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The Berkeley Bowl CookbookRecipes Inspired By The Extraordinary Produce Of California's Most Iconic MarketBy Laura McLively Suzy Chase: Welcome to the Cookery by the Book Podcast, with me, Suzy Chase.Laura: I'm Laura McLively, and my new cookbook is the Berkeley Bowl Cookbook.Suzy Chase: Epicurious just named the Berkeley Bowl Cookbook one of the it cookbooks for Spring 2018. Tell us about Berkeley Bowl and the owners.Laura: So, Berkeley Bowl is a family-run market. They, Glenn and Diane Yasuda are the owners, and they opened up shop in a former bowling alley back in 1977, so a lot of people think that the store is called Berkeley Bowl because of the bowl alluding to some sort of edible culinary adventure, but it's actually named after the bowling alley, and so they opened up shop there back in 1977 because they used to live behind that location, and Glenn and Diane spent some time living in Japan, and that arrangement really reminded them of how shops were set up in there in Japan, where people had their store front and they lived behind it, and so, they bought the property, turned it into a grocery store that was mainly produce, and from there it evolved into what is now 40 years later a very big grocery store with over 600 employees.Suzy Chase: I found it really interesting that local farmers asked Berkeley Bowl what they should plant.Laura: Yeah, I do too. I think that that's the unique aspect of Berkeley Bowl, and that because it's still a family-run market, they're able to work directly with farmers and local growers to source and ask them to produce items that they want to have in their grocery store, that large grocery franchises can't really do that because they have to provide such huge quantities and take them to a centralized warehouse and distribute them to all the locations. They can't really work with a small farmer to produce some niche item, and so it's a really nice arrangement because in that way, Berkeley Bowl can ask a small farm to produce, for instance, food at hand, knowing that they have a huge customer base that wants that item, and then the small farmer has a guaranteed market for that item. They're not taking that huge risk of growing something that's maybe a little bit wacky or unknown to most people and risking no one buying it.Suzy Chase: The LA Times has called Berkeley Bowl one of the nation's most renowned retailers of exotic fruits and vegetables. Describe the first time you saw an African Horned melon at Berkeley Bowl, and what is it?Laura: So, that's a great question. If you have my book, it's right on the cover because it's such a unique item. It's on the back side, and it's a neon orange orb that is covered in darker orange spikes, and when you cut into it, it literally oozes this lime green juice and all these seeds, and it seriously looks like some sort of spiky hand grenade or a weapon from outer space, and in fact, the first time I saw it was featured on a Star Trek episode, where aliens in outer space are eating this fruit, and it's actually an African Horned melon. It's not something that they CGI'ed or created for the show. I think it's really interesting that it's ...Suzy Chase: That's funny.Laura: it's on Star Trek, but my first time seeing it in the store was I had moved here from Sonoma county. I moved to Berkeley to go to college, and I had heard about Berkeley Bowl, and I immediately went there because I wanted to check it out for myself, and I was, of course, struck by the variety they had. Even though I'd heard about it, I just couldn't believe what I was seeing. They had so many amazing fruits and vegetables that I'd never seen before, and I think, by far, the most extreme one is the African Horned melon, and I picked it up. I looked at it. There happened to be one that was cut in half, and I smelled it, and it just, it was kind of intoxicating. It smells like lime and banana and melon and cucumber all mixed together, but something in me didn't feel like I could take it home and eat it. It was almost like all these unusual fruits and vegetables that weren't part of my culture, I almost felt like I didn't have permission to take them home and cook with them, like they weren't mine. And it wasn't until years later, after an experience of living in Spain and having a cooking club there, where we were basically just challenging ourselves each week to cook with something we'd never cooked with before, it wasn't until coming back from there that I was really yearning to continue that spirit of adventurous cooking, that when I went back to Berkeley Bowl for the first time, and I saw these fruits and vegetables in that new context, I was like, well, hey, why aren't I doing this now? Why don't I continue that spirit of adventurous cooking from my own home? And so that's when I picked it up, brought it home, and played around with it and had so much fun developing recipes for it that I decided to start a blog where I would chronicle my adventures with doing that with each and every item in the store I could find.Suzy Chase: Yeah, before we talk about your blog, you have a line in your book that says, "Foods unfamiliar to me are as much a part of someone else's everyday diet as tomatoes are to my family."Laura: Exactly. Yeah, and so that fruit, every fruit and vegetable in my book is normal to someone, right?Suzy Chase: Yeah.Laura: And for good reason, so these things are really amazing, and they may be popular in other cultures, other countries, but even within the United States, other regions, and once you get over that fact of, once you realize that fact that these things are normal to someone, it kind of [inaudible 00:06:18] some of the intimidation in working with these fruits and vegetables because maybe at first glance they look like, oh, well I've never seen that before. I wouldn't possibly know what to do with it, but someone somewhere is cooking with that, otherwise it wouldn't be in the store, and it's probably for a very good reason.Suzy Chase: That's a really good thing to remember.Laura: Yeah, I think so.Suzy Chase: So, you chronicled your journey cooking with the market's ingredients on your blog called My Berkeley Bowl. Tell us about your blog.Laura: So, my blog was really just a personal challenge. It was a ... where I just chronicling my own personal challenge. Like I said, once I brought my first exotic or unfamiliar food home and had so much fun developing a recipe for it, I sort of just challenged myself to make my way through all the unfamiliar fruits and vegetables at Berkeley Bowl, and I thought, why don't I chronicle this adventure because there's bound to be some interesting discoveries and mishaps, which there were, and it could be some fun, and so I really was just writing for myself, and I was surprised that when I posted my first entry, it's kind of crazy how the internet works. I don't know how someone found it, but within a minute, I had a like, and I was kind of like what? How did someone find it? It's been ... At that point, I didn't even know how to tag my posts in a way that they were searchable. It was really just so fun, and so I was surprised to see it kind of grow, and people starting to comment and saying they really liked the concept, and even on Wordpress you can see in which countries people are reading your blog, and so really quickly, there were people all over the world reading it, and I don't know if it's maybe because they were excited to see maybe something that they grew up eating being featured on a blog, but it was really neat to see that it was being appreciated outside of the Berkeley area, and so I did that for ... Let's see. I started it in spring of 2015, and it was that December of the same year that Parallax Press approached me about turning it into a cookbook, and it just seemed like a great idea because it was such a finite project with a very specific aim of cooking with unfamiliar fruits and vegetables, and it just really seemed like it would work as a cookbook because part of what I wanted of this is to see, to really shine the spotlight on these fruits and vegetables, and so to have a beautiful, almost coffee table-like book with luscious photos by Erin Scott, that really capture how beautiful these fruits and vegetables are, is sort of a dream come true for me.Suzy Chase: In the book, the recipes are organized by type and ingredient. Talk a little bit about that.Laura: So, I didn't go the traditional route of organizing it by courses because this is really an ingredient-driven book. That's how my process was for developing the recipes, and so that's how the cookbook is laid out, so what I mean by that is I literally would walk into the store not knowing what I would find that day because it's different every day, based on what's in season, and I would pick up something new and bring it home, and after trying that one item in a jillion different ways, I would develop a recipe for it, and so it makes sense to me to organize the book in a way that really honors the fruit or vegetable itself rather than organize it by course because that's not how I developed the recipes. And in addition, I think it's really, it's kind of a poetic way to think about these things, but in a chapter, that if you want to delve into a chapter, you're working with spores and succulents, or you can work with flowers, seeds, and pods, and so I think it's a kind of poetic way to think about these things and just to treat them as the superstars or as the hero of the dish, rather than as an ingredient in a breakfast or in a dessert or in a dinner.Suzy Chase: You have a whole chapter dedicated to stems. What exactly are stems?Laura: Stems are basically anything that would be the stalk or the stem of a plant, and so, some examples in the book are things like Bạc Hà, which is the stem of the Elephant Ear plant, so it's a really spongy stem that once you cook it, it's like a sponge. It literally soaks up the broth, so it's really commonly used in, for instance, hot and sour soup type dishes, and I use it in a Spanish-style garlic soup. Other stems that maybe don't even look like stems are, like one that surprises people who are familiar with it is kohlrabi. The kohlrabi is, people think it's the bulb of the plant or the tuber, but it's actually a stem that's kind of in a round shape, so that one is, that's the kind of surprising one in that chapter. And then I have things like white asparagus and lemongrass, which is in a lemongrass coconut ice cream, [inaudible 00:11:44], cardoons, rhubarb, so all different colors and shapes and sizes that when you weigh them out, and if you have the book, you can see them laid out in the spread, and it's like art. It's these beautiful different shapes and sizes and colors.Suzy Chase: When I go to an ethnic market that has exotic produce, I'm so intimidated by the fruits or vegetables that I can't identify. What advice would you give someone like me, who's daunted by the unknown?Laura: Have some fun. There's no harm in making mistakes, and there's really, you really can't make mistakes first of all, but if you take it home and you try using it in a way that you don't like, no harm, no foul. You can just try again, but I think I would say that you would quickly find that the fun of doing it outweighs the fear of the unknown, and there's also of a lot of resources available to you. One thing I would say is if you're at a market and you're looking at something you're considering cooking at home, but you're not sure what to do with it, just stick around and wait because someone is bound to come up and reach for it, and it's a great way to interact and to share between cultures because you can ask the person, hey, what are you doing with that? And that's what I often did at the store, is I would sit around and wait for someone to reach for the burdock root, and I'd ask them, what do you do with that? Also, the staff at those places are usually very knowledgeable, and so you can ask them questions, and if they don't know, someone else might know, and they'll go grab them, so that happened a lot at Berkeley Bowl, where the staff is diverse with the community and is diverse with the offerings at the market, and so I was always able to get an answer from them. And then, of course, most of us have iPhones or smart phones, and so you can look it up. There's some great resources out there. You can find a lot of them on my blog, My Berkeley Bowl, but also Specialty Produce is a great website that has a lot of information on specialty produce as well.Suzy Chase: Yeah, I took the book with me to Chinatown because there's a bit of a language barrier, and that helped a lot, getting the produce that I needed to make some of these recipes.Laura: Oh, good. Yeah, I was hoping ... I'm hoping this book can sort of be a companion because of the nature of the items in it, a lot of times they have a short season or you have to go to a specific market to find them, and so my idea is that you just pack this up and take it there because you don't really know what you're going to find until you get there, so it's better to go see what's there, and then maybe look it up, and in the back there's a key, where all of the produce is pictured with numbers, and you can look up the name of it so that you can easily find it and identify it and make sure you're picking up the right thing.Suzy Chase: As a food explorer, and I love that title, how did you determine how to cook a mysterious fruit or vegetable? Walk us through how you developed these recipes in the book.Laura: Generally, once I got the item home, I started a process of what I call playing around with it, so generally I would try it raw to see what it tastes like in its pure form and really identify its flavor, and if it's something that needs to be cooked, I would usually cook it a couple different ways, and not necessarily the most, the way that it's most commonly used in that culture. So, I wanted to see if there were other ways to bring out its structure and flavor, so I'd broil it or braise it or roast it, grate it. I'd try as many ways as I could to see how I liked it the best, and then once I identified the way in which it, the way which truly honored its texture and its flavor, I was usually inspired by that point to incorporate some other flavors, so for instance, something like a green papaya, when I tried that on its own, it's really bright and acidic, and I knew I wanted to have it in a gazpacho because gazpacho should be very bright and acidic. So, from there, I fiddled around with what I wanted in the gazpacho. I threw in some avocado for creaminess and some cucumbers and limes and ultimately tried and tried and adjust and adjust until it's to the point where it can be tested, and then I would send it to a huge team of friends and recipe testers, I think there's about 35 of them all over the world, and someone would try it at least three times, and we would adjust it from there.Suzy Chase: So, I made a few things out of this cookbook. First was the pickled kumquats on page 197. The flavor was definitely different. I expected the kumquats to be very sweet.Laura: Yeah, I think a lot of people expect oranges but they're not ...Suzy Chase: Yes.Laura: ... as many oranges.Suzy Chase: Exactly.Laura: Exactly. So, I think what I love about pickled kumquats is that they're not sweet, and it's not supposed to be candied or like a fruit that you would eat on its own. It's really meant to brighten and add acid to pair it with, so I always had a jar of pickled kumquats in my fridge to throw in salads. It's really great to throw on a salad, or just something to make it more beautiful and acidic and tangy, and guests are always surprised because they sort of look like cherry tomatoes, but the Sun Gold tomatoes, so when they bite into them and instead they find this citrusy, pickly taste, they're always like, wow, what's that? And then they're also really great on a cheese plate because creamy cheeses like Brie or Camembert can really finish it from having a little touch of brightness and acid.Suzy Chase: Yeah, they were definitely tangy. I'm going to try them on a cheese plate.Laura: Yeah.Suzy Chase: I also made the purple cauliflower quesadilla with curry crema. Try saying that three times fast on page 73, and I cooked the cauliflower until it was super, super soft, and the curry cream was such a nice surprise with it.Laura: I'm so glad you liked it, and yeah, I'm glad you brought up that recipe because, actually, both the recipes you brought up. One thing that people have told me when I tell them that I have this cookbook is they say, "Oh, I'm not a good cook. I probably shouldn't cook anything out of your book," and I'm always surprised by that because just because ingredients are extraordinary and unique and sometimes look intimidating doesn't mean that the recipes are. I'm a home cook. I'm not a classically trained chef by any means ...Suzy Chase: Me, too.Laura: ... and I'm cooking for my family, right? So it's like these are things that I should cook, and purple cauliflower quesadillas is about as easy as it gets, so the things that are meant to be accessible and to take the intimidation out of these fruits and vegetables.Suzy Chase: And my 11 year old loved this quesadilla. It's really a great weeknight fast dinner.Laura: Good, I'm so glad that you're daughter liked it, too.Suzy Chase: He's a son, but that's okay.Laura: Oh, sorry. Yeah.Suzy Chase: So, I also made the starfruit almond torte on page 198, and I didn't have a springform pan, so it was rough getting it out, but it was really delicious, and I was surprised by how almondy, is that a word,? Almondy it was.Laura: Yeah, that ... This tart was inspired by Tarta de Santiago, which is the St. James cake that they serve in Santiago de Compostela, which is the end of the pilgrimage that you can do across northern Spain, and so when you arrive in this town, there's sort of cake in every window, and it's an almond based cake, and I've always loved it, and my mom used to make it when we were growing up, and it's really simple to make, too. It's kind of a foolproof dessert, and so when I saw the starfruit, I knew I wanted it to decorate the top of the cake, but rather than just laying it on there raw, I thought it would be really cool to bake it into the cake, so there's like a pineapple upside down cake and flip it over, and so there's a sort of a combination of those two things, and I think it comes out beautifully, and if you serve it to guests, they can be like, oh, my gosh, how did you cut the fruit in that beautiful shape, and they don't realize that it just comes that way.Suzy Chase: Yeah, it's really pretty. Last night, I made the broiled pomelo with cinnamon crème-fraiche on page 172. Now, what's the difference between a pomelo and a grapefruit?Laura: A pomelo is much larger, and it has a much thicker rind and pith, whereas grapefruit is obviously smaller and has a thinner rind. I also think pomelo is a bit sweeter. It's sweeter and it has less bitterness, so if you always wanted to like grapefruit, but you just can't get over the fact that it has that bitter taste, you should try pomelo, and the reason I like it in this preparation is because when you slice it in half and you broil it, there's more, the pith is bright white, and it just looks prettier than grapefruit. It has that nice contrast between the pith and the fruit, and it kind of caramelizes and burns a little bit on top, so I think it works really well in this recipe.Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on social media?Laura: So, my social media, my Twitter handle and my Instagram handle is @myberkeleybowl, and I have a Facebook page as well that's My Berkeley Bowl. My website, the blog is myberkeleybowl.com, and you can also me on my personal website lauramclively.com.Suzy Chase: With this cookbook as your handy guide, sourcing produce is fun. Thanks, Laura, for coming on Cookery By The Book podcast.Laura: Thank you so much, Suzy, for having me.Suzy Chase: Follow me on Instagram at CookerybytheBook. Twitter is IamSuzyChase, and download your kitchen mix tapes, Music To Cook By, on Spotify at CookerybytheBook, and as always, subscribe in Apple Podcasts.

Laura Martin. Photo courtesy of Laura Martin. Episode 6 features Laura Martin, expert parent, mom blogger at Joseph at Home, and the Director of Parent Communication and Engagement at Graham’s Foundation—a non-profit organization that supports parents of premature infants. During the episode, Laura shares her son Joseph’s story of prematurity and survival including his near fatal bout of late-onset NEC and the multitude of life-long complications that have resulted. She discusses: The extremely premature birth of her twin sons, Joseph and Campbell, at 24 weeks—four months early, and Campbell’s passing at 23 days of life, How Joseph developed late-onset NEC and lost two-thirds of his small intestine, Several of Joseph’s secondary diagnoses including Short Bowel Syndrome, Auditory Neuropathy Spectrum Disorder, Eosinophilic Esophagitis, and multiple food allergies—all resulting from NEC, How hers and her family’s experience with prematurity led to her work at Graham’s Foundation, Her personal blog where she documents her daily life as an expert parent of a child with special needs. Copyright © 2015 The Morgan Leary Vaughan Fund, Inc. This episode was produced in part by the TeacherCast Educational Broadcasting Network. [powerpress] STEPHANIE VAUGHAN, HOST: Welcome to Episode 6 of Speaking of NEC—a free, audio podcast series about Necrotizing Enterocolitis. Produced by The Morgan Leary Vaughan Fund, and funded by The Petit Family Foundation, Speaking of NEC is a series of one-on-one conversations with relevant NEC experts—neonatologists, clinicians and researchers—that highlights current prevention, diagnosis, and treatment strategies for NEC, and the search for a cure. For more information about this podcast series or The Morgan Leary Vaughan Fund, visit our website at morgansfund.org. Hello, my name is Stephanie Vaughan. Welcome to the show. I’m the Co-founder and President of The Morgan Leary Vaughan Fund. NEC is the leading cause of Short Bowel Syndrome or Short Gut Syndrome. The amount and location of intestine lost can result in life-long medical complications. Up to now, we’ve discussed NEC and its most common complication from the perspective of the neonatologist or surgeon. However, I feel that it is equally important to share the parent’s perspective. I’m privileged to have one such expert parent as my guest today. Laura Martin is the mom blogger at Joseph at Home, and the Director of Parent Communication and Engagement at Graham’s Foundation. She is also the parent of a fellow surgical NEC survivor. Laura will share with me today her son Joseph’s story of prematurity and survival including his near fatal bout of late-onset NEC and the multitude of life-long complications that have resulted. During our conversation, she will discuss in varying degrees: The extremely premature birth of her twin sons, Joseph and Campbell, at 24 weeks—four months early, and Campbell’s passing at 23 days of life, How Joseph developed late-onset NEC and lost two-thirds of his small intestine, Several of Joseph’s secondary diagnoses including Short Bowel Syndrome, Auditory Neuropathy Spectrum Disorder, Eosinophilic Esophagitis, and multiple food allergies—all resulting from NEC, How hers and her family’s experience with prematurity led to her work at Graham’s Foundation, Her personal blog where she documents her daily life as the parent of a child with special needs. With that in mind, let me introduce my guest today. This is Laura. Hi, how are you? LAURA MARTIN, GUEST: Hey, good. How are you? STEPHANIE: Good. Thank you for joining us. And Laura is a blogger at Joseph at Home and the Director of Parent Communication and Engagement at Graham’s Foundation. So I will let you introduce yourself and talk to me a little bit about your experience with prematurity and Necrotizing Enterocolitis. LAURA: Yeah. Our twin boys were born at 24 weeks gestation on Halloween morning in 2009. It came as a big surprise. It had been a perfectly clean, normal pregnancy. I had just had an appointment three days before, woke up with a dull backache about midnight. And Joseph was born first at 7:41 and his twin brother Campbell at 7:42. No rhyme or reason for the prematurity. It just happened. Campbell, unfortunately lost his battle to prematurity after 23 days of life. He just had a lot of complications from prematurity that he just couldn’t have overcome. Joseph went on to spend 228 days in the neonatal intensive care unit before he came home. He is now five and a half. He just started kindergarten. But it’s been a long journey to get here. We were two days from coming home when he was 5 and a half months old. He was about eight weeks adjusted. We had everything set up at home. We had oxygen. We had G-tube equipment. We had everything. We were ready. His room was ready. All of the clothes were washed. Two days before discharge, we got a call from the NICU that he was gray and bloated. And they were putting him on a ventilator. Let me back up a little bit. A few days prior to that, he had been showing some signs of infection. But nobody really knew what it was. He just had vaccines. He was running a little bit of fever. We contributed it to that. This pushed discharge back a little bit. But just two days before the initial discharge, when they called and said he’s gray and bloated, and they were putting him on a ventilator. You need to get here immediately. Our world kind of turned upside down, because we thought we were two days from home. And here we were not knowing what was going to happen. This was a Saturday, the day before Palm Sunday, 2010. And we didn’t know what was going to happen. The doctors kind of watched him throughout the Saturday, were taking X-rays every few hours. A little bit after lunch that day, one nurse practitioner came and said, his X-ray looks a little bit like NEC. Do you know what that is? And we said, of course, we know what that is. We’ve been in the NICU five and a half months. But he’s eight weeks adjusted. Why would be looking at NEC? We’ve been told once you get to your due date, you cross that off your list of things to worry about. And so, as the day went on, the night went on, it became very evident that he had Necrotizing Enterocolitis. They had seen this one other time in the NICU with a baby this old. He went through Saturday night. Things were not looking good. And on Sunday morning, the surgeon came to us and said, I’m going to take him to the OR. I’m going to open him up. And I’m going to see what happens. We don’t know what we’re going to find. So, on Palm Sunday, 2010, the surgeon took him to the OR. He was gone for several hours and came back halfway through surgery and sat us down in a room and said, here’s what I found. He has 41 centimeters (16 inches) of salvageable intestine. He said, he has 28 centimeters (11 inches) below his stomach, and he has 13 (5 inches) above his colon. Everything else in the middle is completely gangrenous. He said, we can take out the gangrenous intestine. And he’ll have two stomas for a while. Then we’ll go back in and reconnect. But he also looked at us and said, we don’t know what life for him is going to be like. It’s probably going to be very rocky. He may die before the age of two waiting on a liver transplant, because he’s going to be TPN dependent. If you want to close him up and let him go, I’ll respect your wishes. And, of course, we looked at him and said, no way, we’ve gotten this far. We’ve already lost one kid. We’re not doing this again. Go in there. Do what you have to do and save his life. So he went back. He was gone for several hours, came back to us. We saw Joseph, and it was amazing. Even though he had stomas, and he had just lost two thirds of his small intestine, he looked so much better than he had right before he went, because the infection was gone. A few days after that, they went in and placed a central line, because he was, of course, totally TPN dependent. He already had a G-tube before NEC, because of aspiration to his lungs. So we were fortunate with that that he already had the G-tube. But, as the weeks wore on, they were able to slowly decrease TPN, increase feeds, and decided after four weeks, he was ready for intestine reconnect, which was shocking. Nobody expected after four weeks he would be ready for intestine reconnect. So four weeks later, they went in, reconnected the intestines, told us we would probably be in another two to three months. He again amazed everybody—came off TPN very quickly, increased G-tube feeds to the point that they pulled his port before he came home. He never came home with a central line. And four weeks after his reconnect surgery, he came home—after 220 days in the NICU. STEPHANIE: That’s amazing. LAURA: So that’s how NEC came to be. Again, the hospital had seen one case of that. And it had been years and years and years. And people say, are you sure it’s NEC? Are you sure it was NEC? Yes, pathology confirmed that it was NEC. But who knows? Who knows why he had it at five and a half months old. STEPHANIE: Right, right. So just to back up, I’m curious what you knew about NEC before his surgery. You know, you had said that you had been in the NICU for now almost five months. And he reached his due date, so you were crossing it off the list. So I’m just curious, in general terms, what you knew up to that point. LAURA: NEC was one of those things that I remember learning about really early on in our NICU stay. Having 24-week twins, we knew that it was a very rocky journey. They both had less than 50% chance of survival. But my husband and I were the type that we wanted to know everything. We wanted to know what are things we have to look out for. What are things we need to be worried about? What are things that we don’t have to worry about? And it was within the first 24 to 48 hours that the nurse said there’s a thing called Necrotizing Enterocolitis. It doesn’t happen a lot. But it’s one of these things we watch for. We stay on top of it. So we knew about it from the beginning, but we had always been told that once you reach the gestational due date, you didn’t have to worry about it anymore. And while that is so true 99.999% of the time, there is a very small chance that it can happen later. And it’s almost one of those things I wish we had never been told—oh, yeah, you don’t have to worry about it when you hit 40 weeks. Because we did—we had completely crossed it off Right. So we know about it. And we knew what the warning signs were. We knew what to look for. Yet, again, when we look back on it, he had some of these warning signs two to three days before he got really, really sick. But why would—none of us thought it could be NEC. We thought, well, he’s had some GI issues. He has the feeding tube. He’s had his vaccines. It could be any other bug he’s picked up. He’s still in the NICU. But we knew what it was, but it was still just a huge shock that—I mean, he was 13 pounds at that point. He was a big kid, you know, for being in the NICU. STEPHANIE: Right, right. So he came home now, you said, four weeks after he had been reconnected. So talk to me a little bit about, I guess, those first days and first months when he was coming home—you know, again, sort of thinking from the perspective of things that we want to let parents and caregivers know, questions to ask, sort of things to look out for—so anything that you want to talk about, you know, his transition home and getting settled. LAURA: Yeah, he came home on complete continuous feeds via G-tube. So he was on feeds 24 hours a day because, of course, having NEC left him with short bowel syndrome. So he had a lot of dumping episodes, where it was out of control at times. We couldn’t really go anywhere because of the dumping syndrome. As the days went on, the weeks went on, the months went on, that got a little bit better. We were in and out of GI every 8 to 12 weeks, just checking in, making sure he was gaining weight. But a lot of doctors also didn’t really know what to do because he wasn’t TPN dependent. A lot of kids who come home with short bowel syndrome are TPN dependent. But here you have this kid who has only a third of his small intestine, but for the most part he’s tolerating formula well. He’s tolerating G-tube feeds. He’s gaining weight. He’s not going to need a port. Everybody was convinced he would have to have his port put back in. He never did. So that was actually, to be honest, a frustration for the first several years, is finding doctors who understood that, yeah, he is doing well. But he’s also not doing well. He only has a third of his small intestine. His weight gain is very slow. He still has periods of severe pain even today, from school. He still has periods where his belly is very distended. It took some time to find doctors who really wanted to help and say, yes, there really is still a problem here—with a kid who only has a third of his small intestine. That first year that he was home, he was rehospitalized five or six times, most of those with a GI bug. If he got any sort of stomach bug, we were in the hospital, because his body just couldn’t handle it. And so we were back in. Usually it would lead to a respiratory infection. He would spend a good week, 10 days, in the hospital. That was the first year. After that, I quit my job teaching, because we knew he had to stay home. He had to be healthy. And he had to grow. And as he’s gotten bigger, he’s gotten healthier. He has not been in the hospital for a GI bug in 3 and 1/2, 4 years. It’s been awhile. STEPHANIE: Oh, that’s great. LAURA: Yeah, now his body can tolerate it. You know, it’s not pleasant still. But we know what to do. But, as he’s gotten bigger, it’s gotten better. So, yeah, that was the first few years out of the hospital. STEPHANIE: We don’t have nearly the after-effects, but I remember Morgan’s transition home was pretty chaotic. LAURA: Yeah. STEPHANIE: His brother came home after 85 days, and I’m guessing was a much simpler transition, even just holding him in hands-on care and changing diapers. Morgan was very traumatized, I think, from being in the hospital and having the surgery. And we saw a big, big difference between him and his brother. So it was very scary as a parent that even simple things that you have to do was traumatizing to him. LAURA: Right. And then they can’t communicate with you to tell you that. And that’s what was so hard to watch early on, was you knew he was hurting. You knew he was in pain. But I didn’t know what to do to help, you know. So that was hard. Yeah. STEPHANIE: So, I guess, now that he’s getting a little bit older—you said he started kindergarten. That’s great. So how is he doing, I guess, developmentally? And are you seeing anything—you know, secondary diagnoses, I guess, maybe, strictly because of NEC or because of the short bowel or other issues that he’s having? LAURA: Yeah, he has several things that are going on. He did just start kindergarten. He’s in a special needs kindergarten. As a result—well, when he had NEC, he had to receive Gentamicin, which of course is an ototoxic drug. And the surgeon said, if we give this to him, he will probably lose all of his hearing. But if we don’t give this to him, he’s not going to live. Well, of course, it was a no-brainer decision. Before that, he had not passed his newborn hearing screening. But a lot of preemies don’t. So we kind of thought, well, we’ll get out of the NICU, he’ll pass it. He never did. While he was still in the NICU—this was in between NEC and the reconnect surgery—he was diagnosed with Auditory Neuropathy Spectrum Disorder, which is a hearing loss that comes and goes. It’s almost like you’re trying to tune a radio and there’s static. And that was what his hearing was like. So he received his first cochlear implant when he was three—three months after he turned three—because his hearing was rapidly deteriorating in his left ear. Just, not even two weeks ago, he received his second cochlear implant in his right ear. And we always go back to say, his hearing probably would have never been that great. But it’s definitely a lot worse post-NEC, because he had to receive the Gentamicin, the ototoxic drug, in order to kill the bacteria. Some other things that he has—July of 2014, he was diagnosed with Eosinophilic Esophagitis, which has been in question for several years. And we could not get the GI doctor to agree to do an endoscopy. He hated to do the endoscopy, because it meant putting him under sedation. Due to asthma, he didn’t want to do that. But at the same time, we’re battling with this increased amount of food allergies, knowing that that has to be a problem. Finally, they agreed to do the endoscopy. And it was clear that he had Eosinophilic Esophagitis. As a result of that, he has 15 food allergies. I’m happy to list them all if you want. But it includes all of the top 8 plus beef, chicken, rice, potatoes, watermelon, strawberry, pineapple, and a whole slew of medications. And I always tell people asking—it’s hard to know whether he would have had that regardless. Probably not. But having the Short Bowel Syndrome made it worse. He would not have had Short Bowel Syndrome if he didn’t have Necrotizing Enterocolitis. So to me it’s all sort of related. STEPHANIE: Right. Right. There’s definitely a domino effect. LAURA: It’s a domino effect. One thing has led to the other, which has led to the other. So it’s hard to know, some days, if you’re battling GI issues because of Short Bowel Syndrome. Or are you battling GI issues because of the Eosinophilic Esophagitis? Or are the white blood cells growing because he’s eating something he’s allergic to? Is there a new allergy? So some days we really struggle knowing what is what. And then you’ll have periods where he does great. And he’s like a normal kid. He does still have a G-tube. We were told he would lose the G-tube by two. But here we are almost six, and we still have the G-tube. Many days I wish we didn’t. But there are many days we couldn’t do without it. And if he doesn’t feel like eating or he’s in pain, we have the G-tube. And it’s literally been a lifesaver. And if he’s been sick, we can always get fluids in him. I would love to see it go. But I don’t see it going any time in the future. He doesn’t know life without it. He’s had it since he was four months old. To him it’s second nature. He gets his G-tube feeds at school. He gets them at home. They travel with us. But it’s truly a lifesaver for him. But it helps him gain weight. It’s what helps him actually be on the growth chart as a short-bowel kid. Many short-bowel kids, I think, are failure-to-thrive. He has never even been remotely considered failure-to-thrive, which is huge. So, yeah, there’s a lot of complications as a result—what I feel like, had he not had NEC, wouldn’t have led to X, Y, and Z probably. He does have development delays. But a lot of it is that he spent so much time in the hospital. Then there was the hearing issue, but he could not get a cochlear implant because he wasn’t healthy enough to have surgery. So it was just sort of this domino effect, and a spiral of getting out of it, and getting him healthy enough to be able to have surgery. And then you’re trying to catch up. You’re trying to catch up with language, fine motor, gross motor, it all, as well. But the kid we were told would never walk or talk, walked into kindergarten last week. So there’s so many things to be thankful for, and so many things that he’s doing so well on, that those are the days you really have to hold onto on the days he’s feeling really, really bad. You have to know that he’s going to get through it. Life will turn around, and it will get better. It’s just going to be interesting to see as he continues to grow, how much of this is just going to continue to get better. Will there be a decline at some point? We don’t know. Nobody really thought he would even make it to this point. STEPHANIE: Now, I’m just curious, sort of, personally, but also as a fellow parent of a NEC baby, have you talked to him at all about being in the NICU? Has any of that come up yet? I mean, I know he’s still sort of young. But I’m just curious. LAURA: Yeah, he knows he was in the hospital. When we drive by the hospital where he was born, he’ll say, that’s where I was born. That’s where my sister was born. He has seen pictures. He’s seen videos. But I don’t think he quite cognitively wraps his head around it. When he had a cochlear implant put in 10 days ago, it was at the hospital where he had NEC. And so we were able to kind of say, you were in the hospital here when we are a baby. A couple of the nurses stopped by to see him—they took care of you when you were a baby. But the cognition is just not quite there too. He sees his pictures. And he’ll say, I was very sick. And, yes, you were very sick—because he knows that his baby pictures look very different from his sister who was born full term. So he knows. He knows he has a G-tube. She does not. And so he’s starting to really realize those differences. STEPHANIE: Right. Yeah, I don’t think we’ve quite reached that yet. Shaymus deals with asthma. So he gets his puffs and he has, you know, different things. But I don’t think they’ve really lined up and taken notes on, you know, your picture has this. And my picture has that. Or you have this and I have that. But, yeah, sort of, it’ll be interesting to talk to them about it when they start to ask. Like, they just figured out that they’re twins this year. LAURA: Oh, that’s so funny. And my husband and I have talked about it. Gee, at what point in their life are they going to realize everything that they went through as a baby. And all these odds that were stacked against them. And all the times that they shouldn’t have lived. And will they be teenagers? Will they be adults? Will it be when they have their own children? My husband and I talk about this a lot. It’s just going to be interesting to see at what point do they kind of go, oh, wow, yeah, that really was what mom and dad went through and what I went through. It’s just fascinating. STEPHANIE: Yeah. So I would also like to let you talk about the work that you’ve done now because of having preemies and Joseph’s diagnosis. So you are the Director of Parent Communication and Engagement at Graham’s Foundation. So I’m happy to let you plug them away, and also to talk about your blog, which is Joseph at Home. LAURA: Yeah, I'll start with Graham’s Foundation first. I started working for them, gosh, about three and a half years ago in a different capacity. And it was one of those things that I was staying home with Joseph. And I was trying to figure out a way that I could give back to the preemie community. But I knew I couldn’t go into the NICU, because here I was with this child who got sick easily. And I knew that that couldn’t happen. So I started working for Graham’s Foundation, which was such a great outlet to be able to connect with other preemie parents, and sort of share stories—share stories with families who lost their child, with families who went through a long-term NICU stay, families who went through a short-term NICU stay. People will say, well I was only in the NICU 10 days. You were in seven and a half months. One day is one day too long for anybody to be in the NICU. And that’s what I always say to people. Nobody should have to go there. And if I can provide any sort of “it’s going to be OK,” I would love to do that. And so now, I serve as the Director of Parent Communication and Engagement. I do a lot of the writing for the blog for Graham’s Foundation, which is something we’re really trying to get off the ground. And through that, I also serve as a NEC mentor. So if parents come across our website and are looking to talk with someone who has experienced NEC, in no way am I a medical professional but I'm able to say: This is what we experienced. This is what we’re experiencing now. These are some questions you might be able to ask the doctor. And it’s been really nice to connect with people. Also, being five years out, to say, I promise you are going to get through this. When you’re dealing with, all along, doctor’s appointments, and you feel like you’ve got 18,000 things going on in one week. I’m here to tell you that I promise you, it gets better. The appointments get less and less and less. And it’s been so nice to connect with parents, and to offer that support from home, while I can still stay home with my kids and be able to work from home. And then also I have my personal blog, josephathome.com, which I started when I found I was pregnant with twins. I didn’t even share the blog address with anybody. My husband and I thought, oh, this will be great. We’ll update it. We’ll send it to friends and family. So as the pregnancy rocked along, I would sort of update it. I could never send out to anybody. And then when they were born Halloween morning, 2009, at 24 weeks gestation, I knew I didn’t have the energy to tell the same story over and over and over about what was happening. The texts were too long to send the information of what was going on. We had two of them, and I just couldn’t do it. And I was, like, oh, I’ve got this blog. This will be a great way to update people, so the long days of sitting in a hospital, my husband worked on our family tree. And I worked on the blog. That is just what we each sort of did to take our mind off of what was going on. And it was a great way, if somebody asked me a question, I would just say, read the blog. It’s on the blog. Just read the blog. I could share pictures—it just—because I wasn’t really in the mood to talk. We would talk to family, immediate family, and share with them what was going on. But it was just—it was so draining to tell the same story over and over and over. And if I just wanted to get something out there quickly, I would put it up. So, when Joseph came home, and I thought, well, I’ll keep it going. We’ll see what happens. It’ll probably die by the wayside. Well, five and a half years later—it’s almost six years later—it’s still going. And I write a lot now just about, of course, about prematurity, but also raising a special needs child and what that looks like, because we’re in this short-bowel world. We’re in the eosinophilic world. We’re in this hearing-loss world. We’re in the cochlear-implant world. We’re in the vision-impaired world. We’re in the mild cerebral palsy world, food-allergy world. And it’s just been nice to be able to connect with other parents and just to write about our real life and what it’s like. What it’s like. How do we deal with insurance? How do we deal with medical supplies? How do we travel? How do we do this, that, and the other? And it’s just a great outlet, too, just for venting, you know. And if I don’t want to talk about it, I can write about it. So we’ll see where it goes. It’s been a really nice outlet. But it’s also a great way to show Joseph, hey, this is where you started. This is where you are now. And it’s almost like a scrapbook, really, of his entire life, because it started the day he was born, and has everything. I just hit my—over 1,100 entries on it. STEPHANIE: That’s great. I commend you on that. I attempted, when I first came home from the hospital, to start recording things. And, I think, honestly, it was just too hard. I sort of thought to myself, I don’t want to remember this piece of it, so I sort of stopped. And I had scraps of paper where I would write down stats every day. You know, they gained this, and literally had, like, a pile two inches thick, by the time they came home, of daily weights and charts and things. Yeah, I mean, I’ve seen many of your posts. And I think they’re great. And I think it’s a great outlet. And, again, sort of that you’re not alone. And, you know, people are better off than you. People are worse off than you. And everybody’s sort of on their own journey. And I know preemie parents tend to minimize amongst other people, but your struggle is really your struggle and your family’s struggle. And no one should have to struggle. LAURA: No. And that’s what I’ve always said to people is, somebody out there always has something worse going on. Like, on Joseph’s worst day, somebody else has something worse going on. And that’s what I always say to people is, yeah, this is just our life in a little nutshell. But we’re so thankful for what we have. And, again, it could always be worse. You can just turn on the news every day and see that. But if it’s just, you know, if it can help one parent to say—and even sometimes I think people don’t like to say, well, this is not fair. You know what, sometimes it’s not fair. And it’s OK to say that and have a little pity party and then move on. And I enjoy being able to say to people sometimes. STEPHANIE: That’s great. So, I guess, is there anything else that you would want to mention if you had somebody in your position, however many years back, thinking to ask the doctors about, or transitioning home—coming home—how you sought out your specialists, if you’re not getting the answers that you think you should, how you proceeded, any sort of big-sisterly advice. LAURA: Yeah, I know, really. I think the big thing is to trust your instincts if you know that there’s something not right. We’ve gone through our fair share of doctors. Because if I feel like my child’s not getting the care that they need—and any parent would feel this way—I’m not going to settle for mediocre. I’m not going to settle for “he’s going to be fine” when you know in your heart that there’s still a problem. We were having some issues last year around the whole eosinophilic diagnosis. And I felt like we had run out of options where we live. And so I reached out to a doctor eight hours away. And he said, if you’re willing to travel, I’m willing to see him. I said, of course, we’re willing to travel. And so we did. He got us in. And we made the trip. And it was so nice to just connect with somebody who was a specialist in that field of Short Bowel Syndrome, to be able to say, yeah, he’s doing OK. I see that there are some problems. But you’re doing the right thing. And I think that’s become sort of my mantra is, don’t stop until you have the answers that you need. And there may not be answers. But I am not going to rest until I know that we have the answers we need. Like, we’re having some eosinophilic issues, so we’re working on getting into a top eosinophilic clinic. I don’t care how far we have to travel, because that’s what Joseph needs and it’s what’s best for him. And that’s what matters. It matters him feeling good. It matters him being healthy. It matters him growing. And he deserves to have the best life absolutely possible. And that’s what I would tell somebody if you’re just coming home. If you feel like something is not right, keep going and keep going and keep going. Yes, it’s exhausting. I think there are many days I’m asleep before my head even hits the pillow. But you have to do what’s best for your kid, because they can’t do it for themselves. You are their advocate. And that’s one thing that the NICU nurses taught us really, really early on—is you have to advocate for your child. Nobody else is going to do it for you. They can’t do it for themselves. You just have to keep going. And, again, it’s hard. You may hit brick walls here and there. Because goodness knows we’ve had our fair share with doctors. And it’s OK with doctors to speak your mind and say, you know, I don’t think you’re right on this. I think there’s more to it. You may upset them a little bit, because there’s no doubt I’ve upset a few. But it’s OK. It’s OK. Yes, they’re doctors. But they don’t have all the answers. You’re the parent. You live with your child day in and day out. You know their idiosyncrasies. You know what’s right and what’s wrong with them. And I think standing up for yourself is so important. And that’s what I would tell somebody coming out. You can’t be shy when it comes to advocating for your child who has special needs. STEPHANIE: I would agree. Yeah, we’re transitioning through preschool. And the boys were kindergarten eligible this year. But they’re actually being given an extra year of pre-K. And we had sort of that, uh, I’m not sure about this. I’m really not sure about it. I’m really not sure about it. And in the end they saw that—their teachers agreed with us. And the educational system agreed that, yeah, they’re a little bit immature. And probably going to kindergarten isn’t the best idea for them. And they really need the extra year. You know, they’re smart. Yes. But good enough isn’t good enough. We don’t want them to sort of eke by. We want to give them the best opportunities that they can have. So I agree with you wholeheartedly. LAURA: And it’s tough as a parent. I’ve had this conversation with a lot of people. My husband’s a teacher. I’m a teacher also. I’m not teaching right now. Hopefully one day I will be again. But it’s hard as a parent. It’s hard as a parent-teacher to have a child who has special needs and who needs that IEP (Individualized Education Program). It’s tough to sit on that end of the table as a parent. I mean, I’ve sat on the other end of the table as a teacher countless times. But, as a parent, it’s a tough pill to swallow, to say—and we know—I mean, Joseph started kindergarten. But we know full well he may need to repeat kindergarten. And while that’s tough to say, it’s a reality. We hope that he does great. But he may need to repeat. And if that’s what’s best for him, then that’s going to be what’s best for him. It’s tough to sit in an IEP meeting and hear how far behind he is. Or these are all the goals. And up to 21 pages now of his IEP. But it’s what he needs. And it’s what’s best for him. But I always go back to the day when one of our favorite NICU nurses—this was a long time ago—said, you know, one day he’s going to pull out a picture of him with all those tubes and wires and on a ventilator and say, see, mom, you remember this. And I have to think back to that, because, yes, it’s hard. And I kind of want to wallow in self-pity about, oh, I wish he was just in a regular ed class. He shouldn’t even be here. And that’s what I have to remind myself is, we had many days where we weren’t even sure we would see pre-K. And I know you’re the same way. We weren’t even sure he would see kindergarten. But here we are. And let’s just make the most of it. He’s loving every second of it. And that’s what matters. And so, being a preemie parent, as you know, it’s a journey that I never expected. But at the same time, I’m grateful for it, because it’s opened my eyes to a whole new area of life. STEPHANIE: Right. Well, I really appreciate you talking to me. And I think you’ve given some great advice—preemie parents or not, and NECs parents or not—on advocating for your child, and in every facet. So I really appreciate your time. And thank you so much. And if there’s anything else that you want to add, feel free. LAURA: If anyone wants to contact me personally, I’m happy to answer questions if there’s something that anybody wants to know more about. STEPHANIE: So great. Thank you. Thank you so much. LAURA: Thank you. STEPHANIE: For more information about Laura or to follow her blog, visit: josephathome.com. A direct link can also be found in this episode’s show notes. You can also email Laura directly at: laura [at] grahamsfoundation [dot] org. In closing, I’d like to share a few thoughts about today’s conversation with Laura. According to Dr. Besner, with whom I spoke about Short Bowel Syndrome in Episode 1, “if we estimate that a newborn baby has approximately 200 centimeters (78.74 inches) of intestine, they have to be left with at least 40 centimeters (15.75 inches) in order to be able to nourish themselves and get off TPN.” As a result of his bout with NEC, Joseph had only one centimeter (0.4 inches) more remaining. So first, I would like to take a moment to celebrate Joseph’s survival, courage, and strength. And that of his family. Both Joseph and his parents have shown remarkable resiliency while dealing with the daily effects of his bout with NEC. Second, I would like to reiterate that I strongly believe that a cure for NEC, once found, will have a far reaching impact not only on Gastroenterology (the digestive system and its disorders) as a whole, but also all of the patients like Joseph, and families like Laura’s. Show your support for our smallest and most fragile babies, those who have the greatest risk for developing NEC. Show your support for continued research in NEC. And join our effort to raise awareness about, and funds for research in NEC by making a donation to Morgan’s Fund at morgansfund.org/donate. If you’ve had a personal experience with NEC and would like to share your story, or have a question or topic that you’d like to hear addressed on our show, e-mail us at feedback@morgansfund.org. We’d love to hear from you! Copyright © 2015 The Morgan Leary Vaughan Fund, Inc. The opinions expressed in Speaking of NEC: Necrotizing Enterocolitis (the Podcast series) and by The Morgan Leary Vaughan Fund are published for educational and informational purposes only, and are not intended as a diagnosis, treatment or as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis and treatment. Please consult a local physician or other health care professional for your specific health care and/or medical needs or concerns. The Podcast series does not endorse or recommend any commercial products, medical treatments, pharmaceuticals, brand names, processes, or services, or the use of any trade, firm, or corporation name is for the information and education of the viewing public, and the mention of any of the above on the Site does not constitute an endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by The Morgan Leary Vaughan Fund.

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Laura Fitton CEO and Co-founder, OneForty Date: April 25, 2011 NCWIT Entrepreneurial Heroes: Interview with Laura Fitton [musical introduction] Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders, the CEO of NCWIT, the National Center for Women In Information Technology. This is the next interview in a series of interviews we've had with women who have started wonderfully successful tech companies. We're always interested to catch up with our latest entrepreneur and see what she's doing. With me is Larry Nelson, W3W3.com. What's going on at W3W3, Larry? What's the news? Larry Nelson: Well, I'm trying to learn more about Twitter. Other than that, things are going good. We've got a number of business people who tune into the various shows with NCWIT. It's not only business leaders and parents, but also many young women who listen for some great ideas. Lucy: Today we're interviewing someone who is known as the Queen of Twitter, Laura Fitton. I guess that's why you said something about Twitter, isn't it? [laughter] Well, you need to get the number right in your Twitter. Larry: I was just trying to check her out there. Lucy: We're interviewing somebody who is known as the Queen of Twitter, Laura Fitton. Laura Fitton: [laughter] I think Lady Gaga deserves the crown now. Lucy: Lady Gaga! Laura: Once upon a time. Lucy: [laughter] That would be great, maybe we should try to interview Lady Gaga. Any way, Laura is the founder of oneforty.com. Oneforty.com helps people understand Twitter and the exploding ecosystem of applications and services built on it. Oneforty.com has been called the "app store" for Twitter by TechCrunch and others. It's really a place to find awesome tools that really help you use Twitter, not just in ways for yourself but also for your business and so forth. I went and looked at some of the apps there and it just shows how much I need to catch up on the world of Twitter. [laughter] Laura: It's so true. We started out the Consumer App store and quickly learned from our users that they need us to cut through all the noise and provide them with reporting, with solutions to streamline their social business. Oneforty.com is really the place where tool providers, experts, and business leaders are sharing all their advice and lessons learned regarding social business. If your business needs to be getting into social media, this is the place to start. Lucy: Well, Laura, we're really happy you're here today. Maybe you could start off quickly telling us the latest news from oneforty.com. I think it's a place that most of us really need to know about. Laura: Sure! Thank you. In the last four months, we've done a pretty significant pivot, again user-led. We offered people a little thing we called "Toolkits," which were these humble little lists. The idea was, well you're using Twitter online but you're also using it on your phone and a few other places, using a lot of different tools. People came in and said, "Well, here's how to market a car dealership," "Here's how to market a restaurant." Or, "Here's what a realtor needs to know about social media and social business." So we responded to our users like any good startup does. In the last three weeks, we have completely relaunched the site centered around four business personas. All of the directory is still there, but we're really focusing it on connecting people with what they need to streamline and scale social. Lucy: So oneforty.com three weeks ago had a relaunch? That's pretty exciting news. Like I said, the site was just great and I really enjoyed looking at it yesterday. Laura: Thank you so much. The other thing that's new is that I was just on a webinar where I gave a sneak preview of some products that we're just launching that put everything you need for social all in one place-tools, all the workflow, all the guides on what to do next. Kind of training wheels for social engagement, making it really easy. Lucy: So Laura, it's really pretty exciting times at oneforty.com. Thanks very much for telling us all about the new site launch three weeks ago. It's really a great site and we really appreciated taking a look at it earlier this week. One of the things we like to find out from our entrepreneurs is how they first got interested in technology, as well as ask them a follow-up question to that where we ask them to look into their crystal ball regarding which technologies they think are out there that will change things even more? Laura: Awesome. Well I was a kid who was really into science, so I came to technology through science. In fact, my degree is in Environmental Science and Public Policy. I always played around with consumer web technologies, but never got involved in software development or anything like that, quite up until I did the startup. So it was a very odd choice for me, because I'd never seen software built. I knew tons of people in the interactive industry who did build software. I had lots of friends who had invested in it, had worked at startups, had run startups. But I myself had never done it. My connection to startups was that I was kind of a communications consultant. I did a lot of work on helping people to present and speak more effectively. And obviously entrepreneurs are constantly on the hot-seat having to present, so I stayed very close to the startup community but never dove into it myself. Long story short, I moved to Boston in 2006 just in time to have my second kid. They're like 14 or 15 months apart. I've no business network up here and I have to restart that communications consulting firm after nearly two years out of the market. So I get into blogging. I hear about this Twitter thing. I blog how stupid this Twitter thing is, around March 2007. And then two months later, the nickel drops and I say, wait a minute. I can surround myself with successful, interesting people and still be this home-based mom of two kids under two, and yet stay motivated and inspired throughout my workday. And that is exactly what appealed to me about Twitter when Twitter finally did appeal to me. Then I got so emphatic over how so much it was changing my life and how amazing and exciting it was for me that I just ran out there with this blog post called, "Ode to Twitter" on something like August 11, 2007. I mailed it to Guy Kawasaki, who, believe me, had never heard of me. And I just started telling everyone who would listen. To my great luck, Guy Kawasaki did listen and then turned around and trumpeted to the rest of the world. So in this very short time, I went from not even really knowing what the term "web 2.0" means in March 2007 to being profiled by the author of "Naked Conversations," one of the first major books in the space, less than a year later in April 2008. The next month, Wiley is coming to me asking me to write "Twitter for Dummies." I'm relaunching my communications consulting firm as a Twitter for business consulting firm, which was a little insane to do in September 2008. It was still really early on the concept and I'm just incredibly lucky that I staked my career on Twitter and not on one of the competitors like Pounce or Plurk, most of which have dried up or disappeared. I got very excited about a technology, because it made huge personal and professional changes in my life. It's like the classic adage to follow your passion and you can't go wrong. I was still was dragged into it kicking and screaming, though. For four months after having the idea for oneforty.com, I was trying to pawn it off on somebody else. But hey, you go build the startup and I'll advise. I'm smart enough to not do a startup. I know they're kind of hell. I'm in the middle of a divorce and have two very young kids. (They were two and three at the time.) And yet I failed at quitting it. I kept trying to quit it and I kept failing at quitting. So in March 2009 I finally started it up in earnest and it's been two years now. Lucy: You know, your comments kind of lead to our second question. Larry: Boy, I'll say, is that a fact. Here you came into this thing through science. You've been through all the different types of things, you knew you wanted to give it up. But... Lucy: And she tried to not be an entrepreneur. Larry: Yeah, exactly. Laura: I tried so hard. I'd worked for a startup in my 20s and the guy was nuts. [laughter] Laura: I've worked with a lot of entrepreneurs and I love entrepreneurs. You have to be fundamentally out of touch with reality on some level to be an entrepreneur, because otherwise you would know that your idea can't possibly work. You need enough detachment from that to be able to go make it work. Which is great, but boy, it puts you into some weird places, doesn't it? Larry: Boy, I'll say so. What is it about entrepreneurship that makes you tick? Laura: I don't know, because I never thought I was an entrepreneur until this happened. [laughter] I have mad curiosity. I love to see things for myself. One of the people who has been kind enough to mentor me is Tony Hsieh, who is the CEO of Zappos. I won't be able to remember exactly what they were, but he asked me three very simple framing questions when I was kind of whimpering and whimpering and saying that I couldn't possibly be the CEO. It was, "Do you have that natural drive and curiosity?" "Do you want to see things for yourself?" And one other thing. He said, "If you have that, you're good. Everything else, you can learn." Lucy: Zappos is a great company. I just ordered my son four birthday shirts from them. Larry: Oh, all right! [laughter] Laura: That's the [inaudible 9:00] , girl. Tony is a fantastic human being, very generous with what little time he has. Lucy: It sounds like Tony definitely supported you on your way on your career path. Do you have other role models or mentors or other people who influenced you? Laura: I was carried by this net, literally my network. When I first did my angel pitch, there were a few people I knew in the investment community who charitably dialed in to hear it and asked me leading questions to help me understand what I was missing. One of them was Christine Herron, who at the time was with First Round Capital and now is with Intel Capital. She literally had to ask me in my first angel pitch, "Laura, where's the pricing coming from?" And I didn't even know what the word "pricing" meant at that point. [laughter] I was that naive. I tried to answer it. Later another person-again, these were friends because of social networking-Dave McClure was kind enough to take the time to listen to the recording. He asked, "Do you know what Christine was trying to tell you, Laura?" I said candidly, "No." And he explained it to me. So I was carried by this huge network of cheerleaders and supporters and mentors. One of the weird, kind of, "rags-to-riches, Cinderella" aspects of all of this is, I was so completely unknown, and then a year later I was in a book by Seth Godin and I was being mentored by Seth and by Guy Kawasaki and by people whose blogs I'd been reading for a long time and looking up to. And it actually took awhile to come to terms with accepting that. Like I felt guilty. I felt like, why am I getting all this time from all these busy people, there's nothing that special about me, I'm just sort of whatever. And then the way I came to peace with how incredibly generous the world was being with all of this was just like, OK, maybe they see a chance to get something done in the world by helping me get it done. So my responsibility to pay back the debt of all this mentorship is not only to do mentoring when I finally have bandwidth to do it, but to follow through and to make sure I realize the riches I've been given and try to create something with it. So that's been incredibly powerful to keep me going. Lucy: Well, and you know this interview is part of a give back. We have had a lot of people listen to these interviews, we have a social networking campaign with Twitter right now, on this interview series, so we really thank you for being with us and giving some of that advice back. Laura: Thanks. Larry: Well you know with all of the neat things you've done, Laura, what is the toughest thing that you've ever had to do in your career? Laura: That is such a great question. I was going to say that, the days after you run into a wall, because make no illusion, you run into a wall time, time and time again when the start-up [inaudible 11:46] , you fail all the time. Investors flake, co-founders drop out, people you hired don't work out, whatever. It's constantly running into a wall. And the next moment where you have to pick yourself up and dust yourself off, is really painful, it's hard. And just staying calm and.. and one lesson I've learned? Being radically nice to everybody, even if they kind of screwed you over. Because it preserves the relationship and you never know where that relationship leads in the future. That said, I'm very lucky, in that the energy just kept surging back to get through those times. I can't even take ownership of that, it was like being a lightning rod. I would give up, I would go to sleep like, "OK it didn't work, tomorrow I'll figure out something else," and I'd wake up still hell-bent on making it happen. So I was lucky. Lucy: Wow, it's great advice to be radically nice to people, even if you think they screwed you over. [laughs] I mean, it's powerful advice and I think it's advice that you might give to any young person who was thinking about being an entrepreneur. Do you have any other advice that you might tell a young person if they were on this call right now or listening to this interview? Laura: I think it's really important to not discount the most trite, childhood, what-your-mother-tells-you of all, is really be yourself. People told me that. I really struggled growing up, I was not socially well adapted, I was very emotional and kind of out of touch with my colleagues, like had a hard time in elementary school. And everyone was like, "oh just be yourself!" and I'm like "yeah, right." You know, "everybody hates me, I can't be myself." But it is so true that the more I was able to connect with "OK, that is what makes me tick, I'm just going to go with it." I mean, I never set out to think, "I'm going to rave about Twitter for a year and a half and someday it's going to be my job to do that." I just couldn't contain my excitement. So things worked out really well for me. I was very lucky. Larry: You know, with all the things that you've been through, in your childhood, preschool and everything else, what are the personal characteristics that really give you the advantage of being an entrepreneur? Laura: Definitely resilience. Some of the greatest gifts that I've been given in life were times that frankly sucked. I won't trot them all out, but... a couple tough things here and there. A couple really scary things that ended really well, like a premature baby and a very minor stroke, and things like that. But those are huge gifts and I don't think people see them in the moment when they're first happening. Again, I want to fall back to the trite, "whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger," but there is huge, huge, huge silver lining in every negative thing that happens to you. Even if it's just making up a story in your head like "hey, that felt really terrible but I actually just dodged a bullet, because it could have been this," and I look back at the tough times and I am so grateful for every single one of them. I'm sad for the places where something terrible happened and it made other people sad, but I'm so grateful for how much strength they gave me and how much ability to bounce back and how much calm they gave me. I would not give up a single one of them. Lucy: That's just wonderful advice. That's so true of life in general, right? Being able to learn from tough times. Laura: Yeah. Lucy: And really integrate that into how you're looking at situations. Laura: I really do just straight-up cherish some of them. Lucy: Yeah, I think personally I had some in my corporate career that ultimately led to me coming here and doing what we're doing now with MC Wit, and it's just kind of interesting when you look back and thing "gosh, if that hadn't happened I wouldn't be here." Larry: Yep. You bet. Laura: Right! Lucy: It's totally the case. Laura: You know one of the more bizarre things I did was when I was about 26 or 27 I kind of more or less adopted one of my nieces. Who was, you know, "go and live with your aunt for the fun of it," right? So she had a couple things. And my mom was so, like, almost mad at me. She thought I was crazy to do it. But it was huge, I got so much more out of that experience than I put into it. A lot of growing up, a lot of taking responsibility, a lot of learning about how radically permanent love for a child is, because she really was functionally my daughter for three years, when she was 15, 16 and 17. And I remember thinking, "oh how hard can it be?" And wow, it was really hard. You know, being a teenager is tough, and being a teenager who's had a crappy run-in up to there was tough, too. But it took me out of my shell, it made me connect to people in new ways, my career catapulted because I had to get my act together. And I just love her so much, it was just incredible, it taught me a lot. Lucy: Well and that kind of gets to our next question we were talking some about, sometimes people say "oh, you should have balance between your work and your personal life," and how do you bring balance. We've talked to people about it really being an integration, and we're just curious to get your point of view on this issue of work- life balance and how you achieve it? Laura: It's tough and I don't think I'm super good at it. Yeah, not enough. I try to be really present with my kids when I'm not working. I would really love to bike commute more often, because it's about a nine mile, very flat, ride, very easy, takes the same amount of time the train does but forces me to exercise. And I think that's really important in managing the stress. Again, in a twisted way, I'm lucky that I'm divorced, because my ex is a fantastic dad, and he and his fiance are a great family for my girls in the 50 percent of the time I don't have them. I use that 50 percent of the time I don't have them to do all the extremes like, stay up late and work, or travel, or the different things you have to do to do a start-up. And I think that it would be tough if it was an intact marriage, and I didn't have that really clear-cut line of "OK, you are not a mommy right now." Yeah, of course I call them and stuff like that. But I'm not functionally needing to be there for them. And being more present when I am there with them. Larry: My goodness, I must say that you have really done a great deal, you've achieved a lot. What's next for you? What's on the horizon? Larry: You know, I don't think you ever feel like you've achieved a lot. I always feel just like, "oh crap, what's next? Oh my god, we've got to surmount this, we've got to surmount that." It's not like our company's profitable. It's not like we have a billion users. And I think if you asked everybody along wherever they are in the entrepreneurial process, they'd probably talk a lot more about what's yet to come than about what they feel they've achieved. So there's a ton of professional development I want to do, a lot of skills I want to improve upon and learn. I have this little fantasy about joining a team in the future where I'm a relatively junior part and I can really stretch and grow and learn from others who are just the best at what they do. I still don't have very much management experience, I never had an employee before oneforty.com, and so that means it's been really tough for me and for my employees to learn how to manage on the fly, learn all about software on the fly, learn all about business on the fly. And I just feel like I have so much more growing to do. Lucy: Well we have no doubt that oneforty.com is headed towards great success. Laura: Thank you very much. Lucy: We really do thank you and wish you the best of luck. So I want to remind listeners that they can find us at w3w3.com and also mcwit.org and to tell their friends this is a great interview, and to go visit oneforty.com and learn more about how to use Twitter. I know Larry's going there! Larry: I'm going to oneforty.com . Lucy: I saw him underline "Twitter for Dummies." [laughter] Laura: It's tough, right, I can't really give out my book as a gift because it's a bit insulting, isn't it? Thank you so much for the opportunity, such a salute out to, it shouldn't matter, but to the women in technology who are my heroes. Because it is inspiring to see, you know, Padmasree Warrior as the CEO of Cisco, Kara Swisher just tearing it up in tech journalism, Katarina [inaudible 19:01] , one of the first social media founders of a company. Rash [inaudible 19:12] is running slideshare.net, Marissa Meyer who's done phenomenal things at Google. It shouldn't matter whether, you know, I'm inspired by lots of men, too, but it really does mean a lot and I'm just so grateful for all of them and their work. Lucy: Well thank you, and I know people are really going to enjoy this interview. Larry: Yeah, thank you. Laura: Thank you. Lucy: All right, bye Laura. Laura: Take care, bye bye. [music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Laura FittonInterview Summary: Once upon a time known as "Queen" of Twitter, Twitter's own mom-at-home to tech CEO Cinderella Story is CEO/Founder of www.oneforty.com and co-author of Twitter for Dummies. You can read her story in the Boston Globe, on Xconomy.com or watch her Mixergy interview. Release Date: April 25, 2011Interview Subject: Laura FrittonInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 20:12