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Josh Herzig-Marx, founder of Knect, discusses the latest developments in his startup journey since his last appearance on the show. He emphasizes the program's value in helping founders like himself refine ideas and strategies. He particularly notes the program's effectiveness in addressing challenges unique to startups, such as managing professional networks and dealing with the rapid growth of online presence. The conversation also delves into AI's technical aspects and potential applications and the practicalities and ethical considerations of using it in professional networking. Josh and Jordyn explore various AI use cases, distinguishing between beneficial applications and those they deem undesirable. Transcript: LINDSEY: We are back for our Incubator update with Josh Herzig-Marx and his startup, Knect. I'm Lindsey Christensen. I do marketing things at thoughtbot. We are also joined by Jordyn Bonds, who runs our incubator and does product strategy for thoughtbot. And today, we're going to be catching up with Josh and learn what's new since last we checked in. But before we get to that, we have an exciting incubator update: our application window has just reopened. JORDYN: Yes. LINDSEY: You could be the next Josh. JORDYN: You could. JOSH: Don't be me. You should join the incubator. [laughter] JORDYN: Go to thoughtbot.com/incubator and apply. It's just that easy. The application doesn't take long, even though it's in Typeform, and we have gotten some feedback, including from Josh, that it's challenging to plan your application efforts because, as you all probably know, Typeform just gives you one question at a time. So, sorry, maybe we'll update that. But it won't take you very long. It's a pretty brief application. And we are looking for pre-product folks, so you don't have to have a lot. Don't worry about what you do or don't have. Just apply. LINDSEY: Pre-product founder trying to figure out, is this problem worth solving? Who is it for? Jordyn and the team can help you out. thoughtbot.com/incubator. JOSH: And me. LINDSEY: And Josh. JOSH: And if, for some reason, you want to ask somebody about the program who isn't directly affiliated with thoughtbot, you should reach out to me. I'd be happy to talk about my experience. LINDSEY: You should. JOSH: I'd be happy to tell you what I think would be some reasons to join and some reasons that it might not be a good fit for you. And I'd be happy to chat about any of those things. It'd be my pleasure, in fact. LINDSEY: That is a great offer. JORDYN: It is a great offer. You all should take Josh up on that offer. He is an excellent sounding board and mentor. And additionally, if you get into the incubator, you'll just be in a Slack channel with Josh for the rest of time, inside of thoughtbot's Slack. So, that's another [crosstalk 02:05] JOSH: Statistically, there's a good chance you already are. [laughter] JORDYN: You mean in a slack with you. That's true. Josh is in a lot of Slacks, not [crosstalk 02:14]. LINDSEY: Yeah. Once you go through the incubator, you're family for life. JORDYN: You're family. You're here. You're with us. You can't get rid of us. LINDSEY: And you're able to hit us up with the questions, talk to the other founders, so that's another great benefit of participating. All right, but topic of the hour, Josh, hey, how are you? How you doing? JOSH: Lindsey, I am floating right now. We had our end of incubator session last official meeting. And we reviewed how we started, what we hope to accomplish, what we actually did accomplish, and next steps, and it feels really awesome. LINDSEY: It does. That's so great to hear. And can you, at the top here, maybe remind folks who haven't listened before, you know, what was that beginning point that you came in the incubator or the problem that you were looking to solve? JOSH: So, I had this Josh problem, which is that I am overwhelmed by the number of places that I am online and by the rapid increase in my professional network, professional social network, I guess you could say, but in my professional network, you know, see that comment a few minutes ago about how we're probably already in multiple Slacks together, whoever you happen to be online. Plus, if you're on LinkedIn, we're probably at least secondary connections on LinkedIn. Like, there's an awful lot of people, and it's growing really, really fast. And as somebody with a whopping case of ADD, which just feels like making an excuse, as somebody in, like, this modern world, I was feeling overwhelmed, and I felt like I was dropping the ball. And my problem was somebody must have a solution to this. I cannot be the only one. I could not find a solution myself. And I thought, well, maybe if there is no existing solution, maybe we should just go ahead and build it. And that was the genesis of my application to the thoughtbot incubator, which was that even though I've done this once before, I had never done this alone. I don't want to do this alone. And I thought that, you know, because of my experience with thoughtbot in the past and my understanding of, like, thoughtbot's unique organizational skills and capacities, this would be a particularly good fit for the thing that I wanted to figure out. And when I say figure it out, there was really four things I was hoping to get from this program. Let's see if I can remember them all in order. Number one, is this a Josh problem, or is this a broader problem affecting more people? Number two, this is, like, a ladder of problems, right? Like a cascading set. Number two thing I was trying to figure out: if this isn't just a Josh problem, is there at least one identifiable and addressable set of people who think about this problem in a similar way with whom I could engage? Number three, if there is such a group, are they willing, ready, and able to, like, spend money on solving this problem? And then number four, which I guess is kind of orthogonal to the other ones, it's kind of alongside, is this thing to solve even technically feasible, right? Because you can have this, like, amazing opportunity, but you just can't build it. And, you know, is this a thing that we could build or that I could get built within the resources that I might have? And I came in with some hypotheses, with some ideas. It's not like I had never done any research in this at all. But coming out of it, we have four pretty good answers. And I would not have been able to reach those answers with the same level of confidence, certainly not within eight weeks, if I hadn't gone through the incubator, and it's a really nice way to end the year. LINDSEY: With a bow on it. The last time we talked, you had narrowed in, I think, on your starting target market. And you had also recently introduced a prototype into the mix. How has the prototype evolved? JOSH: It's...and this is going to be no surprise to either of you or anybody who's listening. But, like, the difference between, like, talking about something in the abstract and actually having, like, a thing in your hand is night and day. So, the prototype actually evolved pretty rapidly. You know, it allowed us to try using it, like, to put on our own empathetic user analog hats and try it ourselves and be like, "Well, this doesn't quite make sense." This doesn't actually flow right. And it allowed us to show it to a lot of people. I'll say, we are, by far, our own strongest critics, which is good. Mostly, when we showed it to people, people are like, "This is amazing." And they would ask us, like, really specific, weird questions like, "Where's, you know, your about page? Could I see your privacy policy?" which is, like, a really, really good thing to hear. Because if the only thing...one way to interpret that is the only thing keeping them from maybe, like, diving in and using it right now, besides it doesn't actually exist as a product, is, like, some questions around privacy because it seems maybe too good to be true. Like, that's a pretty good buy sign. You know, we were expecting, like, "The screen makes no sense. Why are we swiping here? Where does this data come from? Is this really complete?" They're like, "No, I'm pretty much ready to go." So, that was good, helpful feedback, though we evolved it ourselves a lot internally. It's really nice having a thing. Do we use the term Pinocchio prototype or Pinocchio test [crosstalk 06:58]? LINDSEY: Yes, I did hear that. JOSH: Yeah, I like that. If this was like, you know, this wooden toy wanted to be a real boy, like, two weeks ago, it really, really wants...I don't know, Lindsey, we should, you know, get you in front of it. You're going to be like, "Why can't I use this today?" [laughter] JORDYN: That's definitely what we're hearing from people. JOSH: And my answer would be, "Well, you can't, but maybe in a couple of weeks." [laughs] JORDYN: Yeah, exactly. I will say I want to say for anyone listening in, though, that that was not, getting to what Josh just described where folks weren't really...they didn't have any hang-ups about the functionality or the value prop. They were basically just like, "What's your privacy policy? And when is it going to be ready for me to use?" It's not like the first draft of this prototype that was what we jumped to. I want to be clear. The first time we showed someone, there was this interesting problem, which is that we were still talking to the wrong people, somewhat. And the prototype hadn't evolved to be the slam dunk that it is now. So, at first, it was like, we'd have these kinds of muddled conversations where people were like, "Well, I don't really understand what this is supposed to be, and I'm not sure about that. And this seems interesting," but then their interpretation of what that thing was would be, like, wildly off from what it was intended to be. I just want to make it clear: this was work and effort. And the team did a really great job of iterating quickly based on, like, every time we talked to someone and showed it to them, we'd come back and say, "Here's what I heard." And it really pushed our thinking forward. Like Josh said, like, we are our toughest critics, so, like, every new version unlocked some new insights in ourselves about what it was we were actually driving toward. Really, just there's nothing like having a thing to look at and bang on to, like, clarify your thinking. LINDSEY: There's nothing like having a thing. Jordyn, you touched on you were talking to the wrong people, maybe. How has that exploration of the core market evolved? Is it still the startup enthusiasts? Are you even more narrow in that? What are the updates there as our chief market focus get everyone thinking about this all the time, officer? JORDYN: Yes. So, you know, startup enthusiasts is still the umbrella. What you're looking for with this is that you can guarantee pretty much every time you talk to someone in a segment or a sub-segment you will know how the conversation is going to go. And we've gotten there with two sub-segments of startup enthusiasts, which is repeat founders, key, key kind of nuance there. Founders, sure, but repeat founders really have this problem, for reasons we could talk about, and then chiefs of staff at startups, which is a relatively new role that's sort of emerged over the last sort of several years. But those folks are really the people that you ask them about this pain point, and they immediately are, like, yes. They use the same words to talk about the pain point. That's another really strong signal. When folks are using the same vocabulary, and they say the same sentences in the same order, and you start to feel a little bit creeped out, like, you're like, "Did you see these questions before I...? What? Did someone pay you to say that?" is, like, how you start to feel [laughs] [crosstalk 09:59] LINDSEY: Also, a marketer's dream. Oh my gosh, here comes the messaging, right? JORDYN: Exactly. LINDSEY: [inaudible 10:04] JORDYN: It feels like a cheat code because you just get to reflect their language back to them. You don't have to write copy. They wrote the copy. You just show them it, and they're like, yes. And everyone's like, "Yes," and it works. LINDSEY: Any thoughts to add to that, Josh? JOSH: It's really good. I would say the bummer or the good thing about this point is we're getting diminishing returns from testing everything other than the actual product, which is good that we got there in eight weeks. But we're not going to learn, you know, keep on adjusting the prototype and making little tweaks and more user research. But the truth is, we're not going to get anything substantial until we get this into some users' hands. JORDYN: Like you say, this is sort of bad news, but it's good news. JOSH: Right. JORDYN: It's how you know, right? When you get to the point where the thing is so clear, and the way to talk about it with folks is so clear that you're not learning as much anymore, diminishing returns is the right way to frame it. You really just need people to get in there and use it. That's the only way you're going to keep learning. That's the moment to build. Hey, everyone out there, don't build before that. That's when you build. And then you really build the smallest thing you can conceive of building, and then whatever that thing is that you've conceived of building that's very small, scope it back by 50% [laughs]. Do it. JOSH: And it's a little humbling as someone who considers himself a founder but who had reasonable success as a founder and who has had pretty good success as, like a very, very early-stage, you know, zero to one and 1 to 10 product leader, has done this a bunch of times and actually coaches people in doing this, and came in with, I'm not going to lie, a pretty good vision in my head for how this stuff was supposed to work together. And it's so much better now. Going through a process actually makes things better. This wasn't just, like, wasting time. Like, going through a process, a thoughtful process actually makes us much better. Like, the thing we're talking about building is much more likely to be successful than the thing I was originally thinking about building, right, Jordyn? JORDYN: Yes. I guess it bears sort of diving into that a little bit, which is, you know, for all the founders out there or folks with a product idea kicking around your head, you're apt to have a little bit of everything we've talked about already. You have an idea of the solution you want to build. You have an idea of who it's for. You have an idea of what their pain points are. And you might be sitting there thinking to yourself, I don't need to do eight weeks of discovery. I already know the answers to all of these questions. And it's possible Josh felt that way coming into the incubator, but doing the work, gathering the data, talking to a ton of people, what you can't understand before doing that is how much more confident and at ease you will feel once you have done it and how much clarity you'll have about what it is you need to build first because likely, you're sitting there with a vision in your head for this product that is fully featured, fully formed. It is the 18th month. We just went into a hidey hole and built a really complex thing, thing. Cool, don't throw that out. But you got to begin somewhere, and you got to begin somewhere meaningful and valuable. And it's really hard to know where to begin without this discovery, without focusing on a specific person, talking to as many of those folks as you can. And really, it sort of writes itself. It does feel easy. But you've got to set aside the time and the effort to do the research, market research, whatever we call this, customer discovery. And it thrills me to no end, Josh, to hear that that is how it felt for you, that you probably felt like you already knew the answer. But it just feels different, having talked to, I mean, how many people, 100-plus people? We were looking at the stats. JOSH: Well over 100. LINDSEY: Josh was talking to a bunch of people before he came to the incubator, and all the founders that we accept have been doing that. Like, we want to know that you've been doing that research. But then, I guess, coming into the incubator, you're continuing that process and maybe in a more structured or a differently structured way where the thoughtbot team is helping you, maybe zero in far deeper on the segment. Is that accurate to say? Just kind of the difference between, like, maybe some of the pre-research and then the thoughtbot-specific user interviews that happen. JOSH: Yeah. I think they were more focused. They're both more focused from the audience, but also more focused from if it's not just you doing it; it forces you to have a more clear, here's the questions we're asking, and here's what we're trying to learn, all these conversations. It's also really nice to have some diversity in who's asking the questions. As good or bad as I am at user research and user discovery, I am only one person. And having people with different backgrounds professionally, who live in different countries, who have different feelings about social media, basically, who are not me in a variety of really interesting ways, I think, made the entire process more interesting. Caro, who is our lead designer on the project, handed off basically the summary document of, like, everything we learned, and she pulled out, like, little snippets from the interviews. First of all, that is not something I would have done had it been just me, like, let's be very, very clear. This is an incredibly valuable document, particularly as we consider adding additional people onto this project to be able to, like, translate insights. But also, like, this is, like, summarized in a way that, like, takes some real expertise. And I would have walked away with vibes, and instead, we walked away with like, structured learning. LINDSEY: Awesome. So, the last time we checked in, also, you were very excited because you had just maybe started a technical spike and were starting to dig into the, okay, like, how technically feasible is this product? And I think, at that point, you all were looking at circling around this target market. Here are the main tools they use to communicate. What does it even look like to connect with those APIs? How possible is it? Can you give us an update on some of that work? JOSH: The way that I framed the question in the very beginning was, is this a science project, or is this going to be engineering? And, for the most part, the answer is, it's going to be engineering, right? Some are a little bit easier; some are a little bit harder. But it isn't, like, reinventing new stuff, with one exception, and that is connecting up with iMessages, which has been in the news a little bit. And I honestly just hope the ghost of Steve Jobs comes back and haunts, you know, the Apple headquarters at Cupertino because, come on, guys, interoperability is sort of the future, and you're ruining it for everybody. But other than that, I think we have a pretty clear path. I'd like to test out some of these. Like, you don't really know until you do it. I think that's kind of the next step of what we're doing is to, like, demonstrate that it is possible for a person to connect up a couple of different accounts. It is possible for us to extract data and turn that into information and insights in the kinds of ways we thought we could and then present that back in a meaningful way. I think that would be the next step for us to do. Mostly, everything seems feasible, except for iMessages. LINDSEY: I've also, I think, heard some whispers of artificial intelligence for Knect. Is that true? Have you all looked at, you know, what AI's role could be in the solution? And how does that research look? JORDYN: We assume it will be part of the mix. That said, I don't know how to frame it exactly. It's not like it's not an essential ingredient. I think the work with large language models and the democratization of that work recently is absolutely going to make this product way better than it would have otherwise been. But there are a lot of heuristics we've, like, been able to, you know, draw out and come up with that are, frankly, algorithmic, and they're not AI necessarily. Now, the line between big data plus an algorithm and AI in the popular lexicon, like, there's a big difference between those two things. But, like, as people talk about it, yeah, where does one end and the other begin? But we definitely will be making use of a lot of the newest technologies, and we've dabbled in them. I've dabbled in them. I know, Josh, you've been playing around with some of them, too, to the point where we're like, okay, yeah, we can make use of this stuff. It will be a valuable kind of tool in our toolkit, but it will not be the sole basis of value. I guess that's the sort of nuanced answer. But maybe Josh has a more bite-sized hype machine answer to this. Yeah, AI to the moon, right? JOSH: Um, no. My only answer would be more cynical. Would anybody rightfully start a company in 2023 without having AI in there someplace? Maybe I'll say something different. One of the things that we've wondered is, there's more than a handful of companies that are adjacent to what we're doing that are definitely looking at similar kinds of problems and that aren't building the solution that, clearly, some market is, like, desperate for. And these are not, like, wildly successful companies that have grown astronomically and changed the market. And, like, trying to figure out, like, why is that? And one of the reasons is...I sound like a tech bro, right? There has been a paradigm shift in the technology world, but there really has been. What do, you know, publicly available LLMs like, you know, OpenAI's ChatGPT, like, what have they done? They have taken a whole set of problems that were once really, really complicated and allowed you to do a reasonable job of solving them much more easily than you ever could before. And it takes some amount of imagination, to realize that, to realize that these things are more than just, I mean, every product I have on my computer has some kind of OpenAI ChatGPT-style thing in there, right? It's, like, 16 different variations on give me a prompt, and I'll write your essay for you, and they all kind of suck. But those aren't the really exciting uses that I've seen. It's the more subtle things. There's a company called Booklet, which tries to replace, like, noisy email lists or noisy communities to something more calm. And one of its features is it'll send you a summary of what's been going on in the community since, like, the last time you checked in. And it gives you, like, two paragraphs to read, and they're really chill and really informative, and they don't make you feel FOMO. They don't make you feel stressed up. Like, okay, stuff's happened in the community. This is really neat. And it's all powered by OpenAI's APIs. And it's really kind of magical. And, like, you have to have a slightly different perspective to imagine these kinds of magical moments. So, that's what I'm excited about. There's a set of things that we would have had to do with, like, terrible, complicated queries and, like, pattern matching, and freaking grep, or whatever old-school tools we would have had, you know, for doing things in the past. And now you just get to, like, shove text in one end, and say how you want the results structured and get the results back in the other end. And it doesn't have to be perfect, but that's okay. Like, we're talking about human relationships, which are inherently imperfect. So, I'm fine with this. And it's kind of exciting. But we'll see in, you know, if we end up continuing going down this path. Like, that's the goal of the next stage is to be, like, okay, what are the easy things which we can generate out of this? Is there an intersection between, like, easy and meaningful? And if there is, this is pretty exciting. JORDYN: Can I add something to that? Which is that the problem Knect is trying to solve and the way that we're trying to solve it, the way we've thought of solving it that's differentiated, lends itself really well to the current landscape of AI tools in that, and you were kind of getting at this, Josh, but I feel like it bears drilling into a little bit, in that what we are proposing here is not a set of deterministic things. We're not going to give you a to-do list. It's not, like, a linear...deterministic is really the right word. Like, there's a to-do list. There are things that make the cut. You got to go address them, et cetera. We're way more trying to approximate the way a slightly more put-together person with more time would approach nurturing their relationships, which is just to remember more of it more of the time. It doesn't mean we need to remember all of it every time. That's not the kind of task this is, which makes it a really good task for the place that AI is at right now. And I think where folks have failed in the past is that they've either tried to turn it into a deterministic set of tasks, which then just feels like another to-do list, another inbox in a series of to-do lists and inboxes that you have in your life that just make you feel guilty and inadequate. That doesn't seem fun to us. We don't think you need another one of those. Or other places we've seen this fall down, which is that it takes the current sort of state of AI and tries to actually do the deterministic thing for you, but it doesn't do a good enough job right now. But where we've kind of landed in the middle is that, again, what we're trying to solve for is solvable in a way more probabilistic way. Like, can we get more of this accomplished more easily for you? It's never going to, like, completely, you know, do the task in this perfect deterministic way. But it is going to make you feel more confident and more relaxed à la Booklet, it sounds like, how to do that for this particular problem, which is a different bar and one we think we can clear. And that really does provide value. People are really longing for this. LINDSEY: Jordyn and Josh, building on those descriptions of, like, kind of maybe bad AI use case, good AI use case, could you give some specific examples of, like, what that might look like for Knect, like, how AI could be used in a good way or maybe what you're trying to avoid, more specifically? JOSH: Yeah. First, I'm going to start with what I want to avoid, which is, there are tools out there, and these may be interesting to some people listening, and if so, go find them. Good luck. But there are tools out there that say things like, "Keep in touch with your network at scale." And will use AI to write a message which you can send out to people without you ever having to, like, review it. That seems like creepy, futuristic sort of, you know, there's, like, a Black Mirror episode about that. Like, the whole point of having, like, a professional network of people who you care about is actually interacting with them. And having some service, like, write some prompt, maybe in its own voice, maybe if it's really good in your voice to, like, let them know that you care about them, let them know that you're thinking about them is, like, that's just bad. I think that's bad. And we don't have any plans to do that kind of thing, even though most uses for AI in the products that I use are writing three or four paragraphs in response to, like, a prompt. So, certainly, that's the common use case. It's not very appealing to us, and, frankly, in the people we were talking to, that wasn't one of the things that anybody ever suggested. It's obvious, but as far as we can tell, uninteresting, right? Just because it's obvious and just because it's straightforward doesn't mean it's interesting. The things we're imagining, for example, is, talk about Jordyn. Jordyn and I have known each other since 2020, I think. And we have, like, a whole history of text messages going back and forth, which, by the way, we actually could integrate because we both have Android phones, you know, shout-out for Open Internet. It might be interesting to, you know, summarize some of that, like, I know Jordyn pretty well, but other people who I might have not talked with in a while, sure, you could present me with a whole timeline of our communication. But that isn't necessarily useful. I'll have to read every bit of it. Why not, like, take all that and summarize, here's things you guys talk about. Here's things that, like, prompted your past few conversations: job change, got laid off, started a company, got a cat. Whatever those topics happen to be like, share some of those things. Bring me up to speed a little bit faster without having to literally review every word that could have been going back multiple years. That's a pretty good use of it. If you think about the way that messages work, right? Like, my kids are now at the age where they have phones, and I can now text my kids during the day. I will just tell you, like, this is, like, an incredibly joyful thing for me to be able to send, like, stupid memes to my kids or, like, what's exactly the right emoji to, like, send to them or for them to send to me. If every one of these things were, like, pushed to some kind of timeline, and I'm like, "What's going on with my kids?" Like, that's just, like, going back and reading through, like, your WhatsApp thread, which is something that isn't interesting necessarily, at least not from, like, a professional perspective. And there's, like, thousands of these things. Like, why do I want, like, a record in my, like, database of people who I talk to that says, "OMG," or "K," or "lol," or those sorts of things? Like, that's, like, a phrase. It isn't a conversation. And we could use an LLM to go summarize what the conversation was all about, which is, by the way, a way more interesting thing to persist over time than, like, my daughter typing "JK, JK, JK," which I think is 15-year-old for laughing at me, but I'm not entirely sure. LINDSEY: [laughs] Okay, so as you are...you mentioned wrapping up, and you did your last meeting, and you've got your kind of takeaway docs. You know, one, I'm curious, like, if there's, for your last, you know, days, hours of the program, if there's any final morsels you're trying to get out of it, and then how that kind of leads you into, like, what's next. What are you planning? JOSH: Let's do another one of these things in two weeks. [laughter] LINDSEY: Oh, okay. JOSH: Yeah. I'm inviting myself back on your show. We have one more day of school then, like so many folks, we get in a plane or get in a car and go do some travel and try to disconnect a little bit from our professional networks. So, I'm consciously not trying to say what's going to happen next. I would love to have this conversation again, maybe in two weeks, in the new year, about what comes next. I don't know that I could have a meaningful one right now. JORDYN: I will say what we are trying to send Josh off with into his R&R is what's it going to take to get to a viable MVP, not merely viable, but actually viable? Given what we know, given all this, you know, work that we've done in the last eight weeks, we now have, you know, the ability to envision what version one of something might be. And so, making that kind of argument: here's why it is what we're imagining it to be; here's what it is; here's what it would take to build that thing, gives Josh a lot of stuff to think about in the meantime in terms of how to accomplish that. And the thing that will happen in two weeks is understanding a little bit more about, like, the actual, okay, here's the actual plan. But the ingredients are there, which is super valuable and is a thing we have done every time at the end of every incubator we've done. It's essentially a...it is that what's next plan and why, why that thing. What's the ultimate upside of pursuing this product, and what's the near-term upside? And what's it going to take to get there? Because that's often a thing that founders, especially for some founders, which Josh is not, but what they often can't get their heads around is there's this little feeling if you've got this big vision over here, and you've got, like, the set of things you could do tomorrow, really tasky things really, like, operational things, oh, I need to, like, set up a C Corp, but I need to...whatever those things are, right? What's in between? What's that near-term path that's going to directionally head in the direction of that big vision? It's, so far, always, what we have sent founders off with. LINDSEY: So, if you weren't here at the very beginning of our session, we mentioned that the applications are now open for session 1 of 2024. I'm curious, Josh, what kind of founders would you recommend for the thoughtbot incubator? What's the profile of someone you might send our way? JOSH: I'm going to say something, and I don't think I match that profile, which is interesting, and folks should think about that, what that means. But I would say that if I had to, like, pick a profile, having gone through this, I would say somebody with an idea, of course; ideally, it's one that they have some connection to. They have some personal passion for but, not just because it's an abstract idea but a personal passion that comes from their own experience. And it's really great for somebody who hasn't been inside of a tech company before, at least on the tech, half the business. Tech companies have three halves: one half is, you know, the product building side of bit of it or the tech half, which is engineers, and product designers, and product managers. And the other half of that is the go-to-market side, like sales, and marketing, and customer success. And the third half would be, like, operations like HR and finance. So, if you have experience in, like, the sales, or the marketing, or the customer success side, or the HR, or the finance, or corporate operations or that part of it, and, you know, you're familiar with tech coming from that perspective but maybe haven't been on the actually building stuff side of them before, this is a really, really good process. Because what does thoughtbot do? It does the building in tech side of things: designers, product managers, and especially engineers. And it has this, like, legacy and this history and expertise, therefore, with, like, the journeyman program where they help, like, level people up in those areas and now are applying this to founders. Because as the founder, you do need to develop some ability to converse around engineering and technical stuff. And you really, really, really, really need to get good at the discovery side, especially of, like, product design and product management. And those are the things you're going to get to do and you're going to get to do with people who are themselves really, really good at it. And that's awesome. The flip side is if you're, you know, a founder who is super attached to every bit of your vision, and you think you have the strategy all laid out and you're just looking for, like, warm bodies to build it, I mean, is it the insight team? What's the right level at thoughtbot? I forget the names of things, but, like, thoughtbot has, like, a startup program where you can give thoughtbot money, and they will build things for you. And they're also really, really good at that, but that's not the incubator program. The incubator program is probably a step earlier. So, I think it is worth thinking, are you at the I'm so confident of my vision; I'm so confident in my strategy that I just want to get this thing built, then maybe don't sign up for the Incubator. But if you're at the stage of I think this is a problem; I'm pretty sure this is a problem; I really want it to get solved; I have some vision, but I know it's going to change, then I think the incubator is really ideal, especially if you're looking to upskill yourself, too, because you're going to walk away with the ability to be conversant around the technology stuff. And you're going to walk away with a crap ton of experience with the discovery, qualitative discovery, like user interviews, quantitative discovery, like, you know, running ads, and landing pages, and all that stuff. Like, you're going to be really solid with that stuff after eight weeks because you will have done it. LINDSEY: Jordyn, any thoughts? JORDYN: I love all that. I think it's accurate. I would only say to those of you sitting out there who are thinking, I'm in that other camp; I'm very confident about what it is I want to build; I would ask you to do a little soul-searching as to whether that's actually true. Like, what evidence do you have? If you needed to stand up in court and defend your conclusions and your vision, could you? And I say that as the person who, as a first-time founder, was deluded in that way. I thought I knew exactly what I was doing and for whom and why. And, boy, howdy, could I have used a program like this to actually get me to sit down and, like, talk to people, listen to them, figure out what was valuable and what wasn't, what a valuable, you know, initial market offering was going to be like. Ah, I wish really, really badly that I'd had something like this because I was pretty deluded. I don't even know, like, what the right word is. I just didn't know what I didn't know. So, like the way you described it, Josh, I know Jordyn of 2017 would have been like, "That's me. I know this thing that I need to do. LINDSEY: [laughs] JORDYN: So, I don't need to apply to this program because I don't need to do any of that discovery work." But I was wrong [laughs]. I was absolutely wrong. I was wrong to the tune of, you know, two years and $150,000 of angel investment. So, consider, it is not idly that I say this to you, person sitting out there who feels very confident in your vision right now. Perhaps you have done all those things already; in that case, [inaudible 33:43] you don't need this. And you just need to [inaudible 33:46] with the thing you already know to be true. But ask yourself, how do you know what you know? LINDSEY: Yeah, even if you...we can help you build the thing. But we're probably, also, still going to push you on [laughs] some of those things we [crosstalk 34:01]. JORDYN: Yeah, we're still going to ask. We're going to ask to see the receipts. LINDSEY: Yeah [laughs]. JORDYN: And maybe you have the receipts, which is great, but we're still going to ask you for them, I guess, is my point. Every team at thoughtbot will ask you for the receipts, by the way, not just mine [laughs]. LINDSEY: The other interesting thing you touched on, Josh, was, I think, where we kind of started the incubator was with that target profile that you just described, which is, like, the less technical founder, and maybe even, like, a first-time founder. And then over time and seeing, like, applications, we broadened that as we saw, like, oh, you know, actually, also, technical founders and repeat founders do still need, like, help with this and can use guidance. So, we've expanded a bit, and maybe that is still, like, the person who gets the most value at the end of the day is the non-technical who hasn't really done this before. But yeah, we've kind of expanded to those other profiles as well. JOSH: There's a reason that repeat founders are no more successful on average than first-time founders, and it's something really important that Jordyn said, which is, you may think you've done all this, but we're going to ask you for the receipts. Just because you've done this before doesn't mean you're going to be good at it. Chances are, if you've done this before, it's mostly because you got really, really lucky; ask me how I know. So, it's nice to have. I mean, I described a profile, and I said that wasn't me. But I'll just tell you, as somebody who, like, spent his entire career, almost his entire career, in the tech side of tech companies, and I think I'm pretty good at it, I'm certainly not the worst at it, thinks I'm pretty good at it, it's still really nice to have a team backing you up in this early moment. It's really nice to have a team. JORDYN: Yeah, I will say another thing that we've heard from every founder we've worked with is just how much more real and actionable their idea feels when they have a team sitting there with them taking them seriously, which is another thing, you know, I really would have benefited from is, like, suddenly, when you've got three or more industry professionals sitting there in a Zoom call with you, like, okay, what are we doing? Why are we doing this? How do we know? The feeling of being taken seriously in that way and then having a bunch of people working full-time with you for eight weeks, they're in it with you; they're asking the questions; they're talking to people; they're coming back and saying, "I just had the most amazing conversation with someone. Here's what I learned," it just takes your project to a different level of reality. Like, we're humans. We're social beings. We create reality together. And when you're working alone, you know, through force of will, you can do a lot, but with a group, it really feels like you're creating something together. And, like Josh said, having those other brains with other experiences in other contexts percolating on your idea it's like bringing a team to bear on something. There's just nothing quite like it, and it's a huge value of the program. Like, we can give you the programming and, in fact, you can go run the programming. It is published in our handbook. The things that we do together you can go do, but it is a whole other matter to do them with a team. It just feels different. LINDSEY: Great. Well, I think that's where we're going to end today. I mean, Josh is leaving us hanging a little bit. So, we might need to...we're going to figure out a way to get your final thoughts, conclusions in a few weeks because I know everyone would love to hear what the plan is for Knect. Josh and Jordyn, as always, thank you so much. Any final thoughts or farewells from you today? JOSH: I've really enjoyed it. I'm going to miss these folks. Though, apparently, I get to hang out in a special Slack channel forever. LINDSEY: Yeah, you get to hang out. JOSH: Which is nice. LINDSEY: Exactly. You can't get rid of us just yet. JOSH: Good. I wouldn't want to. LINDSEY: All right. Thanks, y'all. And thanks, everyone, for tuning in. Special Guest: Josh Herzig-Marx .

James "Jimmy" Grant from Georgia Trial Attorneys at Kirchen & Grant, LLC joins us on the podcast today to discuss how he became an attorney, started a personal injury firm and now helps other PI lawyers with litigation. Jimmy is a true entrepreneur and plans on offering their services to other personal injury law firms all over the US. Jimmy can be found on TikTok @AccidentAttorneyJG or you can email him at jgrant (at) 8334thewin.com. Jimmy & Co-founder Mark Kirchen started Georgia Trial Attorneys which you can visit here: https://www.gtakg.com/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcription: Welcome to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute, where we quickly cover the hot topics in the legal marketing world. I'm your host, Lindsay Busfield. In some markets, it can feel almost impossible to compete against all of the other law firms. Unless you have millions of dollars at your disposal for marketing, you just can't win going toe-to-toe with the Goliaths using strictly conventional techniques. So you have to get creative. Some get creative in their branding, others niche down and throw their whole budget at one target demographic. Both are great options. But James Grant has taken the traditional legal marketing model and flipped it on its head. Rather than marketing directly to consumers like everyone else is doing, Jimmy has built his law firm using B2B marketing principles, creating his own market space and dominating it. Thanks for joining us, James. Jimmy: Thanks, Lindsey, for having me. I'm super pumped to be on today. Lindsey: Oh great. We're excited to have you here. So tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into practicing law in the first place. Jimmy: That's always a funny story, because everyone looks at my degree and they're like, "You went to Georgia Tech? You're a civil engineer? How did you get into law?" And I look at them and say, "I don't really know, but it just kind of happened." You think you want to go one way and you end up on another direction entirely. Lindsey: You just stumble into greatness. Jimmy: I mean, some would say that, others would say I'm crazy, but you know what, it's been a fun ride. I thought I was going to be patent law. And now I own my own personal injury law firm. So weird things happen. Lindsey: That's fantastic. You have one life, you may as well do everything you can in it. Jimmy: I mean, in my eyes, it gives me a little exposure to a couple different sides of things. I've got the analytical side of my brain. Of course, I have no idea how to do math anymore. If I can't do it in an Excel or on a calculator, it doesn't happen. But that's one side of things. And then be creative on the other side. How Georgia Trial Law was started: Lindsey: They automate that. Right. Well, you've got tools for that, you've got people for that, and you figure out how to make it work. So talk to me about your first practice and kind of how you ventured into the legal side of things. Jimmy: So when I first graduated law school, the number one priority's obviously passing the bar. So you put every ounce of everything into that. Luckily I was one of the lucky ones that passed the bar the first time. And then from there immediately started working at a local prosecutor's office. Georgia's a little bit different than most states. Most states, the district attorney handles everything. In Georgia, we split things up where the District Attorney handles felonies and the Solicitor General handles misdemeanors. I was working at the Solicitor General's office and got a whole lot of exposure to a whole lot of stuff really fast. I mean, I probably had, I think, 20-something trials in the 18 months that I was there just because it's churning and burning. Lindsey: Wow. Yeah. Jimmy: So then after my public service, I was like, "All right,

Chad and Lindsey talk about how the pandemic has changed "normal" remote work and how thoughtbot has dealt with the transition from being majoritively in-person to fully remote, plus the impact it's had on both employees and clients. Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. LINDSEY: And I’m your other host, Lindsey Christensen. We’re back. Chad, I've only seen you pixelated for over a year now. CHAD: I know. LINDSEY: Can you believe it? CHAD: It's hard to believe. I haven't seen anybody that I work with [laughs] not pixelated for over a year now. LINDSEY: It seems normal now. CHAD: Yeah, it seems normal, except when you think about it, and you realize how long it's been. We're going to talk about remote work today, and I think that that's something to keep in mind, which is what we're doing now isn't normal remote work. We can make the best of it and that kind of thing, but it's obviously different than normal remote work when you can actually have a social life outside of work and meet people and get together in person to kick off new projects or to be like, “Let's have a retreat or whatever.” So right off the top, we should acknowledge that we're not in this normal period, and this isn't necessarily normal remote work. LINDSEY: Right. Which is a good thing, I guess, or the optimist in me says remote work can be way better than it is right now because this is quarantining work. [chuckles] CHAD: Right. So for those who don't know, thoughtbot made the decision to go remote-first work from anywhere. And we touched on it in the previous two episodes a little bit, and that's what we're going to be talking about today. And I think that that's one of the things that made us confident in the direction was that things aren't great now, but they're certainly not bad. And the majority of the team felt good about what was happening now, even given all of the downsides. It gave us the confidence to look ahead and say, “Can this be even better, and will it be okay?” And I think that's part of what gave us the confidence to move forward. LINDSEY: I saw this interesting stat, and this was actually from a while ago, last July 2020. Gartner did a survey of company leaders, and 80% plan to allow employees to work remotely, at least part of the time after the pandemic, and 47% will allow people to work full-time from home, which is even a bigger percentage than I anticipated. But I think it speaks to the major change that everyone's seeing. We've all learned that remote work can work. I saw another stat that was, I think, no companies are reporting a reduction in productivity because of remote work, and in 27% of cases, companies feel like they're being even more productive. CHAD: We didn't not do this before because we didn't think it would be productive on a day-to-day basis or that we didn't believe in the ability to work remotely working. There were a couple of important points that caused us to choose the direction we did; the first one being we went through a period of time where we were a hybrid remote or about half the team was remote, and the other half was working in an office in Boston. And it felt hard and mediocre and something we couldn't -- It wasn't worth the amount of effort we would need to invest in making that work well. It just didn't seem worth it. And so we made the decision to -- And I think this is the way thoughtbot works like we've got to make intentional decisions in a lot of things that we do and half measures don't really satisfy us over the long-term. And so there was this feeling back then of we either need to decide to go completely remote, or we need to all be in person. And because we work locally with clients, that pushed us in the direction of well, we really like working with local clients face-to-face. We like how that feels, and it feels like something that's going to be enjoyable and fulfilling, and sustainable over the long term. So let's commit to that. And I think that that's one of the reasons why we've been successful in this transition is because, at the same time, we no longer had the client constraints of clients asking us to be in person with them or wanting to work with them in person, that was just completely off the table. LINDSEY: That's interesting. I think I hadn't really fully thought about that element which was need or perceived need from the client to be side-by-side with us. CHAD: Yeah. Once that was off the table, it allowed us to be freed up to make an independent decision, probably more confident in that decision because going through a period where we could show clients that it could work, I'm more confident now that when clients can be in person again, that they will be more open to working with us remotely. And I'm sure some portion of them won't be, but we'll find other clients in that time period. [laughter] LINDSEY: I think another thing that helped us in that transition was we weren't fully remote, but we were remote in a lot of regards. So we had six different studios around the world who collaborated together, worked on the same projects and the same teams. And we had a really good starting point for how we collaborated online, whether that's in actual video meetings or doing asynchronous work or project management all the way through to client work. Not everyone was in the city of the client that they were collaborating with. CHAD: Yeah. And all of the corporate team, the operations, marketing, all that stuff was already really a distributed team. It was primarily the design and development that fell back on being in person the most often. LINDSEY: And I would say we also had a pretty flexible work from home policy too. So if folks felt like they were going to be more productive from home a certain day or were having a delivery or whatever those life things are, we trust that they know what's best for them and best for the client and allow folks to make decisions about where they're working. CHAD: The way that we worded it before was that temporary remote working was always okay. And that could be I'm going somewhere for two months; even that was okay. And the opposite of that is what we said wasn't okay, which wasn’t permanently remote. And the big difference now is that we said permanently remote is okay. And walking back through the transition, this was something that has been an ongoing conversation at thoughtbot for a while. It was pretty early on in the pandemic that we said that people needed to start to move out of the places that we had studios. And I think that that was the first important step that we took as a company to make sure that we were supporting everybody in what they needed to do for life reasons saying, “If you need to move outside of a place where you would normally be based, do it. We'll continue to support that.” And then about 20 people, [laughs] a little less than 100 moved over the course of the next six months or so. And once that happened, that's a pretty significant portion of the team no longer being based where we have offices, and that sort of sealed the deal. LINDSEY: I didn't know that number. CHAD: I think it's less than 20. I think it's like 17 or something like that. LINDSEY: So it probably works out to about 20% moved to where there weren't offices. And do you have an idea how far spread out everyone is now? CHAD: I think most people who moved significantly moved to be closer to family or back where they were originally from. I think that was the driving factor. So it's places like Texas, different parts of Texas, Arizona, that kind of thing. And then people bought houses to get out of the city and that kind of thing as well, particularly New York City was -- I think a lot of the people in New York City are the ones who moved as well. LINDSEY: So, how would you describe our remote structure now? CHAD: I think there are a couple of important things like, we're specifically calling it work from anywhere, not work from home. Obviously, we all need to be in our homes now, but long-term, there's no reason why if the home isn't comfortable for somebody that they will work somewhere else, and anywhere also means geography. And we're not even completely shutting the door on eventually having small co-working spaces or small offices where people can get together and work in person. It's just not what we have right now and not what we're specifically planning on in the short term. So I think that's the base level when I think about the important parts of the structure is what are we actually saying, or what are we actually doing? And then the next important aspect we took into account was okay; one of the things that influenced the way that we were working before, which was a local team working with primarily other people in your office was it's pretty annoying, and it does affect productivity to be waiting significantly across time zones for people that you're supposed to be collaborating with. And so we ended up splitting the company by time zone into what we’re calling Launch Pad 1 and Launch Pad 2. And Launch Pad 1 is all of the Americas, and Launch Pad 2 two is Europe, Middle East, and Africa. It's interesting because that's actually only about three maybe four times zones different at the extremes. All of the Americas, when you do it out, it's a lot of time zones. It's ten timezones, but the reality is we don't have anybody in Hawaii or Alaska yet, so we're okay with that.[chuckles] But it's something that may need to be revisited in the future if we really start to hire people remotely in those extremes of the time zone. LINDSEY: So the geographies are really time zone-based, which is an interesting note. And then I'm sure some folks are also interested in logistics, especially now that you're heading up operations. What does that mean, or what are the big hurdles when you do have people spread across countries, let alone states? CHAD: So let's break it down in terms of employment stuff, and then we'll talk about operations like how we run things. We're not leading the charge in this. Other companies have done it before. And so we're taking a lot of cues from companies like GitLab and Buffer about how they do things. We've had international employees for a little while off, and on or international team members, I should say. And what we've historically leaned on for that is having them as independent contractors. And it's pretty common for them to create their own company that they're then using, and they're working within, and they're paying local taxes, and they're invoicing us for the time. And in a lot of countries, their laws are conducive to that. But strictly speaking, it's not okay to do that in every country. And if you were to get audited and someone were to look at the relationship you have with that person and their laws are similar to the U.S., they might declare that person an employee, and you're responsible for the taxes and everything, not them. Operating at the size we are, to be perfectly honest, at the size, we are with a handful of people, it’s a gray area. Like, some places it's okay, some places it's not quite okay, but it's only a handful of people and everything. You can get away with that without doing a lot of research into each specific country, whether it's okay or not, particularly if you make it the responsibility of the people, and you set up contractor agreements, and you set things up that way. So that's a pretty common way of operating. But as you start to grow and formalize it more and the numbers of people that you're working with as international contractors increases, the pressure is going to mount to say, “We have to get out of this gray area; otherwise, some country or someone could get in trouble,” not even us, but potentially the team member. If they were to get audited and it's not quite up to snuff, they could be held for some employment taxes or something like that. So we want to avoid that. We don't want to create a burden on people. And so there's really two ways of going about it; one is to create local entities in each of the countries where you want to hire somebody. So you create your own local company. That company employs them and pays the local taxes and employment taxes, and all that stuff and everything is fully set up and official, and we've done that before. We did that in Sweden when we had the studio in Stockholm, and that's how we work in the UK. The overhead of doing that is really high, especially --It’s okay when we were in Sweden and the UK and the U.S. But as we look ahead and we say, “We're going to have ten then maybe 20 in different countries,” the overhead of that is really high. So the alternative is to work with a company that does that for you. So there are companies they're called PEOs professional employment organizations or international PEOs. And what they do is they create companies in all of the countries that they want to operate in, and then they employ the people as real full employees there. And they do all the books, and they pay all the taxes and everything. And they make sure that everything is done correctly for each individual country. And then they invoice you for the employee's salary, the taxes, and then an administration fee. And it's typically on the order of $250 to $600 a month per person. And so that's the direction we're going to go in as we expand this and we do it. That's the direction we'll go in because we've been through what it's like to create that overhead of the individual entities in each country. And it might make sense if we were saying we're going to open an office or hire significantly in this one country and build a whole team of 20 people in one country, but that's not what we were planning on doing. We may only have one or two people in each of the countries that we end up hiring someone in. So it doesn't make sense to have that overhead. And there are a few different companies out there, and not to plug them, we're not using them yet, but the interesting one that's on my radar is remote.com which was started by the person at GitLab that did this all for them and learned a ton about it and then left GitLab and started remote.com as a way to make that more accessible and modern for other companies. A lot of the other companies that do this tend to be very large, and they've been around for a long time, which typically means things aren't really done online so much; it's a lot of paper. And remote.com it's a website you sign up for. You could just enter the people in, and things happen automatically. And so that's why that's on my radar. LINDSEY: They're probably getting a lot of business these days. CHAD: Yes. And they have a lot of countries that they're expanding to over the next year or so. LINDSEY: How many countries do we have people in now? CHAD: That's a good question. I don't know [laughs] United States, UK, and Uruguay right now. I think those are the only ones. But we have two people who are moving, one to Canada, one to Austria. So those are the next two that are on the horizon. And we're actively hiring, so we just opened a bunch of positions. And I know that a lot of people applying to those positions are from places like Brazil, other places in South and Latin America, and potentially Canada as well. LINDSEY: Cool. Oh, we also got some great audience questions for this episode, so thanks to everyone who submitted. One of the questions was, when will you start hiring Canadians? CHAD: We're doing it now. [chuckles] All the positions on thoughtbot are at thoughtbot.com/jobs. They're all listed as remotely. They're segmented by Americas versus Launch Pad 2, which is Europe, Middle East, and Africa. LINDSEY: So, continuing on the hiring conversation, obviously, the hiring process itself has to be modified for the remote life. I'm not personally currently hiring, but I see the activity. And I think it seems like right now we've got a good handle on it but are also in the process of figuring out what works best and how to optimize it. Because we were on a hiring freeze for a while, and now it's opening back up, and we're trying to figure out how -- Honestly, it seems like the biggest question is how do we replicate that in-office cultural experience, social experience in the online format? CHAD: Yeah. Up until the office visit portion, the majority of our hiring process was already remote. So the non-technical interview was primarily done remotely. The technical interview was primarily done remotely. But at the final stage of that process, we would bring people into the office for the full day to pair with one person in the morning for developers, pair with another person in the afternoon, have lunch with the team. For designers, it was getting a design challenge and working with the team throughout the course of the day in a conference room. And so replicating both the working together aspects and the social aspects of that office visit day is important to us, and that's where the tricky part has been. The working together part is the easier part of it, I think we found because we're all working remotely anyway. So we just replicate that; it’s pairing remotely, and it's doing the design challenge in collaboration remotely. It's the social aspects that are harder. And part of it is is we're not necessarily getting everybody together on a regular basis every day and so creating a time for everybody to come together just because we have a candidate visiting and do something that's not artificial, together, was a little bit tricky to find. LINDSEY: Everyone act natural and social at 2:00 p.m. [chuckles] CHAD: Right. Go. [chuckles] And then to insert someone into that mix who doesn't know anybody on the call and is interviewing, it's a high level of awkwardness for the candidate as well. So what we've found has worked best is to find something that we are doing already and piggyback on top of that. So in the case of the UK, they were already getting together where everyone shares something that they're working on. They were already doing that on a regular basis. Or someone would say, “Let's have a discussion about this,” we were already doing that. So just making sure that that gets scheduled for when there is going to be a candidate and then prepping them and asking them to prepare something to share as well. And then, when it came time to do a different team, I encouraged them, “Don't just do what they're doing because they were already doing this. If you try to do it, and it’s something you're not doing already, it might turn out to be even more awkward. Try to find something that you're doing already and piggyback off of that.” And some teams were brand new, and they didn't have anything that they were doing already. And so that's the one thing we talked about in the last episode. But at the same time as going remote, we also, instead of being small teams based on geography, we reorganized to be based on the kinds of projects that we work on. And so Boost, for example, was an entirely new team of people that didn't necessarily have those norms and those regular events happening. And so they needed to create something that they could use not only to bring the team together but that that hiring process could piggyback on for that final stage. I think mostly it's gone well. I think everyone knows that it's a little awkward, so I think everybody gives it the benefit of the doubt. I couldn't imagine...well, I guess I can imagine it. But I wouldn't necessarily want to arrive at a standpoint where we start hiring people without the opportunity for the whole team that they're going to be working with to get to know them a little bit but also to provide their feedback but also for the candidate. When you join a new company, you want to know what it's like to work there. You want to know that you want to work with the people. You want to flush out any red flags. And I don't think we have any red flags. And so I'd rather that be out there and that kind of thing so that people can experience as much as possible what it's really going to be like to work at thoughtbot and who you're going to be working with. LINDSEY: So we have another audience question, and you can let me know if you actually want to answer this or not. How will you handle compensation? Will it be the same for everyone across the globe or country-specific, et cetera? CHAD: I can totally answer this. LINDSEY: You want to get into it? Let's do it. CHAD: I realize I'm answering in long-winded ways, but I think the context is important in these things. So the way things worked historically at thoughtbot was based on your geography, but that made sense because the clients were based on geography, and each of the locations was working with local clients. And so, the economy of the different studios was entirely different from one another. So the studio in Raleigh-Durham worked with clients there primarily, and that is very different than Manhattan, New York, and what people understand a local team costs and what they're willing to pay and that kind of thing. And so there was a natural one-to-one correlation between the studio you worked in and the economics of how the business of that studio worked. And so the salaries and the economics of the whole expenses of the studio were based on that local thing. And so that's the way it worked previously. And then we would always do reviews within that group of people to make sure that there was fairness in pay from an equity perspective between people with the same level of experience and not for other factors like gender or anything like that, so equity in pay is really important to us. And so every compensation thing goes through that review process. And then we do an annual salary review every year where we re-review everything for equity, and we review an increase for economics and performance, and that happens in April. So when we went remote, we didn't change anything. And historically, what would have happened if you lived in one place and you moved to another studio with different economics? Your salary might change because you needed to be sustainable within that studio. And you would find that out in advance, and it would factor into whether you want to do it or not. So when we went remote, and people started moving, what we did was we reminded people that traditionally, that might have an impact, but you're not moving to where a new studio is. We don't know how things are going to be in the future, just that we'll do the salary review in April. So coming up to the salary review, we started looking at the way that we were going to do it. We went through a little bit of a change when we originally started the process; like I said, we're taking cues from other people, and one of those companies is GitLab. And what GitLab talks about is cost of market. And so that's what we had planned on doing so rather than paying people cost of living, cost of market is the idea of what would your competitive salary be based on where you live? And that includes both remote and local employers, what you can command, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's the same everywhere based on where you live. And so that was the direction we started to go down. It's not where we ultimately ended up. Ultimately, we ended up creating within the United States, based on the position you have, a salary range, and that is the same salary range across the whole United States with a couple of exceptions, and I’ll mention what that is. So if you're a developer, or if you're a senior developer, or you're a team lead across the whole United States, you'll fall within this range based on your performance, and I'm happy with that. We were never philosophically opposed to doing that. And I'm pretty cool with the fact that we got there in the course of doing the review. So the exception to that is we financially couldn't set the level of that salary at a city like San Francisco or New York. If we were bringing everybody up to that level at the company, it would be very difficult for us to be profitable. And so we set the tiers based on the next tier down of cities in the U.S., so it's cities like Boston and Austin are where we took the bands from. We have team members who live in San Francisco and New York, and that, strictly speaking, would have meant a salary reduction for the people who live there. And we didn't want to create hardship on people that didn't know that we were going to do that. When they decided where to live, it would create hardship on people. And so, we took a look at New York and San Francisco, and we created another tier that is based on those markets. And then, between those two tiers, what we're looking at is, are these salaries based on the cost of living equitable? So does someone who was working at thoughtbot in New York effectively earn the same amount of money as someone on the other tier who's living anywhere else? And if you actually look at that, the interesting thing is there are more people at thoughtbot now who are at the main tier who live in even lower cost of living places. And so they're actually coming out sort of it's more favorable, which is I'd rather be in that position because I think over time, more and more people will become more and more distributed, and people will live in different places with different cost structures. Any follow-up questions or thoughts on all that? LINDSEY: For me, I'm glad I didn't have to decide it. [laughter] It's really complicated because I see there's logic to different approaches. Nothing is an obviously bad decision. The reality is we do live in a world where economics of location vary greatly. But at the same time, what does the future of work and equity look like? CHAD: Everything I just said was U.S.-centric. So we actually don't have a set thing that we're doing for countries outside of the U.S. We're going to evolve that based on what we learn over the next few months as we hire people. There are really two tracks or two options in front of us: the first one is to establish country rates, and the second one is to establish an outside of the U.S. tier like that is maybe the same or slightly below that other tier that we're already talking about, the main tier that everybody in the U.S. is on. And so we'll see what we learn over the course of that. The reason why we probably won't end up there is because Canada is very different than Uruguay, for example. And so establishing one rate that works everywhere -- There are two important things that are our guiding principles here; the first is people should be paid equitably and fairly for the work that they do. At thoughtbot, there's not really an ulterior motive. We don't have outside investors. We're just people who work at the company trying to create the company that works on our behalf as people who work here. That's the primary motivating factor is to be fair and to pay people as much as we can, and then the second thing is while being sustainable. So we also don't have outside investors. We don't have a huge bank role, and we have to operate profitably. We’re not a VC-backed company that doesn't need to operate profitably. And so that's the second guiding philosophy is we've got to make sure that we operate profitably. And if we create a tier, creating a tier that works to meet both of those things, pay people fairly and be sustainable, we've got to set those numbers right because it's pretty easy to hire a bunch of people in an expensive place and set the tier too high and then not be sustainable. So we'll learn over the next six months. LINDSEY: So switching gears a little bit, we got a few questions from folks who are curious how we are actually doing the remote collaboration with clients because that's obviously something core to what we do that we're really passionate about and I think especially on the design side too. So someone's like, “How, are you doing things you used to do on whiteboards or on the walls?” The sprint comes to mind with the sticky notes all over the different walls. CHAD: Well, I've been talking a lot. Do you want to start this one? [chuckles] LINDSEY: Yeah. It's funny; I’ve said this before on the show, but I feel like going remote has also almost made our meetings more equitable. We had a lot of especially corporate folks in the Boston team who would sit in a room, and then we'd have a few folks from our different studios calling in remotely. And there is a disadvantage to that, not being in the room and not being able to hear every comment or the conversation after the call has ended. And I feel like this spills over to client work as well, where remote meetings can actually be even more productive and collaborative in a lot of ways. So that's one component. But as far as the actual tools that we're using, I would say right now we're using online whiteboarding, sprint-mimicking tools a lot. So Miro is definitely getting a lot of use. CHAD: I think that's the one we're using the most. New things come along, and people experiment with them and everything, but the default at this point is Miro. LINDSEY: They even have the sticky note feature, which for some reason, just works. It's the same thing as having a little box and writing in it, but it feels like a sticky note. So it evokes the feeling of the sprint. So we do use that a ton for brainstorming and collaboration internally and with clients. CHAD: And there are actually some things that are obviously being in person in the room with people is really nice, especially in those early days of a product where it's a really critical portion of the time. But there are some things about being remote equitable inclusive is one. Another is when you're in person, you have limited space. And Miro whiteboard is an infinite canvas, and so you don't run out of space. And when you flex to fill your whole tool and take advantage of that, it makes it easier. And the other I would say is -- and Jaclyn and Kyle just talked about this on the last episode of Tentative, our design podcast, which if people don't know about, they should check out. And talking about how when we're in person and one person is at the whiteboard, they have a marker, and they're working on a sketch, bringing together the wireframe and the storyboard. They’re the one with the marker, and they're the one who's doing everything, and not only is that not necessarily -- They're the funnel of all the ideas, but it's a lot of work for them as well, and it's not as collaborative as it otherwise could be. But when everyone is remote, and everyone's on the live whiteboard, people can share the work in a way that is better and more efficient when it comes to those wireframes. And you can give people a task because everyone can have their own portion of the board. And you can say, “Can you do this for me?” And then two people can go off and do that on one portion of the board, and then you can drag it over when they're done, that kind of thing. And it makes the sprints more efficient. LINDSEY: Yeah, like organizing the Post-it notes. I've seen that done a lot, asking for help. Grouping common themes together can make things move really quickly. CHAD: We were already using Figma on the majority of our products. And for those who don't know, Figma is a collaborative design tool so think Photoshop or Sketch, a totally online version of that that's more like working on a Google Doc with people together. And now Figma has prototyping tools built in. So it's pretty powerful in a very online collaborative way to be able to create the designs and then turn them immediately into prototypes and to do that directly with clients and with other team members all in the same document. This is one of those things that is actually a little bit harder to do. If you're all in the same room with someone, you're inclined to -- I guess you could all open your computers and work in the same document together, but I feel like that doesn't happen as much instead one person's driving, so it actually makes things more productive to work that way. LINDSEY: Yeah. Miro and Figma both have that kind of Google-ish feature of you see everyone who's in the doc, and you can actually see their cursor moving around in real-time as you're both working on it. And you can leave comments on all the kinds of collaboration features that you'd want with those kinds of things. And then on the development side, we also obviously put a lot of value on pairing on work. So I know even before Covid, we were experimenting a lot with different ways to do development pairing, whether it was in Hangouts or Slack video. And I believe we're currently using Tuple a lot for that. CHAD: Yeah. Tuple was created by a previous host of this podcast, Ben Orenstein, thoughtbot alum. LINDSEY: It’s how all the greats get started. CHAD: Yeah. But unfortunately, it's Mac only. And so we do have some team members who are not on Macs; they're on Linux. So we can't totally rely 100% on Tuple. And so there are some other things we use like USE Together, and people who use Team Macs will share that way. LINDSEY: And then I think one of the last things about remote work that is worth chatting about today is the team culture. We did have a very in-office culture, especially because folks are working on different client projects. And one of the things they love most about thoughtbot is the other thoughtboters and getting to see each other and maybe do investment projects together or going to the summit. So we had another question about this too, which is how do you foster that culture? How do you keep it going when no one's in-person anymore? CHAD: I think this is one of the areas where we have the most iteration and learning to do because the work stuff we were already doing a lot of it. And the project stuff is easier to judge, too. So did the project work? Did we ship on time? Was the design great? It's a lot easier to get immediate feedback on whether what we're doing is working or not. And with the culture things, the ramifications of doing it badly might not manifest for months. LINDSEY: We also need the client work to get money. CHAD: Right. [chuckles] LINDSEY: We need the money in order to work on the culture. [laughs] CHAD: Right. And the fact that we've been doing this in the pandemic it's a double-edged sword. I think it gives us a little bit of leeway to say, “Things are not normal now. And so we can't do this or we can't do that, and that is just what it is. And so we're just going to have to make the best of it.” The other side of that, though, is that it's been a very difficult time for a lot of people, not only just because of the pandemic. This last year has been a really difficult year for a lot of people. And so, yes, we get a little bit of runway to figure things out because it's such a unique situation. At the same time, it's important more than ever to figure out how to support people and have things be good and fulfilling and sustainable for people and to have a culture that thrives, not necessarily just gets by. I think that is what has made this last year challenging is figuring that out. So some specifics, we traditionally get together as an entire company once a year. So we brought that all online last year, and we combined it with our end-of-the-year parties that we usually do, which are also a hackathon where we take time off of client work, and we work on projects together. So we combined those two things in December and had a two-day all-remote event with murder mysteries hosted by professional companies to trivia and then underlying with the hackathon. And I think people really enjoyed it. It was one of those things where I think people were -- there was a pocket of people who were really skeptical about it. “I'm tired of being on video calls all day,” and all that stuff. “I'm not feeling up for it,” like all these sorts of things. And it was like, “Trust me, just show up, just do it.” And I think what we heard was pretty universal that people were surprised at how enjoyable it was. And so this year we're doing three of those, two one-day ones and one two-day one. And that'll be in May and then the summer, and then the winter. Implicit in that is we're not expecting to be able to get back in person together in any large group for all of this year. LINDSEY: But you do anticipate in-person summit return. CHAD: Yeah, definitely. I think it's more important than ever. And I think what we'll also see and encourage is team in-person get-togethers where it's not just the whole company, but you're on a project team or the marketing team or rocket fuel, as it likes to be called now, and get together. Yes, it's fine. Get together in this place. And that's one of the things that -- We spend a lot of money on very expensive offices in Boston and New York, and in the past, San Francisco, and Austin, London. It’s over $500,000 a year in office expenses between all those places that we still have the expense now. But once we're able to eliminate that expense, it's going to free up a lot of money to be put towards getting those teams together in person and do other things. LINDSEY: That was the other thing I was going to say, and you noted this about the UK team is that there's also a lot of team-specific activities where team leadership for Boost, Ignite, Lift Off, Mission control or with the geography-based ones too are figuring out what kind of social stuff or testing out different ideas like the show and tells or doing quiz time. I know there's a pocket of folks who jump in the lounge, which came out of the remote summit, the lounge during lunchtime or after work on Friday, and just trying out different things. CHAD: And Stephanie, who was the office manager in New York, has moved into an operations manager role, so company-wide. And a big part of what she is doing is figuring out things to try. And I think some things will succeed and some things won't, whether it's organizing games or the thing that just happened on Friday was people opting in to be paired for a 15-minute conversation with somebody else in the company, things like that. We're trying a lot of different things and seeing what works, what doesn't online. She created an online art gallery where people who are doing art can post it, that kind of thing. So we'll learn. LINDSEY: We'll learn, and then we'll most likely share it with you, so stay tuned for that. You can subscribe to the show and find notes for this episode at giantrobots.fm. CHAD: If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. You can find me on Twitter @cpytel. LINDSEY: And me on Twitter @Lindsey3D. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot. CHAD: Thanks for listening, and see you next time. LINDSEY: This podcast was brought to you by thoughtbot. Thoughtbot is your expert design and development partner. Let's make your product and team a success.

How one woman turned her people pleasing tendencies into her greatest assetThis week’s episode is one that I believe a lot of you want and need to hear. This week’s guest is deeply and truly authentic, someone who truly cares about each person she encounters—her name is Lindsey Shwartz. In a filtered world where only highlight reels are shared, people pleasing and living up to an unrealistic reality is a constant pressure. Lindsey digs deep into her inherent tendencies of people pleasing, how she worked through her self-doubt, and the journey it led her on to create a community of love, support, honesty, and compassion. Listen to this week to hear the captivating story of how an Enneagram 9 evolved and faced her unhealthy aspects to truly embrace herself and turn her “flaws” into her greatest strengths. Listen nowYour environment will either push you or paralyze you Lindsey Shwartz shares the version of herself several years ago—a woman who was working at 70% of her potential, which looked like 150% of most people’s, and gaining recognition and awards as a result. A tiny voice inside of her was calling her to greatness, to exert herself to 100%, but her environment failed to push her. She shares the significant moments of being called to action, being challenged by criticism, called out by strangers, and how this led to her writing a book, her in depth soul searching, and her recognition of her strengths. Getting out of your own way and into actionLindsey discusses that while she was sifting through her own people pleasing tendencies and self-doubt, she watched numerous women in her life stop short of pursuing their own entrepreneurial dreams because of their own fear and self-doubt. She shares how this helped her identify a need for more honest conversations about the trials and successes of entrepreneurship, and to show that you don’t need to have it all together to get started. Today, Lindsey has grown a community of women that gives permission to show up in your glorious self and encourages you to step into your gifts that make you uniquely you. Lindsey ShwartzLindsey Schwartz is an entrepreneur, top podcast host, and best-selling author. As a sought-after speaker, Lindsey travels around the world inspiring women to get out of their own way and into action around their big ideas and helping them create the careers they’ve always dreamed of. She grew the Powerhouse Women community, annual event, and podcast, with the motto that we're not meant to do business (or life) alone! “What [Lindsey] realized in this people-pleasing is until she let go of that, she was not going to be able to do what she was called to do.” 5:17“When people tell me ‘fix me, I’m broken, there’s something wrong with me,’ I’m like ‘no, no, no, no, there’s nothing wrong with you, this is who you needed to be to take you to the next level.’” 8:08“The only way to find what you’re actually capable of is to throw yourself into something that you have no business doing.” 13:00 -Lindsey“You Enneagram 9’s listening, your voice and your opinion matters, I know that’s the biggest fear of a 9, and when you actually use it, you are Yoda.” 16:16“That feeling of ‘crap, am I the one to do this’ is actually how you know you’re going in the right direction.” 20:02 -Lindsey “The first time you don’t ‘people-please,’ because you’ve conditioned the people in your life to accept that you’re a people pleaser, it comes with a lot of backlash.” 27:25“I thought I had to become less of a people pleaser to be successful. I thought I had to care less… but actually the fact that I care and it’s authentic to my core is what has made me so successful.” 33:31 -Lindsey“You know your intention and it was out of love and between you and our maker at the end of the day I know that you know that you did it out of love for yourself which is important.” 38:51“Everything we do is either out of fear or love. If we know it’s out of love, then we can have high involvement in the process but a low attachment to how it’s received.” 40:30“I’m not serving anyone if I’m not sharing that full side of [my light].” 49:01

Mark is once again joined by Lindsey to talk about the 1967 Doctor Who story The Tomb Of The Cybermen. Do you have a classic series Doctor Who recommendation for Lindsey? You can tweet her @lha_again on Twitter.     --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/nerdology-uk/message

During my live on stage Q&A, I did not expect her to say this… On today’s episode Russell shares an interview he did with Lindsey Stirling at Funnel Hacking Live 2019 and talks about what some of the things she said were and why he wasn’t expecting it. Here are some of the amazing things you will hear in this episode: Why Lindsey thought that America’s Got Talent was right about her not being good enough. Find out what Lindsey’s book is about, and how it follows a theme of her life. And see why Lindsey is also involved in Operation Underground Railroad. So listen here to find out how Lindsey Stirling got started, and how her story is similar to that of an entrepreneur. ---Transcript--- What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. I hope you loved the last episode where I had, let you guys in behind the scenes to hear Lindsey Stirling at Funnel Hacking Live share some amazing wisdom and ideas and thoughts. And I’m even more excited, if that’s possible, for today’s episode. Because after we queue up the theme song and come back, I’m going to let you guys listen in behind the scenes of the live Q&A I did with her afterwards on stage. We go over a lot of cool things in there and I think you’re going to love it. But the one thing that impressed me most, I want to kind of put it from my perspective, so that when you hear it’ll hopefully have the same impact on you that it had on me. But I do know that before we brought her onstage, I knew that she was on America’s Got Talent, and I do know that she made it through a couple of rounds and then they kicked her off and said she wasn’t good enough. So I specifically I wanted to ask her that question and find out, “What did you feel? What was going on in your mind?” And what I assumed she was going to say was, “Oh yeah, they screwed me. Blah, blah, blah, whatever.” Or “They kicked me off. They didn’t know who I was and I was going to prove them all wrong.” That’s what I assumed she was going to say when she responded back to that answer. But instead what she said was so different and so much better and so much more powerful. What she said afterwards was she got off the show and she went home and she looked at herself and she realized that they were right, she wasn’t good enough yet. So because of that she went back and started practicing and working hard until she became good enough, until she became the Lindsey Stirling we had a chance to experience at Funnel Hacking Live. Such a powerful thing. I thought the message of “Screw you, I’m going to work harder anyway.” would have been powerful, but the message she left instead was a thousand times more powerful. And a lot of times the market tells us no and we have to look at ourselves and say, “You know what, the market is right sometimes. And instead of me fighting it, I’m going to go and I’m going to become good enough.” Such a powerful thing. Anyway, this interview is amazing. It’s not super long, I’ve never interviewed someone on stage before. I’m not going to lie, I was a little bit nervous. It’s only about ten minutes long, but I hope you get a lot of value out of it. Once again, if you guys can go to a Lindsey Stirling concert, support her, she’s amazing. And she was such a huge addition to this year’s Funnel Hacking Live. Alright let’s queue up the theme song and when we come back we’ll jump right into my live Q&A with Lindsey Stirling. Was that amazing or what? Lindsey: Thank you. Russell: What an awesome way to end out this extraordinary last four days together. It’s fun because we were planning, as soon as Funnel Hacking Live ends we start thinking, “What’s the plans for next year?” We were just talking about this and I was like, ‘Man, I want something to end where we can just leave on cloud 9 and everyone’s got the energy and everything. We should have a concert.” And then we’re like, “We’ve never done that before. We don’t know how that even works.” And then, {inaudible} talking, but before. We started talking about different names, who would be possible and then we said your name and everyone on my team was like, “If Lindsey Stirling could come, that would be the most amazing thing ever.’ And you guys just experienced it. Was that the most amazing thing ever? It’s so great. Lindsey: Thank you. Thanks for having us. You guys are amazing, as I’ve said. Thank you so much for your energy and it sounds like it’s been an amazing week. Russell: It’s been a lot of fun. Well, cool. I wanted to take a few minutes just to interview her because we were actually going to try and do this earlier today, but we ran out of time. So I wanted to do this just partially because I want you guys to connect with her more, and be able to follow her more, and I’m going to talk a little about that towards the end, but also so everyone understands some of her journey. Because some of her journey, I think, is very similar to a lot of your guys’ journeys as well. So I think my first question is, where did you come up with such a unique thing? There’s people who do violins, people who do dance but I’ve never heard of anyone besides you who did both. How did you come up with that? Lindsey: You know I, well a funny fact I guess about me is, a lot of people ask me, ‘what came first, the violin or the dancing?’ And the thing is I’ve played the violin my whole life. It started when I was 6. I did not start dancing until I was 23 years old, and I’m a self taught dancer. So it’s very ironic that I’ve always loved dance and I thought it was such a beautiful art form, and I wanted to make my performance as a violinist more engaging than just, I always felt so stiff. So I really started working on incorporating movement into my performances. But you know, the funny thing was is that I had this vision of being a dancing violinist, and I couldn’t dance. And I think it’s so important whenever you are starting out on a venture or a journey whether it’s an artistic one or a business one, there are things that you’re going to be like, “But I don’t know how to do that. How could I possibly be a dancing violinist if I don’t know how to dance?” Well, I started step by step by step in a very literal sense, teaching myself very simple choreography that just started with like a look and a wink and a little shoulder. You know, just very minimal movements, and now I can literally do backbends while I play. I can spin, I can learn choreography and it all was just step by step and because I had such a clear vision and I was so determined. You know, sometimes the less you know in a way, the better it is. I don’t think I realized how difficult it would be, so I naively just went into it with everything I had and worked tirelessly until I could do it. Russell: That’s amazing. Very cool. So my next question is, before Crystalized blew up for you and you’re going through I’m sure practicing and doing things and videos and all sorts of stuff, and things weren’t blowing up for you, first off how long was that period of time for you? And second off, what was it that kept you going, like moving forward during that time as opposed to just throwing it in and walking away from it all? Lindsey: Yeah, I probably started to pursue and write my own music and make this art of dancing and playing and I probably worked at that for 2 years before I even discovered YouTube. And during that time I had some, I had a lot of times I kind of fell on my face, sometimes literally, sometimes more figuratively speaking. One of which was extremely public, it was in front of millions of people on America’s Got Talent. I was, my little artistic heart was absolutely broken on that show. I felt like my spirit was just broken at what I thought was going, I thought this was going to be the biggest moment of my life and what changed everything. And I ended up getting absolutely publicly humiliated and told in front millions of people on live tv that I sounded like strangled rats when I played the violin. I was told I didn’t have what it took and I should try something else, I would never make it. And that was one of the hardest things to get over because I was literally terrified to step on a stage again after that. I was like, “I just don’t know if I can face that kind of humiliation.” It was in the back of my mind every time I would go to step on a stage, “I am probably going to fail.” But I took a little break from it just to re-gather my confidence again and to work on my craft. And I realized, I think the most important thing about that story, which took me years to realize, is that they told me, “You’re not good enough.” And people now always are like, “Oh America’s Got Talent, they were so wrong about you. They missed this diamond in the rough.” And looking back on it, no, they actually were right. I wasn’t good enough, but the most important word was left out and it said, “I wasn’t good enough yet.” I had literally just invented this idea of dancing and playing a violin and I hadn’t put in the time yet. I wasn’t good enough. But I just began, once I realized that I’m just not good enough yet, I worked for the next year and a half honing my craft and getting good enough so that no one would ever be able to say that again, and it wouldn’t be true. And I also think there’s this inner gut that guides you, and sometimes you get to a point, and I’ve done this in different ventures, where I realize this isn’t a path that I should pursue anymore. I think this door is closed and it’s time to go to a different one. But this door, I knew that it would open. I just felt it. And it was, I just need to keep going, because that inner compass will never lead you astray. And to me, that’s God.  You can call it whatever you want, whether it’s the universe talking to you and guiding you, but I do believe there is something so much greater than ourselves that guides us and gives us inspiration and gives us that courage to press forward. I’m spinning. Russell: I know, me too. They’re all spinning up here. So for those who want to know more about you, I know in fact, my mom’s down here, my mom in the middle, she’s like, ‘Have you read her book yet?” Will you tell everyone about your book, so if people want to learn more about you and your life and everything. I’d love for you to tell them about that and have them all go buy the book tonight. Lindsey: There you go. My book is called The Only Pirate at the Party. It’s very thematic of a theme in my life, where it’s based off a true story where I went to a birthday party that when I first moved to LA, and it was a Peter Pan themed birthday party and I was really excited. And I was like, “Oh my gosh, I have a pirate costume. This is perfect. I’m going to make so many friends.” And it was that mean girls moment where I walk into the party and it was a regular party. Nobody was dressed up and I was a full blown pirate. And I was like, I had the hat, I had a tin foil hook I made so I was Captain Hook. And there was like a Tinkerbell cake, and that was the only thing that let you know maybe this was a themed party. And I remember there was that moment of like, no one’s really seen me yet. No one really knows me, I could get in my car and go home and no one’s the wiser, or I could just own it and go into the freaking party and try to make some friends. And I decided to go in and make some friends, and kind of laugh about my, and I met a lot of people because I was the only pirate at the party. But it was such a like, you know what, this seems like it’s a little bit of a theme of my life and that’s why the book has all these stories. It’s not like any of us walk through life trying to be like, ‘I’m different. I’m the only pirate.” You know, but I think we’re all different. We are all so unique and those are the things that make us wonderful, they’re the things to be celebrated. The joys, the hardships and it all leads into our story. So that’s what my book talks about. It talks about my experiences going through an eating disorder and depression and America’s Got Talent and all these times when I hit the bottom. And through my own gifts and uniqueness decided it’s time to get back up again. Russell: Awesome. Everyone go on Amazon and get that today. Alright, so my last question for you is revolving around Operation Underground Railroad. So I know you’ve been involved for a long time with them as well, and you had a chance to watch the documentary. So last year, at this event in Orlando was the first time we introduced this world to Tim Ballard and Operation Underground Railroad. We watched the first documentary, we raised just over a million dollars during that event, which is insane and amazing. And then Tim actually flew from our event to Haiti to pick up his kids and then flew back, which was so cool. So I know you’ve been involved with them for a long time, but I’d love to hear some of your thoughts about what they’re doing and the importance of it and kind of how you’re getting involved now as well. Lindsey: You know, I don’t, like I get chills just thinking about it. The documentary was so, I don’t think there was a dry eye in the room. It’s I think what they are fighting is the greatest evil that could possibly happen. It’s the greatest evil, it’s the plague of our time. And I don’t think there is anything that is more important than freeing people from slavery. And Tim’s book is amazing. Slave Stealer’s if you haven’t read it, it’s on audible, you can listen to it as you drive around. But it’s so, you know I’ve written a lot of music based off of my experience of going through anorexia and depression and I do a lot of these metaphorical images and music videos about being trapped. And they were to represent a time when I was literally trapped like a prisoner inside my own mind, and that was really, really hard. But it just makes me think like my next mission, I’ve told that story now, my next mission is to talk about how people can literally be trapped by somebody else. And you know what, I think the greatest thing about having a voice and having success is that then you get to pick, you get to tell your story, through my book, through my music, through my art, but then I also get the opportunity to help other people tell their stories. And each one of you, as you grow your business and your brands and whatever it is, this is giving you not only a platform for the things you’re passionate about, and the things you work so hard for, but it’s giving you a platform to share whatever message you are passionate about. And I’m super passionate about Operation Underground Railroad. I’m so excited, I was so excited to hear that they were a part of this event and that you guys support them. Anyways, I can’t think of a greater cause. Russell: Awesome. Thank you.

Women's fiction author Lindsey's Kelk has made her name with her I Heart romance series featuring the adventures of Angela, a British magazine editor who moves to New York – but she's just as happy writing stand alone rom coms.  The most recent of those – One In A Million - is described as “Bridget Jones meets My Fair Lady for the social media set” – and has been warmly endorsed by stars like Marian Keyes. Six things you'll learn about Lindsey from this Joys of Binge Reading episode: How a cynic found herself writing Rom ComsWhy she's co-hosting two podcasts - on wrestling - and makeupHow a Yorkshire lass ended up in LACareer building tips from a career in publishingThe fiction queen who's acted as role model and mentorWhy Christmas is a precious destination Where to find Lindsey Kelk:  Website:  https://lindseykelk.com/ Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/lindseykelk/  Twitter: @Lindseykelk Facebook: @LindseyKelk What follows is a "near as" transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions. Lindsey Kelk Rom Com best seller Jenny: But now, here's Lindsey. .  Hello there Lindsey and welcome to the show, it's great to have you with us.   Lindsey: Hello there Jenny, it's wonderful to be here. Jenny: Beginning at the beginning – was there a “Once Upon a Time” moment when you decided you wanted to write fiction?  And if so what was the catalyst for it? Lindsey:   You know I don't think there was, I don't know if it's very common, although I know among some of my writer friends it is, but I ever since I've been very very young I've always wanted to write. My Mum taught me to read when I was very young, so I was reading from before I got to school, and so when I got to school my teachers didn't have to teach me to read so they said to me 'Why don't you write yourself a story?' so I've been writing stories since I was tiny, it's always something I've always done. As far as doing it professionally, that's something I did assume I would never be I would be able to do, because of the way teachers, mentors and others and others crush any thoughts about writing for a living, so it was only when I was an editorial assistant at Harper Collins, in the children's team, working with film and licensed tie in books - because that was the only job in I could get in publishing. I'd thought 'well if I can't make books myself, at least I can be close to the books that are being made. And I was sat there after a couple of years thinking 'Well all these books ARE getting published,' so if I am not at least trying I shouldn't feel good about myself, I should at least be trying. It wasn't really a "light bulb" moment, it was more a question of 'well my boss turned down Twilight,' or some book that we thought was going to do really incredibly did very badly, so why not try? Once I saw the inside of publishing and saw you never could really tell what would do well, then it seemed like I should at least try. Jenny: Did your boss really turn down Twilight? Lindsey: Yeah. . . . Well it was the publisher in the fiction department.. But a lot of people did, she turned down a lot of books, and she signed lots that did really well. That's how it is in publishing. People outside tend to think that if a book sells really well everyone wanted it, but that's often just not the case. We were working with John Green after he'd done Looking for Alaska and his second book An Abundance of Katherines just didn't do that well, so who could have forseen the success of The Fault in Our Stars? It's a fascinating industry to be part of but a really long answer to your question . . . its the "overnight success" that takes 20 years. I heart New York - first in the series Jenny: You've made your name with the I Heart series of contemporary romances featuring Angela, a British magazine editor who moves to New York – and a lot of that resembles ...

"If we don't start doing things differently, there won't be agriculture to pass down." Climate change is a hot-button political issue, but in the Western U.S., no one can deny that the drought and above average temperatures are real. Mike Nolan, a young farmer in Mancos, Colorado, gives an insider perspective on farming in extreme weather conditions, building resilience, and shares how an innovative conservation policy idea that started over beers and ended up in the Senate farm bill. What is the path forward for farmers in the arid West? Mountain Roots Produce: https://mountainrootsproduce.com/aboutus/ U.S. Drought Monitor: https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/ Rocky Mountain Farmers Union Drought Diaries: https://www.rmfu.org/homepage-2/latest-news/happening-now/the-drought-diaries/ Episode Transcript This is the Young Farmers Podcast. I’m Lindsey Lusher Shute. Today I’m speaking with Mike Nolan, a farmer at Mountain Roots Produce, and chapter leader at the Four Corners Farmers and Ranchers Coalition that’s based near Mancos, Colorado. Mike is already growing in a dry climate, but this year has been especially tough. He explains the challenges brought by drought and severe weather and how he is cop ing with it all. He also tells us how micro-equip, an idea he had over some beers, made it all the way to the Senate version of the farm bill. I’m Julia Sherman, farmer at Rag and Frass Farm in Jeffersonville, Georgia, and a leader of the Middle Georgia Young Farmers Coalition. I’m a member of the National Young Farmers Coalition because it’s so important for young farmers to work together to create change. For $35 a year, you can join too. In addition to being part of a bright and just future for agriculture in the United States, you’ll also get discounts like 40 percent off Filson and 25 percent off farm to feed socks. To join, go to youngfarmers.org. Mike: You know, you guys had that at your place. You had that massive hail storm. Lindsey: Yep. Mmhmm. Mike: You know, we’ve had like kind of like one of those events or something like that, like every 10 to 14 days where it’s like— Lindsey: Woah Woah Woah… Mike: We’re like really? It’s either hail or bug infestations or water issues or smoke or fire or something. Lindsey: Ah wow, you’ve had it all. So can you just, you know, even now when I talk about the water situation, particularly to really new farmers where you are, who are east coast farmers, it’s just so different. I mean you’ve farmed on this side of the country for a while so you can understand the contrast. Could you just very briefly describe how your farm gets water? Mike: Yes, definitely. Um, basically our water rights go back to the late 1800’s. They’re some of the oldest in the state, so a lot of the farms and ranches here have adjudicated water rights. So they’re water rights that kind of stay with the ground. Like ours come off river. So we have river water rights and then we also have storage water rights. So we have storage water out of our lake, which serves to make this valley, and that deeds us an acre foot of water per acre on an annual basis. And then we have– Lindsey: And that’s not water that you have on your farm–that’s in the reservoir. Mike: Yeah, that’s in a reservoir. And that reservoir also serves Mancos role water, which is our domestic water. It serves the town of Mancos and it also serves to Mesa Verde National Park. And that reservoir is small compared to a lot of place s. It’s only 10,000 acre feet when it gets full. And right now after this summer, I think it’s sitting at about 1400 acre feet going into the winter with the 2 municipalities or municipal water. Mancos and Mesa Verde will be continuously using it all winter. Lindsey: Okay. So over 10 percent full. Uh, how does that compare with a normal August? Like where should the reservoir be at this time of year? Mike: You know, normally the reservoir would be 30 to 40 percent full, possibly higher. The tricky part this year, Lindsey, was that in a normal year we get to run off our adjudicated water, our priority water, and in the past five years on this place we can run off river water until about, you know, fourth of July, sometimes early August, and this year we didn’t get a single day of river water. And then our storage water was limited to 60 percent of our total allotment. So this is really abnormal. And the hardest part about it honestly was we didn’t get any precipitation all winter, so the ground was so dry. So even hay guys around here, they could grow two to three inches of water in 24 hours on hay grounds and it would just drop right into the water table. Like you’d come back seven days later and it’d be bone dry. Lindsey: If you have senior rights, then there’s a lot of other people who clearly didn’t get water either. Lindsey: Yeah. Some folks, I mean, some folks still have river water. Um, so here’s kind of an interesting thing. The town of Mancos is priority 3, but the priority is sitting at two right now. Um, so the town of Mancos is actually using their storage water and there’s two irrigators in the valleys that are priority one and two that are using water right now to irrigate hay. So the town has actually fallen out of priority, which rarely happens. Lindsey: So the town has fallen out of priority for its river water? Mike: Yeah. So the town usually is able to pull off the Mancos River for their domestic water use. Um, but right now they’re just pulling off the lake Lindsey: And so they’re further depleting the reservoir? Mike: Yeah. And I don’t totally know what their usage is. It’s a small town so I can’t imagine it’s more than an acre foot or two. So yeah, they were using their lake water. Everyone’s on storage water right now and it’s scary out there. Speaker 2: Yeah. So you have received 60 percent of your total allotment this season for storage water. How is that impacting the farm? Mike: So we, this winter by farm partner and girlfriend Mindy Perkovich and I kind of sat down and we knew it was going to be tight, so we wanted to, we knew we needed to do the CSA crops and we can kick that on domestic water. Then we kind of had tears of like, okay, storage, beets, potatoes, winter squash. You know, last year we did about seven acres in production. This year I think we did about 1.7 or 2 acres of production. So we’re super limited. Our water came on about four weeks later than it should and we’ve been out of water for I think two and a half weeks now. And we’ve had like barely any rain. We’ve been running off our Mancos role water just to ease things along, and we’ve just taken crops that we would like to finish out, like the cabbage and the beans. And we’ve either just mowed them and decked them or picked them early. We could afford the water with rural water. Lindsey: That’s like from the town? Mike: It’s our domestic water for the valley. So it, you know, we don’t like to use too much of that stuff because the Ph is a little bit off. It’s a little bit higher in salt, it’s chlorinated. Lindsey: It’s treated water. Mike: It’s treated water and I hate using treated water for vegetable production personally. Lindsey: And it’s expensive I imagine. Lindsey: Oh yeah. You know, we budgeted about a thousand dollars for the last six weeks of the season to be able to tide us through. Speaker 2: Wow. So what, so what is next for you guys for next season? Doesn’t seem like it’s expected to get much better next year and the reservoirs are lower than in previous seasons. What are you thinking about for the 2019 season? Mike: We’re thinking a lot of stuff. It’s, you know, with all the workers in NYC, you know, we are always talking about resiliency, right? Resiliency and drought. And what I’ve realized this year is that I can totally figure out how to be resilient, resilient with my markets and crop production. What I’m having a hard time with is being resilient in relationships and with mental health. And I don’t think that Mindy and I could do this again next year. I think it would crush us. So if things don’t get better, we’re just going to get jobs for a year. Um, we’ll have some water. We’ll be able to cover crop things great for some rain. Um, in the meantime, financially we’re okay. Like we’d have enough to start up again next year. Um, but if we don’t farm, we won’t have enough to do it again in 2020. We’re being, we’re trying to be really pragmatic about it and not take it too close to heart personally if we can’t farm next year, because fighting it is not..you can’t fight this. In order for us to be looking good next year. Um, and these are things I think folks out of the Mountain West don’t totally understand about water is that, you know, we need some good fall rains to wet the mountains so that the snow, and then we need a good snow pack and then we need a good slow melt. And the reason why we want mountains to go in wet is that if the mountains go in dry, which is what happened last year, the little bit of snow there, you know, for every 10 inches of moisture up there, you can lose 40 to 60 percent of it to the ground and we want that to run into the rivers. So we need to kind of have like a very normal fall, winter, spring, um, in order to kind of pull ourselves out of this. Lindsey: If there are those conditions possibly in the fall, then you and Mindy might consider making a go of it for 2019. Mike: The plan will be to farm next year until we really get those clear signals that it’s not a good idea basically. Every year is a gamble that, you know, I have this silly analogy when it comes to this water stuff that helps me understand it, is that it’s all this stuff. It’s kind of like a GPA. So it’s like you do all this. It’s good, good, good, good, good. And then you have one year or one bad grade and it totally screws you up. And then it can take years to get back to that place that you were prior. And that’s kind of where we’re at now is that one winter is not going to save us. We probably will have a limited year next year. It’s going to take a couple of good winters and some good summer rain to pull us out of this. Lindsey: And what are you hearing from folks who give technical support and are making projections on the weather? Lindsey: You know, all spring they were like “this is going to be one of the best months and years on record” and we have gotten about an inch of moisture or less than that all summer. And so it’s like they’re predicting for a wet fall. But I, I honestly have no idea like what to expect. We’re just grateful that it’s cooled off a little bit because the other thing is that, um, our nighttime and daytime temperatures are five to 10 degrees above average for most of the summer as well. It was, it was a very bizarre summer here. But you know, some of my 80 year old neighbors are like, they’ve never seen this before. So we have some CSA members that do, you know, there’s a lot of folks that work for the FEDS around here, a federal government, whether it’s BLM, Forest– Lindsey: On federal lands? Lindsey: Yeah, national parks, I mean they employ so many people in our region because we’re surrounded by every form of public lands. Um, so there’s lots of scientists and biologists and we have a woman who is a CSA member and she does lizard studies and she was telling us that she’s seeing Pine, Pinyone and Juniper trees that are 80 to 90, 100 years old, just completely dying in front of her plot that she’s researching. Lindsey: Because, because of the weather, because of lack of rainfall. Mike: 2018 is one for the books is the most quiet way I can say it. Lindsey: And then on top of that there was, was the 416 fire, is that the one that has impacted you as well? I know there have there been quite a few in the region. Mike: The big impact of the fires is that, um, it just, it hit the economy super hard. Everybody’s numbers are down. I mean, wholesale numbers are down across the board for farmers. People weren’t eating out as much. Tourism kind of dropped off. Honna and Daniel, who are NYFC members, um, they’re about 45 minutes away from us. They were saying that there was a four or five week period where their wholesale numbers were down about 60 percent or more. Locals were leaving town, so they weren’t buying the local restaurants and tourists weren’t coming and it was just this really weird—. Like one restaurant we sell to was closed for three weeks because the fire, because they couldn’t access it, um, they’ve pulled them out of there on opening night. So we’d lost that account for about three, four weeks. And then you first smoke on top of that and you know, that kind of messes with the plants, we would call it. It was causing all of our head-lettuce successions to bolt, because I think it was messing with their, with their daylight requirements. You’d have multiple times where our visibility was like a mile and a half, two miles and the sun was red. Kind of like the eclipse last summer. And we would plant these head-lettuce successions and they would just barely grow and then bolt. It was usually a couple days after you’d have one of those kinds of smoke events. So yeah, that’s another, another crazy thing about the fires, but the economy hit was the really big one. Um, and I will give props to everyone, like being really resilient about it and also to our elected officials on both sides of the aisle that showed up. I mean we had our congressional rep, both senators, governor, um, everyone in the State House, State Senate, county commissioners. Everyone’s really pushing for people to like come back to our area because we’re such a tourist economy. Lindsey: Just by, just by promoting it and saying it’s still safe. You should come. It’s beautiful. Mike: We’re still open for business. Lindsey: I mean, I guess that sort of brings me to another question. How does policy relate to any of this and what do you want elected officials to do to help farmers in your region? Mike: Havin g direct assistance payment is I think what they really need. There’s so many cattle producers, hay producers, you know, producers that are just on the verge of bankruptcy. The last thing they need is a loan. Lindsey: And you’re talking about like an emergency loan offered by a farm service agency? Mike: Yeah, and those, you know, I appreciate those and I think they work for some people, but we’re down here with our state representative, Marc Catlin, and that’s what all, I mean these are guys and girls that do not want to ask the government for everything. And they were like, we need something. Otherwise, you know, our centennial farms are going to be filing for bankruptcy and we’re done. And there’s no reason for the next generation to come in if it’s not economically viable in any way, shape, or form. Lindsey: I don’t disagree with you at all. But I wonder what is the strategy to keep those farms viable if these conditions continue? Like I think they do need, you know, more than a loan potentially. But like for how, I mean no one knows for how long. What we’re seeing with global warming is only going to make these conditions potentially even worse than they are now. So what are people talking about just like the future of agriculture in the region? Like is there a path forward? Mike: Yeah. So I would, I think that’s a great question. I don’t think it’s smart for anybody to prop up types of agriculture that are long-term unsustainable. Stewardship-wise, but also economically. I think a couple of steps would be to like prop things up now and get it so you know, these families aren’t dipping into all their savings and their kids are going to be left with nothing. Just prop them up for a minute so we can all sit down and figure it out. There are a lot of families in this region who are coming to. I’m on the Mancos Conservation District Board as well. And we have multi-generational families and cattle families that are coming to our offices being like, “what can we do that’s different? Like what crops can we grow that are more profitable, what’s up with all this market gardening stuff? What’s up with this root crop vegetable stuff? Like what can we change to be more economically versatile and resilient?” Lindsey: And what are they growing right now? Mike: I mean in this valley like hay and cattle. There’s no real crop production in Mancos per se. Lindsey: So one of the things that I’ve heard you talk about that I appreciate is this need for young farmers to really stand with multigenerational farmers. Some farmers who are doing things very differently at a much different scale. You describe culturally like the importance of having this farm community intact. Can you just speak to that for a minute? Like why do you think it’s so important to have these larger farms in your region? Mike: Farmers make up two percent or less of the population and whether somebody is raising commodities or you know, these hay guys are raising hundreds of acres of yay, you know, and hundreds of heads of cattle, and I’m over here doing an acre or two of potatoes. We’re all on the same boat. We’re all in that small number of people. So, inadvertently creating divisions, being like we’re really different and better or worse than or any of those kinds of things. I don’t think that’s helpful because you sit down with a lot of these farmers and ranchers and you know, I understand there’s a unique set of struggles that NYFC is addressing really well when it comes to young and beginning farmers and ranchers, but they’re not too dissimilar to some of the things that these farmers or older farmers or ranchers have gone through and also are kind of struggling with too. I mean it’s still hard to make a living whether you’re starting out or three, four or five generations in. It can be really challenging. You know, there’s just such a wealth of knowledge there. And so like that kind of cohabitation is really important to me. Lindsey: We’ve definitely had a similar experience in New York. Just really needing those farmers to be there for so many reasons because they’re the reason we have a tractor dealership and a market, you know, and availability of, you know, mechanics and even if we’re doing things totally differently and even if they think we’re crazy on some level, you know, they still, there’s still like this mutual respect and understanding about the life we live and the hours we work and the seasonality and the risk and that sort of thing that is just like so, so vital for farmers to do well. I think it’s just too hard to be out there by yourself. Mike: It’s pretty awesome to have those kinds of connections. Lindsey: So, you know, on the federal level, I think people are looking at conservation programs. Do you think conservation programs can help them in a moment like this? Mike: Oh yeah. I mean, I don’t have any ground and obviously in CRP. And there’s a lot of ground in our region that’s in those conservation programs, and on a year like this that ground has become really vital. A lot of folks up in the Duck Creek area and some of these other places in Montezuma county and Dolores County, the state has allowed them to graze their CRP ground, which has been in literally a lifesaver for some of their herds. Lindsey: So you guys in the Southwest are really feeling the brunt of climate change. And I think people are, seems like with, with rising temperatures and extended drought, folks are more comfortable pointing to your farm and saying, Oh yeah, that’s climate change. So do you feel, how do you feel about the government’s response on climate and to what extent do you feel like there should be greater action taken on it? Or do you feel like it’s just so slow moving? It’s not really gonna make a difference? Mike: That’s a loaded question. Lindsey: Like, if anyone should be complaining, it’s you and you’ve got a pretty strong case to make that climate is having a major impact on your farm, on the local economy, on food security. I mean, I feel frustrated about some events that I associate with climate change in New York, but we’re not having to cut our production by more than half. Do you feel like, um, we should be taking more action on climate? Do you feel like the farmers in your region are feeling more passionate about climate issues as well? Mike: To be totally frank on a federal level, with the Paris accords and all those other things, I honestly don’t know what the Feds can do. The western slope for the most part is pretty conservative. Folks don’t want government help for the most part. What I see is that that’s changing a little bit. So people want pipelines put in, they want dams and storage upgraded. Um, but what I see is people aren’t really on the ground talking about climate change. What they’re talking about is that water is scarce and water is rare, and we need to adapt our farming models and we need to do all this kind of stuff. So it’s kind of funny. Like I don’t, we don’t actually have the climate change conversation around here all that much, so I don’t know how much whatever the Feds are going to do is really going to change that? There’s a lot of people, the majority of folks around here understand that something is changing and that if we don’t start doing things differently, there won’t be agriculture to pass it down to the next generation. Lindsey: So when they’re thinking of doing things differently, that’s we need to farm differently, we need to manage water differently. It’s not we need to stop emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Mike: Yes, exactly. Lindsey: And uh, and I guess it’s like we have to bring these communities together at some point, right? Because you guys are feeling that you are, you’re in it, right? You have the stories to tell that I think can really move people to take action, broader action on climate change. Obviously taking care of this season and next season and keeping a family and business needs to be priority one. But clearly to achieve climate mitigation, to lessen the longterm impacts for, you know, for 100 years from now, we all sort of have to have that recognition of how the United States and globally we’re impacting this situation. Mike: Yeah, I totally agree. Mindy and I were having a conversation about this maybe yesterday, the day before. You know, a lot of the old timers that we know, like they just don’t believe in climate change. And I said, well, what I’ve kind of realized is that when you tell somebody who’s in their sixties or seventies that climate change is going on, I don’t know if it’s not that they don’t believe it, but I think their perspective is that they’ve been farming for 60 years. Every year is completely different. They see what they think is climate changing all the time. So telling them like we need to do something. They were like what are you talking about? Like we’ve kind of realized that kind of stuff and I think that’s like, you know, a lot of the others, like the things you’re talking about, I agree with. And I think for me, doing what we can here when it comes to management practices in water efficiency, I think that’s really huge. Lindsey: When President Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Accord, was there any reaction from the farm community? Mike: No. Lindsey: No. Yeah. Mike: Not really. But also, you know, we live in the wild west, like, you know, I grew up in California and living here now the political landscape is, I find it super intriguing. It’s like you can throw yourself into a ditch in the middle of winter and anybody’s going to come by and pull you out, like people get along really well here and you know, you just don’t talk politics. Speaker 2: It’s like we have, we have to maintain these strong and positive relationships that are really driven by being neighbors and being fellow farmers and community members, but also figure out some way to recognize and take action on these global issues because they are also impacting us locally too. Mike: I think the other thing, you know, with doing all the advocacy within NYFC and locking down Farmers Union and the conservation district and all this kind of stuff, is there are people in our region doing that thing you’re talking about. And I just realized my role is to not do that. I’m going to sit on my four wheeler on the fence line and talk to my neighbor about, you know, whatever. You know about the boxes and chickens and like what’s wrong with this chapter and all this kind of stuff. And that’s kind of my end. Lindsey: Yeah, I mean it’s all gotta sort of start at the fence line anyways. Right. It’s has to be like a personal trust and communication. Mike: Yeah. Lindsey: So my last thing, I just wanted to congratulate you on micro-equip and getting that into the Senate version of the farm bill. And I wanted to ask you just to, if you could describe sort of the process of making that happen. Mike: Yeah, thanks. You know, it’s funny. So Alex funk, who used to be the western policy director, so we we’re at convergence two years ago in San Diego. Lindsey: And I’ll say, convergence is National Young Farmers Coalition’s gathering of chapter leaders from all across the country. And Mike is the chapter leader of Four Corners. Mike: Basically, we were sitting around one evening after everything having some beers and what I realized about this, it’s very hard to get anything new into the farm bill, and so if you do want to make changes or want something new, to me the smartest way to go about it is taking an existing program and make an adjustment. And part of the inspiration was what you did and what NYFC did in its early days with the micro loan. Lindsey: Microloans. Sure. Mike: Yeah. So you were taking something that’s there and you’re like well let’s just tweak it and see if we can get more people in the door and more people accessing it. So that’s kinda the idea between for micro-equip. There’s lots of programs that small scale growers can access, but there are certain aspects of it that’s really challenging, but the hope is to change the equip program a little bit. So we just have more young beginning and small scale growers walking through the doors in our CRS offices. That alone to me is super beneficial because if we don’t have that generation of folks coming through the door, what’s the point of those offices being there in 20 years? Lindsey: And it’s like the identifiable product for I think a lot of young farmers, the micro loan has been. So, like they know, “oh yeah, farm service agency through USDA. They have those microloans. I should go check that out.” Now that so many new farmers have gotten microloans, it’s like it seems like a place to start for a lot of people, which is great. So and micro equip– so environmental quality incentives program, which is how we’ve used it on our farm for instance, to do high tunnels, to build greenhouses for season extension. Was there a project on your farm that you sort of had in mind when you were thinking about this concept? Mike: I had looking at the cover crop payments. We do a lot of cover cropping here and the payments didn’t make sense for me to access them, both for my agent to deal with the paperwork and also for me to make the trip over the Cortez to kind of deal with it. A lot of the payments for some of these programs… they’re scaled out so big. So the payments per acre are actually really low. So how do you incentivize somebody who’s doing say three acres or two acres of market grabbing crop who’s contributing to the local economy? How do you incentivize them to go and access something for subsurface drip or some sort of other aspect of an equip program where the payments are really low? And I think if there was a micro equip where paper work was kind of streamlined and we could kind of trial out some of these programs to see if they can be scaled differently or the payments could kind of be different, I think that’d be really great. Lindsey: All these programs and why the micro lending program was necessary, all of the paperwork is pretty intense. I mean it’s a lot because it’s written and designed for oftentimes a much larger system, a much larger farm and much more scaled farm than what many of the projects that beginning farmers are bringing to the table. Like that’s, that’s why we just need to have, you know, different, a more flexible system that can make it easy for agents to say, of course. Yeah, let’s, let’s work with you. I have this program that was designed for this case. Mike: Yeah, exactly, and that’s the thing. I will say, I’ll give a shout out to Julie, our NRCS agent over there in Cortez. This program wasn’t coming out of him not being able to do anything or that office not being able to do anything. It’s more that with the hiring freezes and everything going on, these offices are stretched so thin there. So part of the idea of micro equip is to obviously incentivize young beginning and small acreage growers that need to instill, like you’re saying, we need to incentivize the agents. They do so much work and there’s just so much paperwork and bureaucracy to be able to access these things. So if this program can alleviate even a little bit of that, I think they’d be much more amenable and available to work with young, small beginning producers. Lindsey: So the idea for this started with you and Alex having beers at convergence and then like what was the, what was the next step? Mike: Well it’s funny like when we had the idea we weren’t expecting it to go anywhere, to be quite honest. Like, you know, we were just like, we both thought it was a good idea. So then like, you know, Kate Greenberg, who’s western program director, you know, I told her about it and she talked to people about it. I talked to Andrew in DC about it and it just kinda kept on getting kicked around. It was like kick the can to be quite honest. It was just kinda like, oh, this got mentioned here, it got mentioned here, it got mentioned at Bennett staff or it got mentioned to Tifton and it got mentioned blah blah blah. And you know, I think it’s serendipitous to a certain degree. I think we’re lucky because there’s all this awesome NYFC infrastructure. For some silly reason, I love policy. And also, our state Senator Michael Bennett is also on the Senate Ag Committee. So there’s these little things that part of it’s luck, part of it’s hard work. Yeah. And I think eventually it just kind of got picked up like when all that went down and I was like, okay, this is, this is crazy. All of a sudden, you know, there’s like a signed thing with Michael Bennett’s signature being like, you know, “this is going into the farm bill” and he’s like saying my name on the Senate floor and I’m like “okay,” so at least you know, my mom’s proud now. Lindsey: Well, she should be. Mike: Yeah, so it was kinda good. I mean the thing that, you know, if I want to communicate to those listening to the podcast, NYCF members or not, is that those crazy ideas, you know, those late night ideas, early morning ideas like if you think it’s a good idea, try kickin it up the chain. Email your congressional staffer, email your senator. Like if you think you have a good idea, like see if they can go up the chain Speaker 2: I mean the best ideas definitely come from real life experience in the field and interaction with federal programs. We need that as Young Farmers Coalition to know what ideas need to be moved up to Congress. And frankly not everything needs to be in the farm bill. Right? A lot of the micro equip program, or excuse me, the micro loan program was piloted by USDA, by farm service agency, before it was put in the last farm bill. So there are things that can change, you know, just through a conversation with folks at USDA. We can make a lot of change by just as you said, like thinking about how this might be different or how it might be better and with the knowledge that indeed we can be quite powerful in this and really help to make those changes become reality. Mike: Yeah. And I think another big thing for me is like thinking about changes in programs and adjustments that aren’t super major but benefit, you know, your neighbors too, or even just benefit your neighbors. Because what I realized around here is if my neighbors are happy and healthy, that has a direct effect on what’s going on with me. I hope, hopefully we’ll access micro-equip. Um, you know, it’s my plan that if I don’t, that’s okay. I just hope that for a whole bunch of other people, that it benefits them. Lindsey: Well, we’re going to be fighting for it in the House version of the farm bill and the final conference version. Of course, if you know we don’t have a farm bill this year, we will look to your administrative changes or if it’s not put in the farm bill this year, I mean that, that won’t be the end of it. Uh, so thank you so much for your leadership with your chapter, with, with Four Corners and thanks for speaking to me today and man, I really hope that you guys have a good fall because I know you need it. I hope you’re going to be farming in 2019. Mike: Well, I appreciate you giving me the opportunity. Lindsey: All right, Mike, thanks so much. Next week, the farm bill is back. Andrew is going to tell us all about what’s going on in conference committee as they try to get a farm bill done by the end of this month. Thank you to Mike Nolan for being on today’s show. This show can be found wherever you get your podcasts. If you like us, please take a second to both rate and review us on iTunes and tell somebody else about what you learned on the show today. Thanks to Radio Kingston. Thanks to the National Young Farmers Coalition, the whole team for being there, to Hannah Beal for editing and to you for listening. Thanks so much.

This week I talk with Lindsey Vertner, who shares her amazing story and pushed her into a path of Life Coaching. Want to learn more about Lindsey? You can visit her website here: http://www.lindseyvertner.com/

The birth of social media massively affected the way online marketing works nowadays. Our special guest, “One-Click Lindsey” shares with us her “Perfect Traffic Strategy”, what it takes to convert site visitors to customers And… - The Single Greatest Benefit Of Having A Solid Social Media Campaign - The Difference Between Your Website And Your Landing Page? -How To Convert Site Visitors From Skeptical Strangers To Great Leads - How To Make A “Rock-Star” Landing Page - 5 Proven Tactics To Generate A Never Ending Cycle Of High Quality Traffic And Leads     One-Click Lindsey is a web strategy expert working with small business owners to help them utilize the web to produce more website traffic and leads. Lindsey is the founder and CEO TrafficAndLeads.com that specializes in driving traffic, getting leads and the art of nurturing leads to become lifelong clients. One-Click Lindsey is an expert in landing pages, email sequences, search engine ranking, newsletters, analytics, social media, pay-per-click ads, websites, blogging the list goes on. She knows how to utilize the myriad of online marketing options to generate more traffic and leads which produced more paying clients. Social Media:  The Cornerstone Of The BEST Type Of Traffic And Leads Lindsey definitely agrees with the fact that the birth of social media massively affects the way online marketing works nowadays. She mentioned that it is now considered the cornerstone of effective marketing. Unlike any other marketing method like, SEO (search engine optimization) where you have to wait three to five months to see the results, social media will give you the quickest way to generate high quality traffic, where leads can be produced and results are often gained effortlessly and sometimes, you can even get results in real time. The Single Greatest Benefit Of Having A Solid Social Media Campaign If you have a great social media campaign, then you can drive leads from your social media channels directly to your landing page and easily get people on your list. The Perfect Traffic Social media is a great starting point in building relationships and targeting people through the area of interests that you’re after. Lindsey says in this terrific interview, that your main objective is to catch your target's interest and attention.  Once your targets are hooked, that is the best time for you to start marketing your products and services. When your audience is hooked on something they are interested in, they will almost always “buy in” to some degree - this is where your opportunity is….and that is what she calls “the perfect traffic”. Is Your Website The Same As Your Landing Page? If You Answered Yes, One Click Lindsey Says, Think Again. Another great tip from Lindsey: You have to always be mindful as an entrepreneur that your website MUST always be different from your landing page. What Is The Difference Between A Website And A Landing Page? A website is where people can visit and find out about you and your company. It should showcase your past, present and forthcoming excellent projects. It should have a myriad of subpages and each subpage must have a specific goal. On the other hand, a landing page can look identical to your website. The difference is, it is focused on a very specific topic. It is sometimes known as a "lead capture page" or a "lander". The landing page is usually the extension of your advertisement, search result or direct link. Lindsey says, that landing pages are also often linked from social media, email or SEO campaigns, all to enhance the effectiveness of your advertisement or the product that you’re selling on that landing page. How Is Your Landing Page Performing? The main goal of your landing page is to convert site visitors into sales or at least great leads, it should also include a method for the visitor to get into  contact with you. A great way to execute this, is by having a subscribe button or a contact form where your visitors can share their information. **WARNING** Never make your subscription page complicated. Asking for your visitors to share their Email address and Name is already enough. How To Make A Rock-Star Landing Page Below are Lindsey’s proven strategies for making your Landing page rock-star quality: Make your Headline beautiful, big and bold Address IMMEDIATELY HOW you can help them and WHY they need to subscribe and buy your product. Invest in making a video  In making the video, sell the idea and the benefits of your product. Be a Superhero! What you offer is going to help your customers SO much, they’ll think you’re a Superhero for it. Create a bulleted list If you don’t feel like doing a video then you want to do a nice bulleted list of how your product can help them. Create an enticing and beautiful form Convenience is the key here, always make it a “one-click” process. Tip Directly From Lindsey: Your form should only ask for minimal information. Focus just on these three items- first name, email address, submit button. Add a picture of your free offer in return for their email address – Always remember, FREE items are always up for grab. Make your landing page mobile friendly Always remember that almost everyone now has a smartphone. If your site is not mobile friendly and optimized then they will not spend time on your website. How Do You Effectively Generate High Quality Web Traffic and Leads? Lindsey knows that generating traffic and leads from the internet is very important and knowing HOW to create this traffic and leads are two different things. She mentioned that though it is challenging, there are virtually limitless amounts of resources and techniques available to make big things happen for you. As a matter of fact, Lindsey reminds us on this interview that if you want absolutely the highest quality web traffic and leads, then you need to focus on only one main thing, and that is to be transparent and keep your customers happy...and not forcing them to through the waters of online marketing options.   Lindsey’s Top 5 Proven Tactics To Generate A Never Ending Cycle Of High Quality Traffic And Leads Lindsey has 5 proven tactics to generate a never ending cycle of new faces for your small business. If you start implementing these in your business now, you’ll launch yourself ahead of your competition. Invest In Having A Killer Website Your main website is the central part of all your online activities. It is absolutely essential that your website is super easy to understand, crystal clear and straightforward.   Invest in making your website’s design beautiful. Your website should also be responsive and interactive. Have A Great Marketing Plan That Will Result In Generating Traffic What good is a website without traffic? Lindsey advises, after you have setup an awesome-killer website, you now need to focus on marketing your website. The best way to do this is by utilizing the social media channels and search engine optimization. This will funnel huge amounts of traffic to your site. Catch Your Target Audience’s Attention Now this is where you need to create a targeted landing page. Having a landing page will not just increase your sales conversion rate, it will also give your visitors precisely what they are looking for.   Email Marketing Is Not Dead Lindsey tells us that “Email marketing is NOT dead”. It is actually the powerhouse for generating leads online - if used wisely.  Her best piece of advice? Make it simple. Don’t ask for a lot of information. Their email address is the only information that you REALLY need. Your goal should be for your targeted audience to deeply desire your irresistible offer and subscribe to your mailing list with just “one-click”. Build A Long Lasting Relationship Let’s face it, most of our website visitors are not really ready to purchase just yet. Therefore, Lindsey gives us another great piece of advice: Nurture your leads through a “Know, Like and Trust autopilot email sequence”. This will ensure that when they are ready to spend and subscribe, it will be with you. [content_toggle style="1" label="Click%20Here%20To%20Read%20The%20Full%20Transcript%20Of%20The%20Show" hide_label="Hide"] Lindsay:           This is one click Lindsey and I’m social media business hour with Nile and Jordan and today you’re going to learn how to leverage social media and generate more traffic and leads for your small business. Woman:          In business and know the way forward most include social media. Perhaps you find it a bit confusing. Even frustrating. Well, you have no idea how to make it work for your business. Fear not. We interview some of the best social media experts in business who will share their experiences, ideas and knowledge. Plus offer tips and tricks to make using social media a breeze. Leverage the power of social media and grow your business now. Welcome to social media business hour with your host Nile Nickel. Jordan:            Hello and thank you again for joining us. This is Nile’s trusty sidekick and co-host Jordan and I’d like to take a moment to share with you how you can benefit from Nile’s incredible experience using social media for real business success. If you’re an entrepreneur or thinking about starting your own business then using social media might be the most cost effective and time effective way to get your business real results. That’s not to mention much of what you can do to get those terrific results on social media is even free. Take Linked In for example. Nile always says it’s the best social media platform for business today. And that’s why I recommend you go to linkedinfocus.com and start your social media education today. Sign up for Nile’s free tips, tricks and strategies. Once again, it’s free and it only takes a few seconds. Go to linkedinfocus.com today. You’ll be glad you did. Nile:                 Hey, welcome back and we’ve got one click Lindsay on tonight Jordan. Jordan:            One click Lindsay. Nile:                 Isn't that a name? Lindsay:           That’s right. That’s right. Jordan:            I like that. Lindsay:           Thank you. Nile:                 I have to ask Lindsay, where did you get that name? Lindsay:           Well, essentially I was a web developer and there’s a difference between a website that just kind of sits there and a website that actually generates traffic and leads for your small business which is what we all need. And so I had a client of mine and we were constantly working on this landing page and for every conversation that I was having with them I was constantly referring to we have to get them to click that button, we have to get them to click. And eventually we got that landing page to work really well and he came back to me and said you’re one click Lindsay. You got them to click the big subscribe now button so from then on I thought it was kind of catchy and that’s really what everyone’s goal should be is to get people to make that one click and actually get enough people to your website to make that click so it kind of -- that’s what I’m going with. Jordan:            That’s awesome. Nile:                 I have to say I think that’s bold. Lindsay:           Thank you. Bold. Nile:                 Because I don’t know that I can be that bold. Can you imagine one click Nile? Lindsay:           Yes, I can. But you can't steal it. Can we come up with something else? No. I’m going to let you keep one click. Trust me. Jordan:            We could call you Linked In Nickel. How’s that? Lindsay:           Yeah. That’s cute. Nile:                 Linked In Nickel. Jordan:            Linked In Nickel. Nile:                 Well, as you probably gathered one click Lindsay is a web strategy expert. She works with small business owners to help them utilize the web, to produce -- that’s key. To produce. You like that Jordan? Jordan:            I do. It sounds much better than branding or getting your image out there. No. produce. Nile:                 Yeah. Produce more website traffic and leads because traffic in of itself isn't important unless you get leads from it so she’s got those married together. I love that Lindsay. And she’s -- Lindsay:           Yeah. I mean, I could send a bunch of spammers to your website but that really wouldn’t help you get phone calls now would it? Nile:                 No. That just messes up everything for the people that really want to get on there so we don’t like traffic without leads. Lindsay:           That’s right. Nile:                 Traffic with leads, great thing. And Lindsay’s a founder and CEO of trafficandleads.com Bit catchy, don’t you think? Jordan:            I think so too. Nile:                 Goes with one click Lindsay. I mean, she’s all about that. Lindsay:           I like you guys. I like you guys a lot. Nile:                 Well, she specializes in driving traffic, getting leads and the -- I love this. The art of nurturing leads to become lifelong clients. Lindsay:           Which all starts with social media by the way. Nile:                 Oh, I like it. But I like the art of nurturing. I’ve got this gourmet one click traffic and leads strategy in my head now. Lindsay:           Well, I guess I can sign off for the day. No, I’m kidding. Nile:                 And one click Lindsay is an expert in landing pages, email sequences, search engine ranking, newsletters, analytics, social media, pay per click ads, websites, blogging and the list goes on and on and on and on. I bet you like to talk a lot too, don’t you Lindsay? Lindsay:           I do but I’ve been doing this for a very long time and there’s so many myths and everyone gets so confused and overwhelmed that I do tend to know a lot about what’s going on out there. Nile:                 Well, one thing that I know about one click Lindsay, she knows how to utilize the myriad of online marketing options to get what we all want and that is not traffic but traffic with leads and produce more paying clients. That is -- I mean, that’s what you want at the end of the day. Jordan:            That’s solid. Nile:                 I think we’re done here. Jordan:            Yeah. Lindsay:           Enjoy. Nile:                 Hey, great show today. Jordan:            Lindsay has left the building. Nile:                 Well, I know that you talked about how social media is really the corner stone to this process so tease us with that. Tell us a little bit about it. Lindsay:           I will. I will definitely call it the cornerstone and the reason why I like social media so much and the birth of social media recently is because it’s the quickest way to generate that high quality traffic that actually produces leads where if you were to run a search engine optimization campaign, that can take three, four, five months. Where if you do a good social media campaign you can drive those leads from your social media channels to a very nice landing page and get people on your list. So social media’s great because you can start building those relationships, you can target the people in the area with the interests that you’re after and really target market them to get that very perfect traffic to come to your website. Nile:                 As we’re talking about this here I figure that we have a problem Jordan. Jordan:            Uh-oh. Nile:                 Well, we probably need to understand what a landing page is. We’re talking about websites and landing pages on it so -- Jordan:            You mean, it’s not a website? Nile:                 Lindsay, we need your help. We need your help. Lindsay:           Nile and Jordan, you have so much -- I’m kidding. Okay. Well, so there is a difference between your website, your like main website where people go to find out about you and your company and all of your wonderful projects and everything that you’ve ever done. That is what we’re going to call just like your regular corporate website. Well, a corporate website should have a myriad of subpages and these pages should all have very specific goals to them. So for example, let’s take a chiropractor. I have a chiropractor client. He has a corporate website all about mister chiropractor but we also created a very specific landing page for those experiencing back pain only. So I have this website. It’s about back pain. If I am a person with back pain and I go to this website I can see he is the man for me because this website has a guy grabbing his back and that’s exactly how I feel and it has a whole bunch of pain points about how much that hurts your life because you have back pain and how this guy is going to fix it and all these testimonials about everybody’s back pain that mister chiropractor has ever fixed and so I know he is the guy for me. So I am going to have more of a likelihood to actually click that button, right. So that is the difference between a main website and a landing page. A landing page is about a very specific topic. It’s going to be kind of duplicated a lot on your website. Now, from your website you’re not going to be able to get to all these landing pages. They’re just kind of hanging out there ready for an SEO campaign or a very dedicated social media campaign to drive those individuals with back pain to this landing page to let them know that you are the man for them. Nile:                 So if I’m mister chiropractor I probably have people with back pain and neck pain and foot pain and that are pain in the -- oh, that’s another one. Hold on. But what you’re saying is you’re going to have different landing pages for each one of those little niches that the chiropractor may deal with? Lindsay:           Yes. And don’t get overwhelmed by it because they’re pretty much a carbon copy of each other except you’re going to change those key words or those key pain points because essentially when people -- if you were to drive people to just a generic website they’re going to kind of look all over and be like, oh I don’t know if this guy really does back pain but you kind of want to make it look like you’re a specialist. The other thing about a landing page is you don’t want it to have a menu. You don’t want them to be like my two year old and kind of like wanting to click around. You want -- this is the information, I want you to fill out this form and schedule an appointment, get on my list, whatever and go from there. That’s why lead pages is so popular. We’ve probably all heard of lead pages and they’re very good at this and if you ever make a lead page you’ll notice that it has nothing really to do with your website but it’s basically a video or a bold list of items and a nice form and a big red button. And that is a landing page and they work and that’s why lead pages are so popular and work so well. Jordan:            Yeah. I think that’s a really good point Lindsay. We actually use lead pages as one of the tools that we use and just to give everyone an idea of what it is give lead pages a little bit of free exposure here. When we build our websites and our landing pages we have a myriad of ways that we can do that. We can do that with Word Press, we can do it with Drupal. Lead pages really just specializes in kind of a drag and drop -- you see what you get, no coding involved, super easy way of just building your landing page and man, it’s really a dream. It’s a nice, nice website. Nile:                 So I’m -- I need help here. I need clarification. Jordan:            Okay. Nile:                 So we’re talking about the function of lead pages and what they are but now we also just switched in your conversation and question Jordan to lead pages, the company. Jordan:            Okay. Nile:                 There’s a difference there. Jordan:            Yeah. That’s true. Nile:                 Do you use lead pages, the company to create the lead pages on your website or is that something you do on your website yourself? Lindsay:           No, no, no, no. I was totally talking about lead pages, the company. Jordan:            I knew it. I knew it. Senile? Nile:                 I am see Nile. What are you talking about? Okay. Good. We’re talking about lead pages, the company. Our folks like Tim Page and Bob and those beloved that we’re talking about lead pages, the company. Jordan:            Yeah. Nile:                 So Lindsay. Lindsay:           Yeah. Nile:                 Tell us more about that. Lindsay:           About utilizing lead pages, the company? Nile:                 The lead pages, the company. Jordan:            The tool. Nile:                 We’re now doing an advertisement for lead pages even though they didn’t know it. Lindsay:           I know. But I mean, it’s a super useful tool and they were very revolutionary because -- in coming up with that because it’s such an important tool for small business owners. Yeah, you can get a Word Press plugin to create the lead pages and all of that but you do have to have a bit of HTML and CSS hand to be able to do those and make them look decent. So lead pages came out, there’s these beautiful templates, they’re proven to word so it’s an excellent option for any small business owner to create these exact lead pages that I’m talking about. Nile:                 Now, Jordan I understand that on one of our lead page processes that are going on right now you found a recent problem. Jordan:            Oh, yeah. Yeah. We’ve been using the lead pages here for a while and now we’ve got a Facebook can. Nile:                 A Facebook can? I’m glad that you have problems like I do every so often. Jordan:            That’s right. By the end of the show I’ll be spot on. We’re running a Facebook campaign to a lead pages page that is hosted by lead pages but as far as anyone is concerned, it’s our page and on that page we can open it up for Facebook comments. So we’ve got a bunch of Facebook comments from our Facebook ad showing up on our lead pages page. If you follow me. Nile:                 I’m confused already but I think I’m there. Jordan:            So the end result is a new prospect gets to our lead pages page, they see our offer and then they see all of these great comments that people have left from Facebook. Oh, wow. This is great stuff, thanks so much. Nile:                 That sounds super. Jordan:            Yeah, absolutely. Lindsay:           Yeah. Social proof. It’s powerful. Jordan:            Yeah. With tiny little exception. Nile:                 Oh, here it comes. Jordan:            A lot of those people may be fake profiles but a lot of those people are leaving spam in our comments as well. So they’re saying here, check this fitness thing out. Nile:                 Oh, so we just need to delete those. Jordan:            Yeah. I would love to just delete those but so far it looks like lead pages only allows me to turn on or off the whole section of comments. I can't get rid of any particular comment through lead pages. I think. I’m about 80 percent sure at this point that I cannot. Nile:                 You know what? We have an expert here. We have one click Lindsay. Lindsay:           Yeah. One click Lindsay -- see, I don’t use -- I don’t personally use lead pages for my company. I help clients with it a lot but I actually -- I kind of specialize in making custom lead pages so I have not run into that problem so I can't help you. Jordan:            It’s all my problem. Lindsay:           I’m sorry. Shoot. Jordan:            That’s alright. Lindsay:           But it doesn’t sound like a great problem unfortunately. Nile:                 Can you pass me the tissue? Lindsay:           It’s time to hang up now. Nile:                 Well listen, we’ve about wrapped up our time in our first segment today so we will be jumping out to our next segment and we ask that you just join us there. We’ll be right back. Jordan:            Hello and thank you again for joining us. This is Nile’s trusty sidekick and co-host Jordan and I’d like to take a moment to share with you how you can benefit from Nile’s incredible experience using social media for real business success. If you’re an entrepreneur or thinking about starting your own business then using social media might be the most cost effective and time effective way to get your business real results. That’s not to mention much of what you can do to get those terrific results on social media is even free. Take Linked In for example. Nile always says it’s the best social media platform for business today. And that’s why I recommend you go to linkedinfocus.com and start your social media education today. Sign up for Nile’s free tips, tricks and strategies. Once again, it’s free and it only takes a few seconds. Go to linkedinfocus.com today. You’ll be glad you did. Nile:                 So now we’ve talked about lead pages and how we’re going to use social media and all of that good stuff and so I’m jazzed and I’m excited. Now Lindsay, I’ve got people going to my lead pages and they like what they see and they’re taking some action. What typically do you get them to do? Lindsay:           Well, the easiest thing for them to do is subscribe to your list and return for an awesome, super mega irresistible offer that you’re giving them like a pdf or a free video series. That’s the easiest thing to do because it’s very difficult to convince people to call you or to fill out a boring contact us form or do something for you without you doing something back for them. let me press this -- that whole sentence by social media is a super awesome way to drive people to your lead pages and I’m sure -- and I know you’ve covered this on your show before but it’s worth repeating as Facebook owns all of your fans, Facebook owns all of that, it could change at any moment so we want to try to grab all those fans and all those people that we worked so hard to nurture through social media and get them on an email list where we can actually market to them and we own those names. So that’s the whole point is if you can get people to make that one click and get on your list then you can actually like start nurturing them and selling to them. Jordan:            That’s a really good point and I’d like to just point out one thing real quick and this is just something that just sticks in my -- I know it bothers you Nile but Facebook’s so arbitrary about how they do things that one day we’re going to go to try to communicate with our fans and Facebook’s going to say no. we’re not going to let you do that. Or now we don’t like that kind of communication and it could be something that we thing is relatively harmless. Nile:                 No. I totally agree and that’s -- unfortunately it’s not our sandbox, we don’t get to make the rules. If we want to play in the sandbox, the sandbox owner in this case Facebook gets to make the rules and we could either play in the sandbox or not. Jordan:            Yeah. I like what you’re saying Lindsay. Facebook’s a great place to make friends but to keep them you want to get them on your list. Lindsay:           Yeah. I mean, and what you’re saying is not untrue. I have literally had a client who logged into their page. They had -- let’s see how much. Did they have 25000 fans. And they could not login because Facebook kind of deactivated their account. We had spent a fair amount on running ads for them and it was because they had put some like weight loss stuff on their fan page or running some ads for that in the wrong way so Facebook just -- one morning they couldn’t login which -- let me give your fans a little -- or your listeners a little hint. Is to make someone else also an admin of your page so if your personal account gets shut down someone else can manage that page as well. Nile:                 Yeah. we always use -- and I know -- we talk about all the time that you want to do that not only on Facebook but literally all of the social media platforms that you have pages or groups or things like that set up on. Lindsay:           Yeah. Nile:                 You absolutely positively want to do that so yeah. I agree. Or it could be something as minor and I say as minor. It’s not necessarily minor when it happens to you but your account gets hacked and now your account’s hacked and they’ve got to shut your account down for a period of time. Sometimes you don’t get the same account back. And like you said Lindsay, you sort of passed over that really quickly but you spend a lot of money getting that built and it’s like sorry about that. Lindsay:           Yeah. And they don’t have to apologize. Jordan:            Oh, no. yeah. I was going to say -- Lindsay:           It’s their cross form. They can do whatever they want. Jordan:            I’ve never heard them apologize to anybody. Lindsay:           No. Nile:                 I’m apologizing for them. Jordan:            Oh, okay. Nile:                 But that’s what they say. Sorry about that. It doesn’t matter. It’s done. Jordan:            That’s right. I think the listeners are getting the impression that we have a love hate relationship with Facebook and that’s -- Nile:                 Well, that would be true. Jordan:            I was going to say it’s not inaccurate. Nile:                 Yeah. That would be true. Lindsay:           Yeah. I mean, everybody screamed and hollered when everybody’s reach dropped earlier last year but again you’re kind of using their platform so you can pay a few dollars a day to boost your posts so your fans can see it, right. And they’re actually kind of like doing you -- and I’m going off on another tangent but they’re doing us a favor because your fans don’t want to see a bunch of ads anyway. Otherwise they’ll never come back to Facebook. Nile:                 Yeah. It’s a balancing act and I get the balancing act but I also get that if they want to take your money for ads that -- yeah. so anyway, we’ll leave that alone because now we’ve just become -- we’re crying in our beer and the big problem is I don’t have a beer right now so that’s not going to work. Lindsay:           And this is an evening show. What a crock. Nile:                 Great. Well, normally I drink the bourbon on the evening show. I don’t even have my bourbon here tonight. What’s up with that? Jordan:            So you’ve got 99 problems and having no bourbon is one of them. Nile:                 Yeah. That’s the big one. Big one. So  help us out here. Can you give us an idea of -- or a description -- maybe some of the qualities of a good landing page? Lindsay:           Sure. Absolutely. There’s a few main components to a landing page. First one is a beautiful, big, bold headline that basically addresses their pain point. Back to the chiropractor example. It’s going to say having back pain? I can solve that. Big, bold. Okay? Typically left hand side you’re going to have a video which -- you had a lovely guest on talking about the importance of video but nobody ever wants to do video but have a video of you saying how you can cure back pain and how you’re the super hero of all back pain problems. If you don’t feel like doing video then you want to do a nice bulleted list of how you can address these back pain issues. On the right hand side you’re going to have this beautiful form that I was talking about asking for very minimal information. First name, email, submit. And a picture of your free offer or whatever you’re going to give them in return for their email address. Bellow that, you’re going to want to have this wonderful social proof. You guys were talking about that with that Facebook plugin. And that is about all there is to a landing page. Obviously, it needs to look super nice, it needs to look really great on mobile and it needs to have some nice imagery to make the person feel like you can solve their problem. Jordan:            That’s great and not to beat a great horse but you covered an awful lot very quickly and it’s all such good, good information. Let’s just take a half a step back here. When you’re writing a headline and you’re off -- you’re creating your irresistible free offer, we don’t want to go milli-mouth on it, we don’t want to just go yeah. We can probably do this for you. No. we want to make it bold, right. Lindsay:           Yes. Bold. You are the super hero, you are the man of their back pain dreams and the five bullet points as to why and what you can fix. Jordan:            That’s great. And with every one of those things and correct me if I’m wrong here. With every one of those things we just simply see a boost in conversions, right. Lindsay:           Right. Jordan:            So if you do one thing you’re going to get a certain number of conversions meaning people who are interested and sign up. and if you keep on kicking it up a notch you’re just going to continue to increase those conversions and from what I’m to understand video really is the best so it does take the longest to kind of map it out and really think through a good video but that’s really important, isn't it? Lindsay:           Video is super duper important and that’s why you guys dedicated one of your last episodes to it but I would say even though I tell clients that’s going to convert more people, seriously though, it’s not a big deal if you’ve got your cell phone, take a nice 30 second video of yourself. Like five percent of my clients will ever do it. And it’s a pain but it totally converts. Jordan:            So in other words, if 95 percent of the people are not doing it and you’re one of the five percent who is you get to stand out. Lindsay:           That’s right. You’ll make the most money, you’ll get the most leads, you’ll get the most options. It’s true. Jordan:            You know it helps if you un-mute yourself when you want to go talking to us. Just an idea. Lindsay:           Unless we’re having connection problems. Nile:                 I was. I was having problems connecting with my mic. See, that’s because somebody -- I complain so much about not having the bourbon. I know how bourbon sounds. This is a good thing. This is an adult show. It is the -- Lindsay:           This is officially the best podcast I’ve ever been on. Nile:                 Hey, we like to hear that. One of the things that we glossed over very quickly too was mobile and how critically important mobile is today and so many people don’t think about that. Do you have clients that you have to really work through that process with to explain the importance? Lindsay:           Earlier this year I did and obviously as a web designer you’re kind of on the up and front. Like you know what’s coming so maybe two or three years ago you’re like telling people your website’s got to be mobile friendly. Please, please, please. And like nobody will do it but then at the beginning of the year when I finally had Google backing me meaning on April 15th of this year Google came out and said we’re going to start considering mobile friendliness in who we rank. So that actually pushed the majority of my clients over the edge for them to be like oh, so yeah. Mobile is friendly. But especially for like Facebook ads and social media, people are constantly checking social on their phone. So it’s so important that when they’re redirected from an ad or anything at all even if they want to just -- if you put a post and they want to like follow your blog post to your website that they see a nice mobile friendly version of it because then they’re just like turned away. Most of my clients are well over 50 percent of all their website traffic happen on a mobile device so you cannot ignore it. You cannot ignore it. Jordan:            So that to me, right off the top of my head sounds like there are two major things to consider, right. One is technology. You’ve got to make sure that whatever you’re using, whatever platform you’re using supports mobile, right. Lindsay:           Right. Jordan:            So like lead pages is automatically mobile friendly. There are Word Press themes out there that are automatically Word Press friendly. They call it responsive, right. Lindsay:           Yes. Jordan:            So if you see something says responsive, that’s mobile friendly. But the other thing is kind of the bane of my existence as of recently and that’s short form copy. Nile:                 I was worried for a minute it was going to be me. Okay. Good. It’s short form copy. Jordan:            That’s right. The bane of my existence, Nile Nickel. That’s right. Nile:                 I'm here. Jordan:            The booze hound, bourbon drinking Nile Nickel. Nile:                 Hey, I want Bullet as my sponsor. But let’s get back to short form copy. Jordan:            Let’s hurry and get that shout out going. Yeah. So short form copy. You can't have a super long page anymore, can you? Lindsay:           No, you cannot. No. especially on a mobile device and I know you had a copywriter on a previous episode. Those words, small amount to convince people to do it. Not only because it’s on a mobile and people don’t want to scroll. People love micro content. That’s why Twitter is so popular. You’ve got to keep it short and to the point and do that one, two punch and get them on your list. Then you can kind of like talk their ear off a bit. Nile:                 She’s called one click Lindsay but she’s been clicking our podcast. She’s been listening some. Lindsay:           Oh, I have. Nile:                 So one click Lindsay -- Lindsay:           It’s a great podcast. What can I say? Nile:                 One click Lindsay’s given us a number of clicks. So let me ask a question because we’ve only got a few minutes left in our segment here. So you’ve listened to a few of our segments so what do you think of our different news, different views or as my wife calls it our weird ass news segment. Lindsay:           I really, really like it. I think -- it’s one of my favorites. It’s what keeps me remembering your podcast so keep it up. Nile:                 Oh, wow. Listen to that. Jordan:            Yeah. You just keep fishing Nile. You just keep fishing. Lindsay:           But then again I am one click Lindsay so I mean, as far as trying to stand out and stuff I totally support that. Nile:                 Yeah. We just can't get better than that. That’s perfect. Actually we tried to -- Lindsay:           So does your wife like it? Is that what she’s trying to say? Nile:                 She does like it. She just doesn’t like the name different news, different views. Of course, we did officially just a couple of episodes ago, officially renamed it weird ass news. Lindsay:           I heard that. Nile:                 That was a good story to rename it on, wasn’t it? Lindsay:           Yeah, it was awesome. Nile:                 People will have to go back and listen to that. Well listen, we’ve exhausted this segment. We know that we’ve got a lot coming up. Listen to us in segment three. Jordan:            Hello and thank you again for joining us. This is Nile’s trusty sidekick and co-host Jordan and I’d like to take a moment to share with you how you can benefit from Nile’s incredible experience using social media for real business success. If you’re an entrepreneur or thinking about starting your own business then using social media might be the most cost effective and time effective way to get your business real results. That’s not to mention much of what you can do to get those terrific results on social media is even free. Take Linked In for example. Nile always says it’s the best social media platform for business today. And that’s why I recommend you go to linkedinfocus.com and start your social media education today. Sign up for Nile’s free tips, tricks and strategies. Once again, it’s free and it only takes a few seconds. Go to linkedinfocus.com today. You’ll be glad you did. Nile:                 And Jordan this has been a power packed series. Jordan:            Yes. Lots of golden nuggets. Nile:                 And we’re in the third segment of the series. We’ve got one click Lindsay. Love the name. Lindsay:           Thank you. Nile:                 I just get excited about that. That is such a big, bold name. Lindsay:           Well, you’re going to remember it, right? Like you’re not going to remember my real name which is Lindsay boring Anderson, right? One click Lindsay. And by the way, you can get to my website by spelling Lindsay in any myriad of ways your heart’s desire because I bought every domain name. Jordan:            That’s great. Nile:                 Smart tactic. Jordan:            That is smart. Nile:                 Smart tactic. No, I won't forget one click Lindsay and there’s one thing that I guarantee you has never went with your name and that is boring. I guarantee you. In fact, in your high school yearbook, what was the little subtitle under your name? Lindsay:           Most boring. No, I'm kidding. Nile:                 You just had to try to throw that in, didn’t you. Jordan:            Most likely to bore. Lindsay:           I don’t think I had one. Nile:                 Miss congeniality. Lindsay:           I’m sure that’s what it was. I’m sure that’s what it was. Nile:                 It had to be. Absolutely. So we’ve talked a lot about how to convert or how to get traffic, how to convert that traffic into leads, some social media strategies and tactics to do that. One of the things that I’m really interested in and this is not scripted, not prompted and I can't wait to hear the answer and that is -- Lindsay:           Oh, I hope it’s another question I can't answer. That’s going to be awesome. Nile:                 Okay. Good, good, good, good. Well, we’ll see. Here, I’ll give you some thinking time. But I haven’t asked you the question yet. So the question is this. What do you think is the most difficult obstacle that you fight on a regular basis getting those conversions? See? I need to give the pause. Jordan:            Get some Jeopardy music going. Lindsay:           It would definitely be -- if you want something super specific it’s going to be the wording or that irresistible offer. You need to make that something that the user doesn’t feel like they can just go Google the answer for. You need to make it extremely appealing. I’ve gone through different versions of those irresistible offers with clients until we finally had a winner. You can't just stick something up there like -- I couldn’t just stick one up like 10 places you need to list your website. No one’s going to opt into that. You have to make it special, you have to make it something super unique that they’re actually going to give you their email address for. Nile:                 I think that’s a great golden nugget. Jordan:            That is a great golden nugget. Lindsay:           And you have to put your time into it. Let me add one more thing. Nile:                 Absolutely. Lindsay:           You have to put your time into it and please know -- I’ve had clients just kind of throw -- be like oh, here is my irresistible offer. Maybe the first chapter of my book or what not. But you have to remember this irresistible offer is like the first piece of service or of your representation that they’re going to get from you so you need to pour a bit of heart and soul into that because that’s their initial impression. Don’t just get their email address and send them some piece of garbage. Like make it thought out so that it -- use it as a sales tool. Don’t just use it as ha-ha, I got your email address. See you later suckers. Nile:                 See? I’m telling you. Boring does not go with one click Lindsay. Just doesn’t happen. Jordan:            Congratulations. You’ve just been bait and switched. Lindsay:           Yeah. You know what I’m saying boys. You do. Nile:                 I’m enjoying this because now we’re boys. I get bourbon, get called boy. We’re doing good. I love it, love it, love it. So you mentioned another thing on there too besides not having this boring offer if you will or your irresistible content. You mentioned copy as another critical thing. So I suspect that you probably go through revisions on both of those. Lindsay:           Yes. Now I’m going to get into the part that stresses everybody out which is AB test thing. Quite literally you can change a word, change a color of a button, add an image with an arrow pointing and it can increase your conversion rates. But I get a lot of people stressed out about that because you don’t even know where to start. It’s like okay. Everything I’m going to put on here is garbage because I can just make it all better. Just -- you’ve got to start with something and then you’re going to want to -- maybe you see something that catches your eye then go and reword your button. Maybe a certain button on a landing page you visit caught your eye so go try that. Try it for a few days and see if it improves. If you talk to someone about AB testing it can be super overwhelming. I get overwhelmed and I’m in the business. But just know it’s just like life and as a person you can always constantly improve but be happy getting what you’re getting and just kind of test it out. Don’t get overwhelmed by it. But yes. One piece of copy can increase your conversion rates by a certain percentage which sucks. Nile:                 I think we should call it BA testing anyway. Lindsay:           Yeah. Nile:                 Well, there’s a reason for that. You see, because we’re always trying to improve our grade so if we start out with a B we’re trying to get an A. Lindsay:           That’s very true. Nile:                 So everybody says AB testing. I think it should be BA testing. Just personally. Lindsay:           You know what? Let’s go ahead. Let’s start an internet marketing movement and start that way and we will know it started on the social media business hour. Nile:                 It started right here. Lindsay:           On this evening. Yes. Nile:                 You heard it here the first. It was bourbon inspired. Bullet I might mention. No, really, I have a friend that has a program. He calls -- and it’s a sales training program. But I think it’s applicable here. It’s beat your best. And what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to create your best but you’re trying to then beat it. So you really put your best foot out there. You’re trying to do something you think is good but then you’re trying to make it better. Lindsay:           Yeah. That’s really awesome and I think -- yeah. That’s a really good way of going about it. Don’t try to get overwhelmed by should this be green or red and what should the caps all say or whatever. Just put something out and like you said beat your previous score. It’s like playing Pac-man when you were a kid. You always just wanted to beat the previous score, right. Nile:                 Yeah. Absolutely. And imperfect action I should say. Lindsay:           Love it. Nile:                 Is better than perfect inaction. Lindsay:           Love it. Nile:                 Do something even if it’s wrong and then get better. Lindsay:           True. Nile:                 So I love it. Jordan:            Lindsay, I’ve got a quick question for you and I’d really like to hear if you’ve seen the same results but all the guys that I’ve talked to who’ve really maximized split AB testing have said I just changed this one word or I just changed the picture or -- it’s just -- it was such a minor change and then they boosted their -- it’s not like they rewrote the whole page to get better results. Do you find the same thing? Lindsay:           Yes. Absolutely. And that’s actually the key to AB testing is you don’t want to have like version A and then version B being something completely different. Like I literally was running a Facebook ad and I changed the word amazing to awesome and I kid you not, my cost per like went down about 50 cents. No clue why. I was pretty happy about it and it stayed around but you just want to make very subtle changes so you actually know what made the difference. Nile:                 Okay. Lindsay:           Because actually you could redo your whole page and it could get way crappier results and we don’t want that. Nile:                 So I am now -- my mind is spinning and it’s not from the bourbon I might add. Lindsay:           Yet. Nile:                 You changed -- what was it? Amazing to -- Lindsay:           Awesome. Yeah. Awesome to amazing. Nile:                 Awesome to amazing. Lindsay:           Or was it -- now I’m all backwards. Maybe I’m drinking too. One or the other. Nile:                 But that one word changed. You mentioned -- I assume it changed your results but it also changed your ad cost and it lowered it. Lindsay:           Yes. Jordan:            Which means that people were engaging more because of that one word, right. Nile:                 Man isn't that just so totally amazing though? Not only are you getting better results, you’re getting lower ad cost. Jordan:            Well, I think it’s awesome. Lindsay:           And amazing. Nile:                 I think it’s amazingly awesome. That’s the next BA test. I’m sorry. Lindsay:           And like I said, I -- it can get really overwhelming to do that but as a starting point you guys can do some like Googling, like best color for buttons, best -- all the best things because people kind of know like really if you have a blue button versus a green button on the get my free offer now button, that all important, one click button, it can totally change. And so there’s tons of articles on Google about the best colors for everything and all of that and again it’s another good reason to use lead pages, the company because they have tested all that out and that’s why they have this format that we’re all used to seeing because it works. Nile:                 I’m thinking that we need to go to a light golden brand. As in color. Jordan:            You mean the color of the bourbon in your glass right now? Lindsay:           Have I not taught you anything? Nile:                 That’s exactly what I was thinking. So listen, we’ve been talking about this. You get asked this all the time so what’s your canned answer for how can I make my website more effective? Lindsay:           Let me pull up my beauty pageant answer for this one. Nile:                 Oh, I like it. This is exciting. Lindsay:           World peace. Nile:                 World peace. Lindsay:           I’m kidding. Nile:                 Hey, that just went with Miss Congeniality. I’m just saying. Lindsay:           Yes, I did. Right, right? In fact, my high school mascot was a potato so Miss Rosti right here. So anyway -- Jordan:            I’ve got nothing. Lindsay:           To make your website better -- listeners please stay with us. Anyway, to make your website better we’ve kind of discussed that. My number one, two and three things. Have a video on the home page. Number one. Number two, make sure it’s super duper mobile friendly. Pretty please. Number three, spend some time on copy. Don’t just do some throw away website. Literally spend some time on copy and address the pain points of the people coming to your site and let them know you can address their issues. Nile:                 Hey, that’s worth the cost of admission right there. Jordan:            Yeah. Everybody got a seminar for this podcast. Nile:                 They really did and they got to enjoy some humor, some bourbon. Jordan:            No. That was just you. Nile:                 They didn’t. Just me. Yeah. I’m sorry. I did. So I have to be thankful for that but Lindsay you have given just awesome information. One click Lindsay in a completely non boring way. I know that there are people that are clamoring right now. I know our listeners. They’re clamoring to say we want to get more from this exciting one click Lindsay person. How do we find out more about her? Lindsay:           Well, you can visit my website where I do tons of video and tons of ways where you can improve your conversion rate and get more traffic and leads to your website at oneclicklindsay.com and you can spell that however you want. You’ll find me. Nile:                 I like that. That is also a powerful piece of advice. Using the common misspellings. Lindsay:           Yes. Well, my original company -- anyway, my original company name was webimpakt with a K and I swore I didn’t want to ever tell someone how to spell something ever again. So I learned my lesson. Nile:                 Makes absolutely perfect sense to me. Jordan:            That’s a good lesson to learn. Very good lesson to learn. And most people don’t know that they can do that. They can relatively cheaply go and get all the different domain spellings and make sure that they do redirects to the right website and all that good stuff. Lindsay:           Yeah. Nile:                 And so again, that’s worth the cost of admission. So just remember you heard BA testing first here on social media business hour tonight with Nile and Jordan and one click Lindsay and to give everybody your name again it’s Lindsay Anderson but Lindsay not boring Anderson. One click Lindsay. Jordan:            Lindsay awesome Anderson. Lindsay:           That’s better. Thank you. Nile:                 Lindsay awesome amazing Anderson. My daughter has three names or two middle names so we could do the same thing here. Lindsay:           That will totally work. I love it. Nile:                 Yeah, yeah. So there you go. Hey, thanks so much for joining us on the social media business hour. Lindsay:           Thanks boys. I really appreciate it. It was super fun. Nile:                 Oh, thank you so much and to our listeners, thank you as well. We love all the comments and feedback we get on our Facebook page at social media business hour as well as socialmediabusinesshour.com where you could listen to the episode again because I know you’ll want to. You can find all the links. This is social media business hour episode 121. But I want to thank you again and hopefully you learned a few new ideas or concepts. Maybe you were just reminded of a few things you already know but you haven’t been doing to improve or grow your business. You know that our desire is that you take one of the things that you learned or were reminded of today, you apply it to your business this week. Not next week. This week. We know that a small change can make a big difference and I’m committed to bringing you at least one new idea each week that you could implement. So go back and listen, identify just one small change that you could make to your business this week and see what a big difference it will make for you. So until next week, this is Nile Nickel. Now, go make it happen. Woman:          Social media business hour is powered by linkedinfocus.com. For show notes, updates and to pick up the latest tips and tricks head over to socialmediabusinesshour.com. Until next time. Thanks for listening. [/content_toggle] Weblinks: Website: www.oneclicklindseys.com www.trafficandleads.com Facebook Handle: www.facebook.com/moretrafficandleads Twitter Handle: @moretandl

“It's a dream. I am so thankful and just hope I can return the favor to the community because you all have been such a gift in my life. If I can give anything back, I hope that my story helps people.”Lindsey's episode has SO much to offer! From listening to over 200 VBAC Link birth stories and extensive evidence-based research, and now fresh off of her own HBAC, Lindsey shares her list of helpful VBAC tips. As an active duty Air Force servicemember, Lindsey also shares tips on finding birth support during a military PCS as well as getting a referral to birth outside of the hospital under military insurance. Finally, Lindsey shares her husband's journey with paternal postpartum anxiety and an update on how his anxiety levels are now– three months after her HBAC.Lindsey's stories are just as impressive as she is and we are so honored to have her on the podcast today! Additional LinksHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsThe VBAC Link Facebook CommunityFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Hello, you guys. Welcome to The VBAC Link Podcast. We have a story coming to you today from Maryland. We have a mama. Her name is Lindsey and she married her high school sweetheart which I think is so fun. So fun. They have two boys, right?Lindsey: Yes. Meagan: Pretty fresh postpartum. Three months out. Lindsey: Pretty fresh. Meagan: Pretty cool. Your husband is a stay-at-home dad and you are on active duty Air Force and work as a dentist. How? You are a powerhouse. That is awesome. Lindsey: Thank you. Meagan: You are doing a residency and you have lived all over the country and seen so many things and you've had a VBAC. Lindsey: I can't wait to share. Meagan: Yes, I can't wait to get into this story. You guys, one of the things we are also going to be talking about today is something that I actually don't know if we've ever talked about on the podcast but it is something that I feel like I saw in my husband when I was going to VBAC for the first time with my second birth. I saw what happened and he shut out, so we want to talk about paternal postpartum anxiety a little bit today because it's something that we don't focus on highly. We are focused on the mom giving birth and the experience that they have had, but it's so important not to forget about our significant others or our birth partners, or anybody there that was in the space and witnessed birth. I'm excited to be talking in just a minute with Lindsey about paternal postpartum. So if you have a significant other that may have had a traumatic experience, definitely listen up. It's going to be great and then also sometimes, I think just hearing these stories and hearing maybe some of the characteristics and things that are happening, it might help you know. I didn't know until he had said things when I was preparing for my vaginal birth after two Cesareans, he was saying things and I was like, “Okay. You are not okay completely. That triggered you and let's talk about it.” So I'm really, really excited. Review of the WeekOf course, though, we have a review of the week and this is a long one. I would always make Julie read the long reviews because I swear I can't read and hear myself at the same time. I just get mixed up so we'll see how this goes.Lindsey: You've got this. Meagan: This is from likap8 so thank you. It says, “I did it. I have my VBAC.” It says, “Hello, ladies. I was waiting to write this review since I was pregnant and tell you thank you very much from the bottom of my heart. I knew I was going to achieve a VBAC thanks to the knowledge you provide. When I was 12 weeks pregnant, my doula team recommended it to me and I immediately felt really empowered by listening to every single story. I finally had something real from real women telling me that VBACs are possible, that I just needed to educate myself and do everything in my hands to make it happen, and that's what I did.”“I hired a doula team. I went to the chiropractor. I did Spinning Babies. I followed doulas on Instagram that tell you what exercise you must do to prepare for labor. I did Hypnobirthing. I submerged myself in everything about natural birth and I trained my body and my mind for this big day. I had my VBAC on March 15, 2022” which is almost a year ago. Actually when this comes out, it will be over a year ago. It says, “and it was the most healing experience. I did it thanks to you all and people like you to help women like me have our dream birth.”Wow. That was incredible. Such an amazing review. Thank you so much. We are always smiling when we see these reviews come in on Apple Podcasts or Google. Sometimes like I've said in the past, we'll just get an email that says, “Hey, I just want to quickly write a review.” So if you have a review for us, please shoot it over. We would love to read it on the next podcast. Lindsey's StoriesMeagan: Okay, Lindsey. Are you ready? Lindsey: I'm ready. I'm excited. Meagan: I'm so ready. Thank you so much. I'd absolutely love to turn the time over to you and share all your wealth of knowledge and your experience that these listeners are definitely going to benefit from.Lindsey: Thank you so much for having me. This is a moment that I daydreamed so many times when I was walking with my son, well, when I was pregnant with him and when I drove. At one point, I was driving to a provider in Virginia and I would listen to it on the drive. I was like, “Maybe one day I can be on the show.” Meagan: And here you are. Three months postpartum. Lindsey: Oh my gosh. It's a dream. I am so thankful and just hope I can return the favor to the community because like your review said, you all have been such a gift in my life. So if I can give anything back, I hope that my story helps people. Meagan: Awesome. Lindsey: Yeah. So I first learned about The VBAC Link actually right after I had my Cesarean. It was a week after my Cesarean. I searched #vbac on Instagram and you guys popped up. I started following it and tucked it in the back of my mind because I had heard about a VBAC and I knew that I wanted to try for that. I didn't start listening to the podcasts until I was 24 weeks pregnant. My family and I had just done another military move. We moved from Kansas to Maryland and I was pretty overwhelmed by starting over again. The moves have been pretty good, but when you start adding kids to the mix, it makes it a little harder. I felt like I didn't have a community and I was starting this intense training program and feeling kind of lonely. I felt like I didn't have the time or mental capacity to learn everything I should learn to have a good VBAC, so the podcast was such a gift because it packaged it into a reasonable amount of time that I could do when I was multitasking and then provide evidence-based information and hear a powerful story. It was just everything that I needed, so I learned so much from you all. I'm so thankful. My Cesarean story, to start out, I wanted an unmedicated birth with my first son. We hired a doula. We found the only midwife in the town where we were living in Kansas who covered our military insurance. The base I was at didn't have OB care so we got an automatic referral. I kept a really active pregnancy. I even did cardio kickboxing up until the day before my water broke. Meagan: Cool. That's awesome. Lindsey: I was like, “Yeah, I've got this.” But a couple of things looking back on my pregnancy, I did have a brand new midwife. She said I would probably be the first birth that she attended which is fine. Meagan: Yeah, you've got to start somewhere. You've got to start somewhere. Lindsey: Yeah, but the way that it worked in the city where I was living in Kansas, she was not on her own. She was actually part of an OB practice. She couldn't be on her own so that practice, I found out later, had the highest Cesarean rate in town. I didn't know that at the time. She also gave me the recommendation to start using primrose oil vaginally at 38 weeks and I didn't know that that was an induction method. I found that out on your podcast. She said that it would prevent tearing so I was like, “Oh.” I found out things later. Things I didn't ask about. I didn't know to ask about them. My water started leaking at 40 weeks and 1 day. I woke up at 3:00 AM. It was just a trickle and mild contractions. I went back to bed and called the midwife on call at 6:00 AM. She was like, “Well, you have an appointment today at 8:00 so you can wait for that.” At 8:00, she checked and my waters had ruptured. She left the room to talk to the OB and then when she came back, she was like, “You know, let's have you eat some breakfast and then have you come start Pitocin.” The hospital had a birthing center across the street from the hospital so you weren't actually at the hospital but they were prepared if something went south. You could have a Cesarean there too, but not really meant for it. So then I arrived to the birthing center, or a birthing suite, and they didn't have a cordless monitor so they put me on a monitor that had the cord. I remember being really disappointed because I was like, “I want to walk around,” but it was really limited with that. They started Pitocin and really an hour later, I was having a hard time handling them. The contractions were really hard and really fast. We called my doula and she came. I remember my midwife saying, “Don't scream.” I said, “Okay, well I don't know what to do. I'm trying not to scream.” I labored with Pitocin for seven hours and got to 6. My midwife then had me stop Pitocin and labor on my own for three hours. I remember sitting in the bath and not wanting to get out. I was like, “I don't want to get out of this bath.” I wasn't really feeling any contractions at this time. I did have the labor shakes and I remember asking why. No one really answered me why I was having the shakes. I found out on your show later, one episode, and I was like, “Oh, that's normal. I didn't know that it was normal.” Meagan: So was the water helping you contraction-wise? You weren't really feeling them or did it just stop?Lindsey: Unfortunately, she checked me and I was still at a 6 three hours later. Meagan: So when they turned Pitocin off, your body wasn't quite in that active phase on its own. Lindsey: Okay. Meagan: Okay. That's when I was like, “Hmm.”Lindsey: I know. She put me back on Pitocin and I said, “If you're going to do that, you're going to have to give me an epidural,” because my body had just calmed down from not having it for three hours. The epidural worked so well. I was numb all the way up my chest. Meagan: Oh wow. Lindsey: I know. I remember asking, “Can we turn this down?” They never turned it down because it never felt less than that. Then seven or eight hours later was when I made it to a 10 and I had got some rest. They said, “Okay, time to push.” Again, I couldn't feel anything. They showed me how to do it. They said, “You're doing it.” After two hours of pushing, my midwife went in and manually tried to turn my son because she said that he was in a weird position. When she did, his heart rate deceled. She told my husband, “Go pull the cord.” He pulled the cord. Eight people flooded in the room and then I heard, “Turn her on my side,” then I was like, “Oh.” So I turned myself on my side and my midwife apologized actually to me afterward. She was like, “I didn't mean for you to turn you on your side,” but I was just like, I don't know if it's because I'm in the military and I heard something so I was like, “I've got to do it.” But we laughed about it. It was something to laugh about. After another hour of pushing, so three hours total, she asked the hospitalist who was working to come in and the hospitalist did a pelvic evaluation. She determined she couldn't get forceps around my son. He was asynclitic and at that point, she said that she recommended a Cesarean. I learned that it's an unplanned Cesarean, not an emergency Cesarean, but still, it felt emergent and it felt unplanned. It felt very unplanned. Meagan: Yeah. That's one of the hardest things for me as a doula, as a mom who has had them, to decipher what is emergent because they treat it as it is an emergency and we are feeling that feeling so we think that we had these emergent situations. Lindsey: Yes. You definitely feel it. Meagan: I'm not saying there aren't. There are definite emergent situations, but sometimes, we label them as emergencies and they're not but the way that everybody is making it seem feels that way. Lindsey: Yes, and the tension was definitely in the room. I mean, even when I was in labor and pushing. Meagan: Was he doing okay? I know he had the decels a little bit, but was he doing okay now? Lindsey: Yeah. Oh yeah. He was stable at that point when they brought me back which was good. So he had had the decels. Then I consented and thirty minutes later, they pulled my son out. He was crying and I cried and felt that instant love that you feel for your baby like you'd do anything for them and it was very special, but I definitely felt really excited and then also really robbed of the birth that I wanted at the same time so it was kind of weird to feel both things at once. Meagan: But that's okay. That's okay. Lindsey: It is okay. What was encouraging though was like, “Man, I labored for nothing.” 20-something hours of labor, but all of those hormones, the midwife did say, “You know all of the hormones you had released are really good for the baby too,” so I was like, “Okay if it worked for something.” So then about 4-5 hours after my son was born, they left us alone for a little bit. They still came and checked on us. I woke up and my husband was pacing the room. I asked him, “What's going on?” He said that he was shaking. I could see that he was shaking and his heart rate was racing. He was really emotional. I told him, “I think you're having a panic attack.” We were married for almost ten years before we had kids, then we were together for five years before that so we'd been together for a long time and I'd never seen him go through anything like that before. I was like, “Oh my gosh, just come,” and I had him lay in the hospital bed with me until he stopped shaking. Yeah, so that was our experience at the hospital, and then we got home and I remember we ordered pizza and he couldn't eat it at home after the hospital. He couldn't eat anything for a few days after we were home. He barely was eating anything. He couldn't be in the same room with our son when he was crying. He felt like another panic attack would come on, then couldn't be in the room when we were sleeping at night. I remember feeling so concerned that he would never be the same again. We would never want any more children. He is my best friend, so it was like, “Oh my gosh. Who do I talk to about this? What do we do?” We actually ended up, he talked to one of the pastors at our church and worked through that. We were like, “Okay. This is a hard moment. We're working through it.” Evenings were the worst at the time. When the sun started to go down, that's when we would try to connect together and talk about what he was feeling and going through. We would pray and we would watch Gilmore Girls which is our favorite show. It seemed like things were slowly getting better, but then five months later, my husband was watching our son and I had already gone back to work after 12 weeks and then he was also watching our friend's baby who is a little bit younger than our son and the baby started crying and he had a panic attack. He called me and I was working across the street. Our base was across the street from where our friends lived. Thankfully that day, a skunk had gotten into the ventilation system at work. Meagan: Oh gross. Lindsey: We were all being evacuated at that moment. They called it a natural disaster. Meagan: Oh my gosh, that's a natural disaster. That is. Lindsey: It was $80,000 worth of work to fix it in the end. It was nuts. I was literally leaving my desk at that moment to go home. I said, “I'll be right there.” So I was there and had him go walk it off. I had heard of a therapy group in town from a friend and got the information. He started therapy pretty soon after. I think it was in that week. He ended up going for the rest of the time we were in Kansas which was I guess a year and a half that he went. It made a huge difference, a huge huge difference. I am really thankful for that. Meagan: Did he feel that the birth itself was what brought everything on? Was that a trigger?Lindsey: Great question. That's what we're thinking is that it was all of the heightened emotions from me being in labor and that not going well, then all of a sudden we were in a Cesarean. The pulling of the cord was something that really stood out in his mind, like, “Oh my gosh. This is a serious thing.” Just that fight or flight reflex was on for that whole time. Meagan: He was the one that pulled the cord, right? He was the one that was told to go pull the cord. Lindsey: He was the one that pulled the cord, exactly. Meagan: Which if you think about it, when someone tells you to go pull the cord when you know that's an emergent, really scary, someone-could-be-dying cord, you can imagine where his mind went. Lindsey: Exactly, exactly. He brings up this story when they brought me in for the Cesarean, they had me on the– I don't really remember because they had given me medicine at that point, but he said that I was on a table naked. No curtains were up. They were rubbing iodine on me or something and he was like, “Oh my gosh. Are they not going to put a curtain up? I'm just going to see my wife being sliced open?” They had my arms tied down. Meagan: Scary. Lindsey: Scary, yeah. He's not a medical person at all. I'm a dentist and he doesn't do the blood thing. He said, “No, that's not for me.” I'm going to bounce back and forth between what he went through and then jump back into the story too. I had a lot of questions about my Cesarean mainly about how did I go from wanting an unmedicated birth to having a Cesarean? I remember asking my midwife at my six-week postpartum because I had done some reading on Evidence Based Birth, the website of how you can wait after PROM so many hours before you start Pitocin. I asked her, “Why did we start so quickly?” It was six hours after I had PROM that we started Pitocin. She said in a hushed voice– no one was in the room with us, but she kept her voice really low. She said, “Oh, it was the OBs that I'm working under.” I was like, “Oh, okay.” I don't know. I was disappointed that I had a Cesarean, but in the state of weakness, it really taught me to rely on faith and it also set me on a path to really deep-dive into the world of birth education. I'm no expert by any means, but I learned so much compared to where I was at the first time. Flashing forward to January 2022, we were celebrating my son's first birthday and I found out I was pregnant. I was nervous and excited. We were going to be getting orders from Kansas to Maryland, so we will flash forward to Maryland. We moved when I was 24 weeks pregnant. My doula, Lauren, came as a recommendation from a friend in the area who lives in Virginia. Lauren, the doula, suggested a practice that was VBAC-friendly. At this point, I am working at a military installation, so they expected me to give birth there, but long story short, I was able to get a referral, so if anyone is on active duty listening to this, hang in there. It's hard. Sometimes you can't get a referral. But I was able to get one thankfully and the practice in Virginia was an hour away so I would drive to the appointments. They were nice, but I didn't see anyone consistently. I did move later on in my pregnancy, so it was hard to see every person because there were so many people that worked there. I did have one experience before I decided to ultimately change to home birth. When I was 30 weeks pregnant, I was feeling menstrual-like cramps and it really concerned me because I know that could be a sign of labor contractions. They didn't go away, so I called. It was a Saturday. I called the OB on call and she said, “Well, why don't you ahead and come to the hospital? I'm working here. We'll put you on some monitors and check.” So I drove and I remember driving by myself and again, feeling really lonely because I was there by myself. My husband was with our son. It was late in the evening. His bedtime would have been soon. I called my doula and she offered to come with me because she's awesome, but I was like, “No, it's okay. I'll just call and check up.” When I got to the hospital, I got checked in. I was crying and the nurse was like, “Oh my gosh, what's going on?” She was really sweet. But the OB popped her head in, looked, and she said something quickly, and walked away. Then I never saw her again. She had the midwife come in and talk to me. The midwife said, “Everything looks good. No contractions. You're probably dehydrated. Let's get you some fluids.” She asked to do a cervical check. We did a cervical check. I was at a 1, but she said that most women who have either given vaginal birth or have dilated to a 10 walk around at a 1 at any time. I was like, “Okay.”Meagan: Or more. 1 or more. Lindsey: I'm sure. I'm sure. She walked away and went to talk to the OB. She came back and said, “Okay, so OB would like you to start some steroids for the baby in case you go into labor.” I was like, “Wait, you just said that I'm fine.” Meagan: I'm not in labor, yeah. Lindsey: Right. I felt really conflicted. I wanted the best for my child. I was confused because I didn't have any other signs of being in labor. There was a woman who was– it was the triage room so it's just curtains. I heard a woman who was the same gestational age as me and she was at a 5 and in labor, so they were like, “Okay, we're going to do this intervention and this intervention.” I thought in my mind, “That makes sense. This woman is in labor. I am not.” I felt really disappointed that the OB didn't come and look me in the eye or talk to me, put her hand on my shoulder, find out that, “Hey, you just moved to a new area. You're stressed out. Stress could make this happen,” which I found out later. So I ultimately ended up declining and had a very healthy pregnancy. It was just that one time that I had that happen for about a week and everything was okay. He actually came a week past my due date, or eight days past my due date so no worries about being early. That's something and I'll touch on this later too, as a provider, it's so important to connect with your patient and in my specialty that I'm getting into, we talk about, “Listen to your patients. They'll tell you what's going on.” It's not that we have to stand over them and make a clinical decision, it's like, “Look at them. Hear what they have to say. They will tell you what the problem is even if they don't know what it is. Their story will tell you.” So it's so important that they do that. Find a provider that's willing to listen. So then at 35 weeks, I was actually listening to an episode of The VBAC Link on my lunch break and I texted my doula. I said, “You know, if I have a third child while we're living here, I really think I'll do a home birth.” She said to me, “It's never too late” –I wrote it down– “to follow your gut and find the perfect birth team. I was like, “That's nice to say that but that is way too stressful to try to figure out a home birth at 35 weeks pregnant, get a new referral from the military,” and I said, “I'll look into it,” but it seemed really overwhelming. She was really encouraging. Meagan: Very daunting. Lindsey: Very daunting. She said that she would support me either way, but she did send me the names of a few midwives in the area. I ended up calling three and one had openings around my due date. I felt really connected to her right away. She put my mind at ease and she had worked with a lot of military families so she knew about my insurance. She actually has delivered over 2000 babies at this point, so tons of experience which was really nice to have.Meagan: Kind of the opposite end of things. Lindsey: The opposite end of things, yeah. We told her we would get back to her. I went home and presented it to Zach because I did all of this in one day. I just ended up having an extended lunch break and called then went back to my residency, then called more. I told my husband about it and he was like, “What?” At that time, we were doing a birth education class with our doula, so we were watching some of the videos that she sent us then we watched a video of the hospital room. He couldn't finish the video of the hospital room. I was like, “Babe if you can't finish the video of the hospital room, how do you think it's going to go if we get in there?” So we thought about it that day and prayed about it, then the next morning, he was like, “Yeah. Let's do it.” I was like, “Okay. Now I need to think a little bit more,” so I took the rest of the week to think about it. We ultimately decided to do it. I remember my first prenatal appointment with her was a few days after that and she spent over an hour with me. I kept looking at the time and I was like, “She's got to go. She's got other patients and I feel guilty.” It was weird. I felt this guilt of, “I'm taking up too much time from her.Then I could tell by her demeanor though, she was in no rush to leave at all. Even when she walked out the door, she was just like, “Okay, yeah.”So with that being said, her appointments were kind of a time range like, “I'll be there around 2:00.” Sometimes it was later. Sometimes it was a little bit earlier so we had flexibility with our prenatal appointments. They were all at our home. Meagan: Which is awesome. Lindsey: Yeah, it was so nice. My HBAC story, at 8:00 PM, I had a few painful contractions the night before my son was born. I texted my doula and she recommended doing the Miles Circuit. Then I texted my midwife and she recommended I have a glass of wine or some Benadryl and go to sleep. I didn't because, at the time, I was like, “Alcohol interrupts your sleep cycle. I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't.” But I probably should have done some Benadryl or something because after I gave birth, I was talking to her about it and she said, because I had these irregular– maybe someone will connect with this– but I had these irregular contractions all night and I was so tired. She said, “Having some Benadryl probably would have helped you sleep and stopped the irregular contractions. I'm like, “Okay. The next time that happens, I will take Benadryl.” But I go into the shower an hour later and that really helped to labor in the shower, just the hot water hitting my back. I was on my hands and knees and I really wanted to let my husband sleep because, in the back of my mind, I was thinking of what happened our first time. I just didn't want that to happen again to him and to us. But I didn't feel like, “Oh, I just have to do this because I have to be strong for the two of us.” It felt like, “Okay, we're a team. I'm able to do it myself right now and then at some point, I'll need him to tap in, but I can do it now.” As much as you enjoy labor, I was like, “Okay, I can do this on my own,” so it was kind of a good time to just be with myself and my baby and think about what was ahead. Zach did bring me a birth ball around 10:00 PM and I used that. At 11:00 PM, I tried to get some sleep. I couldn't get comfortable. I took a nap in between contractions, but they kept waking me up. Then until basically 4:00 AM, they were 5-20 minutes apart so I would try to sleep on the floor but every time a contraction hit, I had to move and get up on my hands and knees. I felt like I just couldn't stay still during the contraction. At 4:00 AM, I was like, “Okay, I need Zach. I need some help.” He worked with me from 4:00-5:00 and did hip squeezes. He was super sweet and encouraging. Then we called my doula at 5:00 and she arrived around 5:30. She was like, “Okay, where are you feeling it?” I was pointing to my back and she said, “Let's get this baby off of your back.” We did some Spinning Babies and this really helped the back labor. I mean, it was still labor, but it was all in the front at that point which was really helpful. The contractions were more regular, still pretty far apart like 10 minutes apart. She said, “All right, you're at a good place.” This was a little before 8:00. She said, “I'm actually feeling really sick by the way.” I was like, “Oh.” She said, ”I called my backup doula just in case, but I just want you to know where I'm at.” I was like, “Oh no, Lauren.” She's like, “Nope, not about me. Don't worry about me.” I was like, “Okay.” But at 8:00 AM, she left, and then within half an hour, it was all in my back and I was like, “Oh my gosh.” I wanted to call her back right away but I also knew, “She is sick. I don't know.” We waited a couple of hours and it actually ended up being a really sweet time for my husband and me because we talked and we prayed and we cried. We just talked about how different our life would be. I mean, we had done that too before our second son was born, but it felt like that was such a special time to talk it out. I'm thankful for that. 10:30, I did call my doula back and she said was going to tough it out and come over, then the backup doula would be coming, but then she called me right back and said, “Lindsey, I have a fever. I'm so sorry.” I was like, “Oh no.” I didn't want to expose myself to a fever and the baby, so she took care of all of that. The backup doula was going to be coming at 12:30 but I was like, “Oh gosh. I have to make it until 12:30.”I found out two weeks before I was giving birth that my pastor's wife is training to be a doula so I invited her to come. I don't know her very well and I especially didn't know her very well at the time, but I told her, “We're going to know each other very well after this.” So we called her to come and it was nice because she is not a birth worker, but it was really beautiful to have her there and she was helping my husband at a few different points. Just watching her cry when the baby was born and I actually heard– jumping ahead here– but I actually heard my midwife telling her, “Okay, this,” and giving her tips. Meagan: Tips and stuff? Lindsey: Tips and stuff, yeah. That might bother some people, but maybe because I've been in school for so long myself, but I liked hearing it too so it ended up being a really beautiful thing. She was praying for us while everything was going on. The whole house was so peaceful. The backup doula ended up coming at 11:30. She came a little bit earlier at 11:30, then I had the pastor's wife, and then when my midwife came, I felt so surrounded by loving, confident women and felt very safe. That's something that I really wanted to feel was just like I knew everyone there. I felt really safe. That's what I felt. At this point, I was back in the shower when the doula arrived. Ashley is her name and I had never met her before. I turned off the shower and I was like, “Thank you for being here,” naked and sobbing. I hugged her. She said, “Okay, let's do some Spinning Babies.” We did a few things and then at 12, it wasn't even that long later, I was like, “I've got to go back to the shower.” So I was back to the shower and things continued to build up.I get out. They called the midwife and Ashley had thought of a few things we could do with Spinning Babies. She and the midwife were immediately on the same page. The midwife was on her way. They were like, “Let's have Lindsey do the side-lying release,” and I was like, “Nothing in me wants to get on the side of the bed.” I looked at her and I said, “I'm done. I've got to go to the hospital. I need meds. I tried. I can't do it.” She was very, very kind and acknowledged what I had to say and said, “Let's just try this.”Meagan: Yeah. It's such a hard thing as a doula because you're like, “I know you want this and you're saying this. I don't want to ignore you and not take you seriously, to then later have you not feel heard or respected…”Lindsey: I can only imagine. Meagan: But you can see a different space than they can see. Yeah. It's a hard space to be in. Lindsey: Right, especially when you met them an hour ago. Meagan: Yes. Oh, I can't even imagine, yeah. Lindsey: Yeah, yeah. No, exactly. I appreciated that she was validating me, but I was like, “No. I've got to go.” But then I was pacing the house in my diaper naked and Zach said I was walking around like a zombie. The little amount in me that could think reasonably was like, “Okay, if I have to go to the hospital then I have to get checked in, and then if I get checked in, then I have to wait for an epidural from the anesthesiologist, then I have to be in the car to get to the hospital. That's going to take so long. Okay. Let's just try it.” So I tried it through three contractions, then she had me flip over to the other side. As soon as I flipped over to the other side, my water exploded. I was wearing those diapers and it felt like the water filled up like a water balloon in my diaper and then burst to the floor. I was like, “Oh my gosh.” I looked down at the water and it was green. I stood up and I was like, “Ashley!” I was hysterical. I was like, “It's not clear. It's not clear.” She was like, “I've been to a lot of births. It's something that happens. We'll talk to your midwife and see what she has to say.” It really ramped up. I went back to the shower. I remember I ran to the shower and turned it on. When I got in, it was cold, but the water warmed up. Meagan: Yeah, but shocking. Lindsey: Shocking, a cold shower, yeah. I was gasping. Then the water warmed up and I started screaming. She really was helping me through the contractions and was like, “Keep it low,” and so sweet in how she did it. I was just following her voice. So really, my husband at this point, when the doula was there, he was like, “I'm going to let her help my wife.” I didn't feel like, “Where is my husband?” I felt like, “Okay, this is good. I'm glad that Ashley is helping me.” Actually, I found out later that he went and cleaned up my water. He was like, “I have something to do,” and he cleaned it up. She reminded me, I failed to mention that when I did want to go the hospital, she reminded me, “When you get to this point, I know you've listened to a lot of birth education and listened to a lot of podcasts,” you know that this means that you are really close. It just didn't feel real. I was like, “Yeah, but they were close. I don't think that I'm close.”Meagan: It's not possible that I'm the same. Lindsey: I just felt like it was not possible, no. I did find this out later too because Jennifer, my midwife, wasn't worried about the water. She said, “The color of the water, when it's bright green, usually means that a baby is in distress, but when it's brown and murky, it just means that the baby is old and has been in there for a while.” Again, he was eight days past his due date because I asked her later, “Why weren't you concerned about it?” So she said that it was fine. That was good to know. Meagan: Yeah, very good to know. Lindsey: Yeah, so then I get in the shower. I had the mucus plug come out, the bloody show, and then things were ramping up. The midwife gets here and they want me to get out. I started to make a grunting noise. I was like, “Oh my gosh. Did I actually just do that?” Ashley said, “Are you feeling pushy?” I said, “I don't know. I think so, maybe.” Then the midwife arrived and she was checking the water. She said, “The water is not warm enough,” because I had used all of the hot water. They were filling up the tub and the water was gone, so my husband was boiling water in the kitchen because there's a certain threshold for the temperature that it has to be. I still didn't believe even though I was making grunting noises that I was going to give birth. I still thought, “I'm going to have to go to the hospital.” They tried to get me to sit on the toilet, and I can't. I was like, “No.” I go to sit down and then I would get back up. I know the toilet is a dilation station and I was like, “Oh, I just can't do it.” When she arrived, my midwife put her hand on my lower back. She never did a cervical check. She put her hand on my lower back. She said to my husband, I found out later, that I was probably a 7 or 8 when she got there. I asked her how she knew that and she said she would feel the tailbone push out and then the back of my buttcrack is a darker color. I was like, “Oh, interesting.” I'm in the tub and they are adding hot water. I am pushing and they don't have to coach me. I'm doing it. They're encouraging m– my doula and my midwife– but my body just knew how to do it which was so cool. I did start to feel the ring of fire which actually to me didn't feel that bad because the whole labor felt really bad. Meagan: It didn't to me either. It just felt like I had a whole ton of pressure. I just remember pressure. I don't remember the full, full ring of fire. Lindsey: No. Oh wait, I did forget one thing. I didn't want to forget this. I didn't think I could do it when I started to get to almost pushing. I think I must have said something. I should ask my husband. I must have said something because my midwife gave me a pep talk and she said, “Okay. Would it help you if you felt your baby's head, like a little bit of biofeedback?” As a dentist, we talk to patients about different things like biofeedback so I was like, “Yeah, that connects with me.” I was like, “I don't know how to do it.” She said, “Reach down, feel, and then you'll feel something firm and squishy. It won't feel like you.” I was like, “Okay.” Then I did. I was like, “Oh my gosh. He's there.” That was definitely a big motivator for me. I didn't do that with my first son. They had offered and I was like, “Oh gosh, no. I don't want to,” but I think that it was very helpful. There is a mental hurdle to giving birth. I think VBAC moms, I don't want to say more of a hurdle, but I think we do. Meagan: Sometimes we have extra stuff. We just do. We just do. Lindsey: Yeah, so setting yourself up for success if it is touching your baby's head. That was my point when I had to have the Cesarean was when I was pushing, so that pushed me through the threshold. It was mental at that point. The baby was coming. I just had to work with my body to do it. My husband has a funny memory of me when I was in the birth pool. I was holding both sides because there were the sides of the tub. I literally am roaring and I felt like I was roaring. I was like, “Come on.” My son's name is Finn. I was like, “Come on, Finn. Let's get this over with,” and just roaring him out. My doula was standing in front of me. He was like, “You were just yelling in her face.” It took me an hour to push which sounds like a long time but didn't feel like a long time at all. I held him and I cried. Zach was crying. The picture that I sent is really cool because you can see my husband tearing up in it. The pastor's wife cried. Ashley was crying. Except for our midwife, she was cracking jokes the whole time not in a disrespectful way, but she kept the mood really light. I didn't notice because I was in labor land, but my husband said that it was really nice. It kept him calm because she was so chill.She said to me later actually when I got in bed that my son didn't cry right away but she checked. Actually, my doula recorded it so I could hear her. She checked the pulse and the cord. She wasn't concerned that the baby didn't cry right away because she felt that the pulse was really good. In the video, she was like, “He's just getting ready to take his first breath,” really calm. She said to me later that she did do a little bit of suctioning which I was like, “No, that's fine. I didn't have a problem with that.” I say that because everything was so considerate. For all of the questions that were asked or what she did, she wanted to let me know. I could have never known that she did suctioning ever but she wanted me to know. I just thought that was really cool.She has me quickly get out of bed. I didn't think it was quick, but we talked in our debrief later that it was quick because she saw that I was bleeding but no placenta came out, so she wanted to figure out where it was coming from. She had a really cool way of testing or trying to triage me without me knowing. At one point, I did pick up on it because she asked, “Are you feeling any pain in your arm?” Then I was like, “Oh, she's checking my heart. I know that from being a dentist?” She would just ask low-key questions but was trying to make sure everything was all right. Meagan: Without making you feel like it. Lindsey: Panic. She was like, “Okay, we're going to check your blood pressure.” Blood pressure was 100/40 so she said, “All right, Lindsey, let's start you with some IVs,” I was like, “I don't care. Do anything. I have my baby on my chest. Do whatever you want.” She said, “You have some bleeding. We're going to try to see where it's coming from and get the placenta out.” She had me try to push and I was like, “I feel like I can't. I have no urge to push.” She said, “All right. I can try,” so she tried to pull it but then the cord was feeling like it was going to separate so she said, “Okay, I'm not going to do that.” Sorry, when they started the IV, she was like, “I would like to give you a shot of PItocin.” I was like, “Okay, yeah. Go for it.” So she gave me a shot of Pitocin in my leg. It turns out that she was concerned about the bleeding. She was like, “I've got to figure out where this is coming from.” At that point, she had tried to pull it out. She wasn't able to so she said, “Okay, Lindsey. I need you to push the placenta out.” I was like, “Okay.” So I pushed it out and she said, “I'm sorry. I have to be really mean and press on your abdomen,” so she really got on there to make sure that I wasn't hemorrhaging or anything. The birth assistant was stuck in traffic so she had just arrived at that point. She had her check too and she did find a small tear, a first-degree tear. Oh, sorry. I wasn't going to do this but I'm going to do this one time. When I did feel that ring of fire, she said at that point, “Okay. Put your hand down there and where you are feeling burning, move the tissue out of the way,” so I think that helped. She told me in a prenatal visit that she has women do that because she can try to feel or try to guess where they might tear, but when moms do it, it usually is really successful because they can feel it. I thought that would be really interesting. I did have that first-degree tear, but she said, “You probably don't need a stitch, but I'd like to go ahead and do it because you have blood.” I said, “Yeah, fine.” So we did it. It was a venous tear so that's why it ended up bleeding more. The bleeding stopped. We weighed the baby and they did the tuck-in service. My in-laws were in town. They actually are the best and they were supposed to fly back to California that day because they came two weeks early. They came a week before my due date and stayed a week past because we thought the baby would be born then but he wasn't. They were flying out that day but they canceled their flight and stayed because I had gone into labor the night before they left so they were with our one-and-a-half-year-old. They ended up saying, “We're just going to get a hotel room and you guys hang out,” which was nice to have that time with just Zach and I and our new little baby boy. After my HBAC, we were sitting on the bed with our second son and just so thankful. I asked my husband how he was feeling because I was curious about this experience. Would it be different than the hospital? He said that he was feeling great. He felt like in the hospital, he couldn't really do much. The doula didn't take over but he would try to support me in labor, but then he was like, “Well, what else do I do?” He felt like being at home, he put water in the tub. He cleaned up my water. At one point, he even said, “I put the dishes away.” That night in bed, he did have a little bit of shaking, but I think his sympathetic nervous system was so ramped up. That happens. The specialty I'm getting into is pain– head and neck pain. Oral-facial pain is what it's called. We have patients with chronic pain, people who have undergone post-traumatic stress and TBI, or I should say have post-traumatic stress disorder or TBI and their sympathetic nervous system is ramped up. It's designed like a zebra outrunning a lion. You'll see a zebra shake after it's done and shake it all out. But a zebra doesn't keep thinking, “What if that lion would have caught me? What if I would have lost the let?” Zebras just move on. But we as people are the ones that think about, “What if?” So that's what causes that sympathetic nervous system to keep staying on. Anyway, so he had a little bit of the shakes. I was thinking through that and one of the things that we have patients do for chronic pain patients, it can also help with anxiety, and it can also help lower your blood pressure. Feel free to link this and look into it because there is a lot of evidence-based research on it. I'm saying that to all of the listeners too. It's called diaphragmatic breathing. I highly recommend it just in general for any type of chronic pain. It's really helpful but there have been studies of people lowering their blood pressure. I was like, “All right, honey.” We were in bed. I was like, “We're going to do some diaphragmatic breathing.” We did some diaphragmatic breathing and it really helped him calm down. What it does is it activates your vagus nerve which is that fight or flight reflex responsible, that nerve that innervates and starts up the fight or flight. It helps activate your parasympathetic nervous system to calm your body down. So that's what I did and it was awesome. Meagan: I love that. Lindsey: Yeah. One more thing to go over after this, but to show where we are now, I did go back to work and this is my second week back, so very timely. My husband did a full week by himself with the kids and there was lots of crying because my baby doesn't take a bottle during the day which is another story and also stressful. We're working on it. The baby's been crying a lot and is hungry. I asked him last night, “Okay, I'm on the podcast tomorrow. Let's give a full update.” He said, “I have not felt any anxiety at all.” I was like, “That is so awesome.”Meagan: Oh awesome. Lindsey: Right after the birth we talked about it, I was like, “Do you feel like you would have had this in the hospital?” He was like, “I don't know. I don't know if I would have because I would have had the same smells, same sights.” He and I both feel like the total change of environment was what was best for our family and really helped my success in my HBAC and for him too. I really do think that I would have gotten an epidural 100% if I was in the hospital. I was so close so I just wonder, “Would that have hindered me?” Who knows? You can't play those games. You never know. Meagan: It's hard to know. It's hard to know. I believe that if I were in a hospital for the second, and this is not to say anything bad about a hospital birth–Lindsey: No, no definitely not. Meagan: I probably would have had an epidural too and I do believe that I probably would have had a third Cesarean but it's so hard to know. I'm curious, maybe not. I have no idea. Lindsey: Right, yeah. Absolutely. Meagan: Oh man. Lindsey: I have one last little thing I want to go over. Thank you. So one of the key components I think that was missing from my first birth was education. At almost every prenatal appointment, my midwife would say, “Any questions?” Almost every single time, I didn't. I guess I trusted her and not that you shouldn't trust your providers but I didn't even know what to ask so that's why I recommend your podcast to first-time moms too because then you know what to ask. I did some reading. I definitely did some reading and I did the hospital birth class. I did a class with our doula too, a birth class with our first doula, but I did so much more the second time around. My point is that definitely finding a provider you can trust and you can feel like you can ask those questions or who would maybe even prompt you with what questions to ask is so helpful because being informed as a patient– I strive to build that rapport and trust with my patients every time. I tell them this, “We're working together as a team and I want you to do your own research and I want to work with you to determine the best plan for you,” because when you feel empowered and informed, you have better outcomes. I really felt like birth happened to me the first time around and then the second time, I was actively a part of my birth which was really a powerful thing. Meagan: Very, very, very powerful. That's something I was going to say. Even if it doesn't go the way you want, you can still be the driver in the driver's seat. We know that with babies and birth, things go certain ways and everything but you can still be empowered. Lindsey: Thank you for saying that. I actually had that thought to say to share that too. Birth is crazy and you never know how it's going to go or what's going to happen but you would know, “Okay. I did all of the research beforehand and I can rest in the fact that it's okay. We made the best decision at the time given the information that we had.” Meagan: Absolutely. Lindsey: I'm just going to read if it's okay, a quick list because I am a list person and I listened to all of your VBAC Links. I gathered my own list. Everyone's list of how to have a VBAC might look different but this is my list. Meagan: Yay, I love it. Lindsey: I'm a list person for all of you guys out there. I did listen to as many birth stories as possible. If I would have started sooner, I would have listened more, but my number one on Spotify in 2022 was The VBAC Link. I had listened to 206 episodes. I know there were almost all of the 206 episodes at the time. Almost all of them, not quite. I did learn things like the risks and benefits of Pitocin, what the labor shakes were, how having a tight pelvic floor can prevent baby from descending, how important movement is in labor, and coached pushing versus self-directed pushing. I learned a lot about breathwork. There's a really good YouTube video by Bridget Teyler that my doula told me about. Meagan: Bridget's awesome. Lindsey: And then your podcast too talked about breathing. The low tones are so important. I didn't know that the first time around. I did see a chiropractor once a week for the majority of my pregnancy starting really in the second trimester. When we moved here, I couldn't find a Webster-based chiropractor in my area but I saw a corporate practice called The Joint. The woman there was trained in Webster. She just wasn't certified because she doesn't pay an annual fee to get the certification. Something to think about there. I did drink the tea, the red raspberry leaf tea, and ate the Medjool dates at 37 weeks. Spinning Babies, I started that three to five days a week. I didn't do as many intense workouts as I did with my first son. I really did a lot of walking partially because I had so many Braxton Hicks and partially because of hearing that having a tight pelvic floor can prevent the baby from descending.Hydrotherapy– I did so much of that during labor. I squeezed a comb through every single contraction. The comb was the comb that we brought home from my first birth that they give you at the hospital so it was kind of poetic. By the end, the comb was very destroyed from all of my squeezing. I did write down my fears and emotions with the birth. I did boil it down to three that I was feeling. I told my doula and my midwife about them. I was like, “In case I stall in labor, I just want you to know.” I tried to really turn the fear/tension/pain cycle to not give in to the fear through every contraction. I'd turn that into prayer. Every contraction is helping my body to move down my baby and to work with that. I remember, and I would say that Pitocin contractions were worse than actual contractions, but I do remember that I was bracing every one like, “Oh no. Another one is coming.” I'd fight every contraction. It was still hard, but I tried to work with my body instead of pushing them away, then moving every 15 minutes to a new position in labor. Meagan: Such a powerful list right there. Lindsey: Oh, thank you. Hopefully, if someone is like, “Oh, my VBAC might be tomorrow, maybe they can listen to this episode and get some tips at the end there in the final hour.” Meagan: Yes, the final hour. The final countdown. I love it. Thank you so much and huge congrats. Lindsey: Thank you. Thank you.Meagan: Congrats. What a crazy journey to go from moving and finding providers, then changing and even changing doulas in the very end. You had change up until the very end. Lindsey: The very end. I didn't even think about that. That's true. Meagan: Yeah, you really did. Awesome. I'm so happy to hear that everything is going well right now and your husband is going better. That's really awesome. Lindsey: Thank you. It's really good, really, really good. Thank you so much. I'm just so honored to be here and to see you face to face and just thank you for all that you do. Meagan: Thank you. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan's bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands