in her neighborhood and I was so excited! Tim: Yeah, you told me. She's never taken me to The Donut Spot. I'm a little disappointed. I'm excited for you though: that sounds really cool. That's kind of… Katie: You know what? It was a really good donut because she says she's not a fan of the hipster donuts with a bunch of stupid toppings like cereal and candy bars and crap. Tim: Like the voodoo donuts thing in Portland? Katie: Yeah. These are just some straight-up home-town donuts in Brooklyn; I guess not really home-town but they were good! Tim: That's good. This is just like plain glazed? I want to know how far down the rabbit hole you went. Katie: We got banana…no, not banana: they were like custard-filled ones with the chocolate icing. I'm not a donut expert but those good ones! Tim: Gotcha, OK. That's a safe choice. Katie: Not the white sugary whipped cream-filled, the kind of yellowy-custard cream-filled ones; those are good ones. I don't know the distinction: is one cream and one custard? Is one icing and one cream? I don't know. Tim: I think it's usually like an icing and cream thing. Depending on where you go, it's almost like pure frosting is what it tastes like you're eating… Katie: Yeah, like you bite in and you're just like, oh my… Tim: Yeah, it's like there's frosting on the outside of the donut and frosting shoved down the inside as well and you just feel the cavities forming as you're eating them. It's great. It's a really good experience. But that's good. No, I did not…you did tell me this and that's very awesome, very cool. It's kinda like… Katie: Sorry; I'm obviously still thinking about that. Tim: I don't blame you. Katie: It was an experience. But, back to today's episode! We are talking to Sophie Shepherd and the big reason we wanted to get Sophie on here is not only because she's an awesome designer but because she has experience with working on products that are primarily used in developing countries that typically have the less than ideal device scenarios that we kind of always talk about in theory but she has some really great insight on talking a bout it in practice and actually designing for those devices and scenarios so it's going to be really interesting. Tim: Yeah, it'll be a nice fresh take, a different perspective than we usually get. Very cool. Katie: Cool. Well, let's go hear from Sophie. Katie: And we're back with Sophie Shepherd from Ushahidi. Sophie; can you tell us a little bit about Ushahidi and what exactly that is? Sophie: Sure. So, the what exactly it is, it's a Swahili word that means "Testimony". A lot of people are like, "Usha-what?" so it's not English so don't feel bad if you can't say it. And the company was founded in 2008 in Kenya so in 2008 what was happening in Kenya. there was an election that was fairly corrupt and there was quite a bit of violence broke out and some bloggers who were in Kenya and living in Kenya realized that they needed to do something to help out as well as just writing about what was happening, so they made a product in which people could submit reports of different places where the election was happening, different polling stations and this way they could say, there's been violence here, someone was killed here or this is a safe place where you can go to vote, or there's fraud happening. And what Ushahidi does is it takes all of these different reports and collects them into one place and provides a list and a map for them. So that's how it was founded; it's now a number of products but the name of our main platform is still Ushahidi and the purpose of it is still too collect data, crowd-source data. It's oftentimes gets mapped but isn't necessarily, we're re-doing the platform right now so that it's not only map data; it can really be anything that users submit. Katie: Awesome. So, spoiler alert, I know Sophie really well so I know the details of what she does and what really struck me and why I wanted to get her on the podcast so bad is because you deal a lot with users that are in places that have really poor connectivity and the products that you're designing are really crucial information that they need to get to. Can you talk a little bit about all of that and the challenges that you face when designing for that? Sophie: Sure. So, I think something that's really interesting is that it's not only poor connectivity but the kind of contexts in which people are using our products are unique. Not exclusively, but oftentimes they're used in crisis situations, so people don't have a whole lot of time. A lot of the time, the power could be down or internet could be down, so it's not only we have to think about connectivity but also ways that people are submitting information. This has been the first project I've worked on where it's not just, when we talk about performance, it's not just people needing to load something fast but it's about access and accessibility so, built into our product is people can anonymously text stuff in and that'll become a part of our system so it's really thinking about this whole ecosystem of access and ways of submitting information rather than just a website. Katie: Can you talk a little bit about what that means exactly, more than just a website? How else are you working around those connectivity and accessibility issues? Sophie: Yes, well, Ushahidi as a whole, not only with our platform but we have a lot of other companies that have spun out from the product itself, so there's a company Brick which is really, really awesome. It was founded by someone who was also a founder in Ushahidi and they make wifi devices that are super-rugged; they work off 3G connections so you can take those anywhere. We were in Kenya and they have all these attachments so it can be solar-powered wifi, so we had a group meeting in Kenya and we were all accessing the internet in the middle of nowhere on a beach from this device we had. So, it's thinking more about getting people information. Similarly we do a lot with SMS so if someone only has a phone they can text in a report or receive a response saying, OK, this has been confirmed, through their phone. Tim: This is fascinating stuff. I always think it's very interesting to hear the perspective outside of what we're used to in the little bubble that we get to live in here in the United States tech industry. This is taking everything in terms of the importance of building something that is going to work on different devices and the importance of building something that's going to perform well and this is really scaling up the importance of doing that, the vitality of doing that from just business metrics to, like you're saying, people's lives at stake in some of these cases. I'm curious; you mentioned being in Kenya and using those devices to get access. You can't obviously develop all the time in Kenya, so how are you finding ways to get that experience here, when you're building stuff from the United States so that you're feeling what it's going to be like on those, a 2G or a 3G connection or whatever it happens to be? Sophie: It's definitely a challenge for me because not only am I working every day on a really good connection but I've never really not had that; maybe five years ago my connection was not as good as it was now but I think I've always been as far as connection speeds in the one per cent, but we have a really great user advocacy team at Ushahidi so this is not only thinking about performance and website metrics, but we have a whole team that is dedicated to making sure that our users are satisfied, listening to what their needs are and responding in that way and also helping them, because this is a product that then gets extended and they can download it and set up their own deployments to use the product so we have a team that works really closely with people who are actually using it, which is terrific because we get a lot of feedback through that. Tim: I was going to say, are some of the team members in Kenya? Sophie: Uh-huh. Yeah, we have one person in Kenya, one person in Canada and then we have as part of, we have a specific user testing wing that's in Kenya but what they do is, since they are so in touch with people who use this stuff all over the world, they're good at being able to not only test it in Kenya but test it elsewhere and talk to…we have a large group using this stuff in Nepal right now because of the earthquake so they're in touch with them, checking that everything's working OK, getting any feedback from them. Katie: Do you tend to look at what specific devices the majority of users in these areas are using and start building and testing there or how does that work out? What's the size of an iPhone, that tends to be our default? What devices are you really thinking about in those areas? Sophie: It's interesting because right now, we are in the midst of re-building this product and so a lot of the people out there who are using it right now are using Version 2 which is the older version and at this point I don't even know how many years old it is but it's fairly outdated. It still works really well but it's not responsive; it's hard, we've noticed that quite a lot of people are using it on a desktop but that's only because it doesn't work very well on a phone so it'll be really interesting, we're launching the new one which is fully responsive and a lot more modern in this way to see how people end up using it. But it's tough because we can't say, iPhone users use this because it's used really everywhere in the world so maybe if it's used in the US it is going to be on an iPhone more, whereas elsewhere, it's Android but we try to cast a really wide net so there's an Android app that will be used for collecting information, you can submit by SMS. The new version's going to be totally responsive so what we try to do is not really focus on one but make sure that everyone can use it. Katie: So, you've been working on a responsive re-design and everything we've talked about has been the poor connectivity and all of that. How has performance played into those decisions when building this site or the product again for this new version? Sophie: It's a continuous consideration and process of checks and balances. One thing is that, thinking about images: part of this new system is we're able to have people submit images as part of their reports so that's something that we still have not quite figured out how we should work with how to then deliver those back to people and also thinking about different JavaScript libraries that we're using. It's a constant balance, so I think we're still figuring it out. We've done quite a bit of user-testing but more UX user-testing but the application itself is not totally done, it hasn't been built yet, so I think that's to come in terms of optimizing how it's going to work exactly. But from the design and front-end, we've definitely been keeping things really light and really the only question that we have is how we're going to treat images. Tim: Is it primarily a matter of using them or not using them or is it a degree of compression in terms of getting them to a point where maybe they're a little pixilated and ugly but they're balanced: the trade-off is that they're going to perform well on those types of networks? What are you battling with, with the images? Sophie: Well, I think basically every single image that is ever going to be on the site is going to be submitted by a user, so we don't know exactly the sizes of images that are going to come in and then at what point we are then going to compress them or shrink them and how we're going to do that and then how they're going to then be delivered back out. Yeah. Tim: So it's getting a system in place for all the user-generated content? Sophie: Exactly, yes. Tim: Gotcha. OK. Katie: So, you talk a lot about style guides and patter libraries and Sophie I know that's how you like to design and work. What is that process looking like? Do you do testing as you go on designs and see how performing it is or how fast it's loading under those different circumstances? Can you just talk a little bit about your design thinking? Sophie: Yeah. What we have been doing is we did all the UX fairly separately, thinking about just user flows and how things were going to be laid out and how things should work and then we did some visual design and then we started combining these by building the pattern library, so we took out patterns from visual design and eventually we've just started building templates and designing in the browser because we have enough of these patterns to build upon and it's been really great; this is the first time that I've worked in this way and what I really love about it is that each of our patterns and components basically stand on their own so it's really easy to look at them and understand exactly where certain weights are coming from. By designing modularly, we can pull those out rather than seeing a page as a whole and not really understand what's causing what. Tim: In a prior episode, we were talking to Jeff Lembeck of Filament Group and he mentioned what he called the "Jank Tank" which is this big box of basically ugly, horrible, slow devices. Considering how wide the net you're spreading, do you have anything similar? Is there a Ushahidi Jank Tank that you guys go to? Sophie: There isn't, but I love that idea. Tim: Yeah, I think we were fans of that too. Sophie: Is it like…what does he mean exactly? Tim: The idea was having… Sophie; …lowest common denominator kind of devices? Time: Yeah, basically grabbing cheap devices or old devices and firing those up: things that are going to be maybe a few years old and are probably going to be a huge challenge to make things feel fluid and work well on those and you have those handy to test them out and see what honestly might be a more typical user would experience than the high end stuff. Sophie: Yeah, we don't have that here in the States; I feel bad calling it a Jank Tank because that's negative-sounding, but in the office in Kenya, they have…they all work in a building and there's quite a few tech companies that work in there and they have something like a Mobile Device Lab and I think it was sponsored by a mobile company there but I was there earlier in the year and it kind of blew my mind; I put a picture of it on Twitter that we can refer to in the Speaker Notes. But that was all of these phones that were phones that I hadn't even necessarily seen, that they don't sell in the States, and they're all used for testing so at some point probably now that I'm talking about it, I'm realizing we should do it sooner rather than later, they have a whole testing lab there that we can test this product on. Tim: Nice. A mobile device lab does admittedly sound a little bit more ??? serious. Katie: Everything that you're saying sounds like, just tying in that accessibility and performance are going hand in hand and it sounds like you've just learned a great deal of empathy in your time there. Is that true and has that influenced your design? Sophie: Yeah, definitely. I think something that has really changed in my mind is thinking about when doing the design, what actions are people going to want to take, so I think that goes with performance too: if we can only load this one button that says "submit a report" and skip all of the images then that's the most important thing, so, really thinking about where to guide people and what the most important and crucial actions are before loading and everything else, so as a designer that's been definitely something that, previously I was doing client work and it was like we had this long list of requirements that we had to fit in and now it's kind of re-assessing and re-prioritizing what requirements actually are and having different levels of this is the one thing they need to really use this app and then here's all of this other helpful stuff that could be called crucial but isn't actually life or death crucial. Katie: That's really interesting. Do you think that there's any way that, for those of us still working on client projects, to have those conversations with the client to try to be like, "no, really, but the marketing video isn't truly required"; exercises in priority and stuff: do you have any tips for paring down those requirements? Sophie: I think it's tough if your talking to a marketing person because they'd be like, "no, literally I'm going to die if I don't get this on there." Katie: And you're like, "no, literally, people are on our products like…" Sophie: Yeah. I think any time it's easier to say, "does this go above this in the priority list" people are willing to answer that question rather than either or. So, in general, communicating and deciding things I would recommend ordering rather than choosing people to sacrifice things. Tim: And it seems like that's clarified too in, I would guess one of the reasons why it works so well where you are is because that task, if you're looking at what the most important thing for the user to do is, it's so very clear and so very critical whereas on maybe on a more traditional thing where you're working with marketers or whatever, they may not have as clear a sense of, what is the ultimate purpose of this site? And then it becomes a lot harder to do the prioritization without that. Sophie: Yeah; it's funny because we're in the process right now of re-designing the company site as well as re-designing the product itself and it shouldn't be, because there's no life or death, but it's so much more complicated to prioritize stuff on the company site because there's so many different types of audiences and services that it needs to provide whereas on the app itself, it's pretty clear to say, what's the most important action for someone to take. Tim: Within the new site, do you still have to take into consideration a lot of the same sort of constraints in terms of the different devices and connectivity because that's who your audience is that you're marketing to, or are you marketing to a different group through the site? Sophie: Yeah, the site will be, well that's up for debate; that's I think what we're still trying to figure out. I think by default it's a good idea to not ever say, "oh well only people in the States with nice phones are going to look at this" just because that's a dangerous attitude to have, but it's possibly less of priority for the site itself. Tim: So, going back to prioritizing performance within the actual apps and stuff that you're doing: did you have set targets that you were looking at when you were working V3 of this? Were there hard-set goals; we are not going to go over this amount of weight or we are not going to take longer than this for the map of data to appear or anything like that? Sophie: Yeah, so we set a performance budget and we've set a few of them; we set one for the front-end so what we've done is build this pattern library and we have all of our, we're calling them "weight-outs" which are basically our different views within the app itself. So we had an initial goal for that, that we've met and then we set a separate one for the build itself and that's still in process, so hopefully we can get around that target. I like this too because instead of having one end-goal we can really check as we go. Tim: Yeah, it's nice to have it broken down like that. Can we ask what the targets are, just out of curiosity? Sophie: I can look them up but I don't know them right now. Tim: That's fine. Just curious. Was it in terms of the weight or is it a different sort of, more like an experience-focused metric or anything like that, that you're targeting? Sophie: Yeah, we did a weight and a load time. Tim: Gotcha. OK. Katie: It sounds like you've worked in some of the perceived performance thinking too when you're saying, what's the critical information to load first. Sophie: Yeah, for me as a designer, that's definitely something that I can relate to more and I think in some ways it's possibly more important. I think they work as a team but… Tim: I think it is. And I think that's…I think or I hope that that's what, within the performance community, the people who really that's what they do focus on, I think that that's where everything is starting to, we're starting to wake up to that and certainly to shift towards understanding that it really is about the experience and making sure that the critical things are coming in, whatever the top task, whatever the most important features are on the page or coming in and measuring those sorts of things, instead of this blind race to the finish that we've kind of had in the past. Sophie: Yeah. I'm curious to see how that thinking changes because I love the idea of a performance budget but I think sometimes it can be a little limiting and you wouldn't want to sacrifice certain things just to fit into the performance budget. Not limiting, but I think it's very concrete whereas it should be a fairly fluid depending on context of the site itself. Tim: Sure, yeah, it doesn't dictate what goes on; it's another consideration or it's part of another piece in the puzzle. Sophie: Right. At the same time, it's the easiest way to communicate goals. Tim: True. It's hard to without it having a hard set thing, it's very hard, yeah. Sophie: Yeah, until you have the design done, you can't say, OK, our goal is that this is going to load and then this is going to load this much later. It helps to have a number that everyone can refer back to. Katie: So, when you say for everyone to communicate, who is that? Is that between you and the developers? Is this something that your leadership is really that's close to their heart as well? Sophie: Yeah, I think when I said that it was more coming from my experience with client work, where you're using this number as a kind of tactic to force a client to decide on certain things. For us, since we're all working internally, I think definitely any…basically, everyone wants to see it be as fast as it possibly can, so we're all working towards the same thing. Katie: Is there ever a push-back to even like, "OK, now that we've hit that, let's try another goal that's even faster"? Sophie: Not yet, because we haven't launched it, but I wouldn't be surprised if we launch it and get certain feedback that it wasn't loading or it wasn't working quite right on something. I'm really curious to see once it's out there and people are using it, how people respond. Katie: Yeah, I'm really curious to see what metrics you find out from that. Tim: Did you make a distinction…there's the cutting the mustard approach that the BBC popularized which is the core experience goes to maybe older, less capable browsers/devices and the enhanced experience goes to everybody else. One of the things that that fails at, or that doesn't take into consideration which seems like it would be really important for Ushahidi is the situation where you have somebody is on a very nice device but the connectivity is really awful. Did you have to make any distinction between different experiences or do you just have one experience and that experience itself is extremely lightweight, no matter what the scenario is? Was that enough for you to accomplish or you needed to do? Sophie: Yeah, that's funny; we had our company retreat in Kenya so it was I think maybe about half, maybe a little less of our company is in the US so we all went there with our snazzy iPhones and still couldn't connect to anything and it really, I think in terms of empathy, made us realize: oh, wait a second. But in terms of yeah, I think we're just going to try to make it fast for everyone. We don't have a whole lot of enhancements for people on quicker systems yet. Katie: When you were in Kenya, were there any things that were especially awful to try to load, like you're used to just being part of your everyday life? I'm just curious. Sophie: I remember reading Twitter, on the Twitter app and everything loaded except for the pictures and it made you realize just how often people supplement their tweets with pictures; I remember getting really frustrated about it. Katie: That's interesting. Sophie: But I didn't even really try to do a lot of stuff because it really didn't look very well. Same thing on Instagram; it's like sometimes this progressive loading thing; I would rather it not load at all than, oh, I see all of these people posted great pictures that I can't look at. I'd rather not know than… Katie: Or like the tweets having fomo, oh, you had a joke and I can't see the punch-line! Sophie: Exactly! Katie: That's really interesting because when we're just designing here in a bubble it's like, "well I think that would be fine for you to just know that it's there but not see it" but then when you're actually using it, you're like: no, this sucks. Sophie: Yeah, it's like actively frustrating. Tim: How often do you get to Kenya? Sophie: I'm new to the company; I've only been here since the beginning of the year but I think they do a retreat every year but not necessarily always in Kenya; I think every other year it's in Kenya. And I think other people on the team, it depends, we'll do these what we call Hit Team Meetings because everyone is remote and then mini-teams will get together and all work together for a week so those have been all over the place since people live on opposite ends of the world, depending on who's meeting they usually choose a place that is fairly central for everyone to get to. Katie: We'll start to have a list of sites, Sophie, how much is this really crappy, wherever you end up going… Sophie: How long does this take? Katie: Look it up and tell me how much it sucks. Sophie: It is cool to have people on the team everywhere for that reason. Tim: Sure, I bet that gives you a really nice overall picture of a whole bunch of different landscapes from a technical perspective. Sophie: Yeah. Katie: I know, I didn't prepare a list of questions like I should have! Tim: It's all right, I'm actually having a lot of fun just going off the cuff on this, knowing almost nothing. I did a little bit of research and I had heard of Ushahidi from this big fat book about mobile on a global scale that was put out a couple of years ago. Sophie: That's cool. What was that book? Tim: It's called Global Mobile. It's six hundred pages and each chapter is written by a different author on a different topic and I think Ushahidi came up twice… Sophie: Oh, that's awesome. Tim: …in the book. Sophie: Do you know what they referenced or what it was…. Tim: One was just talking about how…I don't remember one of the references in much detail. The other one I know that they were talking about a variety of different mobile technological solutions that were out there; I think they were focused primarily on Africa in that chapter or similar areas and they were talking about the different services that are making use of technologies that we might consider a little bit more simple, but they're doing really powerful things with it and so I think that they were focused on the SMS aspect, if I remember right. Sophie: Yeah, it's been definitely challenging, but also interesting that designing a product that is not used for one specific thing; it's very much user-focused and people will download it and decide how they use it, so it's been a challenge to design for that and to keep it well designed but also really, really flexible. Tim: Which is why I guess it's so important I guess that you are getting a chance to experience at least a little bit every once in a while because everybody talks about front-end design perspective, from a development perspective, how important it is to put yourself in your user's shoes and when you're talking about what Ushahidi is dealing with, and it's not just the devices or the browser or the connections: it's the situations; it's just so hard. It's so hard to put yourself in those sorts of shoes and understand what it must feel like to use the application or the site in those sorts of scenarios; that's such a huge challenge. Sophie: Yeah, there's no way that, well it sounds selfish saying it, but hopefully there's no way I would ever actually be able to experience that but I think that is why we have such a strong and valuable user advocacy team so that they can really communicate with them when people are in those situations and as they're using it in those situations. Tim: Do you get feedback from the users that are pertaining directly to things like how quickly they're able to report something or how quickly they're able to get access to the data that's been reported, in terms of it takes too long sort of a thing, not just a usability thing but from a performance perspective? Sophie: We haven't. Or not that I know of. Tim: Well, maybe that means you're doing an awesome job! Sophie: We'll see. It's also tough because the new version is yet to be used on a wide…by a lot of people, so we'll see, but it is great because we have the product is also open source, so we have a lot of community submissions and ideas so this is again the first time I've worked on something like that where I'll just be in my normal task list that we use internally as a team and I will get one from…I'm in Katmandu and this thing is not working; can you add this? So it is really cool to see that people care about improving the product. Tim: That's awesome. Katie: Is there anything that you've learned from going through this process and being hit with all of these pretty heavy design constraints that are just, oh man, there's no way I can ignore that. Has that changed your view on design, even outside of this product in particular? Sophie: I think that this has, compared to how I used to design, I'm keeping things a lot more simple, not even necessarily visually; visually as well but also just in how they work and not trying to dictate how something should work. Oftentimes we'll, with other people in my design team or sometimes with our developers, we'll discuss how something, spend hours doing flows and then just realizing, why don't we just let people do what they want to do and take a step back and not define so much how this should be used, so I think just the fact that so many different people are using it for different ways, I've found that it's often best to leave things open and then to not over-complicate them. Katie: Is that kind of freeing? Sophie: Errr….it's been difficult because I'm so used to not being like that. But yeah, kind of. For me as a designer it's been kind of hard to let go of control. Katie: Yeah, that's usually I think our downfall as designers is wanting to control everything and that's kind of a big part about embracing performance too: it just sounds boring to design for performance, even though it's not and it's just like anything else. Sophie: Yeah, I think that I talked to ??? about this a long, long time ago and I remember it's stuck with me in terms of performance but also it's kind of user advocacy side of design, which is that it's not in conflict with the design; you shouldn't think of performance as taking away from visual design but it's just a piece of design so it's just another aspect of UX and if it loads faster, then that'll make the design better. Katie; It means you did your job well! Sophie. Yeah, exactly. Tim: At the end of the day it's about, especially in your case, but at the end of the day it's really about how quickly can the people using the site or the application get the task done that they came to the site to do and so that makes performance comes right up front and center along with any other bit of the process really, information architecture, clear content structure and good visual design; it all contributes. Sophie: That's what design is, right? Getting people to be able to do what they want as easily as possible. Katie: Is this something that you were thinking about before having these experiences in these other parts of the world, or was that the eye-opener of, oh-whoa, my designs should encapsulate this? Sophie: Yeah, I think it's always something theoretically that I could be like, your designs have to load really fast, of course, but selfishly I've always wanted them to look really cool or try out some latest thing that's trending on the web. So I think it's helped me step out and realize I'm not designing this for me. If I want to try something, I can just do it on my own site. Katie: So, I'm wondering if that's maybe the first step for designers that are not wanting to think about it… Sophie: Make them design something for someone in crisis. Katie: Yeah! Sophie: At an agency, every junior designer has to design for… Tim: Oh man! Sophie: …life or death situations. Katie: It's part of the interview process, you need to whiteboard a crisis design. Sophie: Yeah! Tim: Talk about no pressure right off the gate, that's what you're dealing with! Sophie: Have either of you seen Eric Meyer's presentation? Tim: I have not, but I've heard it's excellent. Sophie: I really want to. Katie: I want to see it as well. Sophie: It sounds really… Katie: Everything you are talking about is making we think of that. Sophie: I would really, really love to hear, I don't know if he would…he could be a good guest on the podcast just to talk about his experience. Tim: Yeah, I'd love to talk to Eric. I've heard the presentation is just fantastic but I haven't had a chance to catch it live. I don't know if it's recorded or not anywhere but if so, I haven't seen it. Katie; I think if any of you want come hang out in Ohio, I believe I would have to double-check, but I think he's giving that Rustbelt Refresh in Cleveland in September. Tim: I do like that conference. I did that last year, it's a lot of fun. Katie: So, you want to come hang out in Ohio and see it? Tim: Sunny Cleveland! Katie: Where the lake caught on fire! Sophie: Oh my God! Tim: I don't think I heard this. Katie; I think it was before I ever lived in Ohio, ten or so years ago. It may have been the river, it may have been the lake, I can't remember. One of them was so polluted that it caught on fire at some point. (45:11) Tim: That sounds a lovely! Sophie: That's terrifying! Tim: My only knowledge of Cleveland, which I think is probably upsetting and insulting to all people who live in Cleveland… Katie: Drew Carey Tim: Yep. So, I apologize for that! Sophie: I've been to Cleveland; I spent two weeks in Cleveland. Katie: What? Sophie: I was going through, you know, being young and wanting to work for Obama during the election but even then, I don't know what's in Cleveland, even after spending time there. Katie: I have been to Cleveland twice and I don't know. I live two hours from it; I couldn't tell you what's in Cleveland. Sophie: Really cheap houses if I remember; lots of empty, cheap houses! Katie: One time I tried out to be on The Price is Right this is when Drew Carey was the host and because I am really bad at being like, wooow, cookie-crazy person to be on The Price is Right, they interview every person that goes through the process and like, "why should we pick you?" and my only response was just like, "I'm from Ohio. Just like Drew. Cleveland Rocks, right?" Sophie: Certainly good for TV. Katie: Yeah, well, we'll talk about Ohio. Obviously I did not make it! Tim: That's sad! Sophie: There's still hope; you could try again. Tim: Don't give up on that. Katie: No, that was actually…. Sophie: Don't give up on your dreams. Tim: No, you've got to follow through. Katie: That was horrific; you're just like cattle being herded for six hours through this line as they interview every single person that goes in the thing, so if you're ever in LA and thinking, it would be fun to go on The Price is Right: it's not. Sophie: Think again! Katie: Sophie, you never did that when you lived there? Sophie: A lot of people I knew did. Katie: Did anyone ever get picked? Sophie: They did it…I grew up in LA and they filmed Jeopardy I think right next to my High School and they would do it as a fundraising thing where you would…they'd get a group things of tickets to Jeopardy and then the cheerleading squad or whoever would try to sell them individually. Katie: Whoa! Sophie: That's the closest I've gotten. Katie: Growing up in LA sounds wildly different from anywhere else! Was it? Sophie: We didn't have any lakes that lit on fire! Katie: Wasn't your High School the one from Grease? Sophie: Yep! Katie: Oh man. Sophie: And Party of Five. Is that what that show was called? Katie: Yeah. Tim: That's kinda cool. Katie: I'm more interested in Rydell High though. Sophie: I think they filmed it in partially different schools but the stadium was our stadium. Katie: The track where Danny's trying to be a jock and running around? Sophie: Yeah, yeah. Katie: Aw man, that's the worst part when Danny's trying to be a jock! Sophie: Wonder Years. Wonder Years, that's the block I grew up on. Katie: Really? Sophie: Yep. Katie: Dang, you have Wonder Years, Alison has Dawson's Creek. Sophie: Dawson's Creek. Way before my time. Katie: I want to grow up on a teen drama! Sophie: The Yellow Brick Road was also the street, from the Wizard of Oz. Tim: Where was the Yellow Brick Road? Sophie: Before the houses were built, they filmed it on the street that my house was on. Tim: What? Sophie: And then years later, they had a reunion for all of the oompa-loompas that I accidentally walked on and I was sort of….what? Katie: Were they dressed up? Sophie: No. Tim: Wait, wait, wait…you just said oompa-loompas, but isn't that…that's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, right? Sophie: Not oompa-loompas. Munchkins! The Munchkins! Tim: I was like, wait a minute… Katie: Glad you got that 'cos I didn't! Sophie: I didn't either, I was like, this sounds right. Tim: Yeah, OK, I just wanted to clarify which movie it was. Sophie: Can we cut this out? We're going to get complaints from Little People of America organization. Tim: Yeah, that's fine. Actually we could use a few complaints. We haven't got many or any yet. Katie: Thanks for bringing it up. Now we're going to….well, if you're looking for feedback, let me tell you...you can lay off the chit-chat. Tim: We've gotten plenty, plenty of negative feedback and complaints so please don't bother sending those emails or letters. There, that should… Katie: I'm going to write you a strongly worded letter about your podcast! Tim: It happens. Sophie: This really went off the rails! Tim: It did, but you know what? That's cool. That's all right. I feel like… (50:03) Katie: It was getting really heavy, so you know we to lighten it up. Tim: It was, we had to lighten it up and I feel like it's kind of weird that we had gone this far without talking about Drew Carey so, you know, however many episodes we're into this and Drew Carey had never come up; seems wrong. Katie: Really? Sophie: Give us some Drew Carey facts, Katie! Katie: Actually, well I don't know any Drew Carey facts but I'm sure Tim has lots because that seems like that's your era of TV. Tim: I'm not that old, all right? Katie: Yeah, but Everybody Loves Raymond, you'll never… Tim: Yeah, I actually had…. Sophie: Are you Everybody? Tim: No, no. Am I? Sophie: Do you love Raymond? Tim: I do love Raymond; I do. It was a good show, all right? It was a good show. Under-appreciated by the current generation! Sophie: It was the most popular show ever at the time. Tim: It was really popular; really popular. Sophie: Did you just watch it on multiple TVs over and over again to up the ratings? Tim: Errr…. Katie: He had it going on every TV in the house, the whole day and night! Sophie: The syndication too so they're getting those checks, all from Tim! Katie: Tim loves Raymond! Sophie: New TV show! Tim: All right, all right; neither one of you are ever invited back on this podcast; even you, Katie. That's it, that's the end of it. I'm going to go start my own podcast where we're going to talk about Everybody Loves Raymond and The Drew Carey Show and things like that. Katie: Indiana Jones Tim: Indiana Jones, yep. This really did get off the rails. My gosh! Sophie: Yeah, feel weird going back to talking about crisis. Tim: So, well, you know, maybe we don't, there was a lot of really good, like Katie said, it was getting really serious and really awesome discussion, I think, around performance and it was really cool to hear somebody who is coming at it from that global perspective which, it's just not something that we commonly think about a lot, for most of us aren't dealing with on a day to day basis, so it's really interesting to have somebody come in and burst the bubble a little bit and give us a broader perspective. Katie: Yeah, it's great because I think like you said, Sophie, earlier: in theory everybody's like, it's nice and stuff and obviously we talk a lot about performance and everything and it's one of those things that I think everybody is like, yeah, yeah, in theory yeah, we want it to be fast because we don't want to be shamed by Twitter, but… Sophie: Other web designers! Katie: Yeah, basically. So it's great for you to come in here and give us the perspective of what that actually means and hopefully shed some light on that empathy. Sophie: Yeah, thank you for having me. Katie: Yeah, thank you so much for joining us. Tim: Going forward, it anybody wants to follow along and hear more about what Ushahidi's doing or about what you're doing, how do they do that? Sophie: For Ushahidi, I would recommend following Ushahidi on Twitter, ushahidi.com for a lot of information about all their different products and blogposts and then for me, my website is sophieshepherd.com Tim: Very cool. Katie: What about any social media that you may have because, I might be biased, but I think Sophie you have a pretty good account that's pretty funny! Sophie: My Twitter unfortunately is sophshepherd, because there's a British teenager named Sophie Shepherd who took that from me. So, don't follow her unless you want to hear a lot of complaining about tests and boyfriends. Katie: Do you follow her? Sophie: Occasionally! Then I get too mad about it and then I think, what if they think it's me? Katie: Is she also blonde and kind of looks like you? Sophie: Yeah, I've sent her a message; she does kind of. I sent her a message on Facebook once and she went, what are you freak? And then that was it. Katie; Really? Sophie: Yep. Katie: She called you a freak? Sophie: Yeah. I'll put a screenshot in our speaker notes! Katie: OK, well follow the real Sophie Shepherd then. Sophie: Yep. Tim: Well, thank you and we'll definitely have to have you on again to discuss because I feel like there's a lot more we could get into in terms of Drew Carey and Ray Romano, so in a future episode. Katie: You can do that on your separate…Everyone Loves Ray. Tim: And Tim Loves Raymond. Yeah, that's good. It'll be the initial episode. Sophie:: Tim and Ray. All right. Thanks. Bye. Tim: Thanks; bye. Katie: Thanks. Bye. Tim: Thank you for listening to this episode of The Path to Performance podcast. You can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes or on our site pathtoperf.com; you can also follow along on Twitter @pathtoperf. We'd love to hear what you thought so feel free to drop us a note on Twitter or leave a raving and overly kind review on iTunes. We like to read those. And if you'd like to talk about being a guest or sponsoring a future episode, feel free to email us at hello@pathtoperf.com