Podcasts about kelsey you

If you are looking for VBAC inspiration, Kelsey's episode is a MUST-LISTEN.Kelsey is a VBA2C mom and speech-language pathologist living in Erie, Pennsylvania. You will feel literal full-body chills as she tells her birth stories on the podcast today. As a first-time mom, Kelsey chose a Cesarean over physiological birth thinking it was the safer, easier route. But after experiencing the reality of two C-sections, she went from fearing vaginal birth to trusting in the labor process even more than her providers did. With her VBA2C, Kelsey got just about every type of pushback in the books. She was coerced, persuaded, questioned, and fear-mongered by multiple providers. Yet Kelsey was able to ground herself by listening to VBAC stories on The VBAC Link Podcast, seeking refuge in her doula and Webster-certified chiropractor, and connecting with other VBAC moms. Kelsey knew her body could do it. She just wanted a chance. Going up against a hospital practice that was saturated with skepticism, Kelsey's labor was beautifully textbook. Her labor progressed quickly, and her biggest baby yet came out in two pushes– “like butter” as described by her doula!VBAC-Certified Doula, Tara Van Dyke's WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode Details Meagan: Hello, Women of Strength. We have another amazing story for you today. And actually, it's stories. We have a VBA2C mama coming your way. And as you know, this is a hot topic because lots of people want to know if vaginal birth after two Cesareans is possible. So Kelsey will be sharing her stories with us today. But guess what, you guys, I have a co-host today and it's Tara. Hello, Tara Van Dyke.Tara: Hello. Hello.Meagan: She is one of our VBAC link doulas. As you probably heard back in 2024, we are going to randomly be having co-hosts from our VBAC Link doulas. I think it's so awesome to have them on. I love hearing the topics and things that they want to suggest to talk to you guys about because again, just like we talked about years ago, we just in Salt Lake City, Utah, can't share enough. And so we want other doulas from all over the world to share as well. So Tara, tell us more about where you're from and then your topic on partners and being prepared.Tara: Yes. So thank you for having me here with you. This is so fun to hear a story live. I'm a doula working in the Chicagoland suburbs. I've been doing that for 20 years and now moving to more of childbirth education as well as like a lower caseload of doula work partly because I just welcomed my first grandchild this week, so I want to be available in a different way in my life. Meagan: Congrats. Very valid. Tara: So I do a lot of childbirth education. But along the way, what's always been really important to me and I feel really passionate about is the partner connection with the person giving birth and their preparation. The research supports it too, that a prepared partner makes a really big difference in outcomes too. I know we talk a lot about doulas and increasing the positive outcomes of birth, and that's been shown over and over in studies, but the actual dream team is a doula and a prepared partner.Meagan: Yeah. I love that.Kelsey: I tell the dads who come to my classes that the doula is important, but we are replaceable in this situation. The partner is so important because of that connection because they bring the oxytocin. They bring the safety. They have that history with you already. And what even bumps that up to being really helpful in the birth room is their preparation and their understanding of what to expect and being completely on board. So theres lots of ways for partners to get prepared, but they get left out a lot. So I feel really strongly that partners are so much better in the birth room when they're not feeling anxious about what's going on, when they know what to expect and they have a few good tools in their pocket for how to help.Meagan: Oh yes, I could not agree more. I always talk about, I make things up, and I call it the doula sandwich. So it's just what I call it in my practice of my doula work. One bun has all the oxytocin and all the knowledge of who you are, and then the other side is the doula who has the education in birth work and the ideas of how to help navigate through the birth space, but also can then support the partner in doing that and educating the partner. So then, we've got two really great sides and then we sandwich the doula. We have great buns. We have really great buns. And we sandwich that mom together and with love and support and education and oxytocin. Like you said, it really creates that dream team. I love that so much. My husband didn't educate himself. He was just, "Okay fine, if you want a VBAC, go do it. You do the research." I did HypnoBirthing with my cousin who luckily was pregnant around the same time, but we did that together, and he just really didn't know. When I told him, "Hey, I want to VBAC after two caesareans out of the hospital," he was like, "Yo, what?" because he was uneducated. I truly feel that it is so powerful. That's why I encourage partners to take the VBAC course with, the mom or an education course in childbirth. Really understand what the mom is going through, but also know how you can help because I do feel like a lot of those dads kind of get shoved aside. They want to help, but they don't know how to help, and they don't really know what's going on. Is that noise good or is that noise bad?Tara: Yes. Yeah. And they're going through the birth, too. This is the birth of their child. So they can also feel, as far as traumatized, hopefully not trauma, but they can feel a lot more dissatisfied or upset by a birth if they didn't know that what was happening was normal. So it's good for them, too, to learn how to take care of themselves as well as their partner.Meagan: Love it so, so much. Everybody, get your partners educated. It is so, so important. Thank you so much for that tip. Meagan: Okay, Ms. Kelsey, it is your turn, my love.Kelsey: Okay, so as you know, I had a VBAC after two C sections which I didn't even know was a thing. You played such a huge part in giving me education and the motivation to pursue this. My story starts in October 2018. My husband and I found out we were pregnant with our first. It was really special because it was actually our two-year wedding anniversary. It was that morning that we found out and we had a special trip plans to Niagara Falls, just up in Canada. It's a special place for us. It was where he proposed to me. It was just a really special time. It was also kind of crazy because up until that point, up until just prior to that, we had been together eight years, and we didn't think we were interested in having kids. I'm so grateful that our mindset had shifted, but it was just kind of a lot at once. We had agreed that we did want to start a family, but it happened really quickly, and it was just a lot to process. I didn't educate myself at all about birth. My husband and I took a class in the hospital, but it was pretty much just how do you take care of a baby. It wasn't how to bring a baby into the world.Meagan: Yeah, yeah. Sometimes those can be a little more what to expect after than really what to expect during.Kelsey: Exactly. And, I don't know what it was. I don't know if I just couldn't really picture myself giving birth just because we had just kind of come into this or if I just was not believing in my body, but I just felt the opposite of a lot of people on this podcast. They say, "I never thought I would have a C section. I never expected that for myself." For me, I just went into it thinking I'm intimidated by all of this. A C-section sounds easier and I cringe saying that now. But, I just thought not having to go through labor and not having to push a baby out, I just always had that in my head. That comes into play with how my first ended up. I was told throughout my pregnancy that my baby was big and specifically it was driven home, "The head is big. The shoulders are big." They were telling me about shoulder dystocia, and I didn't know anything. So I'm thinking, oh my gosh, not only am I already intimidated by the idea of birth. I know nothing about birth, but now you're telling me I have this big baby. My OB was really telling me maybe a C-section should be considered. And then she threw it out there. "Well, we could induce 39 weeks and see how things go." And again, I was just trusting her. She had been my gynecologist since I was a teenager. To me, I thought, okay, that makes sense. Baby's big. And again, I hadn't done any research on my own. So we did what I referred to as a half-hearted induction. I feel like it was just done to humor everyone. Like, "Oh, we tried." But I went in the night before at 39 weeks on the dot. Nothing was going on with my cervix. Surprise, surprise at 39 weeks. They did Cervadil and I just lay in the bed. My husband and I watched the fireworks out the window. It was the fourth of July. We were just completely not prepared for anything. Just going along with this and thinking, oh, we'll just have a C-section tomorrow if this doesn't happen. They came in the morning and nothing had happened. So they were like, "Oh, well, we could start Pitocin. We could do this." I just wasn't interested in any of that. I wasn't motivated to have a vaginal birth. I guess that's okay. That's just where my head was at the time. I've accepted that's just where I was at. So we had the C-section. It was a surgery. Just being there and as baby comes out, just hearing everybody in the OR talk about, "Oh, look at her cheeks and look at the hair." It was minutes before I'm ever able to get a quick flash of her around the curtain before they swoop her off. It was just a weird experience, but it was all I knew. I was grateful that it went okay, but it just makes recovery so hard, so painful. When I think back to it, just think about just crying while my husband's trying to do my abdominal binder, not being able to get in and out of bed, struggling to breastfeed, even getting in a position of breastfeed with that searing surgical pain. We struggled, and I ended up exclusively pumping. So it was tough as a first-time mom just dealing with all of that. But again, I didn't know any different. I think that was a blessing that I didn't know what I was potentially missing. For my second birth, we knew he wanted more than one child. You just never know how things are going to happen. We just weren't trying to not get pregnant, and it happened right away. The babies were 16 months apart, so when I showed up to my appointment, my OB, the same one who had said, "You have this big baby, and you should have a C-section or induce at 39 weeks." Oh, the ARRIVE study was hot off the press at that point too. So he was excited to show me the ARRIVE study back.Meagan: Oh, yeah, but you're not even a first-time. I mean, you were a first-time vaginal mom. So the ARRIVE trial, you know. You've been with us. Hashtag eyeball.Tara: Yeah, yeah, it changes. It's changed everything.Meagan: It really has. And I don't know if it really has changed for the better in my opinion.Kelsey: So sorry, that was for my first birth. I forgot to mention.Meagan: Oh, oh, oh, sorry. Yes, that would make sense. Yes.Kelsey: So with the second, it was the same OB, and she's like, "Okay, since your births are so close together, you'll just be a repeat C-section. You can make appointments with me, and I'll do your surgery. Easy peasy." I'm thinking, oh, okay. That makes sense because she's talking about uterine rupture, and they're so close together and I didn't research on my own. Is there another option? How risky really is this compared to a repeat C-section? I just trusted her so much. I had been with her for so long. I figured she must have my best interests at heart.Meagan: Yeah.Kelsey: I didn't even think to myself, my own mother had a VBAC with a 13-month age gap. I was a C-section, and my brother was a VBAC at 13 months 30 years ago. Meagan: Uh-huh.Kelsey: You only know what you know at the time. And so even though I didn't look into it in the ways that I should have, I did know that I wanted the experience to be a little different. So I found out about gentle C-section which I think is a funny term. Meagan: I was happy to see that you could request a clear drape, and you could request not to be tied down to the table. We did implement a few of those things. I had the clear drape. It was nice to see her coming out just for a quick flash before they swooped her away. It was nice not to be completely-- I had one arm free which is funny these things that we consider luxuries when you're having a C-section. So it was a little bit better in that way, but there were things that were also worse. They couldn't get the needle in, and they had a resident doing things. I was having trouble. I was starting to pass out during. They were having to adjust. It was stressful in its own way. I had some things that were a little better. But also, it's just's a C-section. Also, during, my OB made a comment as she has me completely open, all seven layers of me. She said, "Yeah, who was it the did your last C-section?",I told her and she made no comment. I said, "Why are you asking me this as you're inside my uterus?" She said, "There's just more scar tissue than I would have expected." She said, "Hey, you can have another baby if you want, but just wait more time in between. Just not so close together." So that was something that got in my head too. Anyway, we thought there was no way we would ever have a third. It was really hard having two under two recovering from another C-section. It was November 2020, so it was the first COVID winter. It was cold. It was dark. Everything was closed down. Everybody was in masks. It was so depressing. It's like, postpartum isn't hard enough. As if two under two isn't hard enough, then adding COVID.Meagan: Yeah, adding zero support and zero resources. Yeah.Kelsey: Nowhere to get out and do anything. It was a bummer. So anyway, it was a lot, and we thought, no way are we ever going to have three. It was just a hard season. So I donated everything. I put all my carriers and all my stuff out on the porch and said, "Come get it," to the local moms group. I just couldn't see myself having a third. Well, then the years pass, and things get easier. You come into an easier season. All of a sudden, we're not dealing with diapers and bottles. It's like, we could leave the house. Things are opening back up. My husband and I had talked about a third and toyed around with the thought of it, but it's just hard to pull the trigger once you've come into this easy season. The thought of hitting the reset button is intimidating. But all it really took was watching him take down my youngest's crib with her. And it was like, okay, this is something that we want to do. It was a funny conversation that night. I said, "If we were to get pregnant this cycle, we would have a June baby, and that would be really nice." So that's what happened. I was playing it with my third. That's when I realized. I mean, I had thought about it, obviously, but I realized, oh, my gosh, I have to have another C-section, a third C-section. Talk about being years away from it and thinking about how you're all healed. It's been a few years, and to think about them cutting open again and just knowing what that entails, I was just in a whole different headspace. I was thinking, how is there a way that I can avoid this?Before my first appointments, I did a quick Google search, "vaginal birth after two C-sections" just to see if this was something anybody had done or was doing or was even possible. I was so excited to see that people were doing this. It looked like it was actually potentially a good possibility. So I was thinking, I've got to be the right candidate. I didn't even need those first C-sections. I knew this now, reflecting back. Yeah, I had my first screening where they do your intake, and they were asking a bunch of questions. And I had said at the RN, I said, "Would I be able to maybe have a vaginal delivery after two C sections?" And she was like, "Oh, they consider it after one, but once you've had two, you're a C-section for life."Meagan: Oh, jeez.Kelsey: Something about her saying that and the way that she said it, I went from being a little bit curious and oh, this might be good, to no, this is something I'm going to pursue. It just didn't feel right. She didn't know my history. She didn't know why I have my C-sections. So to tell me, "Oh, no. You need to have a third major surgery for sure. No option." Tara: It was this moment when it brings a fight out in you. Like, I am gonna do this now.Kelsey: I'll never forget how I felt at that moment. So I started to have my appointments with the OBs, and I would bring it up. Everything was perfect. It was going really smoothly. So the appointments would be like two minutes, and then at the end they'd say, "Do you have any questions or concerns?" And I'd say, "Yeah, I wanted to see what my options are for delivery." They were like, "Well, we decided as a practice to support VBAC after one C-section, but we actually have a policy against VBAC after two C sections."Meagan: How did I know that was coming? The policy, I swear, every time it's like, "We decided as a practice or as a practice, we--". It's always like, they created this stupid policy that actually is against evidence based care. But okay.Kelsey: I'm thinking to myself, so then what do you do? Anyway, I was just mind blown by that. I went to a couple of more appointments there. You'd go every month and they'd say, "Any questions?" I'd say, "Yes. I'm just really not feeling good about the idea of a third C-section." I said, "The risks of a third Cesarean intimidate me much more than doing a trial of labor." I've never given my body a chance. It's not like I've been through this before and things went wrong. I've never been given a fair chance. They were very nice, but they just look at me and smile and nod and say, "Well, it's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay," and not even entertain the idea for a second. So I'm thinking to myself, okay. I've gotta figure something out. So at that point, when I had talked to a couple of providers, and they were all very consistent about, "Nope. Nope, not even going to entertain it," I knew something had to change. I'm reaching out. I'm searching in the local moms group about C-sections. Has anybody had a VBAC after two? It was crickets. Nobody was responding. I was looking back years trying to find anybody who had done this, in the area. Wat I was finding is, "No, it's not going to happen in Erie. You need to go to Pittsburgh or try a home birth." And I'm just really not comfortable with the home birth even though I know that's a perfect option for plenty of people.Meagan: It didn't feel right for you.Kelsey: Yeah. It just wasn't what I was feeling like I wanted to do. So I reached out, and I had not known anything about doulas until your podcast. I hardly even knew what they did before listening. I just searched "doulas in Erie." I called the first one I saw. I left a message that was probably pretty unhinged just like, "Help! What do I do? Is this something I can do?" She called back, and it was the first time that I had any validation at all. Up until then, it was just people telling me no, people telling me policies and not safe. It was the first time that I was heard. I was heard. She said, "There's really no reason why you can't have a chance. We'll figure this out." I kept doing my research. I dug really deep, and I found a few people who had referred to providers being supportive. I was reaching out. I was sending people DMs saying, "Hey, sorry to be huge creep, but can you tell me more about your experience?: I found out that at the other practice there were providers who would consider this. So it wasn't looking super promising, but it was better than where I was at. So I kind of took a chance. I switched practices at 28 weeks. Prior to that, I had an amazing appointment at 24 weeks. I had one last appointment at that office with the policy. He was amazing. If you could have just copied and pasted him, he was just like a midwife. I mean, he was very upset about the policy. He said, "How do you even enforce that?" He said, "What are we going to do? What are we going to do, strap you down and take you to the OR?" I wish that he had a podcast episode because he took so much time. He explained to me  the history of C-sections and how, in his words, the pendulum has swung so far from only doing C-sections when they were needed to they're safe now. Let's do them whenever we can. He talked about the whole policy thing and how they met as a group. He said, "Some of these younger JOBs have only been practicing now that C-sections are so common. They haven't seen the success." He said, "You have just as much of a chance of success as a 20-year-old walking off of the elevator because our C-section rate is so high. You have just as much of a chance." He laughed at the fact that macrosomia was in my chart, which I forgot to mention with my first. She was 9 pounds, 1 ounce. She was big.Meagan: Okay. I wanted to ask you though because they had said, "Oh, big baby, 16 months apart." I wanted to ask, but 9 pounds, 1 ounce is actually not macrosomia. It's a bigger baby, but it's not a huge baby.Kelsey: Exactly. It's not 12 pounds, which also, people have done. But anyway, he put so much wind into my sails, and he fully supported me switching. He said, "Honestly, I think this is great. I think this is the best option for you. You need to go for it." He said, "But if you were to stay here, you would face nothing but doubt and bullying and scary." He said, "If you were my wife, I would tell you to switch over to this other practice." So that's what I did. I also forgot to mention in my anatomy scan, the sonographer is going about doing it and she said, "Were your other babies big?" I'm like, no, we're not gonna start this. It was already with the big baby comments. So they had me do a growth scan to switch practices. It was refreshing to be in a place where they entertained the idea. They said that they decided as a practice to follow what ACOG says, but it was also very clear the difference between support versus tolerance. So although I was grateful that they were entertaining the idea, I still had, "Oh, 90th percentile. Oh, you've never labored before. You don't have a proven pelvis."Meagan: Proven pelvis. Tara: Yeah, proven pelvis.Meagan: There's a lot of eye rolls in this.Kelsey: Thank goodness, again, if it weren't for this podcast, all of those little comments would have swayed me. I would have said, "What am I doing? Listen to all these things they're saying. This isn't right for me." Once you know, it's just so hard to listen to the VBAC calculator. "Oh, let's just type your stuff in and see." I think it gave me, like 50% chance. Like, I don't know. So anyway, I'll get back on track. My low point was at 32 weeks. It was with my provider who was convincing me that a C-section or induction was right, and then telling me, "Oh, you'll just be a repeat. We'll schedule it." I was dreading my appointment with her. I knew that I needed to meet with her because she could possibly be the provider who was on call. I wanted to tell her what my plan was, and assess her thoughts. I thought that I was invincible because now I knew all of these things, and I wasn't going to let anybody bring me down. That appointment was pretty terrible. She came in hot. She said, "You're 32 weeks. Baby is 5 pounds, 4 ounces, and he's off the charts." She actually referred to him as massive. She said, "He's massive. He's huge." She said, "Put him in a room with 100 babies, and he is enormous."Meagan: Enormous. Tara: She's comparing him to other babies already. Meagan: And he's not even born. Tara: Can I just add a little tidbit here because there's so much talk in your story about the fear of big babies, and the research has shown that what leads to more problems or interventions in a birth with a big baby is not the actual size of the baby, but the provider's fear of the big baby. They're already getting themselves stirred up, and nothing has even happened. Kelsey: I was really discouraged by that because I had come across those facts too. And looking at the research and looking at what are the real risks of a big baby, that's actually just the providers. Yeah, se was just disgusted with my plan. She said, "Are you sure?" I said, "Yeah." I really stood my ground. I was so proud of how I stuck to my guns. She pulled out all the stops. She just kind of sighed and she said, "Okay." And then she pulled it out of me as I was  trying to justify. I said, "We're not sure how much we want to grow our family." I said, "If I have three C-sections, I'm not going to want a fourth." I said, "I just think it's worth a try." So she took that and she ran with it. She said, "Well, for what it's worth, I would rather do two more planned C-sections. I would do two more planned C-sections on you, and I wouldn't bat an eye. I'd rather do that than have you TOLAC." I thought, oh, my gosh. So again, I stood my ground. She went out. She was visibly upset. I was so proud of myself. But then I spiraled that whole day. It just chipped away at me all day. I came home.  I had been doing nightly walks religiously. That's when I would listen to The VBAC Link. That night, I didn't do my walk. I cried in my bed. I was just so upset. I spent the night then going through the groups I was in for VBAC after multiple Cesareans and The VBAC Link searching "big baby, big head circumference" and screen-shooting all of the success and all of the comments to fuel back my motivation. That was definitely the low point, but I did have some great meetings with providers. I was grateful that where I was living, I was able to find enough support where they would let me go for it. Once I got toward the end, there kept being the comments about "big baby". I had an OB do my final measurement and not tell me what it was. I said, "How is baby measuring? There is a lot of drama about baby being big." She was like, "Well, how big were your other two?" I said, "They were 9,1 and 8,4". My second was almost a full pound smaller. She said, "Oh, if you pushed those out, no problem. You don't have anything to worry about." I said, "That's where the drama was. I didn't push them out. I had C-sections." It was like she saw a ghost. She was like, "Oh, well that is drama." She was just beside herself. I say that story specifically because spoiler alert, she was the one who ended up delivering my baby.Meagan: Oh, really?Kelsey: To give a preface to that. She actually said, "Well, it is what it is." She just was very nervous and very upset. I said, "Have you never seen a VBAC after two C-sections? Have you seen that?" She said, "Well, yeah, but it's usually with people who have birthed vaginally before, and not with a big baby." That's what she said. Meagan: Oh my gosh. Kelsey: I just wanted to talk about that because she was the one who delivered Anyway, time went on. As I got to 39 weeks, I started to stand my ground a little bit more because they wanted to do cervical checks. They'd say, "Okay, undress for the provider." I just was like, "No, thank you. I'm good." I would have been really discouraged if they had come in and checked me. I know that got in my head with previous appointments with things that I didn't think would affect me. At 39 weeks, one of the providers who had been trying to talk about how big my baby was and persuade me to have an induction, she said, "What if we did a growth scan at 40 weeks, and you were measuring 10 pounds. Would that change your mind?" I was like, "No. I'm not doing a growth scan at 40 weeks. I've already done too many scans." So just right up until the end, they were trying to get me. They were talking about the size. Meagan: They were really trying to get you to cave. Kelsey: Yes. So after that appointment, because of my BMI, after 37 weeks and beyond, you have to have an NST and a BPP (biophysical profile) every week. Meagan: After 37 weeks?Kelsey: Starting at 37 weeks, you have to have both of those tests every week. It was just a new thing. I didn't do it with my last. Again, I'm worried about this. I know how the testing goes. Sure enough, I go. This is 39 weeks. I go for the biophysical profile, and they were like, "There is a lot of fluid. You have too much fluid." They were talking about all of the fluid. "Look, here are little flakes." They were talking about the fluid. I thought, I've made it this far. This is something that is going to make it a C-section.Baby wasn't also taking enough practice breaths for her which was frustrating. She even said, "I think he's sleeping, but I want to be on the safe side." I said, "I just had an appointment. She could hardly get his heart rate because he was moving so much." I had driven to Cleveland an hour and a half away the night before to go to a Noah Con concert. I felt him moving the whole time. I was like, "I'm pretty confident that he's okay. I was just checked by my OB five minutes ago." She wanted to send me. I wasn't going to mess around this far on, so I went to triage. They hooked me up to an NST. They wouldn't just let me do it in the office. I'm sitting there. Everything is perfect. The nurse comes in and said, "They're just going to place an IV." I stopped and said, "What did you say?" She said, "They're just going to place an IV." I said, "Why would they place an IV? Everything is looking good. I have grocery pickup in an hour. I'm not trying to be here for long." She said, "Just for access." I said, "No, thank you. Please let me out." That was weird.She said, "Okay. We're just going to watch you a little longer." Then this OB who I'd never seen before who was apparently just newer to the practice comes in. I'm like, "How are things going?" At this point, it had been 45 minutes. I'm trying to get out. He said, "Things are looking really good." I could see his wheels turning. He said, "But, since you are 39 weeks and you've had two C-sections, we can do a C-section for you today." Meagan: Oh my Santa. Tara: Here you go. How did you manage all of this pressure, Kelsey? It's extraordinary. Meagan: It is. Kelsey: I should mention that I had an amazing doula, so after these appointments, I would text her a paragraph. She was constantly lifting me back up. I was going to Webster chiropractic care. The chiropractor I saw, shout out to Tori, she's amazing. She's a doula also. She was pregnant going for her VBAC, so we would have these appointments, and it was a mini VBAC therapy session. We would talk about what we were up against, and just the different providers because she was going to the same practice as me. It was just so nice to have her. I was doing all of the things. The chiropractic care. I was eating the dates and drinking the tea because I wanted to know that if I was doing this, I was going to try everything and then I couldn't look back and say, "What if I would have done chiropractic?" Anyway, I basically tell him, "Get out of my room. I'm going." He just was awful. He did all of the scare tactics and all of the risks but none of the risks of a third C-section of course. Only the risks of the very low uterine rupture that he was hyping up. Anyway, that was bizarre, but again, I stood my ground. I was so proud, but then I got home, and I spiraled. I was packing my hospital bag. I was crying. I said to my husband, "I let them get in my head. I shouldn't even bother packing any of this stuff." I had the little fairy lights and things to labor. I was like, "I shouldn't even bother packing any of this VBAC stuff. They're just going to find some reason to do a C-section. Look at this. This whole time, they wanted to do the C-section." Again, another night of spiraling. As he left, he said, "They're going to want to see you tomorrow and repeat all of this testing." Meagan: For what? If everything was okay, what was the actual medical reason? Kelsey: Exactly. It was just out of spite because I shut him down. They were like, "They're going to want you to come back tomorrow." I'm like, "Okay. If it gets me out of here and gets you out of access to an IV and a C-section, fine." Meagan: Seriously. Kelsey: The next morning, I'm on my way to my appointment. I was on the phone with my mom and I told her, "I'm having these weird feelings I've never felt before. I don't know if maybe they're contractions." It was very strange. It was something I never felt. I never had a contraction and had never gone into labor. So I go to my appointment and passed the BPP with flying colors. I'm like, "Well, what about the fluid?" She's like, "Yeah, there's a lot of it, but it's fine." I got an 8 out of 8 score.  I go for the NST. Well now, baby's moving too much, so his heart rate, they can't keep it on because he's moving, and she kept having to move it. So again, I'm just very frustrated that I'm even there. I'm so close to the end. This is now 39 weeks and 4 days. And so the tech says, "I'm going to bring this to him. He might not like the drop offs, but I'll explain to him that the baby's moving a lot."I said, "Who's he? What OB is this?" She said the OB who was in triage the day before who tried to have me do the C-section and I was just like, "Oh my god. He's going to see my name and have any reason to send me back." Sure enough, he comes sauntering in the room and he says, "We meet again," as if I'm this problem child, as if I wasn't just having all these normal tests. He says, "I can't be confident that these aren't decals. You need to go back to triage." I was just again, so frustrated. It's like just a constant of all of these things coming up and none of it being real. It'd be different if it was like, oh, this was actually a risky thing. But again, I'm so close to the end. I know what I know. I knew that the OB that I had seen the day before in the office, I wanted to talk to her about the fluid because I had searched, and I saw that the polyhydramnios could actually be a thing. If your water breaks, there's the risk of cord prolapse. So I knew that that wasn't something that was completely to be ignored, so I wanted to talk to her more about that. I humored him, and I went in. Well, all the while, I'm feeling these sensations more and more consistently. They get me hooked up, and I explain the situation. I said that I was just here yesterday not really for a reason, but I'm back now also not really for a reason. They hook me up. Of course, everything looks good. But she's like, "Are you feeling these contractions?" I'm like, "Is that what they are?" I was excited. They were just cracking up because she's like, "These are pretty consistent and big contractions." I just couldn't believe it. I was just so excited my body was doing it. I'd only ever, at 39 weeks, been cut off and then never been given a chance. All I needed, I guess, was a few extra days. I'm just so excited that I'm having contractions. The nurses are laughing. "We've never seen somebody so excited to have contractions." Anyway, at that point, my OB comes in, the one who had been trying to get me to be induced. She's plenty nice, but the one who said about if we did a scan of 40 weeks and 10 pounds, would you reconsider? So she said, "Kelsey, do you know what I'm going to say? This is the second day you've been in here in two days." I'm like, "Yeah, but for nothing."Meagan: And because you asked me to come in here.Kelsey: Yeah, trying to humor everyone and see that yep, everything's fine. See? But again, I was having these contractions, and as I was there, picking up. She wanted to check me. I said, "Okay, I'll let you check me," because I'm having contractions I never have before, and I want to see what's going on. I went to the bathroom, and I had bloody show, which again, I had never had. So things are really happening. I come out and I told her, "There's blood and I'm having contractions." She's like, "Yay, let's check you," and I was 1 centimeter. She was one of the OBs who was comfortable with a balloon. So she said, "I'll tell you what. You've got a lot of fluid. Things are happening. Let's work on moving things along."Meagan: So she induced you?Kelsey: She wanted to.Meagan: She wanted to. Okay.Kelsey: So she's like, "Let's get you in. I'll do the balloon. We can get things going because you've got a lot of fluid. It's time, Kelsey." I'm like, "Okay." I said, "Well, I'm gonna go home."Meagan: Good for you, girl.Kelsey: Get my kids off with my mom and get my dog off. She sunk when I said that. I said, "I promise I'll come back. I'm not gonna run it. I'll come back just in a little while. Like, maybe this evening." But she said, "Okay, I'm here till 4:00, and then it's another OB coming on who won't want to do the balloon." So just come in before then. Of course, I wait until exactly 4:00. But as I was home, it just kept picking up, and I started timing. The app is like, "Go to the hospital. Go to the hospital." But I've also know from listening to this podcast that that happens. My husband's freaking out because he would see me stop and pause, and he's like, "Let's go. Let's get out of here." I was grateful that everything maintained through the car ride. I got there, and contractions were still happening. My doula met us there because I hear about people going too early and the contractions stop, and then there are problems there. Yeah, things just kept happening. We got in a room. My doula was amazing. We were just hanging out and just laughing. I couldn't believe just how happy I felt to feel my body doing it after all these years of just, "Your babies are too big, and you can't do this," and then all of this pregnancy saying that. It was just amazing.  I definitely had my guard up. The nurse was talking about the IV and the monitors, and especially with being overweight, I was worried about a wireless monitor. That happens. They can't get a good reading, and then they think baby's heart rate's dropping. I was just so worried about any reason, because I knew that they would. They would take it and run, so I was so grateful that the wireless monitoring worked perfectly. I was on my feet. Things just kept getting more intense, but I'm just laughing and smiling through it all. My doula was amazing. It was just such a great vibe in the room. My nurses were amazing. Every little thing that went right, I just embraced. I was so happy that this was happening. My water broke while I was on a video call with my friend. Again, it just like, "Oh, my gosh, my water broke. That's never happened." There was meconium in the water. So again, I'm like, oh, no. You know, any little thing. I was quickly reassured. It was very light. It wasn't anything to be worried about. I labored and stayed on my feet. My doula was amazing with suggesting things I never would have thought or never would have thought that I would enjoy. I was in the shower at one point on a ball. They had this little wooden thing with a hole in it so that it keeps the ball from slipping out and keeps the drain from plugging. I'm just listening to my guilty pleasure music while my husband's outside the shower eating a Poptart laughing. It was just such a funny thing. I was just so, so excited about it all. Things were really picking up. My water just kept breaking and breaking. I mean, it was true. I had so much fluid. It just was just coming out and coming out. I couldn't believe how much there was. I got into the bed on my side, my doula said, "Try to take a break," and then I felt a water balloon in me. I could feel it burst. Just when I thought surely I was out of fluid, it just gushed out. And then immediately it was like, "Oh, my gosh, this is really intense." I handled that for a while. I was squeezing the comb. I was working through contractions, but I tapped out at about 1:00 AM I'd say. So we got into the hospital around 4:00, and the time just flew. They came to do the epidural, and he put it in. I just kept waiting for relief because I felt like I just didn't have a break. They were kind of on top of each other. It was one of those things that if I knew I was only going to have to do that for a short amount of time, but just not knowing how long, I just felt like I was suffering through them at that point. I wasn't trying to be a hero. I was just trying to avoid what I know sometimes happens and just trying to avoid interventions as much as I could. I kept waiting for this relief because I'm like, "I think I just need to rest. I feel like I'm close." The last I've been checked, I was 5 centimeters, but that was before the water broke and before struggling through contractions for a while. I had no idea how dilated I was. The relief never came. I was hoping to be able to relax and maybe take a nap like sometimes I hear. I could still feel my legs. I could have walked around the room if I wanted. I kept pushing the button. I don't know if it was in the wrong spot or what happened. I don't know if maybe there was something that was working because instead of feeling crushing and just defeated through the contractions, I was feeling like I can survive that. I can get through them. There was just no resting, it was just still having to work through contractions. And then my doula at one point said, "Maybe we should call him in and have him redo it." But then I was in my head, "Well, what if he redoes it, and then I'm too numb and I can't push?" So I just went through it. I'm so glad that I did, because it wasn't long after that that I was checked, and I was 8 centimeters. My  nurse kept checking and there was a lot going on down there and a lot coming out. Eventually she checked me and she said, "Hi. Hi, buddy. I just couldn't believe it." She said, "Do you want to feel him?" I got to reach down and feel his head. It was just also surreal. She had me do a practice push once I was dilated enough, and she's like, "O, oh, okay, okay, okay." She said, "I'm gonna go make a phone call."Tara: Wow, that's impressive.Kelsey: And the OB came in. I forgot to say that when I got to the hospital, the OB who was gonna do the Foley balloon, I totally left this out. She checked me, and I was already 2 centimeters. She said, "Your body is doing it on its own. We're just going to let you go."Tara: That was my question, Kelsey. I was wondering this whole time if they did anything to augment. There was no Pitocin. This was all you? Kelsey: Yes. Yes. I can't believe it.Tara: That's amazing.Kelsey: I got there, and I got the monitor placed. She came in. She checked, and she said, "You're 2 centimeters. We're just going to let you go. We're going to let you do your thing." That was just music to my ears just knowing how things sometimes go. Also, the OB coming on, I had told you, was really nervous about my plan. My husband and I joked that she did something to calm herself down before she walked in because she was just like, "You know what? I'm going to do something crazy. I'm just going to channel my inner midwife and do something crazy and just let you go and leave you alone." My doula is like, "Good. Please let us go." Yeah, I forgot to mention that is not only did I not need the induction, but then I had the OB surrendering and saying, "Go ahead, just let's do it. It's fine." So she literally did not come in. I think was as far away as she could pretending it wasn't happening, I guess. When the nurse called her, she came in and she got her gloves on. I just kept waiting for something to happen still. I'd been so, so scared by providers this whole time. So I'm like, okay. She instructed me on how to push. We did it through one contraction, and his head came out. I was like, "Oh, my gosh. This is crazy," and then, during the second contraction, I did it again, and the rest of him came out. It was unbelievable. It was five minutes from start to finish. My doula described it like butter. He was 9 pounds, 3 ounces.Meagan: So biggest baby. OkayKelsey: Biggest baby, enormous head. I didn't have any tears. I had what the OB described as grazes, like little spots that were bleeding. She put one or two stitches on the walls from where there were these grazes and I can't even describe it. I was sobbing. I was like, "We did it. We did it." He came right to my chest and to get to see him, it was unbelievable. It all happened so fast. Going from not believing in my body and just going for these C-sections, I'm so glad I didn't know what I was missing because in that moment, I probably could have done this before. Again, I didn't know what I didn't know and who knows would have gone? But it was just unbelievable to be in a normal room to have him come out and just right to me where he belongs and getting to see him with his cord still attached and he's crying. It just was such a beautiful moment and I just couldn't believe that had after all of that, here he was. It was beautiful. They asked about cutting the cord, and we hadn't even discussed that. I was like, "Can I do it? I really want to do it." I wanted all the experiences that I could never have gotten in the OR. I cut his cord. My doula got an awesome picture of that. I was considering having that be my picture for the podcast. It was just unbelievable, and I was just so happy, too, that that OB was the one who was there because seeing how nervous she was, I'm so glad that she got to experience. Look what you almost deterred me from doing just seeing how perfect it was. Now I'm hoping that if somebody comes to her in the future, she'll remember and say, "Hey, we had this baby, and it was just such a great experience." I was just so grateful for every second. I couldn't believe how things ended up.Meagan: I am so happy for you. Like Tara was saying, I'm so impressed. Standing your ground the way that you stood your ground after just constant-- I'm gonna call it nagging. They were just nagging on you and trying so hard to use the power of their knowledge that we know that they hold. We as beings, and it's not even just in the birth world, just as humans, we have this thing where we have providers, and we know that they've gone through extensive amount of schooling and trainings, so it's sometimes easy as you said, you spiraled when you got back to spiral and be like, wow, they're just all pushing this really hard. Maybe I should listen. Tara, have you experienced this within supporting your clients or just your own personal experience?Tara: You mean the pushback from the providers?Meagan: Yeah, the pushback, and then for us, should we doubt our intuition? Should we doubt what we're feeling and go with what they're saying because they know more?Tara: Yeah, I mean, that's the hardest thing, because you hire them. Like you said with your first provider, you trusted her. You'd known her since you were young. You've built this trust. She's gone to school. It's so hard to stand up against that as just a consumer and as a person who cares about the health of your baby and your family. But then the multiple times that you had to stand up for yourself even in small things like not getting the IV, not getting the cervical exam, those are not small things. You were protecting yourself from having more of that pushback. I am amazed. We struggle with that as doulas too, because we're helping advocate for our clients. It sounds like your doula was a rock for you and a place to feel validated and heard. I'm so glad you had her.Kelsey: Me too. I say to my husband, "No offense, you're great, but what would be done without our doula?" I mean, she was unbelievable just bringing the positive energy. My husband and I were so nervous and we were so worked up. We were third-time parents, but it was our first time doing any of this. My husband wouldn't have really known. He's never seen it before. My doula, she's done this so many times. She was right in there with the massaging and the side-lying. She did the, she called it shaking the apples.Tara: Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's a good one. But Kelsey, it's against all odds. I just think it's amazing because we talk about the power of oxytocin and feeling safe and not having stress hormones going on, and you had all of that. You should be so proud of your body coming in in the nick of time and just proving against all of this. I'm just gonna go ahead and birth this baby, and a bigger baby than your other two which is such a triumphant moment.Meagan: Seriously.Kelsey: His head was 15 inches. That was another thing because they had talked about his head circumference being off the chart. That was another thing I had been searching is people who've had the big head circumference. Those groups, this podcast and just groups and having access to so many stories and people overcoming all of these obstacles because every time I came up against something, I had heard it before. I said, "Oh, this is something that I've heard time and time again with these stories. They make you feel like you're the only one with the big baby and, oh, this is a problem. But it's like, no. They're saying this to so many people. It was just amazing going into this being so informed and motivated and having that confidence that I never would have had. I just so grateful for this podcast and for all the information.Meagan: Well, thank you so much. It's one of the coolest things, I think, not only just the VBAC, but to see where you came from at the beginning of, "We're not having kids. Okay. We're having kids. Okay. This is what I'm thinking. I'm kind of scared of this. Let's do this. Okay. Doctor said this. Let's do this." to this. I mean, you came so talking about the pendulum, right? And what that provider was talking about. You came from one side over here to not even wanting kids or wanting a vaginal birth to swinging so far to the other side and advocating so hard for yourself and standing your ground. When we say that you should be proud, I am shouting it. Be proud of yourself. Girl, you are incredible. You are such a great example. Women of Strength, if you are listening right now, I want you to know that you can be just like Kelsey. You do not have to be bullied. You do not have to be nagged on every single time. Know what's right. Know your gut. Know your heart. Do what you need to do, and you can do it. You can do it. It is hard. I know it's hard. It is not easy, but it is possible. Girl, you're amazing. I thank you so much for sharing your story today and empowering all the Women of Strength who are coming after you and needing the same encouragement that you needed not even years ago. How old was your baby?Kelsey: So he is four months old.Meagan: Four months. Yeah, so a year ago when you were listening. I mean, really, so so amazing. Thank you so much. And Tara, it's always a pleasure. Thank you so much for being here. I couldn't agree more with your advice. Get your partners educated. Create that true dream team.Kelsey: Thank you.Tara: Congratulations, Kelsey.ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan's bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Having ADD or ADHD is a gift, not a curse. Hear from people all around the globe, from every walk of life, in every profession, from Rock Stars to CEOs, from Teachers to Politicians, who have learned how to unlock the gifts of their ADD and ADHD diagnosis, and use it to their personal and professional advantage, to build businesses, become millionaires, or simply better their lives.     Hey guys, Peter Shankman the host of Faster Than Normal. I wanna talk for a second about the Skylight Calendar, the wonderful sponsors of this episode and one of the things that keeps myself and my daughter on track. Skylight sits on your wall and tells you what you have to do today; what chores your child has to do today. It's basically a family calendar all-in-one. You can color code. It is amazing for people with ADHD. I am truly in love with this thing. We look at it every single day. It tells us the weather. It tells us what's on our calendar. It tells us what chores are left to do. Oh, time to feed the dog! - Mark it off on the calendar. My daughter can check the box when she's done and the chore disappears. It is one of the best things we've ever had. You can get yours with a discount using code: PeterShankman for 10% off, up to 30 bucks off. You're gonna love this Skylight calendar.  And you are gonna love.. I mean, truly it is amazing for people with ADHD or basically anyone who wants to keep track of their schedule. It sits on the wall, added bonus. You can throw your own photos onto it as a screen saver- on your wall! So now your wall has pictures. That's cool. Check it out. I'll put the link in the show notes. https://www.skylightframe.com Discount Code:  PeterShankman for 10% off, up to 30 bucks off. In her own words: Hello, I'm Kelsey! I am in my early 30's, originally from Michigan, and got diagnosed with ADHD when I was 26.  I graduated with a degree in Psychology and Public Relations, and have worked in several different roles in sales, customer service, operations, and marketing in the computer software industry within the last decade.  Shortly after being diagnosed, I sold my house, furniture, and all my belongings to pursue a nomadic lifestyle.  From the years of 2017-2020 I participated in an organization called WWOF, where I worked on several different organic farms across the US in exchange for room and board.  During this time, I worked remotely, tried stand up comedy, adventured, and brainstormed on how I could make money on my own terms.  In 2020, I moved to Nashville and in 2023 relocated back to Michigan.  I have a passion for fitness, international traveling, learning, and meeting other neurodivergent people. Today we learn why Kelsey Sterkenburg decided to try out the nomadic lifestyle and if it is perhaps a choice for you also, enjoy! 00:40 - Thank you so much for listening and for subscribing! 02:06 - Welcome and introducing Kelsey Sterkenburg 03:00 - What made you decide to go Nomad; the ADHD diagnosis? 04:20 - On WWOOF-ing ref: https://wwoof.net/destinations/ 05:00 - On actually making the commitment and doing it. Yeah…how did you do that? 06:20 - On leveraging the prep-work and risk taking 07:00 - On settling-in and how she got into WWOOF-ing 08:27 - Did you ADHD play a big/small role in your being able to learn something new, and in a hurry? 09:45 - What was in a typical day that got you to that euphoric high? 10:00 - A day in the life on the farm 11:05 - On re-claiming perspective and finding a passionate work ethic once again 13:38 - Would you recommend this lifestyle for other people with ADHD; maybe to change things up even? If so then why? 16:30 - What are you doing now? 17:26 - How do people find out more about you? Socials we could find: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelseysterkenburg/ Another big shout out to Skylight calendar! 18:00 - We are thrilled that you are here!  ADHD and all forms of neurodiversity are gifts, not curses. And by the way, if you haven't picked up The Boy with the Faster Brain yet, it is on Amazon and it is a number one bestseller in all categories. So check it out. Click HERE or via https://amzn.to/3FcAKkI My link tree is here if you're looking for something specific. https://linktr.ee/petershankman 18:41 - Faster Than Normal Podcast info & credits. Guys, as always thanks so much for subscribing! Faster Than Normal is for YOU! We want to know what you'd like to hear! Do you have a cool friend with a great story? We'd love to learn about, and from them. I'm www.petershankman.com and you can reach out anytime via email at peter@shankman.com or @petershankman on all of the socials. You can also find us at @FasterNormal on all of the socials. It really helps when you drop us a review on iTunes and of course, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already! As you know, the more reviews we get, the more people we can reach. Help us to show the world that ADHD is a gift, not a curse!  — TRANSCRIPT via Descript and then corrected.. mostly somewhat:  [00:00:40] Peter: Hey everyone, what's up? My name is Peter Shankman. I'm the host of the Faster Than Normal podcast, and I wanna give a big shout out to Skylight for sponsoring this episode again, Skylight Calendar, guys, I told you about this thing before. I love it. It sits in my kitchen wall and tells my daughter exactly what she has to do. It tells her what she has to bring to school. It tells her what she can leave home. It tells her what chores have to be done. I don't have to yell at her anymore. She doesn't complain. We can throw photos on there of family, of friends, of my parents, of her, of of her mom's parents, everyone. She sees everything. She can touch screen it when she's done. She loves going over feeding the dog and then touch screening to say that she's fed the dog and the chore disappears. They're color coded, which is great for people like me who have ADHD and people like you. Check out Skylight. It is a phenomenal, phenomenal calendar. It'll make your life so much easier and simpler,. You'll have so much less to complain about. Skylightframe.com . Use code Peter Shankman and get up to 30 bucks off your first offer. And I wanna thank them again for sponsoring the podcast. The Skylight calendar is incredible. Skylight frame.com. Check it out. https://www.skylightframe.com Discount Code:  PeterShankman    [00:00:40] Peter: Hey guys. Peter Shankman. Welcome to that episode of Faster Than Normal. I am your host as I have been going on, I don't know, six years or something ridiculous like that. It is lovely to have you here. We are having a good time. We're gonna have a good time today. We're gonna talk to a wonderful young woman named Kelsey, but before we do, I wanna give a big shout out to Skylight Calendar. Makes the skylight frame. They now have the skylight calendar, which let me tell you, has changed my life with my daughter. She doesn't argue with me over what chores to do anymore because they're literally on a digital calendar on our wall, in our kitchen table area place. Basically, she goes in, she pours her Honeynut Cheerios. She looks up at the calendar and says, oh, okay, today I have chorus and have to bring my coral music and I have to feed the dog and I have to do all this stuff. And as she does it, she clicks the checkbox on the touchscreen and she checks it off. She loves doing that. It's color coded for people like me who have ADHD. It is the easiest thing in the world. You can upload all your photos to it as well. So when you're not using the calendar, it shows cool photos. Remind you of places you've been in, things you've done. You can get up to 30 bucks off with the code: PeterShankman at skylightframe.com. Huge, huge fan of this calendar. It has made my life a lot easier, and we want to thank them for hosting or for, for sponsoring the hosting of this podcast. As always, it is wonderful to have such wonderful, wonderful, fascinating, and brilliant sponsors such as Skylight Frame. Check out the frame, check up the calendar. You're really, really gonna like it. Use code Peter Shankman. For 30 bucks up to 30 bucks off and lemme know what you think. So with that said,  [00:02:06] Peter: I wanna welcome Kelsey. Kelsey, I'm gonna screw up your last name again. Sterkenburg. Is that right? Yes. Yep. All right. Got it. Kelsey is in her early thirties, she's originally from Michigan. She got diagnosed with ADHD when she was 26. She graduated from the, with a degree in psychology and public relations, and worked in several she worked in several different roles in sales, customer service, operations, and marketing, blah, blah, blah. But after she got diagnosed, she decided to sell her house and furniture and all her belongings and pursuing nomadic lifestyle from the years of 17, 2017, 2020. She participated in an organization called WWOF, or. Which I like, where she worked on several different organic farms across the United States in exchange room and board. During this time, she worked remotely. She tried standup comedy. She adventured, she brainstormed how she could make money on her own terms. In 2020, she moved to Nashville and 2023 back to Michigan. She loves fitness, international traveling, learning, and meeting other neurodivergent people. Kelsey, welcome to Faster Than Normal.  [00:02:59] Kelsey: Thank you so much. Thanks for having.  [00:03:01] Peter: My pleasure. So you have an interesting life when you decided, Hey, I'm ad, was it because you decided, because you had ADHD that you decided you were gonna go nomad or was there something else involved? [00:03:11] Kelsey: You know, it was, um, it was mostly the ADHD. It was just this kind of light bulb came outta my head and it made sense at the time of my life. Um, I was a little bored with how I was living. I, I was trying to kind of fit in and mask do what everyone else was doing around me. Um, kind of just live the Midwest life and it felt very hard for me. Um, I felt very stable. I felt very safe, but I didn't feel like I was doing what I really wanted to do. Um, and it's hard, you know, when you first get diagnosed it makes so much sense. It's just you finally have, you can see color. Yeah. After living in black and white for so long. So for me, I just thought, I wanna travel, I wanna go see things, I wanna go do things. And of course I, you know, I knew I had to work and I knew I had to have everything, kind of my ducks in a row. But I did feel confident in myself for the first time in my life. I felt like I can do this! You know, I wanna go move somewhere different, somewhere new, and I've always been pretty adaptable. So I kind of just looked online and I, um, I had heard a lot of people talk about, um, woofing is what it's called. And it actually is, um, an organization that allows you to, um, like you mentioned, live on organic farms and, um, move around the country and, um, you're not necessarily making money, but you're not losing money. So I saw that as an opportunity to grow and discover my love for working again. I had gotten a little bit stagnant in that department. Um, I had kind of lost that passion because I was doing things I didn't truly have a passion for. Um, so I just decided to go for it.  [00:04:52] Peter: Lemme interrupt you up for a second. Let's talk about that. Cuz the concept of sort of selling all your crap and just going out, working on an organic farm or doing anything like that. You know, a lot of people talk about it, oh, we should do this or do that, but it's scary as hell to actually make. Sleep and do it is scary as hell. So how did you swallow that fear and turn that into action? Because fear usually negates action when you're nervous, you usually, you, you're paralyzed by fear, yet you just, some somehow swallowed your fear and did it. What was it that made you do that?  [00:05:19] Kelsey: I did. You know, I put together, I've always been, I've found that when I'm very motivated towards a goal, I know it's gonna happen and I know I'm going to get there and it, it, I may seem crazy to the outside world, but to me, It makes sense and it's just, I'm laser focused, right? My hyper-focus was on, so I knew I wanted to sell my house. Um, I just knew that wasn't for me.  [00:05:42] Peter: So you owned the house in that point?  [00:05:44] Kelsey: I did, yeah. Wow. I did and I tried everything. I tried to really just create a lot of stability where I was and. Like I said, follow the norm and do what everyone else was doing. And I had done every single, I felt like I was checking off, you know, things on a list, and it felt really, um, I just felt kind of uncomfortable with it, which is strange because usually at that point in life, you, uh, feel steady and you feel comfortable. But for me, I wanted to be outside my comfort zone a little bit. So I felt like I had a little bit of a nest egg once the, the house went through. Um, and I thought to myself, I'm smart, I'm capable. I can do this, you know, and as long as I'm frugal and, um, I'm careful, I think that it will all work out because I had been playing it safe for so long at that point that. I wanted to take a risk. I wanted to go. So it was, uh, a little bit of a leap of faith, but I also had that confidence. I just knew that I was gonna be okay and I was excited. So I kind of let that draw me into, um, making that decision. Um, but I went and, um, I was excited and, um, I ended up just kind of being thrown into. Um, I went to California actually first in San Diego and, um, found a place to live pretty quickly. Um, and, you know, started the job hunts. And while I was doing that, I started to look at, um, WWOOFing because I had actually. Um, met one, I met a friend that was doing, um, woofing in Arizona and he actually, um, kind of introduced me to it. I had never heard of it before. I always, uh, you know, I just assumed that was something that, you know, maybe rich kids would do, but it was really for anyone. Um, and I thought to myself, I don't really wanna stay only in San Diego. Um, I had stayed there for a little bit. I wanted to see more. I wanted to do more. So I thought, what can I do that will allow me to. See more of this country and move around a little bit, but not, um, you know, not have to start over each time with housing and that kind of thing. So I saw, um, woofing as an opportunity to be out in nature. Um, Learned to work hard. I worked on farms, I worked with animals. Um, I helped rebuild fences. Um, and just really worked with some really interesting people. Um, and you're, you know, you're meeting people from all walks of life at the same time because there's other volunteers, um, at each site that you choose. [00:08:26] Peter: Tell me about your adhd. How do you think your ADHD played into you're being able to be on a farm and do something incre entirely new. Right. And, and, and, and learn something basically on the fly with your feet in the fire.  [00:08:37] Kelsey: Yeah. Um, I think, um, like most ADHD people, I think, um, we're very spontaneous. We're very excited to learn. Um, when we're interested in a subject, it's, you know, there that hyper focus comes on. Um, so for me, I had always been. Um, aware of just my adventurous spirit, you know, being spontaneous and, um, interested in a lot of different things. So I, I feel the most sharp when I'm moving. When I'm, um, talking fast. I'm moving fast. I'm meeting other people. I'm, you know, there's novelty around me, so, Um, those things excite me. And, um, I think that because I had kind of been bogged down by, you know, sitting in a chair for eight hours a day and trying to, you know, living that monotonous life for a while that I was, I just, it was polar opposite of that. It was just so much dopamine. Um, and I wasn't medicated either, so it was just this, um, I guess you could call it like a euphoric high.  [00:09:44] Peter: Tell us about it. But I was, what, what was the typical day that got you to that euphoric high?  [00:09:48] Kelsey: Um, what was it that got me there?  [00:09:51] Peter: No, tell us, tell us about a typical day there. Cause you said it was euphoric high, so what were you doing? What was a typical day like for you?  [00:09:57] Kelsey: Absolutely. So what I would do is I would, um, wake up and, um, you could actually pick what kind of work you wanted to do. So, um, wake up, they actually, they feed you. They give you kind of room and board. It's, it's very nomadic, like I said. So it's, um, you know, it's not for prim and proper. It's, you know, you're, you're dirty and you're not. It's not a hotel, but you're living, well, you're living on someone's property and you're, you're helping, you're giving back to a really good cause and, um, and you're treated very well. So I would wake up, um, have breakfast and um, you know, you kind of just, Get started, you've just kind of developed this routine and you're told, okay, you know, you're in charge of the horses today or you know, the donkeys or you know, go out in the field and start um, you know, doing kind of the farm chores. And they of course had walked me through how to do that every single day. And, um, I specifically wanted to work with animals cause that is one of my biggest passions. So I would go out and kind of complete all the farm duties, and that would take a couple hours. Um, it wasn't easy, I will say, but it didn't feel What kinda, [00:11:02] Peter: when you say farm, when you say farm duties, what were you doing? [00:11:05] Kelsey: Yeah, I was, um, kind of like bailing the hay in, um, feeding all the animals and, um, I actually was milking the cows as well. Wow. Um, and doing a lot of different things just, um, to kind of keep all the operations up and running. This was a, I had worked on a couple different farms, um, up in the PNW area. Um, Northern California and um, also one in Montana as well in the, the Bozeman area. So each farm was different. So you do have to really just adjust to, um, the owners and their expectations, what they would like you to do. Um, but it was like a little bit of gardening as well. There was a little bit of, um, you know, learning how to manage a garden. Um, and also a lot of the food prep, you know, kind of taking in the eggs and the milk and kind of doing a little bit of food prep in the kitchen. So it kept me busy, as you can imagine. Sure, yeah. Um, a six hour shift would go by like a snap of the fingers. And I could not remember the last time I felt so, um, so busy and, um, productive and I felt like I was back in college again where I'm learning new things and you know, I'm interacting and I'm away from my phone for, you know, that period of time. And I'm just really, really happy. I feel like this is a good fit for me and this is what I need. Um, so I kind of felt like I had become a drone before that. Um, just kind of masking and blending in and trying to do what was expected of me. And then I finally chose to do something that I thought would help me grow. Um, that's a little bit unconventional, but it worked and it did really help me establish a hard work ethic again. Um, which in turn helped me kind of decide what I wanted to do next, um, with work. So, um, but it did definitely teach me that I prefer to work by myself. Um, I, I like to be independent. I like to, um, I prefer the more the self-employment route I guess you could say. So I kind of, uh, discovered my entrepreneurial spirit during that time and, um, learned a lot though. And I did that for, um, about a year and, um, did a little bit of traveling in between there.  [00:13:25] Peter: That's very, very cool.  [00:13:26] Kelsey: Tell us as well, so very risky.  [00:13:31] Peter: Tell us, uh, I guess this is my, my only my, my last question to you, because this is fascinating to me. What. You re would you recommend this lifestyle for a year or two years or three years for other people with h adhd? Because it seems to be for people who are stuck and, and in this sort of A D H D, um, uh, spinning their wheels type mentality, which we've all been in from time to time. And there are some people who are just looking for, okay, maybe this is a way to break everything and, and change everything up. Would you recommend it?  [00:13:59] Kelsey: I would, and I'll tell you why, and I know a lot of people can relate to this. I had a lot of people trying to stop me from doing this. They said, you know, you're gonna fall on your face. You're not gonna make it. Um, you don't have enough money, you don't have enough experience with life. You know, all these things. And um, and I had always found that the more people told me not to do something, the more motivated I was to do it. Um, and so I stopped kind of sharing. I stopped oversharing and I started to really just quiet the noise around me, um, and stopped comparing myself to, you know, other people. Um, and that's hard to do in your twenties, as you can imagine. It gets easier as the years go by, but, um, I thought to myself, you know, this is smart. This is a way that I'm not really losing any money. I'm not really. Um, the biggest, you know, fear I guess is just a couple months off of a real corporate job, you know, but at the same time, with everything we have in our remote world today, digital marketing, you know, you can start your own business online. There's a, there's a ton of ways to be creative and make money, and I thought.. I don't think this is gonna be hurting me. I think this will help me grow. This will reshape my perspective of life. Um, kind of bring back that childhood spirit, you know, that childhood energy and, um, get me excited about life again. And not learning the same thing in an office day after day. Um, I just, I also really wanted to rediscover my work ethic. I wanted to feel like I was really, really earning my time and my money. Um, and, you know, feel fulfilled at the end of the day. And I did. I feel like it really helped me reset, um, and put me back on the path that I was meant to be on. So it changed my life, it really did. And I know I, um, I know others have had much, you know, greater experiences with moving to different countries or traveling. but.. it definitely gave me that travel bug and that, um, thirst for life. And, um, I recognized that there were other neurodivergent people that were in that environment and I didn't feel alone and I felt, wow, there are other people like me that have struggled and just had to do something that was a little bit crazy to uh, maybe find themselves and discover where they're meant to be. Um, so I  [00:16:29] Peter: What are you doing now?  [00:16:30] Kelsey: Um, so now I am, um, kind of, I'm also still working remotely in a, a software, um, company that does analytics for, um, LMS systems. So we're kind of tracking the performance analytics for instructional designers that are creating different courses over different LMS systems. So I'm kind of working as more of a, I guess you could call me a jack of all trades, a customer success kind of manager slash business sales representative slash operations manager. So I'm, I'm in a role right now that is a really good fit. Um, it really does let me wear all the hats I like to wear. Um, and it also lets me thrive because I'm, um, working independently and, um, I don't really have anyone overseeing anything I'm doing. It's just, I'm just kind of given the reins to run with it.  [00:17:25] Peter: That's awesome. So, very cool. Kelsey, how can people find you if they wanna learn more? They, I have a feeling this might change in lives. How can people find you?  [00:17:32] Kelsey: Yeah, they can actually, um, find me on, um, LinkedIn. Um, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, just Kelsey Sterkenberg um, or they could find me on. I have Instagram, I have Facebook, um, all those tools and my name is pretty, um, un uncommon. Yeah, true. So I think, uh, it won't be too hard to track me down, but yeah, and I'd be happy to, you know, provide my contact information if needed. [00:17:58] Peter: Very cool guys. Kelsey, thank you so much for taking the time. Really appreciate it. Kelsey. This is a really interesting interview. I found myself really fascinated by this. Thank you so much, Peter. Awesome guys. Listen to Faster Than Normal. We want to hear what you want to hear. Let us know what you think. Don't forget, uh, the Boy with a Faster Brain is still number one. It's burning up the charts. Grab your copy, buy a copy and donate it to a library. They're shutting down libraries in this country. Man. This is. Keep libraries alive, buy a copy and donate it to a library. And if you do that, shoot me an email, let me know you did and I'll send you something fun. But either way, keep listening. We'll have another episode next week. ADHD is a gift, not a curse, as is all neurodiversity. We love that you guys are here and we're greatly thankful that you tune in every week. Stay safe, stay well. We'll talk to you soon. — Credits: You've been listening to the Faster Than Normal podcast. We're available on iTunes, Stitcher and Google play and of course at www.FasterThanNormal.com I'm your host, Peter Shankman and you can find me at shankman.com and @petershankman on all of the socials. If you like what you've heard, why not head over to your favorite podcast platform of choice and leave us a review, come more people who leave positive reviews, the more the podcast has shown, and the more people we can help understand that ADHD is a gift, not a curse. Opening and closing themes were composed and produced by Steven Byrom who also produces this podcast, and the opening introduction was recorded by Bernie Wagenblast. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next week!   

About KelseyKelsey Hightower is the Principal Developer Advocate at Google, the co-chair of KubeCon, the world's premier Kubernetes conference, and an open source enthusiast. He's also the co-author of Kubernetes Up & Running: Dive into the Future of Infrastructure.Links: Twitter: @kelseyhightower Company site: Google.com Book: Kubernetes Up & Running: Dive into the Future of Infrastructure TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud, with your host Cloud economist Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of Cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is brought to us by our friends at Pinecone. They believe that all anyone really wants is to be understood, and that includes your users. AI models combined with the Pinecone vector database let your applications understand and act on what your users want… without making them spell it out. Make your search application find results by meaning instead of just keywords, your personalization system make picks based on relevance instead of just tags, and your security applications match threats by resemblance instead of just regular expressions. Pinecone provides the cloud infrastructure that makes this easy, fast, and scalable. Thanks to my friends at Pinecone for sponsoring this episode. Visit Pinecone.io to understand more.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud, I'm Corey Quinn. I'm joined this week by Kelsey Hightower, who claims to be a principal developer advocate at Google, but based upon various keynotes I've seen him in, he basically gets on stage and plays video games like Tetris in front of large audiences. So I assume he is somehow involved with e-sports. Kelsey, welcome to the show.Kelsey: You've outed me. Most people didn't know that I am a full-time e-sports Tetris champion at home. And the technology thing is just a side gig.Corey: Exactly. It's one of those things you do just to keep the lights on, like you're waiting to get discovered, but in the meantime, you're waiting table. Same type of thing. Some people wait tables you more or less a sling Kubernetes, for lack of a better term.Kelsey: Yes.Corey: So let's dive right into this. You've been a strong proponent for a long time of Kubernetes and all of its intricacies and all the power that it unlocks and I've been pretty much the exact opposite of that, as far as saying it tends to be over complicated, that it's hype-driven and a whole bunch of other, shall we say criticisms that are sometimes bounded in reality and sometimes just because I think it'll be funny when I put them on Twitter. Where do you stand on the state of Kubernetes in 2020?Kelsey: So, I want to make sure it's clear what I do. Because when I started talking about Kubernetes, I was not working at Google. I was actually working at CoreOS where we had a competitor Kubernetes called Fleet. And Kubernetes coming out kind of put this like fork in our roadmap, like where do we go from here? What people saw me doing with Kubernetes was basically learning in public. Like I was really excited about the technology because it's attempting to solve a very complex thing. I think most people will agree building a distributed system is what cloud providers typically do, right? With VMs and hypervisors. Those are very big, complex distributed systems. And before Kubernetes came out, the closest I'd gotten to a distributed system before working at CoreOS was just reading the various white papers on the subject and hearing stories about how Google has systems like Borg tools, like Mesa was being used by some of the largest hyperscalers in the world, but I was never going to have the chance to ever touch one of those unless I would go work at one of those companies.So when Kubernetes came out and the fact that it was open source and I could read the code to understand how it was implemented, to understand how schedulers actually work and then bonus points for being able to contribute to it. Those early years, what you saw me doing was just being so excited about systems that I attended to build on my own, becoming this new thing just like Linux came up. So I kind of agree with you that a lot of people look at it as a more of a hype thing. They're looking at it regardless of their own needs, regardless of understanding how it works and what problems is trying to solve that. My stance on it, it's a really, really cool tool for the level that it operates in, and in order for it to be successful, people can't know that it's there.Corey: And I think that might be where part of my disconnect from Kubernetes comes into play. I have a background in ops, more or less, the grumpy Unix sysadmin because it's not like there's a second kind of Unix sysadmin you're ever going to encounter. Where everything in development works in theory, but in practice things pan out a little differently. I always joke that ops is the difference between theory and practice. In theory, devs can do everything and there's no ops needed. In practice, well it's been a burgeoning career for a while. The challenge with this is Kubernetes at times exposes certain levels of abstraction that, sorry certain levels of detail that generally people would not want to have to think about or deal with, while papering over other things with other layers of abstraction on top of it. That obscure, valuable troubleshooting information from a running something in an operational context. It absolutely is a fascinating piece of technology, but it feels today like it is overly complicated for the use a lot of people are attempting to put it to. Is that a fair criticism from where you sit?Kelsey: So I think the reason why it's a fair criticism is because there are people attempting to run their own Kubernetes cluster, right? So when we think about the cloud, unless you're in OpenStack land, but for the people who look at the cloud and you say, "Wow, this is much easier." There's an API for creating virtual machines and I don't see the distributed state store that's keeping all of that together. I don't see the farm of hypervisors. So we don't necessarily think about the inherent complexity into a system like that, because we just get to use it. So on one end, if you're just a user of a Kubernetes cluster, maybe using something fully managed or you have an ops team that's taking care of everything, your interface of the system becomes this Kubernetes configuration language where you say, "Give me a load balancer, give me three copies of this container running." And if we do it well, then you'd think it's a fairly easy system to deal with because you say, "kubectl, apply," and things seem to start running.Just like in the cloud where you say, "AWS create this VM, or G cloud compute instance, create." You just submit API calls and things happen. I think the fact that Kubernetes is very transparent to most people is, now you can see the complexity, right? Imagine everyone driving with the hood off the car. You'd be looking at a lot of moving things, but we have hoods on cars to hide the complexity and all we expose is the steering wheel and the pedals. That car is super complex but we don't see it. So therefore we don't attribute as complexity to the driving experience.Corey: This to some extent feels it's on the same axis as serverless, with just a different level of abstraction piled onto it. And while I am a large proponent of serverless, I think it's fantastic for a lot of Greenfield projects. The constraints inherent to the model mean that it is almost completely non-tenable for a tremendous number of existing workloads. Some developers like to call it legacy, but when I hear the term legacy I hear, "it makes actual money." So just treating it as, "Oh, it's a science experiment we can throw into a new environment, spend a bunch of time rewriting it for minimal gains," is just not going to happen as companies undergo digital transformations, if you'll pardon the term.Kelsey: Yeah, so I think you're right. So let's take Amazon's Lambda for example, it's a very opinionated high-level platform that assumes you're going to build apps a certain way. And if that's you, look, go for it. Now, one or two levels below that there is this distributed system. Kubernetes decided to play in that space because everyone that's building other platforms needs a place to start. The analogy I like to think of is like in the mobile space, iOS and Android deal with the complexities of managing multiple applications on a mobile device, security aspects, app stores, that kind of thing. And then you as a developer, you build your thing on top of those platforms and APIs and frameworks. Now, it's debatable, someone would say, "Why do we even need an open-source implementation of such a complex system? Why not just everyone moved to the cloud?" And then everyone that's not in a cloud on-premise gets left behind.But typically that's not how open source typically works, right? The reason why we have Linux, the precursor to the cloud is because someone looked at the big proprietary Unix systems and decided to re-implement them in a way that anyone could run those systems. So when you look at Kubernetes, you have to look at it from that lens. It's the ability to democratize these platform layers in a way that other people can innovate on top. That doesn't necessarily mean that everyone needs to start with Kubernetes, just like not everyone needs to start with the Linux server, but it's there for you to build the next thing on top of, if that's the route you want to go.Corey: It's been almost a year now since I made an original tweet about this, that in five years, no one will care about Kubernetes. So now I guess I have four years running on that clock and that attracted a bit of, shall we say controversy. There were people who thought that I meant that it was going to be a flash in the pan and it would dry up and blow away. But my impression of it is that in, well four years now, it will have become more or less system D for the data center, in that there's a bunch of complexity under the hood. It does a bunch of things. No-one sensible wants to spend all their time mucking around with it in most companies. But it's not something that people have to think about in an ongoing basis the way it feels like we do today.Kelsey: Yeah, I mean to me, I kind of see this as the natural evolution, right? It's new, it gets a lot of attention and kind of the assumption you make in that statement is there's something better that should be able to arise, giving that checkpoint. If this is what people think is hot, within five years surely we should see something else that can be deserving of that attention, right? Docker comes out and almost four or five years later you have Kubernetes. So it's obvious that there should be a progression here that steals some of the attention away from Kubernetes, but I think where it's so new, right? It's only five years in, Linux is like over 20 years old now at this point, and it's still top of mind for a lot of people, right? Microsoft is still porting a lot of Windows only things into Linux, so we still discuss the differences between Windows and Linux.The idea that the cloud, for the most part, is driven by Linux virtual machines, that I think the majority of workloads run on virtual machines still to this day, so it's still front and center, especially if you're a system administrator managing BDMs, right? You're dealing with tools that target Linux, you know the Cisco interface and you're thinking about how to secure it and lock it down. Kubernetes is just at the very first part of that life cycle where it's new. We're all interested in even what it is and how it works, and now we're starting to move into that next phase, which is the distro phase. Like in Linux, you had Red Hat, Slackware, Ubuntu, special purpose distros.Some will consider Android a special purpose distribution of Linux for mobile devices. And now that we're in this distro phase, that's going to go on for another 5 to 10 years where people start to align themselves around, maybe it's OpenShift, maybe it's GKE, maybe it's Fargate for EKS. These are now distributions built on top of Kubernetes that start to add a little bit more opinionation about how Kubernetes should be pushed together. And then we'll enter another phase where you'll build a platform on top of Kubernetes, but it won't be worth mentioning that Kubernetes is underneath because people will be more interested on the thing above.Corey: I think we're already seeing that now, in terms of people no longer really care that much what operating system they're running, let alone with distribution of that operating system. The things that you have to care about slip below the surface of awareness and we've seen this for a long time now. Originally to install a web server, it wound up taking a few days and an intimate knowledge of GCC compiler flags, then RPM or D package and then yum on top of that, then ensure installed, once we had configuration management that was halfway decent.Then Docker run, whatever it is. And today feels like it's with serverless technologies being what they are, it's effectively a push a file to S3 or it's equivalent somewhere else and you're done. The things that people have to be aware of and the barrier to entry continually lowers. The downside to that of course, is that things that people specialize in today and effectively make very lucrative careers out of are going to be not front and center in 5 to 10 years the way that they are today. And that's always been the way of technology. It's a treadmill to some extent.Kelsey: And on the flip side of that, look at all of the new jobs that are centered around these cloud-native technologies, right? So you know, we're just going to make up some numbers here, imagine if there were only 10,000 jobs around just Linux system administration. Now when you look at this whole Kubernetes landscape where people are saying we can actually do a better job with metrics and monitoring. Observability is now a thing culturally that people assume you should have, because you're dealing with these distributed systems. The ability to start thinking about multi-regional deployments when I think that would've been infeasible with the previous tools or you'd have to build all those tools yourself. So I think now we're starting to see a lot more opportunities, where instead of 10,000 people, maybe you need 20,000 people because now you have the tools necessary to tackle bigger projects where you didn't see that before.Corey: That's what's going to be really neat to see. But the challenge is always to people who are steeped in existing technologies. What does this mean for them? I mean I spent a lot of time early in my career fighting against cloud because I thought that it was taking away a cornerstone of my identity. I was a large scale Unix administrator, specifically focusing on email. Well, it turns out that there aren't nearly as many companies that need to have that particular skill set in house as it did 10 years ago. And what we're seeing now is this sort of forced evolution of people's skillsets or they hunker down on a particular area of technology or particular application to try and make a bet that they can ride that out until retirement. It's challenging, but at some point it seems that some folks like to stop learning, and I don't fully pretend to understand that. I'm sure I will someday where, "No, at this point technology come far enough. We're just going to stop here, and anything after this is garbage." I hope not, but I can see a world in which that happens.Kelsey: Yeah, and I also think one thing that we don't talk a lot about in the Kubernetes community, is that Kubernetes makes hyper-specialization worth doing because now you start to have a clear separation from concerns. Now the OS can be hyperfocused on security system calls and not necessarily packaging every programming language under the sun into a single distribution. So we can kind of move part of that layer out of the core OS and start to just think about the OS being a security boundary where we try to lock things down. And for some people that play at that layer, they have a lot of work ahead of them in locking down these system calls, improving the idea of containerization, whether that's something like Firecracker or some of the work that you see VMware doing, that's going to be a whole class of hyper-specialization. And the reason why they're going to be able to focus now is because we're starting to move into a world, whether that's serverless or the Kubernetes API.We're saying we should deploy applications that don't target machines. I mean just that step alone is going to allow for so much specialization at the various layers because even on the networking front, which arguably has been a specialization up until this point, can truly specialize because now the IP assignments, how networking fits together, has also abstracted a way one more step where you're not asking for interfaces or binding to a specific port or playing with port mappings. You can now let the platform do that. So I think for some of the people who may be not as interested as moving up the stack, they need to be aware that the number of people we need being hyper-specialized at Linux administration will definitely shrink. And a lot of that work will move up the stack, whether that's Kubernetes or managing a serverless deployment and all the configuration that goes with that. But if you are a Linux, like that is your bread and butter, I think there's going to be an opportunity to go super deep, but you may have to expand into things like security and not just things like configuration management.Corey: Let's call it the unfulfilled promise of Kubernetes. On paper, I love what it hints at being possible. Namely, if I build something that runs well on top of Kubernetes than we truly have a write once, run anywhere type of environment. Stop me if you've heard that one before, 50,000 times in our industry... or history. But in practice, as has happened before, it seems like it tends to fall down for one reason or another. Now, Amazon is famous because for many reasons, but the one that I like to pick on them for is, you can't say the word multi-cloud at their events. Right. That'll change people's perspective, good job. The people tend to see multi-cloud are a couple of different lenses.I've been rather anti multi-cloud from the perspective of the idea that you're setting out day one to build an application with the idea that it can be run on top of any cloud provider, or even on-premises if that's what you want to do, is generally not the way to proceed. You wind up having to make certain trade-offs along the way, you have to rebuild anything that isn't consistent between those providers, and it slows you down. Kubernetes on the other hand hints at if it works and fulfills this promise, you can suddenly abstract an awful lot beyond that and just write generic applications that can run anywhere. Where do you stand on the whole multi-cloud topic?Kelsey: So I think we have to make sure we talk about the different layers that are kind of ready for this thing. So for example, like multi-cloud networking, we just call that networking, right? What's the IP address over there? I can just hit it. So we don't make a big deal about multi-cloud networking. Now there's an area where people say, how do I configure the various cloud providers? And I think the healthy way to think about this is, in your own data centers, right, so we know a lot of people have investments on-premises. Now, if you were to take the mindset that you only need one provider, then you would try to buy everything from HP, right? You would buy HP store's devices, you buy HP racks, power. Maybe HP doesn't sell air conditioners. So you're going to have to buy an air conditioner from a vendor who specializes in making air conditioners, hopefully for a data center and not your house.So now you've entered this world where one vendor does it make every single piece that you need. Now in the data center, we don't say, "Oh, I am multi-vendor in my data center." Typically, you just buy the switches that you need, you buy the power racks that you need, you buy the ethernet cables that you need, and they have common interfaces that allow them to connect together and they typically have different configuration languages and methods for configuring those components. The cloud on the other hand also represents the same kind of opportunity. There are some people who really love DynamoDB and S3, but then they may prefer something like BigQuery to analyze the data that they're uploading into S3. Now, if this was a data center, you would just buy all three of those things and put them in the same rack and call it good.But the cloud presents this other challenge. How do you authenticate to those systems? And then there's usually this additional networking costs, egress or ingress charges that make it prohibitive to say, "I want to use two different products from two different vendors." And I think that's-Corey: ...winds up causing serious problems.Kelsey: Yes, so that data gravity, the associated cost becomes a little bit more in your face. Whereas, in a data center you kind of feel that the cost has already been paid. I already have a network switch with enough bandwidth, I have an extra port on my switch to plug this thing in and they're all standard interfaces. Why not? So I think the multi-cloud gets lost in the chew problem, which is the barrier to entry of leveraging things across two different providers because of networking and configuration practices.Corey: That's often the challenge, I think, that people get bogged down in. On an earlier episode of this show we had Mitchell Hashimoto on, and his entire theory around using Terraform to wind up configuring various bits of infrastructure, was not the idea of workload portability because that feels like the windmill we all keep tilting at and failing to hit. But instead the idea of workflow portability, where different things can wind up being interacted with in the same way. So if this one division is on one cloud provider, the others are on something else, then you at least can have some points of consistency in how you interact with those things. And in the event that you do need to move, you don't have to effectively redo all of your CICD process, all of your tooling, et cetera. And I thought that there was something compelling about that argument.Kelsey: And that's actually what Kubernetes does for a lot of people. For Kubernetes, if you think about it, when we start to talk about workflow consistency, if you want to deploy an application, queue CTL, apply, some config, you want the application to have a load balancer in front of it. Regardless of the cloud provider, because Kubernetes has an extension point we call the cloud provider. And that's where Amazon, Azure, Google Cloud, we do all the heavy lifting of mapping the high-level ingress object that specifies, "I want a load balancer, maybe a few options," to the actual implementation detail. So maybe you don't have to use four or five different tools and that's where that kind of workload portability comes from. Like if you think about Linux, right? It has a set of system calls, for the most part, even if you're using a different distro at this point, Red Hat or Amazon Linux or Google's container optimized Linux.If I build a Go binary on my laptop, I can SCP it to any of those Linux machines and it's going to probably run. So you could call that multi-cloud, but that doesn't make a lot of sense because it's just because of the way Linux works. Kubernetes does something very similar because it sits right on top of Linux, so you get the portability just from the previous example and then you get the other portability and workload, like you just stated, where I'm calling kubectl apply, and I'm using the same workflow to get resources spun up on the various cloud providers. Even if that configuration isn't one-to-one identical.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Uptycs, because they believe that many of you are looking to bolster your security posture with CNAPP and XDR solutions. They offer both cloud and endpoint security in a single UI and data model. Listeners can get Uptycs for up to 1,000 assets through the end of 2023 (that is next year) for $1. But this offer is only available for a limited time on UptycsSecretMenu.com. That's U-P-T-Y-C-S Secret Menu dot com.Corey: One thing I'm curious about is you wind up walking through the world and seeing companies adopting Kubernetes in different ways. How are you finding the adoption of Kubernetes is looking like inside of big E enterprise style companies? I don't have as much insight into those environments as I probably should. That's sort of a focus area for the next year for me. But in startups, it seems that it's either someone goes in and rolls it out and suddenly it's fantastic, or they avoid it entirely and do something serverless. In large enterprises, I see a lot of Kubernetes and a lot of Kubernetes stories coming out of it, but what isn't usually told is, what's the tipping point where they say, "Yeah, let's try this." Or, "Here's the problem we're trying to solve for. Let's chase it."Kelsey: What I see is enterprises buy everything. If you're big enough and you have a big enough IT budget, most enterprises have a POC of everything that's for sale, period. There's some team in some pocket, maybe they came through via acquisition. Maybe they live in a different state. Maybe it's just a new project that came out. And what you tend to see, at least from my experiences, if I walk into a typical enterprise, they may tell me something like, "Hey, we have a POC, a Pivotal Cloud Foundry, OpenShift, and we want some of that new thing that we just saw from you guys. How do we get a POC going?" So there's always this appetite to evaluate what's for sale, right? So, that's one case. There's another case where, when you start to think about an enterprise there's a big range of skillsets. Sometimes I'll go to some companies like, "Oh, my insurance is through that company, and there's ex-Googlers that work there." They used to work on things like Borg, or something else, and they kind of know how these systems work.And they have a slightly better edge at evaluating whether Kubernetes is any good for the problem at hand. And you'll see them bring it in. Now that same company, I could drive over to the other campus, maybe it's five miles away and that team doesn't even know what Kubernetes is. And for them, they're going to be chugging along with what they're currently doing. So then the challenge becomes if Kubernetes is a great fit, how wide of a fit it isn't? How many teams at that company should be using it? So what I'm currently seeing as there are some enterprises that have found a way to make Kubernetes the place where they do a lot of new work, because that makes sense. A lot of enterprises to my surprise though, are actually stepping back and saying, "You know what? We've been stitching together our own platform for the last five years. We had the Netflix stack, we got some Spring Boot, we got Console, we got Vault, we got Docker. And now this whole thing is getting a little more fragile because we're doing all of this glue code."Kubernetes, We've been trying to build our own Kubernetes and now that we know what it is and we know what it isn't, we know that we can probably get rid of this kind of bespoke stack ourselves and just because of the ecosystem, right? If I go to HashiCorp's website, I would probably find the word Kubernetes as much as I find the word Nomad on their site because they've made things like Console and Vault become first-class offerings inside of the world of Kubernetes. So I think it's that momentum that you see across even People Oracle, Juniper, Palo Alto Networks, they're all have seem to have a Kubernetes story. And this is why you start to see the enterprise able to adopt it because it's so much in their face and it's where the ecosystem is going.Corey: It feels like a lot of the excitement and the promise and even the same problems that Kubernetes is aimed at today, could have just as easily been talked about half a decade ago in the context of OpenStack. And for better or worse, OpenStack is nowhere near where it once was. It would felt like it had such promise and such potential and when it didn't pan out, that left a lot of people feeling relatively sad, burnt out, depressed, et cetera. And I'm seeing a lot of parallels today, at least between what was said about OpenStack and what was said about Kubernetes. How do you see those two diverging?Kelsey: I will tell you the big difference that I saw, personally. Just for my personal journey outside of Google, just having that option. And I remember I was working at a company and we were like, "We're going to roll our own OpenStack. We're going to buy a free BSD box and make it a file server. We're going all open sources," like do whatever you want to do. And that was just having so many issues in terms of first-class integrations, education, people with the skills to even do that. And I was like, "You know what, let's just cut the check for VMware." We want virtualization. VMware, for the cost and when it does, it's good enough. Or we can just actually use a cloud provider. That space in many ways was a purely solved problem. Now, let's fast forward to Kubernetes, and also when you get OpenStack finished, you're just back where you started.You got a bunch of VMs and now you've got to go figure out how to build the real platform that people want to use because no one just wants a VM. If you think Kubernetes is low level, just having OpenStack, even OpenStack was perfect. You're still at square one for the most part. Maybe you can just say, "Now I'm paying a little less money for my stack in terms of software licensing costs," but from an extraction and automation and API standpoint, I don't think OpenStack moved the needle in that regard. Now in the Kubernetes world, it's solving a huge gap.Lots of people have virtual machine sprawl than they had Docker sprawl, and when you bring in this thing by Kubernetes, it says, "You know what? Let's reign all of that in. Let's build some first-class abstractions, assuming that the layer below us is a solved problem." You got to remember when Kubernetes came out, it wasn't trying to replace the hypervisor, it assumed it was there. It also assumed that the hypervisor had APIs for creating virtual machines and attaching disc and creating load balancers, so Kubernetes came out as a complementary technology, not one looking to replace. And I think that's why it was able to stick because it solved a problem at another layer where there was not a lot of competition.Corey: I think a more cynical take, at least one of the ones that I've heard articulated and I tend to agree with, was that OpenStack originally seemed super awesome because there were a lot of interesting people behind it, fascinating organizations, but then you wound up looking through the backers of the foundation behind it and the rest. And there were something like 500 companies behind it, an awful lot of them were these giant organizations that ... they were big e-corporate IT enterprise software vendors, and you take a look at that, I'm not going to name anyone because at that point, oh will we get letters.But at that point, you start seeing so many of the patterns being worked into it that it almost feels like it has to collapse under its own weight. I don't, for better or worse, get the sense that Kubernetes is succumbing to the same thing, despite the CNCF having an awful lot of those same backers behind it and as far as I can tell, significantly more money, they seem to have all the money to throw at these sorts of things. So I'm wondering how Kubernetes has managed to effectively sidestep I guess the open-source miasma that OpenStack didn't quite manage to avoid.Kelsey: Kubernetes gained its own identity before the foundation existed. Its purpose, if you think back from the Borg paper almost eight years prior, maybe even 10 years prior. It defined this problem really, really well. I think Mesos came out and also had a slightly different take on this problem. And you could just see at that time there was a real need, you had choices between Docker Swarm, Nomad. It seems like everybody was trying to fill in this gap because, across most verticals or industries, this was a true problem worth solving. What Kubernetes did was played in the exact same sandbox, but it kind of got put out with experience. It's not like, "Oh, let's just copy this thing that already exists, but let's just make it open."And in that case, you don't really have your own identity. It's you versus Amazon, in the case of OpenStack, it's you versus VMware. And that's just really a hard place to be in because you don't have an identity that stands alone. Kubernetes itself had an identity that stood alone. It comes from this experience of running a system like this. It comes from research and white papers. It comes after previous attempts at solving this problem. So we agree that this problem needs to be solved. We know what layer it needs to be solved at. We just didn't get it right yet, so Kubernetes didn't necessarily try to get it right.It tried to start with only the primitives necessary to focus on the problem at hand. Now to your point, the extension interface of Kubernetes is what keeps it small. Years ago I remember plenty of meetings where we all got in rooms and said, "This thing is done." It doesn't need to be a PaaS. It doesn't need to compete with serverless platforms. The core of Kubernetes, like Linux, is largely done. Here's the core objects, and we're going to make a very great extension interface. We're going to make one for the container run time level so that way people can swap that out if they really want to, and we're going to do one that makes other APIs as first-class as ones we have, and we don't need to try to boil the ocean in every Kubernetes release. Everyone else has the ability to deploy extensions just like Linux, and I think that's why we're avoiding some of this tension in the vendor world because you don't have to change the core to get something that feels like a native part of Kubernetes.Corey: What do you think is currently being the most misinterpreted or misunderstood aspect of Kubernetes in the ecosystem?Kelsey: I think the biggest thing that's misunderstood is what Kubernetes actually is. And the thing that made it click for me, especially when I was writing the tutorial Kubernetes The Hard Way. I had to sit down and ask myself, "Where do you start trying to learn what Kubernetes is?" So I start with the database, right? The configuration store isn't Postgres, it isn't MySQL, it's Etcd. Why? Because we're not trying to be this generic data stores platform. We just need to store configuration data. Great. Now, do we let all the components talk to Etcd? No. We have this API server and between the API server and the chosen data store, that's essentially what Kubernetes is. You can stop there. At that point, you have a valid Kubernetes cluster and it can understand a few things. Like I can say, using the Kubernetes command-line tool, create this configuration map that stores configuration data and I can read it back.Great. Now I can't do a lot of things that are interesting with that. Maybe I just use it as a configuration store, but then if I want to build a container platform, I can install the Kubernetes kubelet agent on a bunch of machines and have it talk to the API server looking for other objects you add in the scheduler, all the other components. So what that means is that Kubernetes most important component is its API because that's how the whole system is built. It's actually a very simple system when you think about just those two components in isolation. If you want a container management tool that you need a scheduler, controller, manager, cloud provider integrations, and now you have a container tool. But let's say you want a service mesh platform. Well in a service mesh you have a data plane that can be Nginx or Envoy and that's going to handle routing traffic. And you need a control plane. That's going to be something that takes in configuration and it uses that to configure all the things in a data plane.Well, guess what? Kubernetes is 90% there in terms of a control plane, with just those two components, the API server, and the data store. So now when you want to build control planes, if you start with the Kubernetes API, we call it the API machinery, you're going to be 95% there. And then what do you get? You get a distributed system that can handle kind of failures on the back end, thanks to Etcd. You're going to get our backs or you can have permission on top of your schemas, and there's a built-in framework, we call it custom resource definitions that allows you to articulate a schema and then your own control loops provide meaning to that schema. And once you do those two things, you can build any platform you want. And I think that's one thing that it takes a while for people to understand that part of Kubernetes, that the thing we talk about today, for the most part, is just the first system that we built on top of this.Corey: I think that's a very far-reaching story with implications that I'm not entirely sure I am able to wrap my head around. I hope to see it, I really do. I mean you mentioned about writing Learn Kubernetes the Hard Way and your tutorial, which I'll link to in the show notes. I mean my, of course, sarcastic response to that recently was to register the domain Kubernetes the Easy Way and just re-pointed to Amazon's ECS, which is in no way shape or form Kubernetes and basically has the effect of irritating absolutely everyone as is my typical pattern of behavior on Twitter. But I have been meaning to dive into Kubernetes on a deeper level and the stuff that you've written, not just the online tutorial, both the books have always been my first port of call when it comes to that. The hard part, of course, is there's just never enough hours in the day.Kelsey: And one thing that I think about too is like the web. We have the internet, there's webpages, there's web browsers. Web Browsers talk to web servers over HTTP. There's verbs, there's bodies, there's headers. And if you look at it, that's like a very big complex system. If I were to extract out the protocol pieces, this concept of HTTP verbs, get, put, post and delete, this idea that I can put stuff in a body and I can give it headers to give it other meaning and semantics. If I just take those pieces, I can bill restful API's.Hell, I can even bill graph QL and those are just different systems built on the same API machinery that we call the internet or the web today. But you have to really dig into the details and pull that part out and you can build all kind of other platforms and I think that's what Kubernetes is. It's going to probably take people a little while longer to see that piece, but it's hidden in there and that's that piece that's going to be, like you said, it's going to probably be the foundation for building more control planes. And when people build control planes, I think if you think about it, maybe Fargate for EKS represents another control plane for making a serverless platform that takes to Kubernetes API, even though the implementation isn't what you find on GitHub.Corey: That's the truth. Whenever you see something as broadly adopted as Kubernetes, there's always the question of, "Okay, there's an awful lot of blog posts." Getting started to it, learn it in 10 minutes, I mean at some point, I'm sure there are some people still convince Kubernetes is, in fact, a breakfast cereal based upon what some of the stuff the CNCF has gotten up to. I wouldn't necessarily bet against it socks today, breakfast cereal tomorrow. But it's hard to find a decent level of quality, finding the certain quality bar of a trusted source to get started with is important. Some people believe in the hero's journey, story of a narrative building.I always prefer to go with the morons journey because I'm the moron. I touch technologies, I have no idea what they do and figure it out and go careening into edge and corner cases constantly. And by the end of it I have something that vaguely sort of works and my understanding's improved. But I've gone down so many terrible paths just by picking a bad point to get started. So everyone I've talked to who's actually good at things has pointed to your work in this space as being something that is authoritative and largely correct and given some of these people, that's high praise.Kelsey: Awesome. I'm going to put that on my next performance review as evidence of my success and impact.Corey: Absolutely. Grouchy people say, "It's all right," you know, for the right people that counts. If people want to learn more about what you're up to and see what you have to say, where can they find you?Kelsey: I aggregate most of outward interactions on Twitter, so I'm @KelseyHightower and my DMs are open, so I'm happy to field any questions and I attempt to answer as many as I can.Corey: Excellent. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. I appreciate it.Kelsey: Awesome. I was happy to be here.Corey: Kelsey Hightower, Principal Developer Advocate at Google. I'm Corey Quinn. This is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on Apple podcasts. If you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on Apple podcasts and then leave a funny comment. Thanks.Announcer: This has been this week's episode of Screaming in the Cloud. You can also find more Core at screaminginthecloud.com or wherever fine snark is sold.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

In today's episode of The Movement and Mindfulness Podcast I'm chatting with Kelsey Weight - an accredited dietitian who helps people heal their relationship with food using intuitive eating and non-diet approaches to health and wellbeing.In our conversation we talk about:> what it means to heal our relationship with food with intuitive eating and non-diet dietetics> why we're so embedded in a 'food police', diet culture 'norm' of diet rules and restrictions> why food has no attached morality (and therefore why you're not good or bad for eating or not eating certain foods)> The difference between restriction/punishment versus focusing on how we feel and how we look after our body and self> The process of unlearning the messages diet culture has embedded> The importance of satisfaction and joy when it comes to food> and more.Tune in to listen to our full conversation!Connect with Kelsey:You can find Kelsey via Instagram and her website.About Kelsey:Kelsey is an Accredited Practising Dietitian who currently works in private practice, offering one-on-one consultations, and teaches in the tertiary education setting. Kelsey is compassionate and approachable with a genuine love of working with women to optimise their health and wellbeing, free of diet cultures rules and restriction.Like most nutrition professionals, Kelsey loves food- cooking it, eating it, growing it, talking about it! Her food philosophy is simple; to listen to her body and feed it what it needs. Kelsey endeavours to create a space for women that allows them to learn the skills to tunein to their incredible bodies and do the same.Kelsey is skilled in working with digestive health issues, as well as helping women heal their relationship with food using intuitive eating and non-diet approaches to health and wellbeing.Books Kelsey recommends:Intuitive EatingUnapologetic EatingAnti-DietJust Eat ItConnect with Erica via her website, Instagram and Facebook.

A lot of our episodes are focused around the challenges that come with being part of a blended family and parenting, but today we’re doing a bit of a shift. In this episode, we're diving into what our children learn in school, how they learn in school, and how we can encourage them to realize their potential. We’ll be talking with an expert, Kelsey Komorowski, about the difference between teaching vs. learning and how we can ensure that we’re putting our children in the best position to truly learn. Listen in as Kelsey discusses how we as parents can foster increased engagement and foster a stronger ability to learn in our children. She shares some of the key issues kids tend to have when it comes to actually learning and how their learning environment has a huge effect on that. Kelsey has a fascinating perspective on education, and we think that any parent will really enjoy this episode and get a lot of valuable information from it. 5:52 – 10:56 - The importance of paradigm shifts and why Kelsey stepped into the education space. 10:57 – 13:09 - What we can do as parents to encourage more effective learning and excitement for learning in our children. 13:10 – 14:23 - How Komo Consulting works with teachers to bridge the gap between classroom teaching and at-home learning. 14:24 – 20:59 - The reasons families want to work with Komo Consulting and the transformations that come from that. 21:00 – 33:41 - How the transformations actually happen and how parents can facilitate change. 33:42 – 47:16 - The feelings that happen when we are learning and how to teach problem-solving, resilience, and confidence. Takeaways: Why we need to focus on the things that get kids excited. Why parents need to be taught alongside and as well as their kids. The importance of understanding what skill-building really is. Why we need to re-think the role of educators, teachers, and ourselves as parents. How we’re able to help our kids realize how much potential they have. Quotes: “There’s an assumption that being taught to in the classroom equates to learning, and that’s just not true.” - Kelsey “You can be the best teacher in the world, but if the student isn’t tapped into themselves as a learner, it’s not going to matter.” - Kelsey “It doesn’t matter what you’re being taught—what’s important is what you’re learning.” - Kelsey 3 Interesting Clips: 11:50 – 12:54 - What school is for and how we should view it. 17:45 – 18:35 - The problem of identity and grades. 23:21 – 24:22 - Why student achievement is greatly shaped by household dynamics. Links: Kelsey Komorowski Komo Consulting Text us: 760-389-3722 Send us an anonymous letter Subscribe & Review in iTunes! Are you subscribed to our podcast? If not, we would strongly suggest you do. This way you won’t miss a thing! Subscribe here: Everything Always And now for the pretty please with a Bordeaux Maraschino Cherry on top. We would be so incredibly grateful if you left us a review on for Everything Always as well. This will help other parents and families like you find our podcast. Plus, it’s fun for Mike and I to sit and read them together on date night! Just click here, click open in iTunes, select “Ratings and Reviews”, tell us your favorite moment and best take away and we will send a huge cyber hug and kiss right to you! Find the Everything Always Podcast wherever you listen! Apple Podcasts (iTunes) acast Pocketcasts ListenNotes Spotify player.fm

When people scroll through Instagram these days, they can’t avoid the ads and the influencers pushing products. And that’s not a bad thing. In fact, more and more often, ecommerce is taking place in channels other than on a brand’s website, which is why so many companies are looking for ways to optimize how they execute commerce at the edge -- this means meeting customers where they are. Paloma has one way to do that, by turning messenger platforms into sales channels, which creates a more personalized shopping experience for customers, and a .5-to-10x higher conversion rate for brands.On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, I was joined by Kelsey Hunter, the Co-Founder and CEO of Paloma, to give us the inside scoop on why brands should be investing in conversational commerce. In the last year, Paloma has helped partners convert $9 million in sales, and she explains how that happened by simply diverting ad traffic away from a website and into a chat instead. Plus, she discusses the future of conversational commerce and how the low barrier to entry into the ecommerce industry is forcing everyone to adjust quicker than ever before. Enjoy this episode!Main Takeaways:Website Woes: Moving forward, a brand’s website will become more of a secondary piece of collateral when it comes to driving conversions. It will still be critical to have a fast, highly-efficient website experience, but more of the interactions and conversion efforts will be focused on other channels where customers are spending more time.Get To The Party: The worst thing a brand could be doing right now is not experimenting with and setting up processes in Facebook Messenger and other messaging apps. Customer service and the customer experience are two of the leading drivers of conversions, and ignoring a channel that allows you to provide a proactive and personalized experience is a huge wasted opportunity.Far Out Future: The future of commerce is being written right now with shops that are opening with simple Instagram product posts and telling customers interested to go to a PayPal link. More new brands are foregoing the traditional channels and website launches, so the barrier to entry is much lower. As more competition enters the market in this way, traditional brands will have to keep up with their own easy, personalized commerce options.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce---Transcript:Stephanie:Welcome to Up Next in Commerce. This is your host, Stephanie Postals, co-founder and CEO at mission.org. Today we have Kelsey Hunter joining us. The founder and CEO of Paloma. Kelsey, welcome to the show.Kelsey:Thank you, Stephanie. It's so good to be here.Stephanie:We're excited to have you on. I was just thinking I'm like, "How do I know I'm actually talking to Kelsey and not a chatbot?" She's put up a virtual screen and it might not even be Kelsey back there. I'm not sure.Kelsey:I have a history of pretending to be a bot, so.Stephanie:I actually, I read that. I read that you spent a little bit six weeks pretending to be a chatbot to learn how they worked.Kelsey:True.Stephanie:That's fun jumping off point. Tell me a bit about being a chatbot. What's that life like?Kelsey:It is wild. Let's see, I was working at a startup in New York that we offered mobile commerce solution for brands and publishers. So I was really deep in the mobile commerce space when the messenger API opened up. And as we're getting side projects, of course then, decided that messenger would be a good place to try to test things out.Kelsey:And before even building anything, I pretended to be a bot just to see how it would work. That's what sparked all of this. It was like, "Oh wait, if you can talk to people directly, people will talk to you about themselves." I'm asking people questions, they're telling me way too much information. That was really the spark for me. Then I said, "Oh, why are we making assumptions online? We can just ask people and they will very happily tell you things to help figure out what they should buy and why."Stephanie:That's cool. So you were doing this at another company. And then you're like, this is the business in and of itself. And that's how you went to create Paloma?Kelsey:Yeah. It was a totally side project outside of the company that I was working with. But all of the pieces tied together for me. That company is called Button, and when I left Button, I did a little bit of other experimentation in the channel. Actually, worked with a team to build a open-source software, to help people call Congress on Facebook Messenger, which was one of the first software tools that was like a MailChimp for the space, which is really cool. But brought it all the way back around to commerce and launched Paloma at the end of 2017.Stephanie:Cool. So tell me a bit more about Paloma. What is it? What does it do?Kelsey:Paloma helps brands turn Facebook Messenger into a sales channel. Essentially, we work with a lot of D2C and ecom brands across every product, category, audience, price point, and we help them drive traffic into messenger instead of their website where their customers get a more personalized shopping experience, that's powered by our software. So what that might look like for a furniture brand would be, they're running Instagram and Facebook ads and they can set them to open up a Messenger conversation instead of opening up a website landing page.Kelsey:And once in Messenger, our conversation, we'll ask them questions like what room do you want to design? What are the colors in that room? Do you have cats, dogs? Any other kind of style preferences. And then we'll dynamically route the customer to the right products based off of what they've shared. By helping the customer make the purchase decision, we're effectively seeing anywhere from two to 10X increases in conversion rates. And that's a little bit of very cap on, on how that works.Stephanie:That's awesome. I feel like just thinking about, I follow all these influencers on Instagram and they're always selling stuff, which normally I'm like, I want a lot of this. But if you respond to them, they definitely can't keep up. If you're like, does that size, would it fit me? Is that Off-White? Is that Real-White? It seems like there's a lot of opportunity everywhere to have a chatbot set up that personalizes the experience and also helps it scale.Kelsey:Exactly. And what you just described is one of the reasons that we see so much opportunity in that space. And the reason why customers messaged in the first place is because when it comes to online shopping people don't shop on websites. That's just where they transact now. But they're making decisions by what you're talking about, watching influencers, DMing folks, talking to friends, watching YouTube videos, TikToks.Kelsey:So you're basically piecing together all these different parties to figure out, should I buy this? What's the right thing for me? Whereas if you walk into a storefront, for example, you can get all of that figured out in a matter of minutes. You can talk to an associate, they're going to ask questions. Everything that you just described can happen there. There's nowhere like that online. And that's where messaging channels open up that opportunity for the brand to be part of that purchase decision process. So instead of leaving it up to all the third parties, the brand can do it themselves and they can scale it through these kinds of automated conversations.Stephanie:Very cool. And how do you go about setting up the responsive? Is it very custom based on the product? Like, do you work with a brand early on to be like, here's probably what they're going to ask you or they're telling you. What does that look like behind the scenes?Kelsey:We definitely curated a lot to the brand, a lot to the product type and to their customer demographic. So for example, Facebook recently published a case study of the work that we do with Wallow, which is a brand that sells titers, strollers. Basically goods for families and their kids. So they're really great products, but it's actually not so much about having a lot of skews. They don't have a ton of skews. It's more about why should somebody buy this Wallow stroller and how is it going to fit into their family and lifestyle?Kelsey:So essentially what we do is we'll work with them, look at the products that they sell and try to understand their customer type. In their case, a lot of their customers will buy for themselves, but there's a pretty good chunk that are gifting. So for example, the first question we ask is, is this for you and your family, or is this for a gift? Who are you gifting for? And then as customers answer these questions, we can speak to how it will fit into their lifestyle. How old is your little one? Are they eating solids yet or not?Kelsey:We don't actually need the customer to ask questions because by us asking questions first, we can preemptively answer how the value prop works for them. How it fits into their life. So we can say, "Well, they're eating solids is getting very messy. This high chair is very easy to clean." And so you're effectively accomplishing both along the way. It's basically just a really good sales conversation.Stephanie:Yeah. I mean, that's really smart and I think it's a different mindset where a lot of times, when you think about chatbots, the consumer has to initiate the conversation. Has to think of the questions. And it makes me even think about when I'm hiring... I'm trying to think what I was hiring. But they're like, "Oh, do you have any more questions?" And I'm like, "Well, what do people normally ask you? Like, what's the normal questions because I don't know what to ask you."Kelsey:What should I ask. Yeah.Stephanie:If I'm buying a house or whatever it is, what are the top 10 questions you get? And so that's great being like, we'll do all the work for you. Here's some of the questions that we know will start a conversation. So it's actually less work and less cognitive load. Where you can get to the end point and still leave being like, I know what I'm talking about now with this product.Kelsey:Exactly. That's 100% right. And it's actually a really classic UX design issue. Which is actually my original background. Basically, when it comes to any digital interface or any interface at all, if you don't know where you can go, you're not really likely to do it. You're not going to walk up to a pitch black tunnel and be like, "Yeah, I feel confident walking into that."Kelsey:That's like an open free from bot conversation or like you get on a customer support call and it's like, "What can we help with?" And you're like, "Well, depending on what I answer, what's the likelihood you'll have any idea what I'm asking?" It's not great. So we find that structuring and providing a really clear interface for the customers to navigate also makes a huge difference.Stephanie:We talked about this a lot on the show that shopping is moving to the edge. Everyone is shopping on Social, they're shopping on Amazon, Walmart it's everywhere and not always on the website anymore. Do you think that websites are going to become like a secondary thing, where it's like, yeah, it's a nice to have. But people are actually on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. Going directly to Amazon, they're not really going to always go right to your website.Kelsey:That's exactly right. It's going the way of retail. And that's not to say it's going to go away. It's just that it's not the primary anymore. We see a website as like the catalog and it's a transacting location. In a lot of cases that's useful, but it's not necessary anymore. And we see that with how new sellers are starting today. Especially with COVID, everything accelerates so rapidly. But one of the really interesting trends is, you've got new shops opening up just with Instagram pages and saying, "Hey, DM me for this product and I'll send you a PayPal link."Kelsey:I think those kinds of very low tech indicators of the fact that that's where the market is heading. And, I think you're 100% right. The website's really not necessary. And there are tons of great antique shops I follow in New York that are doing just well without it.Stephanie:Yeah. That's cool. So what other trends are you seeing among sellers right now? Maybe anything new popping up and you're like, pre-COVID we actually weren't really seeing this and now there's a big trend to just opening an Instagram page and selling through DMs. What other things like that are you seeing?Kelsey:I think that's huge. I think that I'm really interested in these future QVC type of models. But that's just because I grew up watching those. I don't know, did you ever watched the knife show?Stephanie:I did not watch that, but.Kelsey:The show was wild.Stephanie:Well, there's a [crosstalk].Kelsey:I think it was on a lot when I was in college. We'd always end up like late night. The knife show would end up on at very late hour and it was just like, "Hey, here's some knives and we're just going to cut all sorts of stuff with these knives." Like the silliest thing. It was so funny, but-Stephanie:[crosstalk] the Blender show. It wasn't called the Blender show, but where they [crosstalk] random things in the blender and I'm like, [crosstalk].Kelsey:Exactly. The same kind of stuff.Stephanie:How much time do we have on our hands apparently?Kelsey:It was so silly. It was like cutting shoes and weird things like that. The humor of it, I think it was really fun. And I think that online, we're seeing a lot of that, like humor come into commerce in a way that I think it's really fun. And that's really what it should be. So I like things like that. But I do think that the new selling methods are probably what some of the most interesting things to me is just, what's the version of opening a store today versus before. And like the barrier to entry is just so low now. It's pretty phenomenal. So I'm excited for that.Stephanie:Yeah. Cool. And how do you advise brands to being proactive when it comes to starting conversations versus being reactive and just taking the inbound? Because if I'm thinking like, I'm a new brand, I don't have any inbound. What's the way to be proactive and like reach out to people with your product?Kelsey:What's really nice is that these channels are often first, which I think is really important for there to be a great customer experience. If we want these channels to succeed, if we want these brands to succeed, we need to make sure that we're being really mindful of the consumer. But what's really, really nice about Facebook Messenger while it is tough to work on another platform, play by someone else's rules sometimes, but there's a ton of great benefits there.Kelsey:And one of them is the acquisition funnel. So brands are currently running ads from Facebook and Instagram and stories, all those normal places. And all they have to do is set up the exact same ads, but they can change the destination of the ad click to open a messenger conversation instead of a website. And so we're able to say, "Hey, we're basically giving you a new ad type that you can leverage. It's going to drive to a higher converting destination." And there's no reason not to try that.Kelsey:Basically, it's a win-win from the standpoint of, it's really easy to test. We can guarantee traffic and make sure that we're properly vetting it and controlling the volume. And you can compare it one-to-one to your ads that go your website. So it makes it really easy for brands to get started. And it makes it easy for the consumers because they're doing what they don't normally do, which is click on ads. So that's the most common way to start.Kelsey:There are other ways of getting customers into the channel and you can do it with short links, with QR codes, we'll link from an email, a pop-up on your website. There's a lot of different methods there. And we have partners that do all of what I just described, but ads is a really common format because again, it's just a very seamless acquisition funnel.Stephanie:Cool. And is there anything that brands are doing right now in messenger or Instagram DMs, where you're like, that's actually the wrong way to do it? Anything that you would advise brands not to do or have seen things going wrong?Kelsey:Yeah, that's a great question. I think not doing anything at all is what I would say is the worst thing. Because, whether that's Instagram DMs and you're just not responding to the people that message you there, and that's a huge, lost opportunity. We understand that it's really hard to scale responding to people individually, which is why platforms like ours can help. But I'm just not doing anything, you're losing customers every time you don't respond to them because they want to engage with you directly for a reason.Kelsey:And every time they do that, there's an opportunity for that to become either a customer or a recurring customer. So let's say that's probably the worst, but in terms of actually doing things that are, are wrong, I don't like any of the spammy stuff and I don't like any of the things where it's not clear to the customer what's going to happen. Those are the things that I find frustrating, but in terms of how to do that, well, there's not as much going on with that anymore because Facebook really did crack down on some of it. So I'll say what I didn't like before was, there was a trend where there's an opt-in check box that you could put on your website that basically said, "I'm opting into Facebook Messenger with a business."Kelsey:And that's still something that you can use today, but at the time you could actually put it on your website pre-checked. Oftentimes customers wouldn't necessarily notice it or see that it was there or see that they had opted into something. But what was even worse was there were lots of sites that were putting them behind the scenes. So it wasn't actually visible on the page at all. So a customer would add something to their cart. And by submitting that add to cart, it was opting them into messages without them knowing it.Kelsey:And then they would get messages later if they abandoned their purchase that were like, "Hey, here's the 10% off. Here's a whatever go buy that thing you were looking at." Which inherently is not a bad workflow, but to do that without letting the customer know that's what's going to happen, really not great. I'd say that's the worst thing I've seen in this space, but you can't do that anymore. And I'm grateful for it.Stephanie:Yeah. Well, that's good. How do you keep up with the changes that Facebook's going through? Because it seems like they've been definitely on like a roller coaster where very popular. And then, I feel like they kind of went through a trough where it's like, does anyone use it anymore? And now I feel like it's growing again. Even among my friends, it's like people are using the groups now and Messenger.Kelsey:The groups are huge.Stephanie:That's the only reason I go on there for the most part, but how do you keep up with what they're even doing behind the scenes and how the buying groups on there just changing. And then coming back and then leaving, and then there on TikTok. How do you keep up with that?Kelsey:I think it could be really easy to get distracted or feel like that's very volatile. The approach that we've taken is actually just been to have our own point of view that is rooted in something just so fundamental that it doesn't matter what the policy changes are really. We won't be disturbed by them essentially. So we've looked at Facebook Messenger as a sales channel since day one of the business. And we've been around just over three years now. And of the platforms that were popping up at the time were MailChimps for Messenger, were abandoned cart notifications and things like that.Kelsey:And that is really easy to get disrupted by policy changes. But if you're fundamentally saying, this is a place where you can more effectively get a conversion from a customer and have a better experience for them. There's actually not a lot that that Facebook could do that would really interfere with that in a way. Unless they just fully said, "Hey, you can't actually use the API at all anymore." They just shut the API down. Then it'd be like, okay, fine. But even if that were to happen, the US market for messaging is inherently multi-channel.Kelsey:Messenger's not being first or last for us. It's going to be one of many. So, that's the way that we approach it as yes, we keep up with the trends. We are a platform partner, so we're pretty in tune with the roadmap and what's going to be happening there. And that's really important. The relationship is really important to make sure that you can prepare for your business. But at the end of the day, I think having a really just underlying fundamental platform approach to what we're doing, enables us to avoid a lot of the mishaps that we've seen affect other business models.Stephanie:Yeah. Cool. And you just mentioned like messaging is just the first, are there other areas that you feel like there's a lot of opportunity that brands can be selling in right now. Or maybe it's not even ready yet, but in the future it's coming down the pike.Kelsey:Yeah. I think anywhere where consumers and brands can have a direct conversation, you're going to see things evolve for that. And it might depend on the platform, if the platform is incentivized towards it or interested in it. Facebook supports this because they believe in messaging as the future of consumer behavior. It's something that's been around since the beginning of the internet, we've been chatting. I don't think that's going anywhere, but Facebook is also really highly motivated to monetize on it. And so, there's opportunity there.Kelsey:But would someone like discord do something like this? I'm not sure. I'm not sure if they're like motivated towards that or if that's part of the business that they want to be building. But I really do see that any messaging channel where you can have that kind of interaction, there's no reason not to produce a better shopping experience there and tried to scale that. It's kind of infinite, I think.Stephanie:I wonder if chatbots on websites, like native chatbots have muddied up a bit. Where it's like, we've all had that bad experience with a chatbot where they're talking and you're like, "Get away, get away. You're not going to be able to help me. I already know it Verizon, stop." [crosstalk]. I wonder if that has hindered the market, with certain people being open to buying via chat bot when they've had experiences that are subpar on maybe certain websites.Kelsey:At the start of these platforms opening up and these APIs opening up, you had people making bots left and right. And they were very low quality. It tarnished it a little bit. I think tarnished it a bit for the consumer and for the brands, because, when things opened up, brands started testing things and they weren't getting performance results. It wasn't their fault. It's really hard. It's like launching your first website and then not working super well. It's like, well, yeah, this is a totally new... It's where the start of websites existing. It's like, yeah, that's tough. It's tough to figure it out. It's a whole new learning curve.Kelsey:So I think that in terms of, what can happen there. It is very easy to tarnish their reputation, but again, it's not going anywhere. So as long as again, you have an opportunity to drive a better experience. You should keep iterating on that. And again, it's like if you have customers that are willing to do directly, it's always an opportunity to do better and to turn them into a better customer for you as well. There is also really huge difference between like the customer support experiences like that, and these types of sales experiences. I think there's a pretty clear line between the two and a lot of that depends on the customer's intent.Kelsey:If you're coming from an ad to shop driver, for example, you know that's what you're doing and you know that that's what you're being helped to do. And it's pretty straightforward. But if you're going in with any level of support need, there's a lot of opportunity to get that wrong. So it's really tough.Stephanie:Someone's already coming in with a heated mindset and one wrong word from chatbot. Ooh, I'm hot.Kelsey:Exactly.Stephanie:The one thing I think about too is the payment piece and how to make sure that customer journey is frictionless because even when I hear, Oh, some brands have a PayPal link, which I think is great. Or like an MVP, get something out there. And also, show there like, do I even know my PayPal login? Like, Oh, I don't know.Kelsey:Exactly.Stephanie:How do you think about, making the checkout experience frictionless where it's not a million different options and people know it's very be fast and easy.Kelsey:Currently we actually drive to check out on the brand site and we find that works really well because it's the trusted destination. You have all of the tooling and UI that you need to be able to have a good seamless checkout experience. And that works really well. Checkout is on our roadmap to be able to process that and manage that. And we won't be like a payment processor. We have partners we're talking to on end, but in terms of the checkout, there's a lot of ways to handle that.Kelsey:And I think that there's been so much best practice learned from mobile shopping as it is, that can be leveraged there. And there's also a ton of testing opportunities, but we really do look to... We're not trying to reinvent wheels here. Stephanie:That whole space is evolving so quick and just talking to the team at fast and continuing to be here and see what they're doing with the one-click checkout. I'm like, it seems like there's such an opportunity to have that right. In every form of like, you've got your cart already loaded in like your Instagram DM, and you can just hit checkout and all your payment information save and drop onto the next Instagram site.Kelsey:[crosstalk].Stephanie:There also seems like there's a good opportunity for Amazon there. I always look at all those Q&A sections, where it seems like how much time do I spend looking at toothpaste? Is it fluoride-free? It's for my kids, is it fluoride free? Does it not have this, that, that. All these questions, but I'm actually going through the whole product page for a thing of toothpaste so much time wasted. But it would be really nice to have a Messenger on there where you could just say, "Hey, does this have this and this?" Instead of me trying to zoom in on the ingredient list, or like, look at all the reviews for something that's like $6 or whatever it may be.Kelsey:Yeah, exactly. I hope Amazon's listening. They should come talk to us. We haven't seen anything quite like that, but we have talked to brands that sell on Amazon and we have done experiences in Messenger that link to Amazon product. That is something that we've experimented with before. And I think that you have to your point, why scroll through a million questions and answers that aren't necessarily relevant to you? And one might be, when you could just have the brand get to know you better and then tell you what you need to know.Stephanie:Yeah, exactly. So when you're first starting to work with brands who are implementing chatbots, what kind of metrics do you maybe advise them to look at to see if it's going well or not? Because a lot of people I could see being new to this, not even knowing like, well, what should I expect for conversion? Or like, what's good. What's bad. Like, how do you advise them around that?Kelsey:That's a great question. So first and foremost, and I think this is a little bit of what might have gotten wrong in the early days of the channel. Businesses care about performance. They care about conversions and CACs and return, and all those things. So, we want to make sure we're mapping to that because if you don't then at the end of the day, they're going to be worth your time if it's not performing on those metrics? Probably not. So first and foremost, we can own conversion rate. That's the KPI that we really truly measure against. Because essentially we're saying if you drive traffic here, instead of your website, it's more likely to convert. That's our thesis. And so if that's true, that's what we're going to start measuring against. And we'll do that by looking at what's your conversion rate from a standard click to site ad.Kelsey:So purchases you're getting out of link clicks. And then when you run a click to Messenger ad, we'll do the exact same thing. How many purchases are you getting out of those ad clicks? And that should be able to tell us if it's a higher converting channel for you. Fundamentally we've seen anywhere from 50% increases to 10X increases in one case and anywhere in between. So it's not abnormal for that to be the initial result. But then in terms of the other things like captain role, as they should benefit from that better conversion rate. It shouldn't be approached necessarily differently than any other conversion tests that you're running.Kelsey:That being said, we have a ton of insight into the full funnel that we can leverage to optimize. And so, all of our partners start with at least a three month program because we know it takes time to warm up and we want to make sure we can iterate. And we do that on a weekly basis. So you might start with X result in month one, by the end of month three, it should be much better. And so the way that we can do that is looking at everything from a customer clicks on an ad, they land into Messenger. Do they respond to the first message, which basically ops them into the channel?Kelsey:Are they completing like a quiz? If there's a quiz or personal shopper? Are they clicking on products back to the website? And then are they adding to cart? And then are they purchasing? So we have a slightly different funnel. You're going to get your ad performance from ads manager and see the link clicks and add to carts and purchases. Paloma is going to see everything in between. So we'll be able to know exactly where people are off and why. And be able to iterate on that much more efficiently than if it were traffic going to a website, where are they clicking? How are they browsing? There's like a ton of more opaque data from a website side. From our end we can literally just see, okay, you have too much drop-off on the first question. So let's not ask that question. Or, Hey, everybody is answering the same way to this one question, that doesn't need to be there.Kelsey:Or, people are clicking on the products. Maybe we need different product batches or whatever that may be. So we'll be able to get a lot more of a finer detail on that. And we have benchmarks for each. We expect our partners to get at least a 30% opt-in rate, maybe percent completion on any type of quiz or personal shopper experience. And then at least 50% of traffic clicking back to the website. And then from there add to carts and purchases depends on what they would normally expect to see. It's kind of a lengthy answer.Stephanie:It's good to know metrics like that to aim for. How do you plug into a brand's inventory system and then also make matches. That will be something that I want to look at. I can just imagine me going in there and not knowing what I ever want being like, "I want a picture." And then someone's showing me something and maybe like, "Oh, not that one." How do you guys personalize it and show something I want, but also make sure that you're not tapping into inventory, that's like out of stock.Kelsey:So we basically can ingest inventory into our system, keep that up to sync, keep that availability up to sync. And so anytime that we're building experiences, you're able to make sure that it's the right things getting shown. In terms of what to show customers based on their selections. We have this like start matching dynamic product matching system where basically the customer's responses get associated with the inventory.Kelsey:So all of your boots are associated with like a boot selection or all of your things that come and break colors would get associated with like bright colors. If you were asking about color preference. And some of these qualities are not things that would normally be tagged onto your inventory. So we're basically expanding on that. So we make the association between the two and as customers make the selections, we basically just filter down and display all the things that would then relate.Kelsey:So like Andy swimwear, for example, if you chose one pieces and some coverage and a lot of support, you're only going to see the products that, apply to all of those qualities. And it's really simple for us to create those. Something like that can take like 10 minutes to build, whereas a quiz to put on a website can cost thousands of dollars and take two months. And so, that's kind of part of the magic and secret sauce of our software.Stephanie:Yeah, that's cool. I was just thinking about, okay, to even create that kind of filtering and navigation options and all that can take a long time. And tagging it and making sure that it's actually can be searchable. And then if you can just have it in a DM or Messenger, that's great game changing.Kelsey:Yeah. It's really fun. It's a very simple, we have like own drag and drop interface to just jag product on to the selection options. They're tagged with that in the future. And then as customers answer, we just know what to show them.Stephanie:Cool. Where do you see the future of commerce headed or chatbots and commerce intersecting. What does that look like to you maybe three to five years down the road? Where do you hope it looks?Kelsey:Really, again, I like to look to what people are doing now when they're just starting out and also at other markets. So really in terms of the future of commerce, we believe very strongly that it's on messaging channels, that that is the next door front. And so, what does that look like? It's customers going to DMs, it's brands driving traffic to DMs and customers just getting much better shopping experiences there, converting there, checking out there. And new stores not having to even open up a website. Again, I don't think website's going to necessarily totally go away, but it's just going to be a smaller part of the puzzle. If you look at what's gone on in other markets like China with Weechat, they're way ahead of the game. And that works really, really well.Kelsey:And it's a huge chunk of the commerce ecosystem out there. So we've been a little bit slower to that, but it is happening. It's happening a little bit more multichannel, and I think that's really interesting and that's a really fun challenge is that, we don't have the monolith app that will do it all. We have a lot of [crosstalk] apps. I think it's great because everyone likes to have their own different way. We're always getting new social networks and apps out there and it's fun. It's really fun. So basically, I'm not sure how many different tools there will be in the future, but we very strongly believe that messaging is the next channel and destination for commerce to happen. And we're effectively building the platform to power that. Stephanie:That's great. It definitely begs the question about keeping things organized when you're selling on so many different channels. And there's probably going to be dozens of messaging platforms that people are using. I'm just imagining a brand, trying to keep up where, they go from selling on their website and then maybe dabbling in Amazon, maybe on Walmart. And then all of a sudden it's now, you can sell on Pinterest and Instagram and Facebook and TikTok. How do you think a brand would be able to keep up or do you see anything right now? Like any innovations that are allowing brands to organize everything in one central place that they can keep track of what they're doing?Kelsey:There are definitely a lot of interesting tools. I think that what comes before the tools are just the people, expertise. I think that's what we're seeing, services and agencies that will help with coordinating all of those things or know how to best launch on Amazon. And then once you've launched on Amazon and all these other places, then you go, okay, well now I have everything in too many places I need a more scalable system. And that's when you start seeing softwares get put in place. And I don't think any come to mind immediately, but I think there's some really great tools that are coming up to try to glue things together and basically to piece together, all the different supply chain and logistics issues.Kelsey:And there's some really great things out there for that. But we're also seeing new commerce platforms that are inherently taking those things in mind. So we have a lot of commerce players that exist that are trying to catch up and trying to add on these different channels. But then you have new players that are from day one saying, "We know it's not just about one place." So you've got things like, headless commerce and no code tools and platforms like Paloma that will from day one say, "Hey, this isn't just about a single source of shopping. It's about a lot of things."Stephanie:Yeah. I completely agree. All right, well, let's shift over to the lightning round. Lightning round is brought to you by Salesforce commerce cloud. I'll ask a question and you have a minute or less to answer. Are you ready? You look a little nervous. Wow.Kelsey:I don't know, that's scary. It's a little daunting.Stephanie:No, it'll be fun. It'll be fun. What one thing will have the biggest impact on e-commerce in the next year. I have a feeling you're say message shopping and Messsenger.Kelsey:Obviously messaging. I'll just be repeating myself a little bit, but I think messaging is a bit. It's already been exploding pretty quickly and it's growing faster than ever. We drove almost 9 million in partner revenue last year. And that's just as a small, early stage team, so there's a lot ahead of us.Stephanie:Yeah. That's cool. What, one thing do you not understand today that you wish you did?Kelsey:Just so many people things. I find people so fascinating. I'm constantly seeing how people chat, but I would just love to talk to people about their experiences with all of these experiences and with all these different kind of shopping channels. And, I think that it's not something that I don't understand. It's just something that I'm always eager to understand people's behaviors more. So that'd probably be it. [inaudible].Stephanie:What's up next on your Netflix queue?Kelsey:I am so behind, I need to watch Bridgeton and literally everything else. I've been doing a Buffy rewatch. So I'm just like living in a very different time.Stephanie:What is a book that has really left a very big impression on you? You're like, "I always think back to this book for either business or life."Kelsey:Oh, that is a great question. I'd say, well, what are the ones that comes to mind, it's Italo Calvino. [crosstalk] is the author. And basically, it's a person telling stories about visiting a lot of different cities. And when I was younger, I found that it was just... When you're reading, it's all about picturing what's going on. And as someone who, if you didn't grow up being able to travel a lot, it stuck with me. I was like, I want to be able to do that someday, but also just being able to picture it from a book is really, really nice. I still have like the images in my head of different passages from that.Stephanie:Oh, that's cool. All right. And then the last one, what's the nicest thing anyone's ever done for you?Kelsey:Oh my gosh. I feel like people are so nice. What is the nicest thing anyone's ever done to me? Oh gosh, there's too many things.Stephanie:Wow. You must be a very... People are sending all this nice stuff you way. [crosstalk] people around you, can I have some?Kelsey:When you run a business, or when you start a business, it's all about getting help. That's the best way to be able to succeed is knowing what you don't know and how to get help. So I will say I'm very good at getting help, but what's like the biggest part of that is having people be really nice and great. And so, there are just a lot of people that have helped along the way that I literally would not be where I am without that. From little things like making the introductions, not everyone has access to the networks that you need. And so, the people that believed in me more than the business or more than anything else, that's really huge.Kelsey:And so, I've just got like some really great, great people that helped along the way. I can't pick a single thing, but I'd say like some of our investors, some of just the people I've worked with in the past and they're really just root for you. And will be there when you say, "I have no idea what I'm doing. How does this work?" Or, "I need some help."Stephanie:I thought so. Good answer. All right, Kelsey. Well, it's been a blast having you on the show. I love learning about Paloma and your story. Where can people find out more about you and Paloma?Kelsey:You can learn more about Paloma, getpaloma.com, G-E-T-P-A-L-O-M-A. And me I'm on Twitter, LinkedIn at Kelsey Hunter. I think it's usually Kelsey AH. So feel free to message me, check out the site, chat with us. We're always around.Stephanie:Amazing. Thanks so much.

Today's episode comes straight from Beer & Banter LIVE w/ airs on the Living Headfirst Facebook page every Monday & Wednesday night! Join us, when you're able, for the opportunity to interact with guests, ask questions, and play along with the basket of GREATNESS!   Today's guest is Kelsey Eyers, the CEO & Founder of Sweat CBD! Here's what you can expect to hear in the episode: - Kelsey's story of her battle with anxiety, taking medication to manage symptoms, struggling with an eating disorder, and feeling stuck.  - How CBD changed Kelsey's life from the inside out, and opened up new opportunities she never saw coming. - The different types of CBD products Sweat CBD provides, how they make them, and how YOU can get them.  - Different symptoms CBD can help you manage - anxiety, lack of focus, poor sleep, post-workout recovery, and more! - The safety of CBD, different qualities, and what to look for as you do your own research!   Want to give Sweat CBD a try? Check out their website at: www.sweatcbd.com  Use code: MEGS10 to save 10% on your order!   Want to connect with Kelsey? You can find her on:  IG: @kelsey.eyers OR @sweatcbd Facebook: Sweat CBD Facebook Page

GUEST BIO: Kelsey Hightower has worn every hat possible throughout his career in tech, and enjoys leadership roles focused on making things happen and shipping software. Kelsey is a strong open source advocate focused on building simple tools that make people smile as well as an occasional conference speaker. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: In this episode Phil speaks to Kelsey Hightower, who is known in the industry as an innovator who makes things happen. He strongly believes in the power of the community, so works on bringing people and motivating them to produce products that truly work. He is currently working on the GoogleCloud project and is a popular technical workshop speaker and teacher, who believes in and advocates the use of Open Source products. KEY TAKEAWAYS: ­­­ (00.59) – So Kelsey, you can I ask you to expand on that brief summary and tell us a little bit about yourself? Kelsey explains that he has been in tech for about 14 years with various companies including Puppet Labs and Chrome OS. He is currently working at Google making sure that all elements of the Google Cloud work together. Kelsey says he is working on the computer side of the house, on everything from Kubernetes to the Google service platform. He now describes himself as a generalist. Phil described Kelsey’s role as creating “seamless integration from a user perspective” (2.00) – Phil asks Kelsey for a unique IT career tip. Surprisingly, Kelsey’s tip is to “write it down”. In IT we tend to do things on the fly. Often, we do this because we are trying to minimize outage time. Sometimes it is because we want to implement change and feel we need to move quickly to keep everyone on board. Operating like this means that, often, we do not come up with the right solution. In the long-term this can turn out to be a big problem. It is important to stop, sit down and capture all the facts and consider the pros and cons of your proposed solution. You also need discuss the idea with others. For this a document acts as a great reference point. It also enables you to look back and understand why you made the decisions you did. (3.25) – Phil asks - Do you see that as an iterative process, as well? Kelsey agrees often these projects can span many years. Over that time, things will change so the objective or goal can also evolve. But, that document you created captures the current situation. It does not mean that you should never change your opinions and the direction you take. (4.24) – Phil asks - do you see it as a problem in IT generally that people don’t necessarily think too far ahead in terms of what the future might look like? In IT people tend not to take the time to document why things are done the way they are. Plus, they do not always work to push things forward. When someone asks them to change, their immediate response is that “it is not possible”. But, when you ask them to explain why the change is not viable, they do not really know. They just know that things have always been done that way and can be resistant to change. (5.31) – Kelsey is asked to share his worst career moment with the audience. For Kelsey it was the moment that he realized that to be able to make progress on a project you have to convince people that things need to happen. The realization put out a flame for him. Prior to that, he believed that he could just make things happen. He was a bit disappointed to realize that he had to overcome people’s resistance to get things done. But, he soon adjusted and learned to do both. So, in the end his worst career moment resulted in a positive change for Kelsey. (7.10) – Phil asks Kelsey what his best career moment was. Kelsey explained it was the day he first spoke publically at a meetup in Georgia Tech. He did a lot of preparation for that event, so that he could make his points concisely and take the entire audience, including the newcomers, with him. It went really well and he got great feedback. That day inspired him and set the scene for the rest of his IT career. Today, he enjoys seeing the light bulbs going on as the audience “gets it”.   (10.11) – Phil asks Kelsey what excites him about the future of the IT industry. Kelsey responds “the potential”. Today, it is possible for a newcomer or new business to come along and use some of the existing systems to get what needs to be done. They do not have to worry about legacy systems and integrations. It is possible to install a modern system that just works and takes care of the basic functions, leaving the new firm to focus on growing their business.   (11.55) – What attracted you to a career in IT? When Kelsey started his IT career, you did not need a college degree and you could earn very good money. Both of these facts attracted him to the field. Working in IT is a great way to connect with others, make a difference and be rewarded financially for your efforts. (12.46) – What is the best career advice you have been given? Definitely, “write it down.” If you believe something is the solution write down why you think that is the case. Doing so allows you to see things clearly and makes it easier for others to consider your proposal and challenge it if necessary. This greatly improves your ability to identify and implement the right solution for the situation. (13.48) – If you were to start your IT career again, right, now, what would you do?  Kelsey said that it is important to understand that the fundamentals are more important than the products. If you dive deep and learn the fundamentals of a product you can operate well in most environments. Phil summed it up by saying the technologies may not last but the fundamentals are always of value. (15.05) – Phil asks Kelsey what he is currently focusing on. Kelsey says he is just working on being a little better every day.  Each day he pauses and spends a little time analyzing what happened and how he can improve. He is also focused on building up his technical ability and becoming a real expert in certain areas. Kelsey is now willing to go deep. He is not just taking the “happy path” and learning what can be done with his chosen technologies he is also studying its limitations, so he can recognize when not to use it. (16.22) – What would you consider to be your most important non-technical skill? Kelsey says his genuine positivity keeps him excited about the projects he is working on and what he is learning. He is able to pass that positivity on to others, which motivates them. Making people feel good about themselves inspires them and pushes them to be more effective. (17.19) – Phil asks Kelsey to share a few final words of career advice. In IT you need to push yourself, to think outside of the box and over deliver. Kelsey explained that he has come across people who just take a task and do exactly the task. They do not look beyond it and never ask themselves if they could come up with something even better than what is being asked for. As a result, they stagnate and do not really grow. They end up spending 15 years in a role, but only accrue the equivalent of one year’s experience. Don’t be afraid to “automate yourself out of a job”, there will always be more work to do, better work. You need to be creative and innovative when you work in IT not just someone who blindly does a list of tasks. BEST MOMENTS:  (5.22) KELSEY –"Noone is really sure why the process exists. There's no clear place with the processes defined, so we know how to improve it. I think that's one of the biggest problems we see today."   (6.49) KELSEY - "A lot of cases, you would actually spend more time doing the convincing than the actual solution takes." (9.09) KELSEY - "You can see the light bulb go off for some people for the very first time and you know that those communication skills are working." (9.53) KELSEY - “You have to learn how to create the light bulb moment for yourself before you can create them for other people." (15.05) - Phil – “The technologies won't last but the fundamentals are always of value.” (15.18) KELSEY – “Just be a bit wiser every day.” CONTACT KELSEY HIGHTOWER: Twitter: https://twitter.com/kelseyhightower @kelseyhightower

Learn How To Listen To Your Body With Love & Get Back Into Alignment with Kelsey Fox Bennett   You know there are amazing people in the world who have that gorgeous clean positive energy. Kelsey Fox Bennett is totally one of them!  On episode 4 of the Pleasure Rising Podcast I had the pleasure to speak with Kelsey about self-love and reducing stress. We discuss what happens to your body when it’s in a state of stress. How to get back in alignment with yourself.  What self love means and specifically how you can begin practising self love - like today! Kelsey gives amazing action steps for those people trying to ‘juggle it all’. Listen to this episode now. Want to learn more about Kelsey? You can find her on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kelseyfoxbennett/  And her website: https://kelseyfoxbennett.com  Plus, she has an amazing freebie for ya’ll, called ‘Self Care From Scratch: Boost your energy and navigate life & relationships with ease.” Get that freebie here: https://kelseyfoxbennett.com/free-love If you like this episode please leave us a review, and share it with your friends Enjoy this episode!  Sarah Marie Liddle Website: www.sarahmarieliddle.com Instagram: www.instagram.com/sarahmarieliddle/ Podcast Instagram: www.instagram.com/pleasurerisingpodcast/  

Kelsey is a Registered Dietitian who quickly learned in her program that she wasn’t being taught what dieticians should really be teaching their patients. She decided to study functional medicine, open her own practice, and pursue her dream of working with clients who really care about themselves, who want to invest in their health and receive support along their health journey. In today’s show, Kelsey and I talk about Adrenal health, HPA axis dysregulation, and how this can impact fertility. I’ve had a number of questions from listeners about adrenal fatigue and HPA axis dysregulation because of the impact it can have on a woman’s fertility hormones! Topics discussed in today's episode What is adrenal fatigue? Does it mean that your adrenals are "tired"? Why the label of "adrenal fatigue" is actually a misnomer, and the term "HPA axis dysregulation" is actually more accurate What is the body's hormonal response to stress? The connection between gut dysbiosis and stress The link between PCOS, testosterone, and cortisol What are the symptoms of HPA axis dysregulation? What is the link between blood pressure & HPA axis dysregulation? How to address HPA axis dysregulation/adrenal fatigue in a practical way What are some of the ways that you can reduce your stress in your daily life? What to do if you're not into Meditation, Visualization, and Yoga The scientific explanation for why bringing fun into your life improves HPA axis dysregulation and reduces your overall stress The role of cortisol in the body and why cortisol isn't actually "bad" for you when your levels are optimal Is it possible to exercise too much? What is overexercise and how does it impact your stress levels? Connect with Kelsey You can connect with Kelsey on her Website and on Facebook and Twitter Resources mentioned Healthy Gut Healthy Life | Kelsey Kinney (Marksteiner) The Ancestral RDs | Kelsey Kinney & Laura Schoenfeld The Ancestral RDs Podcast | Kelsey Kinney & Laura Schoenfeld FFP 012 | Recovering from Post-Birth Control Syndrome | How to get your period back | Laura Schoenfeld FFP 084 | Adrenal Fatigue, Fertility & Hormone Balance | The Kalish Method | Dr. Daniel Kalish Headspace Meditation App Stress Doctor App Join the community! Find us on the Fertility Friday Facebook Fan Page Subscribe to the Fertility Friday Podcast on iTunes! Music Credit: Intro/Outro music Produced by J-Gantic

Thank you Sumeet Shah ( https://www.theconsumervc.com/20-sumeet-shah-swiftarc-ventures-4th-generation-of-retail-periscope-founders-and-what-is-wrong-in-vc/ ) for introducing me to our guest today Kelsey Moreira ( https://twitter.com/kelsey_moreira ) , founder and Co-CEO of Doughp ( https://www.doughp.com/ ). Doughp makes 100% raw cookie dough. As you probably can guess, we talk all things cookie dough as well as why Kelsey moved from Oakland to set up shop in Las Vegas, effects of COVID in her store and ecommerce, her mission and her experience on Shark Tank. And there you have it. It was wonderful chatting with Kelsey. I highly recommend following her @kelsey_moreira on Twitter. A book that inspired Kelsey - You Are a Badass ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0762447699?camp=1789&creativeASIN=0762447699&ie=UTF8&linkCode=xm2&tag=theconsumervc-20 ) by Jen Sincero Some of the questions I ask Kelsey - * You worked in tech for a long time, what attracted you to entrepreneurship and the food and beverage space? * What was the insight that led you to founding DOUGHP? * How did you decide to approach creating the product? * How did you think about DOUGHPs brand and positioning? * Why Las Vegas? * DOUGHP for Hope initiative * Mental health days for staff * What did you want to raise capital? * How was your experience on Shark Tank? * What was your fundraising approach? * How did you distribution and different channels? * What has been the effect of COVID on your business? * What's one thing you would change about fundraising? * What's the best piece of advice that you've received? * What's one piece of advice for folks building a consumer product?