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Machine Guarding ranks number 9 out of OSHA’s Top 10 Most Frequently Cited Standards, with 1,743 violations in 2019. (https://ehsdailyadvisor.blr.com/2019/09/osha-reveals-latest-top-10-list-of-violations-at-nsc-2019/). According to OSHA’s Machine guarding eTool, there are over 18,000 injuries and 800 deaths each year attributed to worker exposure to unguarded or inadequately guarded machines. Does your workplace have presses, shears, gears, rollers, conveyors, or shafts?  How about mixers, jointers, portable power tools, or power saws?  What do they have in common?  Their moving parts can cause a multitude of serious or life changing injuries like amputations, crushed limbs or digits, and blindness.  And all may fall under the machine guarding standard.  In this episode, Peter speaks with Hartley Webb, MEMIC’s expert on machine guarding, about what machine guarding is, hazards of unguarded machines, and common strategies to control worker exposure.  Listen in as they discuss different types of guards from fixed to interlocking and self-adjusting, as well as devices like light curtains and two hand controls/trips that protect the worker from moving parts. Peter Koch: Hello, listeners. Welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast for today's episode, Machine Guarding. I'm speaking with Hartley Webb, Safety Management Consultant for MEMIC, to better understand the impact machine guarding has on us in the workplace. Hartley has been a safety management consultant with MEMIC for over 25 years, almost since its inception, working with all varieties of businesses. He's a frequent speaker for the Maine and New Hampshire Safety Councils, and Hartley is a CSP and a firefighter in his hometown in northern Maine. Hartley joins us today on the phone. And welcome to the podcast, Hartley. Hartley Webb: My pleasure. Thank you for having me. Peter Koch: Fantastic. So happy to have you here. Before we get into this topic, a little bit of talk about machine guarding. Why don't you tell me a little bit about yourself and your position here with MEMIC? Hartley Webb: Well, I graduated with industrial technology degree and I went to work for heavy industrial account work there for a few years and then was offered a job as safety consultant for heavy construction. Spent a few years in that trade. And then the insurance company that was handling the contractors working with asked me to come to work for them. And that got me into the insurance industry. And I was there for about two years when I was able to take a job with MEMIC back in 1993. And I've been with MEMIC ever since. Peter Koch: Wow. Long, long history and some good work experience to bring you in to MEMIC to be a safety consultant. And certainly so really having that heavy industry experience gives you some insight into machine guarding across the board, whether it be through heavy industry or it could be in the many woodworking shops that we have here in Maine or any of the manufacturing or industrial operations that we have across the England or throughout any of our insureds. Peter Koch: So, we're to talk a little bit about well, a lot about machine guarding today. And what I'd like to know from you is like, what is the definition? Let's start with that. What's the definition of safeguarding or machine guarding? Hartley Webb: Well, the idea behind machines safeguarding is to prevent the accidental contact with some hazard operation associated with a piece of machinery. And there's various types of hazards. We'll probably get into discussing, but the whole goal behind it is to prevent that accidental contact with those hazard areas, either while operating machines, servicing a machine or working in proximity to a machine. Peter Koch: Ok, so accidental contact, obviously, you know, no machine guarding is going to prevent a purposeful contact with a hazard operation of the machine. So accidental contact. Is it designed to have there for normal operations, or for maintenance operations? Does it have to be there all the time? So, is it designed to protect the employee at all times or are there certain times where the machine guard doesn't need to be there? Hartley Webb: The machine safeguarding should be there at all times. Anytime that safeguard is either removed or bypassed, that would bring about the need for controlling of hazardous energy or using alternative measures in order to protect the employee. Once again, put those same hazard points that the guard was put there to begin with. Peter Koch: Nice. I think that's a good framework to start with. So, when we look at a machine, we've got to look at where those hazard areas are, where there could be accidental contact and those should always be guarded at all times. And then if we got to remove it, then another process has to be in place to protect the employee. Perfect. So, what industries or job activities need to be aware of or understand machines safeguarding? Hartley Webb: It's really all industries. It's amazing. The different jobs you could go into where people won't think that there is a need for safeguarding. But I mean, typically we think about the metalworking industry, the woodworking industry. I mean, food processing that I deal a lot with has a lot of need for machine guarding because again, there's a lot of material. I'm sorry, a lot of machinery that's handling product. The printing industry has as a strong need for machines safeguarding course. You have completely different exposures in the agricultural industry, in the forestry industry, and you could even include stuff like even grounds keeping industry where you have a lot of that mobile equipment that still has a lot of requirements for machines safeguarding. But I've helped businesses from, you know, retail, wholesale. I mean, is conveyors in a lot of different businesses. Almost any business has some type of either small power tool or something. It's in the maintenance shop or groundskeepers’ shop or whatever that that could bring about the need for safeguarding. Peter Koch: Nice. So, every industry, like you said. So, it doesn't matter where you're at. Could be a. Mom and pop business. It could be a multi-national or multi-state corporation that has a lot of different functions, but every industry, if you've got a machine that has moving parts, you've got a more than likely you'll have to have some machine guarding on it, whether you have to install it or there comes that way from the manufacturer. Would that be a fair statement? Hartley Webb: Yes. Yes. Correct. Peter Koch: Awesome. Ok. So when we start to look at our machines and especially our older machines, or we found this to actually in the recreation industry, when we're purchasing a piece of equipment from overseas, they don't always have the same safety standards that we do for production. And if you don't know and you know, ask for it, parts may not come guarded to the extent that we expect them to be in the states. So, when we're looking at a piece of machinery, what are we looking for to determine whether or not it needs to be guarded? Hartley Webb: Again, you're gonna be looking for those common hazard areas to start with. You're gonna do like an assessment. Well, the first one we'll be looking at any rotating motion. Are there any shafts? Are there any surfaces at all that may be rotating where you could either get pulled into some type of day nip point like in running net point, which we can talk about more. Is there any reciprocating kind of motions that are taken place where you could have a struck by or a pinch type exposure? Are there any transverse motions that would be something you would find them like chain drives or belt drives where you would have, you know, transverse motion or, you know, surfaces moving in opposite directions. Anytime that happens, typically you will also create a nip point type hazard. We'd be looking for any like points of operation where you would have a cutting action that would be taking place or punching, shearing or bending kind of action where there's the potential for a part of the body or something deep to get caught into that hazard area. Peter Koch: Okay. So, you mentioned rotating parts in running nip points, transverse motion like a chain drive point of operation cutting operations. So, as you're assessing your piece of equipment, first of all, you'd be looking for moving parts. What those moving parts are doing, are they rotating? Are they driven by a sprocket or a socket? And then can you touch those points? Right. So, I guess if you can see it, does it mean that you have to guard it, or do you actually have to be able to contact it? Hartley Webb: Well, no, you don't actually have to come in contact with it because I mean, a lot of those actions that we just spoke about were, you know, hazardous activities that are taking place. But you could also have the potential for falling into walking into or struck by of material, you know, coming off of the machining process due to failure. And there's a lot of equipment that requires just like a debris shield would be required in a lot of pieces of machinery that’s actually classified as a guard. And a simple example, that would be something like a milling machine or a blade where there are rotating motions. Some of those can't be physically guarded on some of the manual type machinery but would have like a barrier debris type a barrier to prevent access, but also a to prevent contact with any debris that may be coming off of the point of operation. Peter Koch: So, in the… Hartley Webb: And also,  we also didn't include heat would be another one. So, if there's any hot surfaces, I mean, that would be a different type of exposure, but that would also bring about the need for, you know, for safety. Peter Koch: So, any hazardous energy that you could be exposed to there, looking for it to be guarded from accidental contact, like you said, from for the employee. OK, so a debris shield that be something to look at. Let's go back to those different types of points and let's talk about those in running neck points. I know that's a question that comes up all the time. Describe for me what that in running nip point is and what are the hazards around those? Hartley Webb: Again, it's probably one of the from my experience, that has been the hazard that has caused them the greatest amount of both severity and frequency of injuries within the industries that I work in, the food products, wholesale warehousing type, where there's conveyors that in running nip point, it can be created in several different areas. But typically, it's like a belt coming in contact with a rotating drive wheel or tension wheel. You're going to find those on a conveyor system. You're going to get those nip points created on any type of conveyor, whether it be a chain conveyor, a belt conveyor or a roller compare to inward moving wheels in opposite directions like you would have on a on a conveyor roller conveyor type thing has that potential. At the end where you could come in, where you get two adjoining. Systems where they could get pulled in. But the most common ones would be a belt and pulley, a conveyor rotating or drive wheel or tension wheel along with the belt. Even in a transverse type of belt, the hazard where again, if part of your clothing party, a body or even a tool or something that you're working with or a piece of the product that's moving on the conveyor that has a possibility or on a machine that has the ability to get caught, which could then inadvertently pull you or injure you if you're standing nearby when that takes place. Those types of hazards would have to be guarded against that occurring. Peter Koch: Ok, I'm gonna ask you here to give me an example. So, can you frame for us and kind of give us a picture of what type of machine would have an in running nip point and kind of describe for where and how that might expose the worker to that energy? Hartley Webb: Yeah, probably the best scenarios would be a chain and sprocket. So, where that chain needs that dry sprocket on the in running portion of that, obviously there's no hazard on the outrunning but that in running would have to have protection. So rather it's a belt pulley or a chain sprocket. Typically, would be found on some type of power transmission or derived system that would have to be guarded or that portion would have to be guarded so that you cannot make contact that would draw you into that hazard area. Peter Koch: Gotcha. Perfect. So that makes sense. So that the section where the sprocket or the drive wheel is coming in contact with the chain or the belt typically really at the bottom as it starts to pull that in where those two pieces come together. That's that in running that point. That's what you're talking about. Hartley Webb: Correct. And there's almost nobody around that has an experience that was like a bicycle where your pant leg got caught onto that in running neck point of that chain and sprocket on your bike. The only difference is when we're dealing with industrial, we have motors behind that energy. So, the rotation doesn't stop. And that's where you could it could have some serious injury from basically continuing to draw in, you know, the clothing or the body part. Peter Koch: Sure. That makes a lot of sense. I think that's a great description. That chain and sprocket for the bicycle and I. Yeah, everybody has written a bike has had that. Has that happened before? But the benefit of the bicycle, like you said, is it will stop if you get too much, too much in there or you just fall off. But the machine's not going to stop it until someone pushes the button or until it reaches its maximum tolerance. OK, so in earning the points, we've talked about those another rotating part. You talked about rotating shafts. So, there's a lot of rotating shafts that are out there. What part of that shaft has to be guarded? And what are the guidelines around what has to be guarded for that rotating shaft? Hartley Webb: Yeah, the if it's a shaft itself. Well, I guess this first we'll talk about the shaft. And so if you take a shaft and connect it to some type of the pulley or a gear or something like that, there's potentially going to be an exposing shaft end like you would find on a like a grinding wheel where you'd have that shaft coming through the center of the wheel. And then on the outside, you would typically have like a hex knot or in that same thing's gonna be in an industrial facility, may or may not have a nut on the end of it. It could just have a set caller on the end of it. It's connected by some type of this that screw with or without maybe a keyway. So that shaft end that has some very specific requirements to it. If it doesn't have any burrs. If it's smooth. If it's less than one half the shaft diameter. What's sticking out of the of the surface that it's uprooting through? So, one half the shaft diameter or less, you can leave it alone and don't have to safeguard it. But if you're going to let more than that stick out, if it has any exposed keyways or if it has a collar with a set screw on it. In that set screw is sticking out so that it might it could come in contact with clothing or be able to catch something that now has to have a guard on it. Hartley Webb: So, the shaft and is one of the areas you'd want to focus on. Anytime you have any type of the shaft on a piece of machinery, then the shaft itself you would want to be taking a look at to see if it's an extremely slow-moving shaft. And I can't remember exactly the rotation. It is in some letters of interpretation that have been documented. But if it's really slow, I mean, slow enough that you could almost sit on the thing and, you know, get off of it without it moving more. I mean, if it's really moving slow, it's not much of a hazard, but it fits. But if it has any rotation to it, it could accidentally catch clothing or catch material or hair or anything like that. It's going to have to have some type. The shield on it. If it has a keyway in it. Now we have a surface. It can easily catch material that has to have a guard on it. So, if your shaft has an exposed keyway, it's gotta be guarded. If it has any rough surface, it has any anything on it. All set callers or anything that could do again could catch clothing, hair or strike you as it rotates. It's going to have to have a guard on it to prevent contact with that hazard. Peter Koch: So, a smooth shaft that's greater than one half the diameter of the shaft itself. That that much is sticking out beyond the machine that is protruding from if it's smooth. No keyway. No castle. No. No set screw. Totally smooth. No damage to it. Does that have to be guarded? Hartley Webb: If it's less than half the shaft diameter total sticking out? No. As far as size and in it in its protrusion. But again, looking at it like you just mentioned, any of those items that could accidentally cause you to get caught on it. Hair, clothing, or even as a struck by if it's coming around, you can catch the body. It's going to have to be safeguarded. So sometimes we'll try to eliminate the need for a safeguard by cutting those shafts back. There’re no exposed keyways, no exposed set screws. So therefore, the shaft can be left unguarded. Peter Koch: Very good. But if it is longer than half the diameter, then it's gonna have to be guarded regardless or if it has any protrusions from it. Those are all good to remember. OK. So, you're looking at are the rotating shaft ends. Those are some good points as a have something that's going to catch the person, their clothing, their hair, a tool or strike someone as it comes around. Then those have to be guarded. The length is something you have to look at. Any you brought up a good point, too, that you don't have to guard it. If you can make it shorter than half the diameter of the shaft itself. So, you can if it's possible to cut it back, you can cut it back and therefore eliminate the need to do that. So, it's another tool in your box as you're thinking about machine guarding. Hartley Webb: Correct. Peter Koch: Excellent. Hartley Webb: And a good example of that would be like a buffer. Put a buffing wheel on like a bench grinder but use a buffing wheel again. The guards could come on the manufacturers guards can come off because of the buffing wheel and you may need the entire surface. So, if you need the entire surface of the wheel, you can justify the removal of the barrier guard. But you still are gonna be required to guard that and that. And you're still going to be required to guard the shaft. If there's an expose shaft between a motor housing and the buffing wheels. So that stumps a lot of companies that just want to have an open buffing wheel. But they still need to either have a smooth, not smooth cap on the end or they're going to have to come up with ways of guarding the end nut along with the drive shaft. Peter Koch: So that's another option there. I was thinking that as you described that I'm thinking about the buffing wheel that I've used in some woodturning shops for two to two polished finished products. And some of them have three or four wheels right on the shaft itself that comes out. And at the end of the shaft is machine. So, the last buffing wheel stops right up against this. So, there's nothing sticking out. However, if there was something, stick it out. You can put a smooth cap on the end of that too, then. Hartley Webb: Correct. Usually that's usually that's a hex nut on that end. And oftentimes my counsel machine, a smooth almost like an acorn nut without any hex fittings on it that will actually get rate over that in fitting or if you're a connection point. And so now that you get a nice smooth shaft, it doesn't stick out more than half the diameter. They can now leave that out there in case they have to use the entire surface of that blast buffing wheel. Peter Koch: Perfect. Without putting a large guard around that to prevent contact. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, very good. We talked about the ends of shafts. When does a shaft itself need to be guarded? Hartley Webb: Typically, is when you have access to it. I mean, again, this is going to be every industry is a little bit different, but a lot of places can guard by location, which we can get into. You know, the methods of safeguarding. But if you can't have access to it, you can't you know, if you tried to reach it, you cannot with the full arm's reach, gain access to it. Then, you know, you can have basically administrative procedures and say, look, you need to go in. That area is going to be basically you'd have to control hazards, energy prior to entering. So, it can be guarded by location. Oftentimes what I see is it's where the operator station may be and they have that again, the potential for that accidental contact where clothing or something that could drape like hair, could drape over that rotating chair. And in that case, you're gonna have to guard or put a guard on to prevent contact. I mean, that's gonna be the same as any revolving surface or rotating motion that we talked about initially as a hazard. In the end, a lot of times in our mind, we're thinking of that horizontal shaft. But if you think about rotating motions, the one that most people can reference would be like a chuck on a drill press that has to be protected against accidental contact of that rotating surface. And that's no different than a chef would be. Peter Koch: Yeah, that makes sense. I was thinking, as you're talking about, that actually a vertical rotating shaft back in my history of employment, working in the recreation industry. We had some large vertical pumps for snowmaking systems and the older pumps had a vertical rotating shaft below the motor that went down to the impeller into the pump pit itself. And that was exposed. So, once it started up, you could easily come in contact with that. And in one of the first places I worked, it wasn't guarded initially. It did get guarded after a while. No one got no one touched it because no one was allowed into that area except the operator during operation. But still, that's the way it came from the manufacturer, or at least that's the way it looked like it came from the manufacturer as a 22-year-old working snow making for the first time. Hartley Webb: Something like that, there's basically the two most common ways would be to put a fixed guard over it so that you don't have access to it. And some of the most common methods that I see in the woodworking industry is and what actually in a lot of industries. But to put a slip collar over it, which is basically like a piece of TVC pipe, one size larger than that rotating shaft, kind of works like the shaft on a PTO for a like a farm tractor. When you're using an implement behind it, you'll put a slip shaft over that. So, in the event that you accidentally come in contact, land on it, your clothes drape over it, that the shaft, if it is rotating, may actually mean the covering like the TVC pipe. You could actually grab that pipe and the pipe would stop at the shaft but continues to spin inside it. You don't have access to that rotating surface. So, a lot of times I'll see those shafts like that just with a simple slip bag placed over it. And know that works effectively as long as it's installed properly. Peter Koch: Excellent. That's another really that's another really good point. So, we've been talking about a number of different ways to guard. So. you talked about slip collars. You talked about a fixed guard. You talked about a smooth cap on the end of a rotating shaft. What are some other ways that you can guard some of the machine guarding hazards that we've talked about so far? Hartley Webb: If you looked at it from a compliance standpoint, the one that they the one that compliance really likes to look is a fixed guard. So, the best guard is an actual fixed, solid fastened down, you know, some type of guard measure that protects you from that hazard area. If so, if you can't put a fixed guard on it, can you put an adjustable? So, an adjustable guard would probably be the next guard. So that's something that maybe manually would have to be adjusted each time a machine or something was used. But again, that would be the next level. So, you've got fixed, you've got adjustable. Then you would go to like self-adjusting. You know, where that would be like in a lot of the machines or saws where you thought of your table saw and you put some of the standard guards at table saws have that's gonna be just self-adjusting guard that just it just itself to the stock as it's being fed in. Obviously, the hazards of that type of guard is if you can continue to, you know, pass a part of your body in there. The guard is going to adjust into whatever is being fed into it will adjust over it. It really just protects you from having that accidental contact coming in from the side or above. But so, you've got fixed, adjustable, self-adjusting, and then the next level would probably be like an interlock type device that would be on some type of a fixed barrier or a door or gate that might be around the hazard area. Hartley Webb: Then you're then at that point you'd probably be looking at devices and without getting into a lot that we can get into some discussion. But basically, there's like six common devices. There’re those present sensing devices that will sense when you're in the area and stop the machine or prevent access. You've got a safety trip device where again, that's going to trip, he just stops the machine or trip some safety measure that will prevent access to the hazard. You have two-hand control. There’re basically two types of that two-hand trip and then two hand control. So, two-hand trip with the you know, you put your hand somewhere, the machines. But then they let you remove your hands and do something else where a two-hand control, you'd have to leave your hands in place the entire time. The machine's functioning and if you remove your hands, the machine stops. Then there's pull back and restraints, which now I've actually got the employee somehow harnessed where each time the machine cycles, it literally pulls their body out in a way from the hazard each time that machine does a hazardous activity at the point of operation. Or you can have restraint. That's basically just putting the person on a on a tether that prevents them from reaching a hazard area. So, if we go to that, it's fixed, adjustable, self-adjusting, interlocked. You can use your devices than the next one would probably be by location. So, in the world of safeguarding, if it's above seven feet from a walking, working surface, it mostly doesn't need to be safeguarded unless for some reason an employee elevates himself. Hartley Webb: Then it would have to be addressed or taken in. And then there's some standards about fast moving belt's large belts and stuff where it still protects in the event of the belt breaking over your head. But pretty much you can guard by location and that's kind of a 7-foot rule. Then obviously you could use stuff like robotics and stuff to remove the human out of the hazard area and auto feed type systems, so the employees aren't involved with the hazardous activities. And then it really goes into administrative where that's just using everything we just discussed. But that's including the necessary signage as an awareness, installing some type of, you know, barrier that you would have to go through before you get to even some of the guarding. And that would also include the employee training, training on what the guards are, what the signs are, what the do’s and don'ts are, along with the machine and the use of the guards and the injustice, some the guards. So, it's kind of a little toes were nine kind of key areas. But if you're doing a guarding assessment or if I was to come out and do a guarding assessment on a machine, I'd be basically looking at how many and which one of those nine items could potentially be used to safeguard that piece of machinery. Peter Koch: Great. There's a lot there. Looking at a piece of machinery from each of those places. But let's talk about some of the benefits of or the drawbacks as well for each of those. So, let's take them kind of in turn. So, the fixed guard you stated the benefit before of the fixed guard is it's fixed. It's in place. It's always there, protects the employee. What's the drawback of having a fixed guard? Hartley Webb: Well, the only drawback would be it's a fixed guard doesn't work for you. So, in other words, you need to have access. Product has to flow under it or through it, then obviously would be in the way. Or if you have to have visibility, sometimes a fixed guard can be an issue. The other thing with a fixed guard is depending on again your operation, you may not be able to install it. Fixed guy. Due to the hazard. It's just it's not physically possible. Example of that might be. See, you've got a conveyor system and that conveyor is two or three hundred feet long, which you actually install a solid fixed guard for the entire length of the now 200-foot-long conveyor. Or do you just guard the high areas of exposure such as the nip point and stuff, but yet you still have a moving belt system. So then they would let you go to another like a trip kind of device where you'd use like a trip wire or something like that, where if you were outside of those in running nip points and stuff that have physical guards on and that's where you've fixed guards would be located. You'd also be using alternative measures in lieu of completely encasing, you know, the piece of machinery so you can't get access to it. Peter Koch: So, the trip the trip wire or the trip guard be in addition to having a fixed guard then, is that what you're saying? Hartley Webb: Correct. Yeah. Because it's interesting because the most commonly not to get into citations is that the most commonly safeguarded violation is the one that says basically a machine needs more often needs more than one type of guard to be safely protected. I can remember exactly how the standard reads, but it's read at the very beginning of the general requirements for machine guards. And in you know, people sometimes just stop at implementing one guard when they really haven't addressed all the hazards of the machine. And it comes back to that point that the entire machine needs to be assessed. And what are there all the potential hazards associated with that given machine. So again, it will oftentimes need more than just one. But the other common one that a lot of accounts that I work with, a fixed guard tends to build up and accumulate debris. So, if you have like conveyor systems or machinery that has the ability to produce a lot of debris. Then those fixed cards can become a hazard because they lead to more maintenance type activities for having to do cleaning, which now is going to expose you to hazardous energy and elevated issues and, you know, elevated fall exposures. So, companies won't go with a fixed guard. They'll tend to go with area guards or barriers that going to keep you away. So, they tend to guard more by location and then allow the machine to run so that it doesn't have as much downtime for cleaning. Peter Koch: That makes sense. And so, a couple of points that I wanted to highlight from what you just said was that the entire machine has to be assessed and not just from what moving parts it has, but what moving parts does it have, and where will the employees or where might the employees get access to it during the course of normal operations? So, if they have to walk behind it, to walk around it, move above it. Do something with it, even if it's not in the point of operation area for the machine. If, say, the back of a powered press or something. You have access to it because you've got people walking back and forth. That area might need to be guarded just as well. So, in your assessment, you're not just looking at where the operator is, but you're assessing the entire machine. I thought that was a really good point that you brought up there. Hartley Webb: Correct. And probably almost anybody listening because either you don't care if it's a push mower or more or riding more. But everybody is familiar with like a riding lawn more. Well, if you looked at the guarding that's on that you have guarding on your power transmission. So that drive system that built pulley that has to be guarded. You've got your point of operation. You're cutting deck. The guides that are required on that to keep debris and stuff from being thrown out from the sides, along with the discharge chute in the stickers that are on that lawnmower are riding more from the manufacturer. Those are administrative controls. That signage is part of that guiding requirement. And that's something I often see in the agricultural industry where they'll have older tractors that they've repainted them or they've just from where. And those stickers that are on the rear fenders of the tractor, on the operating controls of the farm tractors that may even be attached to the PTO guarding mechanisms, those stickers have to be on there. They're part of the manufacturer's requirement for the safe use of that guard, and of the tractor. So that becomes part of that guarding that information of what are the hazard points and what to stay away from. Along with the actual physical fixed or adjustable God's. Peter Koch: Perfect. Perfect. So those stickers or the information parts are a part of their machine guarding requirement to giving instructions. Awesome! Hartley Webb: Correct. Peter Koch: Let's talk a little bit then about the pros and cons of those adjustable or self-adjustable guards. You talked a little bit about that. How? There's a couple of cons for the Self-adjusting Guards. But give us a little more insight into the pros and cons of using an adjustable or a self-adjusting guard. Hartley Webb: Well, the self-adjusting, that's just the maintenance criteria. So that has to basically be maintained so that it's functional and operating in the way that would that it was designed to be adjustable. Good is where I typically would see or we do see a lot of exposure areas because again, that comes back under the training of the employee, which is, you know, one of those administrative requirements. It's also part of the company's safeguarding effort. But there is a guard opening scale. So, it pretty much represents the human arm. So when you're adjusting any of those adjustable guards, they should be adjusted in a manner that in the event that your hand was to pass under that guard, you cannot make contact with that point of operation, with that hazard activity is taking place. So, you know, you can have that opening can become larger and larger the more you come away from the hazard. And once again, it represents really it represents the human hand. I think it goes down as far as a quarter inch. So any type of an adjustable, if you want to think of like a table saw or a band saw, which probably most people have at home or in the work, is that guard can't be graded in a quarter inch from the largest portion of the stock feature that you're feeding into the machine. So, you would want to be adjusting that all the time and keeping that within tolerance of the part. So, again, it comes back to a human requirement and knowledge to keep adjusting that. That's one of the biggest downfalls of that adjustability, is it doesn't get adjusted as much as it probably should. Peter Koch: Yes, you kind of put it in an either in an average spot, if you adjust it for the largest piece that you're going to have and then you start feeding. Pieces into the machine and you don't adjust it back down. Therefore, exposing the employee to that, that the hazard of the rotating parts of the moving parts inside the machine, that makes sense. So, comebacks that the human factor is the challenge with the adjustable guard. Sure. So, what about interlocks? I know quite a few of the machines that I've worked with before. You open the door. The machine stops. Or you know, you can't operate the machine again until the interlock is closed. Are there any there? There's a really great benefit for that. Like if there is a door that is enclosing all the rotator part, rotating parts or moving parts like a CNC machine. Another piece of machinery, you might have a window where you can see into the operation itself, but in order to access, you have to open the door and then the machine won’t operate until it's close. Great control, great guard. But what are the challenges that we might have with an interlock system as a guard? Hartley Webb: Well, they're allowed to be used. The biggest thing is, again, maintaining and making sure that they're actually functioning. Unfortunately, they have the ability to be overridden by the employee often times or, you know, shouldn't be, but they can they can make it so that the interlock is no longer functioning, either by turning it off, by putting some type of the mechanism in it that bypasses it. Obviously, that would create a very unsafe situation because now you wouldn't have a secured guard. And basically, it's just it's taking a fixed guard, making it easily removable or allowed to open. The other thing that it brings about the need for, which would be another conversation for another time. But again, once you open that guard, even though it may be interlocked and shut down or stop some functioning part of the machine or the hazard area, you still have to deal with the control of hazardous energy. If what you're about to do is classified as a service or maintenance activity, which typically would be the reason you would have to go beyond that, that guard. So, it's there, too, as a protection measure. But going beyond the interlock brings about the need for control of hazardous energy. At that point, we'd have to say probably ninety nine percent of the time. Peter Koch: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Makes a lot of sense. So, we're gonna take a quick break and we will continue with some more discussion with Hartley on the back side. So, we'll see in a moment. *********************************************** Peter Koch: Welcome back to the Safety Experts podcast by minute. Today, we're talking with Hartley Webb, safety management consultant at MEMIC. So, let's jump in with some more questions. Part of the break, Hartley, we were talking about the different types of machine guards and they're pros and cons and we talked about fixed, adjustable, self-adjusting and interlocks and now we're onto those devices. So why don't you talk to us about the devices and what the pros and cons are for those devices? Hartley Webb: Ok. Well, the first one would be the first one that comes to mind would be like a presence sensing type device. And there's a lot of different ones. Some of them there might be a sense mat on the floor. So, a few that can be wired either way say that the they want you that you want the operator to stand in a certain area and not leave that area so that they don't become injured. You can actually put a man on the floor that would be interlocked back to the piece of machinery. But you can have one or two ways. Either somebody steps onto the mat trying to enter into an area that would that would activate safety devices, or you can have it so that the employee literally has the standard or be station in one area in in order for the machine to function. So that's one type of present sensing devices. Other ones would be the most typical one. Probably people are familiar with would be like curtains or some type of barrier interlock where it senses some part of the body entering into an area. And when it does so, once again, it either sets off alarms it could it could stop the piece of machinery. It all depends on what the machine is and how close you are to the hazard area at that point in time. But those are good examples of present sensing some of the downfalls, short sides of those. Once again, they have to be maintained. So, people have to test them. They have to make sure that they're being serviced properly aligned properly, are given on what type of device that they're actually using. Peter Koch: How often... let me interrupt you for just a second, Hartley, how often do they have to be tested and evaluated, those present sensing devices? Hartley Webb: Most of it's going to come back. When I usually do that, I usually look for the what the manufacturer's requirements are for like a light curtain. So, in some of that may also be based on how dirty the environment may be. That may affect the sensors or the photo portion of the of the sensors. So usually I go right to the manufacturers literature to find out what they have. I believe OSHA’s got some requirements for like curtains. And I think that's only when used on presses that they do have some requirements. And I want to I want to say that's like a, it's like a pre-check where you'll just verify that the system's working based on its light mechanisms, where it's got a red or green to show you when it's been tripped. As far as maintenance, maintaining them and keeping them within the tolerance that’s required, that will go back in manufacturer's literature and following that requirement. Peter Koch: Ok, good. And all those can be adjusted based on the machinery. How far away? How big the thing that you want to identify is as it comes into the presence of whatever you're trying to, whatever you're sensing. So, whether it be a light curtain or the mat, all those tolerances can be set. So that can be tuned pretty well for really good safety or in good safety and efficient operation as well. So, you've really got to know what the manufacturer says about how to adjust it, when to test it and how it's supposed to function. Good. Good points there. Thank you. So, from there, from the other devices you had mentioned before, you had mentioned safety trips to hand controls, to hand trips, pull back restraints. So, what are some pros and cons of those different devices? Hartley Webb: I shouldn't say I've been fortunate of, I’ve been unfortunate, but I've been able to do some accident investigations where they used a safety trip. And once again, the safety trip just it's a two-hand trip. And sometimes you can actually have a one-hand trip if you want to use buttons. So that basically controls either one or both hands. So, you're able to control where the operator’s hands are at the time a piece of machinery starts. The difference between two-hand trip and two-hand control that I spoke about would be the control they would have to leave their hands on those two pressure points doing the entire cycle of the machine. Usually that would be used in the event that they could take a handoff and reach into the machine and still be injured. So sometimes you'll see just a control use just to like to shut a gate. Once the gate closes, you're able to let off the control and the machine can cycle. Other types of trips we had mentioned earlier would be your trip wires. Sometimes those run along the length of something like a conveyor. I also have a lot of industry where they'll use them to surround a piece of machinery such as a roll press, say, in the metal industry where you could be anywhere around that machine, 360 degrees. And if things are going if things aren't going right or there's a hazard anywhere, then you can quickly basically the trip wires down by your foot and allows you to quickly step on the wire on like a roll press that would basically stop that machine immediately or like on a conveyor, you would be able to pull it. So, it has a lot of various is a lot of different type trip devices. It can put out there. It can be out there, but it and it just allow some allow actually another one that's very common is device where you'll see it in a plastic or in the rubber industry, sometimes in the textile industry where if you accidentally get caught in a machine because you have to have the operation has to be open to gain access to the product. But if something happened, then you were to fall forward or you get caught on a product and got pulled towards a machine, you would come in contact with some type of either a swinging overhead bar or there'd be a bar crossed in front of you. That when you make contact with that, it would stop the machine prior to entering. Probably the one that most people would be familiar with that aren't into some of those industries would be if anybody is looked at like a woodchipper, they have one of those bars that would be a trip device where if you get caught on a tree limb and it started pulling you into the chipper, you would just reach up a party of body and hit that bar by the feet you and that would stop the feed mechanism. Peter Koch: So, it's a change your pants bar, pretty much because you're saying later, if your heart is going a million miles a minute, because you're just moments away from being incorporated into whatever product you have. Holy cow. Yeah. Peter Koch: So, question I have on those trip wires, though, those by themselves, are they considered an effective guard, a trip wire by itself, or does that have to be used in conjunction with another type of guard? Because it seems to be more of an emergency stop device that I would have to physically trip that. Like I'd have to reach out, I have to touch it. I'd have to kick it, but I could step over it or I could move around it. I don't actually have to touch it. So, can you use it trip wire or as I guess as you stop wire or something like that as an effective guard or would it be used with something else? Hartley Webb: I've almost never seen it used by itself. I can't think of any machinery where it would be the sole type of safeguarding. Usually it is used along with like an emergency stop button that would probably be at the operators control area. So that would be the primary emergency stop. And in the event that the operator walked away from the control panel. He's got access to that trip wire. That's what you would typically see on like if I go back to that, that roll pressed for steel. Right. But it's you know, if you'll start if you think about it on conveyers, which is probably where it's most predominantly used. Again, I go back to that statement that, you know, more than one method of safeguarding. And if you take here, you know, you take a conveyor. There’re all sorts of houses associated with that that need to be guarded. So, you it's going to have to usually be used along with fake guards, adjustable guards, interlock guards. I mean, every machine's different, but I've never seen it used just solely by itself. Peter Koch: So, the bottom line that makes a lot of sense. The bottom line is the guard that you have must protect the person from accidental contact of rotating parts or moving parts. So, it must be it could be a single type of guard or more than likely because of the complexity of the machinery. It might be more than one guard. And that example that you used of the riding lawnmower and the number of different guards that it has that has multiple different guards, has it just adjustable guards, has fixed guards and administrative controls on that to help protect the operator. So that's a really good description. I think a good rule of thumb going forward. Don't just think that one guard is going to do the trick. Really do the assessment and evaluate how can that employee common accidental contact with the moving parts that we've identified. In your travels around and again, working for MEMIC for so many years and then being in heavy industry prior to that? Hartley, in your experience. What's the most overlooked guarding exposure that you see? Hartley Webb: I have a lot of heavy industrial accounts that I tend to service, but it's not necessarily always heavy industrial, but the conveyor which we've talked about is for the most. Serious accidents that I've had to investigate from the frequency associated with people getting caught or injured when there's conveyors in the area. But I mean, I have conveyers in my warehouses to move freight around. I have conveyers in my food processing areas again to move product around. I mean, there's conveyers in the printing industry. There’re conveyers in the agricultural industry again. I mean, I don't really think there's not I don't think there's an industry out there are many that doesn't somewhere have, you know, a conveyor type exposure unless you're maybe the service sector. But I even have those in some of the back storerooms and stuff for a receiving area. So, it happens that conveyor. There's just so many things on that conveyor that have to be addressed as part of that. You know that machine safeguarding assessment. Peter Koch: That makes a lot of sense. I'm thinking as you're scrolling through all those different industries and I'm looking at some of the industries that I work with tend to be on the softer side of the service, retail, hospitality, recreation. And even there are guards looked back at the house from a food service standpoint. And you have multiple pieces of equipment that might have a conveyor like an automated pizza oven will have a conveyor to bring raw product from one side to cook product on the other side as it moves through. There're other conveyor systems that might move pizza or move dough from one area to another or through a platen machine to flatten it out in the recreation industry. What's becoming very popular to move people from point A to point B are carpets, magic carpets. So, think about an escalator without any steps. Right. So, it's just a basically a conveyor belt for humans. But you still have to maintain it. And there's been numerous injuries for people getting caught either trying to maintain and clear it from snow or debris or they're actually underneath it. And it starts up so a little different from a control of hazardous energy. That's the lockout tagout thing when you're in a maintenance process. But they still have to be guarded. So, you're right, they're all there all over the place. So, don't forget the conveyor. Hartley Webb: And you're going to have a, yeah, I kind of have a list of, you know, some items that if I'm looking at a conveyor, the first thing I'm looking for is the things you just talked about of those big ones, that that that's what I'm looking for, those fixed guards. So those nip points, those rotating surfaces, where can those where do those areas exist? Typically, on either the beginning of the end of the conveyor, we'll get that in running nip point of some stationary surface in the conveyor or can I get into the conveyor in between the two transverse motions where I can come in contact with those wheels or the drive wheels? You know, the ease or the return mechanisms. So those can be protected by fixed guards. If they do have some emergency stop mechanism, I usually ask that that has some type of a requirement for resetting before any type of resuming of the conveyor operation. So, if somebody does hit an emergency stop, just basically pulling that stop button back out will not restart that equipment. It's going to take some type of manual resetting to occur. I'm usually looking at protection from walkways. You mentioned that earlier. If somebody is going to walk alongside the conveyor, that's when we would look at the trip wires or you use some type of fixed guard if it's a possibility. How about those people that pass under a conveyor or have to pass over a conveyor? Again, if it's over the conveyor now, we would have the need for the fall protection or the railing system to keep access from landing on the conveyor. If you're going to pass under a conveyor, what type of overhead protection exists? Warning signs that we've talked about in the past, it would be on all of those hazard areas of the conveyor. So, is there signage there that explains the hazard? It signifies that in running nip point or whatever there has, it might be warning light stuff's going to either restart, start back up or is in operation. So, people realize it has that potential for either automatic restarts or manual restarts. If there's an opening through walls and floors in a building, you know, then that also has to be, you know, if you have access to those areas, can those create hazards? Do those need to be to be safeguarded either by location with some type of a barrier or whatever may be required? Guarding of star buttons for a compare. So, you don't get an accidental starting. So, it is either the star buttons have covers or the start buttons are recessed or some type of a sequential series of buttons that have to take place in order for a conveyor to start up. It's not just by pushing one single button where you can get accidental start up of the system. So those would be some of the things that I would look at along with his capability of being locked out during servicing or it's to be shut down, what's the process for overloading or jamming and that kind of stuff? So those are just a few of the simple things are the key things that I tend to look for any anytime I see a conveyor in any of those industries. Peter Koch: Well, I was just trying to keep a list of all those things that you are going to look for. And I couldn't keep up. So, if I'm looking after I listen to this podcast, then I'm looking back out on my factory floor and I'm thinking about, gosh, look at all those machines. We haven't done a machine guarding assessment or maybe we have, but we've changed some of the tooling. We've changed to the machines or the configuration of our shop. What are some resources that we can draw from and what are the standards that drive the requirements for machine guarding? So, let's take standards for. So where can someone find the standards and what are some of those standards that drive the requirements for machine guarding and then we'll talk resources. Hartley Webb: The best place to go to the standards would be to the most up to date would be to your ANSI standards and stuff. But OSHA has a lot of great publications that that really help out with machine guarding and they've really broken it down. You talked about like conveyers, which I just went over. There's so many different exposures on conveyers. Those are actually specifically addressed in the general industry standards, in the construction industry standards. And I believe they're even individually addressed in the marine standards. But you have it in general, in industry if you wanted to go to the OSHA regulations. Subpart O in your 1910 and your general industry regulations. Subpart O will cover all of your standards for machine guarding in the general industry. And they're very specific. It's very well broken down where they have a they have a section just dealing with the general requirements and then they get specific into all your woodworking tools, your abrasive tools, you know, your steel presses, forging machines and power transmission. So if you're actually looking at a power transmission type exposure, where it goes back into what we talk about, shafts, pulleys, we didn't talk about open flywheels, but if you have an open flywheel, is it a belt running through or even a sprocket maybe part or a chain maybe passing around? Again, you have to protect those openings, or those exposures and you've got a very specific standard so you can go right to the standard and that defines exactly what you can do. Hartley Webb: Your construction standards, Subpart I. So, in your general industry. Subpart O. and your construction is subpart I. Actually, addresses them with the tools, handheld and power tools and it gets into all again, it talks about almost the same standards for your woodworking, metalworking, power transmission, that kind of stuff. And if you looked at your Marine standard, your 1915, it's also found under this subpart H, but that's also your tools and related equipment and that gets into abrasive and again, some of the tools most commonly found in that industry. So, Subpart O, general industry, Subpart I construction and subpart H for your marine industry. Peter Koch: Oh, fantastic. So, it's a good place to start to look at the compliance side of things. And I give you the what and the where for. So talk to me a little bit about the different resources that might be available to someone who would want to do a machine guarding assessment or to put a program or a plan in place at their business or work and they turn to for some resources. Hartley Webb: Once again, I tell most of my accounts or businesses that I'll come in contact with that OSHA has some great resources and they have a they have a lot of what they call E tools. And if you can go right to their Web site and look for E tools and they have them for all of the woodworking and all of the metal working. And they also have a general some general ones that get into your power transmission and conveyor type systems in their great assessment. They're really easy to read. They're in bullet format. You can go right down through. And it kind of describes exactly what the guarding requirements are for those specific pieces of equipment. And they've just taken their standard. But they've actually they just made it easier to read, easier to understand. And some say you can almost use it as an assessment form when looking at a piece of machinery. Peter Koch: Perfect. So, the OSHA standards for looking at compliance and then the E tools for helping you with the different assessments that that you might need to do. Awesome. Any other resources? Hartley Webb: I mean, if you're looking at somebody, ask me about a specific machine and that's a machine that has been fabricated. I usually will want them to address or I'll go look at the manufacturers' literature for that machine. So, what does the manufacturer say is required? And you can when you started, you kind of mentioned that early on. That's a good reference point, but it is a lot of documentation by OSHA that is stated. The fact that the manufacturer of that equipment isn't responsible to install all the necessary safeguards. It's the employer of the person who purchases that equipment that has to identify is there an existing hazard? You know, you begin using this piece of equipment that I may need to add additional safeguards to in a great example of that is like a bandsaw. You can go out tomorrow and buy a vertical bandsaw. Yeah, vertical bandsaw. Almost anywhere being bandsaw to cut wood with. And there's no guarding requirements on that bandsaw does not meet the standard requirements. So you would basically you go in to the  standard for a vertical bandsaw and it would describe the you need to have a guard on that machine that prohibits access to any part of the blade other than the part that's being used to cut the product. So, but all of those bandsaws are fabricated so that you have access to a lot of the blade above the point of operation. And that has to be protected by the employer prior to putting it out into the workplace. And again, that's so unless it has some ventilation system or lighting system attached to it does not offer that safety mechanism. So, the employer would be responsible to add that as soon as they bought the machine. Peter Koch: Sure, that's a great point. So, with you have a particular tool, don't rely on the manufacturer to provide everything because like you said, the OSHA standard says the manufacturer is not responsible. The employer is. Do your own assessment, go back to the OSHA standards. Look at subpart H, I or O depending on the industry. Check out the E tools and then I mean you can even reference I know that you specifically Hartley, have developed some resources for MEMIC that have helped our policyholders do machine guarding assessments and address some of the challenges that they have. So where might they find some of those things that MEMIC? Hartley Webb: I believe all of the forms that you're talking about are on our resource library within the safety director. So, if you go into our website, references safety director and then go to the resource library. We were actually involved in a NIOSH study. MEMIC was we have some great resources for assessing metal work machinery, but some of that does cross over. I mean, a bandsaw is a bandsaw, but it's a very, very detailed. And those go into the NIOSH requirements for machine guarding, which are much more extensive than what you would find in your OSHA regulations. Peter Koch: Sure. But that could give you a good resource, especially when you might have a more complex machine or you're really looking at something that kind of fits the OSHA standard but might not fit the OSHA standard. And you're looking for or you have a very dangerous operation and you want to make sure that you're protecting your employees, that the NIOSH places is certainly a place to go. And yeah, you're right, we we did participate in that study and there are a lot of good resources out there. So safety director is a good place to stop into. Hartley Webb: Those resources that we have available for them for the metal working. Like I said, they're detailed, but that's not only looking at fishing guarding, that's also looking at electrical, looking at lighting, looking at personal protective equipment, employee placement. It does a full hazard assessment of the machine, not just the guarding portion. Does they all time to work together with the clothing that the employees wearing, debris protection, access to hazard point. So, there's a there's a lot more being assessed than just the physical hazards and the requirements regarding. Peter Koch: Yeah, awesome resource for a general hazard assessment for machines, especially those metalworking machines. Well, thanks a lot for sharing all this with us. But we're about at the end of our MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. And I really appreciate that you've shared all this expertise with us. Hartley, but before we close, I've got one final question for you, because this is a safety podcast. Why is safety important to you? Why is it important to you, Hartley? Hartley Webb: Nobody out. It wants to get hurt or should be getting hurt. And it's easy. I've made it a point in my life to enjoy what I do, be a consultant and try to do the best I can to try to prevent people out there from being injured in the workplace. And it's in their best interest. It's a passion of mine. It's just something that I don't think is ever going to be a driving force. I'm gonna to, you know, give up anytime soon and, um, you know, I just I look forward to it every day. But it it's all about, you know, employees being able to go home to spend time with their families and, you know, enjoy their lives without being at risk while they're in the workplace. Peter Koch: That's awesome. That moral component of safety is a is a huge part. I can see it working. Having worked with you for the last 12, 19, almost 19 years now for me, that I can definitely see it in the way you apply yourself to the work that you do. So fantastic. I appreciate that, Harley. Thanks a lot. Peter Koch: So, again, thanks for joining us today. Thanks for joining us today. And to all of our listeners out there. We've been talking with Hartley Webb, safety management consultant with MEMIC, about machine guarding on the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. If you have any questions for Hartley or like to hear more about our particular topic on our podcast. Email us at podcast@MEMIC.com. Also, check out our show notes that MEMIC.com/podcast where you can find links to resources for a deeper dive into this topic. Check out our website, MEMIC.com/podcast where you can find the podcast archive and find all of the ones that we've recorded prior to today. While you're there, sign up for our safety net blog so you never miss out on any articles or safety related news updates. And if you haven't done so already, I'd really appreciate it if you took a minute to review us on Stitcher i-Tunes or whichever's podcast service you find us on. And if you've already done that, I thank you very much because it helps us out a lot to spread the word. Please consider sharing the show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Kotch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good but using what you learned is even better. People, Ideas and Articles referenced in the Podcast MEMIC – https://www.memic.com/ Peter Koch – https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-consultants/peter-koch Hartley Webb – https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-consultants/hartley-webb OSHA – https://www.osha.gov/ ANSI – https://www.ansi.org/ OSHA E Tools – https://www.osha.gov/dts/osta/oshasoft/ NIOSH – https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/index.htm  

Jennifer Fugo joins Tahnee on the women's series today. Jennifer is a clinical nutritionist who specialises in healing chronic skin conditions and digestive issues. Through her work, Jennifer's ultimate goal is to resolve the health issues that standard medicine loves to medicate away. With experience and wisdom taken from her own personal health journey, Jennifer knows first hand that what we eat matters. In her clinical practice Jennifer uses a toolbox that includes food, micronutrient supplements, herbs, lifestyle changes, and stress management to help her patients reclaim their own good health.     Tahnee and Jen discuss: Jen's personal health history and what inspired her to start Skinterrupt and The Healthy Skin Show podcast. The underlying disharmonies responsible for most chronic skin conditions. Healing skin conditions using a multidimensional approach. There's no one size fits all cure here folks! The importance of addressing an individual's liver function and detoxification pathways. Grief and trauma as catalysts for dis-ease within the body. How these factors can impact the health of the organs and body as a whole.  Health sovereignty and non judgement in the healing journey. The dangers of elimination diets, especially when they are not personalised. The importance of having adequate stomach acid not only for digestion but for the prevention of pathogenic invasion. Using caution when applying coconut oil topically to the skin. The concept of "leaky skin".   Who is Jen Fugo? Jennifer Fugo, MS, CNS is a clinical nutritionist empowering women who’ve been failed by conventional medicine to beat chronic skin and unending gut challenges. Because she’s overcome a long history of gut issues and eczema, Jennifer has empathy and insight to help her clients discover missing pieces and create doable integrative plans. Simply put, Jennifer believes that YOU deserve better. That’s why she launched www.Skinterrupt.com -- to interrupt the failed conversation about chronic skin problems with helpful alternatives that you aren’t being told about.  Jennifer has a Master’s degree in Human Nutrition from the University of Bridgeport and is a Certified Nutrition Specialist. Jennifer's work has been featured on Dr. Oz, Reuters, Yahoo!, CNN, and many podcasts and summits. Jennifer is an Amazon best-selling author and the host of the Healthy Skin Show.   Resources: Jen's Website Jen's Facebook  Jen's Pinterest Jen's Instagram Jen's Youtube Skininterupt Website Healthy Skin Show Podcast Jen's Stomach Acid Guide    Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We’d also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher :)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Tahnee: (00:00) Hi, Jennifer. Welcome to the SuperFeast podcast. We're so excited to have you. Mason and I have been looking at all your work and the beautiful Jolene introduced us to you. So, we're very grateful. She's an amazing friend of SuperFeast. I know you're joining us from the States today. And I just wondered if you want us to introduce yourself to our audience, and give them a little brief rundown of what you do, what you specialise, that kind of thing.   Jennifer: (00:24) Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. It was such an honor. I was so flattered when I got the invitation. I was like, me? But I work as a clinical nutritionist in the United States. And I came to this whole world of wellness and nutrition because I had gotten sick about 10, 11 years ago and started out more with like gut issues, and learned about different trigger foods and things like that. And then, eventually I got a handle on that.   Jennifer: (00:55) But, when I decided to go back to school to get my master's degree in nutrition, I started developing eczema. And so, that's where I ended up now with this whole little world that I've created for people that are really struggling with these like chronic skin rash conditions, eczema, psoriasis, rosacea, dandruff, tinea versicolor, that kind of stuff.   Tahnee: (01:19) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Jennifer: (01:21) To help support them on this journey, because there's not a lot of great information out there. And like I really even struggled when I was going the quote unquote natural route to find things online that really worked. It even seemed like most of the things you read online are kind of managing things, just like the steroid creams and everything else. And I wanted to take a step back and go wait, in this day and age we should have some more options. So, could we possibly dig into some of these conditions and find better, more natural options. But, at the same time, not shame people around if they choose or require some medication on their journey. Because I think everybody's personal journey is different. And I believe that each person should have the freedom and the comfort to make their own decisions.   Jennifer: (02:10) And so, I started a website called Skinterrupt and The Healthy Skin Show podcast in order to educate, and empower, and connect people who were looking for other answers. And, yeah. So, that's what I do.   Tahnee: (02:24) And here you are. Yeah, your podcast is really awesome. I listened to a few episodes. And just the scope of what you cover and how in depth it goes, like I think what you said earlier about that lack of good quality information online. Like so many people, I think, they go down the rabbit hole and they read all the things. And a lot of other people, a friend of ours called them like two minute noodle shamans, they may be people that have had their own really brief, personal experience with something, and then they become a kind of an expert, and they start promoting different ways of managing things.   Tahnee: (02:56) And there is always such a bias toward the one way or the kind of... this is kind of the thing that's going to fix it. You know? And I think, when we're looking at these kind of chronic skin conditions, it's usually a compounding kind of collection of factors that have led someone to be erupting in the first place. And the solutions are always multi-dimensional, or that's certainly been the experience we've had. I wonder if that's true of the people you work with, you know? If that's-   Jennifer: (03:22) Yeah. It really is, and that's a great question. So, one thing that's really interesting and, I think, is important for people who are listening to this to know is that, while it's really important for certain details of what type of condition you have, like eczema has some differentiators compared to rosacea, or psoriasis, or dandruff. But generally speaking, what I found through my research so far is that there are 16 root causes that contribute to these inflammatory, chronic skin rash conditions.   Jennifer: (03:58) And with all the salves and... I don't know. There's so many things online that people will say, oh, take this, try that. A lot of it doesn't work. And I also have have a deep concern, which I hope we can touch on today, about the dangers of some of the elimination diets that are out there for these skin rash conditions. But you have to look at the body as a whole and pick it apart and say, okay. Well, is there a gut issue? Usually there is of some sort, whether it's gut function, or microbiome imbalance, that usually overrides and overloads essentially the liver. So, you need to manage that and think about, how do I best support my liver? You need to look at your hormones, your thyroid. And so, putting together this piece helps us figure out a way forward that it doesn't cure or heal conditions, but it really helps look at the body as this out of balance puzzle, and how do we figure out how to put the pieces together in a way that makes more sense. It takes time.   Jennifer: (05:03) I think, if people are looking for like the super highway route, like your alternative routes are probably not going to work for you because you'll be very disappointed. I mean, I think it's important to be honest about that. But, if you're like, hey, I've tried steroid creams. I've tried a lot of these other salves. And I just don't see results. And I'm not comfortable continuing doing this kind of stuff, or I want to try some other things while I'm doing some conventional medicine things, there is a really great pathway forward.   Jennifer: (05:33) And, as I was saying, like people get hung up on like, but I have eczema, but I have psoriasis. There's a lot of overlap in the way that you can decipher the problem. There may be little nuances to each condition that, at least that I have found from a clinical nutrition standpoint, like for example, psoriasis tends to have like these really overt fatty liver issues where you don't usually see that with eczema and a lot of the other skin issues. For some reason those are connected.   Tahnee: (06:03) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Jennifer: (06:04) And so, you just knowing those little pieces really helps us find a way forward. So, there's not one formula. There's not one magic, diet, or food, or supplement.   Tahnee: (06:15) Or herb or anything. Yeah.   Jennifer: (06:16) Right. Exactly. But, if you take into account the 16 different facets and say, okay, what are my like three to maybe five unique points where I'm really out of balance?   Tahnee: (06:28) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Jennifer: (06:28) And how do I most efficiently get those into balance? You can find, at least from my experience, a lot of improvement.   Tahnee: (06:37) Mm-hmm (affirmative). I think I saw those 16 on your website. Do you list them somewhere?   Jennifer: (06:41) Yes.   Tahnee: (06:41) Yeah.   Jennifer: (06:41) We actually have a great podcast that lists them all out. The reason is that... I mean, it's a lot. It's not anything that's necessarily different from functional medicine, right?   Tahnee: (06:51) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Jennifer: (06:51) I mean, there's a lot of things that we love to share with people that are incredibly helpful. But, as I said, I mean you've got environmental toxins as a potential root cause. There are genetic root causes as well, which aren't necessarily quite as important to like decipher and figure out. But, just to like go through the list real quick, you've got diet and food reactions. So, it could be allergies, food sensitivities, or food intolerances, all three of which are actually different, although we tend to use them interchangeably, but they're not. Microbiome dysbiosis could happen at the skin as well as in the gut. Environmental allergies, nutritional deficiencies, auto-immunity and auto inflammation, gut dysfunction, which would include something like low stomach acid. You had your gallbladder removed, or your pancreas isn't putting out enough enzymes, or your motility is either moving too fast so you have diarrhea or you're constipated so things are moving too slowly.   Jennifer: (07:54) And then, we have liver detoxification challenges, past traumas, thyroid issues, drug reactions, mitochondrial dysfunction, hormone imbalance, unmanaged stress, and heavy metals. So, heavy metals are one of those little pieces where you can't start there. That is something further down the road. You need to look at some of the other pieces first. And that's always important too, to know that there is a hierarchy by which you deal with these things. And typically, especially if any practitioners are listening, I just beg you, please, like you have to start supporting that person's liver detoxification first.   Tahnee: (08:34) Yep.   Jennifer: (08:35) You can't like... it doesn't mean you go do a liver detox. It actually means you need to support the liver pathways that requires specific nutrients in order to run correctly. So, it's a much different perspective. And, if you don't do that, if you try to address like the gut or other things, you'll find that that person will become very uncomfortable and find that they'll flare.   Tahnee: (08:58) Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. Because, I mean, I think people don't realise the different stages of liver pathway detoxification, mobiliing toxins at different levels. And, if they're not functioning well, it's just going to end up back in the blood. And, especially if you start to detox all the parts of the body, say you start to improve stomach function and the body starts to-   Jennifer: (09:16) Yep.   Tahnee: (09:17) There's... I mean, this is from Chinese Medicine. Like this is all like this relationship between the Spleen, which is the digestion, and the liver. And what happens is when, especially when digestion starts to suffer, then you'll start to see that the Liver has to kind of overwork to try and reassess everything because it's like stagnation. And I always use the analogy of like composting. If you imagine that there is rotting kind of food going on in the gut. If the acid isn't great, there's going to be food particles that are too large. It's going to create issues with the gut microbiome. This is all going to impact the Liver. And then, if it Liver as not functioning well, the colon is not functioning well, you're going to end up with all that stuff back out. And it usually comes out through the skin. Right? So-   Jennifer: (09:54) Absolutely.   Tahnee: (09:55) You can-   Jennifer: (09:56) Absolutely. And I'm glad that you actually mentioned all of that because it's one of the biggest ahas. It was a big aha for me like as a clinical nutritionist. I really always initially thought, oh, well it's all gut. You just fix the gut, you rebalance the gut, and you support healthy gut flora and you're good. And it's not. That's what's been most surprising. And I fortunately have some really fantastic mentors who I've talked to about that, that I have this concern that a lot of times people are like, oh, you have gut issues. Let's deal with the gut issues. And I'm like, with skin, if you don't support those liver pathways first, you're going to have major problems.   Tahnee: (10:37) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Jennifer: (10:37) It's just inevitable. And I've seen it in clients and I've seen it in other individuals who come to me where the physician or functional doctor was like, oh, let's do a gut protocol and they got super flared and couldn't get rid of it.   Tahnee: (10:52) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Jennifer: (10:52) And it's because the liver gets backed up. And you're right. If there is this impediment, essentially not enough nutrients to clear out what has passed through phase one detox and it's just hanging out in this waiting room growing and growing and growing because phase two doesn't have enough nutrients to support the removal of those toxins or the processing of them to make them more water soluble, you've got a problem.   Tahnee: (11:17) Yeah. And I think what's interesting when you look at that as well, which is what you touched on with the thyroid, and hormones, and stuff, is like, again, from a Chinese perspective, that's going to impact the Kidneys.   Jennifer: (11:26) Exactly.   Tahnee: (11:26) So, you're going to end up with a hormone imbalance dysfunction. And this is all kind of playing out at once. And often, you'll see people go, well I've got this, and I've got this, and I've got this, and they get really fixated on the label. And if you can, like you said, draw back a little bit and just go, okay, well what's really happening at a systemic level of the body.   Tahnee: (11:44) Another super interesting idea, and I'm sure this is probably something you've seen as well, is, from Chinese Medicine, if there is extra energy in the body, if all of the organs are demanding healing energy, if they're constantly backed up and not working well, then the skin is going to be one of the first places where infections and things can set in because it loses its protection. And I've seen that so many times with people that come to us is that they're just tapped out. They're exhausted. They've got no reserves.   Jennifer: (12:12) Exactly.   Tahnee: (12:12) They're just getting enough sleep to kind of stay okay. And there's no extra in there to like really be like, okay, now we can repair. Now we can get things going better again. So, it's just this huge scope of potential things to address.   Jennifer: (12:31) Exactly. Exactly. And it is complex. I mean, skin is... People want to think that skin is like fast. Like, oh, well I've only had this for two months. And I'm like, I don't know how long you have the issues underneath. But, by the time the skin issue happened, there was probably a lot more happening under the surface that either you didn't quite notice or you ignored. I mean, look, to be fair, most people don't tune into symptoms. They're like, oh, well I have a headache all the time. I take Tylenol every day. I have this, I'll take this medicine. You go to the doctors and they're like, I don't know, these aren't connected. You're just stressed. And so, we're really conditioned in many respects to blow off the warning signs. They're subtle, but there are warning signs that had been there for quite a while.   Jennifer: (13:20) And, as I start to dig through a client's history, I discover like, oh, were you... One question I ask, which is really helpful a lot is, have you traveled to any third world countries? Because that can be a major red flag for infections, parasites, all sorts of problems. And inevitably, some of my worst cases, most complicated cases, they had been in India for a year, or they worked in Africa, or something, they went to Haiti. They had gotten sick while they were there or had some sort of incident with their health. And that's not something a dermatologist... and I saw a dermatologist for my eczema, and I never got asked. And I don't think any of my clients I've ever gotten asked, have you ever gotten really sick in a third world country or as a result of coming back?   Jennifer: (14:12) But also too, you can pick up bugs and not end up violently ill. And that's the other piece that is confusing for people to say, well but I was but I didn't get sick. And I'm like, you know what? It doesn't matter. You can have gut infections and have no gut symptoms.   Tahnee: (14:29) And things really in the liver and stuff that just don't come out until you're really weak.   Jennifer: (14:34) Yep.   Tahnee: (14:35) So, yeah. So, when you're talking with people, obviously consultations would be part of what you do. And I think, if people are listening, and they have these kinds of things, and they're not feeling like they're being heard by their practitioners, are there things that they can offer as information or kind of, if you were in your shoes again, going to see a dermatologist again for the first time?   Jennifer: (14:56) Yeah.   Tahnee: (14:57) Like what are the things that are really... what should people be paying attention to, taking notes of just to help to start to hone in on what might be the kind of specific thing? I know that's a really broad question, but I'd just be curious.   Jennifer: (15:08) No. It's a good question. It's a really good question. The first thing I would say is, think about what was going on at least six months to a year before the skin rashes appeared.   Tahnee: (15:20) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Jennifer: (15:20) That's a really important thing because a lot of times we don't think about what happened. It doesn't necessarily have to be the thing that happened the day before. It could have been something that happened six months, eight months, ten months prior. And also, did you have a lot of exposure to antibiotics, through your life, not just around that time? Did you have, especially for women, were you on birth control pills for a long period of time because they do have an antibiotic like action, according to some research, on the gut. And I'm sure Dr. Brighton talked about that at length and the action on the gut and the depletion of nutrients.   Jennifer: (16:03) And so, those are two really big red flags. But also, make a list of every single symptom that you have, no matter how small, like don't listen to that voice in your head that is echoed by the doctor. And I love doctors. My dad is a doctor and a surgeon, so I'm not demeaning doctors. But how many times have you gone, well, but I have a little bit of a headache. I have a little of this. And they're like, oh yeah. It's just nothing. It's just stress.   Tahnee: (16:26) Yep.   Jennifer: (16:27) I want you to tune into all of those symptoms. If you're snappy with your husband last minute, or you find that you're just like crying over everything, or you're waking up every day and you feel like you've lost motivation. So, it can be mental, emotional, and physical symptoms that you're experiencing. And make a complete list. And it doesn't have to be... I know that people are like, but it's not my skin. I get it. Like it's totally fine.   Jennifer: (16:57) I would also say, you could write down what type of skin condition you've been diagnosed with. And then, write out all the symptoms that you experience. Because, in my experience working with clients, the symptoms aren't always the same. Someone could have psoriasis and have extreme itching where someone else has psoriasis and they don't.   Tahnee: (17:15) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Jennifer: (17:16) And there's definitely differentiators within eczema as well. So, you want to write down all of the symptoms so you get clearer on a picture of what's going on. And, if there are certain things that trigger your skin issues, write those out so that by the time you sit down with someone, if you're really unsure of which way to go, you aren't like rambling on and unsure of how to answer those questions. You're like, actually here's my list. Here's all the things, my history of things, my incidents, my stress, think about traumas and triggers. Like I lived in New York city on 9/11. That's one for me.   Jennifer: (17:55) So, we have to think about all of these things because they add up to a point where your body is trying to do its best to support you, but it gets to a point where it can no longer juggle all the balls. And some balls start to drop. And eventually we drop enough balls that it's still trying, it's trying it's hardest, but it can't operate optimally anymore because there's too many things going on that have worked against it. So, that's where we have to say, okay. What has been dropped? Why have they been dropped, and how can we start to replete the system and get nutrition in? How can we reduce stress by rebalancing biochemical pathways with appropriate nutrients, and food, and lifestyle changes that really make a difference?   Tahnee: (18:39) I think that's probably what people get so much out of holistic medicine versus conventional medicine is that idea of going individual. Yes, you might have symptoms that present as a case, but we look at you as a unique person with your own set of unique kind of contributing factors.   Jennifer: (18:56) Exactly.   Tahnee: (18:56) And I think that's just such a powerful... I think, as a person going to see a practitioner, to remember that, that you get to decide who you work with. And, if someone's not seeing you as a whole person, you can go and find someone who is willing to look at you that way. But I think it's such a, like you said, the two things that really stood out for me there are like how just stress, like we dismiss it. It's a huge thing that impacts us so greatly. And so many of us just accept that we're stressed. And it's something I'm just still like, why? Like why do we let this happen to ourselves? Excuse me.   Tahnee: (19:35) And then, the 9/11 thing like, which must have been incredibly traumatic for you, and these shocks, these deep traumas that we can experience in our lives, divorce, even just miscarriage like these things that could happen. Like you say, I always see that there is... Not always, but very often see this like strong emotional link to chronic kind of things that people just can't seem to shift. Is that something you see a lot in your practice as well and in clinic?   Jennifer: (20:03) I do. I do. I can't actually address that within my scope of practice.   Tahnee: (20:10) Of course. Yeah.   Jennifer: (20:10) So, I would always refer them to someone who can. But I think some of the deepest, hardest work is that trauma piece. Because one, we think we're just stuck with it. And sometimes you just don't want to address it. So, there's this lack of wanting to step up and deal with it because it's hard. It's a lot.   Tahnee: (20:31) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Jennifer: (20:33) Sometimes we can also end up feeling uncomfortable emotions that we don't want to feel. We've packed them away and put them in the attic for a reason because we don't want to deal with them. But underneath it causes a lot of stress. And there's interesting correlations, for example, between like scleroderma, which is an autoimmune skin condition, and lupus, and trauma. There's like real research that shows us that there are links between these skin issues.   Tahnee: (21:04) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Jennifer: (21:05) I will share this story quickly. I really did not believe in the trauma and health issues connection. And so, I was going to interview a guest, this was a few years ago, about this. And I was like going online, researching, and Googling. And I'm like, I'm going to prove her wrong. I proved myself wrong.   Tahnee: (21:25) Yeah. Doesn't that happen all the time.   Jennifer: (21:28) I was like, oh, like there's actually like a lot of research from major institutions that talk about this. I'm wrong. Like my judgmental... I'm always skeptical when I hear things and I was wrong. So, I always share that because I totally understand. Some people think, wow, that sounds really woo woo. It's not woo woo. There's research. There's legit, big studies that have looked at this and have found that it can be a really big contributing factor.   Jennifer: (21:58) And it's not just with autoimmunity. There was one article that I had read, the writer had experienced horrific eczema. And turned out, as they dug deeper, her father had died suddenly having a procedure in the hospital when she was ten. And that was a major source of trauma. And we also have to realize that sometimes traumas can rewrite this script that we tell ourselves like of who we are and how we show up in the world. And it can take a lot of work. It's our individual responsibility to undo those scripts and question, are they true?   Jennifer: (22:37) I was in a very unhealthy relationship for a number of years in my early twenties. And I walked away from that relationship literally telling people, I'm too stupid to do whatever. Like I was always too stupid or too dumb because I was told that so long that I had started to repeat it myself.   Tahnee: (22:57) Internalised it, yeah.   Jennifer: (22:57) And we don't realize that, when people call you ugly, when people tell you you're stupid, we start to believe that what they're saying is right. And we internalise it. It does impact our stress levels and our self worth. So, I would write down all of those really significant events because they are important.   Tahnee: (23:17) Well, that's... I mean, I'm a yoga teacher. And Chinese Medicine is really big on this stuff as well, this idea that an emotion can actually injure an organ system. And so, when we would look at something like a grief trauma, that would injure the Lung system, which controls the skin. And you could imagine that that would have a very big impact on the ability of the skin to maintain its integrity and its health. And what you're saying about rewriting our stories, that's what yoga is telling us to do. It's saying, everything you think you are is a construct. And it's getting a bit deep, but this idea that we can become the authors of our own story, I think, is really powerful in the healing journey because you'll be told by everybody what you have and what to do, and so much of it, I think, can just become overwhelming. And you can just get stuck.   Tahnee: (24:04) That's something we see a lot is people that are really stuck in the story of what they have. And it defines who they are. And it defines how they see the world, and relate to the world, and how they interact with it. And they are looking for that thing that's just going to make that thing go away. And it's like, I don't think that's going to happen. It has to come from this internal process of self exploration. And for sure you can have practitioners assist and support, but I don't think it's something that's just a, like you said before, a magic pill or a single program.   Tahnee: (24:33) And I think, when we create... It's something I see a lot in the wellness industry and it's what I really appreciated about you is, you didn't define yourself as an eczema sufferer. You had a story about your own process, I think so people can empathize and you can empathize with people. But you haven't become like the eczema doctor. Like I think people get very... They can get really stuck on their story.   Jennifer: (24:56) Yeah.   Tahnee: (24:56) And they become the lupus person, or the this, or the that. And I'm like, well what about when you're you. Like what about we start to create a bigger story for ourselves?   Jennifer: (25:05) Yeah.   Tahnee: (25:05) Yeah.   Jennifer: (25:06) I also want to share too, one of the issues that I find in just folks in this community, men and women, is that you go to the doctors and they go and say, do you have anything else? Like this steroid cream, it keeps coming back. I don't know what to do. I'm using steroid cream. Well, we have these stronger drugs. I was not comfortable with those. And then, the response, it's almost like a knee jerk reaction is, well, you're just going to have to learn to live with this. This is life. Like you're just going to have to... That, to me, it's one of the most... It made me feel like I just wanted to curl up and die inside, because there was no hope. And when, you don't have hope, what do you have?   Tahnee: (25:55) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Jennifer: (25:57) And so, a lot of times people will say, well, I've tried everything. And I'm like, well, have you actually tried everything? Like, I know that you've probably tried all the recommendations your doctor told you. And maybe just maybe you've like dabbled your toes in the quote unquote alternative or holistic stuff. But have you really looked into all of the different alternatives that there are out there? Because there is a lot of information. The problem is that it's not making its way down into the doctor's office.   Jennifer: (26:27) And there's a couple of reasons why that happens. I don't know how exactly it is in Australia, but in the United States there's something called a standard of care. And, when doctors deviate from that standard of care, which is steroid creams, and then biologic drgus, and immunosuppressants, when they deviate from that, they can get their medical license taken away from them. So, it's not necessarily that they're trying to withhold things from you, but they also are held to a very specific standard that does not include like using topical B12 to potentially help with the rashes, even though there's some good research out there for it. And so, there's that.   Jennifer: (27:13) And then, the other piece to this is that, you have to be willing to take a step outside of your comfort zone and start looking for other opportunities for improving the quality of your life as a whole, as opposed to just like trying the same thing over, and over, and over again expecting a different result.   Tahnee: (27:33) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Jennifer: (27:34) And so, we have people, at least in my community, that are dealing with something called topical steroid withdrawal or red skin syndrome, because it's where their skin becomes addicted to the steroid creams.   Tahnee: (27:46) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Jennifer: (27:46) And they end up with a full body flair, even though they may not have used steroid creams in a full body sense.   Tahnee: (27:53) A long time.   Jennifer: (27:53) They've used them for many, many years. And that illness... like in the United States, it's not really recognized all that well. I don't even know if there's an actual diagnosis for it. I find that more people are aware of it in England and Britain, but not so much in the U.S. And you have these like horrific symptoms that go along with it. And so, I think, in providing people more options and making people more aware, they realise that there is a lot more out there that they can do, and try, and explore that they really didn't hear about.   Jennifer: (28:29) Also too, our system is based around, okay, you have these symptoms and they fit this drug. So, we'll give you this drug to mask those symptoms and turn them off. And that's fine. Look, if that's what someone wants to do, more power to you. Like that's your choice. I believe everyone should have the choice to make the decision of what's right for them. But, if you want a different choice, if you want to explore the things that you're not hearing, that's what I was looking for. That's where I was like, I need to share what I'm finding with the world because nobody is talking about this stuff. And I want to have an honest conversation about it because my skin, your skin, everybody's skin deserves better than what we're being told is like, oh, you just have like a steroid cream deficiency and that's it. And that's not the case.   Tahnee: (29:18) Well, it's a funny one because like I had an acne thing in my late twenties when I came off the pill. And I literally had to change like... I think when I say change my life, it was a lot to do with how I related to myself. But I was in a similar situation to you. Like I'd had a relationship that went on for a very long time that he was a good guy, but it wasn't a good relationship for me. And the shock of that kind of change was huge for me because I'd been with him since I was a teenager. So, I'd never lived on my own or done any of the grown up things.   Tahnee: (29:56) And then, I was just so busy and stressed. I was running a yoga studio and working ridiculous hours. And I remember having this kind of moment where I was like, the only way that this is going to go anywhere, it's got nothing to do with how many cleanses, and baths, and detoxes, and pills, and supplements, and doctors, and like whatever. It's, if I just start to take care of myself, then I'm like... And it was all an inner journey for me really. Like there were lots of external things like herbs really helped me, Chinese Medicine really helped me, meditation really helped me. But, if I really look back at me then to me now, like I wasn't taking care of myself. I was kind of, I think, expecting the care to come from somewhere else, like from some kind of external source.   Tahnee: (30:41) And I think that's such a common theme is that, I really believe, if we could sort of empower ourselves to go to a practitioner with our own strength and not just hand over our power, and to really always come back to, well, what can I do to honor myself in this process? And I think that's just such a powerful place to start. And that's probably my biggest struggle with Western Medicine, especially, and some alternative practitioners, is that it's sort of like, oh, I've got the answer. I've got the solution. I'm going to give it to you, and then you're going to go and do it. And I just don't feel like that's a particularly hopeful motto. I think it sort of takes the person out of their own healing journey and makes them a victim of something. And it's something that I... Yeah. I think that's what I'm hearing when I listen to you, is that that's just not a very constructive approach, I suppose.   Jennifer: (31:34) I don't think so.   Tahnee: (31:35) Yeah.   Jennifer: (31:37) I will say that there are some natural things that I had tried that were amazing and were incredible help to me. And there's other natural things that-   Tahnee: (31:47) Same.   Jennifer: (31:48) I'm like, that's not the right way for me to go. And that's okay.   Tahnee: (31:52) Yeah.   Jennifer: (31:53) My big thing was always, I don't want that person, wherever they are on their journey, to feel judged. And I think that there's so much judgment, especially the internal judgment we have of ourselves and our own choices or our failure to do something. We are our worst judge, and jury, and executioner by far. And I was like, you know what? I want people to... they'll figure out what resonates with them. They'll figure out which way to go. I want to provide them avenues that I never got told. And it's been a really amazing journey to see so many people just... They're like, oh my gosh, for the first time ever I feel seen and heard, or the fact that they could listen to a doctor, they could listen to a dietician, or they could listen to just a regular person who is actually experiencing eczema, or psoriasis. Or I've got one woman who's going to be coming on the show who has topical steroid withdrawal and is talking about that at length.   Tahnee: (32:56) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Jennifer: (32:56) And no one one is discussing this stuff. And I want to give people a voice. And our community is oftentimes told you just have to deal with it. You just have to live with it. And that's a really great way to shut down a person's, as you said, their power in the conversation. That's not to say-   Tahnee: (33:14) Yeah. We call it sovereignty.   Jennifer: (33:14) Yeah.   Tahnee: (33:15) This idea that we're sovereign and responsible for our own health first, so.   Jennifer: (33:18) Yeah. I mean, I would say that one of the biggest pieces... I agree with you, is that self care begins with the actions you take in recognising that you are important, that you are not an inconvenience, and that you need to be one of the top priorities in your list. Like I would say at least top three, you have to be in there. And no one is going to magically swoop in and address these things for you. And I totally understand, for someone who is listening, if they're like, but this isn't fair. Why did this happen to me? Look at it, instead of feeling like a victim, as an opportunity, an opportunity to get in a better relationship or develop a better relationship with your body so that you are listening, you are more in tune with what's happening.   Jennifer: (34:07) I have a great amount of gratitude for the skin issues, for the gut issues that I experienced, for all of my health issues because it changed my life. It gave me purpose. And it helped me see that taking care of myself is way more important than going out to parties and doing all of the things of like keeping up with the Joneses and whatnot. I like going to bed at ten o'clock at night.   Tahnee: (34:34) Yeah.   Jennifer: (34:34) Like that's my choice. I don't want to be up until late. Because how I feel is so much more important than the things in life, the small talk, and let's talk about the weather, and just the nonsense. It sort of became like this BS detector. I was like, okay, this does not serve me. This doesn't help and support my life. So, now I'm going to tune in. I'm going to focus on that. And I'm going to take steps every day. And it's okay if I mess up. It's okay if I make a mistake today. I'm going to get up the next day and I'm going to do better.   Jennifer: (35:13) And that's really what mistakes are. I just want to encourage people to, if you feel like you've made mistakes, or you screw up, or you can't do it perfectly, okay. Your journey is not meant to be a straight line. It's a real squiggly mess. And any person who has been on it knows that, and when it comes to skin, you may feel like you took five steps forward and then how to flare and took three steps back.   Tahnee: (35:34) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Jennifer: (35:34) But that three steps back may be an important clue or something, whatever it may be, on your journey to help you get even further. So, mindset is really critical here. But I just want to share too, I think it's important before we close too, to just mention that you can't rely entirely on diet to fix skin issues, especially when they're really chronic. A lot of people have gotten on these really, really tiny diets. I had one client that ate five things every single day. That's it. Just the same five things. Convinced, after looking online and being told, oh, take out this food, take out that food. Look at Susie's journey. She took out this food and she got better. And so, I should do what Susie did.   Tahnee: (36:20) Yep.   Jennifer: (36:20) Food, oftentimes for people who have been sick for a really long time, some people get lucky, a few people get lucky, but that's not everyone. And so, I just want to encourage people to be very cautious with elimination diets. Because a lot of times we're eliminating a diversity of food out of our diet that our gut microbiome requires. We require nutrients coming from all different sources. We require colorful foods. We need different fibers for our gut bugs. We need diversity. And to whittle your diet down thinking... Like I mean, ask yourself a question. Like once you get to the tiny diet, let's just say that the skin issues go away, then what?   Tahnee: (37:03) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Jennifer: (37:04) What do you do? Well, like you're-   Tahnee: (37:08) [crosstalk 00:37:08] masking symptoms, right?   Jennifer: (37:08) Yeah.   Tahnee: (37:08) Like I think it's kind of like a steroid or any other topical solution. Again, this is something that I find super frustrating because I used to see naturopaths a lot when I was younger. And they'd always tell me to cut out this, and cut out that, and do this, and do that. And I'd go get those IG blood tests. And I'd be sensitive to everything. And I was thinking, well, I don't understand because... There was part of me that could never rationalize why any human would be sensitive to everything. Like fair enough, chemicals and stuff that weren't in our food chain for hundreds of thousands of years. But, meat, and like vegetables, and eggs. And I'm thinking, how is this... And I started to look deeper into that. And I realized well, no. It's just another symptom. It's another symptom of a greater imbalance.   Tahnee: (37:54) And, when I start to manage that, that imbalance, then these symptoms will disappear. And I've found that... I was celiac for ten years. And I had started taking, my partner... This is kind of how I ended up here. I'd been into health my whole life. My mom studied herbalism and was one of those vegetarian, '70s, '80s health ladies. And I'd sort of been raised on that diet of juices, and vegetarianism, and yoga, and all these things. And in my twenties, end of my twenties especially, I was not particularly well. And I met my partner and I said, oh, I've got this autoimmune condition. And he said, well, no you don't. He said, well, why doesn't your immune system work? Like, what's really going on? He's like, immune systems are meant to function. How would humans have survived so long if we didn't have immune systems?   Tahnee: (38:47) And he kind of just gave me this little talk. And I walked away from that thinking, I've never even considered that. I'd never even thought that maybe this thing that I was labeling as an autoimmune condition was actually another symptom. And I started researching Chinese Medicine, which talked a lot about strengthening the Spleen system if you have celiac disease and which, again, is related to digestion, and liver, and all this stuff we've been talking about. They're all kind of... This branch of this idea of like hormones, gut, liver. Most health issues, if you really dig down, that's where it's hanging out.   Tahnee: (39:22) And I started working with Chinese doctors. I started taking tonic herbs, medicinal mushrooms, and stuff that we sell. And, yeah. Now I can eat... Now, I can't eat a lot of gluten. If I go crazy and like eat 500 kilos of it, I feel a bit yuck and my immune system will start to kick in. But like now I can have quite a lot without any issues. And that was such a revelation to me. And I've certainly seen that with people where they'll cut out everything only to find they can't eat anything. And then, they react to even the five things they have left.   Jennifer: (39:52) Yeah.   Tahnee: (39:53) So, what's your solution when people are kind of addicted to that elimination? I can't possibly eat this or that. Or do you just sort of ask them to work on strengthening their digestion and their kind of liver function? Or what's-   Jennifer: (40:05) Yeah. So, the first thing that I always do and want to know, especially... Oh, I should say this. If someone says to me, I don't really like meat, or I seem to react to meat, or I don't crave it, and they went plant-based and I notice a real improvement in their diet, I'm like, you don't have enough stomach acid.   Tahnee: (40:25) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Jennifer: (40:26) That's usually the number one thing.   Tahnee: (40:27) Hello. I started taking those HCL things and I was like, oh, I love meat, after 20 years of vegetarianism.   Jennifer: (40:36) And here's the thing, even if you're a vegetarian, like even if there is some reason why you ethically feel you can't eat animals, and fish, and birds, and such, poultry and whatnot, the thing is, you have to have sufficient stomach acid regardless of how you eat. Because it's not just breaking nutrients apart. That's one piece that people don't realise. It's also a chemical barrier. So, if you inhale or swallow, we can't see what bugs are in the air and what bugs are on our food and whatnot. And so, if you inhale or swallow something that is, say, pathogenic, it ends up down in your digestive system.   Jennifer: (41:15) So, we need that chemical barrier. And we also need it to break like B12, for example, is bound to proteins. And, yeah. You could say, well I eat plant based. So, I feel a lot better, and it has the enzymes, I've heard all of that. And I'm not anti plant-based or anything. I let people eat however they so choose. But a lot of clients who have gone in that route, I tend to find they're really nutritionally depleted, unfortunately, no matter how many supplements they've taken because their system just doesn't even want to absorb. There's real absorptive problems.   Jennifer: (41:51) So, we need to look at stomach acid levels, which is super easy to do. You can do it at home using water and baking soda and see if you burp. And I have a handout that I'm happy to share with everyone of how you do it.   Tahnee: (42:05) Yeah. We can put it in the show notes.   Jennifer: (42:06) Yeah. It's super easy to do.   Tahnee: (42:08) Home chemistry.   Jennifer: (42:08) Yes. And I like that better than the betaine HCL task where you take more and more. Because here's the thing, what if you do have too much? What if you legitimately do have too much stomach acid? Or you have H pylori or something like that? So, I feel like, in the least, you're going to find out, but you're potentially doing less harm, which is always important.   Jennifer: (42:32) And then, the next piece is starting to question like, why did you take those foods out? Was it because you read something online? Did you see any improvement even when you took any of those foods out? A lot of people don't. And so, starting to walk themselves back into their diet, though, usually I'll wait with legumes and grains until later because those can be more difficult to break down.   Tahnee: (42:56) Yep.   Jennifer: (42:56) But typically, if you're reacting to foods, it's because you have a microbiome imbalance and/or gut dysfunction. And so, that is a real indicator. If you keep reacting to more and more foods, it's super important to find out what the heck is going on in the gut so that you can rebalance that environment. But again, that said, if you're going to rebalance that environment, you do need to support the liver first, right? We have to make sure that the phase two detox has the nutrients that it needs. And I just want to say this, coffee enemas are not giving you any nutrients. I've been asked about that. You can't take milk thistle and assume that that's going to fix the problem. It's not enough. It'll give you some glutathione, but it will not give you enough.   Tahnee: (43:45) Yep.   Jennifer: (43:46) We have to do that first. The liver has to be supported and prepared for what the next step will be. And usually, as we begin to improve the gut balance, and the gut flora, and support that good, healthy gut flora to take over, you can really begin to introduce more foods. That assumes it's not a legit allergy. Right?   Tahnee: (44:06) Yeah.   Jennifer: (44:06) That's a totally different story.   Tahnee: (44:08) Yep. So, when you're dealing with like supporting liver, are there supplements you've reached for? Or do you go case by case? Or how do you-   Jennifer: (44:17) It really depends. There's some products out there that have like the full phase two spectrum.   Tahnee: (44:23) Yep.   Jennifer: (44:24) There's other instances where sometimes just adding in some glycine powder and some B6, but you have to be careful with B6. You don't want to supplement a lot because there are consequences to excess B6 in the system. So, you want to work with someone, especially because the amounts that you would be taking are considered therapeutic.   Tahnee: (44:44) Yes.   Jennifer: (44:44) And that's not necessarily appropriate to do on your own.   Tahnee: (44:46) Home experiments. Yeah.   Jennifer: (44:48) Yeah. That's not okay. You can do low stomach acid test. And, especially if you do, I should say this, if you do have GERD or heartburn, it is equally possible that having no symptoms whatsoever or having heartburn, you could still have low stomach acid. Both instances are equally possible.   Tahnee: (45:07) What's so interesting about that, which kind of relates to something else I've seen you talk about, is like, if you think about all these entry places of the body, so like the skin, the gut, the vagina even, they're all acid environments. It's not like they're... There is this whole alkaline fad as well, at the moment, which is another thing. But these protective kind of parts of the body are meant to be a acidic and are meant to have a really high bacterial kind of colony on there which is protecting us. And I've seen you talk a little bit like topically with the skin that... Not to be putting... like I'm actually seen it, I think, and I hope I'm right in saying this, a thing you talk about, maybe using products specifically designed by people that understand the skin, not just kind of random internet recipes for, you know, coconut for everything or whatever.   Jennifer: (45:58) Yeah.   Tahnee: (45:59) Is that something you can touch on quickly? Because I thought that was really interesting. Because my experience, like just in general with my skin care, is like, there's certain oils I will use but I find coconut oil really heavy. And it's always made my skin kind of feel like it can't breathe. I don't know if that makes sense. But, yeah. I just wondered if you could talk to that a little bit.   Jennifer: (46:21) Yeah. And coconut oil was one of those surprise things that I was like, oh yeah, coconut oil, right? And two specific people in my life were like, no. Stop saying that. And I was like, but I read it everywhere. And they were like, I don't care, and here is the reason why. So, the two people were Kiran Krishnan, who is, I think, the chief science officer for Microbiomes Labs. A lot of people in the wellness world have heard Kiran on podcasts. He's super brilliant. And then, the other person was Rachel Pontillo, who does a lot of natural skincare formulations. And she's like a total skin care ingredient nerd on all things toxic, and natural, etc.   Jennifer: (47:01) And the reason is that it's way too antimicrobial. So, you might think that's good if you like you're having these staph infections, and fungal infections on the skin, but the problem is you're essentially then creating a vacuum. And what rushes back in first are typically unfavorable bugs. And so, there's that.   Jennifer: (47:20) Then on top of it, as you were saying, it's so saturated that it's very difficult for it to be absorbed by our skin. So, a lot of times it just sits on the top layer of the skin. And it's also very alkaline. So, it has a pH of about eight where our skin needs to be around a 4.5. And so, that might not sound like a big jump for someone not familiar with the pH scale.   Tahnee: (47:43) That's huge. Yeah.   Jennifer: (47:43) But it is. It's huge. So, you are disrupting the pH in a major way. You are disrupting the microbiome in a major way. And you're putting something on the skin that is not well absorbed. So, for some people who have psoriasis, they've claimed that it really works wonders. I've found, at least with eczema and a lot of these other more like internally inflamed type skin issues, it's like the kiss of death. So, I wouldn't recommend it. Avocado is a better choice, olive oil.   Tahnee: (48:15) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Jennifer: (48:18) Let me see. Jojoba, which is-   Tahnee: (48:19) Like, sweet almond, I like that on my skin.   Jennifer: (48:21) Yeah, that's also really great. Jojoba is a really great option. It's very light. In the winter time when it's colder, sesame oil can be really nice because it's very warming.   Tahnee: (48:31) Yeah, warming.   Jennifer: (48:32) Those would be better options. You could certainly try tallow and emu. Those are both, obviously, not plant oils. They come from animals. But there's a lot of issues with the coconut oil thing. And I know that it's written about everywhere, but you also have to ask yourself like, who is writing about these? Where are the references? And the more that I talked about the coconut oil issue, the more people came out of the woodwork being like, oh my gosh, I thought it was just me. But it's not just them. I think that article on my website has more comments on it than anything else I've ever done.   Tahnee: (49:10) Than anything. Well, I mean it's PR team was amazing, coconut oil. But it's an interesting one because I feel like it goes rancid on your skin because that's something I can smell. I'm really sensitive to smells. And my partner used to use it when we first started dating. And I was like you smell like an off coconut. Like because I think, when it exposes to air, it goes very rancid. And I've always wondered if that's also not particularly helpful to have something that kind of oxidizes on your skin. I don't know. I don't know if you know anything about that but-   Jennifer: (49:38) I do not.   Tahnee: (49:39) Don't you? Maybe it's honestly because where we live is quiet like humid and tropical. And I've always wondered if that's kind of-   Jennifer: (49:47) Yeah.   Tahnee: (49:48) Yeah. Anyway, that's a bit of a weird one.   Jennifer: (49:50) Yeah. And I will also just say really quickly for people that are like... Massage therapists have commented because they used to use it in their practice. And they notice that they developed really bad eczema on their hands after using coconut oil for a number of years. And by switching to something else, the eczema went away. And I've also had the same experience of clients who had eczema on their face. They were using coconut oil for a long time. And, when they stopped, they actually realized they were probably allergic to it. So, there is more of a problem with coconut allergies now because there's so much of it being used in food and used in body care products.   Tahnee: (50:21) Yeah.   Jennifer: (50:21) So, just be aware, if you have chronic skin issues, it is a potential red flag.   Tahnee: (50:25) The other thing with it too, I think, is like it's really cooling. So, when we're talking about sesame being really warming, it's a really cooling oil.   Jennifer: (50:33) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Tahnee: (50:33) So, it's not... I think for massage and stuff it's not... I've always been taught... I studied with a Taoist massage therapist teacher and we were never allowed to use coconut oil because it was just too cold. And, yeah. It's something I have thought about with joints, and a lot of people have circulation issues and stuff. And it could just be affecting blood flow to the hands and all these kinds of things. So, that's really interesting.   Tahnee: (50:55) But the final thing I wanted to touch on was just this idea of leaky skin, because this idea of leaky gut is quite well known now. That the kind of membranes of the gut become permeable and larger pieces of things can move through into the bloodstream and create inflammation and issues. And so, you've said that the skin is a leaky organ as well in some people.   Jennifer: (51:16) Yeah.   Tahnee: (51:16) Is this related to this idea of the microbiome is not strong enough, or the skin becomes too weak? Like I wondered if you could explain that idea to me.   Jennifer: (51:25) Yeah. So, essentially what happens is that, like in the gut, we want the junctions between cells. And so, if you think of cells as like a brick, each cell is a brick. You have these interesting layers of bricks on the skin, right? Whereas in the gut, it's a single layer thick. That's it.   Tahnee: (51:42) Really frail.   Jennifer: (51:42) The skin, we have multiple layers, right?   Tahnee: (51:44) Is it five layers. I vaguely remember this from anatomy.   Jennifer: (51:47) Yeah.   Tahnee: (51:48) The epidermis. Yeah.   Jennifer: (51:50) Well, and the interesting thing is there are these almost like a mortar mix in between the cells. It's called filaggrin. It's a protein.   Tahnee: (51:58) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Jennifer: (51:59) So, there's a gene called filaggrin. And the gene codes for the protein also called filaggrin. Real confusing in and of itself. But this is the important piece. So, when there is internal inflammation in the body, and it could be happening anywhere, it doesn't necessarily happen at the skin. It could happen in the gut. It could happen in the bloodstream. It could happen any number of places. So, that's why this is like we look at the skin, and we go, oh, it's a skin problem. It might not be a skin problem. It could be something else. And so, that inflammation actually disregulates how the gene codes for the protein. So, you end up with all these faulty proteins.   Tahnee: (52:36) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Jennifer: (52:37) And what Dr. Peter Lio, who's a really interesting expert, he's a dermatologist, but he also is an acupuncturist. And he was trained at Harvard. And so, he's this really brilliant man. And he's like, the problem we're having here is that there's so much inflammation that your body can no longer build the appropriate protein, which is like your mortar mix. Well, think about it. What happens when a brick wall with time-   Tahnee: (53:03) It starts to crumble. Yeah.   Jennifer: (53:03) It starts to crumble. And you end up with all of these pathways for vines, and bugs, and all sorts of things to enter the building that shouldn't normally happen.   Tahnee: (53:11) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Jennifer: (53:13) And so, with leaky skin, that concept is that the barrier becomes more permeable. We can't sustain an appropriate moisture barrier. The microbiome itself will shift so it may favor more like staph, as opposed to the healthy bugs that should be there. The pH may change. And so, it becomes this environment that's no longer friendly for us.   Jennifer: (53:38) And so, one of the ways that I always tell people, I'm like look, A, liver. Absolutely, we start there. Then B, you've just got to look. The next step is look at the gut because, if the gut microbiome is really skewed and it favors an unfriendly population of bugs, that communicates out to the skin microbiome, it's almost like its anchor.   Tahnee: (54:01) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Jennifer: (54:01) So, we have to look at both at the same time. So, my way into the skin is usually not going directly at the skin. And it sounds like you have the same exact philosophy.   Tahnee: (54:13) Yeah.   Jennifer: (54:13) You've got to look to those pathways in to support that area because it could be your thyroid, it could be so many other things.   Tahnee: (54:23) Well, I think about it as like tending a garden. Like you're going to get the colonizer weeds, which are these bad bacteria. And, if you don't keep tending the soil in which you want healthy stuff to grow, you're just going to end up with a garden full of weeds.   Jennifer: (54:36) Exactly.   Tahnee: (54:36) And I think there is this... I don't know. I think there is... Yeah. Just sometimes it's unwillingness to really address like... I think it's kind of like what we talked about with the emotions before. It's like, if it's eczema, it's kind of like, okay. It's eczema. And put a cream on it, or I can put makeup on it, or I don't know what people do with eczema. I've never had it. But I think they can kind of live with that idea. Whereas, if it's like oh, there is something inside of me that's kind of mysteriously happening and it's like this thing that I can't really observe and fix easily, it becomes very confronting for people, I think. And it's not something that's easily addressed. And, like you said, it's a very slow process. So, I think, like all of us, we're all on our healing paths. So, a very exciting and interesting journey. But, yeah. A really powerful kind of way to start to think about the body as a whole that contributes to this expression of health that radiates out.   Tahnee: (55:31) And this is one of those ideas from Chinese Medicine that we're so passionate about is this idea of Shen, when you look at someone and they radiate and they're passionate about what they do. Your eyes like glowing, and you're really into what you're talking about, and you've found your thing, it's like that's what everyone's promise is. We all deserve that. We're all supposed to have that. And that's something, I think, if that's not how you feel like you're living like, then keep going. Because you'll learn so much along the way that will help you be that person that's of service to others one day when you're ready to make that offering.   Tahnee: (56:06) So, I'm really appreciative for you're offering, because I feel like that was such a powerful conversation and really amazing. You've got so many resources for people. I was so impressed with how much content is available out there for free for people. So, we'll put all that in our show notes. But is anything in particular you're really excited about? I saw you just had kind of an online summit recently. But is there anything else like that coming up? Or any kind of really cool things people might want to connect with you about?   Jennifer: (56:35) Honestly, that was the big thing right now.   Tahnee: (56:39) Now, you're done.   Jennifer: (56:40) I know. I'm done. I'm going to walk away. No, I'm just kidding. Right now, that was the big thing. It just wrapped up, it was called the Eczema and Psoriasis Awareness Week.   Tahnee: (56:50) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Jennifer: (56:50) And we actually do have it evergreen for people.   Tahnee: (56:53) Oh, great.   Jennifer: (56:53) So, if you want to go in and check out a limited selection of the talks, you can do that. And we can certainly put a link in the show notes. Those conversations aren't on, and they're more in depth and more science oriented than what we usually do on The Healthy Skin Show. But that is... most people are like, oh my gosh. Like I never even... I didn't know about this. And we have researched. We made a point to go through and find research to back up every single talk, because I wanted to make sure that people knew this isn't like just an idea that someone had. Everything is research oriented. We have doctors and practitioners on there. And it was a really great resource for people. So, that's been a big thing right now that I've been working on.   Tahnee: (57:37) Yes. I mean, it looked amazing. I didn't get a chance to catch any of it, but yeah. It seems like some really interesting presenters and guests on there, so.   Jennifer: (57:47) Yeah.   Tahnee: (57:47) Yeah. And then, you've got some downloads and different things people can sign up to on your mailing list as well, I saw.   Jennifer: (57:53) Yep.   Tahnee: (57:53) Yep. And like-   Jennifer: (57:54) Absolutely. Like I said, the low stomach acid is a really great first way to get started on that. And I've got like, if you go to the website, there's a way to download a list of skin labs for skin conditions. If you're like curious, like what should I ask my doctor for, that also can be really helpful.   Tahnee: (58:14) Yeah.   Jennifer: (58:14) As well.   Tahnee: (58:15) Well, thanks for so much amazing

We've played a load of games this past year both modern and retro. Whether it's a fresh release or just new to us; we break down our 2019 games of the year. Episode Transcription: The below is a machine based transcription of this episode. Sorta like Skynet if it was 2 years old, and wanted a cookie. Take it with a grain of salt. Jake 0:00 Welcome everybody to press be to cancel. Today's a special episode for us.Palsh 0:06 Wait, what? Really?Jake 0:07 Well yeah, I know we do have some special moments. tender loving, caring moments. Don't we Palsh?Palsh 0:14 okay man.Palsh 0:16 I love you.Jake 0:17 Not on the podcast too soon to sayWulff 0:21 it again.Jake 0:42 We have a special episode today it's very special for us. We've been doing this for a couple of months now. And as is tradition for a lot of podcasts they have a game of the year episode and that's what we're going to do we're gonna start a tradition off right. I've had a few drinks says got back from work Christmas party. So this will be interesting. This is breastfeeding cancels, gave me the year edition. Now what's different for us? is we are we're not just a retro gaming podcast, but it's definitely a large component. So when I say this is our game of the year, we've selected two games, and they could be retro or modern. were easy.Wulff 1:17 Okay? More so new to us.Jake 1:20 Exactly new to us. So I am I am sick Jake. I'm this week's host. I'm not alone. Of course. I'm as always I'm joined by our usual crew. werewolf. How you doing?Wulff 1:30 I'm okay. How you doing?Jake 1:36 Was that? I'm sorry. DidWulff 1:38 you did you want me to go on longer? No,Jake 1:40 we still Burt? Burt. You're yelling. And of course, we're also joined by the Miss Piggy the Kermit guy prime in the retro therapy. How you doing?GP 1:50 I'm doing good. I've actually got two games picked out for every year since 1984. So I may have misunderstood the assignment. You're going to be late.Jake 2:00 Yeah, but knowing you half those games are ones I think are bad. So it's okay.GP 2:05 Yeah, 991 for 2003 hot garbage,Jake 2:10 yet just completed the era of hot garbage. Mega Man one, honestly. And pulse. We're joined by Paul's one and nine. How are you sir? I'm kind of shy now because he said stuff I shouldn't have at the beginning of the. I'm good. Let's just keep going. I know we've buried our hearts to each other today on this podcast. And we'll flip it over to bearing our hearts for a couple games. So I guess we've all picked our personal you know, Game of the Year. new to us. That's great. But let me We'll start with our our secondaries are on honorable mentions, and kind of go around the table and get everybody's take on that game. So let's spin the wheel. Of coursePalsh 2:50 you can add to that at a later since youJake 2:53 GP you want to start what's your honorable mention for Game of the Year 2019.GP 2:56 I hope this is allowable because it's it's Still in test phase like pre release kind of mode, but I have to mention savage the shard of gozen by our friend tober prime.Jake 3:08 NoGP 3:10 Bionic Commando.Jake 3:16 No Go for man savages. I mean toller prime is a fantastic dude, man and I love I only played five minutes of his game, but I've watched a lot of people play it. I've been saving it for myself personally, because it's early access. But if you love it, please tell us it's awesome.GP 3:29 It is awesome. And knowing tober is cool. And having watched him the game be created is a big connection that I have to admit even without all of that just completely, objectively or subject whichever it is where it's just looking at it for what it is. It is truly a fun experience. A very well composed and thought out game. If I if I'm not playing it, I've thought about playing it pretty much every day since I've had access to it. I have a schedule of things I try to keep but I played a lot of my downtimeWulff 3:58 outside of the stream is what I'm saying. So I want to jump in on this one since GP mentioned it. I also put a few hours into savage and this is a game I cannot wait to be finished, like yes, I really, really look forward to playing this in its final form. I kind of haven't gone back to it for that very reason like I bought it earlier I want I wanted to be a supporter of the game, it ended up being badass. I love what was there, but I didn't complete what was there because I want to save the game for when it's done. Like I'd like to go back and I'm sure it'll be quite different by that point. But it'll still be like different not mechanically but drop rates and maybe a couple of stats will affect the play differently. But other than that, I mean it'll be the same game that's it's the bones are there alreadyJake 4:45 piles of both for those who haven't played it? What about this game? makes it so standout?GP 4:50 I guess it's retro inspired. So it's definitely like a platform type. There's a lot of greats, kind of like quest and there's an overworld map and things like that. That's kind of me Innocent of dare I say like Final Fantasy six when it comes to the overworld The gameplay is fun the I don't say the RPG aspect because I that's that's a big thing to say. But you know you do go down to town you talk to a lot of the townspeople and there's multiple threads to pull on. from the get go like you've got the general idea the opening scenes are very well done. But then once you start, you have different paths that you can do so in that way, it's very choose your own adventure, and that's kind of the RPG aspect of it. But then just with with as werewolf mentioned, the stats, the different ways of lining up your inventory the way that you want to customize your playability. It just fires across a lot of different cylinders. And on top of that, it's a beautiful looking game. But yeah, so for me, that's what it is. It's great. It's kind of the old school retro style platformer with some RPG elements that just it delivers. And for as much as I've played it, I still feel like I've only scratched the surface. I think there's going to be a lot of replay value in The game whether or not you want to play lightly or really go deep, and try to try to get everything done.Wulff 6:05 It's like Zelda two with I don't know, pick your favorite EGA vanja Yeah, and since those two smash together and you're good Symphony of the Night Aria sorrow or do you play any of them like, pick your favorite one and it'll probably it's like scratch that itch. But it's it's like that smash together with Zelda two and that butGP 6:25 still completely original. Like that's the other part of it is for as much as it kind of harkens to some of these things. Because retro is a category you know that we think of it as it's hard not to reference things that it reminds us of, but it still is a very unique experience as well. Pulse Did you finish it? I think you finished the current build.Palsh 6:46 Now I wish I'm doing the same thing as werewolf and kind of just I love it so much. And I actually I've gotten like the hunger to play it over and over again, but I'm holding back as much as I can because I want to but I just want to wait about it. Just mainly to support tober and I'll be frank with that it was like I don't like early access, but this game was so satisfying that I just wanted to keep going with it. But I'm forcing myself not to because I want to I want to do when it's complete. So I'm just I'm basically itching to beat the whole game I want to go and I don't want to have to be like, I need more.Unknown Speaker 7:22 abstinence is fun.Jake 7:25 I will say as well the the commercial tober made for for that game is is fantastic.GP 7:31 Yeah, the guy gets it like he's, he understands kind of that that old school feeling of what is rad like you know the kind of heart of that that you know, talking about the commercial, but he gets a really good idea of what makes something fun or humorous or just truly like down to the balls awesome. If that makes sense.Palsh 7:51 anything anybody who's listening to this, if you want to check out the website, or for buying it on Steam, we will link it here on our on our own website. If Listen, presby the canceled comJake 8:02 hashtag sponsored, sponsored.Jake 8:07 All right, good. Um,Wulff 8:09 quick question, are these honorable mentions outside of our two games?Jake 8:13 No, I figured it'd be okay. week you're near number one and number two,Jake 8:18 how many games you guys have? We have a lot of contingencies. I just, oh,Jake 8:23 okay, Wolf, do you want to go next then?Wulff 8:26 Okay, so, I guess my honorable mention, would really be Death Stranding, like The Walking concept because, yes, you know what a lot of people pick on this game. And like part of me really was like, kind of letting go of the idea of picking a 2019 game because I played like five of them. And the two big ones were this one man of Medan and I'm probably only 15 hours into Death Stranding at this point. But what I have played of that stranding it. It starts slow and That's no way to sell a game day. Anybody I will admit, for me a game has to have me within two hours for me to keep playing it and Death Stranding did that. Not necessarily with the gameplay, but the story, I found the gameplay. Interesting, but the story really pulled me in right away. So as I started playing further and further, like I wanted to see what this world was and as I got further into the game, digging into the story, the gameplay picked up to and honestly today, I guess a form of fast travel has opened up to me now and I'm like building freeways and shit. It's it's really bizarre. But I dig on it like it's it's, it's definitely a walking simulator or a driving simulator. Whatever your your your it's traveling. That's what this game is is traveling, picking your basically traveling, picking up garbage along the way and taking it to whoever dropped it. YouPalsh 9:56 basically sounded like you're making, you're talking about a futuristic world. Of The Rings and I'm kind of interestedWulff 10:02 it I guess that's a good way to put it itPalsh 10:05 just make them part of the walking simulator butJake 10:08 explaining with the the the when you walk away you have to do to keep keep balance. Please explain. Oh,Wulff 10:12 yes, yes. Okay, so it's possible for your character, especially the more weight he's carrying to slip trip and fall. And so if he starts leaning, if his The, the the weight on his back or that what he's carrying starts leaning too far right, you have to hold the L to to get him to lean to the left and shift the weight back and vice versa. And if he does end up slipping, you've got about a second and a half to push the buttons. l&r both at the same time to keep him from wiping out because if he wipes out his cargo falls off, it takesPalsh 10:48 damage, whatever, it's so bad.Wulff 10:50 It's silly. I do agree. It's kind of silly, but it's it's something I don't think it's there for the purposes of like, look at this cool Gameplay loop. I think it's there to keep you engaged with the walking. Because if you were literally just running along from point to point, it would get boring. This is something that keeps you actively doing something in the game. But it's not high action high octane. It's like it's just keeping you it's keeping your attention without assaulting your senses. And I think that's kind of what the purpose was.Jake 11:24 Like the Gameplay wise. I can't I can't stand it. But the story of the characters from the baby strapped in a jar in your on your chest to the guy you're talking to with a straight face. He's wearing a metal skull on his face, del Toro's in it Conan O'Brien's fucking in it. I mean, you have a canteen that collects rainwater and turns it not into drinkable water, but into Monster Energy into MonsterWulff 11:52 Energy. I do think that's ridiculous. The your canteen converts rain or river water into my Monster Energy Drink,Jake 12:01 what the hell you have to urinate and when you urinate there's a mushroom appears. And if other people see their mushroom in their instance, they can pee on it and it gets bigger.Wulff 12:10 Yeah, and it spawns crypto by votes that lets you regain.Jake 12:15 Like, this is the most amazing, fantastic game of the year that I will never ever want to play. I love I love watching it. It is so batshit and Shane, you can't help but love this game.Wulff 12:26 I can completely understand people not wanting to jump into this game, I get it. But for me, I like weird shit. I'm a weird dude. I'm target audience. I think thatGP 12:38 there is some science to support if I remember the documentary correctly, the energy drink thing because you can use that as a tool to water your plants because from what I understand it has electrolytes in the energy drink. And that's what plants crave.Wulff 12:58 Damn it.Jake 12:58 So this comes out for the PC when this comes for the PC people going to mod it and I'm telling you the first person that replaces Monster Energy Drink with Canada's own bebas I will I will give them at least five bucksGP 13:13 I think I need to email beaver buzz where they're going to try to get sponsored or we owe them money one of the twoJake 13:19 they haven't tweeted tweeted like three years it's okay we're good.GP 13:22 Okay, so maybe should we change it to jolt?Palsh 13:27 No, it doesn't have that that lower behind it anymore.Wulff 13:31 But yeah, this this game, it's it's definitely the more you do, the faster the gameplay loop gets. And I know that sounds kind of weird, but honestly, I played for a couple hours off stream today just because I wanted to like get some of the mundane stuff done. But not major story because I'm trying to save that for an audience you knowPalsh 13:51 what can be mundane in this game.GP 13:55 If you can't even walkJake 13:56 right the the poop grenades explain the poop grenades. Please,Wulff 14:00 oh my gosh, yes, there's so many weird things in this game. So you're the main character. The main character has some qualities to his blood and just his genetics in general. That make it to where his waist is even a viable weapon against what they call BTS or beach things that the ghosties of the game Yeah, mine too. You can you can basically hurl little grenades made out of either your pee, your poop or even your shower water. And I'm guessing they have varying degrees of effectiveness a go. I imagine none of them are as good as your blood grenades.Jake 14:44 There are plus three to damage.Wulff 14:47 And I realized that everything I'm saying about this game was probably just making people scratch their head like what the hell is this about?Palsh 14:55 Now? I know he's still trying to figure that out. That's whyWulff 14:58 I really am but i'm i'm just So into the story I'm so into the upgrade system like I've I've managed to actually upgrade my weapons today after stream get access to better upgrades for like carrying capacity and things like that by just running errands for people but it'll definitely speed up the pace of gameplay for later soPalsh 15:21 if the last of us you get the spare parts at this word you get fiberGP 15:27 for dinner grenades plus toWulff 15:32 sit down even like all all I've seen him eat those little bugs, the crypto buyouts that just look like what are they called? Water bears? Oh, tardigrades, tardigrades, yeah, they just look like giant float and I say giant because tardigrades are so damn small. They're like the size of a caterpillar. But they're just tardigrade looking flying grubs that you can pull out of water apparently land coral Beat. So, Jamie here, this game is weird. I'm really good at it. And I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes. SoGP 16:09 well, I will say this, my my son, I have a four year old son who who's somewhat coordinated but not at high speeds. So now whenever he starts tripping over himself, I'm just going to start yelling, L to L toGP 16:25 have a second. I'm intrigued. I've watched you play some of this. And I remember scratching my head because of the words your bodily fluids pose no harm to him. And I remember thinking What is this? And now I know a little bit more. But I don't know anymore but I have more informationWulff 16:42 and I'm very intrigued. This This game is very much like a David Lynch. experience on crack. It's just out there.Jake 16:52 Yeah, Paul's any thoughts on destroying?Palsh 16:54 I'm kind of with werewolf there. It's so out there that I just Want to pay attention more? Because it's like, I shake my head at everything that I've seen happen in this game, but at the same time, I don't want to look away I want to see what he's going to do next. It's like the Howard Stern effect kind of thing. You know, when he first came along, and everybody's like, you know the shock Jackie that's what is like, it's like a shock. shock, Jackie kind of thing, but for a video game. Is he really doing this because he wants to or is it just to keep people guessing? Because I'm constantly just questioningWulff 17:31 No, I think this is legit Hideo Kojima without being saddled by lore from Metal Gear. Yeah, right. He got to create a brand new existence a brand new universe and run with it.Palsh 17:45 Yeah. And I mean Metal Gear as great as they are like they have so many like historical tie ins and stuff like that, especially with you know, history and, you know, war and stuff like that. But yeah, even then they've had some so many WTF And since those games and it's making those look realistic, like hyper realistic, I just Yeah, I just, I'll never play it but I am enjoying watching it. And I'll never play it just because I don't have a ps4. SoGP 18:14 is anybody checking in on Cosima to make sure that he's okay, I'm feeling like maybe there might be some red flags in the game about his. I just hope he's okay. Today Oh, if you're listening, we care. And thank you for yourWulff 18:28 outright. I think he did outright respond to the negative reviews he was getting from the western press and said that Westerners don't get it or Americans don't get it or something like that. That's like, that's a little bit pretentious to say. It's like it's it's clearly not a game for everybody. Yeah, and that's fine. Not every game has to There you go. I love that. Thank you for saying that. But, but this is a game for me. I see itJake 18:53 and it's it's definitely good choice. Like there's comments the commentary in that game with the likes system and the roving mules and Former package delivery guys like there's things in that game that are weird but I can see where he's coming from as a commentary on on the way the world is today but to the extremeWulff 19:09 and where it's headed Yeah, all that kind of stuff so I mean it if you if you start like really thinking about the world that's built around what's like the weird circumstances in the world you start to kind of get an idea of where he's coming from on the social commentary side of things right but it's still got that weird like Silent Hill story going on out of left field that's constantly like what is happening?Palsh 19:33 Yeah, it's it's definitely one of a kind will put it that way.Wulff 19:38 Yes, I was. I was gonna say the last thing and it's something I said in GP stream earlier is that a lot of games active skills are reflexes, and memory. This game is active skills are patience and planning, and poolJake 19:56 which is planning and patient. I'm gonnaGP 19:59 eat this It's not for now, but for later.Jake 20:04 I love it. Okay, Polish. How about you? What's your honorable mention for Game of the Year?Palsh 20:09 It was tricky because I don't like playing favorites. Someone ever asked me what my favorite game is, I can give you a different answer depending on my mode or depending on what category so picking one was really tricky. So I'm going to go with one I'm still playing now and I've only been playing for last week, but that's how addicted I am for a runner up. That's what we're doing right runners up. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. So I'm going with Resident Evil to remake. I can easily say it's Game of the Year for me, but I've got I've got a reason behind that. I'll explain later. But this one is, it's hitting the nostalgia buttons on enough at the perfect intervals. Like it's just it's got me like, Resident Evil two is kind of where I've started falling in love with horror games and movies. I used to be terrified. Sleep with my parents. Every night because I was scared that zombies are going to kill us if I don't you know if I don't sleep with somebody and you know until I was like, you know 32 years old it's crazy can't sleep but uh so like resin evil two is always been my favorite. It's it's kind of the chrysalis that the catalyst sorry for me falling in love with an entire genre of games and it was part of my childhood so I knew this game better than most other games I've ever played. So I only get to play this recently like I only got about a week ago, I went in completely blind, all my friends were streaming it and as much as I wanted to support them, I couldn't watch I couldn't even leave a workout because I just wanted to watch it. I just I'm in love with it. It's the perfect amount of nods to the original and the perfect amount of updating. to not have it so dated. So they try to cover a lot of things that you know, the original You can't be because, you know this and that, like, why is the police station so convoluted in the stuff in this one, like they mentioned, it's, you know, built out of an old Art Museum of stuff. So they kind of take the, the original one and yeah, they, they kind of just try to put it in reality a little bit more and not just say, you know, hey, we're going to do this and this is how it is just because like, you know, we're going to make this fun. But it's not really realistic, you know, but the puzzles and stuff like that, they kind of fit in more and the gameplay is just great. It's satisfying. The graphics are beautiful. Every now and then, like, you're thrown for a loop because you you expected it to be like carbon copy with better graphics and new new engine. But like they change things up, but at the same time, they kept it so much the same that it feels like you're playing that game and it just blows my mind. I can't get enough of it. I can talk about it for hours and like I just want to talk about it with others. fans that are huge fans of it, because there's so many little nods, and I'm on my second play through it. And I'm catching on to stuff that I never caught the first time, I was nervous going through it, I didn't want to get scared, I didn't want to run out of ammo, I didn't want to die, you know. And after that, you start getting confidence and next thing you know, you get cocky. And the more thing you know, your first play through was like seven or eight hours the next time for and the next time after this two and a half like you get comfortable with it. And it's not that it gets boring. It's just you understand the system adapted itself the same way as me playing the original. So I think it's just so many levels of nostalgia for me that I can't get enough of it.Jake 23:40 Did they change the 10 controls in this one? Do they get rid of that orWulff 23:43 doesn't it control more like Resident Evil for now?Palsh 23:46 It's more like four Yeah, it's kind of somewhere in between seven and four for controls because you're doing third person over the shoulder but I mean, third person over the shoulder is like a much better tank control anyways, because Is this the same control scheme, but your view is different? Right? So the tank controls are necessary in the original ones because otherwise, every time the camera angle changed, you know, you'd go veer off course. So it's kind of integral to it. And that became part of the series. People complain about it and complain about it. And then when they took it out in resin evil six, all of a sudden, people were like, sucks, you know, and that's part of I think, the tank controls were part of the the immersion for me, you don't you can't jump around like you're Mario and, you know, pop off of different things and stuff. So the control kind of limits you and it kind of adds to the suspense because you can't have these amazing reflexes, you know, so you have to play any movements more.Jake 24:42 Yeah, Resident Evil is as much about the controls in a style than anything else. I think that's why when they did move three recently coming out, people were kind of harping on it complaining about it because it's kind of dated in gameplay. But it's a Shenmue game, right or Shenmue. However you want to say it, and it feels like the game from what 13 years ago so they knew the style they're going for and the people who liked that series like it for that particular style I think resin evil the same wayPalsh 25:07 yeah and when they when they listened to enough people and changed it in resin evil six that's you know that's the worst game the franchise and and like it was like Final Fantasy 13 for me I never gave it a second try and I want to sayWulff 25:21 to is a game I've yet to really do much with I have I haven't even done much looking into it because that's another one I've wanted to keep pretty much blind for myself just because too was my favorite of the Resident Evil series.Palsh 25:34 Yeah, and that that's exactly why I stayed away from it. So if you were a fan of the original that I think you will thoroughly enjoy this oneJake 25:42 cool yeah for me it was the third one Nemesis is when I played when I was younger and never really got chance to play to my uncle was huge into it though I it's one where I want to go back and play it now or at least play the remaining because everybody's been raving about it. Like this game is incredibly popular for cash. Come they've been killing it this past year. So I'm looking for to planet.Palsh 26:04 I also felt a little guilty for my game of the year being from this actual year soGP 26:10 backwards saying that is when we get to that point where we're like, I want to do gimme you the year but I don't know about doing it for this year. Yeah. Yeah, what a great year. That year was 1989 now and I'm with you guys Resident Evil two for me was my introduction to the series but it was it still has maintained as my favorite. I've seen some of the remake and it looks dope as hell, but kind of like polish. I eventually want to get to it but I haven't really sat down watched it yet. You know, cuz I want to play through it. But yeah, if it's as great as everybody says it is, which I believe it will be. I'm excited for it. I just don't know if I will get exiled for playing a 2019 game on a retro themed channel.Jake 26:58 So I rebranded the Modern therapy. Yeah,GP 27:01 I yeah,Wulff 27:02 just make a second channel the modern pair.GP 27:05 Maybe? MaybeWulff 27:09 the I just want to play it anyway there. Yeah,Palsh 27:12 I'll just give you my stream key focus.GP 27:17 Hi, everybody, this is possible. No nine. I have a cold. That's all I'm gonna say. I love Canada.Wulff 27:26 Just give him just give him your little talking face and you're good to go.Unknown Speaker 27:31 Alright, I guess let's meet now. So my honorable mention for me, Jake. Jake, what's your about mentioned it?Jake 27:41 Well, I thank you for asking. I wasn't sure if he was going to say so for me, it's tough because I'm terrible with starting games and never finishing them. Like I'm really bad at it. And I always complain about companies that release games that are I won't say too long. Maybe it's more accurate to say that they don't respect the players time, right? I mean, I'm older. I I kids I work, I don't have a lot of time to play games. If I play one, it's got to be really good for you to finish it. And I don't want to spend 80 hours anymore on these things. I love JRPGs but they're too much of a time sink for me. So it's been very tough this past year to find a game that I can finish in and enjoy in a short timeframe. The longest game I played this year was probably fallen empires, not fallen empires, Fire Emblem. I've had a few. I'll say it again. But there is one game that was just the other week came out and it's Star Wars Jedi fallen order. And I was so done on Star Wars after less Jedi, and solo especially like I had zero interest the new movies coming out in a couple of weeks. My wife wanted to go see it. And I'm like, Do we have to? Can I just can we just like you know, watch on Netflix a year from now. And I was done. Between Mandalorian and Jedi fallen order the game. It's put me in such a mood. Like we went and got the fanciest frickin tickets. I spent $30 on movie tickets. I never do that. I am down for Star Wars now Disney is hooked me again the son of a bitches. So following order is it is honorable mention because there's nothing groundbreaking about it. They're taking the best elements or, or elements from various different games like the climbing reminds me Breath of the Wild a little bit or Uncharted. There's a checkpoint system that is very dark souls inspired. Combat reminds me when you swing the lightsaber around like you're Gerald from Witcher three, they took a lot of elements from various different games and smash it all together. You say took out with a really great soundtrack and a really good it's a goodPalsh 29:37 story adorable.Jake 29:38 We also said sons of bitches. Some of the bitches Look, I get a little bit emotional when I've had a few different drink and I'm talking about my passion. Okay. Yeah, baby Yoda. It's amazing. What's wrong.GP 29:50 I haven't watched it. I haven't watched it. I haven't watched it. All.Jake 29:54 Spoilers. Okay. Wow. All right. Stop the pop.Wulff 30:00 I'm not on the Star Wars hype train by any means, but I'm probably more into Star Wars now than I ever was growing up. So take that take that as you will. Getting back on track fallen order looks pretty cool. It does look good.GP 30:13 And that's got that accurate right and the guys punchable punchable faceWulff 30:18 Yeah, the not Joker Joker from Gotham. Yeah,Jake 30:22 yeah or the kids are but his face wants me want to hit him and he'sGP 30:25 an amazing actor and I feel bad I can't think of his name because he I think it's Cameron Monaghan that sounds right.Wulff 30:32 That sounds sounds about it.Jake 30:35 challa him Monahan Let meGP 30:36 check my Instagram because IWulff 30:38 actually following Oh, we're sorry if you ever actually hear this episodes here. I really likedJake 30:48 your fantastic KimGP 30:50 MonahanJake 30:51 Yeah, and what they did was really neat in this game with the graphics, the graphics are quite a bit, very high quality and they even run in my opinion Computer upstairs I'm really impressed. But what I like about the character models themselves, is they digitized very accurately the faces of the voice actors. So there's a comedian Deborah Wilson and an actress. She used to be on that TV. Very funny person. She's one of the characters in this play a very serious role and it's she nails it and it looks just like her. They did an amazing job. Wow. So like the characters in this game are very relatable. They're very well done. The overall story. It's Star Wars, right? Like it's, it's cheesy, little bit hokey, but it's Star Wars. And there's a lot of parallels to like Rogue One as the standalone movie. Because of the standalone. They had to solve their stories in that that one movie and it felt really tight. This game is the same thing. It's the Star Wars universe, but it's its own contained story is relevant to the whole lore I guess if you want to say that but it stands on its own so well. And I think it's just really great and then like mechanics, you can play like a dark souls. You can check the difficulty up if you like the soul style game. You can do that. Me personally, I don't have the patience for it. I tried. I died to this one frog three times and I threw the controller. And I said too easy. And then I played the story and the story was fantastic. YouWulff 32:10 know what I can appreciate the single serving stories like that, though not every single experience out there needs to be like a 12 part saga. Sometimes you run a one and done kind of story, experience it have the good times, give it an ending. Don't leave it. Don't leave the audience hanging with every single entry.GP 32:29 Every word you just said we're will sounds like a one night stand. Get out there and have your fun, give it an ending. Don't leave people hanging and be done with it. Don't take it to breakfast. Was that howPalsh 32:40 that works? I've been doing a rock.GP 32:42 That's because you're polite calls.Jake 32:44 Right? You don't need her dad pregnant and going to the dark and just notGP 32:48 get any but the actress that you were saying was from med TV. Your answer to this is going to depend it's going to determine whether or not I play this game. Is it the actress who played Stewart's mom? No It's Deborah Wilson.Jake 33:02 I'm struggling to go character she played on that TV.Wulff 33:06 Oh, she did the with Sullivan. I can't remember her first name the blonde woman. They did theGP 33:12 know Nicole Sullivan. I remember because she was on.Wulff 33:14 Yes. Okay. So Deborah Wilson, I believe, did a few skit sketches with Nicole Sullivan. As hairdressers.GP 33:25 Oh, no, I sorry. I just Yeah, she's wonderful. Okay, I'll probably go Yeah, yeah, she was just gonna say if it's Stewart's Mom, I'm not gonna be able to play the game.Jake 33:35 No, it's not okay. Yeah, but it's a really solid title. Like I said gameplay not revolutionary. No, but they took the best elements of various series and mash it together. It's great. It's also got one of the greatest intros, I think of a game in recent memory. It opens up with Mongolian folk throat singing, and I know that sounds fun. Just trust me. It's a great game for sure. All right. Moving along, I guess let's get to our now number ones our official game of the year. Games circle back around a GP. Thank you. I forgot who we started with.GP 34:10 This is um,Wulff 34:12 I'm helping hands.GP 34:15 This is my game of the year. Okay, there's my official one. Then there's one I have to make mention of not the Honorable Mention but something I want to address, because it's important, but my game of the year is River City Ransom underground. And you guys know exactly why I'm going to say that because before the podcast existed before we were pressed me to cancel, we were four buddies playing that game together River City Ransom underground. And when we beat the game, not only was it fun, not only was it you know, a great call back to the river city, ransom the planet with you guys and all the updates and all the things that they did were so well executed, but by the time it was done, I was let down that it was done. I wanted there to be more and more and more And more. So much fun. And I remember the conversation after we beat it. The four of us was like, well, do we play it again? Or do we play something else? And then of course, the podcast idea came up. And of course, it was a great idea and it's beenWulff 35:14 a lot of fun. But I the podcast idea came up like the second or third time we played. Oh, yeah, we just kind of were like, yeah, okay, but I mean, like pulling,GP 35:24 pulling the trigger on it and say, No, let's do this. Because even though we can't say any of the stuff, we played, well, playing the game, we had enough chemistry or whatever to do this. So that was my favorite new gaming experience of the year. And a big part of it is because of you guys, but I mean, the game itself was tremendous, and it was so light hearted and fun, but absurd, like the absurd level of that game. Not quite as bizarre as the Cocina entry from earlier. But really, like just such a great continuation of what it was back then. And as And a bunch of new flair. And you can tell it was made by people who loved and cared about the original and I like that it came through and it was to me like I said, the best gaming experience I've had for a newer game. Nobody can get y'all are crying. And then the other thing I have to say real quick, and I'm just very briefly we don't have to have a discussion about it. I want to apologize to anybody who's ever encouraged me to play Super ghouls and ghosts, the retro therapy we've been doing a year of blind playthroughs and so my like fringe Game of the Year is super ghouls and ghosts played it in May for the first hour April as a blind run. never wanted to play it didn't look interesting. fucking love that game. I was way wrong. Game of the Year in my heart super goals and ghosts but for New Game of the Year, River City Ransom undergroundJake 36:49 for River City there's one just came at River City girls came out by bus different with studio and it's not the same and I was when I heard that title. Oh, another River City game. I was so hype for it and it's not a bad game there You seem okay on it but it doesn't play anything like the four player Co Op like just shit show River City underground is and I was like sad like actually sad that I couldn't play with you guys and it wasn't the same spark right so I think that's very telling what the original was really great fun and just absurd characters like isn't a principal a Bobo isn't it?Wulff 37:25 Yeah a Bobo is principal a Bobo teach bad student lessonGP 37:33 It was great humorPalsh 37:35 was like cool like Kool Aid man just like a double dragon.GP 37:39 It was It was great. It was a wonderful experience. I hope that you guys I sounds like 68 it but I hope you guys all enjoyed it as much.Wulff 37:46 Oh, yeah, that game it. It hits so many notes it. It had random nods to just so many things like so many various beloved franchises of yesteryear andGP 37:59 some deep Slight Oh, your headset? Yes, great.Wulff 38:02 There was so many things, there was so many references that like one of us would catch that the others didn't. And it would be like, Oh, yeah, and I even I played through this game probably two full times. So once with you guys once with another friend of mine and probably another to halfway through, like once we just pause before we did the all four of us thing and then once just by myself that's how much I like this game is just satisfying because theyPalsh 38:33 they fixed. They like they took what was great about it and then just improved on it because it was just a labor of love kind of deal. And the music music is great. Just everything else. tons, tons of characters, tonsGP 38:45 of characters. Everybody had their own unique attacks,Wulff 38:48 doesn't playable characters after you unlock everybody.GP 38:51 Wow. Yeah.Jake 38:53 One guy does a hadoo Glenn.GP 38:55 Yeah. And then there's these, you know, well, there's you know, the Chad's You're like all just completely jacked and doing push ups with their chins to hit Yeah. And it's just, it's the right level of crazy and the the operating not the operating system but the, the way in which you have to accomplish stuff, or level up is is fantastic. You can go to saunas, you can go and eat beef jerky, I can't really describe it very well and do it justice, but you guys know, and if you've played it, then you get it. But if you haven't played it, get with it, act like you want it, download it, play it, find some friends, and make some connections because it'sWulff 39:34 fun, like added to your wish list or something and keep an eye out for a deal on this game if you're hesitant, but I mean, it hits a deep sale a number of times a year. So this is highly recommended one to get your hands on.Jake 39:47 And like the original river city ransom. I tried playing that after we play the new one, right? I don't like the original at all. But Underground's awesome I fantastic. I want to play it again like the original, just something but it didn't click, like this new one does. It's weird.Palsh 40:05 It's kind of like Borderlands two. I can't go back to Borderlands the same because yeah, they just made the second one so much better. Yeah, and I hate it because I love that game.Jake 40:17 All right. Well, how about you? What's your game of the year of 2019?Wulff 40:20 Um, you know what the game that I first like that. Then another new game to me this year. And I mean, I'm keeping it relatively recent right now. Not on purpose. It just happened to be like, I've played a lot of older games, and I was playing a lot of games that were completely new to me this year catching up on stuff on my ps4. So, Dad of war. Yeah, God of War for the ps4, that that's the one that got me It did. But I mean, it's this story about credos and his son and the relationship they don't have. That becomes one by the end of the game. And just the overall game itself, the game players a lot of fun, the conference That was interesting and kept refreshing itself throughout the game because you got access to new new stuff, but it didn't feel like you were burdened by the combat or anything. You know. I don't know that the story between the father and son it got me right in the fields. And I mean, maybe that's because I have a five year old son of my own. I don't know, but I was like, man, and there were points where I was, I was, boy, there were points where I was mad at credos for being such as to his son, a trace and then there were points where I was mad at trace for being such a dick the dad so you know. It's almost like real life. I actually cared about all the characters in this game like there were there was the blacksmith's. They were interesting and fun. One of them is just this crass, dirty old uncle type of bastard and the other one is a total germaphobe neat freak can a guy they're both very interesting stories like the lore behind hind the world. It's, I mean, they make pretty deep cuts into the Norse mythology. And it's all super cool. It's pretty spot on as far as what they pulled and built off of a I This was my first god of war. I haven't played any of them prior to this.Palsh 42:17 It might be a step down from here on in just fair warning.Wulff 42:20 What do you mean? You started that? Uh, whoa, yes, yes. Yeah. But I had, I had no connection with the characters prior to this. So it's not like, you know, I knew a lot of people who played the old god of war games and they were like, oh, man, credos is so cool. And then I never got into it wasn't it wasn't the type of game I was looking for at the time. And this year, it it hit all the right notes for me, and I was so pleased to play through it.Jake 42:46 The voice actor of creatives crisper judge, he's by to con Stargate and she is so good and that the voice acting overall and the game is really good, but you're right when he says boy, oh my god, it just hits all those notes. Indeed. And it's just like such a spectacle of a game. With the fights and whatnot, it just, uh, it is it's, it almost got me to buy a ps4. I made a commitment to the PC gaming this generation I told myself, I would not get another Xbox or ps4. And it's been so hard because Sony has been knocking them out those exclusives that are really fantastic. And God of War almost had me. I'm dying to play it.Wulff 43:25 Yeah, I think I'm the only one here who's played that one. So we don't have to dwell on it too long. Basically, if you haven't played it, and you can do so please.Jake 43:34 So Paul, shovel you What's your game of the year for 2019?Palsh 43:38 My game of the year I was thinking hard and long about this and that in that order? No, not really. I couldn't decide for a while but I wanted to give this something. I couldn't decide between Resident Evil two which I've only been playing for last week and something else but I'm going with hollow night and the reason I gave this The edge over Resident Evil two was not because I enjoyed it better, because they're both I can't I can't compare him to two different games. They're both just so good. But uh, I like the fact that Hollywood I first half it's an indie game that hit it big, and for damn good reason because it's just an amazing game. It hits so many like, buttons again, I just like you know, if you liked Castlevania Symphony of the Night, which I loved, of course, and the economy is, this one is like a completely different storyline is the best Metroidvania I've played. That's not, you know, a Castlevania basically. And I just really thought that after I reading up on it, and discussing with people what they did when they developed this game and how they've worked with it. I didn't know this was a Kickstarter game until I was halfway through. And I'm really wary of Kickstarter games for the most part, but I mean, that's all because I tried to buy Something on Kickstarter wants and I got burned. So I just said Oh, it's all garbage. Garbage is bliss hot garbage. Yeah. But no, I really liked the fact that they destroyed their Kickstarter cool. And as a result, they added extra content they have free DLC, which is the only way to do DLC. Personally, I can't stand the concept of DLC. For me, it's just like, oh, why are you selling an incomplete game that's, you know, stretching it out and trying to make money in the meantime and try to keep the buzz going. Like I'm just very negative when it comes to DLC. And I like how they did it because first off, it was free second half. It was great. It wasn't just like a cheap extension of the game. There's just so many great ways that they did it and apparently that they're working on a spin off or sequel I don't know what to call it. But the people that that contributed to the original Kickstarter campaign for hollow night apparently get the new game for free.Jake 45:57 Oh wow.Palsh 45:58 That's so little Things like yeah, and so like these indie devs are I think they're doing everything right and that's I think Capcom made resin evil to remake and it is amazing and they know what they're doing. They've made many mistakes along the way but they're also one of the biggest names in the world. These guys are you know, I've never heard of them before. This is the game that they are famous war and that's pretty much the only game they got and they're killing it. And I just really wanted to serve my support to them because I think it's amazing. So I'm looking forward to anything else that they put it in the future and just want to do spread that spread that enthusiasm to anybody who hasn't played it. To definitely check it out because retro inspired first off and it is like I said one of a kind for a metro Metroidvania which is not an easy thing to do your your cartoon bugs and the story is really deep, considering how cartoony and how innocent it is. It can be an At the same time really Gothic and really morose but still makes you feel good makes you happy to play it.Jake 47:08 It's definitely going to style man I like the whole role of the bugs and the grubs and the color palette is very very specificWulff 47:15 it to me it screams of like Tim Burton with bugs. Yes,Palsh 47:21 yes, I like that that's that's that's a great analogy there.Jake 47:25 It's one where I don't think I gave it a fair shake when it first came out and I have to go back and play it because I did try it but I found it a little bit of a difficult side or at least initially and I think I fell off it but I have to go back and tryWulff 47:37 I can see how that happened. What platform Are you playing on? It was PC Okay, so you've got a nice big chunky controller is gonna say if you're playing on switch, those two icons are not going to do you any favors. It was like this you need to have a big controller where it's easy to get from button a button and maneuver the joypad your hands is not going to to easily cramp up this was the game that I probably first streamed. When I started really getting into streaming. I had a lot of fun with this game. But for me my biggest issue with the game is just how samey the color palettes are sometimes I legit could not see enemies on certain screen it can get tricky like that. And that's probably more in me issue than an issue with the game itself. So I don't it's not something I hold against the game that was just my issue with the game but the boss fights and a lot of the level design and everything the world building it was all so much cool. So much fun, so cool at the boss fights and it specifically I just, they were so much fun to learn and figure out and master save for like maybe one of them that just pissed me off to no end until I beat it after it doesn't attempt.Palsh 48:54 The boss fights. Some of them were brutal and it came harking back to the days of NAS hard, where you stick through it, and you get Spidey and you want to beat it. And when you finally do, it's just such a satisfaction that you're just proud of yourself and you keep going. And I think the more bosses that you fight, and the more that you struggle with it, I think the makes it just, the more you want to play it.Wulff 49:17 I also liked that this game sort of encouraged the player to be a little bit more mindful of where they traveled. It ate up one of your active charms slots, or maybe two or three of your active charm slots to First off, be able to see the map when you're running around. Or maybe see which room you're in or see your specific location, things like that. Yeah, otherwise, you didn't get that you just got to see the map. And I that might have been a charm tonight. I think about it. But I'm not surePalsh 49:48 you have you can look at the map anytime you want to but to see where you were in relation to everything, you had to use one of the terms so yeah, yeah. So that was always on for me.Wulff 49:58 Me too. I was so Last the few times I elected to go without that thing I was I don't know what room I'm in. I have no idea. So I just started keeping it, it became a staple.Palsh 50:07 You very much have to have that as far as I'm concerned it The world is God I want to say it is three times bigger than I expected. I'm not excited and like, you know, I was about a quarter of the way through the game and I thought I was half done. I thought I was like three quarters the way down. And my friend saw my map and he said, Oh, yeah, you're doing good. You You were about 30% and I'm like what? Wow. Yeah. And so it's it's it's a big game and it's challenging. It'll take you a while. But it is worth every penny. I think it's just great.Wulff 50:46 And then there's the the challenge areas where like, the platforming oh my gosh, you I don't know if you did many of those are any of them but I did. I remember doing the one where everything is white and It's like a lot of clouds and stuff. And each you gotta jump on buzz saws and everything. It's a lot of platforming, a lot of perfectly timed attacks to things that'll hurt you to bounce up off of them and keep platforming. I had a lot of fun with it. It was very difficult but also it I felt very accomplished after completing it.Palsh 51:19 Yeah, the controls for that. They're so tight in the best way. So if you die, you're like, that was my phone. Yeah, that was my fault. You never going to throw that throw the controller and you know, like the Castlevania mode. Like when you're playing the original Castlevania games and you get thrown off because something hits you made jump and stuff. Now it's nothing like that. It's just it's challenging and a whole different level.Jake 51:42 Like Dark Souls combat was always difficult. But I always felt if I died, I felt a lot of time I died because of the slowdown of the animations. It wasn't it was fluid, but there wasn't as much control over your movements. Yeah. Whereas with hollow night, I mean, it's dead of it. There's obvious Dark Souls inspiration here. The combat is fast and like you said, controls very tight. And you are precise with your movements right you have full control your character and if you're right if you die, and I never did I say it's because the game has bad controls or gameplay. It's just it's just too hard for me. That was my fault. Yeah, exactly.Palsh 52:19 So it's definitely it's just one of those games where I don't really have a complaint about it except for the fact that it's just, there's so much that I want to do. Yeah, it's there's so much to it and getting like 100% on everything it is. It is a big pill to swallow if you want to do that. SoJake 52:37 Alright, awesome. I guess that leaves us Jake.Wulff 52:40 Bring it home. Jake. Jake, what do youJake 52:42 know? Yeah, sorry. I just got back to GP laughing I my games my game when I mentioned what it was. So for me, my game of the year. It's not new to me. But I played it a whole lot this year. And I gotta start by saying, I don't like beat him ups. Everybody raves Mostly to rage, and final fight and all those games. I don't like them, I never really got into them. The only one that I really cared for and it came from when I was a kid, my friend had a Master System. And I had a lot of fun memories going to his place to play it. And the one game we played quite a bit was Double Dragon. My game of the year is double dragon for the Master System.Palsh 53:21 See, I thought you were just building up how you're going to start talking about something more recent. So for the fact that I knew what you're going to say,Wulff 53:30 Now, like, I've not played this game. I never really played much Double Dragon in general. What I did play was when I was younger, and I sucked at it, and it was on the ns like that's the one I played. Yeah, and I even cheesed my way through that game. I want to say last year, late last year with safe states because I finally got fed up with trying to do a full single setting of that game. I just couldn't do it. I'm hoping the Master System version is better. Otherwise, I'm calling shenanigans on your turn.Jake 54:02 From once people are disagreeing with me, that never happens. So okay, you're right so the I've been trying to get into the Double Dragon because I know that's the most common one people have been playing. The problem I have with that part of the game is and we mentioned before in the podcast, Nintendo when they brought certain franchises over to the me as they kind of insisted that be something more unique or additions made to the game to separate it from the other versions. Because Double Dragon as an IP, or the first one is important to literally everything. If you want to a hot garbage time. It's the Skyrim Double Dragon for mid 80s. Yeah, we'll play the Atari 2600 version. It exists. It uses one button and a joystick. And if you play Double Dragon the NES you know that you've you really should have three buttons for that game. Right in order to jump you need to push a and b at the same time. It's terrible. The Atari only has one button.Palsh 54:57 You have an automatic jump kick soon as you do Anything with it jumping So,Jake 55:01 right but you have to unlock it in the NDS version. What's the message to them to get off don't not to get too far off track. They are different games. The ns has technical limitations with it. Right? The reason I like the Master System on I know never heard of that before a bit systems being crappy blunt. Like the Master System version was Co Op, you could play with a friend. In fact, it was meant to be played with a friend. Wow. It's on screen Co Op, as well. Yes version. I had a restriction of I want to say two enemies at once on screen. And they were almost I think they had to be the same sprite when they did it. So if you to Bobo'sWulff 55:35 Miss,Wulff 55:37 right?Jake 55:39 Yeah. So the sprites looked a little bit better on the vs vs Master System, but you only had two enemies on the screen at one time. So I mean that and for whatever reason, Nintendo I guess, for that port had shoehorned in some platforming elements, which were terrible, right and it jumping in a game is bad and it's bad in the Master System as well. But nobody In the Master System version is there moving platforms or things you have to navigate the only jump that's really a pain in the butt is the division three you're in the jungle area or forest area and there's a bridge broken into jump across it that's the only real tricky jump jumping is optional. Yeah, but the NAS had so many other jumps that were just terrible. Yes, right. So my system has Co Op First off, I want to say three enemies max on screen if not for and you can have different enemies on screen at once. The first level the end boss is a red a Bobo and there's another guy on the screen or two Why don't you guys the screen and same time I believe, but it's great for that. I played a lot of double dragon in the arcades. When I was a kid. It was Double Dragon and it was a lot of rampage the original rampage nice and this is very true to the arcade. It does not look as nice. The sprites are designed quite different. But the stage layout and the music is almost spot on. Release. Nostalgia tells me it was very similar to the arcade game it's also easier as well more forgiving the enhanced version I say that there's no continuous I think in that one no wrongWulff 57:11 there are notJake 57:12 right and that's ass.Palsh 57:15 Stupid okay.Wulff 57:16 For no reason not agree more.Jake 57:19 Right so Master System you have unlimited continues. For this first three missions is only four missions, you have a limit continues for the first three it's only at the fourth mission that whatever you had, you have to finish the fourth message force force. wow I've had a few. The fourth mission, you have to use your remaining lives and that's all you get. So if you finish mission three with one life you only have one life and no continuous permission for that's a bit annoying, but it let it prepares you the first three missions to kind of make your way through the game is definitely challenging some of the fights, but you have that cushion if you need it. The difficulty ramp up is pretty smooth first mission the enemies you face. And then once you the mission three it ramps up quite a bit and then for it gets a lot harder but it just a great professional way through. But I love it and Co Op because you just battling with a friend right and I get it now for beat him ups for people who play beat him ups. I could never get through the first few stages I just never understood. How can you get there with one life far How do you guys survive that but when you realize when you're playing these games, you got to find the certain moves and when them use them use them. It's very much a placement of your sprites. When you're playing Double Dragon the Master System, you want to bob and weave a bit to avoid getting jump kicked. But the enemies for example, you want to know that the way the AI moves, you can kind of predict the way that moves if you watch carefully enough and you can understand how the game works. Picking that game apart this past year to try and get my time down because I was trying to stream it for retro block party. And originally I played it took me an hour and 10 minutes to beat it just too long. So I want to get it down and I just played it over and over again and I just got such a groove learning the ins and outs of that game and I can do it now and 30 minutes no problem. Wow. It's got to a point where I love playing that game so much and I can just sit down and relax planet I've started speed running it in my off time I hateJake 59:07 I'm not a speed runnerPalsh 59:09 ever Who are you?Jake 59:11 I know who am I it's like I'm not a Jake but it's actually one speed from this game like it's just there's no glitches while there's a couple but it's not like you're you know you're you're zips and weird screen tricks like some speed running games. Double Dragon is just a straight you got to play it and you got to play it well you need to know what moves to use and how to position yourself with the AI. It's just as true game as you can get. I love it. The End sequence is also especially noteworthy if you're playing Co Op. Well, I guess the spoilers, but Nintendo version, you know, a 30 year old game, the end of the Nintendo game, you beat the big ugly with the machine gun. You then face Your brother is his baby. I guess his name is he's the boss and he's super cheap. And the mass system version if you play Co Op after be the guy the machine gun you must beat your brother to death your co op becomes one on one and that's who wins the game.Unknown Speaker 1:00:06 First time that happened,Jake 1:00:07 my friend and I were dying laughing when one of us won the one died. It was just hilarious that you're playing Co Op for for missions. And you get to the end and you gotta beat on your partner it just hilarious is great. Like I don't think any other medium of game has done quite that. I thought that was prettyWulff 1:00:24 that's quite a twist ending for an any or you know for an eight bit game. Not Yeah, Master System. But still. That's, that's pretty cool.Palsh 1:00:32 I want to play it now. Because when you take a platforming, like that sounds more appealing.Wulff 1:00:37 I might go back visit this one.Jake 1:00:41 Yeah. And you have all your moves from the beginning. You can do the elbows and drop kicks, all right from the gecko, and it's fine like Nintendo one is not a bad game. It's fine. I do like it but the Master System one for me just really has that nostalgia belt. It just rings it really clear. It reminds me the arcade game. The music is there. The gameplay is there. It's a fun Co Op game and I've played it so much this year that I've actually started speed running it. And I've never ever said that word with my name in a sense. So for me, it's declared Game of the Year for me just and how much I've enjoyed that retro title.Palsh 1:01:13 I think the only thing I dislike about what I've seen of that game, that version is that the coffee mug fists aren't quite as prominent. That's it.Jake 1:01:24 That's a big, pretty key criterion or a big games.Palsh 1:01:28 It is for me that was the third video game I've ever played. It's high in my record.Jake 1:01:35 Alright, well I think that will do it. That is of course the game of the year for us not just retro, modern two or anything between the new to us all of your titles for presby 2019. I think this is something we're going to get tradition. Maybe not has made drinks and Jake before he does it.Jake 1:01:53 That's fantastic. Well, thank you, everybody who's here. Pulse where Can everybody find you?Palsh 1:01:58 You can find me here. Every now and then I do stream on Twitch at twitch TV slash pulse. 109 says pa l as h 109.Jake 1:02:08 And we're all working folks find you.Wulff 1:02:10 They can find me and Twitch and twitter at werewolf w ar EWULF. f.Jake 1:02:18 and GPS so stunned about my selection for my personal Game of the Year. He is speechless. You can find him at the retro therapy on Twitch TV, or search the retro therapy over on YouTube's. I think he's on Instagram and Twitter too. You'll see him around. He streams a lot. He's a good guy by Nick coughing, but we love and I'm sick Jake, you find me on Twitch mostly, mostly Twitter, just like everybody says just right here, here on presby to cancel. It's been a hell of a year. Here's to another year going forward. Thank you everybody.Wulff 1:02:53 Thank you all for listeningPalsh 1:02:55 to speedsWulff 1:02:57 to an 818Jake 1:03:03 Special thanks for music go to Arthur, the ancient found on Soundcloud or the last station on YouTube. For more episodes, please visit our website presby to cancel.com as well Feel free to like or subscribe at Apple iTunes, Google podcasts or anywhere else you'd like to listen to your favorite shows. As always, thank you.Special thanks to Arthur The Last Ancient on soundcloud for our podcast theme. For updates and more episodes please visit our website www.pressbtocancel.com, or find us on Twitter @pressbtocancel and Instagram @pressbtocancel.

GRAVEDIGGING by Sarah Goldman   When I woke up, I noticed first that Clarissa was there, because she was always the first thing I noticed. I noticed three things immediately after that: it was dark, I could feel dirt under my fingers, and my mouth tasted disgusting, like charcoal and rubbing alcohol and cotton. "What the fuck?" is what I tried to say, except I don't think the words came out quite right. I started coughing and I couldn't stop. "Just give it a second," Clarissa said, rubbing my back. I got a good look at her once the coughing subsided and my eyes stopped watering, and she looked like she'd been run over by a truck a few times: dark circles, greasy hair, unwashed skin. Clarissa always tried to look as put together as people expected her to be. I'd seen her look this messed up once or twice before, and it never meant anything good.     [Full story after the cut.]   Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip Episode 63! This is your host, Keffy, and I’m super excited to share this story with you. Today we have a reprint of “Gravedigging" by Sarah Goldman. This story is part of the (late) Spring 2018 issue of GlitterShip is available for purchase at glittership.com/buy and on Kindle, Nook, and Kobo. If you’re a Patreon supporter, you should have access to this issue waiting for you when you log in. We also have GlitterShip Year Two available in both ebook and paperback formats to add to your queer science fiction collection. GlitterShip is also a part of the Audible Trial Program. This means that just by listening to GlitterShip, you are eligible for a free 30 day membership on Audible, and a free audiobook to keep. If you’re looking for an excellent queer book to listen to, check out Autonomous by Annalee Newitz. This book has a ton of cool concepts and really intriguing characters. If you're a fan of patent-fighting drug pirates or AI characters working out their identities, this is the book for you. To download Autonomous for free today, go to www.audibletrial.com/glittership — or choose another book if you’re in the mood for something else.     Sarah Goldman grew up near Kansas City and studied sociology at Bryn Mawr College. She is a First Reader at Strange Horizons, and her short fiction has appeared in Cicada and Escape Pod. You can find her online at sarahmgoldman.com, or on Twitter @sarahwhowrites. "Gravedigging" is narrated by A.J. Fitzwater. A.J. Fitzwater is a dragon wearing a human meat suit from Christchurch, New Zealand. A graduate of Clarion 2014, she’s had stories published in Shimmer Magazine, Andromeda Spaceways Magazine, and in Paper Road Press’s At The Edge anthology. She also has stories coming soon at Kaleidotrope and PodCastle. As a narrator, her voice has been heard across the Escape Artists Network, on Redstone SF, and Interzone. She tweets under her penname as @AJFitzwater.       GRAVEDIGGING by Sarah Goldman   When I woke up, I noticed first that Clarissa was there, because she was always the first thing I noticed. I noticed three things immediately after that: it was dark, I could feel dirt under my fingers, and my mouth tasted disgusting, like charcoal and rubbing alcohol and cotton. "What the fuck?" is what I tried to say, except I don't think the words came out quite right. I started coughing and I couldn't stop. "Just give it a second," Clarissa said, rubbing my back. I got a good look at her once the coughing subsided and my eyes stopped watering, and she looked like she'd been run over by a truck a few times: dark circles, greasy hair, unwashed skin. Clarissa always tried to look as put together as people expected her to be. I'd seen her look this messed up once or twice before, and it never meant anything good. "Are you okay?" I asked. I had a little more luck with pronunciation this time. "You look kind of like death warmed over. No offense." Clarissa started to laugh, loud and wild enough that it was more scary than comforting. When she stopped, I only had time to open my mouth to ask a question before her eyes rolled back into her head and she slumped over next to me in the dirt. We were lying on dirt. It was dark. I looked up, and up, and up, and when I saw the edges of the hole we were in, I understood what Clarissa had done. I clambered up the sides of the grave to get a good look at the headstone. I knew what it would say, but I had to see it. It told me that May Tenenbaum had died at nineteen years old. If I'd lived another three weeks, I would have been twenty. I sat back down next to Clarissa, passed out in my grave in the wedge of space she'd carved out next to my coffin. A crowbar lay beside us, where she'd used it to pry off the lid, next to the pile of small stones she'd brought for the spell. I looked down at my fingernails, which were neat and manicured like they'd never been while I was alive, and I wondered if I should try to wake Clarissa up. I'd seen her do this before, after she overexerted herself on a spell, and she'd always been all right afterwards. Her pulse, when I checked, was steady, so I stole her phone out of her pocket instead. The last day I remembered had been the fifth of June. My tombstone told me I'd died on the sixth. Today was the seventeenth. I must have been buried for at least a week or so, then. I know my father would've wanted me buried quickly, a Jewish funeral. A good thing, too. No embalming fluid for Clarissa to deal with. Performing necromancy on humans was a felony, and it was horrendously, skin-crawlingly terrifying besides. The idea had made me queasy when it happened in books or movies, when TV pundits went on rants. But from this side of things, it wasn't so bad. My hands were distressingly pale when I looked at them, and my head was in bad shape, but when I checked my face in Clarissa's phone camera, I honestly looked okay. Like I'd been at a fancy party, had too much champagne, fell down in the dirt outside. Messed up, but not a zombie. I didn't feel dead at all. What I should feel was furious. I should be demanding that Clarissa take it back. But I wasn't betrayed that someone I loved would do such an awful thing, like the girl in that modern day Frankenstein blockbuster we'd seen last month. I wasn't thinking about the greater good. I was selfishly and vainly glad, because the girl I would do anything for had done this for me. I'd seen the faces Clarissa made during that stupid movie, and yet: here we both were. Her passed out in a grave she must have spent all night digging up, and me alive when I should be dead. I ran my fingers through her hair, and after fourteen minutes by the clock on her phone, Clarissa woke up. She stared at me, and then she sat up too fast and almost fell right back down afterwards. I grabbed her shoulders to steady her. "It worked," she said, watching me with wide eyes. "It did," I said. "You still look terrible." "Shut up," she said automatically, with no heat behind it. She put her hands against the sides of my face. I wondered, distantly, if my cheeks felt cold, or if my blood had already started to warm them up again. Very suddenly, Clarissa yanked me into a hug, almost overbalancing the both of us. I hugged her back, and politely ignored the fact that she was crying into the shoulder of my nice dress. "I'm okay," I said, because Clarissa probably needed to hear it. "If anyone isn't okay, I think it's probably you. Were you supposed to pass out?" Clarissa snorted, and then shrugged without removing her face from the crook of my neck. "Occupational hazard," she said, muffled into my shoulder. After a moment, she raised her face, eyes puffy and red. "It happens sometimes, with larger—with anything more substantial." She'd probably been about to say ‘animals.’ I guess she didn't think I'd find the comparison flattering. I felt a little sick. Clarissa wiped her face on her sleeve and shook out her hair, visibly trying to pull herself together. "We need to get out of here. The sun is supposed to rise in—" she fumbled for her phone before I handed it back to her, "—about ten minutes." I immediately felt better. Following Clarissa's plans was something I was used to. Together, we gathered up her things and climbed out of my grave, using her shovel to push the soil back as best we could, and we walked out of the cemetery together, the sun rising at our backs.   Clarissa had always known how to make loud and spectacular mistakes. Even as a kid, she made spellwork look easy. When we were ten, I watched her bring back our class's pet guinea pig. We all huddled around Clarissa, crouched in the dirt. She held a chunk of gravel in her hands and closed her eyes for a moment, and we were all sure that she was faking, that nothing would happen. Then the guinea pig got up, and we had to race to catch it. Afterwards, the other kids ran to show our teacher. I stayed behind with Clarissa. She was on her back, staring up at the sky, tossing the piece of playground gravel that tethered the guinea pig's life up and down in her hand. "That was amazing," I told her. She shrugged, and coughed. "I missed him. What else was I supposed to do?" Then she looked at me and grinned, smile so bright I could feel it in my own stomach. "It was cool, wasn't it?" Clarissa wore that little piece of playground gravel she'd used for the spell on a chain around her wrist, humming with warmth for as long as that guinea pig was still alive. She kept adding to the chain, too, doing stupid things like bringing back songbirds in the park, using chunks of gemstones she kept in her pockets to store their life. They all went out, eventually—necromancy wasn't a ticket to eternal life—but she did it often enough that there was always something warm on her bracelet, always a little piece of life hanging around her wrist. When we were nineteen, nine years after she brought that guinea pig back to life and two weeks before I woke up with her in my grave, Clarissa asked me to go with her to a protest. Necromancy unsettled people, but it wasn't really as uncommon as everyone thought it was. Clarissa had explained it to me once. It was just healing, in the end, and there were plenty of people who could do that. Except putting enough force behind the spell to draw someone back from death required more ability than almost anyone had. Back when she was ten, people laughed, and told her that soon, she would know better than to do frivolous things like resurrect dead class pets. Telling Clarissa she couldn’t do something was never a good idea; I could have told them that. When we got older, no one thought it was cute anymore. She scared people. Historically, necromancers didn't turn out well, if you looked at Rasputin or van Hohenheim or Countess Bathory. Healers were dicey enough, if you asked the kind of people who campaigned against them working in hospitals or making vaccines. The day I died, I was with Clarissa at a protest against a local bill that would prevent the teaching of magic in schools. I wasn't really into politics, honestly, but Clarissa was spitting mad. "What do they think is going to happen?" she'd said, pacing back in forth in my apartment kitchen. "Magic is so dangerous, right? Well, if they don't teach kids anything then of course they're going to screw up, of course there's going to be accidents—you know my cousin, the one who can light fires? Can you imagine if he had no formal training?" I sat at the kitchen table and nodded. "There's a protest on 39th and Blackwood tomorrow night. Think of it as an early birthday present for me?" She didn't have to ask me if I would go with her, and I didn't have to tell her that I was coming. It was understood. That was who I was: I did what Clarissa asked. My dad didn't want me to go, but I was nineteen, so I didn't have to sneak out my window, the way I always used to whenever Clarissa had a bad idea. "Be careful, May," was all my father said as I left, right after I gave him instructions on reheating his dinner. And once we got there, I was careful, up until some asshole from the other side of the picket pushed Clarissa, and she pushed him back, teeth bared. Then, suddenly I wasn't anymore. Clarissa was dangerous when she got mad, and she shrugged me off when I tried to drag her back. She started yelling at the man who'd pushed her, and there were people all around us, and Clarissa wasn't listening to anything that I was saying in her ear. "I know you," the man said to Clarissa. That wasn't very surprising; most people around here knew about Clarissa. He pushed her a second time, harder, and she would have fallen if I wasn't in her way. "Clarissa, leave it." I steadied the both of us and rubbed at the bruises forming on my arm where she'd run into me. She ignored me. "You got something to say?" she asked the man. He didn't. What he did have was a mean right hook but terrible aim, and what I had was no self-preservation: I shoved my way in front of Clarissa, and I went down hard. He was a bit like Clarissa, I think—he didn't know when to stop. The last thing I remember was his boot in my face, and a sudden, terrible fear that he was going to break my nose. Touching it now, I didn't think he did. I could feel the place in the back of my skull, under my hair, where he'd got me instead.   We got some odd looks at the diner Clarissa took us to. That made sense—we both had dirt in our hair and smudged on our faces, and beyond that we didn't look much like we belonged together. I was wearing what I thought of as my synagogue dress, complete with pearls around my neck, but also a beanie I'd pulled from Clarissa's bag. Clarissa was dressed like she expected to be going grave-digging, in baggy jeans and boots, her hair pulled back into a bun. She still looked like she might pass out at any moment. It was obvious she'd been crying. It was six in the morning at a twenty-four hour diner, though, so mostly everyone just ignored us. Clarissa ordered coffee and eggs. I ordered tea, matzah ball soup, and a slice of banana cream pie. Even exhausted, Clarissa raised an eyebrow at me. I ignored her. We had more important things to worry about. "Clarissa, what the hell are we going to do? I can't exactly go home." If my dad had any sense, which I happened to know that he did, he would call the cops in two seconds. Clarissa's family would certainly do the same. We didn't have anywhere to go. An awful feeling crept into my stomach. There was no way this was going to work. When my food came, the soup gave me pause: matzah ball soup was my dad's favorite. But I couldn't go home. I would never make it for him again. When I looked up, Clarissa was watching me. "It's better when you make it, right?" she asked. I laughed and went back to eating. Clarissa picked at her eggs, and I ended up finishing half of them for her. "Do we have somewhere to sleep, at least?" I asked. Clarissa looked like she was about to fall over again. "I'm fine," she said, swaying a bit, which was so very her that I couldn't help but smile. "Of course you are. I could use a nap, though." She sighed. "Alright. There's a motel nearby. We can rest there and then we can do whatever you want." "Me?" I'm not exactly the planning type. "What, there's nothing you want to do? No last requests?" I stared at my hands, clutched tight around my tea. I didn't want to get caught, or for Clarissa to go to jail, or to never see my father again. I wanted things to go back to the way they had always been. I wanted to be alive again, and what Clarissa had done was close to that. But not quite. "I just want to spend time with you," was what I settled on. She put her hands over mine, and tilted her head until I had to look her in the eyes. "Okay," she said, reassuring, like she'd heard all the things I hadn't said. "It's gonna be fine, May." Her voice was certain and steady like the stones wrapped around her wrist, and just then, I believed her.   Clarissa took the first shower, and was out like a light the minute her head hit the pillow. I grinned, and wasn't even bothered when I discovered that she'd used up all the hot water. At least that was normal. After I dried my hair, I lay back on the other bed, not particularly tired. I couldn't help but think that if I fell asleep, the spell would snap, like a wire drawn too taut, and I'd never wake up again. That wasn't how this worked: anything Clarissa brought back would live out its natural lifespan. That guinea pig had lived to a very respectable age. I still couldn't bring myself to close my eyes. So I sat cross-legged on the scratchy motel comforter and turned on the news, volume off and closed captioning on. Clarissa slept like a log once she was out, but if she woke up she'd probably refuse to sleep again. I knew what I was going to see on the TV screen, but I still couldn't help but wince, seeing my grainy prom photo on display. Somebody had noticed that the dirt on my grave wasn't quite how they'd left it, or that Clarissa had broken the lock on the gate, or maybe they'd just checked the damn CCTV, and so of course it was all over the news. Necromancy scandals were rare, because most necromancers didn't have enough power to do what Clarissa had done, and all the ones that did had enough sense not to. I flipped through the channels for a while. There was coverage about the protest where I'd died, suddenly relevant again two weeks later. The police were looking for us, of course. There wasn't any doubt in anybody's mind what had happened—Clarissa was locally well known. We were on the national news, too. I watched Megyn Kelly's mouth move silently as the subtitles talked about how this was just another example of the need for greater laws monitoring necromancers—scratch that, all magic. I turned the TV off before she could start talking about Jesus and I put my head in my hands. After a while, Clarissa sat down beside me on the bed and put her hand on my back. She was very warm. Her hand was shaking a little, and I wondered if she was crying. I wanted to turn and hug her, bury my face in her neck, tell her what a goddamn idiot she was being. Still, I couldn't help but treasure the thought that she was doing all these stupid, ridiculous things for me, just like I'd always wanted her to. "May?" she asked, hesitantly, when I didn't move. "Is everything okay?" I looked up at her and smiled as brightly as I could. "Of course," I said, as if the answer was obvious. She wasn't crying like I'd thought. Her hands just weren’t very steady. "Let's go. We really shouldn't stay here, Clarissa." Clarissa stood. I helped her pack up our stuff. Her stuff, mostly. Everything fit into a single backpack, which I shouldered, glaring at Clarissa when she tried to take it. I followed her out the door.   We checked out of the motel, but we didn't make it to the train station, although it was only a few blocks away. There were two problems: people kept looking at us, speculatively, as if they were sure they'd seen our faces somewhere, and after about five minutes of walking Clarissa nearly collapsed, because between one step and the next it seemed that her legs couldn't hold her. I grabbed her just before she went down, so we both stumbled but didn't quite fall. "Clarissa?" I tried to get my arm under hers so that I could hold her up. "I'm fine," she said, and it was less endearing this time around. "No, you're not." I dragged her into the nearest store, an ice cream shop. I dumped Clarissa in a booth in the corner, grabbed her wallet out of her pocket, and went to buy something, both because it would look suspicious not to, and also because we could probably use it. When the girl at the counter handed me my cup of ice cream, she also handed me a wad of napkins. "For your friend," she said, sympathetic. I looked back at Clarissa, confused. She had her fingers pressed above her mouth, and her nose was bleeding. I winced. "There's a free clinic a couple blocks over," the girl at the counter offered. "I think they have a few healers around at this time of day." I thanked her, and took the ice cream and napkins back to the table. I handed Clarissa the napkins and sat down across from her as she pressed them to her face where her fingers had been. "Thanks," she said, a little bit muffled. "Are you going to tell me what's going on now?" She closed her eyes and tipped her head back against the vinyl seat, napkins still pressed to her nose. "It's just a reaction to the spell," she said. "I'll be okay in a little while." "A reaction is you sick with a cold for a week," I said, a little harsher than I intended. Clarissa opened her eyes. "This is different. I'm not stupid. It's never been this bad before." "Well, why do you think that is, May?" Clarissa snapped. "I've never done something like this before. I knew this might happen, so don't worry about it, okay? I have it under control." A thin stream of blood was leaking out from under the napkins. I grabbed another one off the table and leaned in to wipe it off for her. "Clearly," I said, and she glared at me. "You're going back to bed," I decided, and Clarissa sat forward so fast she probably made her nosebleed worse. "Absolutely not," she said. "You were right. We have to leave." I looked at her, sitting across the table and trembling. I didn't think she noticed she was doing it. I wanted to reach out to her and hold her. "We can stay for another night," I said. "There's something I need to get before we go, anyway. I can sneak into my apartment and grab it tonight, and you can rest, and we can leave in the morning. Okay?" She nodded, and didn't even ask what it was I needed so badly. It felt like there was a stone sinking in my gut. Clarissa was always asking questions, demanding answers. I wasn't used to being the one who had to protect her and I wasn't sure I liked it. I took her arm and led her out of the shop, so we could find another place to stay for the night, and Clarissa let herself be led.   I left Clarissa at the new motel and I walked home. The apartment wasn't far, but it was hot, and I was still wearing Clarissa's beanie and my velvet dress. When I got there, I went up the fire escape and climbed in my window, like I'd done so many times when I was younger. I hadn't seen my dad's car in the lot, and it was the middle of the day, so I had to hope that he wasn't home. My bedroom hadn't been touched. I grabbed some clothes and some money, shoving them into my backpack, and I didn't let myself spend too much time looking around. I'd left the book that I'd come for on the bookcase in the living room, although I had no way of knowing if it was still there. It was supposed to be my birthday present for Clarissa. She was always complaining about the lack of materials on necromancy, because almost all of them were rare or illegal or both, so I'd stalked eBay for a few months to get an old book for her. I didn't understand half of the information in it, but surely there was something in there that could help her. I had to at least look. When I walked into the living room, I heard a crash from the kitchen before I'd taken two steps. For a moment I thought my heart had stopped again, but it kept beating, much faster and louder than I liked. I pressed back against the wall the living room shared with the kitchen and prayed that whoever was home didn't walk in here. God, I shouldn't have come. Of all the stupid things I'd ever done for Clarissa, the one she didn't even ask for was what was finally going to screw us over. There was another clang from the kitchen. This one was the telltale sound of my father knocking over a pan while he was cooking. By reflex, I almost offered to help him, but I clamped my hand over my mouth and kept quiet. I shouldn't have bothered. I knew exactly what was going to happen next: my dad would curse, and throw the pan in the sink, and go to find a hand towel from the linen closet. Which was in the living room, of course, where I stood. I tried to step back into my bedroom before my father walked in, but there wasn't any time. I dropped my hand and bit my lip and desperately tried to think of what in the world I was going to tell him. The moment my father caught sight of me, I knew. The change in his face was immediate. I wanted to speak first, head off whatever he was going to say, but the words stuck in my throat like dirt. I choked and I said nothing. It felt like I'd been here before, and it took me a moment to realize why. My frozen feet and the sick feeling in my stomach and the words trapped in my throat, the thought that if I moved or spoke or did anything that he would hate me—I had done this before. I'd been thirteen when I'd come out. But back then, I'd known, deep down, that he wouldn't care. This time I knew that he would. "So it's true," he said. He folded and unfolded his arms, uncomfortable as I'd ever seen him. I wondered if he would stop me if I tried to leave. I couldn't make my legs move. "Dad." He took off his glasses and rubbed at his nose, and I closed my eyes against the tears fighting to escape. I didn't think I'd ever see him do that again. When I was thirteen, my father had opened his arms wide and hugged me, letting me hide my face in his chest. Now we stood apart, the few feet between us impassable. There was nothing stopping me from stepping forward and closing the gap. But I couldn't do it. If I did, he might step back. "I knew that girl was trouble," he said, looking not quite at me but at the space above my left shoulder. It was a trick he'd taught me for public speaking, a long time ago. I looked him in the eyes. "She's not," I said, and at least this conversation was familiar. We'd spoken this way about Clarissa hundreds of times. It’s awful, to have to admit that your parents were right. It didn't matter that Clarissa was trouble. It didn't matter that she'd made a mistake, was always making mistakes. She was still my friend. "I miss you," he said, and on the last word his voice broke. I wondered what it was like to have something you loved in front of you, wanting it with all your heart, and still knowing that you couldn't keep it. Then again, maybe I didn't have to wonder. "I'm right here, Dad," I said. "I'm the same as I was two weeks ago." He shook his head. "You're not. If you are, I'm going to have to bury you twice." I couldn't help it. I was stung. Who was I, if I wasn't me? I turned my face away, looking at the book sitting where I had left it on the mantle, and I said, "I miss you too." Dad looked at the book when I picked it up. "For Clarissa," he said, barely a question. I nodded. "Please don't call anyone," I said. "Clarissa was just—she's my friend. They'll never let her go." His jaw worked. "And you?" I did my best to smile. "I'll be fine. She'll take care of me." In the end, he nodded, and the last thing my father said to me was, "Goodbye." And I suppose that's more than most people get. I left the way I'd come, book clutched close to my chest.   I went back to the motel and settled on the rickety chair in the corner. Clarissa was still asleep, and I looked down at her present, sitting in my lap. The book was old and faded, pages falling out of its leather cover. I flipped through it. I'd spent a lot of time imagining the face Clarissa would make when I gave it to her. I tried to imagine Clarissa's expression if I told her that I'd gone home just to get a book on the off-chance that it might be able to help her, and I had to stop myself from laughing. I wished I hadn't seen my father. I'd known that I couldn't go back, but seeing him threw everything into sharp relief: my father would never hug me again, never smile at me, never tell me that everything would be all right. Clarissa had brought me back, and I meant what I'd said to him. I was still me. But except for her, my life was gone. Once, I would have thought that Clarissa would be enough. But now, I couldn't stop thinking of my father's face, of all the things he'd never say again. I looked down the book, opened it to the first page, and started to read.   Clarissa was still asleep when I finished. I curled up next to her on the blanket and closed my eyes and listened to her breathe. Her breathing wasn't very steady. She was shaking a little, even in her sleep, and her skin was so pale you'd think that she was the dead one. I was so stupid, thinking for even a minute that this could work, and so was Clarissa. I lay there for hours, fighting off sleep and watching her shake, until her eyes fluttered open and she looked straight at me. "Hey," she said, a little muzzily. I couldn't decide if I wanted to kiss her or hit her, so I asked her how she was feeling instead. "Fine," Clarissa said, struggling to sit up. I sat up too and put my face in my hands. "Did you find what you wanted?" she asked, sliding an arm around my shoulders, like I was the one who needed comforting. But she was warm, and I couldn't bring myself to shake her off. "Not really," I said, thinking of what I'd found in that book of hers. "Clarissa, what exactly are you hoping to get out of this, really?" We hadn't spoken about it, exactly, but it hung suspended between us: my existence was an abomination and a disgrace, and Clarissa was the same for making it happen. There was no place for us anywhere anymore. And there was another thing we hadn't talked about. I took a deep breath, and forced the words out: "Clarissa, this is killing you." She didn't seem surprised, which was the worst part of it, really. She'd known all along what she was doing to herself, and she did it anyway. It was just the stupid sort of thing Clarissa would do, knowing the consequences and not caring. Clarissa never knew when to stop. I loved her so much. She didn't say anything. I tipped my head back to stare at the ceiling. "I can't believe you," I said thickly. "I don't want you to die for me." "Well, I didn't want you to die," Clarissa said. "And you did anyway, and it was because of me. You can't expect me to just let that happen, not when I could—what's the point of all this, of all this shit I can do, if I couldn't help you? What was I supposed to do?" Her eyes were bloodshot and watery and she was trembling still, her hair falling in her face, and she was so, so beautiful. "Clarissa," I said. "Look. I just don't see how you think this is going to end." She looked at me, brow furrowed. "We'll figure something out," she said. "We'll catch a train tomorrow, and we'll keep running, and they'll have to stop looking eventually, and as long as we stay together, we'll be fine." She believed it, too. She wouldn't have said it if she didn't. We wouldn't be fine. Even if we never got caught, Clarissa's hands wouldn't stop shaking, her nose wouldn't stop bleeding, her teeth wouldn't stop chattering. I was killing her every minute I was alive. And no matter what, neither of us could ever go home. Clarissa hated being told she couldn't do something--the fact that I was here at all was proof of that. Sometimes, she just needed someone to stop her, if she wouldn't stop herself. I took her face in both my hands and I kissed her. It was funny. Since I'd met her, I could never remember a time when I didn't love Clarissa. I don't know why it never occurred to me, before all this, that she might be as hopeless for me as I was for her. She kissed me back. Of course she did. She kissed me back, because she'd broken every law of magic, was working herself literally to death, just to keep me with her. I sat beside her on the crappy motel bed, her hands in my hair, and felt her breath against my cheek. I closed my eyes against it and willed myself not to cry. She settled back on the bed, and I curled up beside her, so we were lying face to face. Clarissa breathed in deep, tucked her nose against the crook of my neck. "I thought I lost you," she said quietly. "I couldn't do nothing, May, you know I couldn't." I pushed her hair out of her face and kissed her forehead and held her hand, the one that had her bracelet, and I didn't say anything at all. Maybe it had all been worth it, for the chance to have this with Clarissa. Even for just a moment. She fell asleep with my hand running through hair, and I stole her bracelet. Some of the stones on it were cool, inert, and some were faintly warm, and the uneven chunk of amethyst that I knew had to be me was hot to the touch. The stone was rough; I could see the places on her wrist where it had cut into her skin. I untied the knot on the cord and pulled the amethyst off. I rummaged through the pile of our things in the corner until I found the crowbar from my grave. At the rickety table, I took out the book and opened it to the right section. I tucked the train ticket I'd bought for Clarissa between the pages and I left the other things I'd taken from my home for her: hair dye, a hat, baggy clothes, sunglasses, five hundred dollars from the emergency fund in my closet. Not much, but it might be enough to keep her free. And maybe Clarissa could have what I couldn't. I looked at the book again. I guess I should have known that reversing the spell would be so simple. All I had to do was break the stone, and the connection would sever. Clarissa would be fine. The crowbar was heavy in my hands. I turned it over a few times before I raised it over my head. I thought about my father, about all the years of kissing Clarissa I'd missed out on, about how angry and hurt she would be when she woke up. I thought of how Clarissa wanted so badly to protect everyone else, how desperately I wanted to be the one to save her, how she refused to let me, even when I'd died. Clarissa wanted me to live badly enough to destroy her entire life, and I was so used to wanting what Clarissa wanted. I'd tried to want what she wanted this time. I couldn't. I didn't want this. Mostly, though, I thought of the scratches the stone that tethered my soul had made on Clarissa's wrist, of her dying to keep me here. I looked at the amethyst and smiled, and I brought the crowbar down. END   “Gravedigging” was originally published in Cicada and is © Copyright Sarah Goldman 2017. This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library. You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes. You can also pick up a free audio book by going to www.audibletrial.com/glittership or buy your own copy of the Spring 2018 issue at www.glittership.com/buy Thanks for listening, and we’ll be back soon with a GlitterShip original, “Sabuyashi Flies" by Sebastian Strange.

Katrina Ruth: Oh, nobody's there anyway, it doesn't matter. We can just pretend, nobody's there. Marlene Leslie: You say that to all the girls Katrina Ruth: Huh? Marlene Leslie: You say that to all the girls Katrina Ruth: Hang on, we have a problem, we have a lighting issue. Oh! Look how much more fabulous we look. So, we'll give people a moment to jump on. We'll share this stream over and tag you in properly. Katrina Ruth: Hello people who are not there yet but who are going to be watching this as a replay. Look at this fabulous, mysterious guest who I have here with me. She has some important things to share with you. I'm not sure you're going to like them though, 'cause she's been referred to as, what was it? Kind of aggressive? Marlene Leslie: Aggressive and intimidating. Katrina Ruth: I mean, who would want an aggressive woman on a livestream, I don't know what that would be about. Is that better lighting? Katrina Ruth: It's not really making a difference Katrina Ruth: Um, okay. Hi Tamara, hi Katherine. What's been happening? I'm glad you asked, Marlene and I, this is Marlene Leslie, I'll tag her in. Marlene and I have been at dinner and we were kind of rudely having a conversation all to ourselves and now we, 'cause we are kind, nice people, decided to share it with you. That's roughly what happened, isn't it? I suppose you could also say that I somewhat bullied her into leaving the dinner table and coming home to have a livestream conversation. Marlene Leslie: This is true. Katrina Ruth: Like literally ten minutes ago we were sitting at a beautiful restaurant with wine and food and I was like, let's do a livestream. Marlene Leslie: And you refused to answer my questions. Katrina Ruth: That's true. I refused to answer any more questions until I was on camera. It's roughly how I operate, in a general sense. Okay, who's that? That's not you. Okay, I'm just going to share this over to my page and then we are going to start to tell you some very important things, which you are going to need to pay attention to. So get your wine or whatever you need. If you go to my personal page you can see that I've tagged Marlene in, so you should do that. But not now, because you should be listening to us now. I don't know, do you want to say what we were talking about at dinner? Marlene Leslie: Yeah. We were talking about what it takes to make it in the online space as a coach. Katrina Ruth: As a high level authentic as fuck mentor. Marlene Leslie: Yeah, and being yourself and unapologetically being yourself and coaching people outside of the industry but leveraging the online space. Katrina Ruth: Right, so let's give people some backstory, because everybody loves a great story. Where did we meet? Bali, right? Marlene Leslie: Yes, oh gosh. Katrina Ruth: Oh my god, have you guys seen my happy pants? So, check out these pants. Like, what happened is we went to dinner and I was wearing the tightest skinny jeans in the world and then by halfway through dinner I was like, sitting like this, because they were digging in and I couldn't eat. So I was half wanting to get out of the restaurant so that we could livestream and half so I could get the fucking jeans off. And I'm not sure what's up with these pants but I'm going to wear them anyway. Okay, we got that out of the way. Katrina Ruth: So, we met in Bali. Marlene Leslie: Yeah, 4 years ago? Katrina Ruth: 3 or 4 years ago. And we did many things that we probably shouldn't publicly talk about, so we can't tell you about that but it was fabulous. Marlene Leslie: So the livestream is over. Katrina Ruth: Well, we actually were kind of living or staying together at a mutual friend's villa and lots of different cool people were always coming through and staying at this villa people who want to create their own lives and do lives on their terms. Lives on their terms? At least their own life on their terms. And, I don't know, like we just...there were so many people that came through that villa. Marlene Leslie: Cause we were there for like 3 weeks, or maybe it was 2. Katrina Ruth: I was there for like 8 months but you were there for a few weeks. But there was a lot of people that came and stayed there and I didn't continue to stay friends with, I think just you and one other person. And we just clicked because this solidarity about being somebody who insists on creating life on their terms basically. And then I think we just have reconnected, basically, I mean once or twice a year since then, here in the US. Like, we've been up in Utah together and every time I come here we end up catching up. But we haven't seen each other now since... Marlene Leslie: This time last year. Katrina Ruth: You know, I think the last time we saw each other was in Utah, when we went up the mountain. Marlene Leslie: Oh, that's right. Katrina Ruth: Cause I got the Facebook memories a month ago, it was like February of last year. Marlene Leslie: Oh my gosh, it seems like it was just yesterday. Katrina Ruth: It was so long ago. So we are literally catching up tonight for the first time in over a year. But, like this was such an interesting conversation because obviously, as you guys know, I've built a very successful online business and brand and that's my area and Marlene has so much incredible fucking success in the offline world, specifically around, I mean, why don't you tell like a little bit of your background. Because I was super intimidated by you when I met you. Like, I was like, this women is seriously high level. She frickin' builds hotels, not with her own physical hands but.. Marlene Leslie: I have people for that. Katrina Ruth: She has people to do the building. Marlene Leslie: Yeah, so my background is in hospitality and I started working in hospitality when I was in high school and college and then in New York, my first job was as the general manager of a $20 million restaurant. I actually started out as a manager but finagled my way up really quickly because I was very aggressive and intimidating. Katrina Ruth: The path was just delayed. It's considered an unbecoming personality trait. Marlene Leslie: So they say. Katrina Ruth: But that's exactly what we're here to talk about. Marlene Leslie: So, from there I studied hospitality, worked a lot of notable restaurants in New York and transitioned into the hotel industry and opened a very popular hotel that basically had one of the most notable food and beverage programmes in the city. Then I went on to launch another hotel brand and concepted and came up with restaurants and bars within that brand until about 3 years ago, right before Cat and I met, parted ways with that company, my position was eliminated and I was at a point in my career where I kind of, and you'll appreciate this, I totally manifested that because I wanted out so badly but it was such a great job and it was like having an open chequebook to do whatever I wanted to do and to design and to create what I wanted to within hotels, that I felt that the best possible thing that would happen to me was to be able to have my job eliminated or to be let go in some way so that I could travel and take a year off. Katrina Ruth: Yeah, which is how we met because you were on that travel year. But honestly, like when we did meet I was like, I felt intimidated until I got to know you, which I know a lot people feel about me because I think, and we were just talking about this right before we got the [inaudible 00:07:30], like I think that anytime it's an area that you've got no understanding of and it just feels super vast and mysterious and daunting. Marlene Leslie: Yes, yes, totally. Katrina Ruth: And then you meet somebody who has conquered that, like, I'm like hello, she's opened like multi cagillion dollar hotels and done it all. I'm like, that's, like I have no clue to this day about that world. Why would I? I've never been part of it. To me that sounds insanely high level and like just impressive and daunting and vast. And if you try to turn me into getting a hotel opened I would have everybody livestreaming in no time but I'm not quite sure what else I would do. But there would definitely be wine and I'd get some martinis made and then I'm not quite sure what I would do, I'd probably get sick of everybody and leave 'cause I hate people sometimes. So, you know, like we were talking about this because Marlene mentors and coaches insanely high level executives and leaders in the physical world, not so much the online world. Like the real world, like people on the streets of New York you guys. And I'm like whoa, that's crazy. How do you connect with like an executive of a multi multi multi hundred million dollar firm or whatever it is. Katrina Ruth: But we were talking about like what I do and then Marlene's wanting to come online and basically conquer the online world. Marlene Leslie: I didn't want to come onto this, let's be clear. Katrina Ruth: I have my ways of getting people onto livestreams, it's just what I do, it's a gift, I can't teach it to you. Well, I can, you should join my high ticket sales workshop, it's going live tomorrow. Yeah but, like this is what I was trying to explain, right? Cause you were kind of like, it feels like I don't know how to start and like kind of the conversation we're having is the one that I have with all of my clients and friends also, from time to time, around how do I know if I'm good enough and how do I know if I can do that and how do I do it and what's the strategy. Katrina Ruth: And I was trying to explain, it's just about your perception, right? Because if you go to the top of that mountain and plant the flag and say I'm here and I'm the leader and everybody should listen to me, well you've got to be able to back it up. But it's about realising that you've that inside of you to back it up. Marlene Leslie: Yeah, yeah. That's a good point because there are two very different worlds and that analogy is so perfect in describing like my world versus your world and finally realising what I wanted to do and having those aha moments and having people say wow, you changed my life. That takes your breath away, where you are like, I did that? Actually, like you did it but I was there to support you on that. And I've personally been struggling with how to scale that and how to do that in a really meaningful way with executives and with the people that I really want to work with. It's a super scary world to venture into. Katrina Ruth: Right, and it's about, and this relates to everyone. Like I do not think that there is anybody else who is on this livestream or replay who is going to say that they've opened multi-million dollar hotels. But every single person here has their own experiences, stories, skills, things you've learned, things you've overcome. What makes you credible enough to be a leader alone is that you fucking decide that you are and that you believe that you are. So I said to you, in the Uber I think, what you've got to understand is that just being around you is a value. And then you said, how is that a value? Marlene Leslie: Yeah, I did. I was like, what? Katrina Ruth: Like, how? And I'm like, okay, you can choose to play smaller and think that it's egotistical to imagine that just being around you is a value. Typically, that is what people would say to me, right? They'd be like, it sounds egotistical if I think that I'm good enough that people should listen to me and people should, you know, that I should be able to teach people something or position myself as somebody to pay attention to. Katrina Ruth: It's actually egotistical not to and the reason is that it's not about you, the person who has their own insecurities and doubts, as we all do. It's about the talent and the gift that you have inside of you and if you separate your own self, your own self away from that, will that talent and gift inside of you help people, yes or no? Marlene Leslie: Yeah. Katrina Ruth: Right, so get out of your own way, get the fuck over yourself. It's not about you, it's about what's inside of you. So if you would prevent yourself from putting your work out into the world because you think it's egotistical to imagine that people should listen to you, then what you are actually doing is stopping people from being helped and served and you are making your own human self more important than the message and the gift that's inside of you. So look at it as, what if it was a responsibility to get that message out and to impact people with what you have. And that's what I do and I feel like people will never fully understand how real this is for me, and even people who do know me super well. We were just saying that you know me really well, you know that I'm a natural introvert. We've stayed together, travelled together, known each other for some years now, you know that I'm not the person that people online think I am. Marlene Leslie: Totally. Katrina Ruth: Right? But, it's still a real part of me, it's not fake, it's not made up. It's that I allow it to come out, I access that part of me and I let it out. But when I come online, not always, but a significant part of the time I'm still that same scared little girl whose like, am I good enough, do people really want to listen to this, am I just repeating myself all the time? Am I too rambling, I'm wishy-washy, I'm vague, I'm all over the place or some people who don't like me or what do people think about how I look. Like, all the normal things, right? Marlene Leslie: Absolutely. We talked about this earlier too, about how some of the people that we coach are mirrors to us and this comes up for everyone. It's funny to hear. Katrina Ruth: Like you coach your clients and you're like oh, I should probably do that too. Marlene Leslie: Yeah, that's really good advice, I should listen to that. Katrina Ruth: I watch my own livestream replays, I'm not even kidding. I watch my own livestream replays because I don't know what I'm talking about right now, it's all just whatever comes out. Then later on I'll watch it and think that's good, I'll write that down. Marlene Leslie: But it's true, it's true. You hear the stuff that comes up and then you look in the mirror and you are like oh, how can I possibly coach people on this and help them get out of their own way but yet... Katrina Ruth: Because you understand it. Marlene Leslie: Yeah, I understand it but I think that we are also really sneaky when it comes to ourselves. Katrina Ruth: Yeah, the internal critic, the internal dialogue. Marlene Leslie: Yeah, absolutely. It takes somebody like you or another coach to say hey, by the way... Katrina Ruth: Get out of your own way. Marlene Leslie: Exactly. Katrina Ruth: It's not about you it's about what you can help people with, get over yourself, stop making it all about I feel this and I feel that and what do people think about this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Instead, make it what if I was committed to my work, my art, my message, my business, my clients, whatever it is. And also, I guess in the end it's just like when you put all your own drama aside, like what we just said, do you know that what you have inside of you can help people. Katrina Ruth: And you had asked me the question, because I said just being around you is a value and you were like, how? And I'm like, because of the way you've lived your life. Like, I never prepared for anything, right? I ran my event here yesterday and it was so fucking amazing, I'm doing San Diego next Tuesday, message me if you want to come. I was saying to Marlene, and the ladies yesterday knew this as well obviously, I don't prepare anything for that. The event started at 11:00 am, from about 10:15 to 10:40 I was taking selfies in the mirror in the bedroom because I had those rose-gold thigh high boots on. I mean, I'm just going to say, it's essential to get a really good selfie in the boots, that was my preparation for the event. Katrina Ruth: But prior to that my preparation earlier that morning was journaling, did some inspiring reading of my books in there that you saw. Marlene Leslie: Shared on livestream. Katrina Ruth: Not in the morning, that's an afternoon activity, thank you. Wrote something online, went to the gym, went to Equinox, went to the dry bar, did a little bit writing or whatever there. So I did nothing to prepare for the event, in fact I literally didn't even prepare for the event until the afternoon before when I got here and I was like, hey I want to run an event tomorrow and they are like that is plenty short notice and I'm like I'm sure you can figure it out. I didn't plan a single note or concept or anything that I would speak about because I knew and trusted that the message for these women would come through me and would be powerful. However, and this was my point around the value of being around you. My fucking preparation was the fact that since I was 11 years old, so for 27 years now, I've been doing personal development and growth work. Katrina Ruth: That was my preparation and my preparation is the way I live my life every single day and your preparation and what makes you credible and what makes you credible, if you know that this is for you as well, is the way you live your life and how when other people are doing whatever the fuck it is that they are all doing out there, which we really don't want to know most of the time, you're growing and you're putting yourself into uncomfortable situations and you're walking away from situations that are not aligned and you are actively, day by day, moment by moment, designing your life purposefully. I think we take that, we forget sometimes that that's not normal. And not that we want to necessarily be like oh, that's not normal, but mostly to make the point that that is of immense value. The way you live your life is of immense value. So therefore, when you open your mouth, literally value comes out. So somebody should pay just to be around you or they can pay, but it depends on what you want to do. Marlene Leslie: Right, yeah. And I think the question that I asked you to that was, how do you monetize that? Like that's the question, there are so many coaches out there that are selling stuff that doesn't seem to be inline with, sometimes I sense a misalignment in what they are saying and what they are actually doing. So you pick up on that. Katrina Ruth: You can feel it. Like give love heart shower if you see on your Facebook feed people who are selling shit where, like actually I wanted to put a post up, I think I've forgotten and you've just reminded me, which was something like hey, stop fucking selling shit that you yourself have no clue about. Like you're scarcely verbal, your desperate vibe shows. Marlene Leslie: Yeah, exactly, exactly. So the question is how do you, like how do you monetize that in a way that is true to you? Katrina Ruth: Is not that. Marlene Leslie: Yeah, is not that, exactly. Katrina Ruth: Well, firstly you know that you wouldn't because you decide to, like you say that and you are like, ick. It doesn't feel good, it feels yuck inside of you. So you consciously chose out of that already. But secondly, it is about you've got to be, I think it's a courage thing, you've got to be courageous enough. KELLY!!!! That's Kelly. Marlene Leslie: Oh hey! Katrina Ruth: What's up! All right, shout out for Kelly. Everybody send Kelly the love heart shower, I think she's at LAX about to get on a plane. Send her good vibes for her flight home. We're sending you wine and happy flight vibes. Miss you. Katrina Ruth: Jenna, hey! I'm reading the comments. Energy doesn't like, exactly Kristine, energy doesn't like, people can feel. Kelly, look at all those love hearts coming in for you. People can feel when you are being real and when you are not being real in the land. Katrina Ruth: So, how you are going to monetize it? I'm like very committed to this cushion. You don't understand how bloated my stomach is right now you guys, it's death. Well, not really, I'm abundantly alive but anyway, I'm very distracted by it. So you've got to get into giving yourself permission to own your greatness. That's the long and the short of it, right? Like, we all do this, I did this for years, one of my key jobs or roles that I choose into and that I love as a mentor is to kind of kick your ass, to not spend years doing it, like I did. Like the whole point of mentoring with somebody like me, for people that mentor with me. Katrina Ruth: Like I'm constantly preaching at my friends because it just kind of happens as well, like the whole point is not just to learn maybe how somebody does something that if you align to their way of doing things but you should be able to save time and effort and money or whatever by saying, okay, this person is like me and they are saying they wasted all this time doing this that means I don't have to waste all that time, I can learn my lesson. I didn't have a mentor like myself telling me to be true to myself and stay the course and follow my soul and I literally took years before I finally gave in to being me and I think everybody takes years in some way or another before they finally give into being them. Katrina Ruth: And what people do and what you don't want to do is people kind of dip their toe in the water, where they try to do the real passion purpose work that's inside of them and they do like some kind of half fake, not fake, but half assed attempt basically, a cautious attempt is a better way to say it. Katrina Ruth: They are like, well you know I don't want to be inappropriate. Marlene Leslie: Or I don't want to offend anybody. Katrina Ruth: Right, I don't want to offend anybody. Marlene Leslie: Or intimidate anyone. Katrina Ruth: That, be too aggressive, be too much, like women like us, this is what they say about women like you, women like me. She's too much, she's too aggressive, she's too loud, she's over the top, don't you think she's a bit whatever. So we learn to tone it down but also it's the not good enough thing comes up again and like I always wanted to talk about the stuff I talk about now and then for years I was like, why would I get to talk about that, what makes me good enough to talk about that and who would want to listen to me. Marlene Leslie: It doesn't matter. Katrina Ruth: Yeah, it doesn't matter. Is it even a thing? Like everybody here has felt this, is my message good enough, does that really matter? And everyday people say to me, I'm not clear on what my message is and I say bullshit. You are clear, it's just that one, you've got given yourself permission and two, you think it needs to be more fancy in order to be good enough. You're like bad cop, that's too vague, that's like not even a thing. Marlene Leslie: I totally believe that. Yeah, it needs to be packaged really nicely and it needs to be perfect and it needs to use all the right words. Katrina Ruth: And have like modules. Marlene Leslie: Yeah, like the right cadence and the right tone inflexion, like all of that stuff. Yeah, absolutely. Katrina Ruth: Yeah, exactly, when actually your true message is the simple truth of, like I have this megaphone exercise that I give all my clients, which is if you are on the balcony, like on whatever floor, but if you are on a balcony super high up and there was like tens of thousands of people below you and you had a megaphone and get one minute and you get to say, hey, don't you understand, this is what you've got to understand about life, this is what it's about, what would you say? Marlene Leslie: I'd say, be you and I've said that for the longest time. Katrina Ruth: Right, and it is very fucking simple and we would all say some version of that, but that's actually the whole message, that's it. And then you kind of like, but how do you monetize that? And everybody says, but that's like come on, everybody says that. How am I going to stand out from the other coaches and how do you turn that into something you would sell. Well, you start to build on it but you don't imagine to yourself that it's got to be something different from that simple core message. My core message is be you, be unapologetically you. But then when I express it I say a few more words than that and it comes out through the filter of my life experience and what I've chosen and what I've done. So there are lessons, there are stories, there are details or elements but the message is just, be unapologetically you, life does not press play, you've can't have it all, do what it takes. Katrina Ruth: Whatever it is it just comes out differently each day. But it's always the simple stuff and in any era of life it's the simple stuff, right? Whether it's health and fitness, whether it's business, whether it's love, anything just comes down to simple core truths. And there is nothing you need to add to that. Marlene Leslie: So do you find that using, how do you relate that message to executives that are very lonely when they get to that point and they want a little bit more substance. They are used to pain, they are used dealing with it being really hard and I'm wondering how you attract those people in on a regular basis? Katrina Ruth: It's about realising that no matter how high level somebody is, they are a person who has their own insecurities, doubts, uncertainties. And actually, what I've found, is that the higher level somebody is the more they really appreciate, and we were talking about this, like real and raw, and typically the higher level somebody is the more that people, in general, are scared to speak to them at all. Marlene Leslie: I see that all the time. Katrina Ruth: Or they are scared to speak in a real way or speak the truth and it's kind of like cow towing or whatever the expression is. And just faking it, essentially. So when you come in and you be that, you just honestly just be your real self, like you said, and say what you know to say. It doesn't matter how impressive or high up the person in front of you is, if you just pause for a moment and check in with your own self and be like, what do I need to say to this person, you'll know what to say. And people, like I've mentored and consulted with people who have even up to multi hundred million dollar businesses and if they don't have significance and meaning connected to their core desires, and often it is something to do with auto-creativity or whatever it is, then they are not happy. Katrina Ruth: And it doesn't mean that they are going to walk away from their whole business and life, necessarily, but when you can start to connect somebody back to what matters to you, what makes you come alive, and just speak to them as yourself, like take away what their title is or their position. Like, for me, in the online world, I have many clients now who are very well known leaders online and some of those clients, when they first started working with me, I was kind of like, are you sure? Do you know who you are? Like, I know I'm doing okay but I was like, really? Such and such person wants to me to be their mentor? And now that's just kind of my client base. Katrina Ruth: But I still feel that way, I'm still like this is kind of crazy. Like, how did I pull this off? How am I getting away with this? Because all I'm doing is speaking my truth. All I'm doing is, I became the person who stopped worrying about whether it was allowed or whether it was okay. And relevant to your question of how do you know how to coach those people? Well you know because you know and if you put aside the idea that you don't know, well then it's going to be a complicated thing. Then you do know exactly what to say. Marlene Leslie: Yeah, so I don't have a problem coaching those people, I want to know how to cull them in. Katrina Ruth: Okay, cool, perfect. So this is exactly what we were talking about at the end of dinner around fuck niching, or however the word is said here in America. I get confused about it. Like screw niching and nitching, both of them. And like demographics and all that bullshit. It's not about that, that's not how you find your ideal clients, right? It's about personality type and characteristics. So you write down, who is the person who I am speaking to. Like, my ideal client is, well most of my clients are women, but that's because I've typically marketed to women, so a woman or a man now, it's a person who is a born entrepreneur, firstly. So I don't believe in entrepreneurs being made. Yes, I'll agree that somebody can become an entrepreneur and build a business, that's not the same as being a born entrepreneur, that's a different kettle of fish. Katrina Ruth: So my clients are born for it, they've always known it, they've always known that they were born for more. They've grown up feeling like they are kind of smarter than everybody and know more than everybody but they probably felt bad about that, because it sounds egotistical. But they just knew inside of them that they were born for more, that they are going to do something extraordinary, they are not going to live the normal life, they are going to create something amazing. They've always had that yearning and that pull and that are typically like the fuck the status quo, black sheep type person who breaks all the rules. Either who was a bad girl or a bad girl growing up or alternatively more like me, who was like a teacher's pet good girl who somehow hacked the entire fucking system and nobody knew that I was always just doing whatever the fuck I want. Katrina Ruth: But I was still like the A grade, good girl student but I never did anything. I just like hacked it and I always just got the result and I was like, it's so easy. Like I'd always get the top mark and I didn't do anything, right? Which is still now, I'm like I don't really do anything, somebody should report me, I don't know what I'm doing here, like I'm just making shit up every day and now people are agreeing to pay me so that I can talk at them when I just wanted them to listen to me the whole time anyway. Katrina Ruth: So that's who my client set has been, they've either been like kind of a rabble rouser and got into trouble growing up or they were like the good girl or good boy who hacked the system and kind of got away with shit and nobody really knew. And then as time went on, they pretty much walked out on every job, they continually started new business ventures or new endeavours or always never finished them and then feel bad about it, like I never finish things, there is something wrong with me, I'm not being organised, I'm not responsible, I'm not reliable. Because that whole time when you are walking away from everything and supposedly failing at everything and quitting on everything in your life, what you were really doing was going more and more connected to your soul and you were like the one person whose smart enough to not stick with something that's not soul aligned. Katrina Ruth: And now that person is like that woman or man whose said that she's too much, too aggressive, over the top, doesn't do it properly, I could go on and on but my point is that's how you cull your clients. You speak to who they are at their core and you don't worry about what their demographics are. My clients spend, as we were saying, I just from early 20s into 60s and even beyond actually, and all walks of life and all types of businesses, as well. Roughly 40%, maybe a little bit more of my clients are coaches, there are many different kinds of people. It's not about what they do, it's not about how they look, what their age is, what their background is, it's about who they are at their core. Katrina Ruth: And then the way to get those clients wanting to work with you is you do have to be doing this, right? Which you are. But messaging and communication of some kind. Marlene Leslie: So like blogging? Katrina Ruth: Blogging, telling stories, writing massive 3,000 word blog posts every single day 365 days a year. No, not really. You don't have to do anything that I do but you've certainly got to communicate, right? Because you want to be that voice where your core clients are like, if Marlene doesn't write another fucking blog post at 3 I'm going to go over to her house and personally sit her down and make her write it. Like, I used to have bloggers that I would follow, which I still do, but I get so shitty, like I'd be curious to know, like on the odd occasion where I take a day off, does anybody get kind of shitty at me? That I didn't post anything? And I know you do because I gets messages about it. People will message me and be like, did you die? Um excuse me Kat, why have you not posted a blog in two days? Katrina Ruth: And I used to be like that. Like you find that person that you are inspired by and you just want them to produce content for you all the time and the way to become that person for your people is to just become that person and do it and be it and then continue to show up for it. So then your ideal clients wake up in the morning and they are like I'm going to go check Marlene's page and see what she's posted or has she done another livestream, because that's food for their soul. Katrina Ruth: So the question would be, not how do I find my clients the question is, how do I just be food for the soul of my clients right now. And the way to do that is so easy, it's literally turn on the camera or start writing and say what's inside of you, zero filter. Like, whatever it is. Whether it's about obvious relevant things. Kristine says, haha, I feel like where's Kat, why hasn't she gone online. I got so much shit last month when I did hardly any livestreams because I was in the hospital and then I was travelling. I was going my branding in LA with Chris and it was quite full on. We were doing these fancy things. And I did like two livestreams in a month, which was so rare for me. Gosh, people were giving me such a hard time about it. Not in a mean way, obviously. But that's what happens when you build up your position as a leader. And you've just got to let it be easy. Marlene Leslie: It's true. I was going to ask you a question but I know what you'll probably say, to the idea of creating content. Like that's a lot of pressure to create content on a regular basis and to first, like find your voice and then secondly, to like own it and do it on a consistent daily basis because you don't want to be that person that's dipping their toe in the water. Katrina Ruth: Right, but you have a voice already. That's the thing to realise. Right? Like, we go to dinner or we go out with a group of people, you're an aggressive, over-the-top, and we did establish earlier this evening, a hilarious person. We agreed that we are both very funny, we established that earlier in the evening. Marlene Leslie: Cheers. Katrina Ruth: But that's who you are, you're like the life of the party person, same as me, that's why we're friends. We would have never stayed in touch after Bali if we weren't that same sort of person, right? So you already have that voice, you have that crazy irreverent personality and also ability to go super deep super fast and experience and knowledge and wisdom. And its literally just let that same part of you come out here, don't separate it. Katrina Ruth: This kind of doesn't make sense because we're all online and we don't go to boardrooms, but it's a good analogy that I came up with a few years ago, which is it should be the same conversation in the boardroom as what's in the bar. Right? Like separate nothing, at all. The irreverent stuff, the crazy stuff, the random shit that's got nothing to do with anything, like even me carrying on about my pants and my stomach at the start of the livestream. That's just me being me but its also me kind of, that was somewhat deliberate of me to do that because I'm conscious of who wants to just sit down and watch a, like what are we going to do, sit here like this, hello Marlene, this evening on the Katrina Ruth show we're going to have a conversation about what it takes to be a leader online but hang on a second, you shouldn't really do that with a top that has holes in it. Marlene Leslie: Let's start this again. Cut! Cut! Katrina Ruth: And you definitely shouldn't do it in like MC Hammer copper pants. Marlene Leslie: Cut! We're going to delete all this, right? Katrina Ruth: Yes. Marlene Leslie: These people on here are all friends. Katrina Ruth: And besides, switch spots with these weirdo [inaudible 00:36:48], like it should be a proper set. Like, do you know what I mean? Like so many entrepreneurs are like, I'm going to make it look like perfect and now I'm going to present my topic, like they are presenting like a grade school paper or something. Marlene Leslie: Did you hear what I said? Like Marie? Katrina Ruth: Ooh. Marlene Leslie: I'm just kidding, I don't want to be mean. Katrina Ruth: Marlene, you're the one who said it. You guys didn't hear that. But you know what I mean? Like, you don't have to find your voice to message online. There is a voice already there, just use the one that you've got. Marlene Leslie: That's a good point, yeah. Katrina Ruth: But all of it, like all of it. That's the missing link. Don't make it like I've got to make sure that I've got a relevant topic that's of value and it's useful and is this a good enough topic and then what are my fucking three key points or something like that. Don't do that. Make it the same as if you would go to dinner and you already go to dinner with high level people and we all actively call people who are thinkers and action takers and success minded and growth minded. And you'd be able to have an amazing, inspiring, entertaining and motivating conversation with them. So just put it here, same thing. Marlene Leslie: What if nobody watches it? Katrina Ruth: Then you keep on going because you've got to trust in the process. That's a good question because that is hard. Like, I can remember my first livestream, it was actually on Periscope. Do you remember Periscope? So, it wasn't that long ago. It was that same year in Bali, it wasn't that long ago. I was Periscoping from Rob's villa but I did the first one like not that long before we met. It went for about ten minutes and after the ten minutes I found out that I had done the whole thing sideways and I hadn't known because I didn't know how to read the comments at the time. And people were like, it's sideways and that was all that the comments were about. And if you would watch it, and I think it's gone now, or maybe it's somewhere on YouTube, who knows, but team probably like downloaded it on YouTube, but I was so nervous and I was so [inaudible 00:38:53]. Katrina Ruth: I was nothing like the savvy, livestreaming entertainer that I am now. Because I've been online for nearly 12 years now, but Facebook Live is fairly new and livestreams in general, but I think when I first started doing them, for ages it was like three or four people getting on, stuff like. Now it's so widely varied, there's 19 people on right now, but this will totally get like several thousand views over the next day or so, and sometimes there are a few hundred people on, it goes quite varied. But either way, make it not about the numbers, make it about the message. And play the long game, right? Like, for real, you feel self-conscious if you do something and nobody seems to be engaging. Or let's say that you try to sell something and only one person buys it. But you've got to look at it like, well imagine somebody said, well I went to the gym today and I don't have abs yet, so what should I do? Marlene Leslie: Totally. Katrina Ruth: I'd be like, um, hello, idiot. Marlene Leslie: Keep going. Katrina Ruth: It's going to take more than a day or maybe even more than 100 days in a row, who knows. Depending on what your goal is, but play the long game. And I think it is about that, it's about being that very rare person that's going to be brave enough to put themselves out there when they do feel self-conscious and when they do feel like, is this good enough. And you put that video out, like you did something terrifying and scary. Tell people about it. Marlene Leslie: Yeah, I mentioned to Kat earlier that I, my coach had me put a video on Facebook to coach a hundred people in a hundred days, which the coaching part didn't scare me but the moment that she said video on social media, my heart dropped and I started trembling, I was like ugh. Like, can I just talk to people? She's like nope, social media, tomorrow. And I was like, holy shit! What? I was like fine, I'll do it. This also came after I had struggled putting my website together and writing my copy and going through this entire process. Katrina Ruth: And letting people know you. Marlene Leslie: Yeah, letting people get to know me and putting my message out there. So I actually asked for this challenge, I was like you know, I really want to be challenged in a way that I can overcome something because I felt really good. Long story short, I did the Facebook video and it was horrifying, it was so scary. The moment that I pressed post I was like, ugh, nobody is going to watch this and I'm going to have to like go into witness protection programme. Like this is going to bomb. Katrina Ruth: I watched it. Marlene Leslie: But the crazy thing about that was that I had a lot of people reach out to my privately that were impressed by my bravery, my courage. Like all of these words that were used and all the support that I got, that I didn't even anticipate, it was amazing and I reconnected with a lot of great people and actually coached a lot of great people too. It was pretty powerful and I got like 1.8k views or something, which is crazy. Katrina Ruth: And that's the thing, like so few people are going to choose to be brave enough to do something like that and every time you are brave and vulnerable and authentic. Marlene Leslie: That word came up a lot. Katrina Ruth: Vulnerable, right. It pays off, for sure. And there is no way to get around the terrifying part though, that's the thing. You've got to go through it but at the end of the day we are all here to create a life that other people don't even dare to dream of. So it's kind of like, at some point you've got to remind yourself that it's not going to fall into your lap just because you were born for it. Nobody is going to knock on your door with a silver platter and be like, hi you were born for it, here's your leader status, here's your dream life, here's your soulmate. I used to think that. Like I honestly thought that. And then when I was like 27 I was like fuck, I don't think it's going to happen, I think I have to do it. Marlene Leslie: You have to work for it, yeah. Katrina Ruth: Yeah! Legitimately, I was like, holy shit. Because when you are 27 you think that 30 is clearly the beginning of the end, right? Like, when you are 27 you are like I'm going to be 30! Life is nearly over! Like, I had a lot of friends and clients who are not yet 30 and I'm like, shut the fuck up. They are like, I'm going to be 30, I'm not a billionaire yet. Marlene Leslie: You'll be just fine. Katrina Ruth: I'm like, just shut up or I'm going to punch you. But I got to 27, I did, and I was like, fuck, I haven't done any of the stuff, I had a whole life planned. Married at 24, kids at 26, millionaire by 30, just your typical normal life plan. I was like 25, I got married and I'm like, I'm on track, I'm sweet. Then 26, I'm divorced, not part of the plan. 27, no clue, bulimia, debt, looking great from the outside, fitness modelling, whatever, like showing the world success, mess. And I was literally like fuck, what am I going to do? Katrina Ruth: Because I was a personal trainer and I was good at it and I loved fitness but I was not in a good place, but I knew that fitness wasn't my life. And it was, it was that thing of going, holy shit, my whole life I've known I'm born for more and I just suddenly realised that it's not going to magically happen. And that's the year that I started my first blog. Marlene Leslie: Oh wow. Katrina Ruth: Yeah, that's why I started. Because I was like, I better start doing something then. And I built my own little homemade website, it was like, website in a box I think it was called, and you pay for it like $100 and you build it yourself. It was a black background with white writing and neon colours everywhere. Marlene Leslie: Shocker. Katrina Ruth: And it was called kickasslifetraining.com. Anyway. But we all went through that period. So you do have to go through that period of putting yourself out there and what if nobody is watching and nobody responds and I fall on my face. I've had way more offers failed than what have succeeded over the years, but nobody knows or remembers about that. And I barely even remember about it at this point. But it is true and it is real. I just think, when I look back at my business journey I know that very few people would put themselves through what I put myself through because they don't have the inner strength and the tenacity and I think that's really what this conversation is about. Marlene Leslie: Yeah. Katrina Ruth: It's not about do you know you've got what it takes, because you know that, you know that, we all know that. It's about do you have the tenacity, do you have the resilience, do you have the inner strength, will you choose it, because it's all a choice anyway, right? Marlene Leslie: Yeah, but I think that its normal to have those doubts in everything that you do. So, do you feel that that inner strength can be built up? Katrina Ruth: Definitely! It's a muscle, the same as we build our muscles in fitness and we build our mindset in fitness as well. I mean, for me personally and you are probably the same, like I take a lot of stuff to this day in my business from fitness. Marlene Leslie: Oh, totally. Katrina Ruth: Like, you know how to push through, you know how to overcome, you know how to go beyond your limits, you know when you feel like you are at your limit so you want to stop but you know that you are actually not at your limit. So I feel really grateful that I had fitness in my life for such a long time because it has taught me so much and I think that it's critical. But, regardless, anyhow, yes it can be built up, of course it's a practise and a discipline and it's basically that moment when you feel like you can't keep going. Katrina Ruth: Or actually, like back in the day, years ago I used to train with professional rugby players and I was always the only female in the gym, because it was part of our management training when I worked in Australia's largest health club chain. And it would literally be like, you think you are going to die, and I still train so extreme and I learned it from these guys, but back then it was beyond. And it was literally like you would be on the floor nearly crying and dying and it would be like hey Kat, are you dead? No. Then get up and keep going. They don't care. Throwing up? Are you dead? No? Then get up and keep going. Katrina Ruth: And I really just applied that philosophy to business. I don't mean, and we talked about this, I don't mean that you've got to work all the hours to make money or burn yourself out and do shit that you don't want to do, but maybe you do maybe you don't, we all have, but obviously what I teach and preach is fall on your knees and that's what I believe. But it's a kind of interesting thing to talk about because I felt, I was like, I didn't do anything, I felt pretty sure that I did nothing, I'd just sit around all day, all I did was yoga and gym, facial, massage, or whatever. Katrina Ruth: But I still actually wrote about 5,000 words of content, including a sales pitch for an entire new programme, and a long blog posts and a bunch of promotional stuff and communicated with 100% of my clients privately. I said to you, I did nothing today, I slept in, I went to yoga, had a smoothie, had a facial, then went to the gym, had another smoothie, then went to the dry bar and then went to dinner. I was legitimately like I had a total bliss day. Katrina Ruth: Now I'm like, hang on, I wrote a sales pitch for a whole new programme, I wrote a 2,500 word blog post, which was really good, I communicated with all of my private clients [inaudible 00:48:57], I responded to my all my team staff, I laid out a bunch of new project stuff and like probably ten other things I can't even remember right now. To me, I'm like I did nothing. So it's about becoming that person whose disciplined and where it's just kind of who you are, you don't think about it. I'm way off on a tangent there. Marlene Leslie: So how do you differentiate between the stuff that you have to do or that you need to do for your business, like a Facebook Live, like obviously that's something that I'm not comfortable with and everyone has their thing. So the Facebook Live versus like being in flow and ease. Katrina Ruth: Okay. This is where you've got to go, is it true that you don't want to do a Facebook Live or is it that you can't for your mindset, because I know who you are as a person, that actually you're the exact kind of perfect person to do Facebook Live and that if it wasn't a new uncomfortable area you'd be having the best time ever. So the way to differentiate is kind of like a gut check. Like, okay is this an aligned action for me, personally, to be taking my business. Do I, at my core, feel that this is right for me to be doing, yes or no? And if yes, do I feel grumpy or scared or annoyed or fearful around it? Marlene Leslie: Yes. Katrina Ruth: Well, too bad because you just said it's aligned, right? Marlene Leslie: Right. Katrina Ruth: But then there are other things where somebody might go, well for me, anything where somebody says really classic internet marketing strategy type stuff, where I always felt, like even before I knew what I know now, that it's all so fucking unnecessary. But back before I really believed in myself, I intuitively felt like I just don't want to do that and what I felt was, I felt a feeling of I just don't really think that I have to. But then I was listening to people who were saying that you do have to, you should. So I was like, okay. Katrina Ruth: It was exactly like I had a coach helping me in the love and romance area and I stopped working with her and I was so grateful for the work that we did and things that I did learn but I had to stop working with her because she kept telling me this is how to communicate with men and like teaching me rules, right? Marlene Leslie: And you immediately want to break them. Katrina Ruth: Right. Well, at my core I was kind of like, oh well, I haven't had results or success in this area and I feel like I don't know what I'm doing yet and I was still learning or something, like I was in a long-term relationship for 15 years straight and all of a sudden you are single again, I was literally like, I don't know what dating even means. Like, I'm not really sure what you do on a date, how do you do that, how do you get a date and then what do you do on a date, right? So then I went and got a coach, or actually had several. Marlene Leslie: As one does. Katrina Ruth: Yeah. And some were amazing for me personally and one or two, it was like what would be said to me, I was like, I guess you're right because you're the expert but at my core what I felt was, really? Like, really? Am I really going to learn like a fucking script to send a message, for example. Like an appropriate way of how you would word things. So, yeah, that's how you know because something inside of you says well maybe you are right because you are the expert but actually, at my core, I just don't believe you. I kind of at my core don't think I have to do it that way and to be honest, if I would have to do it that way that would be bullshit. Because then what is any connection that I form going to be based on? Katrina Ruth: And that's how I felt with a lot of strategy stuff for business. Like I would hear stuff or see stuff on Facebook or people would tell me things, you've got to do this, you've got to do that. And I was like, I don't want to, personally. I just don't want to do that. And the history of my entire life says that if I don't want to do it it's pretty fucking unlikely that I'm going to do it, no matter what I try and pretend. Like, you might say to yourself, you are going to do something and then it's not going to happen. But there is also that part of you that's like, I kind of think I'm smarter than you. So that's how you differentiate. So go to something like Facebook Live, well is that how you feel about it? If so then don't do it. But if you are like, well I think I'm just kind of scared of it and I'm not used to it yet, then that's a whole different scenario, right? Marlene Leslie: Yeah, that's a good point. Katrina Ruth: So then daily, repeatedly, it's a matter of identify those things which you know you would be doing already if you'd gotten over yourself and if you had the confidence and if you were like kind of that next version of yourself and then you just do it, you just choose that you are going to do it. And nobody knows, it's kind of like, I remember changing schools when I was 8 years old and I was like the shy, introverted person that I am, but I remember when I changed schools I was like, well nobody knows that, I can be the cool girl. But I didn't, I didn't like choose to or know how to, I guess. But we're grown-ups now, we know how to show off and allow that confident side of ourselves out, it's actually a choice. Nobody knows. Katrina Ruth: Like I said, when I first met you I viewed you as this slightly scary, intimidating woman and you still are that to many people with what you do and what you achieve. And so am I to many people as well. And then you get to know each other and it's like, oh, she's like me. Marlene Leslie: Normal. Katrina Ruth: We can be friends. Lets do a livestream. Marlene Leslie: Oh god. Katrina Ruth: I don't know, what else are you thinking? Marlene Leslie: I'm speechless. Katrina Ruth: We have run out of speech. Marlene Leslie: I mean, not really. Katrina Ruth: Never. Marlene Leslie: Not really. Katrina Ruth: Well, how you know you should be doing Facebook Live is you are a talking, you have stories and things to say. Marlene Leslie: Oh god, I do. I don't know if I can go public. Katrina Ruth: Oh please. Marlene Leslie: Maybe we can refer to them as "clients". Katrina Ruth: Well, really if we had recorded our whole conversation from the bar and dinner, that's some fucking high value entertainment. Like, you're a storyteller. Like, this is the quietest I've ever seen you in 3 or 4 years. But like this woman is like a pretty fucking out there crazy person. Marlene Leslie: Chatterbox. Katrina Ruth: Over the top storytelling entertainer, life of the party, dominant. All the things that we all are and then you're just on a platform where it's uncomfortable. But you are going to get into it. Tell stories says Kristine. So Marlene told me she's dating two men and then she finished telling all the stories and I'm like, didn't you say two? What are we up to, what's happening, I don't remember anything. Marlene Leslie: We're up to four. Katrina Ruth: The point is, you definitely have things to say and to share with the world and that's who you are in your normal everyday life. Marlene Leslie: Yeah, I just have to get over that fear. I've never had trouble exercising or doing a workout plan or any of that stuff, to me it's very similar, I equate this to someone I work with in particular who has never exercised. It's like, how could you not? Katrina Ruth: Right. Marlene Leslie: Like, how could you not want to go for a run? Katrina Ruth: How is that even a thing? I'm like, how can you get on a plane or go to an event or go do anything. Marlene Leslie: Or people that don't travel. I have friends that won't get on a flight. I'm like, I don't even understand how you live, like how you live your life. Katrina Ruth: Right. So anything that you do that to you is just really natural and automatic and people try to make it out like it's a big deal and you're like, that's crazy. It's all just a choice. Right, like at some point along your journey, even if it was way back when, you decided to be a fit person, same as me. So at some point along my journey I decided I was sick of the fact that nobody knew who I was and I felt like people should know who I am and people should frickin' listen to me, just listen and then pay me for it. So then I decided to be that person. Katrina Ruth: And it really is that you guys. You've got to understand, people are like how did you become so well known online or whatever and I'm like, because I decided to. I just became that person, I let the inner side of me out. I appointed myself. I keep saying this over and over again and so few people follow it though, like one in a thousand, which makes sense anyway because I always say it's the one percent within the one percent, but the ones that do go to the top fast. Marlene Leslie: But it's scary. Katrina Ruth: It is scary, it is scary. Like, I think about my visions and dreams that I've not yet created, like things beyond my own businesses, like other businesses that I want to bring to life and my empire and other things that I desire in my life and it's terrifying. You know that. Like what we talked about earlier, like putting yourself out there and pursuing something where you feel like, am I crazy? Am I just like a crazy person and nobody wants to tell me? Well, people do tell me that. Right? But it's that thing that we all have of like is what I feel inside of me real, am I crazy, am I just like losing my mind? Who do I think I am that it could be like that? Katrina Ruth: The rule is that if you feel it inside of you then it is available for you or it wouldn't come through you. I believe that, I believe that you don't get given a dream that's not your dream to dream. So if it comes through you then it's available and it's available specifically for you, not just in the general sense. And, if you are feeling and dreaming it it's available now, already. Marlene Leslie: I totally believe that. Katrina Ruth: It's not like for ten years away. Even investing in ourselves can be scary as fuck. Of course it can, investing in any sense, not just financially, but energetically, emotionally, with our time. It is. We feel the fear and do it anyway. You know there is that cliché expression, but I feel like it's so true, which is you know you do what others won't so you can live like they can't. Well I'm at the stage now where if somebody comes along and just meets me, they see the product of my decade, two decades, whatever it is if you really go back through all the years of growth work. So people have a sort of perception of me, if they don't know my story or get to know me. And what's actually happened is, I did it, I did what others wouldn't do for many, many years. As every single person here has in different areas of their life and now I do get to live like they can't. Katrina Ruth: Like somebody said, you're living the dream. And I'm like, yeah, I am and I did the fucking work. Marlene Leslie: Yeah, you have. Yeah, that's exactly right because a lot of people expect it to just happen naturally and you read a book on manifestation and you're like, well how come I can't think it and it's appearing in my life. Like there is actually some action that needs to happen. Katrina Ruth: You can, it comes from thought but yeah there's like a lot more steps than that. Marlene Leslie: But you can't just think it. Katrina Ruth: It's the daily commitment and process. I think it all comes from thought, you do think it and that's how it happens but because you think it you become the person. And that kind of speaks to what I was saying where I legitimately feel like I don't do anything. I'm like, all I do is whatever I want all day. I only do whatever the fuck I want all day but then when you reverse engineer it, you're like, I do a fuckload of stuff. For my business, for my clients, for my children, for my health and fitness, for my relationships. I do a lot, but why do I feel like I do nothing? Because I became that person, so I kind of thought it into being part of my being. I did it through journaling as well. Katrina Ruth: Like fitness, right? To you, same as me, it's part of who you are, it's got nothing to do with what projects you're working on or how busy you are or whether you are travelling or whether you are tired, whether you feel like it. So therefore, you can say that it's easy to stay in great shape and to be fit but then of course you do the work. Marlene Leslie: And anytime somebody asks me how I stay in shape, I tell them that I work my fucking ass off. Katrina Ruth: Yeah, you work your ass off but it's easy because it's part of who you are. Like, it's not easy in the physical sense, the easy part is that there's no internal battle of will I or won't I. Marlene Leslie: The decision has already been made. Katrina Ruth: There is no negotiation being made. And that's actually the hard thing, that's why people lose their energy and their power, is not in the actual doing of the work, like whatever you do at the gym or the studio or whatever, the hard part is that conversation in your head, will I or won't I, do I feel like it, what about this, what about that, oh my god. Who has time for that. Marlene Leslie: It's exhausting. Katrina Ruth: It is exhausting. Marlene Leslie: You feel like you've done the work and haven't actually done anything. Katrina Ruth: Right, exactly. So just make it easy by making it part of who you are. You are still going to sweat and push and hustle and grind and do whatever you do. Like exercising isn't like a production, I just do it, it's easy. Right, it's easy because you just do it. Like, I say all the time, things are easier that doesn't mean you don't put the effort in. Marlene Leslie: Right. Katrina Ruth: Cool, we could talk all night. This is how easy it is to do a Facebook Live. You just start having a chat. Marlene Leslie: I just popped a cherry. Katrina Ruth: You popped your livestream cherry. I've taken another livestream virginity. It's not the first, it's kind of a thing. You brought it up though. Like, I might have hustled to get out of the restaurant because I got excited about taking my pants off. Two activities that are not always connected but occasionally. But it was your idea, you said it first. Marlene Leslie: I did nothing about this. Katrina Ruth: You did, you brought it up somehow. And I was like, done, I'm in. And then what you do next is sell something. Do you have anything to sell? Marlene Leslie: Just my teaching. I coach high level executives. Katrina Ruth: Are you a high level executive who needs somebody whose actually not afraid to tell you the truth? Marlene Leslie: Tell it like it is? That's exactly right, yeah. Katrina Ruth: Well that's the thing, right? That's why you do what you do so damn well. Because you are actually willing to say to people's faces what other people won't say. Marlene Leslie: That's true. Katrina Ruth: Connect with Marlene and if you want to come hang with me in San Diego next week I have one or two places left. Message me on my personal Katrina Ruth page if you want to come to my one day soul shifts and money making day in San Diego on Tuesday and stay tuned because I'm going to launch my high ticket sales with ease workshop probably tomorrow. Have an amazing rest of the day, keep pressing play. Marlene Leslie: Bye.

We can’t find any skilled labor, does this problem resonate with your trade? Shawn Van Dyke has come up with a solution to this ongoing problem. As we talk about the solutions and the change of mindset you will come to the conclusion that for this  will actually work. . I have a real and fun and exciting guest with Sean Van Dyke and Sean is a construction industry consultant business coach and mentor. He's the author of the paperwork punch list 28 days to streamline your construction business and find the home building brand administrator. Shawn is the keynote speaker and travels the US working with and training construction business owners on how to streamline their businesses. That's a fun thing. No one likes to work hard.   Yeah. Before becoming a business coach Shawn owned a Construction Management Consulting Firm and General Contracting Company. He also served as an Executive at the Specialty Contracting Company and enjoys living life in East Tennessee where it's nice and warm this time of year and happily married with five kids.   So, Shawn, I'm just excited that you are with us today. And, you want to share some valuable information farm with Dave. I'm excited to be here. Thanks for inviting me on. I'm looking forward to chatting with you. Yes. Tell us a little bit about your journey and how you got from here to there to where you are today.   Yeah, it's got an issue with it. When I hear my own bio read off I kind of hear my wife you know in the back of my head just saying you know to some people all that stuff sounds impressive to her and be married to an entrepreneur. It sounds like, man, you can't keep you can't keep down a job dude, you know.   Well, I as I say as I started out my career I guess by getting a couple of degrees in engineering and I got a bachelor's degree in civil engineering and a master's degree in structural engineering. Spent a few years doing that and then realized I don't think I want to be an engineer. And so, I transition to commercial construction doing some project management for some commercial contractors and then kind of bounced around as we do in construction sometimes from company to company and ended up doing some real estate development working and as a construction manager for a real estate developer. Traveling all around the Midwest and the Southeast building large commercial developments.   And by then we had number two on the way and I was on I was on the road three days a week and my wife were kind of like yeah this isn't going to work out so well for being a dad. So, I started my own construction management company and real estate company that transitioned during the downturn into the general contracting company.   And let's see what happened after that. Yeah, I went to work as a Chief Operating Officer for a trim and millwork company and spent several years there. And I guess that was the last job that real job that I had and left there about a little over a year and a half ago and went into what I'm doing now doing construction consulting and coaching and mentoring.   So, I travel all over the place and teach construction business owners you know how to streamline their business how to run a better business. And I'm just I'm really enjoying you know what I'm doing now before I was working for one company doing these things and now I get to work with literally dozens of companies all over the U.S. and Canada. Even have one client in Sweden.   So yeah if you're listening to this and you've got issues and problems it doesn't matter where you are in the world. Contractors we all have the same you know the same issues when it comes to the business side and the paperwork and the people. So, don't feel like you're alone out there. You're not you're not alone.   Everybody's struggling with the same thing and it's kind of funny everyone and you know you thought some might say well my business is different. Yeah right. Yeah. So saying we've got people you've got the paperwork you know the regular business and I'm dealing with people and it's all people. And so, I'll bet your wife’s a lot happier too now.   Well yeah, it depends on where you are. You know when I started this I didn't think I was going to be traveling so much and now I'm doing different training. I travel to my client’s locations and do executive training or employee training. But then also doing keynote speaking at trade events and that kind of stuff so I sold my wife on the whole deal.   Hey, you know as you know as I travel around then you know we find somebody to watch the kids and then you come out we can have a long weekend and some of these nice places. But you know when you when you have a speaking gig in I don't know. In Detroit in February or something like that. It's not exactly. You know what I sold her on Detroit in February is not exactly you know the long weekend. You know that I kind of promised her or whatever so are booking some.   Some stuff like Hawaii and Miami and LA in the summer when it's when it's nice and yeah what I've got I've got an I've got one client in Hawaii I have another one in Key West Florida. So those aren't the those are the worst places in the world that have to travel any time of the year so we'll see if that happens. Now you said you had five kids out with your oldest and you're young. You can't ask me those questions that they keep changing ages. I can’t remember them. I got grandkids. I've got them from 15 to 1 Yeah. So that's all I know. Yeah.   So, at one time at one time we have four boys and then the baby is a girl. So, four boys and then we had a girl. I think my oldest is he's in sixth grade so I think he's about to turn 11. I think he's going on 12 or maybe he's 10 going on 11. See this is very embarrassing. And you know I don't care about that sound to sound the same way. I know that the oldest is 15 and I said the baby just turned 1 a couple months ago. And there's a, let’s see, that's there four others in between.   Yeah. So, I think I've got an almost 12-year-old a 10-year-old probably and 9-year-old a 6-year-old that gets the four boys and then the baby girl is easy because she was born on my birthday. So as if she wasn't spoiled enough already She'll be sorry she'll be 3 on March 5th.   So, my oldest and one of my older ones were born both on November 6th. So, Abby goes when her brother was born. Oh, that is awesome and she had a birthday party with him. Yeah. Yeah well, my wife told me I don't have any more birthdays. They're all hers which is fine with me because I'm just you know I'm just getting older so they can all be hers anyway so yeah. So.   So, as you travel with here you're your clients. What are some of the biggest challenges that they're having to overcome in the marketplace right now? Yeah, right now it really you know it really comes down to and I hear this with every client especially with me. Construction is back. Things are booming. If 2018 doesn't isn't your best year in construction than you, you're doing something wrong because there's just so much work out there and from the downturn and this is kind of gets into the issue we're going to talk about you know we lost two million plus jobs 10 years ago.   And, it's not like those people were waiting around till it picked back up because like they left they're gone. They left the industry they left the country. They're just not there. So, demand is huge for construction and there are not enough people to fill those the available spots for Labor, skilled labor and then so I hear that all the time from my clients    Shawn, I just can't find the skilled labor that I need for you know for my business. If we had more people than we could do more work or are we just you know we're delaying projects because we just can't get to you know everything.   And so, I hear that a lot we can't find the skilled lay. You know we can't find it. And I say you're exactly right. You can't find it because it doesn't exist. Right. So that kind of hits I'm like will get hired you to help me solve the problem. Right. And the thing is the problem is they're just not making plumbers, electricians, carpenters, welders you know like they used two generations ago where that was a viable option now. And there's nothing. Well, give me all my soapbox here.   No there's nothing wrong with a college education. But I might get in trouble by saying this but the value of that college education with technology and all that is just not as high as it used to be. And so, there is this you know there's this there's this labor gap and it's huge right now. And so, to solve it the problem the problem is that you know that these people don't exist.    I say what you're doing is you're hunting for unicorns you're looking for this mythical creature that's supposed to you know mythology the unicorn I guess if you capture it you know the horn of the Unicorn had special healing properties and all of these other things. Right. That's what you're looking for you're looking for this-this guy or gal with five or 10 years’ experience that can just jump in on the crew lead the crew to you know a successful project. You're just looking for a unicorn. It's a mythical creature that doesn't exist.   Not too long ago I was in an education class and the teacher was going through said Okay so I went there was like 50 people in a classroom and I watch it and it was all for construction because I want everyone to look around the room and he goes How many people. And he goes how far under 40. Nobody resigned. He said how many people are under 50.   And there was a couple but most of them are 50. But they said here's the problem. He said there are no new contractors taking getting their licenses to fill the gap of what you guys are moving out of and he says that's creating a big problem in the marketplace. And I go Yeah and I said Here's a stupid thing guys if you don't realize that or not you are competing on price when you have you are no longer a commodity. But I need you and you're fighting against each other on price. Stop it yeah.   Yeah and that and that the solution to the problem is to say OK you know if we if we can't find it because it doesn't exist then what are we supposed to do. Well, you have to create it. And they're both hard problems to solve. I think that finding something that doesn't exist is a lot harder than creating something that you that doesn't exist. Meaning we stop hiring for skill, we stop hiring for technical expertise. Those are things you can teach somebody.   But what you need to hire like most other successful businesses and we need to take a note from you know the big Fortune 500 companies. And the other things like that. They hire a lot of cases. They will be hiring for competency and culture and fit. And you say you know things like culture to a construction other like What are you talking about. We just get the work done. And you know you know we're just the nose of the grindstone knock it outright. But every company has a culture and the culture of your company is what your employees think about working there. Right.   So, you know you may not have spent any time developing your culture but I guarantee you if I go in and start asking your employees you know what. What are some struggles they have working here or what you do have a culture you may just not be aware of exactly what it is? So, if you can if you can improve or you can enhance or you can just talk about what your culture is or what you want it to be then that's going to attract people that are competent and that have the right chemistry for your culture and are a good fit and you just have to say listen you know we can't find these people because they don't exist.   We're going to have to create them. So, what does that mean? Well, we better have a training program that we can take somebody that does. We're going to hire for a good work ethic and passion. Maybe it's not passion towards carpentry or painting or electrical work or you know whatever the trade is but you can probably help somebody to develop a passion because everybody in the trades that are working right now at some point you know no one was born with it. I don't even care if you've been wearing the tools since you were you know since you were a little kid on your grandfather's side and helping to build stuff in the shop.   You developed a passion for the time because you saw what that passion you know what it lived out what it what it created. Well just because somebody is 22 years old and they got a college degree in history, no offense to the history majors out there. But that doesn't mean that that that guy or gal can't develop a passion very quickly in six months and eight months and heck four months with the right company that shows this is what we do we create and build this stuff with our hands at the end of a day.   At the end of the day at the end of a week at the end of a project. We can walk away and point at something and say we built that. It wasn't here before and now it is. And the right people for your company they can develop a passion for whatever the craft is whatever the trade is but you got to train them to do it.   And I think that you could you can easily spend 18 months looking for this unicorn right and you'll probably go through a couple of people. The other thing that I say is if you hire somebody or somebody has the skills that you're looking for on paper anyway or they say they do. You got to ask why are they available. It's probably because no one wants to work with them right so oh this guy got 10 years of experience. He’s been a lead carpenter now you know he's looking for a job. Right. You need to make sure that you're interviewing process kind of weeds out the psychopaths right. Because you know you bring somebody in like that. Yeah, they're technically very competent.   They can do a lot of work but nobody wants to work around them. They won't listen. They won't get on board with the way your company does stuff so that can be dangerous too as when you do find somebody with the technical skills you've got to make sure that you're you know back to the culture thing. You've got to hire for that first and you get the right training program in place in six months, 12 months 18 months.   You can probably get somebody to where they need to be where they're very productive and very profitable for your business. And there are people out there that are the look they are realizing that they were lied to about college. Now if we go 100 grand in debt and get an education then somebody is just going to pay me 50 or 60 thousand dollars just because I went to college and they're working at Starbucks or at the movie theater or in and I've met them I've talked to them they're driven Uber right.   Trying to figure out what the next best thing is. And you find these people that are looking to put their passion towards something maybe it does haven't been carpentry or something like that in the past and you just say hey, come work for us. We've got a training program and we have a path in two years you could move up from this level to that level. You could you can do whatever you want within our company. But you got to have that structure you've got to have something you know you've got to have something in place and it's a lot easier if you focus and do that.   Put those systems and that training in place. You'll be able to take somebody that's pretty green and get them being very productive in a small amount of time because you'll go through the next 12, 18 months trying to hire the skilled guy and having to fire them every time you hire somebody and they come in and work for a little while and you got to let them go then. You know I think there are statistics that say you know when you fire somebody you have to let them go. It costs you 30-40% of whatever their yearly salary would have been.   So, I mean I work for a company like years ago it was co you can't train and fire, and I was like you don’t understand. No, we do understand. I said, “No, you don’t understand the cost involved in training them. Would it take a toll on me? Would it take a toll on you in dollars and cents?” “Well, we don’t care about that.  We just want somebody to do the job. Well, we got to train them. No, if they can't do the job just fire them.” “Well, that doesn't make sense”. You know and again you know it's like going back to like you said it goes back to leadership and culture.   And the nice part about what you're talking about from what I'm saying is that now you're a construction company. You should strategically grow your company along with a path because you're bringing people on board. That you can train. I think that's awesome because, now you're, instead of planning for tomorrow because I need help tomorrow you're planning for the future which if any anybody in the construction industry would hope that their business would last for the future instead of short-term.   So yeah everyone has to look differently at it but I think it's you know what you're talking about is so awesome because it is. It’s long-term. And it's scheduled for long-term growth, but not only that but you've got long-term profits. And then if you've got you know the culture that you've got a good culture or you don't have a good culture but you know that you need to be the leader you need to change then that makes all the difference in the world and you can become you know a force to reckon with in your marketplace.   Yeah. There are companies out there that when they get this. So, here's what I see. I think that the trend is shifting. I think that there are more people getting into the trades. They're dabbling in it a little bit, but society still looks down on construction. Meaning they say oh you couldn't you know you're doing construction because you couldn't have done anything else. And I think that's starting to change a little bit. You know just because of just exposure to it you know things like Instagram and Facebook and YouTube.   They're saying you know that this is this is a viable career to work in the trades. So, it is starting to shift. But I think that the companies that are going to when demand is when the supply does change. And I think it will change. I think eventually the gap will get so big that the government will step in and start throwing a lot of money at trade back at trade schools and putting vote tech back into education   When that happens, the supply is going to jump up. It's the companies that have spent the last ten years previous to that time whenever that is building a training program building a recruiting process. They're going to be able to pick the cream of the crop and then those business owners are finally going to be able to ride off into retirement because now the supply they're going to get the best people and their companies are going to be are going to be set right.   Everybody else is going to be scrambling for the supply and now they're going to say yeah, they've got some technical training. Right. So, there are some more welders, there are some more plumbers there. Great. Now you got a people problem. You know they still don't you know your company isn't set up to work in a team atmosphere and how do we communicate and how do we you know how do we grow because sometimes growing, just for the sake of growing, can put you out of business quicker than anything else.   So, it's those companies that right now when this gap is huge and the work is really hard and they change their mindset from hiring as their first step to recruiting as their first step. They're going to win when the supply does change. When you when there are more skilled technically skilled people. But again, the technical skills part that just gets your foot in the door.   What gets you the job, what makes you the money, and what gives you-you know a huge opportunity with construction companies is your character and in the end, combine that with the culture of the company so that's why I think that's the long game is put do the hard work. Now get your culture and get your training procedures in place so that you can get people good people and train them and then that's a system that you know for success right there.   And if you have a company that's doing this progressively and growing and training and recruiting, then people are going to come to you for. You're going to be able to. I mean you're going to be running the profit margins you should be running to run a very successful business anyways. So, you can you'll be able to afford people who have the right mindset, who have the right culture into your culture and grow within the company. You'll be able to pay them more than the average contracting company.   Yeah, and that's part of the recruiting mindset. Like, listen supply is down demand is high. Guess what you're going to pay more. From the very beginning. But just get over it. That's part of recruit. Like when you know when the Yankees go out and recruit somebody like they just pay the bill whatever the guy needs for his contract right because he's an all-star player and we need him to win the World Series or whatever. Like the money just you know like let's get that out. Let's get that out of the way so yeah you know you are going to pay a little bit more but you know we're playing a long game. What's the payoff in the end right? That that that A player is really going to produce you know produce for me and I hear that a lot to say you know maybe list and they said ok Shawn, I get it.   Dave, I get it you know but I don't know. This is another issue I hear a lot from my clients. I don't know if I can afford to hire somebody. Right. Or when is the right time to hire somebody? And it's this mindset of like oh you know OK let's just look at the numbers and say OK if this is, what I hear a lot is OK we're going to pay somebody 25 bucks an hour. That's $50,000 a year. I don't you know I don't have that kind of cash out, or I don't have that much money or what I don't like.   Whoa. Listen if you're if you're hiring right and you're hired the right person may be there and you've got and what I call an onboarding process right. Maybe it takes somebody a couple of weeks to get into your system, to get in your company. Kind of learn the ropes or whatever. After that, they should be making you money right. It's not a cost any more. Right.   They should be making you mine. So yeah maybe you got to. You should have a cash reserve for a couple of weeks a payroll for that person. But after that, they should be making you money if they're not you hired the wrong person or you're not you're not training them right so it's not really. Shawn, I don't think I can afford to hire somebody. Most of the time it's you can't afford to hire somebody.   You as the business owner have got to concentrate on business development and sales and marketing and now training. You can't worry about wearing the tools every day. You got to hire somebody to do that. And in fact, that's why you're not making the profits you need to make right now is because of your high-value work. The sales, the marketing, the business development stuff that generates hundreds if not thousands of dollars an hour when you can put the time in there. You're trapped doing 30 40 50 dollars an hour of work. Right. I know I run into this with so many people. It's mind-boggling that they can't get past the 12 hours an hour 20 hour an hour even 30 hours an hour mindset. And it's because they are so used to doing it. Stop it.   You know and this is not I don't say it's not easy it's not easy but you've got you've got to start. You know you got to start somewhere. Yeah. And it's and it's I've had conversations with guys while I can't do this because I've got something to do and I'm going you know it's very. It's very challenging in the beginning to do stuff that you just need to make an appointment with yourself.   I mean it takes two hours to this day to do this. And it could be you know like going out and I need to go market. I need to go you know to call at this time. He was looking at a property manager say you need the schedule for two hours. Two hours on Wednesday, and that two hours I said you make your phone calls, make your appointments a week before. And I said if somebody calls in sick, you don't jump out and drop because if you put that off, you call the customer and say listen we're running a little behind.   We aren’t going to make it this afternoon. We're going to reschedule you tomorrow. Because you're talking about making a thousand dollars on a job to maybe get a contract for five ten fifteen twenty thousand dollars. You have to really get to the point of what's the most important. It's not dollars today it's for the owner. It's dollars tomorrow.   Yeah. Yeah absolutely. It's like it's you know. Stephen Covey writes about in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People it's urgent versus the important right. Right we got to and it's hard. The urgent stuff is urgent. Right. But the important stuff doesn't take as much time as the urgent stuff but the urgent always bleeds into the important time so if we can get that focus time, focus on the important stuff you know and what we were talking about before that you know.   OK, what's the first step in our recruiting process like let's just spend some time this 15 minutes 30 minutes this week thinking about recruiting instead of hiring. Right. That that will generate some ideas. Now go do that. Now to deal with the urgent stuff fight the fires and all that kind of stuff.   But then like you said to meet with yourself again that next week. Another 30 minutes what's the next step. And then if you do that for any period of time that creates a habit and gets into discipline then you're at least you know you've got this focused time where you're working on important stuff and then that's what creates momentum and movement towards you know towards having a better year than you did you know then when you had the year before   And I've even had a conversation with people so, well you don’t understand. I said, “Dude, I do understand. I understand everything you're going and I've been through it and I still go through at certain times. But here's the thing if you're going to make an appointment to do something. If you're going to schedule time with yourself to do this or that task you know to create something new.   I said to schedule it and I want you to write it down over there. What’s the worst-case scenario? What would it cost you? A time worth is it worth a thousand dollars? Is it worth ten thousand dollars? or is it worth $12? You have to value yet put the value of your time in there otherwise you're not going to you're not going to force yourself to go through the steps you need.   Like you said this to start to recruit process or even write down what you're even thinking about hiring and I knew I was listening until one guy and he was saying you know he says all of my all the people that worked for me are assets. I think of them as assets. We work altogether. So, once they are no longer an asset then we part company.   But that was a beautiful way to look at it because what's an asset? An asset is something that works for you in conjunction with your goals and everything. It brings you in money. So as an asset can be an expenditure. Right. Yeah, it adds value it adds value to the company. Yeah   So, it's you know it's like you know that rental property is an asset as long as it's paying you. And you ain't going to get rid of it until it stops. You know. That's right. You need to think about your employees like that.   So, you say you've got the recruitment process and I your client they are finding it, course, I know it's hard to work through but I know a lot of them seen a long-term plan. A long-term thing yeah I mean they're starting they're starting to you know they're starting to see that recruitment mentality you know. The other thing too is just like look everywhere for your next employee.   Talk to the guys at the. You know there's a there's a kid that's working at the loading docks of the building supply company. Right now. He's not necessarily “in construction or has school” but he's there. He's close to it. Right. He's you know he's doing work. He's yeah, he's working with people but he's around it a little bit. Right. So that's a great place to start in a company that I used to use to work with.   The owner was excellent recruiter and he would go in and if he found somebody at Lowe's or Home Depot working the cash register and they were smiling and he was treated with respect, he gave that guy a business card and said if you're thinking about being a trim carpenter you ought to give us a call even if you've never thought about it for come by our office see what we're doing.   You're already working at Lowe's your home depot. You're on the outskirts of this thing. We want to show you what we, what somebody like you can do at a company like ours. And we've got, we've hired guys and gals from that you know. So, it starts with just you've got to look everywhere. Everybody's a potential employee.   My roofer friend, his last three salesmen that he picked up they know nothing about sales, nothing about the roofing industry, nothing about nothing. They were all his waiters at his favorite restaurant. Yeah. Waiters are really good. Yeah because they knew how to interact with people, you know they know how to think on their feet. They've got to solve a lot of problems very quickly for very impatient and its people that with five kids waiting on the chicken fingers. Yeah, you know. You know.   Yes. I like you. And so that's so cool for you know a lot of guys that are to listen and you know you've got to think outside the box you've got to be constantly looking for friendly people that you know that are friendly, that is interactive. And the funny thing is that you know we were talking about earlier, you know you look so long for the technical side of it. And I learned a long time ago you know you hire for attitude. You can always teach technical. Because you have 98% of the time you're going to fire for attitude.   That's right to start with the good stuff first man. Yeah. I mean we're all gonna make mistakes technically right. But that's usually not a fireable offense that you know if you if you keep making the same technical mistakes it's probably because you have an attitude problem that you're not learning or you're not listening or whatever but it's really not because of the technical mistakes like you said it's an attitude mistake.   I was a guy I know he was. He put a Facebook post on he goes you know it's I get tired of all you guys in a particular industry complaining that you can't keep good health. He goes I want you to understand what the problem is. It is not your help, it is you. Yeah. Yeah.   And part of that you know part of that recruiting mentality means that the hiring process is longer. It means you need to have three or four interviews. You need probably have other people within your organization interview them. So, what does that mean? Well, we need to train some of our lead technicians or some of our project managers to how to interview. Right. They need to know that skill. That's another business skill that they need to learn because that's going to help you run the business.   You as the owner doing all of the interviews is not going to be as helpful as if you get these other guys. I've seen that before too, where we pulled lead carpenters and said hey we've got this potential guy he's going to be working with you on your team. I want you to have a chance to vote on this because he's not going to be working. Yes, working for me but he's going to be working with you and the insights that the guys on that you know boots on the ground kind of guys that are in the trenches they'll pick up on stuff and not necessarily bad stuff. They'll pick up on other things where they'll say yeah, this person is really good. I can tell their character because we had a conversation totally unrelated to something else but they're a good fit for us. Their attitude and because everybody looks good on a resume and everybody's going to say try and say the right things in front of the owner or the manager or whatever but get them get them with some of their peers and let them just have a conversation. And so, but that takes more time.   That costs a little bit more money. You mean Sean I'm going to pay my lead carpenter to come into the office for 45 minutes in the middle of the day and interview somebody. Yeah, it's going to cost you a couple of hundred bucks but if you make the wrong hire it's going to cost you tens of thousands of dollars. So yes, spend a couple hundred bucks and train your leaders. Carpenter how to do some job interviews.   So, it boils down to you're not hiring for today because you need employees today; you're hiring for tomorrow because you want to grow your company and you want your people to grow with you. It basically what it is. Yes, it is. Because it's going to cost you a fortune or the wrong. Like you said hiring the wrong people in a few. You're hiring because I'm busy and I need to hire people. Then it would be you. I know you guys are going to hate me for saying this but it would be smarter to turn the work away and lose the money.   Yeah, you can. You can always tell this to my clients when they say oh you know we're really busy. OK. You're making the money. No. All right. Well, you can just sit at home and go out of business. You don't need to go and work your butt off for it. Right.   Right. I know. So, the other thing the other thing about what we're talking about you know in recruiting and playing the long game here too as I hear this a lot is. Well, I want to give this person an opportunity. And again, it's just a slight little mind shift change or language change saying don't give anybody an opportunity. What you want, what your what your people actually want is they want a path. Give them a path. Show them where they can go. But they earn the opportunity.   We don't give opportunities to this company. What we give is a path. What we give is training. What we give is you know a path to go from here to here to eventually to a project manager to estimator to a general manager heck you can become the CEO of some companies the owners are they can't wait to not have to run the company of somebody you know.   So, don't give them an opportunity. Let them earn the opportunity but you got to show them a path because people see the path that they're on then they'll earn their way along that path and that path may take a couple of different rabbit trails that you otherwise were trying to force them in. But given someone's strengths and their abilities then your company will be better off.   But what does that look like? Well, that means you have an employee handbook that has job description and job titles and responsibilities and there's an organizational chart and have a communication system and you have a meeting schedule. All of that takes time and planning and thinking just like we were talking about before. That's important stuff the stuff that we got to stop doing the urgent stuff to get those things in place.   Yeah, I talked to so many so many business owners and when I go in to train their employees one thing that we work on I say What's your job title? Well, I'm a lead Carpenter would mean well yeah okay. Are you sure because it sounds like you said I'm a lead Carpenter? Well, sometimes I'm a Lead Carpenter. I think you know it's just like I talked to enough employees and I asked them what their job title is and what that means what are their responsibilities. They don't know.   So, no wonder you're having people problems. No wonder you know the business is kind of even though you're super, super busy and people are really frustrated you don't understand because your people don't know what they're supposed to be doing. They don't know what you want them to be doing because a lot of times people will, business owners will hire to fill a gap you know and they'll hire for a person instead of hiring for a job.   Because when Joe leaves this position we're going to hire for that position. We can't possibly hire another Joe because Joe is Joe.  Yeah. Timing me crazy just I know it's good for you. I know it's true. Wow, this is really awesome. Well, we’re getting close to end this time. Is there anything in the back of your mind that you just wanted to have a thought about that you wanted to bring up to the front. Before we close out in the next few minutes or so.   Oh yeah. I always try to end on this just because somebody once asked me if you could only teach one thing to construction business owners or contractors. What would it be? And it's very simplistic but you got to understand the difference between margin and markup.   Like I'd be happy to teach it because when contractors get that and they understand and we don't have enough time to go into all that but when they realize how the math works on that and what the difference between those two terms are and what it means for their business then it totally changes the way they operate.   At least you know as far as knowing what you know when your costs are, what your markup needs to be to produce a certain margin so I'll leave it with that. Just saying if you don't know the difference between margin or markup or you think you do, you probably don't and that's okay. Again, like we said the beginning you're not alone. No one no one gets this until they really you know studied or whatever. Learn the difference between margin and markup.   Yeah maybe with in the future will do a full podcast about that will drive anybody nuts. Yeah. Doing Numbers doing numbers and math on a podcast is really uncommon. Yeah. You got to picture this that would do well do it. Yeah, ducks and birds you know. Yeah, that's right.   Shawn, it's really been awesome. How do our listeners get in touch with you if they want to find out more about you? What you do and your whole organization.   Yep. The easiest way is just Google me and I should pop up all over the place it's ShawnVanDyke.com is the Web site and that's S-H-A-W-N. But if your if your listeners want to you know get some you know to start making some taking some actions and getting some results. I've got a book called the Paperwork Punch List: 28 Days to Streamline your Construction Business.   FREE e-book on my Web site just goes to ShawnVanDyke.com /the paperwork punch list. Give me your email address and you'll get the book download for FREE. It's about 70 some pages and it just kind of walks us through step by step. Some stuff that you can do over the next 28 days over the next four weeks to start getting some of the paperwork stuff out of the way some of the systems in place.   Well, make sure all that goes on our show. Yeah. When we do that so everyone will be able to do that. Awesome. This is really cool and I really appreciate you talking about this. Really. Something an industry that's driving everybody nuts. Well, man, thanks for Dave thanks for having me on this has been this has been a blast. I think we could probably talk for two hours on different stuff. So, anytime and anytime. Thanks.   You can visit this websites for more details about Shawn Van Dyke: www.shawnvandyke.com www.ShawnVanDyke.com/thepaperworkpunchlist   EMAIL: connect@shawnvandyke.com       There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the web site and pick up the free download.     4 Hot Marketing Strategies That Can Flood Your Business with Customers   If you have a story to tell and would like to be a guest on this podcast email my assistant Shell at Shell@contractorssecretweapon.com   and she will send you our guest sheet.       Our sponsors     Would you like your phone to ring more with qualified buyers people looking to buy now? Then let’s make that happen. Best Home Services Leads is dedicated to making your phone ring with qualified buyers wanting to buy now. Go to and fill out the form to get more information.       http://contractorssecretweapon.com/money      How about 100 free postcards sent out to your best prospective customers. Radius Bomb sends out hyper targeted, laser focused postcards using a map while sitting in your under ware at your kitchen table then go to http://contractorssecretweapon.com/radiusbomb      Painting Contractors, get up to a 24% better response rate just for having the right memorable telephone number 1-800-PRO-PAINTER.Check out your area before someone beats you to it and it’s not available. https://www.1800propainter.com/    

Even after divorce you may find yourself running away with a handsome stranger to a foreign land...complete with happy endings, food and intuition and how to get yourself some more clarity in your life.And at the end of this episode I'll share with you one of my favorite things to eat to help increase your intuition – which could really come in handy if you've got a tough decision to make like our guest Darla did. Our guest, Darla AntoineI am super excited to be joined here today for our story by Darla Antoine. Darla is a soul coach, and she works with the elements of what she calls Sacred Darkness, such as dreamwork, divination and deathwork (which is not as scary as it sounds, she tells me). Darla will tell you a bit more about what she does later on, but first I really want you to hear her story which I just can't wait to share with you because it's gonna be great!So Darla welcome to the Clean Food, Dirty Stories podcast! I'm really excited to have you here today!Darla: I'm excited to be here Barbara!Me: It's really great, I mean, I can't wait to hear your story because when you told me about it, I was like “That could have happened to me!”Darla: I know, right? Me: Because we've both had kind of like crazy pasts. And I know that it starts with a husband and kind of moves on from there with the mysterious stranger. So do you want to tell us what happened?Darla: Sure, OK.Darla's storySo I got married young, I was about 22 years old which was in 2004 and I loved my first husband, obviously. We're both from Washington State and we moved to Iowa.He started going to grad school to become a chiropractor, I started to go to grad school in New Mexico for intercultural communication. The last year of his chiropractic school, he had to work under a chiropractor, so we moved to Spain.Learning Spanish from very youngEver since I was a little girl, I always knew that I'd be moving to a Spanish-speaking country. At 6 years old I was trying to teach myself Spanish, I just knew I needed to learn Spanish.Me: Oh that's so cute!Darla: Yeah, and so this was it. We were moving to Spain and he knew he was gonna work under a doctor in Spain and we were gonna stay in Spain for as long as we wanted, and that whole thing. And I was like “Yes! It's finally happening!” I was about 26 years old at this point.But the long distance...I was living in New Mexico, he was living in Iowa and Spain. And we were only seeing each other every few months, which started to weigh on the relationship and there were other issues...Me: Oh, so you didn't go to Spain with him then?Darla: I did, but I also was going to grad school so in summer breaks or on vacation I'd take time off to go and work on our relationship.Whose dream will come true: mine or yours?But anyway we had a great time in Spain, but the distance was wearing on us and there were other issues about...Have you seen the movie LaLa Land?Me: No, but I know lots of people have.Darla: Yes, lots of people have. And the movie ends not the way you think it's going to end. It's very obvious that if the couple had ended up together, that only one of their dreams would come true. Not both of their dreams would come true.So that's how it was with my ex-husband. If I'd stayed with him, his dreams would have come true but my dreams wouldn't. I would just be the supporting role, and blah blah blah.So I was in a very tough position of walking away from our life in Spain in our relationship and going alone on my own and that's what my gut was telling me. I had a very profound dream that backed that up, and I went to a psychic for the first time in my life. She told me, she confirmed what I was feeling and confirmed that yes there was another life waiting for me if I wanted it, and that soon I would be travelling to Costa Rica for research. And I would meet someone there, and this someone would be involved in sustainability, eco living and such. I thought “OK, that's interesting”.And then I asked her some more questions and I got off the phone and made the tough decision. Not just right then and there, but over the next few weeks I slowly dissolved our marriage. It was very difficult.I left Spain and came back to the States and then I had taken the semester off from grad school. I wasn't in grad school in New Mexico, I was up in Washington State with my parents. You know, 26, 27 years old, living with my parents again.Me: I know what that's like, I did that once, it wasn't fun.Looking for a farmDarla: So it was this time of year, late March, early April, and I thought well I need to keep my focus on the future so I don't go crazy.I was studying intercultural communication and I wrote my masters thesis on how food creates cultural identity and legacy, so I thought “I'm gonna get out of the library and I'm gonna go work and visit farms and talk about how food is affecting people's cultural identity and their cultural legacy.So I started looking for permaculture farms in the Washington State, British Columbia area. And somehow I landed on a site for a permaculture farm in Costa Rica.Me: Uh-oh!Darla: Yeah! The psychic's words from 3 weeks ago? I totally didn't think even about it, it didn't even cross my mind. I'd forgotten what she'd said.So I thought “well this is interesting”. I sent them an email, and they wrote right back and they said “We'd love to have you come and volunteer, we could use you next month”. And I'm like “Next month is 10 days away, I should ask my husband about this” and I thought “I don't have to ask my husband about this, he's not gonna be my husband much longer”.Then I thought, “I should ask my mom about this” and I thought “No, no, I'm 26 years old, I don't have to ask my mom about this!” So I had like almost no money, I booked the ticket and did a happy dance because I was stepping into my own adulthood, making my own decisions, doing what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it, and it felt really good!10 days later I was being dropped off at the end of a road in Costa Rica. And it wasn't until I had booked the ticket and wrote back that yes I'd be there in 10 days...That's when I remembered the psychic's words that I'd be going to Costa Rica for research.Me: Wow!Darla: And I got goosebumps, I thought “Oh my gosh, something's gonna happen!”Life on a hippy farmIt was great! It ended up being like a really disorganized hippy farm. I didn't learn anything about permaculture!Me: That's hysterical!Darla: I was disappointed but then I just embraced it. I was like “You know what? This is like summer camp for adults. This is fine”.I was gonna stay for a month but I ended up extending my stay for two months and I didn't have any money to pay the $300 to stay there for a month. So I made a trade: I would be the cook for the second month in exchange for staying. And so when you're the cook for 20 people, you're cooking all day.Me: Yeah, I know what that's like too!Darla: Yeah! So the first month was all summer camp and the second month was like work. But it was what I needed. I got to be around people who didn't know me as so-and-so's wife. They just were meeting me at face value and embracing me and loving me, and some of the people I met there are still really dear friends today.Me: And how was your Spanish at that time?Darla: It was pretty good. It wasn't as good as I thought it was, but it was pretty good because I'd been living in Spain. And I took Spanish in high school and college because I just always knew that I needed to learn Spanish. It's the only foreign language I've bothered to learn.From summer camp to full time cookSo about 3 weeks into my time there I was cooking. I wasn't officially the cook yet, but I was filling in for someone and I was cooking. And the guy who owns this farm also used to own a tour guiding company. He would bring in mostly college students who were on a tour. They would come in through his farm for a day or two and learn about permaculture and then go on the rest of their tour in the country.So one of these tours was coming through, there were about 18 college students. I was told they would be here at about 8 pm. Now there are two ways to get to this farm: you could hike through the jungle for an hour and a half, or you could take a 30-minute boat ride. It was very isolated which was perfect for me.So I was told that they were going to be walking in and the next day boating out and to have dinner ready by 4, they'd be arriving by 3, perfect. They'd be led by their Costa Rican tour guide. OK.And one day, among the vegetables...I'm in the kitchen and I'm chopping vegetables and all of a sudden there's this redhead standing in my kitchen. He's decked out in all this fancy gear. Fancy outdoor gear. And I'm thinking because he's pale-skinned and redheaded, “He must be one of the professors”. He looked about 30 years old. The group's arriving. And sure enough I see some college students walking in behind him.Well I immediately get super annoyed with him. I'm like “Who is this guy?” I don't see the Costa Rican tour guide anywhere.A friend and I had just gotten lost on that trail between the farm and the nearest town the week before. It's a very difficult trail, you need to know what you're doing.I'm like “Here's some hotshot young professor, he's ditched the tour guide, showing off, he's wearing a whole bunch of gear he's never gonna wear again, it's obviously all brand new...”Me: It's interesting how many assumptions you made though, right?Darla: I made so many assumptions! And I was so annoyed. And then I saw the way he was looking at me. Then I thought “Oh my God, this guy's gonna be a pain, he's gonna want to flirt with me...”So here's the thing, I very seriously thought, “He's gonna want me to move to Michigan to the suburbs and have babies!”Me: Oh that's hysterical!Darla: I don't know why Michigan, but Michigan popped up and I was like “I don't want to move to the suburbs and have babies in Michigan! No offense.”Me: Now I'm laughing because I know what happens afterwards, right?Darla: So yes, but then he thought I was Costa Rican. He opened his mouth to introduce himself and it was in Spanish, in perfect, 'this is my first language' Spanish. Not 'I've learned Spanish really well and I can introduce myself' Spanish. It was perfect Spanish.And OK, well, I stopped, my eyes popped out, my mouth might have dropped open a little bit, and I was like “OK well you just got more interesting!” I was kind of shocked and I didn't say anything, so then he took my shock for not understanding, and he switched to perfect, 'this is my first language' English!He said “Hi, I'm Andy, I'm the tour guide”. And I was like, “OK, hello!”Me: All your assumptions were gone, right?Darla: All my assumptions were gone, which was wonderful! It was nice to be surprised. In less than 24 hours...And there was definitely some attraction between us, but he remained very professional. He was there at the farm for less than 24 hours, so he didn't try to sneak off into the bushes with me...Me: Did you regret that?Darla: Yeah! But then I thought well, he doesn't just hit on every cute girl he comes across, this is something. So it turns out his parents emigrated to Costa Rica when he was in the womb, when his mother was pregnant with him, from Michigan! They came from Michigan in 1978 and moved to Costa Rica and he had been born and raised in Costa Rica by US immigrant parents.And before they left the next day, we exchanged email addresses and he said, “I don't care when you come back to Costa Rica, I don't care if it's next month, next week, one year, two years from now, you let me know the next time you come back to Costa Rica and I'm gonna take you out on a date”.Me: Oh! It's like something out of a movie!Darla: Yeah, it really was! But I thought, “well you're cute but I'm never gonna see you again”. I took his email address and neither one of us were big on Facebook but we eventually added each other to Facebook and I went back to New Mexico to finish my graduate degree, I got another boyfriend and kind of forgot about him, honestly.Two years later...And twice over the course of two years he emailed me via Facebook and all the conversation was “How are you?” “I'm fine, how are you?” “I'm fine” “Good”. That was it. Hardly no conversation at all.Me: Wow.Darla: Yeah. But then I was finishing grad school and I thought “You know, I'm gonna go back to Costa Rica, that's really where I feel like I started to become my own adult. And I'm gonna go back for a few weeks and go visit friends that I made there before I go get a job and have to ask a boss for permission for vacation”.So I was making plans to go back to Costa Rica when he emailed me, Andy, this guy in Costa Rica. He emailed me out of the blue. And I'm like “Oh actually I'm coming to Costa Rica, do you still want to go on that date?” And I thought he could have been married with kids, then, I don't know.Me: Yeah, because it was two years later, right?Darla: Yeah, it was two years later. And he immediately wrote back and said “Let me know when you're coming and I'll pick you up at the airport”.Me: Ohhhhh!Darla: And I thought, “Oh dear!”Falling in love...So it went from being seeing him for a night, going on a date, to spending the entire 3 weeks with him. He drove me all over the country, we fell in love.Now here's the thing: the psychic said I would meet someone in Costa Rica and that they would be involved in sustainable living. And he has an organic sustainable farm, he and his sisters run an eco lodge, so yeah.We live on an organic, sustainable homestead now in Costa Rica, and it's been 6 years. Actually 6 years earlier this week, we celebrated it's been 6 years since I came to Costa Rica to see him, and we've got two little boys, and we're madly in love with each other still.Me: Oh wow! That's such a nice story! And it has a happy ending as well, doesn't it?Darla: It does, yeah.Me: And one of the things that came out when we were talking about this was you were saying how your intuition really helped you to make some of the right decisions. Do you want to say more about that? Were there specific moments when you just tuned into yourself? And how did you do that?Darla: Yes, so my intuition really started picking up at the same time as my marriage started ending. And I've always been a really strong dreamer. Dreaming has always been a really great way to get messages to me from the divine.So one was I had a dream right before I ended it with my husband that confirmed that I needed to end it. Two was right before I came here to visit Andy, speaking of dreams, anyway. A most powerful dreamI woke up in the early morning and I started coughing. Like I'd been sleeping with my mouth open or something and my throat was dry. So I started coughing and I needed to get some water. There was water across my room on my desk, but I was still dreaming. And I had this very vivid image of like my astral body or something in the cosmos. Like I was flying through stars, I've never consciously remembered something like this.And I was zooming to get back to my body because my body needed me, but there were these two orbs of light going with me. Like we'd been out playing in the cosmos. I got back into my body and I woke up, but these orbs of light were laughing at me. They were taunting me. They were like “Ha ha, look who has a body! Look who needs to get back to their body! Ha ha!”And as I got back into my body and I started becoming conscious, I could still see and hear them and the more I woke up, the more they faded. Then I tried to get up out of bed to go get the water and I fell to the floor, like I couldn't operate my body. I still wasn't completely back into it.Me: Wow!Darla: I started laughing and I had to like drag myself across the floor to get my glass of waterMe: Yeah cause you must have been really thirsty!Darla: Yeah! By the time I'd had a glass of water I had regained function of my body, but I just felt that those two orbs were gonna be my children.Me: Oh! Wow!On paper? Insane. But in reality...Darla: Yeah, this was about a month before I came to visit Andy on the trip that we fell in love. So I thought, “OK, things are shifting in my life. Things are changing. A whole new energy is coming”.And then sure enough within like 8 months after we got together, I was pregnant by the end of that same year with my first son. So yeah, so the dreams definitely told me that shifts were coming and that changes were coming.But then also just the gut feeling that I had that “This is crazy, I left one husband and now I'm moving to a foreign country to be with a guy”.On paper it all sounded insane, but in my heart and in my gut I knew that this was right, this was what I'd been preparing my whole life for. I always knew that I needed to speak Spanish. I always knew that my partner, my mate, was far, far away in another country. Ever since I was a little girl, I just knew it.Me: That's really funny that you say that about the Spanish, because I was told years and years ago by a psychic that...I was learning French at the time and the psychic was like, “Well, you really need to learn Spanish” and I was like, “Really?” I was in high school, I was like 18 or something, you know? And I wound up using Spanish when I was 38! But use it I did and, you know, married a Mexican, yeah, all that stuff. So it sometimes takes quite a long time to manifest, right? But it does, it's there.What Darla does now to help othersSo talking about dreams and intuition, I think that links really well to the kind of thing that you're doing now with people. Do you want to say a little bit about that? And then, you know, where people can find you?Darla: Sure. So one of the biggest things I love helping people with, especially women but men as well, I love helping them also tap into their dreams. Even if you haven't remembered a dream in years or whatever, you can regain your dreams.And on my website which is – should I give my website address?Me: Yeah, sure!Darla: OK my website is thecopperscarab.com I've got a whole bunch of blog articles that can help you reclaim your dreams. But I also have a course that will just walk you through everything you need to know about dreams.Death work and transitionsI also help people with death work. This is kind of a new door I've got my foot in, but I really love it. I think death work is something that's present at any time of transition, and it's something that really helped me navigate divorce. It helped me navigate moving to another country, and it helped me navigate becoming a mom. Because the old 'me' had to die. Well, all three of those things. I had to shed an old version of me.And between divorce and moving to another country and becoming a mom, I think motherhood has been the hardest transition for me. Maybe because there's so much joy and love wrapped up in it as well, it's not just that I'm cutting off this part of my life and moving on. You have to keep living and interacting and loving this new life. And it's also very painful. It can be very painful and a very hard transition.Divination for everyoneSo I help women transition through big life transitions with death work, and then I'm a big fan of divination. Dreaming I think is a form of divination, but especially when you've got big decisions to make. It's really easy to get stuck in your head or stuck in your emotions and you kind of need a way to get the clarity without the emotions and without influencing it yourselves, so learning a divination tool is really helpful. Whether it's tarot, or claircognizant - inner knowing - or dreamwork, or anything like that. I think at least a form of divination is really important for everyone to know.Me: Yeah, I'd agree with that, cause I think it's just really empowering, you know? To know that you've got this tool to make really important decisions yourself, right?Darla: Exactly.Me: Yeah, that's really cool. I'll definitely put the link to your website in the shownotes as well, and I'll get into the food tips in just a moment.But first I wanted to thank you so much for being here to share your story cause I love your story and I also love what you do. So I'm gonna encourage people massively to check you out and see what you do because it's just amazing, so thank you for being here with me!Darla: Thanks for having me!Me: You're very welcome!Food and intuitionSo, I mentioned at the beginning of this episode that I'd share with you one of my favorite foods to help with your intuition in case you've got any difficult decisions to make, among other things.This food is very common and I'm sure you've eaten it already without knowing the amazing good that it's doing for your mind!The food is...almonds!Now I'm not talking roasted, salted almonds. I'm talking about fresh, raw almonds.Benefits of almondsAlmonds are a great source of vitamin E, protein and calcium, which are all nutrients that our endocrine glands absorb and which therefore can help bring us clarity of mind, focus and heightened intuition.How you use almondsHow do you use almonds? Well you can eat them raw by the handful, of course. You can sprinkle them on salads or eat them in a trail mix. But no matter how you eat them, one thing I would say is that to get maximum benefit from your almonds, it's best to soak them first for a few hours. I soak mine overnight or while I go out for the day.The reason I say to soak them is because nuts have a natural coating of enzyme inhibitors which can make them heavy to digest. The enzyme inhibitors are natural, and they're the reason you can walk through the grocery store and not a forest. They tell the nuts to wait to become a tree until they've got not just light, but water as well. So when you soak them, you're basically activating them. You're telling them that it's time to release that fabulous growth potential – which you absorb when you eat them soaked. It's kind of like eating the potential of an entire tree with each soaked nut. Pretty cool, right?Think of sprouts – it's the same principle. You're eating the potential of an entire plant in each sprout. That's why you've heard that they're so good for you.Where to find out moreAnyway, if you want some specific recipes for using almonds, I have lots in my 5-Minute recipe ebooks that I'll link to in the show notes.The link between food and intuition is actually one of my favorite topics, so I'll also link to an article of mine that goes into more detail about several foods that you can eat to help improve your intuition.And for those of you who want to read more about the science behind food and intuition, I'll link to an excerpt from the best resource that I found which comes from a book called Nutrition for Intuition, written by Doreen Virtue and Robert Reeves and published by Hay House.I'll also link to an article that has more information on other health benefits of almonds in case you find that useful, because there are a LOT of them!Have YOU got a story to share?Which brings us to the end of this week's story – and if you've got a crazy, true story to share (and you'd like to know what food could have saved the day in your situation),  I'd love to hear from you! Got a question, or a comment?Got a question, or a comment? Pop a note below in the comments, that would be awesome. You can also subscribe to the podcast to listen 'on the go' in iTunes.I hope you have an amazing day. Thank you so much for being here with me to share in my Clean Food, Dirty Stories. Bye for now!RESOURCESDarla's website: thecopperscarab.comArticle on food for intuition: https://rockingrawchef.com/increase-intuition-with-food/Excerpt from article on food and intuition from the book Nutrition for Intuition:  http://www.fourcornersmagazine.com/sedonaconsciousmag/nutrition-for-intuition-by-doreen-virtue-and-robert-reeves/Article on other benefits of almonds: https://draxe.com/almonds-nutrition/5-Minute recipe ebooks: https://rockingrawchef.com/5-minute-recipes/About Darla AntoineDarla is a soul coach who helps women navigate times of transition and dark nights of the soul utilizing what she calls the Elements of Sacred Darkness: Dreamwork, Divination and Deathwork (not as scary as it sounds). She is also the mother of two young boys and lives on a homestead in Costa Rica. By accident.