Podcast appearances and mentions of michelle you

On today's episode of The Wholesome Fertility Podcast, I am joined by Hannah Davis (@rooted.with.hannah), a Registered Dietitian and certified meditation teacher who specialises in women's health, hormones, and autoimmune conditions. After being diagnosed with Hashimoto's while navigating early motherhood, Hannah shifted her clinical nutrition practice to focus on uncovering the deeper root causes of symptoms like fatigue, cycle irregularities, and PCOS. We dive into how nervous system dysregulation often underlies hormonal imbalances and why functional testing, mineral status, and emotional safety are crucial for true healing. From decoding PCOS types to understanding thyroid antibodies and the connection between trauma and calcium retention, Hannah offers a deeply integrative and compassionate lens for supporting women on their fertility and healing journeys. This conversation is packed with practical tools and fresh insights—don't miss it! Key Takeaways: PCOS is not just about ovarian cysts—it's a metabolic and inflammatory condition with many root causes. Nervous system regulation is foundational for hormone balance, digestion, and fertility. Functional lab testing (like Dutch and HTMA) reveals hidden patterns traditional labs may miss. Excess calcium in tissues may indicate trauma or over-supplementation with Vitamin D. Diet, stress, sleep, and gut health all influence autoimmune and hormonal symptoms. Guest Bio: Hannah Davis, RD (@rooted.with.hannah) is a Registered Dietitian and certified meditation teacher with advanced training in functional nutrition, lab testing, and spiritual psychology. She specialises in supporting women with hormonal imbalances, autoimmune conditions like Hashimoto's, and chronic fatigue through an integrative approach that blends clinical science with deep nourishment and nervous system healing. After navigating her own health challenges postpartum, Hannah now helps women reclaim their energy, resilience, and sense of safety through 1:1 coaching and group programs at Pivot Nutrition Coaching. She's especially passionate about working with mothers, self-healers, and cycle-breakers who are ready to feel like themselves again. Links and Resources: Follow Hannah on Instagram Visit the Pivot Nutrition Coaching website Book Mentioned: The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk   For more information about Michelle, visit www.michelleoravitz.com  To learn more about ancient wisdom and fertility, you can get Michelle's book at: https://www.michelleoravitz.com/thewayoffertility  The Wholesome Fertility facebook group is where you can find free resources and support: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2149554308396504/  Instagram: @thewholesomelotusfertility Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thewholesomelotus/  Disclaimer: The information shared on this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. Please consult with your healthcare provider before making any changes to your health or fertility care. ------------- Transcript: # Audio: TWF 340- Hannah [00:00:00] [00:01:00] Welcome to the Wholesome Fertility Podcast. I'm Michelle, a fertility acupuncturist here to provide you with resources on how to create a wholesome approach to your fertility journey. **Michelle:** Welcome to the podcast, Hannah.  **Hannah:** thanks for having me. **Michelle:** So I'm very excited to have you on. We're gonna be talking about a lot of really cool topics, but before we get started, I always like to start out with kind of like an origin story and learn how you got into the work that you're doing.  **Hannah:** Yeah. I am a registered dietician. I've been mainly practicing medical nutrition therapy for the last 10 years in a more clinical setting. And you know, and then [00:02:00] I became a mom. I have two. One's almost eight, you gotta say almost eight. And the other one's, and the other one's nine. So they're really, they're really young and I, you know, working at the hospital part-time and I started noticing. **Hannah:** My own symptoms of, of things that just felt like off. And simultaneously I was also becoming more interested in learning about more integrative functional nutrition. And so that really led me down. It, it started off as, oh. A way for me to kind of figure out what was going on with me, because of course, like so many of my, the clients I work with now you know, you go to the doctors, you ask for some labs to be done and they just say, oh, you're absolutely fine. **Hannah:** You might just be stressed. You're stressed out, you're a young mom. Of course it's normal to feel exhausted all of the time and stuff like that. So, I just was like really interested [00:03:00] in doing more digging and so I, we got some training in advanced lab testing and more like integrative functional nutrition. **Hannah:** And so. From there I was able to figure out what's going on with me, and I, I actually have an autoimmune condition. It's called Hashimotos. And so that really affects, you know, your, your energy levels, your, your gut health, your immune system obviously is involved. So I, it was so incredibly validating and it really excited me. **Hannah:** I was like, I feel. If I can figure out a way to use advanced lab testing and combine that with my. More of my more clinical, you know, expertise and combine that together to really like, help women feel empowered about how to support their health and, and how they feel and their showing up in their lives every [00:04:00] day. **Hannah:** And so it just really, really excited me. So that's kind of what got me started with that. And then I, I pivoted towards, towards that about three years ago started my own virtual practice working more in like the women's health space. So like hormones, gut health, autoimmune conditions. **Hannah:** And then I, as I was doing more of that work, I was like, okay, there's. I'm seeing a common theme here. These women at their root, cause a lot of the time is nervous system dysregulation. And I got really. Tired of just saying over and over again. You know, you need to manage your stress a little bit better. **Hannah:** I wanted to be able to give them so much more than that. And obviously I knew that from my own journey. I really had to integrate that. And so, but I wanted to like, figure out how to help my, my clients integrate that. So then I became a certified meditation [00:05:00] teacher. And spent a year studying spiritual psychology, which is like a blend of Eastern ritual and practices with western psychology. **Hannah:** That, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So now I really like to supplement my, programs with giving my clients tools on how to regulate their nervous systems as well. And so, we'll, you know, you know, it's more of like life coaching almost. And then maybe we'll integrate some, some things like, meditation or breath work together. **Hannah:** It really just depends on what the, how the client wants to be supported. So  **Michelle:** Awesome.  **Hannah:** Yeah.  **Michelle:** You know it's interesting 'cause I  **Hannah:** Yeah. **Michelle:** an episode on. Nervous system. Really the vagal tone and  **Hannah:** Yes. **Michelle:** there's a link with a weaker vagal tone and things like endometriosis or  **Michelle:** PCOS, and I thought that was just fascinating. [00:06:00]  **Michelle:** So, yeah, I'd love to really kind of dig deep on all of these things. So just for people listening and they're kind of like hearing nervous system for the first time. 'cause well maybe they've listened to my podcast, maybe not when I talked about the nervous system. But what should people, like, explain the nervous system, explain how the nervous system ties into certain conditions. **Hannah:** I mean, that's a very, like, that's pretty broad because it's like, you know, it really depends on what. **Michelle:** the nervous system like tie into certain conditions?  **Hannah:** I don't know what condition it doesn't, honestly. Uh, the more, the more I get like deep in the weeds with this, so, you know, a lot of my clients we, you know, so I am typically working with people with autoimmune conditions and hormone. I balances gut health, that kind of stuff. And I, you know, I would say the nervous system impacts all of those areas [00:07:00] because ideally, especially when we're talking about women's health and like hormones, things like that we really just want to create safety in the body, right? **Hannah:** So that we can. Manufacture hormones and ovulate naturally and things like that. So, and then, you know, inflammation's another, another piece of that. It really just, it's a great way to, like, it just connects to everything right. **Michelle:** Yeah, well the vagus nerve is incredibly important when it comes to gut health. the stronger the vagal tone, the better the vagus nerve, the better. It's able to lower inflammation in the body.  **Hannah:** Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. **Michelle:** fascinating and interesting. And so what are some of the things that you do suggest for people. they wanna regulate their nervous system and support that aspect.  **Hannah:** So First of all, I think it's important to just figure out what are the systems for that client? What are [00:08:00] the systems that are working for them and what's not? And really get really honest about that. And then, you know, it could be something like starting a. **Hannah:** Very doable meditation practice or some breath work like before, before meals, right? Getting into rest and digest me activating that vagus nerve so that we can digest our food properly. So it really just depends on what is feels a lot most aligned for the client and, and is doable for them. But also I think another big piece of this, which is not really talked about often is eating for blood sugar balance. **Hannah:** Because even like blood sugar swings throughout the day can cause fluctuations in your mood and your anxiety and cravings and all, all of, and even inflammation as well. So  **Michelle:** that  **Hannah:** like a whole body [00:09:00] approach. Mm-hmm. **Michelle:** It's such a good point. And I remember like looking into this and researching like just really the gut brain connection and. And it's interesting 'cause you can see it really go both ways. So if you have imbalanced gut microbiome that can ima impact your brain and your mood and your state and your emotions. **Michelle:** And it actually is linked with certain emotional um, imbalances or like mental disorders. It's really fascinating. And then they found. On the flip side that people who meditated for many years, like Tibetan monks, they had a really vast microbiome that was a lot more enriched and had a lot more diversity. **Michelle:** So it's really fascinating how you really can literally get it at both ends or either end.  **Hannah:** yeah. Like I tell my clients all the time, if you're breathing into your shoulders, the majority of the time it's gonna signal, [00:10:00] or that's gonna signal to the brain that you're in fight or flight. So it's gonna send all the blood to your extremities. It's not gonna be sending the blood to, you know, your, your GI track and your, you know, your organs there. **Hannah:** And so. it's gonna be a lot harder to digest your foods, whereas if you are really taking these deep breaths into your belly, it's sending all the blood there. And that's, that's a, and I mean, I often get skipped, you know, people are just like, no, just gimme a, just gimme a meal plan. I wanna feel better. **Hannah:** I wanna lose weight, or I wanna, you know, but it's like, you really gotta think about not just what you're eating, but how you're eating, like what your nervous system state is. You know, when you're, when you're eating food.  **Michelle:** That's so true. It's  **Hannah:** Mm-hmm. **Michelle:** true. And it was funny 'cause I was reading about that and it was one of the things to do is just stand. This is why they say like, don't drive and eat at the same time. Because when you're driving naturally, you're gonna be in a little bit more of a fight or flight or kind of ready for anything and. Also just to kind of throw it out [00:11:00] there, it's not bad to be in that state, in that sympathetic state. It's part of life. It's just that sometimes you need that and then sometimes you need the other. But what you're saying is so true, like it's actually like becoming mindful of getting yourself into that state and maybe  **Michelle:** doing those exercises to get yourself in more parasympathetic state, which is more of  **Michelle:** the rest and digest, so that you're priming your body when you do eat. To digest better. So I think  **Hannah:** Yeah. Of course, and, you know, if you're digesting better, you're absorbing nutrients better, which is gonna impact your energy levels, your mood, your hormones, everything. So yeah, there really, I feel like the more I get into it, the, more I see that there really isn't an aspect of our health, our med, our metabolic health, everything that is not touched by, your nervous system. **Michelle:** Yeah, it's really fascinating. I like, the more I dig into this, the more I'm just like so [00:12:00] amazed at how Willy, you know, it's the nervous system is kind of like this wiring of like. Information.  **Michelle:** It's almost like information that kind of signals to your body, all kinds of different states, but especially that safety. **Michelle:** I agree with you. You know, when you, when you feel safe, you can be more creative. And what does that mean really in the body fertility and it also regeneration growth.  **Michelle:** So yeah, it's pretty cool,  **Hannah:** Yeah. And I mean, hormones, that's how hormones work too. They're just chemical messengers in your body. **Michelle:** right? and so talk about PCOS, 'cause I know that you work with P-C-O-S-A lot just to cover. 'cause I think of people don't really understand it fully because it is you know, there's so many different types of PCOS and people get confused and sometimes people show PCOS symptoms, but then some doctors, and we don't know if they're just not like looking. Thoroughly into it. Dismiss it. Oh, that's not PCOS. So  **Hannah:** Right.  **Michelle:** that and just kind of, **Hannah:** Yeah.  **Michelle:** [00:13:00] it is,  **Hannah:** Okay, well, we'll just start what, like, so what is PCOS? So PCOS stands for polycystic ovarian syndrome. So a lot of people get confused by that right off the bat. They think, oh, so that mean I have cysts on my ovaries. Does that mean that I have it? So it's actually not a physical ovarian condition, like of the presence of cyst, but it's rather a hormonal condition and it's a, what I like to call a spectrum condition. **Hannah:** You know, 'cause there's different varieties and there's different root causes. It's important to understand, first of all what kind of PCOS you have and what the root causes are which is why we, we use functional lab testing in practice. But but yeah, I think a lot of women often it's like a long confusing road full of mixed messages of like just lose weight advice,  **Michelle:** Yeah,  **Hannah:** [00:14:00] you know. **Michelle:** really thin. PCOS patients, so that's where it can get so confusing for  **Hannah:** Right, right, right. And so, A-P-C-O-S isn't in an ovarian condition, you know, what exactly is going on? I mean, in a nutshell, it's basically, blood sugar issues plus inflammation, plus genetic susceptibility, which is going to lead to the ovaries to begin to produce large amounts of androgens. **Hannah:** So, you know, and I say genetic susceptibility because, you know, just because you have like insulin sensi or insulin resistance or diabetes, that doesn't mean you automatically are gonna get PCOS. Some people just have really sensitive ovaries right. And so they're, they're going to develop the, the condition, so I like to talk to my clients about well first of all, we start by running some tests [00:15:00] to find out, you know, what what their root causes are. And then we're gonna really go deep with, you know, working on the blood sugar issues with the inflammation, real food strategies lifestyle interventions, things like that. **Michelle:** One of the things that I find is pretty common just in my own practice, is that. **Michelle:** there's a huge link of gut imbalance  **Michelle:** or, you know, gut microbiome  **Michelle:** imbalance and inflammation, you know, that is part of the contributor to the inflammation and can really impact PCOS conditions.  **Hannah:** Yeah. Because you know, if we, if that inflammation in the gut is going unchecked you know, that's also gonna drive that insulin resistance even more.  **Michelle:** Yeah.  **Michelle:** what are some of the tests that you do for PCOS? Functional  **Hannah:** Well, yeah. Well, first of all, I, I like to start with a Dutch test. It's a, have you heard of [00:16:00] Dutch? The Uhhuh? Yeah. Oh, you do? Okay. Yeah. So I would run a Dutch you know, so that we,  **Michelle:** out just for people  **Hannah:** yeah. Yes, **Michelle:** I've never heard of it before. So it's dried urine testing for comprehensive, or I forget  **Hannah:** it's a Dr. It's a. Yeah, yeah. Dried urine test for comprehensive hormones. I know I used to think, oh, it's of Dutch, like it's from the Dutch, like, you know, but it's just an abbreviation.  **Michelle:** right, right.  **Hannah:** But yes, it's a very unique way to look at hormones. 'cause traditionally before this test was available, you would have to rely on blood work for hormones. **Hannah:** And, you know, saliva for cortisol, which is okay, but it's just not great. So this test really helps us get a lot more specific, a lot more personalized, and helps us get some answers that would probably. Be left unanswered if we were just, you know, looking at, at blood work alone. So, you know, it's gonna tell us, you know, give us a snapshot [00:17:00] of all three sex hormones, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone. **Hannah:** It's gonna show us how they're being metabolized in the liver. And then what I really like is it looks at your cortisol awakening response. So someone is struggling with sleep, mood, energy levels. Things like that that could also be driving your symptoms and, and your inflammation as well. So I, mm-hmm. **Michelle:** cortisol is your friend in the morning.  **Hannah:** Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And then I like that it also has that organic acid test at the end there, which some of those other markers are gonna be important for looking at, for hormone production. So it's nice if they include that. So I, I like to do a Dutch, I also like to do HTMA testing, which stands for hair tissue mineral analysis. **Hannah:** Because, you know, you know, when we're looking at hormones it's, you know, we, we also wanna be, look thinking about minerals too because and not just like, our minerals through blood [00:18:00] work, but more on a cellular level. Like what is the body doing with those minerals? And how is your body utilizing them? **Hannah:** Are they even getting up into the cell? So, and we can, you know, you know, minerals, they impact hormones, which means they're gonna impact PCOS. So I like that one too. And it's like a little, it's a, it's a nice way to, I like it 'cause it's, it shows your body's like, it's like a blueprint. It shows you your stress pattern. **Hannah:** know how your body is using minerals after you've maybe gone through a season of. Really high stress and you know, the fertility journey too is so stressful on its own that I'm like, yeah, let's look at what your body does with all this stress and how we can really like, you know, deeply nourish your body and, you know, make it feel safe for ovulation. **Michelle:** Yeah, I know that there's a lot of minerals that you can't really test in blood and for example, magnesium. That's a **Hannah:** Mm-hmm. **Michelle:** one to test for. So does this test for magnesium as well, like all [00:19:00] minerals or,  **Hannah:** yeah, yeah. It looks at all of the minerals. Specifically the ones that I'm gonna be focusing on. The minerals that impact PCS would be magnesium, zinc, calcium, iron selenium iodine. So, you know, and in a nutshell, you know, these, these minerals. they can exacerbate insulin resistance, hormonal imbalances, oxidative stress, which is important for like egg quality, sperm quality, things like that. **Hannah:** So women, get your men to your partner.  **Michelle:** Yes.  **Michelle:** So, so this is a hair test.  **Hannah:** yeah, it's a hair. They're using just like a teaspoon amount of your hair to analyze the mineral content in your tissues. **Michelle:** Fascinating. I know they've done those for like heavy metals and, and just testing the  **Hannah:** Yeah, yeah,  **Michelle:** I haven't heard of the mineral testing yet.  **Hannah:** yeah. And this, yeah. And this test does include heavy metals and we look at, mm-hmm.  **Michelle:** heavy metals. Oh, [00:20:00] okay.  **Hannah:** Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. **Michelle:** it's really high. Just like for people that don't have symptoms sometimes I almost feel like it's like high for everybody.  **Hannah:** The heavy metals. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and  **Michelle:** somebody who's not, who doesn't have like,  **Hannah:** yeah, and I mean, we we're exposed to heavy metals all of the time. It's, you know, it's, there's, it's kind of impossible to get around it, you know? It's in our food, our water, the soil, you know. And so my approach is, you know, we might see like an acute. **Hannah:** Exposure to the heavy metals. But what we wanna see is that you, you're able to detox and excrete those heavy metals safely. You know, that's why, you know, we have our detox organs, our liver, right? And so if I ever see those metals like pushing into the tissues, it's just a really good indication that, hey, your liver needs some. **Hannah:** Some attention, like we need to work on supporting that. And also working on not just our [00:21:00] detoxification organs, but our drainage pathways. So like our lymphatic system you know, making sure we're having daily bowel movements that we're sweating all of that. All of that stuff. Yeah.  **Michelle:** Yeah. **Michelle:** for sure. I think that that's key is really detoxifying, and I think that it, you had a good point. You mentioned the word safely because  **Michelle:** that can be an issue, like if you detoxify too harshly. I'm really big on that, especially when you're trying to conceive and you're actively trying, you definitely don't wanna do something that's so strong that it actually circulates more toxins in your bloodstream.  **Hannah:** That's right. Yeah. **Michelle:** So they have like binders, right? Or things  **Hannah:** Yeah, That is one approach for me. I rarely will do like a heavy metal detox with somebody. I will just wanna work with them on, you know, first the foundational things of, are we optimizing the gut health, the, you know, the liver function are we getting those drainage pathways [00:22:00] open? **Hannah:** Because your body should be able to do all that on its own if it's, you know, optimal. but I mean, if someone's already doing like a gut protocol or something with me, then yeah, they, they'll be taking like those types of supplements and then it'll, it'll still act on the heavy metals and things like that, as. **Michelle:** Interesting. So, what are some of the nutrient and lifestyle interventions specifically that you would do for PCOS? Or have you seen, because I, I do know that  **Hannah:** yeah.  **Michelle:** different types, so that could  **Hannah:** Yes.  **Michelle:** the type,  **Hannah:** Yes. Yeah. **Michelle:** the things that people should kind of like look out for, think about?  **Hannah:** Yeah. Yeah. So the first step is, is gonna be improving the quality of your food choices. So, you know, removing inflammatory oils, added sugars a lot of like processed, like ultra processed carbohydrates and, you know, with chemical and artificial additives. Things like that, you wanna replace them with whole real foods. **Hannah:** It's really that simple.  **Michelle:** Yeah. I [00:23:00] know,  **Hannah:** Yeah. Yeah. And then also, you know, the goal is to eat a sufficient amount of carbohydrates to promote ovulation, but while still focusing on those whole real. Food sources, like starchy veggies fruits and then unprocessed whole grains and legumes.  **Michelle:** So really from natural sources,  **Michelle:** complex car carbs. So it's not like simple carbs, not white, you know, avoid those like.  **Hannah:** Yeah. Right. So you, and you would want to make sure you're getting adequate amount of carbohydrates, but you know, if we're also dealing with insulin resistance, then we also need to be talking about you know, maintaining adequate calorie intake and just aiming for. Balance across all the macronutrients. **Hannah:** So, you know, we're pairing those carbohydrates with good quality sources of protein and healthy fats. And, if you're eating a more whole food carbs diet like. Your carbs are coming [00:24:00] from fruits like, and like root vegetables and things like that, then those foods are naturally gonna have more fiber in them, which is also gonna help with things like insulin resistance. **Hannah:** And then I would also be focusing on gut nourishing foods, like, bone broth probiotics from fermented foods, cultured. Products. And then lots of prebiotic fibers. So it also just making sure you're eating a wide range of, plant fibers. Like we're not just eating the same, spinach every day. **Hannah:** You know, let's really mix that up. Maybe like arugula, kale, you know. So that would be the where, where I would start with foods strategies. And then for lifestyle I would be really focusing on exercise. This is a really crucial tool in repairing insulin sensitivity and managing blood sugar levels. **Hannah:** So first I would just focus on increasing your daily movement. So, you know, maybe try tracking your steps. And then maybe you would wanna consider adding in some resistance [00:25:00] training and some short hit style workouts. Since those really show the most metabolic improvements. In general I would avoid, I would avoid like, really long duration cardio on a regular baseball basis, since that's like very stressful on the body. **Hannah:** So exercise is number one. Stress management is key. I know we've already kind of touched on that a little bit. You know, that's a big piece of hormonal. Balance balance since the, your adrenal health, you know, has the ability to impact the function of your sex hormones. I would just evaluate the sources of your stress. **Hannah:** You know, I like to think of it like a bucket, like a stress bucket, and we have all these different inputs pouring in. Some of those things we can't really remove, but some things we can, you can control your nutrition and your sleep quality. You know, you can maybe work on energetic boundaries, right? **Hannah:** Maybe you wanna include things like meditation or [00:26:00] journaling, acupuncture, right? Those are all really nice ways to support yourself. And then sleep. Sleep is also like so major. That's when you know when you're, you can get good quality sleep at night. That's when your, your body's repairing tissue. **Hannah:** And it, it has a lot to do with your hormones, like in like your like your hunger hormones, those ones and then also like cortisol, melatonin, things like that. Everything that just keeps all of the systems working together smoothly. So, yep. Do you. **Michelle:** of sleep. There's a, there like a lot of times we'll increase sugar cravings 'cause you want that quick energy. So  **Hannah:** Yes, **Michelle:** that's one example of how that can impact  **Hannah:** exactly. Yeah. Yeah. If you have like one poor night of sleep, it increases your hunger hormone levels pretty significantly. So we'll see that that issue popping up time and time again. Yeah, so.[00:27:00]  **Michelle:** yeah. And I also have heard, in some  **Michelle:** of like go, literally pivot into autoimmune and how you can address that in the case of Hashimoto's? **Michelle:** 'cause it is so prevalent and a lot of people have it. The first thing that I say is, cut out gluten, corn, and dairy and soy if you can. Now, I always say if you can't do all of them, at least cut out the gluten entirely and talk to us about like what you've done and what you've found to be helpful. **Michelle:** 'cause it is something that if you catch early, you really can sh shift a lot just from diet alone.  **Hannah:** Oh, yes. Yeah, and I've helped. Hundreds of women with that. Exactly. Just you know, we [00:28:00] see, I've seen different stages of, Hashimoto's. You know, so if it's like, you know, stage one where we're seeing the presence of antibodies and maybe they have symptoms, maybe they don't. A lot of those women typically will present with like subclinical hypothyroidism. **Hannah:** So like their thyroid labs look fine. But they're like, I, feel tired all the time. I'm constipated. I can't lose weight, you know? So the first thing I would start with is kinda getting ahead of things with, 'cause the majority of your immune system is in your gut. So I would be doing a GI would run a stool sample, a GI map and see what's going on there. **Hannah:** Because there's different things that could be driving. That immune response. Yeah. It could be coming from things in the diet like gluten. And that test certainly will show us if you're having an immune response to gluten. So in those cases, I would have those clients cut, cut that out. And some people they, they don't, they don't run the test and they [00:29:00] cut out gluten, but they just feel better without it. **Michelle:** See that a lot.  **Hannah:** mm-hmm. I do too. Just kind of anecdotally. I was just gonna say that I think it is because of like, what, what they're spraying on our crops.  **Michelle:** Yeah, **Hannah:** Yep. know that it can impact hormones like big time, that's  **Hannah:** Mm-hmm.  **Michelle:** one for sure.  **Hannah:** Yeah. So, and then, you know, obviously if there's a inflammation or like leaky gut.  **Hannah:** You know, we're gonna wanna address that anyway because that could be driving that immune response and making your symptoms worse, making the antibodies levels worse, right? So I really wanna just get ahead of it with the gut number one. **Hannah:** And then I like to do mineral testing as well, since so many minerals, not only impact PCOS, but they impact your thyroid.  **Michelle:** That's a huge  **Hannah:** Yes, selenium. This is a common thing that I see. I'll see really high amounts of calcium in the [00:30:00] tissues. And that's gonna block your thyroid hormone from getting up into the cell. **Hannah:** So like maybe their thyroid panel looks great, but that, or they're already taking a thyroid medication, but they're, they feel like it's not doing anything for them. I'm like, look, you have a lot of calcium in your tissues. And so like, that's your thyroid hormone's not even getting up into the cell. So of course you wouldn't feel an impact there. **Hannah:** And that also is. **Michelle:** actually? What causes that? Calcification?  **Hannah:** So, I typically see that from over supplementing with vitamin D. So, that will pull the calcium out of the bone and teeth. And put it into the tissues. Yeah. A lot of people get put on vitamin D by their doctor, like maybe they had low levels at one point, and then their doctor never talked to them about weaning off of the vitamin D. **Hannah:** They just kept taking it.  **Michelle:** too high. Yeah.  **Hannah:** Yeah. Or they'll start them off like a really high dose, like I've seen like 50,000 units of, of vitamin. Yeah. [00:31:00] And they, and they just keep taking it like, then they're never told like, Hey, you're actually supposed to tapered off of that after a couple months. I've also seen an influx of people on vitamin D, zinc you know, ever since the pandemic. **Hannah:** So they just kept taking it and they don't know how that's impacted their. Mine. So, so yeah, that's one culprit. I, I'll see. The other thing that I notice, and this is pretty prevalent in the autoimmune community is, and I don't think it's talked about a lot, is significant trauma and certain types of trauma. **Hannah:** It, it's like we call when we see this pattern on an htm. It, we call it a calcium shell where the calcium and the magnesium levels are really high in the tissues. And then we are like really depleted in things like potassium and sodium and other secondary minerals. And it's kind of like the body's way of shielding itself from feeling [00:32:00] big, like feeling really big emotions. **Hannah:** So like a lot of these clients, I, I'll talk to them about this and they have such a flat effect, like with the then we start moving the calcium out of the tissues and then they become, they're, it's like they really need more emotional support throughout that process. It's very interesting. I'm about to actually do an HTMA on myself. **Hannah:** It's been a couple of years, but I've just gone, I'm grieving my mom right now and I, yeah, and it's just been a really rough couple of months. I've just been just going through the motions and kind of in that, like taking care of her, taking care of my girls. Like just everything that we've gone through leading up to this point. **Hannah:** And I'm like, I am so curious to know what's going on with my minerals right now. I would not be surprised if I was having calcium going into my tissues. 'cause I believe that's what was my pattern last [00:33:00] time I ran the test a few years ago. So.  **Michelle:** Oh, that's interesting.  **Hannah:** It's like, yeah, this is my, my unique pattern, you know, so I see that a lot with Hashimoto's and yeah, and, and it's interesting because that pattern, like the high calcium in the tissues and the low potassium, that's really really common with like thyroid stuff in general because, you know, first of all, that calcium's blocking the thyroid. **Hannah:** Hormone from getting up into the cell. It's also gonna be blocking insulin signaling. So there is gonna be a lot of blood sugar swings, and that's gonna be driving the inflammation, making that worse. And then the low potassium, well, you know, potassium is needed for thyroid function as well. So, I see that pattern a lot with that population and it's so fascinating. **Hannah:** And I would just say like, I wouldn't say it's like. It's more like anecdotal, right? Like and you probably see that too in your practice. Yeah. Yeah.  **Michelle:** For different things, not this [00:34:00] specifically, but Yeah. **Michelle:** I mean, you see a lot of that and that's, that matters just because studies are very expensive to have and you can't  **Hannah:** Mm-hmm. **Michelle:** rely just on studies. You have to really rely on data in general, like your own experience  **Hannah:** Oh, absolutely. **Michelle:** there's so much information that you can get just from that. And then, couple of things. One of the things is, I know that Zyme has been shown to really help, it's an enzyme, it's a pro oleic enzymes that break apart, like fibrous tissue. So I'm curious to  **Hannah:** Oh **Michelle:** if it would help with excess calcium or, you know, deposits because it, it works to break down  **Hannah:** yeah,  **Michelle:** really needed in the body.  **Hannah:** yeah. Yeah.  **Michelle:** up.  **Hannah:** Yeah. That is interesting. Yeah, because when we see, usually the calcium in the tissues is also associated with things like restless leg syndrome, kidney stones, gallstones, all that stuff, you know, because it's just calcification of the tissues. [00:35:00] Right. What I do is I'll get, if that person is, has actually been on vitamin D what I'll do is I'll say, okay, let's just pause on the vitamin D and then I'll get them on, a form of vitamin K two that will target that calcium in the tissues and, and bring it, redirect it back to the bones. So we'll do that for several months. And if that person's still concerned about their, their vitamin D levels and say, let's just get that checked, you know, and depending on where you're at with that, you, you either, you know, probably need supplementation time from time to time, or maybe just during the winter, right? **Hannah:** But it's not a long term. You know, supplement for you because of this pattern, this pattern that you typically have. **Michelle:** Another thing that I was gonna mention is, we were talking about like, antibodies.  **Michelle:** I remember, One of my patients mentioning she had like a, 'cause I was talking to an REI and I was gonna have him, I had him on the podcast and so she had some questions and she had a very low amount of [00:36:00] antibodies that are considered normal. And he said no, because the presence of any antibody, and that's what's crazy to me.  **Hannah:** Mm-hmm.  **Michelle:** normal in labs  **Hannah:** Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah. The reference ranges for conventional labs or like in more like conventional healthcare settings. They're not, they're designed to show like if you have a chronic disease or not. Not necessarily if you're optimal. Right. Like thriving, you know? **Michelle:** have any, even if it's like minute, it means that there's an autoimmune, like  **Hannah:** Right. And.  **Michelle:** your thyroid.  **Hannah:** Yeah, and I mean, my first thought is like, and just because I've worked in that arena for so long, is I think it's just because they need to have a diagnose, a diagnosis for a chronic disease, number one, so that they can build insurance and blah, blah, blah.  **Michelle:** Yeah, yeah, yeah.  **Hannah:** So they typically can't treat you. They can't, they [00:37:00] technically can't treat you. **Hannah:** Like they don't really run on a, it's more of like a sick care model. It's not really, they can't really treat you for like prevention. Right. That's not like that that's not how insurance companies work. So, I think that that's, that's my theory on that. But, you know, but to, to answer your question, yes, I, I see, low levels that aren't considered Hashimoto's,  **Michelle:** Right?  **Hannah:** but I would label that early stages or stage one, and I would say, let's work, let's, let's order GI Map. **Hannah:** Let's look at what your minerals are doing like that impact your thyroid. Let's just, just start helping you feel better right away so that we can go into remission. I would much rather my client like, just go ahead and work on those things instead of waiting until it's like, you know, now we're seeing tissue damage, you know, and there's a lot of practices. **Hannah:** I don't,  **Michelle:** it if it's early enough, like, but if it's  **Hannah:** yeah.  **Michelle:** really like far gone,  **Hannah:** Yeah. It can, and I don't know if you've run [00:38:00] across this a lot in your practice or with your clients, but I've been told a lot of times that they weren't even able to request or see a specialist or an endocrinologist, I guess, until they were able to see tissue damage. And it's like, wouldn't you wanna just prevent the tissue damage? **Michelle:** crazy to me. Yeah.  **Hannah:** Mm-hmm. Yeah, so I'm, you know, I just like to get on it like right away, even if it's like, you know, your antibodies are like five, you know?  **Michelle:** yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Really low, but still,  **Hannah:** Yeah. Really low. Yeah. It's worth working on. Yeah. **Michelle:** I had actually just recently, I had a case where her TSH was like five and she's young, she's in her twenties. And I'm  **Hannah:** Mm-hmm.  **Michelle:** not normal.  **Hannah:** Mm-hmm. **Michelle:** just a little abnormal. **Michelle:** But that's not a little abnormal for try somebody trying to conceive.  **Hannah:** Yeah.  **Michelle:** and under. So if you  **Hannah:** Mm-hmm. **Michelle:** the thing. If you go to a general doctor or even an ob, they are a little more general in women's health.  **Hannah:** Yeah. **Michelle:** they're not going [00:39:00] to look at it the same way as an REI is gonna look at it, which is a reproductive endocrinologist and they're gonna  **Hannah:** Right.  **Michelle:** it a completely different perspective.  **Michelle:** Yeah, so it's, so those things I think a lot of people just don't realize and they're going in and they get the wrong information or they don't get like the full information and many years go by and it's kind of like, you know, that's why it's so important to really get ahead of it. **Hannah:** Yeah, absolutely. I think you're, you're worthy of feeling better, you know, if, does it have to be something that's chronic or.  **Michelle:** Right.  **Hannah:** Like full on disease state before just feeling better. **Michelle:** Yeah, for sure. So for people who, you know, are curious and wanna learn more about what you do,  **Michelle:** um, what are some of the things that you offer online? Where can people find you? I.  **Hannah:** So for people who are wanting to work one-on-one with me or maybe just start off with [00:40:00] a consultation or some have some labs done you can find me at through Pivot Nutrition Coaching. So the website is pivot nutrition coaching com. And then if, for my social media, I'm on Instagram with Hannah. **Michelle:** Awesome. I'll have all the notes anyway. If anybody like is curious or wants to know exactly how it's written out or find the link, you can find those on the episode notes. So Hannah, thank you so much for coming on today. It was a great conversation. I love really digging deep on just what goes on with these conditions that so many people hear about that are trying to conceive, but they don't really understand it. **Michelle:** And I think. There's so much power and knowledge and understanding and kind of like going beneath the surface. So I think this is one of the things that I like to do on the show is really to educate people on like really what's going on. So you've really shared some great, valuable information, so thank you so much, Hannah.[00:41:00]  **Hannah:** Thank you so much for having me and I, I think that this is such an important, important conversation to have and a valuable platform, so it's really an honor to be here. And hope we can chat again soon. **Michelle:** Thank you.         

On today's solo episode of The Wholesome Fertility Podcast, I dive deep into the ancient practice of Pranayama, also known as yogic breathwork, and its profound impact on fertility. Breathwork may sound simple, or even unrelated to fertility, but the connection between your breath, nervous system, and reproductive health is incredibly powerful. In this episode, I explain how specific breathing techniques can shift your body from a state of stress into one of rest and regeneration, promoting hormone balance, improved digestion, and pelvic blood flow all critical components of a healthy fertility journey. You'll learn practical ways to integrate ancient breathing practices like Nadi Shodhana (alternate nostril breathing), Kapalabhati (breath of fire), Bhastrika (bellows breath), Bhramari (humming bee breath), and Ujjayi breathing into your daily routine. If you're feeling overwhelmed, stuck, or simply curious about new tools to support your body naturally, this episode is for you. Key Takeaways:  Breathwork regulates the nervous system, supporting hormonal balance and reproductive function. Ancient yogic practices like Pranayama offer free, accessible tools for stress reduction and enhanced vitality. Techniques like alternate nostril breathing and humming bee breath can be easily integrated into your daily life. Breath can help release emotional tension and stimulate vagal tone, a key player in fertility health. Conscious breathing increases oxygenation, supports digestion, and boosts clarity. For more information about Michelle, visit www.michelleoravitz.com To learn more about ancient wisdom and fertility, you can get Michelle's book at: https://www.michelleoravitz.com/thewayoffertility The Wholesome Fertility facebook group is where you can find free resources and support: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2149554308396504/ Instagram: @thewholesomelotusfertility Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thewholesomelotus/   Disclaimer: The information shared on this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. Please consult with your healthcare provider before making any changes to your health or fertility care. --- Transcript: # TWF: 339 (solo episode) **Michelle:** [00:00:00] Episode number 339 of the Wholesome Fertility Podcast. Welcome back to the Wholesome Fertility Podcast. I'm your host, Michelle Orbitz, and today we're diving into a deeply healing and powerful practice that has stood the test of time. It's called Pranayama or yogic Breath Work. You might be surprised to hear just how much breath work could influence your mind and your nervous system, and then in turn influence your reproductive health. **Michelle:** 'cause we know that the nervous system plays such an important role on reproductive health. So if you wanna find out more about powerful breathing exercises that you can do so easily and they're free, that can influence your nervous system and how you feel. Overall, this episode is for you. **Michelle:** Welcome to the Wholesome Fertility Podcast. I'm Michelle, a [00:01:00] fertility acupuncturist here to provide you with resources on how to create a wholesome approach to your fertility journey. **Michelle:** So, so today I'm going to cover a very interesting topic, which is Pranayama. so this is an ancient Indian or yogi or yo guine practice that has been done for thousands of years. **Michelle:** Pranayama or yogic breath work **Michelle:** is extremely powerful And can really impact the mind and the nervous system. So if you wanna find out more on how to hack your nervous system, and if you've watched some of my earlier videos, I talk a lot about how your nervous system really can influence your fertility health because it gets you into a more rest and digest state. **Michelle:** And it can also influence your inflammation and your digestion and even create more balance in your hormones. So if you are trying to conceive and you wanna [00:02:00] find out how you can really hack your body and mind through pranayama this amazing ancient tradition, this amazing ancient practice, then stay tuned. **Michelle:** So you might be asking yourself, what exactly is pranayama? **Michelle:** So in Sanskrit prana means life force vitality. So it's very similar to what chi in Chinese medicine means, and it's the life force vitality that goes through our body. a yma means control or expansion. **Michelle:** So Pranayama in essence, is the art of controlling your breath to influence the life force vitality in your body. **Michelle:** So it's not just about breathing more deeply though. That's part of it. **Michelle:** It is about becoming aware of how your breathing can influence your hormone balance and your nervous system, **Michelle:** as well as reducing stress. And these are all really important and impactful things when you're trying to conceive. **Michelle:** So, although this [00:03:00] is coming from ancient India, this is something that can control all bodies and all different cultures. and it's one of the many gifts that we get from the ancient Vedas, Which is really linked to Ayurveda and yoga. The yogic tradition is the aspect of the physical, and it's more of the physical therapy aspect of it, but this is all part of really the science of life and how they're perceiving that you're able to, and how they're giving you tools to really access this amazing, intelligent life force that resides in your body. **Michelle:** So just to kind of give you a little bit of an overview. So Prana is very similar to Q, which is Life Force Vitality, and this is basically the life force that we have that is intelligent and that keeps our body warm and that keeps our body functioning. So this is something that really is intelligent because that aspect of our bodies is [00:04:00] what tells ourselves what to do, and it also helps the self-healing mechanism of the body. **Michelle:** And when we're in fight or flight, and I always come back to the nervous system than our body is more worried about survival. And regeneration is not as much of a priority because survival is more important. But what happens when we're in survival is that everything moves towards that survival, and it's not worried about digestion. **Michelle:** It's not worried about inflammation. All the things that are running in the background. And it can also impact your sleep because when you're trying to survive, you can't rest, you can't sleep, you can't afford to, you wanna survive, you wanna be alive. So that's ultimately how the nervous system operates. **Michelle:** But when we're getting that free flow of energy and that we're able to really be enriched with the QI and the life force of Prana, and we're able to get also in a more rest and digest mode, things will flow more easily and they're not gonna be as constricted as it does, as things [00:05:00] do happen with stress. **Michelle:** And ultimately as an acupuncturist, one of the biggest things that I do is I work a lot on pelvic energy flow and blood flow. So when there's more flow in your body, there's more blood flow, there's less constriction. And as we know, many times when people have high blood pressure, you know, your blood vessels are actually. **Michelle:** Muscle and those muscles tighten and it causes more constriction and more pressure. And we know that stress can even impact blood pressure. So that tightening is what happens when we're stressed, and ultimately that tightening is going to block. Impact, as I mentioned with the liberty, which is really its role, is to get that energy to flow. **Michelle:** So one of the ways that we can hack really our minds and our bodies is through pranayama. And today I'm gonna talk about a couple of different. Techniques of breathing that you can do that will [00:06:00] immediately have an impact on how you feel and how the energy and the prana in your body is able to flow, which ultimately will be beneficial not just for your body and your reproduction, but also your mind. **Michelle:** And I'm sure you know that if you are on the fertility journey, it can be very stressful. And when you're stressed, there's been studies that show that when you're stressed, you can't really make a clear minded decision. And as we know, when you're on the fertility journey, you need that decision making aspect of your mind because you are going through a lot of different choices and options that are being thrown at you. **Michelle:** So the first breath that I am going to be sharing with you is called Nadi Shaana, and that is alternate nostril breath. I like to call it the yin and yang pranayama, although that's not really the name, because it balances the yin and the yang in our brain. So both hemispheres of the brain start to function and come [00:07:00] together. **Michelle:** And this is one of the most immediate calming exercises that you can do. And what it does is it basically you alternate sides and you will block one nostril and breathe in, and you can breathe into like the count of four or the count of eight, whatever feels right. But if you slow it also, you'll start to feel a little more peace so you can actually breathe into the count of eight. **Michelle:** Then close both nostrils. So breathe in one nostril, close the right, and breathe in from the left. Breathe in to eight, and then hold both nostrils closed to the count of eight, and then exhale from the right to the count of eight. And then breathe back in from the same one, the right to the count of eight, close both nostrils, and then breathe out from the left and then breathe back in for the count of eight out, eight in hold it.[00:08:00]  **Michelle:** So basically just remember one specific count and you're gonna keep doing that and then alternate your nose. Now you're gonna notice that one nostril is going to be a little more clear than the other. And that is actually very normal. Our bodies tend to go more yin and yang throughout the day, so one side will feel one way and the other side will not feel that same way, and you'll find that that will alternate throughout the day. **Michelle:** And that's kind of an interesting thing, but our bodies do alternate and we're constantly getting to this place of homeostasis so that our body can find balance. But through that, we do have those two sides, those dualities, which is why doing something like this can be so powerful. **Michelle:** So by balancing, because our nose is directly opened, you know, the olfactory nerve, which is also the sense is directly linked or connected to the brain. So by alternating those two sides, of [00:09:00] breathing, you are creating that balance from the left and right hemispheres of the brain, and that also can create more clear thinking if you are feeling anxious and it's hard for you to really make a decision. **Michelle:** This is a great exercise to do, and what this also does is activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the more rest and digest nervous system. So if you're feeling extra stressed and you wanna slow down your mind, this is amazing. It also improves oxygenation and it also creates more mindfulness. **Michelle:** 'cause as you're doing it, you're being very conscious of how you're breathing and how you're feeling because it is a practice that you have to pay attention while you're doing it. **Michelle:** So you could do this in the beginning of your day and then you can do this at the end of the day. And it could be literally two minutes, two minutes in the morning and two minutes at night. And I think that it is really nice to actually do it in the beginning and end of the day. 'cause you're literally doing it at yin and yang times of your 24 hour cycle. **Michelle:** So it can help you when you [00:10:00] first start to wake up, and then you can help you end the day really nicely and support your nervous system as you go to sleep. So another one that is one of my favorites is called Kati, and that is skull shining breath. Or you may have heard this, called breath of fire. And so ultimately what it is, is working through your diaphragm and after you do it for a while, you literally feel like you are breathing fire. **Michelle:** 'cause you can feel a lot of fire in your diaphragm area. So the area that I'm talking about is really the soft area of your belly that's right underneath your ribs. So you start to feel this, it's kind of like right above, it's between the bottom of your ribs and your belly button, right in that solar plexus in that area. **Michelle:** So you can put your hands there Before I actually go into the description of how to do it, I wanna talk about what it does. Breath of fire is incredible for [00:11:00] digestion and it is one of the more stimulating breaths, and I remember one of my teachers mentioning That there was like a saying that as many breaths as you breathe, that we only have a certain amount of breaths for our life. **Michelle:** And that is why it's important to breathe slow. And the slower we breathe, the longer we can live. And I asked about this one because it's actually a very rapid type of breath, and they said, well, it's considered one breath because it's, you're not fully exhaling. **Michelle:** You're kind of like pumping throughout the whole time that you're doing it. So it's actually considered one breath. It's not considered, many different breaths. **Michelle:** so another thing, the reason why it's called Breath of Fire is because in Ayurvedic medicine, a lot of times they refer to something called Agni, which is our digestif fire. And that justifier, I guess you can say correlates to really our ability to break down foods And really the acid that we have in our stomach that can cook the [00:12:00] food and ultimately the breath of fire. And Agni is very, very important. And sometimes people will have diminished Agni from drinking too much cold or not really eating correctly. And so we don't want that. We wanna actually kindle that fire because when you kindle that fire, it will protect your body, increase your immune system, and also break down foods so that the rest of the digestive system, is able to really assimilate the nutrition from the food. **Michelle:** Another thing that it can do is clear, stagnant energy. And then when stagnant energy gets cleared, then you're getting more flow in the body and Prana is able to really move. So. This is one of the most powerful breaths to really get things moving. And the only thing that I would say with this, and really everything that I'm saying is not medical advice. **Michelle:** And I would also say be cautious. If you are about to do a retrieval, I would not do this breath because they are afraid [00:13:00] of ovarian torsion and this is something that you don't wanna mess with. So, and it is a very powerful and moving type of breath. **Michelle:** But I'd like to compare it to when the Native Americans used fire for brushes, you know, for, to get rid of like old weeds before they created new or planted new seeds. And this is one of those things, you're getting things outta the way, you're burning out the stagnation with this breath in order to get more flow and more new energy coming into the body. **Michelle:** so here's how you do it. So in between the bottom of your ribs and your belly button, so put your hand there and you could put both hands, one on top of the other. And what you do is you forcefully exhale, and you will find that when you do that, you're naturally going to bounce back almost like a rubber band where it just inhales. **Michelle:** By nature. And then you don't worry about the inhale 'cause it's gonna happen automatically and you just keep exhaling and you just [00:14:00] pump with the exhale. So you go and you'll feel that bounce when you have your hand there. And over time you'll find that it can get longer and longer as you practice. **Michelle:** In the beginning, you might get tired sooner and sometimes you might even find that it makes you cough. It is so purifying, it will actually make you cough up old mucus in your lungs. So it is pretty wild how it works. **Michelle:** So the next type of breath is called baa, and that is also called the bellows breath. And this is a little bit more active and I'll describe it so that you understand how to do it. **Michelle:** But first let me explain what it does. **Michelle:** So Bas Rica, very similar to the breath of fire, is also a breath that is very active and it can stoke the internal fire in our bodies. **Michelle:** It also involves very, forceful inhales and exhales. But in this case, you're gonna be [00:15:00] using the arms. **Michelle:** It is considered to activate the Kundalini energy in the body. This is the energy that runs up and down our spine and feeds really all of our organs and body **Michelle:** and supports our body's energetic flow. and it also is considered to have a balancing effect on the doshas. If you've watched my Ayurvedic video, I talk about the different doshas, which are really elements in your body, and this is considered to be a good breath that balances all of that. **Michelle:** It can also boost oxygenation and mental clarity. And how you do it is you raise your arms up and you have your hands out. So your hands are completely open and your arms are just raised up, and you inhale as you do that, And as you exhale, you close your hands and you bring your elbows to the side, so you bring your hands down so you inhale with your hands up. [00:16:00] stretch hands, and then you exhale forcefully as you bring it down, as if you're bringing something down or pulling something towards you from the top to the bottom. **Michelle:** So your elbows basically end up by your side and completely folded with your hands next to your shoulders in a fist. So inhale, bring your hands up. Wide open, exhale really forcefully as your hands go down into a fist next to your shoulders. **Michelle:** So this is kind of related to the breath of fire. There's definitely a lot of heat that will be coming out from it, It is a very good practice to really get that energy moving. If you feel like it's stuck. This is great. If you feel a lot of stress and you feel a lot going on. If you wanna come home and you feel like you've had a very stressful day, this is a great way to break that up. **Michelle:** So lastly, I'm going to cover something called Ari, or. Humming bee breath. **Michelle:** [00:17:00] So actually this breath and the way you're supposed to do it is one thing that we know for sure is a technique that stimulates the vagus nerve. And as we know, the vagus nerve is extremely important when it comes to reproductive health That's because it has so many different functions, and one of them, which is really key, is promoting really good digestive health, lowering inflammation, improving sleep, and on and on. **Michelle:** And it basically helps the body get into a parasympathetic mode. And one of the ways that is known to stimulate your vagus nerve is by humming. So this breath And another thing is that when you do hum on an exhale, you are actually by nature because you're using your voice, you slow down your breath. **Michelle:** So this is a great way to slow down your breath as you are exhaling. **Michelle:** So this can also reduce any emotional tension And it could also reduce heart rate and blood pressure. **Michelle:** so what you do for [00:18:00] this breath is inhale, fully hold it at the top, and then exhale with a humming sound. So. **Michelle:** And then you just breathe all the way out. So as you'll notice when you're humming, you actually slow down your breath, so it naturally slows down your breath, which has an immediate impact on any kind of state of anxiety. It will really calm your mind. So this is an amazing thing to do, and you can really do this while you're driving. **Michelle:** Just keep your eyes open for obvious reasons, But you could do this even while you're driving. If you're driving to a doctor's office and you're feeling really nervous, you can do that. a lot of times, om in my car, and this is just kind of one of the things that I do, and I find that it really, it, it feels like I'm singing a song, but I'm just oing. **Michelle:** So it feels really calming on my nervous system. It feels like an internal massage, having that vibration. So that can help a lot. And again, you could do this also at the end of the day if you had a lot of. Things [00:19:00] going on if it was a very intense day, and you can get yourself ready and your nervous system ready for more rest. **Michelle:** And actually that was not my last one. I have one more. and this is something that you can do at all times, and it's called UJA breathing. So if you practice yoga, you may have heard of UJA breathing because it's something that a lot of yogis will teach you to do during your yoga practice, and that is something that you can take with you really throughout the day. And what it is, is causing a little bit of constriction in your throat as you're breathing So that your breath could be a little louder. So it's kind of like this constriction where you're able to feel the breath going through your throat. so it's like making a little bit of a, a humming or a sound while your mouth is closed and you could practice. I'm sure you've done this naturally, even when you were little, And it's a very calming and very grounding breath. **Michelle:** It is thought to increase the lung capacity, and it's [00:20:00] also thought to balance out the heat in the body, and it's also thought to balance out the temperature in the body. So it's kind of like a yin and yang balance. **Michelle:** And it can also, since it's so grounding, promote a meditative state. So it's something that you can do, and this is one of the reasons why a lot of yogis use this during yoga, because ultimately yoga was a, was a practice that prepared yogis to meditate. It got the body into a state where it was able to meditate more deeply. **Michelle:** So just to reiterate, none of this is medical advice. It's not something that should ever take the place of what doctors tell you It should not be something that ever takes the place of medical. **Michelle:** Protocols that you've been given, and also to be aware or talk to your doctor if you are going through IVF, to talk to them about different breathing exercises and perhaps to pause on any of them during the IVF process. [00:21:00] If you have any questions or ideas for future episodes, I would love to hear from you. **Michelle:** I'm very active on Instagram and my handle is at the wholesome lotus fertility. I don't always respond right away, but I always eventually get to all of them. So thank you so much for tuning in today, and I hope you have a beautiful day. [00:22:00]     

In the first of a special series, Morgan Stanley's U.S. Thematic and Equity Strategist Michelle Weaver discusses new frontiers in artificial intelligence with Keith Weiss, Head of U.S. Software Research.----- Transcript -----Michelle: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market I'm Michelle Weaver, Morgan Stanley's U.S. Thematic and Equity Strategist.Keith: And I'm Keith Weiss, Head of U.S. Software Research.Michelle: This episode is the first episode of a special series we're calling “Big Debates” – where we dig deeper into some of the many hot topics of conversation going on right now. Ideas that will shape global markets in 2025. First up in the series: Artificial Intelligence.It's Friday, January 10th at 10am in New York.When we look back at 2024, there were three major themes that Morgan Stanley Research followed. And AI and tech diffusion were among them. Throughout last year the market was largely focused on AI enablers – we're talking semiconductors, data centers, and power companies. The companies that are really building out the infrastructure of AI.Now though, as we're looking ahead, that story is starting to change.Keith, you cover enterprise software. Within your space, how will the AI story morph in 2025?Keith: I do think 2025 is going to be an exciting year for software [be]cause a lot of these fundamental capabilities that have come out from the training of these models, of putting a lot of compute into the Large Language Models, those capabilities are now being built into software functionality. And that software functionality has been in the market long enough that investors can expect to see more of it come into results. That the product is there for people to actually buy on a go forward basis.One of the avenues of that product that we're most excited about heading into 2025 is what we're calling agentic computing, where we're moving beyond chatbots to a more automated proactive type of interface into that software functionality that can handle more complex problems, handle it more accurately and really make use of that generative AI capability in a corporate or in an enterprise software setting as we head into 2025.Michelle: Could you give us an example of what agentic AI is and how might an end user interact with it?Keith: Sure. So, you and I have been interacting with chatbots a lot to gain access to this generative AI functionality. And if you think about the way you interact with that chatbot, right, you have a prompt, you have a question. You have to come up with the question. going to take that question and it's going to, try to contextually understand the nature of that question, and to the best of its ability it's going to give you back an answer.In agentic computing, what you're looking for is to add more agency into that chatbot; meaning that it can reason more over the overall question. It's not just one model that it's going to be using to compose the answer. And it's not just the composition of an answer where the functionality of that chatbot is going to end. There's actually an ability to execute what that answer is. So, it can handle more complex problems.And it could actually automate the execution of the answer to those problems.Michelle: It sounds like this tech is going to have a massive impact on the workplace. Have you estimated what this could do to productivity?Keith: Yeah, this is -- really aligns to the work that we did actually back in 2023, where we did our AI index, right. We came up with the conclusion that given the current capabilities of Large Language Models, 25 per cent of U.S. occupations are going to be impacted by these technologies. As the capabilities evolve, we think that could go as high as 45 per cent of U.S. labor touched by these productivity enhancing. Or, sort of, being replaced by these technologies. That equates to, at the high end, $4 trillion of labor that's being augmented or replaced on a go forward basis. The productivity gains still yet to be seen; how much of a productivity gain you could see on average. But the numbers are massive, right, in terms of the potential because it touches so much labor.Michelle: And finally on agentic, is the market missing anything and how does your view differ from the consensus?Keith: I think part of what the market is missing is that these agentic computing frameworks is not just one model, right? There's typically a reasoning engine of some sort that's organizing multiple models, multiple components of the system that enable you to -- one, handle more complex queries, more complex problems to be solved, lets you actually execute to the answer. So, there's execution capabilities that come along with that. And equally as important, put more error correction into the system as well. So, you could have agents that are actually ensuring you have a higher accuracy of the answer.It's the sugar that's going to make the medicine go down, if you will. It's going to make a lot easier to adopt in enterprise environments. I think that's why we're a little bit more optimistic about the pace of adoption and the adoption curves we could see with agentic computing despite the fact it's a relatively early-stage technology.Michelle: You just mentioned Large Language Models, or LLMs; and one barrier there has been training these models. It requires a ton of computing power, among other constraints. How are companies addressing this, and what's in the cards for next year?Keith: So, if you think about the demand for that compute in our mind comes from two fundamental sources. And as a software analyst, I break this down into research versus development, right? Research is investment that you make to find core fundamental capabilities.Development is when you take those capabilities and make the investment to create product out of it. Thus far, again, the primary focus has been on the training side of the equation.I think that part of the equation looks to be asymptotic to a certain extent. The – what people call the scaling laws, the amount of incremental capability that you're getting from putting more compute at the equation is starting to come down.What people are overlooking is the amount of improvement that you could see from the development side of the equation. So, whereas the demand for GPUs, the demand for data center for that pure training side of the equation might start to slow down a little bit, I think what we're going to see expand greatly is the demand for inference, the demand to utilize these models more fully to solve real business problems.In terms of where we're going to source this; there are constraints in terms of data center capacity. The companies that we cover, they've been thinking about these problems for the past decade, right? And they have these decade long planning cycles. They have good visibility in terms of being able to meet that demand in the immediate future. But these questions on how we are going to power these data centers is definitely top of mind for our companies, and they're looking for new sources of power and trying to get more creative there.The pace with which data centers can be built out is a fundamental constraint in terms of how quickly this demand can be realized. So those supply constraints I don't think are going to be a immediate limiter for any of our names when we're thinking about calendar [20]25. But definitely, part of the planning process and part of the longer-term forecasting for all of these companies in terms of where are they going to find all this fundamental resource – because whether it's training or inference, still a lot of GPUs are going to be needed. A lot of compute is going to be needed.Michelle: Recently we've been hearing about so called artificial general intelligence or AGI. What is it? And do you think we're going to see it in 2025?Keith: Yeah, so, AGI is the – it's basically the holy grail of all of these development efforts. Can we come up with models that can reason in the human world as well as we can, right? That can understand the inputs that we give it, understand the domains that we're trying to operate in as well or better than we can, so it can solve problems as effectively and as efficiently as we can.The easiest way to solve that systems integration problem of like, how can we get the software, how could we get the computers to interact with the world in the way that we do? Or get all the impact that we do is for it to replicate all those functionalities. For it to be able to reason over unstructured text the same way we do. To take visual stimuli the same way that we do. And then we don't have to take data and put into a format that's readable by the system anymore.2025 is probably too early to be thinking about AGI, to be honest. Most technologists think that there's more breakthroughs needed before the algorithms are going to be that good; before the models are going to be that good.There's very few people who think Large Language Models and the scaling of Large Language Models in themselves are going to get us to that AGI. You're probably talking 10 to 20 years before we truly see AGI emerge. So, 2025 is probably a little bit too early.Michelle: Well, great, Keith. Thank you for taking the time to talk and helping us kick off big debates. It looks like 2025 we'll see some major developments in AI.And to our listeners, thanks for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please leave us a review wherever you listen to the show and share the podcast with a friend or colleague today.

Do you want to know the number one technique to calm your overwhelm and frustration as a busy mom? Today we talk with guest Rachel Fernandez about how to calm your nervous system and help you move from fight or flight into a regulated state where you can relax and pivot.  Rachel is an anxiety management coach and host of the Ditch Mom Anxiety podcast where she helps Christian moms regulate their emotions by calming their nervous system.  Grab that lukewarm beverage, pull up a chair and settle in as we talk about mom struggles, anxiety, and easy practical tips to help you enjoy your day. Let's dive in!  I pray this blesses you! Michelle   You can connect with Rachel at: Podcast: Ditch Mom Anxiety https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ditch-mom-anxiety-mental-health-anxiety-disorder-nervous/id1651541195 Free Facebook Community: Ditch Mom Anxiety FB Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ditchmomanxiety 8 Daily Habits to Reduce Anxiety freebie: https://ditchmomanxiety.myflodesk.com/eky4u7qhaq Email: rachel@naturalwaymama.com Website (just my sales page currently): https://naturalwaymama.thrivecart.com/60-min-anxiety-management-copy-2/ PS. If you need some extra accountability or help with productivity hacks, time management tools, mapping out a more efficient daily or weekly schedule, time blocking and so much more. We will break down what isn't working in your schedule, create new personalized goals for you, and determine the next new steps you need to take to have more freedom and live with more joy and laughter!  Grab a coaching call with me at: Email: contact@byrdmichelle.com website: www.byrdmichelle.com Free Productivity Planner - my gift to you! Just go to my website Come join our Facebook Group: Home Management for Working Moms - Organization & Time Management

On tomorrow's episode of The Wholesome Fertility Podcast, Alana McGlashan of @thenurturedwomban_ shares her personal fertility challenge story and experience with Asherman's syndrome. She discusses the complications she faced after a miscarriage and the diagnosis of severe Asherman's syndrome. Alana shares her journey of healing and preparing her body for conception, as well as her experiences with pregnancy and loss. She emphasizes the importance of connecting with the heart and womb, and the power of self-trust in the healing process. I was deeply moved by her story of hope and how she found strength to listen deeply to her soul's calling and knowing that she was meant to have her children. Be sure to tune in!   Description:   Alana experienced miscarriage, Ashermans Syndrome & infertility on her journey to conceive. Navigating Asherman's Syndrome was one of the hardest times of her life as she was told due to the severity she may not be able to have children. Sending her on a healing journey that although may have taken 2 years, she now has 2 children later. The medicine she found on her journey she now shares with women in her 1:1 energetic womb explorations, helping women to rewrite the story they have been told on their own fertility journey & setting the foundations for profound healing. You can find her on Instagram @thenurturedwomban_     For more information about Michelle, visitwww.michelleoravitz.com   Click here to find out how to get the first chapter of "The Way of Fertility" for free.   The Wholesome FertilityFacebook group is where you can find free resources and support:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2149554308396504/   Instagram: @thewholesomelotusfertility   Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/thewholesomelotus/     Transcript:     [00:00:00] Michelle: Welcome to the podcast, Alana. Alana: Hi, how are you going? Michelle: Good. So I'd love for you to share your story. I know that it's been a very personal fertility challenge story and definitely defied the odds from what you were told. And I love stories of hope. So I'm very excited to have you on and share your story and your experience with Asherman's syndrome, which I think a lot of people aren't really aware or may not even be aware that they actually have. Alana: Yeah, absolutely. And at the time, you know, I had no idea what it was and it was something I was searching for in the hopes to hear hope, because I was just hearing a lot of stats and a lot of Let's say stories that I didn't, I didn't want to hear at the time. So I felt pregnant and lost that little baby at 10 weeks. Alana: And I was a scientist working in Sydney, which is from [00:01:00] where I live, two hours travel away. And I went to the early early pregnancy. room, and they gave me all these options of what you can do next. And. At the time, everything, I would say I was heavily in my masculine energy. Like all just do the things, list out the steps and we will follow them to become parents. Alana: And because I traveled so far away, I took the option of a DNC, which is a dilation and curette. I'm not sure if that's called anything else anywhere else. And it's just basically the surgical removal. Yeah. Okay, cool. And yeah, and I woke up to complications after that. And, you know, after being told like, it's so routine and I just thought, you know, it would be simple. Alana: We do this and then I have a bleed and we can start trying again. And I woke up to, yes, as I said, complications. And [00:02:00] feeling really disorientated and I just felt really in my gut like wow what what just happened and they kind of just brushed me off and My doctor, then later, just was like, okay, well it's been six weeks, you haven't got your bleed back. Alana: Sometimes women need a little bit longer. And I just knew in my gut things weren't right. And for me, I had no period. So 12 weeks, post that surgery. I still had no period. Yeah. And I think maybe around the eight weeks I, I was like, no, my gut's telling me something's not right. I'm going to book a specialist appointment and because they take so long to get into, I thought I'm just going to book it now. Alana: And if I don't need it, then I can cancel it.  Michelle: Did you, did you know anything at the time? Did they say something was off or you just kind of felt Alana: yeah, they, there was nothing ever mentioned of Ashman syndrome. The only thing that they mentioned, I mean, they obviously mentioned some risks that can happen and the risks, risks are a perforated uterus, but it's so [00:03:00]routine that if that was to happen, that was really negligence. And that was all that they had described as a potential risk. Alana: So I hadn't even heard of Ashman's by this point, like, and so I followed my gut, made this appointment and it must have been around the four month mark after surgery and I told him my story thinking I was just going in there to get a tablet that would just help kickstart everything. Maybe I just needed some help to get things along. Alana: And again, you know, I was, I was very naive at that time on, of my cycle and understanding my body. And I walked in and told him my story. And basically he said, we, there's something called Ashman syndrome, and I feel that this is, this is your situation. And. We need to get in and have a look like, cause he could do it via scans and then go in and do surgery, but he's like, due to the nature of how long you've already waited and the scar tissue that would be there if it was [00:04:00] confirmed. Alana: We need to get this cleaned up ASAP basically. Michelle: Before we continue on the details, I want people to know like, what is Asherman's syndrome? Alana: So Ashman's syndrome is basically where scar tissue grows inside the uterus and reduces your fertility as a result from some form of surgery. So they might try and say just from DNC, but if you have a baby and maybe there's retained placenta and they clean it out that way, any sort of surgical intervention within your uterus, Could potentially scar. Alana: And I think what's important for women to know right now is that any change in your period. Or if you're experiencing difficulties falling could be a sign. I have no women after, so the percentage is actually quite low. I forgot to look it up before we jumped on today of Ashermans. But The other women that I had sort [00:05:00] of searched for to bring awareness to our local hospital and their procedures, they had their period, but their periods just were different, a little bit lighter, maybe they didn't go as long, there was just a lot less. Alana: small signs, which they quite easily then got fobbed off as just being paranoid in a sense. And then all turned out to have different stages of Ashman's, whereas I had none and my stage was quite high. Actually the highest he had seen in my local area. So that was not good news for me. Michelle: Yeah. Alana: yeah, so long story short, he said we need to operate and Confirm, and if so, it's a 20 minute procedure, I'll be in and I'll be out. Alana: And, I thought, oh, I thought my legs were pulled out from me at that moment, but from that surgery I woke up and I felt really disorientated, as you do, and he's standing there waiting for me to wake up to tell me that, [00:06:00] yes, I've confirmed it's Ashman's Syndrome, however, it is so severe, I I've been in there for four hours and I can't see without risking damage to your uterus. Alana: And I need to do some further tests before we continue. And I remember the first thought I thought of was, am I going to be able to have children? And he had this solemn look on his face and he goes, I have no idea what's possible right now. And I was just. Gutted. Absolutely gutted. Michelle: Wow. That is so real. I mean to be in a situation like that and just thinking, okay, I'm going to go in and have the surgery and everything's going to be fine, it's going to be, what did he say? 20 minutes? And to actually see that it's really severe so what happened after that?  Alana: Yeah, so I then had to go you have to allow a little bit of [00:07:00] time for some healing and they put in, I think it depends for the surgeon, but I got a gel put in that just kind of tried to help what he did pull away with the scar tissue not to reform because there is a risk that as he opens it up, like the little spindles might. Alana: touch and then start to pull together. So they put in this gel that lasts, I think, for four weeks. So I had to wait a month. And then he sent me for a we call it here a sonar histogram. So it's just a ultrasound where they insert water into your uterus. And then they can see like a good picture, the flow, if there's any blocks. Alana: And I think for women that might have blocked fallopian tubes, sometimes they use this and it can either unblock or at least identify that the fallopian tubes are blocked. And, I'm just going to say that was the worst pain I had ever been in getting that. And again, no one warned me that it could be uncomfortable. Alana: And I wouldn't say uncomfortable [00:08:00] was the word. And I was just so lucky. I had a girlfriend who came with me and just said, look, I can, I can sit here and hold your hand while they do this. And it probably turned out the reason why for me it was so painful, but I have now heard many other women describe it as quite excruciating. Alana: Is that my, most of my uterus? was scarred to the point that it was nearly completely shut. Michelle: Oh, wow. Alana: And so they were trying to obviously shove water in it and like open it up when it could not. And so that again was like a really hard thing to take. And the specialist had said that he will have to do this with multiple surgeries. The good news is there is a side, there's a little part that is open and he believed if he could get to there, then he could. Remove the rest and it may take a few surgeries, but he just wanted to take his time. Alana: He didn't want to [00:09:00] cause more damage. And so we had just resigned to the fact that this is a process that needs to be done and there's no rushing it. And the good news was the next surgery, he was able to remove all the scar tissue. And again, he inserted the gel so that the hopes that nothing would close back up. Alana: And then I had another follow up, just normal ultrasound, because I said, I was too scarred to have that other ultrasound again and yeah. And then from there he's like, okay, this is great. You know, we've got, we've got rid of it. The uterus has opened back up. It's gone to normal shape again. Let's work on your lining. Alana: So a. Do I call it a symptom afterwards? Is that Your lining may not become thick again. And he is also an IVF specialist. So he was really [00:10:00] wanting my lining to get to a certain thickness that he would put his, or would want his IVF patients to be on which just was not happening. And at first it was really disheartening. Alana: And so he'd reached out to, there's a guru in Sydney, and then he went further. I think it was It was overseas and he just said, you know, like some of them don't come back, you know, any thicker. And that is, that is their lining. And so obviously being a scientist, I had read all the papers, read all the stats and nothing was looking great to have a baby. Alana: Some women had not many in the severity that I had. And if they did have one that were high risks the risk was the placenta could attach to your uterus muscle. And just a whole heap of other things that you really don't want to hear when all you want to do is be a mom. [00:11:00] And yeah, so it was like, I just kept going to this place and this place just kept giving me the answers that did not agree with what was in my heart. Alana: And I just thought this can't be my story. This can't be my only story. And I just had this feeling to expand where I was looking. And so I started to research other modalities. And I thought, you know what, if I can just help support my body, who knows what's possible. And I ended up finding a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner who specialized in fertility and I went there weekly for two years. Alana: Yes. And I felt good. I felt like this was where I was meant to be, but it was really hard to hear the things that she[00:12:00] was saying. Like your body can be trusted. Your body can self heal. Everything's possible because at the time I was so, as I said, in my masculine energy of stats and facts that. Michelle: hmm. Alana: how, how, and it wasn't until obviously with the, with the acupuncture and the herbs, my mind started to heal, my heart started to heal, that then my womb had a chance to heal. Alana: And of course it sent me on this huge journey, deep dive into energetics of the womb and its capacity, its ability. And I started to believe that, whoa, okay. She's a powerful organ, and not just organ, portal for creation. And, Alana: Right? Tingles! Yeah! Michelle: Yeah. When you said heart, that struck me. 'cause I know that the heart's connected to the uterus. Alana: And, [00:13:00] it wasn't, it took me a long time to put two and two together. And, your emotional state. And like, the womb is the element of water, so your emotions. And it's the sister heart, right? So of course, our emotions are going to get stored in our uterus. And if she's too busy trying to hold our emotions that we're not processing, how was I giving her the space she needed to heal in the timeframe I wanted, you know? Alana: And it was just, my world had opened up. I still had at that time stayed close to the medical system. There was still fears, you know. that if I had fallen pregnant what that then might look like, what that journey may look like. And we decided to focus not on a baby at the moment, just focus on healing, get married. Alana: And I fell pregnant on my honeymoon or I found out on my honeymoon and we were so excited. But [00:14:00]again, I decided not to get a scan until a bit later, but that, that Bubby had decided only six weeks was it's time on this earth. And as, Sad as that was. It actually gave me the biggest sense of hope. And I realized the message was just give me time, Michelle: Oh, Alana: me time. Michelle: wow. Alana: And so I was like, okay, this is possible. That was without intervention. That was without any other, cause I had a lot of fear around anyone going in my uterus again, because of course I trusted someone to go in there and do their job. And I came out damaged and that really, and that like, not just you were hurt from that. Alana: That changed the projection of my life completely. And so I had a lot of mistrust. I didn't want anyone to go near it if I could help it. So I really wanted that natural approach. And as I said, as that strength between [00:15:00] heart and womb grew, I knew that that was going to be possible and I just had to trust that you know, the divine timing of trusting and surrender is not the easiest thing to fall into or follow, but. Alana: I just had to trust that my heart was guiding me on the path that, that then needed to be. Alana: Sorry, that brings up lots of emotions thinking about back then. Alana: And so, yeah, it was, it was actually quite interesting that the divine timing of the, that baby that I then lost the second time, my family suffered a significant loss in like my immediate family not long after. And. I believe that that baby also knew that it wasn't the time because I needed to be there for my little brother. Alana: And it was, I was just, [00:16:00] you know, at the time you just think, wow, I'm cop and blow after blow. But when you had the little bit of space, you just thought, well, how would I have been able to grow a baby right now? Like I am in so much grief. It, it was insane. And then once He was better. I went on a Bali trip with a best friend and we just, she's like, you just need to, you know, live life a little bit. Alana: And we went on this retreat and it was when we came back from that, we were like, okay, I feel like we're in a good place now. Like I'm in a good place. Let's just see what happens without the pressure and the timing and the scheduling. I didn't want conceiving to be a job. I really wanted it to be from the heart. And it was about, yeah, because I feel like when you're struggling, you really take the heart out of conceiving and conception. Michelle: is, you are, every single thing is a quote. I'm like, this is amazing. This is really, I'm [00:17:00] feeling this. Alana: Conception isn't just the creation between man and woman, Michelle: Yes. Alana: It's a co creation with the spirit of that baby and what it, what fuses that love, you know? And. I wanted the next baby to be strong, strong enough to like, whatever we needed to go through, we had each other. And.  Michelle: Like the stuff that you're telling, like it's making me emotional. Just so you know, like I'm really feeling every word that you're saying, not to interrupt, but continue. Alana: I probably needed that pause for a second. Yeah. And so then we found out in February I was pregnant and you know what? I knew, I knew instantly this was the baby, that this baby was going nowhere, that they were here and. My dreams had come true. There were still fears around the placenta attaching to my uterus and what that could mean. Alana: And at the end of the [00:18:00] day, I have resided to the fact that if this was going to be my only baby, so be it because I wanted this baby. And. Yeah, I was in, I was, I had an OB because if things did start to go south, we wanted to be on that early. But anyways, I had a beautiful pregnancy. No complications. Alana: The placenta was in a great spot. And it even got to the point, because most, the stats had suggested that women with Ashmans have. a caesarean. And again, that fear of do not go near that part of my body. I don't want you there. I really didn't want it if I didn't have to. And I said, can I, can I try, can I try and go natural? Alana: Like everything is going well. There is no indication of anything wrong. And it was looking good and she thought possibly, but then my son decided to stay in the breech position and [00:19:00] I was not in the place that I am in now where I would continue with a vaginal birth. I mean, I was born a breech baby vaginally. Alana: And so I found it really hard that the quote I was told was that we have lost the art to birth a breech baby or the skills, not the art. And I was like, Oh, okay. And then today I think, I'm sorry, who's birthing the baby? Michelle: Mm hmm. Alana: The mom, Michelle: Right? Alana: the mom is birthing the baby. Not you. Yes, you're assisting, but yeah, so, You know, my views today would have changed on that. Alana: But at the time, again, as I had mentioned, I, we just wanted the baby. And she did give me options to do that, like manipulation, my traditional Chinese medicine practitioner, she was doing all the things to create the space. Yeah. Everything. I had everything going. I had it at home on my toes. I was doing the [00:20:00] upside down poses, which mind you made me feel absolutely terrible. Alana: And so I just said to my husband, I can't do this. Like. This feels wrong. And and I have to resign to the fact that. He found his position and he was not moving and that's where he wanted to be. And then it was my choice to decide how then that, that became our birth together. And so we had a cesarean beautiful little boy, everything great. Alana: It all went great. And so afterwards, because of the scarring and that fear that I had around my uterus, I didn't want to fall back in a place of like dissociation and detachment from it. Like I had. Started to rebuild this relationship with my womb. And now they've just. Also added another scar. And I was like, well, I've had one baby who's to say I can't have another like, and so I went on another deeper journey again. Alana: And with my practitioner of healing this scar tissue and softening it before it has the chance to [00:21:00] really harden in preparation for the next baby. And. Michelle: And this was acupuncture or another Alana: Acupuncture at the beginning. And then it was probably for the first six months I did acupuncture and she showed me how to self massage my scar tissue. And what else did we do? There was just a lot of hands on touch. And I think her focus was to remind me that you can still have loving touch on your body. Alana: After everything I had gone through. And after six months, It got a little bit hard with a little baby cause she was in Sydney where I had found it cause it was close to where it was really hard to get up to her. And now that he was starting to move and be mobile, it was a lot harder to have a session on my own. Alana: And so then I started looking at other modalities. I thought, well, okay, I've done all the acupuncture. Let's see what else there is. And I come across a lady who did Yoni steaming and she did energetic [00:22:00] support. Consultations beforehand. And it became just a really beautiful practice where I could turn within and I could nourish myself and just steam and just visualize the blood flow going back to my uterus and everything being soft and really in that feminine essence, that feminine energy to allow that nurturing to happen to my womb. Alana: And I went weekly. Until my bleed came back, which was 14 months post as I was a breastfeeding mom postpartum. And, you know, we were kind of on this urgency, let's, let's fall pregnant straight away because of everything we had. We didn't expect it to take two years to get our son. And I'm already in my thirties. Alana: So there was like that time pressure to, all right, if we want more children, cause you know, we had always talked about having four and we're like, Oh gosh, I don't know if four is going to happen now, but if we can get. You know, on the roll, we'll see what happens. And so I had to reduce my breastfeeds to get my bleed [00:23:00] back so that we could fall pregnant. Alana: And when we decided to start consciously conceiving, so I think it was just the month of that I ended up with my bleed. I started to feel this essence, this person, this spirit around me. And it was the first time I had really started to attune into these senses. And. I just could feel this girl, this pink. Alana: I could see pink around me when when she'd just show up. And it was really interesting because the month I fell pregnant. So obviously that two week wait, I couldn't feel her. I didn't know where she was. And I was like, Oh, I feel like she's here. And I was pregnant and I didn't tell anyone apart from the lady that I went to Yoni steaming, because we'd always talk about, you know what, what do I feel like a baby might be? Alana: And I was like, to be honest, I can actually sense this female around me. And I just get these glimpses of[00:24:00] pink like a pink orb and yeah. And then it turned out I had a daughter and what was beautiful about that pregnancy, I mean, we didn't find out. I like to just wait till birth to find out what the gender of our babies are. Alana: And. I did not want to go back to the hospital system. I didn't want to be put in a place where they would just see my history and then start to implement things that then of course would lead to other interventions that I didn't want. I didn't want to be supported in that way. I knew the capability of my body. Alana: I, like my pregnancy was again, a really gentle, easy pregnancy. I mean, I was very sick, but overall easy. And. I decided to home birth. And again, that was like a huge thing. Like in my immediate community, you know, no one does that. And so I didn't want to tell anyone cause I didn't need anyone's opinion [00:25:00] to discourage me from this because I had, I think it was just before I tested on a stick and I only tested on the stick to show my husband, like I didn't, I already knew I was pregnant. Alana: I had this vision that the birth would be at home. And so I really just wanted to trust that That was again, where I needed to go and I needed to trust. And that took a lot of self confidence to be able to say, no, this is, this is what I want to do and why. And yeah, I had my daughter at home and now I always knew that like my journey was. Alana: A lesson to be learned. It was a, because if I continued on the path I had continued, I would not be the woman I am today. I wouldn't be the mother I am today. I wouldn't be making the choices I've been making for myself and my family today. And it was like a realignment, but also a [00:26:00] gift for medicine for me to be able to share with women. Alana: And, you know, I want my story to be heard, but I've also then set up my own business so that I can still be at home with my babes because I want to raise my children. And I want to help women who feel like their story is just hurdle after hurdle. And what I've learned in this, this journey is like what we see in our physical body is only the tip of the iceberg. Michelle: Oh, yes. Alana: Yeah, and like when we're looking and talking about our womb, the energetic womb, there is so much she holds and there's so much healing that needs to start there. And the first thing I like to check with women is that connection between heart and womb, is there coherence and resonance? How are they emotionally feeling? Michelle: my language. Alana: right. And, [00:27:00] and that's why I, I love listening to your podcast because I just was like, you get this.  Michelle: I feel the same way about you, by the way. Alana: And now I, I want women to like know how important it is to care for your womb and what we're seeing as manifestations on the physical side, the root cause. The reason that you may not be seeing change is not in the physical. It's in your energetics. Yeah. Michelle: 100 percent Oh my God. I mean, I'm telling you, like, I'm so moved by your story, but also it just fascinates me like beyond fascinates me. When you were saying that you're a scientist, like from somebody who came from a science perspective and background, and yet, even though you were still there, you still had your inner voice. Michelle: Letting know something was off, like the doctors didn't tell you anything was off. Nobody came to you after[00:28:00] the surgery and said, you know, something looks off. You figured it out. You knew it from the inside out. The wisdom within your body spoke to you Alana: Absolutely. Michelle: heard it. Alana: Yeah. And I think sometimes for women, if you allow that external noise to be too loud, you're going to feel it in your heart. You're going to feel it as grief, as sadness, as like, why is this happening? But that noise is too loud. Michelle: Mm Alana: And. You know, if, if all you take away from my story is that deep knowing it's okay to know that your path could be different and maybe that's your sign to go searching elsewhere Michelle: I mean, yeah, it's incredible. First of all, it takes a lot of courage. Oh, I mean, it takes a [00:29:00] lot of courage to hear something from an authority figure, especially if it's like people you're relying on and in the medical community and I'm just FYI, I'm not saying not to listen to your doctors but for your specific journey, your journey Had twists and turns and part of it did rely on you listening to your own gut and, and really getting to the bottom of it. Michelle: And you remind me a lot of a patient who came on the podcast, her name was Amy and she was in her forties. And she also was told she couldn't get pregnant with her own eggs and that she was approaching menopause. And she ended up having two babies afterwards, healthy babies. And she had this determination in her. Michelle: She was just, there was this. Kind of strength. And her voice was so loud, like her inner voice and not her voice. Her inner voice was so loud in telling her, no, no, no, no, no, you gotta, and she had this [00:30:00] determination within her that I see in you. And it's not something that is easy for everybody to answer that call. Michelle: Like it's not an easy call to answer Alana: No. And it's, it's a fire within, but it doesn't mean it's an easy path. And it's like, you have to have the courage to continue to choose, to continue to choose what you know to be true. And I had many challenges. There was many times where I was like, well, I feel like the universe sometimes goes, are you sure? Alana: Because you can choose here if you want to, because we were given choice on this, on this earth. Right. And you can choose to go this way because maybe you believe this is easier. Or keep going as a reminder, you know, just to, to, to choose and yeah, that fire and that courage, like there was a lot of times where I felt like, I don't know, [00:31:00] you know, because you don't know, there's so much unknown and the world really like thrives on structure because that brings safety and that brings knowing and this path can be so unknown and all, all you can do is put one foot. Alana: In front of the other and trust yourself, just trust in yourself, because then the pieces will start to fall and they will start to come. Yes, you may need to choose yourself, but keep choosing yourself and your baby. Because if you desire a baby, that desire is meant for you. Can you trust that? Michelle: You know what they say, there's that Rumi quote, it says, what you seek is seeking you. Alana: Yeah. Because otherwise, why would we? Why would we have that desire to do so? Michelle: I really believe that. That, thank you for saying that because I really, really believe that to be true. And I think a lot of people. learn from so many different opinions and so much of that noise, outside [00:32:00] noise, it dilutes their faith in that being true. Just because we don't have proof for something doesn't mean it's not true. Alana: Yeah. And you get to, you get to decide what's true for you. And I think that's when you come back to the medical system and your doctors is just having a place of discernment. Is this really true for you? And you know, if you can come from a place of self-trust and that self-trust guided you to go there, absolutely listen to that. Alana: Like my message is, listen and guide from within. Michelle: And when you talk about that heart, well, like there's this heart brain coherence, but the heart has. An energy field that's stronger than any other organ in our body. And people think it's all in the brain, but the heart actually has a way larger magnetic field. It has such an important role on our mind and it has such an important role on our uterus, [00:33:00]which is life giving and love gives life, breathes life. Michelle: So talk about that resonance and that coherence and what you've learned about it. When it comes to the heart and the uterus. Alana: so I want to start with a quote from Joe Dispenza that I had just recently heard, and it kind of just put the words to place of what I was feeling, and it, he says, We only accept, believe, and surrender to the thoughts that are equal to our emotional state. We only accept, believe, and surrender to the thoughts that are equal to our emotional state. Alana: And I was like, they're the words that I'm kind of searching for. Right. Because a lot of my sensations that come through me are feelings. So I knew the heart needed to heal and healing the heart allows for the womb to heal and this relationship, this agreement between the two, like the womb holding on temporarily to [00:34:00] emotions, to. Alana: then return to the heart so the heart can process and leave our body. And so there was a lot of practices that I have incorporated and I still do them daily where I will do a little visualization and my intention is always love. And You can still have love and gratitude, even if you're feeling deep sadness. Alana: And it's not about, I don't want to be sad anymore. Let's reject that. This is grief is one of the deepest emotions you can have that has profound healing when you allow it to run its course. Michelle: Yes. Alana: And I think for women who are trying to conceive, when you're struggling, the thoughts that start to come up why me? Why is my womb not working? I can't, I [00:35:00] can't fall pregnant. I can't do this. You know there is anger, there is a disconnection and disassociation from your womb and really. In this society, we are already starting from a place of disconnection from our first bleed and reconnecting, honing in. And sometimes it's as simple as 30 seconds, close down your eyes, put your hand on your womb. Alana: You take a deep belly breath, Alana: visualizing your hands that are warm. That mama hug that you just love to feel. Wrapping around your womb. Alana: And then telling it, I love you. Thank you for everything you are doing. [00:36:00] I know you want this too. Alana: And then bringing your hand back to your heart space. Alana: Feel that heartbeat. Alana: Your own rhythm. beating in your womb Alana: and feel the love between the two. Alana: Maybe you like to envision a rope, a golden cord, connecting, vibrating, Alana: sending out this beautiful white light. That's so strong and so pure.[00:37:00] Alana: Feel it wrap around your body, Alana: feel it encapsulate you. Alana: And then on your next inhale, breathe it all back in, breathe it into your cells, every inch of your being, physical, emotional mental and spiritual Alana: and opening your eyes and practicing a simple visualization I found daily was strengthening this reconnection. It allowed my inner voice to be heard. It built trust and surrender to the process because pregnancy, birth, motherhood, it is all setting you up. It is not something that you can plan out. Alana: The key is surrender. Michelle: hmm. Oh, [00:38:00] yeah. Alana: I get reminded of that every day. Michelle: Yeah, I think we all do, even though we've been on the path for a long time, the spiritual path really, that is in the path of truth and alignment. It doesn't matter. We get reminded every single day and I can literally talk to you for hours. I mean, There's just so much, so much information, so many things, so many ahas that I felt talking to you and I really truly think that you are so aligned in, I mean, I literally think that you're channeling wisdom. Michelle: You're very much connected to that. I can feel it. I could feel the truth in your words. I can feel the alignment I feel the awareness and the knowing and the true knowing of thyself. I think know thyself that's like the key and the only way to do that is to get quiet and To connect with your inner wisdom and to hear what your body is telling you because the more you hear it The more your connection with it gets stronger. Michelle: And of [00:39:00] course I can talk to you for hours, but we don't have as much as I wish, but, but I would love for you to share how people can find you and how people can work with you. Alana: Yeah, absolutely. Michelle: are inspired, which I know they are from your story. Alana: So you can find me on Instagram at the nurtured woman. Womb, W O M B A N and currently the way to work with me is through my one on one sessions and they're energetic womb explorations for one hour where we can just dive into your current state, your desire, and really start honing into this connection between heart and womb with then obviously the opportunity to extend. Alana: But That is the point of contact. Michelle: Awesome. Well, I definitely feel you are connected to that womb. wisdom and I know that womb wisdom does actually speak to us. So Alana, [00:40:00] thank you so much for coming on here today. Sharing your incredible story, like really incredible. Like I felt it on every level of my being. It got me emotional listening to your story. Michelle: And I thank you so much for coming on today. Alana: you so much for having me. It was such a pleasure.

Dr. Katie Lee is a dentist, speaker, author, and coach who lives in Aurora, Colorado. Dr. Lee graduated from University of Illinois at Chicago in 2010 and was an owner-partner in over 80 DSO supported dental practices throughout the US and served as Clinical Partner overseeing 5 states. Currently, she consults for health technology companies and provides implant education for general dentists. Dr. Lee has two passions in her profession: dentistry itself and making other dentists successful. Her passion about the oral systemic health link comes from personal experience. Dr. Lee was involved in an ATV accident as a teenager, which left her without many teeth and rendered her jaw immobile. Dr. Lee experienced how oral health affects systemic health and the benefits of dental implants. Her first-hand journey in recovering from the effects of dental trauma led her to specialize her career on the mouth-body connection® and dental implants. Dr. Lee searches for proven technologies that improve clinical outcomes and the patient experience and loves to educate her peers on those technologies. Dr. Lee authored a book entitled Saved By the Mouth to educate patients and clinicians on the importance of oral health. Dr. Lee has won many accolades, including Top 40 under 40 Dentists in America, and International Woman of the Year in Dentistry. She has been featured on local Fox and NBC news stations discussing the importance of oral health.     https://www.instagram.com/katieleedds/   https://www.facebook.com/katieleedds   For more information about Michelle, visit www.michelleoravitz.com   The Wholesome FertilityFacebook group is where you can find free resources and support:   https://www.facebook.com/groups/2149554308396504/   Instagram: @thewholesomelotusfertility   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thewholesomelotus/           Transcript:   Michelle Michelle: [00:00:00] Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Lee. Katie: Thanks. I'm really excited to be here. Michelle: I'm so excited to have you on actually, this is a first, I have never spoken to a dentist on this podcast, but it is such an important topic because there's such a correlation between inflammation in the mouth and also unexplained infertility. And I'm very excited to get started before we get started. I would love for you to give us a little bit of a background on yourself, how you got into the work that you do. Katie: Sure. Absolutely. Thanks for having me on. I feel honored that I'm, I'm the first. Hopefully, I don't mess it up for the rest of us dentists out there. My journey into dentistry was. Of tragedy. So when I was in high school, about 14 years old, I was involved in a ATV four wheeler accident where I crashed into a telephone pole headfirst without a helmet on, broke every bone in my face from my eyebrows down and naturally, or I [00:01:00] guess as expected, lost a ton of teeth and my jaws were wired shut immediately, even though I had lots of teeth that were displaced and broken. Katie: And, they were wired shut for two months. I'm I couldn't eat and so I was on a liquid diet and My family didn't really know anything about nutrition. So I was Having pudding jello ice cream, you know with Hershey's syrup box mashed potatoes You know all the things that you should not eat to be healthy or maintain your teeth And so I just started developing a ton of dental infection And, , that combined with not being able to eat nutritious foods, you know, my body really started shutting down. Katie: , I lost a ton of weight, my liver enzymes spiked, my kidneys started shutting down. And so I learned from a very early age just how much your oral health affects. Not only your mental and emotional health, but your, your physical health as well. And, you know, it was nine surgeries in four years, , that it [00:02:00] took to reconstruct my face and my jaw. Katie: And then once that was done and only then was I able to my teeth and, and finally replace the missing teeth and fix my smile. So that really. Got me interested in what I do. And then once I got into dentistry, you know, I started going down this journey of oral systemic health. And from a personal experience, I had a lot of fertility issues. Katie: I went through about six years in fertility treatment. And so just really started diving into, you know, how can. How does the mouth affect this and what can I do as a dentist to help other people? Michelle: Yeah, I mean it's definitely something that I think a lot of people do not I don't want to really correlate, but let's, let's actually really break this down because like , how can your teeth impact your body?  Katie: From a high level? Start there? Yeah. So, , there's a couple different ways that the teeth and gums are really affected to the rest of the body. And, the first way that I About is bacteria. So our body [00:03:00] has types of microbiomes and the first real microbiome that we get or we're introduced to is the one in our mouth and we get that, you know, we used to always think that babies were sterile. Katie: We know that they are introduced to some bacteria when in utero first microbiome that we get introduced to is through the mom's vaginal canal. And then Through breast milk and from family members when we're kissing, , and, you know, eating and drinking after them, we get this whole microbiome and the microbiome in our mouth is super important because it's what establishes and feeds our gut microbiome. Katie: And so we know that when we develop dysbiosis in the mouth, what actually happens is that bacteria then go through our gum tissue, or we swallow 80 trillion bacteria a day. And so the bacteria that are in our mouth. We'll go to other places in our body that they're not supposed to be and start to cause damage. Katie: So that's one way that the mouth affects it. And then the other way is through inflammation. So again, when we have these foreign invaders in our mouth, what we know [00:04:00] is that our body elicits an immune response. And that immune response, unfortunately, doesn't stay localized to our mouth. It will break down our gum tissue, making our gum tissue permeable, again, allowing what's in the mouth to get to the rest of the body. Katie: But it also triggers an inflammatory response in other parts of the body, too. And this becomes really important in fertility, because that's when people can start to develop things like endometriosis, pelvic inflammatory disease, and things like Michelle: yeah. And also, as you're talking about this, I'm thinking about all these like alcohol rinses, you know, mouthwashes. So that's huge because people are like, oh, I want to get rid of my mouth bacteria because I want to really clean mouth. So like, But that messes up the good bacteria. So talk about that. I mean, you know more about this than I do Katie: Yeah, no, I mean, that is such a good point. I'm so glad that you brought that up, because The way I was trained, even 10, you know, back in, I graduated in 2010, you know, we were [00:05:00]taught the, the more it burns, the better it's cleaning, right? Like you want something in there that's burning. You want something that's 99 kills 99. Katie: 9 percent of all bacteria. But what we know is that's actually really bad. And to your point, , those types of products are not selective. So they're killing everything that's there. The good and the bad, when really we want to control the bad, support the good. and kind of let the body do its own thing. Katie: The other thing that's damaging about alcohol mouthwashes is that it dries out your tissues. And we know that when you have dry mouth or dry tissues, the bad bacteria love to go to those surfaces and take up shop. And it really supports them colonizing and growing their little, , microbial communities. Katie: So we want to have saliva. Saliva protects our teeth and gums from bad bacteria. So an alcohol containing product is not good for our health. Michelle: Now what does a person do if they were a c section Katie: Yeah. So, you know, there's lots of things that people can do throughout their life to [00:06:00]support their microbiome, you know, C section babies. We know that unfortunately they, they don't get exposed to the. you know, good vaginal bacteria during birth, but there's lots of things that they can do to support their microbiome. Katie: So I'm a, you know, people always talk about taking probiotics and probiotics are great. And what probiotics do is they're actually going to put bacteria into the body. , so it'll, it'll help replenish the bacteria that is missing from the gut. What people also don't understand is that they need to feed the good bacteria that they already have. Katie: So you cannot forget to take. Prebiotics, eat prebiotic food, take prebiotic, supplements. That way you can feed and help nourish the bacteria that's already there. Michelle: Yeah, Katie: We're introduced to so many bacteria every single minute of the day. You know, I, I wouldn't be as concerned once you get into adulthood about having a c section or being a c section baby because by that time you've been exposed to really everything that you need in your life. Katie: At that point it's just about nourishing and keeping it in balance. Michelle: Yeah. For sure.[00:07:00] It's interesting cause I was actually at, , microbiome labs. So are you familiar with them? So they actually have an enzyme like mouth. It's like a mint freshener, but it's like an enzyme one. And there was a guy who was talking about oral health. It was a presenter and he was talking about that and I thought that was really interesting and he also talked about Mouth breathers people who go to sleep and yeah So let's talk about that because that's really important and it's a big thing now people actually tape their mouth Katie: I know, it's just that you don't. Yeah, thank goodness for Instagram, you know, because you'll see someone on Instagram taping their mouth and all of a sudden everyone wants to tape their mouth, so this is really important because You know, there's a really good book out there for people to read called Breath by James Nestor I don't know if you've heard of it. Katie: A patient actually recommended it to me And it basically talks about that over time because of our high processed diet We've gone from eating You know, super fibrous, tough [00:08:00] foods to eating high processed carbohydrates and softer foods. And because of that, the structures of our skull and jaws have actually, , shortened or shrink. Katie: And because we have smaller jaws, it's why we no longer can. Make room for our wisdom teeth. So most people actually have to extract their wisdom teeth now. And what we know is that the smaller our jaws are, the less room in our mouth for our tongue and our airways actually start to shrink. So what happens is when we go to bed at night. Katie: our tongue falls to the back of our mouth and our airway collapses and we essentially start choking on our tongue. And so we start to breathe through our mouth. And the problem with this is our nose is, is such a, an incredible organ. It's designed with. millions and trillions and billions of of cilia in there to filter out the pollutants in the air. Katie: But when we're not breathing through our nose, we're taking in all of that dirty air through our mouth and it goes straight into our oral [00:09:00] cavity. We're introducing new, , microbes into our oral cavity that disrupts our microbiome. We're drying out our tissues. And again, we talked about dry mouth leads to increased bacteria formation, increased plaque formation, but then all that dirty air is also getting into our lung system, , which is not good and will trigger an inflammatory response. Katie: And so people don't realize that mouth breathing. causes or exacerbates allergies, , it also causes oral dysbiosis in the microbiome and therefore gut dysbiosis. And so one of the things that people need to do is to retrain themselves, how to breathe through their nose. So really great way to do that is by mouth taping. Katie: And a lot of patients will say, well, doc, I, you know, I can't breathe through my nose even during the day. And I'll say, well, you've got to retrain yourself how to use that part of your body that you haven't been using forever. So I encourage them to start taping during the day, you know, maybe just do 15 minutes at a time and slowly the nose will start to open up and work again.[00:10:00] Katie: Now, if someone has something more severe, like sleep apnea, they absolutely need to get a sleep test, , to get that diagnosis and then get treatment because. Sleep apnea is where you're actually choking at night. You're not breathing. You're waking up more than five times per hour because your oxygen is desaturating more than, more than 10%. Katie: And so those people need supplemental treatment such as a CPAP or an oral appliance or something like that. But sleep apnea is horrible for your brain. It kills brain cells. It's really hard on your heart and it's fatal if it's left untreated. It's just a matter of when. So I'm really glad that you brought that up. Michelle: that's actually really scary I do know that there's a correlation with weight gain And sleep apnea. So like, it's interesting because it's the whole thing. Like if you're taking care of your body and you're healthy, that impacts all the other things in your life, like your sleep. Katie: Definitely. Sleep apnea, what happens is when you, you know, when you're asleep and you stop breathing, what [00:11:00] happens is your body sends this rush of adrenaline to your brain stem to wake you up enough to take a breath. When you're doing that, you're stressing your body out, so cortisol is released. Katie: Cortisol causes systemic inflammation if it's released at high levels over time. , we also know that it, , lowers our insulin Michelle: Right. And then we gain weight because of that. Katie: yes, making us crave carbohydrates, making us gain weight. And so a lot of people have probably noticed that, and I, I notice this all the time. If I don't get a good night's sleep, I, all I want the next day is carbs, right? Katie: Carbs, Michelle: It's the quickest energy. Katie: I want. So it is crucial. Michelle: Yeah, for sure. I mean, cause that's what it is when you're tired, you want quick energy and the body knows instinctively that you'll get it with carbs. Katie: Absolutely. Michelle: course, that's not a very good source of energy. It's not, , an efficient one. Katie: Yeah, you run out of it very quickly. Michelle: And then other questions that I have is over brushing. Michelle: So some people think, okay, after everything that I eat, I'm going to brush my [00:12:00]teeth. What are your thoughts on that? Katie: Yeah, so there's a balance there, right? And what people want to try and avoid is brushing immediately after eating and drinking. Because we know that after you eat and drink, the pH in the mouth is going to go down. So what happens is we put something in our mouth, the mouth is the beginning of our digestive system. Katie: And so our body releases an enzyme in the mouth called amylase. And this amylase is an enzyme that starts to break down the carbohydrates in our mouth. So in order to do that, the pH has to drop. The pH also drops just because most of the stuff we put in our mouth is acidic anyway. And so you combine acidic food and drink with an acidic pH from, from the amylase secretion, and you're setting yourself up for a disaster of erosion and cavities. Katie: And so if you're going to eat or drink something, I always recommend to wait at least 30 minutes, before you brush. But people absolutely need to brush minimum twice a day. I mean that's like non negotiable I always recommend morning and night [00:13:00] if they can get one more in there during the day. That's great But if they can at least do two minutes morning and night, I think people are going to be pretty satisfied with Michelle: yeah, for sure. Now my other question is mercury fillings. Katie: yes Michelle: Yeah, let's talk about that because for a while, oh, it was like no big deal and now they're finding that it is. So it's kind of like brushed off a lot of times. I remember going to the dentist and asking for the white filler and, and he was kind of giving me pushback on that. Michelle: Yeah. Katie: And there's, unfortunately, you know, a lot of dentists out there that still believe that way. , and, you know, I hope your audience doesn't crucify me with this because I don't believe this. But their, their mindset is, and it is true, mercury fillings are stronger than the white composite fillings. Katie: Also, they're less technique sensitive when putting them in so if you're putting in a white composite filling little dental nerd out here You have to have everything completely Isolated [00:14:00]otherwise the white filling won't bond to the tooth and the filling will fail really quickly and the patient will get decay right underneath that Filling when you're packing in the mercury fillings. Katie: I mean, you're literally just Katie: It's called an amalgam, so it's an amalgamation of all this material. And so it doesn't matter if there's saliva. It doesn't matter if there's blood. , because it's not bonding to the two structures. So the dentists don't have to be as careful and think about it. I mean you're working in the mouth where there's tons of saliva and bleeding and things like that. Katie: So they're much Less technique sensitive to put in and they are stronger. , now the downside is they're filled with all kinds of things that are terrible for you. And we know, you know, think if you think about a mercury thermometer, right? There's a very small amount of mercury in that thermometer. But if a thermometer breaks in school, they shut the entire school down and call in a hazmat team to come clean it up, or a biohazardment team to come clean it up. Katie: Yet we're plugging this stuff into people's teeth. And the hard [00:15:00] thing about teeth, or the thing that people need to understand is that teeth are organs. And they have a blood supply, and they have a nerve supply, and to put that, that type of material, especially mercury, near blood supply that's connected to the rest of the body, or nerves that are connected to the rest of the body, in my opinion, is dangerous, you know, if we just use a little bit of common sense. Katie: And so I don't like mercury fillings. And now we're left with a bunch of patients that have them in their head Now, what do we do to remove them because you can't just go in and start Drilling them out and creating all this mercury vapor, right? Because it's not good for the dentist or the patient Michelle: So there's a biological dentists that specifically specialize in removing them. What are your thoughts on that? Katie: I I think it's really important to Go to someone that understands how to remove them correctly correctly. I would not consider myself You know the gold standard biologic dentist, you know, and the fact that I do all zirconia [00:16:00] implants and things like that But I definitely believe in safe amalgam removal because it's actually more dangerous for the provider who's removing the, the mercury filling and the assistant who's suctioning everything out than it is for the patient because we're creating all this vapor that's coming out of the mouth. Katie: Sure, it's coming into your body, but we're the ones that it's getting on our skin. You know, it's settling up next to our thyroid. So a lot of dentists have thyroid issues, myself included. This happened to me early on in my career when I started learning about this, they have fertility issues. , and so it's really important that dentists understand how to remove them safely. Katie: So I, I definitely, if I was having mercury fillings removed, I would make sure my dentist knew how to do it appropriately. Michelle: Yeah. Oh my god. You're giving such good information I really appreciate it because I think these are all questions that people have and you're giving a very well rounded very balanced Information Katie: I always say, you know, there's amalgam dentists, right? Like the traditional You know, every day dentist , and then there's the biologic dentist that do everything on the opposite end of the spectrum. Katie: I would say I'm [00:17:00] over halfway to the biologic dentist, but not all the way quite there. Michelle: Well, I guess it's kind of like traditional medicine. Katie: Yes. Traditional medicine. Yes, Michelle: It's, it's a little bit more of a holistic way to look at Katie: Yes. Yeah, Michelle: , and of course, even with what I do, even though I specialize in alternative medicine, I'm very much in the world of Western medicine because a lot of my patients need sometimes like conventional medical care  Michelle: so it's nice to have a balance of both. Katie: Yeah. I still, you know, I joke all the time. I still believe in science, right? , I still do testing. I still do modalities. There's a time and place for everything. I just think we need to be a little bit smarter about how we approach, you know, healthcare and dentistry and, , not use bad materials that we know are horrible for us. Michelle: 100%. What I'm finding actually is a lot of people in my world are very much now into studies and science. So there is a bridge that's coming together. And I see a lot of, REs that I have developed great relationships with are [00:18:00] very open to what I do to help their patients. So I'm starting to see this shift of everybody coming together, which I love. Katie: That makes me happy because, you know, I did infertility treatment for six years and I saw some of the best specialists in the country. Not one asked them about my oral health. And there's so much research out there about how oral health affects infertility and you know Thank goodness. My oral health was fine. Katie: Of course. I checked it before, you know, I went and did all this stuff But you know, it was just kind of shocking to me how siloed and hyper focused they practiced, you know, and just looking at the reproductive system and nothing else Michelle: Oh, yeah. And even in Spain, they'll check even the vaginal microbiome, which I find so interesting because there's a correlation between that being off and then fail transfers. So they do that like automatically and it increases their success rates and they'll give them like vaginal, Probiotics Katie: I love that Michelle: And, and that's like a thing here. It's not so as we [00:19:00] learn, I mean, and then of course, when I read it starts with egg, that's what really got me into the whole teeth thing and then seeing the science with that. And now, like, even for my intake form, I always have a section that talks about like, have you ever had dental work done because it's important, but you know, you learn, it's not something that I knew like automatically, but as I got more into it. Michelle: I learned. Another thing that I wanted to ask you, what are your thoughts about fluoride? Because I know this is a very hot topic. Katie: Hot topic right, you know, I think I think it's a, another conversation like mercury, right? I think for a very long time, we had this major issue of, we call it caries in the dental field, which is just cavities. And so we had, you know, dental decay is like the number one disease in the world. And we had all these. Katie: You know, kids and people that had rampant decay and instead of looking at diet and microbiome, which is what we should have done, we said, okay, well, let's create some sort of chemical or product [00:20:00] that we can do to treat right. We're treating the symptom, not the original form of what's causing it. And so they created this. Katie: But what we now know is that when you. swallow it and you ingest it systemically, it's not good for you. It's a, it's a neurotoxin. And there's so many, I think there's so many other ways that we can combat dental decay where we can get around using fluoride. Now, if I have a patient that comes in that's refusing to do any of these other things that I'm talking about, and they're a teenager, and they have rampant decay everywhere and I know they're not going to make any lifestyle, nutritional, or oral habit modifications. Katie: May I put some fluoride on their teeth? Sure, but it's going to be something that's isolated that they're not going to ingest and swallow. My preference is to not use that because I know that even if I put a little bit in their mouth, it's still going to get in their system. But not treating someone with rampant decay and having Having them lose teeth because of it, or worse, develop an abscess, which we [00:21:00] know abscesses are horrible for our overall health. Katie: To me, that's doing more harm than painting a little bit of fluoride on teeth. But I actually recommend to use products like Nanohydroxyapatite is awesome. It was developed for NASA a long, long time ago to help astronauts, , you know, to prevent them from, from getting decay. So if it's good enough for NASA, it's good enough for me, right? Katie: So I love Nanohydroxyapatite. I love M. I. paste. , I also love arginine. Arginine is something that a lot of people don't know a ton about, but there's a ton of research out there showing that toothpaste that are high in arginine, like Tom's for example, , prevent tooth decay and also help treat tooth sensitivity. Katie: So I think we have Michelle: I love Katie: so many great things out there that we could use in addition to, you know, making sure that we're balancing and nurturing our microbiome. Not eating Jolly Rancher is incredible. Michelle: Yeah, exactly. My kids have been fluoride free. They don't get fluoride. They've been using fluoride free toothpaste. [00:22:00] They have never had cavity. Katie: Amazing. Yeah, and they, and they should never need it, right? Our, Michelle: They floss too. Katie: Yeah, I mean, so there you go, right? And, but what people don't understand, and I would have patients come into my practice, and they would say like, well, I want fluoride free. And I'd say, okay, tell me about your diet. And it was breads and pastas and carbs and sugar and five cokes a day. Katie: And they don't brush or floss their teeth. And they think oil pulling is going to solve everything. You know, and I'm like that, we can't do that, right? We need to, we need to intervene here. But if, someone takes a holistic approach to their oral health care, they should never need fluoride. And we know that our cavity causing bacteria really peaks and starts to decline in mid thirties. Katie: And so if parents are healthy, Their kids are going to be healthy because you're number one modeling healthy lifestyle But number two you're transferring all of your microbiome to your kids And so another thing that people don't realize is that if a parent's mouth is Full of [00:23:00] cavities and gum disease the kids mouth is going to be full of it because you're sharing the same bacteria So good for you for you being healthy and then keeping your kids healthy, too. Michelle: Thank you. I love how balanced this conversation is. It's amazing information. , I just love this because it's so important and it's, it's information that a lot of people just don't have access to, and it's not even like, sometimes it's not even knowing that you need to have access to certain information, but it's like. Michelle: So important. And it could be like that one thing that people are not looking into when they're going through fertility treatments or just challenges overall, Katie: Yeah, and we know that fertility treatment actually increases our inflammatory levels and increases the leakiness of our gum tissue. So if the mouth isn't healthy to start, or even if there's a little bit of dysbiosis going on, fertility treatment is just going to exacerbate it. So it's best to get it treated, you know, it's safe to do it during pregnancy, but it's always best to do it beforehand. Michelle: Yeah, [00:24:00] for sure. So now, let's talk about Peelu gum. So you hear about Peelu gum, , that it's very good for your teeth. I just was wondering what your thoughts on it or if you know, like how it can impact Katie: I actually don't know what that is. Michelle: Oh, so Peelu is from a tree. It's the Peelu tree, I believe. And so they create this gum and it's sugar free, but it's like natural sweetener and it's supposed to actually help clean the teeth. Katie: Okay. Michelle: Yeah. So look into that. Yeah. If you find out anything, email me. Katie: Yeah. Do you know what the sweetener is in it? Is it Xylitol or do you know what's in it? Yeah. So anything with Xylitol I love, , Xylitol is a natural sweetener that tricks the bacteria in your mouth to thinking that it's sugar because that's what the bacteria thrive on. Katie: So the streptococcus mutans cavity causing bacteria in the mouth. What it does is it feeds off of sugar, so that can be sugar from candy or gum or, you know, breads, pastas, processed [00:25:00]carbohydrates, things like that. And then it excretes lactic acid on the teeth and that's what causes cavities. So xylitol, what it does, is the bacteria still thinks it's the sugar that it wants to eat, but once it eats it, it can't metabolize it, so it actually starts, from ingesting the xylitol. Katie: So I love that. I'm gonna look that up. I haven't heard of that Michelle: Yeah. They have it at Whole Foods. It's kind of like a more natural, you know, more natural, but it's supposed to be good for the teeth. Like I think that back in the day people used to chew on it. It was from trees and they would just chew on the actual whatever that was. But Katie: which that's good too, because again, you're chewing on fibrous branches, right? And that's really good to stimulate saliva. It's really good to work on your jaw muscles and it's really good to develop the structural skeleton of the jaw on the face. So Michelle: yeah, so maybe, a little gum chewing is okay. Katie: Oh, I love gum Michelle: strength. Katie: recommend it all the time. Yeah. That's actually one of the things that I do recommend for my patients. , because you know, like I mentioned, it stimulates [00:26:00] saliva. Saliva is like our best protector that we have of our teeth because it neutralizes the pH. It actually coats our teeth in, You know, this like biofilm, right? Katie: That's super healthy. So it protects the teeth from getting any bad bacteria stuck to it. So I'm a big fan of chewing gum. I think it's great. I recommend it for patients all the time. As long as it's sugar free, of Michelle: Yeah. So this might be the ideal thing, the Peelu gum. Katie: Yeah. Michelle: I happen to love it. So it's kind of my guilty pleasure. I try not to do it too much cause I know like it's just, you don't want to wear down your teeth, but Katie: should, I mean, you shouldn't, unless you're really grinding it, like you shouldn't be wearing down your Michelle: right. So it's, it probably protects it anyway. Okay. Well that's good to know. Cause I Katie: habit to do. Michelle: I learned something new. It's nice to hear that you, that you actually promote that or that you support doing that. That's awesome. Wow, this is great information. I know you also have a book about the mouth. Katie: Yes, so I wrote a book called Saved by the Mouth and it's all about how oral health [00:27:00]affects , virtually every organ system in the body. So we talk about brain health, heart health, cancer, fertility, of course, , aging, gut health. And so I wrote it from the, or I wrote it as if I was having a conversation with a patient because I wanted the information to be easily digestible. Katie: And entertaining. And so every, as entertaining as Michelle: I love that. Katie: guess. And so every chapter actually talks about a situation that I had with a patient in my practice and them having to deal with whatever ailment they were dealing with. And so it's, I think it's really relatable. It's a quick read. Katie: , and what I like about it too is it also goes over super simple daily modifications that people can do to improve their oral health and it doesn't have to be like a life changing makeover. They're just small things that you can do to improve health and then also what to ask your dentist for and you can go to any dentist and ask this. Katie: It doesn't have to be a biologic dentist. You know, asking for things [00:28:00] like salivary testing, that's super important to know what's in your microbiome. Asking for your gums to be measured, so you actually know if you have a gum infection, things like that. Michelle: Fantastic. And then you had also talked about how like when people are pregnant, sometimes people will say, don't do any dental work during that time. So talk about that. Cause that sounds like it's an important thing for Katie: it is. It drives me insane. , and I was trained that way, by the way. So, you know, people aren't doing anything wrong. It's, it's, it's, you know, a product of the education system, unfortunately. But what we know is that when people have gum infection, it affects fertility in all sorts of ways. You know, it. It affects not only men, or not only women, but also men. Katie: And We know that if once a woman is pregnant, if she has gum infection, she is 30 to 50 percent more likely to have a preterm birth, a low birth weight baby, or stillbirth. And we know that of [00:29:00] pregnant women, about 40 percent of them present with some sort of gum infection, whether it be gingivitis or gum disease. Katie: And yet, 56 percent of pregnant women avoid the dentist. So, with those statistics alone, you know, it only makes sense that we need to be treating our oral health ideally before you even start to try and get pregnant because it will help you get pregnant. But, you know, I, I always get questions from patients being like, well, I'm pregnant now, you know, what do I do? Katie: I, I feel like I might have something going on. Well, you absolutely should go to the dentist and get this treated because you want to try and avoid any sort of pregnancy complications and, and again, patients with perio infection gum disease or gingivitis are at much higher risk for, you know, having a complication with their baby. Katie: And we know that if they get perio treatment while pregnant, their medical costs will reduce about 74%. So it's very important for the outcome of the pregnancy for the mom, but also for the outcome of the pregnancy for the baby. Michelle: Wow. That is Katie: the [00:30:00] dentist. Michelle: important. Chinese Katie: I don't get elective care now What I'm what I'm not saying is to go get veneers done. Katie: Like so I don't want people to mishear me I'm saying, you know If you have a gum infection or tooth abscess, you absolutely should go get that treated while you're pregnant All elective care can can wait until after baby's here. Michelle: Such a good point. Interestingly enough, Chinese medicine, the teeth are an expression of the kidneys. Chinese medicine, the kidneys are not what we look at in conventional medicine. The kidneys are actually what houses your reproductive essence and health. So it's so crazy how there is this correlation. Michelle: I see this a lot. I see this quite often, actually, even with, the heart and brain different. Topic, but the heart houses the brain. This is how we're taught in Chinese medicine. And now they're seeing in heart math that there is this correlation between the heart and the brain. And there's a communication between the heart and the brain that it's measured. Michelle: So it's interesting how science is [00:31:00] connecting, you know, you're connecting the dots between what was talked about in Chinese medicine. That may not. Initially makes sense, but then you're seeing in science things that are proving those things. So it's pretty wild that we're coming to this place where it's bridging. Michelle: You're actually seeing the two connecting. Katie: knew about the meridians in the teeth, but I did not know about the kidneys and fertility in teeth. That just like really blew my mind. Michelle: Yeah, for sure. And it's interesting because as a child, you know, when they're, when they're little, you know, their, their body's developing and as they get closer to kind of reproductive years, that's when their real teeth come out. And then as, , the reproductive health declines and they're getting really old, the teeth fall out. Michelle: So it's kind of like this connection to essence. Katie: I just got goosebumps. Michelle: Very fascinating. It's just, the human body is Katie: And it, it's also tied with, with microbiome, right? Like when we're born, our microbiome [00:32:00] is the least diverse. , and the least strong. It's also the strongest, like what you say, in our reproductive year. So I always tell people, you know, when you're in your 20s, and, you know, you're invincible, and you can go out every night, and not get any sleep, and eat whatever you want, and never get sick, that's when your microbiome is the best. Katie: But then also, as you age, our microbiome starts to deplete again, in not only numbers, but also diversity, and then that's when we die. So it's, it's funny how this all Michelle: Yeah. Isn't that interesting? We have these like peaks and then valleys, so it's pretty wild. Katie: that is wild. Michelle: Yeah. So we're like building and then we're kind of sloping and going down. And then also I was curious to know your thoughts about like neem rinse or a tea tree, you know, instead of obviously alcohol, what are your thoughts on Katie: Yeah. Yeah. I, I love neem oil. I actually use neem oil in my hair all over my face, like all the stuff. I think anything that you can do to be more natural is [00:33:00] totally fine. I think the key is, is that patients need to make sure that they are healthy first. A lot of times I'll have people come in and they'll be like, you know, I haven't gone to the dentist in 10 years because I oil pull or I, you know, I use essential oils or rinse with coconut every day, but their mouth is a mess, right? Katie: And they've inflammation everywhere and calculus everywhere and cavities. And so I always tell people is go to the dentist. Get a clean bill of health or if you're not healthy at least have them You know clean you up and get you healthy and then use those tools to maintain yourself over time You know when patients don't floss their teeth they get little clicks Or little nodules of calculus that build up in between their teeth under their gum line. Katie: There's nothing but mechanical debridement that will remove that. And there's no amount of oil pooling in the world that will treat that. And that's what's going to cause gum infection and gum disease. So, you know, if people want to use neem rinses and tea tree and things like that, great. Tea tree is also good for pain. Katie: You know, if someone has a little [00:34:00] ulcer in their mouth, it's great for that. Very antibacterial, neem is great for that, antifungal, all those things. But get clean first, get a clean bill of health, and then use those tools in your toolbox to maintain that bill of health. Michelle: Yeah, definitely. No doubt. I'm every six months we get our teeth cleaned. It's, it's important to actually get it because you feel it. You feel all the calcification and I even have my own little scraper. Sometimes I'll just get in between, in between times. Cause I'm like, I can't wait until the next six months. Michelle: Cause it does, it builds up. And then if you have tea and all kinds of different things, like it just, it's there. Katie: Yeah, so when we have plaque, plaque starts forming on our teeth just a couple hours after we're done brushing. So that's why ideally, if someone can brush three times a day, that's great. At least twice, you know, you'll be okay. But what happens is, once that plaque sits there, it starts to really mature. Katie: And it gets really, it gets harder to remove because the, the extracellular matrices of the bacteria really start to connect and, and strengthen its attachment to the teeth. Then we mix it with the minerals in our [00:35:00] saliva, and then it hardens and it calcifies into calculus or what people know as tartar. Katie: Once it's hardened, you cannot get that off unless you remove it with a scaler or something like that. And so it is important to go in and get it removed. Because, you know, even with a scaler, I do it to scale my teeth all the time. There's places you can't obviously reach, you know, like underneath the gum tissue in between that have to be removed. Katie: And so I actually recommend for people to go in to see their dentist about every three to four months, even if they are healthy. Because we know that bacteria repopulate about every 90 days. , and so in my opinion, six months is too long. Someone like you who's super healthy, you know, probably doesn't need to go in. Katie: But for the vast majority of Americans especially, they should be staying every three to four months for sure. , to prevent disease. You know, we, It's crazy. Cause the six month timeframe came about because of insurance. It, Michelle: No, that's exactly why we do six months. Cause our insurance pays for that. Katie: yes. It was never a medically, , [00:36:00] science based driven Michelle: Isn't that amazing how the Katie: Yeah, it was, it was dictated by insurance and it's only after. You get an irreversible diagnosis of gum disease, which is irreversible Once you have that once you have gum disease, we know you have that bacteria in your heart We know it's in your brain We know it's all over the body But it's only until you get that irreversible diagnosis of gum disease that now your insurance will allow you to go in every every three Months, that's crazy In my mind, why not go every three to four months and prevent an irreversible disease? Michelle: totally, but you know common sense common sense Doesn't always translate into the system Katie: wish we used our brains more. In Michelle: Yeah, that's crazy. So another question I have lastly like this is another thing My mom sent me this video on Facebook of a dentist showing how to properly Brush the teeth. So we typically will just keep going back and forth, but he said, all you have to do is [00:37:00] kind of go from the gums up, gums up to remove the food, because when you're going back and forth, all you're doing is just mixing the bacteria in the same space. Michelle: You're not moving it up. So just wanted to ask you what you thought about that. Katie: Oh, yeah, I mean, you can, you can do that. Sure, it's fine. The, the point of brushing the teeth, you know, what I always tell people is, the saying is brush your teeth, but what we're really saying is brush the gum line. And so, plaques sits on our, two places. One is it sits on our gum line. That's where it starts to accumulate. Katie: Then it also sits on top of the teeth in the little grooves. So to prevent cavities, you want to brush the tops of the teeth to get everything, get all the food out of the grooves of the teeth. But the most important thing, especially to prevent gum inflammation is to brush along the gum line of the teeth. Katie: And the goal of that is to disrupt the biofilm. So sure, if you're brushing up like that's great, you're brushing it away from the gums. But what you really want to do is just do whatever you can to disrupt that biofilm because you're going to spit it out. Once you get the plaque [00:38:00] biofilm disrupted, it's loose. Katie: You're going to spit it out in the sink. You know, I can't even get people to brush twice a day for two minutes, let alone having them do something as technique sensitive as that. So I just tell people angle your toothbrush at 45 degrees. Right at the gum line. Use an electric toothbrush because it'll be gentle. Katie: Don't get a hard, hard or medium bristled toothbrush. Very light pressure. Plaque is so soft. You don't have to use any pressure. You just want to disrupt that biofilm along the gum line. Spit it out. Rinsing afterwards is great. Luff, you know, obviously everyone needs to floss every day. , and then tongue scraping is really important. Michelle: Awesome. This was great information. I'm so happy that I had you on today. So this is just such great information. So for people who want to learn more about you and read your book, how can they find you? Katie: Yeah. So, , they can follow me on Instagram. I'm pretty good at, at, , responding to the DMS on Instagram. , so [00:39:00] katyleedds on Instagram. My website is also katyleedds. I do Salivary testing for fertility patients. And so if someone wants to check their microbiome and see if they have the bacteria that impact, , Fertility, we do saliva tests for them remotely. Katie: , and then my book is called Saved by the Mouth. They can get it off my website or on Amazon. Michelle: Well, Dr. Lee, it was such a pleasure talking to you. I really enjoy your mind and picking your brain I just love how well balanced your information is and, and also just, it's priceless. It's so important. Katie: Thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks for the opportunity

Allison is a Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioner and Integrative Health Practitioner based out of Vancouver British Columbia. She is a fellow of the American Acupuncture and TCM Board of Reproductive Medicine (ABORM) and a member of the Obstetrical Acupuncture Association (OBAA). With additional training in fertility and reproductive health as well as her personal experience with stage 3 endometriosis, Allison is particularly passionate about treating endometriosis and chronic pelvic pain. Website: https://www.seaofqihealing.com/ Instagram: @sea_of_qi_healing Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sea_of_qi_healing For more information about Michelle, visit www.michelleoravitz.com The Wholesome FertilityFacebook group is where you can find free resources and support: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2149554308396504/ Instagram: @thewholesomelotusfertility Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thewholesomelotus/ Transcript: Michelle:[00:00:00]Welcome to the podcast, Alison. Allison:Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Michelle: Well, I'm so excited to have you on and I thoroughly enjoy your Instagram, by the way. Allison: Oh, thank you. Michelle: you guys got to check out her Instagram. I have it in the episode notes. You have so much great information. Allison: Oh, thank Michelle: You're, you're really knowledgeable about your topic. Allison: Yeah, I, love doing any kind of, I love the social media part. I love educating. I love trying to have like a fun humorous spin on it too. So I have fun with my social media. Michelle: Awesome. So for the listeners , I would love it. If you can give us a bit about your background and how your own personal journey really got you to the work that you're doing. Allison: Sure. So I'm an acupuncturist and integrative health practitioner based out of Vancouver, B. C. And I have, special interest in kind of fertility, reproductive health, hormone health, menstrual cycle stuff. I was kind of thrown into that field of work upon graduating school. And[00:01:00]that's kind of when I fell in love with it, when I started learning more about the menstrual cycle and hormones and fertility. Allison: And I realized how much there is to know and how, how many, People who menstruate don't know about their hormones and fertility and so I thought it was such an important aspect of health to to educate more on and it wasn't until a few years into my practice that I was actually diagnosed with my own kind of hormone issues as well. Allison: So that's when I was diagnosed with gynecological condition and Andever since then, I've just been obsessed with learning everything I can about endometriosis and hormones and trying to help people that are kind of in the same shoes that I am. Michelle:  So,so tell us, well, how, how did you actually get into it? Did you, did you work for somebody who specialized in fertility? Michelle: When you got out of school, Allison: Yeah, so the clinic that I wanted to work at that I was kind of interning atin transitioning[00:04:00]into that was their kind of their their bread and butter. So they did a lot of fertility and women's health. And so upon graduating and starting to work there, it was just kind of part of my education of like all my program. Allison: You know, extended learning and mentorships and stuff were under people that specialized in fertility, so I had this, like, really great knowledge base and, you know, experience right off the bat, which was really crucial for specializing in this, and it was, yeah, it really, really helped a lot. Michelle: that's awesome And so I know that we hear a lot of common myths I mean one of the things I think that was eye opening for me is like Menstrual cycle like pms and all of the things that we have are actually not normal Even though they're common you don't realize this until you learn what you learn And that's when you're like, oh my god, this is actually not normal and it's It's an imbalance and we can work on that. Michelle: Like it almost feels like we just accept it as reality. So I'd love it if you could talk about some of the common myths[00:05:00]that you see and like, let's bust them. Allison: Yeah. I feel like that's a really huge one that like PMS and period pain is normal. And like to an extent, likea little bit of PMS, like a little bit of menstrual discomfort to an extent can be normal. I mean, your body's doing, you know, a very physical thing, but if there's like really severe PMS, that's really disrupting your quality of life. Allison: If there's really painful cramps, that's impacting your ability to go out with your friends or work or any of that, that's a, that's absolutely a sign that something is wrong, that there's a hormonal issue, there's inflammation, there's something else going on that we need to look further. And you're right, we are just kind of like programmed as women as like, this is just how it is. Allison: We just, you know, suck it up and get on with our day and that's just kind of how I feel like a lot of us, especially my generation, we were just kind of programmed to do that. This is just a part of being a woman and this is a normal part of being a woman. But in fact, our period and it's kind of like our monthly report card of how everything in her body is doing. Allison: And[00:06:00]it's such a great visual of like okay, these are my PMS symptoms and this is kind of what it's telling me. And then this is how my periodis. And this is what it looks like. And this is what it feels like. And that's also telling you so much information about your hormones. And I think that's kind of what I really love about Chinese medicine too, because even. Allison: If things are like, you know, normal, according to Western medicine, like I have a lot of patients with really bad cramps that go to their doctor and they're like, well, everything in your blood work is normal. Your ultrasound's normal, but they're still having like debilitating pain. And that's when I think like Chinese medicine. Allison: is really powerful because we'll obviously see like, Oh, you've got no tons of liver cheese stagnation or blood stasis, or I'm seeing so many symptoms of coldin the uterus. And it's almost like really, it's just really empowering. I feel like for the patient too, where it's like, no, we don't see everything like checked off as normal, even though your blood work and ultrasound is okay. Allison: I mean, that's really great too. But for Chinese medicine, we're always looking at[00:07:00]this deeper underlying pattern and all these subtleties. And it's kind of painting this picture of the imbalance. Michelle: Yeah, totally. It's it was really eye opening for me because I had one patient with severe PMS to the point where she was like, I have to avoid people because I'm just not like a kind person around that time. And she was just, and she was actually a friend of mine and I was like, you know what, I'll help you. Michelle: No problem. And so she started coming in And one time she wasn't trying to get pregnant and she was like, she thought she was going to be late because she was like, I'm not getting any of my symptoms and I'm supposed to get them right around this time. Something's off. And then all of a sudden she just gets her period. Michelle: She goes, what? She's like, I just got my period. And I'm like, exactly.I'm like, Allison: I love that. Michelle: G is flowing really freely right now. That's why.Allison: Yeah. That's like the magic of Chinese medicine. Michelle:Totally! Allison:The surprise Michelle: total flow. Yes,[00:08:00]exactly. It's like the flow, Allison: Yeah, your period should kind of sneak up a little bit on you. Yeah. Michelle: Yeah. I mean, you do feel, you know, you definitely like feel your body's cues and the same thing with ovulation. When you get really in tune with your body, it is important to be able to like pick up on the details, but it shouldn't be so severe to the point where you can't, like you said, you can't deal with normal life events. Allison: Mm hmm. Yeah, definitely. Michelle:So what are some of the most common things that you see when itcomes to the menstrual cycle irregularities? Regarding fertility,Allison: Yeah, so there's a lot of different patterns and that's kind of the really funpart about Chinese medicine is that we're kind of like little detectives and we're like piecing together every symptom and kind of painting this picture of what's going on internally with the patient. So I mean, like each organ system has its own characteristics and they all kind of play a role in fertility and overall health. Allison: Because we don't really[00:09:00]think of in Chinese medicine as, Oh,the reproductive organs are just their own specific thing. It's kind of the wholebody has has a, has a play in it. So like what you're talking about, the liver chi, the liver chi is so tied to menstrual health. I am working with liver chi day in and day out when I'm working with fertility and endometriosis and hormone health. Allison: So the liver chi is like really, really important to makesure that everything's moving smoothly in the body and that's emotionally and physically. And then like the spleen chi and stomach chi in the digestive system is also really important because we want to make sure that your body is able to get all the nutrients that it needs and there's not a lot of inflammation there. Allison: We want to make sure the blood is moving really smoothly, like blood stagnation, cheese stagnation digestive deficiencies. I see that a lot. And then the kidney organ system is also really tied to fertility in Chinese medicine because it's kind of like, gives you that kind of DNA deep level energy to the egg cells and the sperm cells. Allison: And so making sure that those are really healthy because a lot of poor lifestyle or[00:10:00]genetics can impact the kidney energy system. So we always want to kind of help support the kidney energy with fertility. Michelle:Yeah, for sure. What I find really interesting and hopeful about really how Chinese medicine talks about the kidneys and talks about like the essence is, is that there's like pre heaven and post heaven. And so yes, pre heaven, we can't really do much about because that's pretty much what comes from our parents. Michelle: But post heaven is really how we choose to live our life. And we've seen that we can actually reverse age like biological age through the choices that we make. And I find that to be great. It's very empowering to know that your choices can make a difference on your body. Allison: Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that kind of goes back to where I really feel like Chinese medicine is such an empowering medicine because there's so much that you can do, diet, lifestyle, herbs, supplements, acupuncture, all those things really can have such a huge positive impact. And it's kind of like, yeah, I love the pre heaven and post heaven. Allison:We are[00:11:00]kind of given what we're got with like our basic genetic blueprint, but our post heaven essence is like epigenetics, where we have the huge percentage of, you know, influence over our health, no matter what our genes are saying and we have so much influence over that that part of it, and I think Chinese medicine plays a huge role in that. Michelle: And do you find that there is a correlation because I mean, listen, we're living in a, a very toxic life, like the environment, everything's just like around us and the foods that we eat, the extra ingredients that they put in it's it's the reality is that you really have to be careful on what you expose yourself to, what kind of cosmetics. Michelle: and the endocrine disruptors, I feel like that really bogs down the liver and It weakens its ability to do its job. And then sometimes I'll see things like Fibroids or certain things kind of popping up because the body's not able to likereally clear up the toxins. Michelle: And sometimes I'll find that the[00:12:00]person is working in an environment that has more toxins than normal. And so we have to kind of work extra, a little extra to release that or clear that out. And even for IVF, I like to do that as well. Right after retrieval do some kind of like very mild, you know, nothing too harsh But like mild liver detox to just help the body release the excess hormones, you know Because I really feel like that aspect of it can really impact the way the reproductive health expresses itself. Allison:yeah, I completely agree. I think there's a lot of, a lot of things in our world right now that are impacting our liver. And we are, as Chinese medicine practitioners, seeing that reflected a lot in liver cheese stagnation. And I think that's why there's so much PMS and period pain and infertility kind of that's pretty rampant because we are seeing, like I don't think I have a single patient where theirliver didn't need like a little bit of support in the Western sense and in the Chinese. Allison: medicine sense.[00:13:00]So yeah, I do love that you that you do payattention to that. And especially like post IVF or something, when all those medications you're it's really working the liver and not that those are bad medications at all because they're really useful and they're doing really wonderful things for patients to help reach their, their goals. Allison: But yeah, you're right. I do think there is a place where we can kind of help support the liver, especially post IVF. Michelle: Yeah for sure. So as far as endometriosis, I know that like gut health is really, really, really important when it comes to endometriosis. So the inflammation, how that impacts leaky gut. So what are some of the correlations or like the patterns, not necessarily just with Chinese medicine, and you could talk about that as well, but like just some of the links that you've noticed or the things that tend to go hand in hand. Michelle: With endometriosis. Allison: Yeah, that's a really good question. I love that you asked that because endometriosis is such a full body disease, like it's not just[00:14:00]something that's happening in the pelvis. So yeah, the gut connection is huge. I find that to be honestly, like one of the biggest roots of something that we need to focus on and kind of like rectify with a lot of my patients with endometriosis because the gut is such a foundational pillar of health. Allison: And so if there's anything going on there with like leaky gut ormicrobiome or their subclinical gut infections or SIBO or whatever is going on, then we really need to work on. Kind of correcting the dysbiosis because not onlydoes that create a lot of inflammation, but there's also such a huge microbiome and bacterial component to endometriosis. Allison: Like, there's so much research coming out about how people withendometriosis have different vaginal and uterine microbiomes. And all of our microbiomes in our body are connected. So I really do feel like if we focus a lot on gut health and working on any kind of issues that are super apparent there, then it makes such a huge difference in like overall inflammatory levels, which are totally going to[00:15:00]help with a lot of the endosymptoms and the endo pain.  Allison:But also kind of helping with the microbiome component is really important for fertility because we do know a good vaginal and uterine microbiomeis super important for fertility, but I also find it really helpful for endosymptoms. And then I also love looking at the nervous system because I find that if we're kind of like, if we've got some like circadian rhythm dysfunction, because we're not sleeping well or we don't have good sleep hygiene or if we're just kind of continuously operating out of fight or flight mode and we're just never in parasympathetic mode, that's going to totally cause a lot of inflammation in the body and that's going to absolutely affect your endometriosis. Allison: So those are two things that I find. a lot of people with endo can benefit from working on. And that's, yeah, correcting any gut dysbiosis and really working on gut health. And then also really working with the nervous system. Like we really need to work on this chronic stress epidemic and like having a good circadian rhythm. Allison: I've been doing a[00:16:00]lot of, I've been like looking a lot into like the cortisol awakening response lately. I've been really nerding out about it and how it's how your cortisol levels like really need to have that initial spike in the morning. And not only for you to like feel good and get out of bed, but also it's areally important indicator of like inflammatory levels in your body. Allison: And there's also a really important autoimmune component. And we do know that endometriosis has this kind of auto-immune overlap with it. And so any of my patients that I am hearing like, Oh, how do you feel like when you get out of bed? Like, how long does it take you to kind of feel alive in the morning? Allison: Once you get out of bed, if it's like, Oh, two hours and five cups of coffee. I definitely know that there is some cortisol awakening response that we need to kind of work on in order to like really help with the immune and inflammatory stuff. So, yeah, those are a couple of things that I'm always looking at for my endo patients. Michelle: That's really great information. Vaginal microbiome I think is huge because I actually was at a mega spore[00:17:00]biotic on the microbiome labs.They had a little conference and I listened to a lecture by Dr. Jolene Brighton and she was talking about the vaginal microbiome and Allison: Oh, I love her. Michelle: She's amazing.Michelle: She always has great information. She just always delivers. And so she talked about that and she said that in, in Spain, they'll always check the vaginal microbiome. And especially when people are doing IVF and transfers specifically. And I had one of my patients going to Spain. Michelle: A lot of people go to Spain. I mean, they save money. The only thing is they lose money with the flights and everything, but they're really good doctors and like the clinics are great. And so what they do is they actually have, I'm almost like always on a protocol to check their vaginal microbiome. Michelle: They always check it before transfers and they have these women going on vaginal suppositories for the microbiome to support it. And I had. A recent patient who was like advanced[00:18:00]maternal age and she's pregnant. But she was on the suppositories. Michelle: They were checking and making sure because they said that she was mentioning that there's a link between, I guess, imbalanced vaginal microbiomes, a little different in the sense that it's. Like, you don't want diversity. You want it to be more like a specific type of strain. She was saying that there's a connection between a poor balance of the vaginal microbiome and recurrent miscarriages, unexplained infertility and failed transfers. And that's huge. That's so important. And nobody really checks here. Like. In our world, North America. Allison: Yeah. Well, actually in Vancouver, where I am, there's one clinic that does for some patients. And I, I have like the past, yeah, the past year. So I've been having a lot more patients do some microbiome testing. They'll do the swab. It's called the Emma Ellis. I think that they do it here. In in a couple of the clinics and they'll do the probiotic suppositories. Allison: And I honestly like tell my patients to go get them[00:19:00]too and jerk them where they can find them because I think it's always a benefit. Like it's not, it's such a harmless intervention. It can only help like and it's, they're so easy to do. It's so affordable. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and it does improve transfer results and pregnancy rates and everything, and so, yeah, I'm, I'm a huge fan of  Michelle: no brainer. Allison: testing for fertility. Allison:Yeah, Michelle: Yeah. It's a no brainer. And I think that it's so important and I, I'm so glad you brought it up. And I'm glad to know that some places are doing it places. I haven't seen it yet. I haven't seen that to be like really. And I've been actually running it for some of my patients. But I'm glad to Allison: Oh, nice. Michelle:people are starting to do that. Michelle: That's great. And then as far as a nervous system and circadian rhythm, that's huge because it's kind of like, I always look at it almost as like the second-hand is going to impact the hour hand. So like the second hand could be like our 24-hour cycle versus our 30 day cycle or[00:20:00]infradian rhythm. So the circadian rhythm impacts the infradian rhythm. Michelle: So it's important to have a good circadian rhythm. Interestingly, if I lookback, I had, I also have a history of We all started as patients, a lot of us. So I have a Allison: Yeah, right? Ah. Michelle:I did was I, I used to have the worst circadian rhythm. I used to not beable to wake up in the mornings. Michelle: Like I would, if left to my own devices, I would stay up until like, I would sleep until 2 PM some days when I was like younger in my twenties, andthen I'd. I'd stay up till two, three, four sometimes. I mean, I was just completely off and I don't know, I always blamed it on college or whatever, but it was just definitely my rhythm. Michelle: It was just the way my body was. And now I'm much more regular just over time. And it kind of synchronized with like my, menstrual cycle. So is that something that you see often?[00:21:00]Allison: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, and it always kind of goes back to like, Chinese medicine roots of like, we, we need to sync with nature. Like, when the sun's down, that's our yin time. That's not the time to do a lot of work or exercise. That'sthe time that we're supposed to be slowing down. We're supposed to be asleep.  Allison: Like, I'm always coaching my patients, like, I want you in bed. by 10pm, 11pm at the latest. I do not care if, like, you're naturally a night owl. Like, that is the kind of ideal Chinese medicine bedtime. Because we really do get those better hours of sleep in the earlier hours of the night. We get that deep, restful sleep. Allison: And it really does make a huge difference. I've been, yeah, personally, like, really prioritizing regular sleep cycle the past couple years. And it's been, like, revolutionary for me for how I feel like mood and energy, but also I my endosymptoms and I also had an autoimmune disease. And so it's been really helpful for that. Allison: So I think it's really easy to overlook the basics of like, well, I'm gettingmy eight hours, even if I'm going to bed at 2am or,[00:22:00]you know, sleep, I'm getting enough, I'm getting about six, seven hours. That should be enough. But it's like really irregular times. Like your body can't really cope with that. Allison: And I think it's really important that we go back to these like. Super basic principles of like, are you sleeping on time? Are you eating at regular intervals?Are you doing regular movement? Like these really basic things, these small habits really add up to make such a huge difference in health problems and especially even like super complex chronic health problems. Allison: It can be really revolutionary. Michelle:Oh yeah. And there's definitely studies that have been linked to irregular periods and also infertility when it comes to having night shifts. So like night shift hours, it really impacts the reproductive health. So it's really fascinating because it's not just the hours. It's really when it's the, when. Michelle: not just the amount. Allison: Mm hmm. Michelle: So I studied Ayurvedic medicine. That was also very eye opening when it comes to like really understanding the rhythms of nature and how[00:23:00]our bodies synchronize and also the elements of food and really understanding like how our bodies do better. Michelle: It's almost like really understanding the time cycle of the day and optimizing it. And when it comes to intermittent fasting. Fasting itself is actually really, it could be very beneficial if done right. And I want to say that like really,really in strong words, if done right, because I personally, from what I understoodand how much I've, I've learned as far as the sun goes, like the sun helps our acne, which is our digestifier. Michelle: So if we, the best time to eat really is during the day. So breakfast lunch, lunch should be the largest meal of the day and that's when you should have those difficult to digest proteins and have that like during that time because at that time the sun is at its highest Where the day is the most young it could be and so you want that young energy that[00:24:00]fire to be supported by nature's rhythms to help your own digestive fire and And then what you could do if you want to fast is fast at night versus in the morning. Michelle: And that's what a lot of people do. They'll fast in the morning and it's been shown that it could possibly not be great for women because it's been mostly studied on men and they have a completely different rhythm. So that's something that I always suggest. If you really do feel that you need to fast for a little bit and have like a little break digestive wise, it's better to do it when the sun goes down. Allison: Yeah, I completely agree. And I do feel the same about fasting. Like, I, to an extent, I like fasting, like, you know, a good maybe 12, 13 hours, maybe 14 hours for some metabolically flexible people, but I've always been a huge component of breakfast just because, in Chinese medicine, like, the stomach channel, time, is in that morning, and that's kind of always when historically theysay that's a great time to eat,[00:25:00]and I feel like, yeah, this huge intermittent fasting kind of craze can be good to an extent and when utilized properly, but I'm always going to go back to, like, what have we been doing for 2, 000 years that has been working really well? Allison: Like, I think there's a lot of parts to Chinese medicine where yeah, a lot of the health trends and health fads are just not going to resonate, and that's kind of,like, always my good reminder of like, okay, well, let's go back to what nature and what has been working for humans for, you know, thousands of years. Allison: Right. Michelle: think about like the light cause like light light hygiene, cause you want to call it, you want, you want to get exposure to light early in the morning so that your body knows. Cause that's how our bodies respond. Our bodies really respond to light. So I always kind of, I always prescribe this, like go early in the morning, get some sunlight while it's safe early, early. Michelle: And then of course, obviously protect your skin if you're skin sensitive and especially later on, but like early in the morning, it's easier. For your body to process.[00:26:00]I almost kind of compare this in my mind as like a hose of water. So you want water. When it's trickling, it's much easier to drink. Michelle: And then like in the middle of the day, when it's like shooting out, you're, you're going to choke. It's too much. So it's better to have it early in the morning. We're able to really get the vitamins. And I remember my grandmother always telling me early morning sun will give you the most vitamins. Michelle: That's how she explained it. The most nutrients. And she was right. She was right. She said that. She's like early morning sun. That's what you want. And so, and not only that, it also anchors the circadian rhythm and then also getting moonlight. So like not having the fake light, dimming the light at night, and that could really, so that's why I would say like light hygiene is to kind of dim it at night so that we go back to our roots. Michelle: And this is just, it's what nature has intended for us. Allison: Yeah. Yeah. I completely agree. All of that. I mean, it's always a good reminder to go back to[00:27:00]nature of, like, the super basics. When it's dark, like, it should be dark. It should be quiet. It should be in. It should be asleep. And then, yeah, during the daytime, that's when things are active, including our digestive system. Allison: Like, it seems, yeah, nature was designed for it to be pretty clear to us,like, what we're supposed to be doing. Michelle: Yeah. For sure. And what are your thoughts about taking melatonin supplements? Allison: think it can be helpful. I mean, I am not a huge and high dose melatonin. So I'm more of like the one to three milligrams because that's kind of akin to what is naturally produced in the body. There are a lot of there's some research that shows that a high dose can be good for endometriosis, like even up to 10 milligrams because of its antioxidant effect. Allison: But I, I've, I've only had it be helpful for a small group of patients, like not a lot. So it's not my favorite one to go to because I just, I don't think that it's going to be hugely beneficial for the circadian rhythm. But I do find it[00:28:00]helpful for some patients and I love it as like a general antioxidant. Allison: If your levels are kind of low because you know, we're not, we have so much light in the night time and stuff. So our bodies are naturally kind of, I bet a bit melatonin deficient. If it's, if you're taking a decent dosage of like one to three milligrams and it's really helping you sleep and you're noticing a huge difference, awesome. Allison: But I also see a lot of patients where it doesn't do a lot for them or it makes them feel groggy. And so I think it's a really case by case dependent. Like if it works for you and you're on a good dosage, awesome. If it's not, like I'm not too hard pressed, like there's a lot of other alternatives. I like, I love a lot of adaptogens and stuff. Allison: too, that can kind of help reset their circadian rhythm too. So, yeah, it's not my absolute favorite go to but there is like some really good research with it for fertility and egg quality because of its antioxidant effect. So I don't hate it. Michelle: Yeah. Well, the great thing is, is that getting that early morning sunlight induces cellular melatonin. So it actually brings that out of you, so it is a great way to get that, Allison: that is true. Michelle: natural light,[00:29:00]but also through light therapy. So light therapy can help that as well. Michelle: So is there anything else that you're like passionate about, excited about that you're like learning about recently that you're finding is really helpful for your patients? Allison: Besides the cortisol awakening response, which I've been really nerding out about and just like cortisol in general, I find it's such an underrated hormone and people are either like, Oh, we want to squash it or we want to raise it. But that's like so much more complex and intricate than that. So I've been really kind of diving into that and like some more Dutch test stuff. Allison: I find, I am always just learning, I love learning so much about estrogen metabolism and methylation because I find that a lot of patients who are struggling with reproductive health stuff and fertility and especially endo and stuff a lot of them are, we're just not metabolizing and methylating estrogen correctly. Allison: And so it's, that's causing a lot of symptoms. And so I've been really kind of doing a lot of research into that, which I've been finding so interesting. So yeah, I feel like that's kind[00:30:00]of, yeah, liver, cortisol, all that kind of Michelle: stuff, liver stuff again. So what, what have you. Allison: Always back to the liver. Michelle: Yes. What have you seen is effective for estrogen metabolism. Allison: yeah, well, it depends, like, at which phase people are having the issues. If it's, like the metabolizing into the 4 2 OH, or if it's, like, the actual methylationprocess, because there's different, you know, supplements and herbs that all, I'll recommend. So that's why I really love testing. So we can really like see exactly where the issue is, or if it's in phase three estrogen metabolism, where we really need to focus on the gut health again because there's too much beta glucuronidase,that's recirculating estrogen levels and stuff. Allison: And so there's different things that we can do for that. But yeah, I just love like, The basic things that your liver needs is like magnesium, B vitamins enough protein, enough iron. Like there's some really basic stuff that I think, if a lot of if we're just really focusing on through like healthy nutrition and stuff, then alot of that stuff can be helped. Allison: [00:31:00]So we don't, honestly, we don't even need like, crazy amounts of supplements and herbs if there's these issues going on. Sometimes your body just needs like a really basic levels of magnesium and B vitamins and hydration and amino acids and stuff and then all these things can kind of work efficiently. Michelle:Yeah. Sometimes I find just warm water and lemon on an empty stomach every day because lemon is like the sour taste for the liver. Just something like that. It's such a simple, it's so simple. It's almost too simple that people think it's like, how could this work? It's too simple, Allison: Yeah. Michelle: amazing that I find. Allison: Yeah, that's kind of how I feel about like castor oil packs, too. Michelle: Yeah. Oh, yeah. So talk about those because that that's actually really effective I find and moving like the lymph and moving that stagnation. Allison: Absolutely. Yeah, I'm a huge fan of castor oil packs, especially like after my patients have endosurgery where they have laparoscopic abdominal surgery to remove the endo lesions. I love using[00:32:00]castor oil packs post operatively to help like reduce scar tissue formation and to really help with the healing process and the blood circulation and lymphatic movement and everything. Allison: So castor oil packs are basically you apply castor oil to the abdomen or liver and then you place a heat pack on it and you kind of just relax with the heat. To as the oil kind of seeps into your skin and does all the magic that it needs to. And it is such like a simple intervention just like warm lemon water in the morning that I find is just such an easy thing to do. Allison: It's really cost effective, it's really relaxing. Like it doesn't take a lot of effort. You can do it like while you're watching tv. Like it's a really easy thing to kind of incorporate into, into your life. But I do find it really, really helpful for like reducing period cramps, helping people to recover post abdominal surgery for liver detoxification. Allison: Like done regularly, it can, you know, have a lot of really positive impact. Michelle: for sure And what are your thoughts on when to do it on the menstrual cycle because I do hear like conflicting perspectives on when[00:33:00]you should do it and then you can also move it at certain times to the liver rather than the abdomen. Allison: Yeah, that's true. Yeah, so I'll never recommend it during menstruation, or like at least during your heavy days because I do think it can cause a little bit too much blood circulation and that just might increase the bleeding. And then I'll never recommend it after ovulation if you're trying to conceive. Allison: So if there's any chance of pregnancy, we kind of just want to like take care of that like precious area. We don't want to do anything to moving or detoxing. Like that's even like a point in the menstrual cycle where I won't do too many abdominal points. Like I kind of just like let your body do what it needs todo. Allison:Like it knows how to do it. I'll do a lot more distal stuff to kind of help with blood circulation and hormone balance and whatever we're working on. But yeah, anytime that there's any chance of pregnancy, I like to leave the lower belly alone. Michelle: No, it's true. I, I do the same thing. Actually. I do like right after ovulation. I tell them not to do it and they're like, and it pretty much[00:34:00]minimizes the window to like, after period, you know, in between that point, but I, usually like to be a little more conservative on that as well, unless you're trying to prepare your body ahead of time. Allison: I'm definitely on the cautious side. Michelle:Yeah, me too. You might as well. Yeah, totally. So this is great. Great conversation. I'm sure we can keep talking about all kinds of topics and questions.And so if people want to work with you, so you do Dutch testing, you do sometesting and you do some online work. Allison: Yeah, so I'm CFG healing on all the social medias and my website. I'm seeing patients in person in Vancouver and Burnaby, British Columbia, and I do see a small amount of patients virtually. So if you're elsewhere and want to work with me, we can do some telehealth. Michelle: Fantastic. Well, Alison, it was awesome speaking to you. And thank you so much for your insight and information. And guys, I[00:35:00]definitely recommend you check out her Instagram because it's like loads of information. You're going to learn so much. I'm learning so much because I love really collaborating and talking to other practitioners because you can always learn something new. Michelle: That's what I find. You just can always learn something because everybody has a different perspective. Allison: Yeah, that's so true, and I'm an avid regular listener to your podcast, and I could say the same. I always learn so much from you and all the people that you interview, so thank you for doing what you do. Michelle: Oh, that's awesome. Well, I admire you. So that's really nice to hear that coming from you. So thank you so much, Alison, for coming on today. Allison:Thanks, Michelle.            

In this thought-provoking episode, we welcome the Co-Founder and CEO of Supercritical and Co-Founder of SongKick, Michelle You, to the Bottom Line. Michelle shares her captivating journey of transitioning into the tech world and her profound career transformation and environmental advocacy. In today's episode, we dive into the intricacies of Michelle's career exploration, the importance of embracing change, and the invaluable lessons learned along the way. Delving deeper, Michelle shines a spotlight on the pressing issue of climate change mitigation, shedding light on the concept of carbon removal and the urgent need for achieving net-zero emissions. Michelle also speaks to her company's pivotal role in this critical space and offers key insights into the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. From sharing advice to college students embarking on their career journeys to discussing the qualities she values in a team, this episode is brimming with wisdom, inspiration, and actionable takeaways. Tune in as we engage with Michelle You in a riveting conversation that transcends industries, ignites passion, and empowers listeners to drive positive change in their own lives and beyond!

Kaely McDevitt is a Registered Dietitian specializing in nutrition for women's health. She owns a virtual private practice where she and her team help their clients reclaim their energy, optimize fertility and overcome hormone symptoms through personalized nutrition. Having experienced the pitfalls of a conventional approach to women's health firsthand, Kaely is passionate about empowering women to build health from a place of connection: to self, to nature and to community. Links: Kaely's Gift: https://kaelyrd.kartra.com/page/foptin Instagram: @kaelyrd Website: https://www.kaelyrd.com Doors are closing soon for my Wholesome Fertility Transformation Program! Join us today! https://www.michelleoravitz.com/Fertility-Transformation-Group-Coaching For more information about Michelle, visit www.michelleoravitz.com The Wholesome Fertility facebook group is where you can find free resources and support: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2149554308396504/ Instagram: @thewholesomelotusfertility Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thewholesomelotus/ Transcript: Michelle:[00:00:00]Welcome to the podcast. Kaely: Thanks so much for having me, Michelle. Michelle: love to have you on love to talk to dietitians, nutritionists, and I would love for you to share your backgrounds and how you got into women's health and fertility. Kaely: Sure. Yeah. So I'm a registered dietitian and I went that path with my career thinking that I would work in sports nutrition. It's what I was passionate about at the time. I kind of grew up as an athlete and as fate would have it, I dealt with a whole bunch of hormone health issues while I was in school, becoming a dietitian and was spending all of my free time outside of school trying to understand more about how the female body worked, how the menstrual cycle worked, the influence of hormones on nutrition and ultimately had a bit of a crisis of faith of what I was learning because it really wasn't helping me optimize my hormone health. Kaely: A big part of my story was actually some pretty significant symptoms related to birth control. So shortly after getting my credentials, came off birth control,[00:01:00]navigated that whole chaotic season of my life of getting back into hormone balance. And when I looked up from that, I realized how a lot of women, friends, family members even, were hungry for nutrition for women's health specifically. Kaely: Because almost no nutrition research is ever done on women. So pivoted away from sports nutrition to women's health a little over a decade ago, and have been running a virtual private practice where my team and I help women all over the country end hormone symptoms, optimize fertility, get pregnant, and really just feel at home in their bodies again. Kaely: And I'm very thankful for that pivot because I can't imagine working in another space. Michelle: Amazing. I love it. I find working with women personally, like so rewarding, especially when it comes to fertility health, it's really amazing because the thing is, you know, what you're talking about is so important food is like at the center of everything, but here's the thing. I think what a lot of people think. Michelle: Is that their symptoms are just[00:02:00]genetics or it's just something that they have to deal with and little is talked about. How our choices and food choices can make a difference. And the thing is part of like having a choice is really knowing what to look for because sometimes you don't really know that you even have a choice. Kaely: Yep, totally. Michelle: And when you talked about, you talked about birth control, that's like abig thing too, because I think that that's another aspect. I mean, that's really beenmy story is that I didn't realize that I had a choice with my regular periods and theonly choice I was given. By professionals that I turned to was the birth control pill for many, many years until, and I always knew intuitively that there must besomething else that's out there that's better because I'm like, there's just no way that this cannot be fixed. Michelle: And I knew thatit was a bandaid because obviously if you take it off, it's right back to what it was. And the doctor told me that. So I remember thinking like, this[00:03:00]just doesn't make sense. However, I didn't have a better option at the time. So a lot of people are in that same position. They really don't think that there's a better option. Michelle: And a couple of things with the birth control pill, number one is that when you're on it for a long time, it can impact. Your body's nutrients and how you process nutrients that can impact your gut. I mean, there's so many things So I want to start with that because I mean there's so much to unpack but like I want to start with that what have you seen like that? Michelle: The pill does to the body What are the things that it depletes? What are the things that you like to address? After a person's been on the birth control pill for so many years. Kaely: Yeah, absolutely. So we don't have a ton of research on this yet. I think it's growing slowly. But what I've seen in practice and even experienced personally was a depletion and a lot of really important nutrients. So at the time that I came off birth control, I was working for a corporate wellness[00:04:00]company that did Micronutrient testing for their corporate clients, which was a little unusual for the time, but really cool. Kaely: And so I'm like, I'm a dietician. I'm following all these food rules that I was running marathons. I thought I was gonna have this like beautiful report come backand it came back and I was deficient in more things than any of the clients that I had been helping. And it was a big aha moment for me to start digging into the influence of birth control on nutrients. Kaely: And what I've continued to see over the last 10 years in practice is a big depletion in our B vitamins. So kind of the whole B complex, a lot of antioxidants are lower too. So we'll see things like vitamin E, vitamin C and selenium be lower post birth control. Magnesium and zinc are commonly lower post birth control. Kaely: And when we think about the nutrients involved in ovulation, in fertility, in being able to carry a pregnancy, I mean, everything that I mentioned is part of that. It's part of energy production and protecting an egg and[00:05:00]follicle health.So those not only can contribute to a lot of the symptoms post birth control, butdefinitely have an impact on, on fertility post birth control too.Michelle:Yeah. No doubt. And what about as far as gut health have you seen witha birth control pill? Kaely: Yep. So we see a change in the microbiome with hormonal birth controluse, and it's a shift away from gram positive to gram negative bacteria, which caninfluence the way that we recycle estrogen in the body. So it can contribute to that state of estrogen dominance. We see an increase in like the gap junction between cells in the gut or a common term for that would be leaky gut. Kaely: So more likelihood to have systemic inflammation, more likelihood to have inappropriate reactions to food post birth control. And then another big area thatgets taxed while on birth control is the liver, gallbladder, and kind of greater biliary tree. You know, the liver is already an[00:06:00]extremely busy organ and it is having to work over time to process and filter the hormones coming in from birth control. Kaely: And those hormones influence the contractility and the composition of the bile, so we see that whole biliary tree impacted by birth control too, which of course influences the way that we're able to get excess hormones out of the body,the way that we're able to absorb fats from our food and our fat soluble vitamins. Kaely: So those would be the main areas. So nutrients. gut and then liver and gallbladder health. Michelle: And what are some of the protocols? And I'm sure similar to my work. Every person is unique, so the protocols are gonna change depending on the person and the condition. There are symptoms as well and like just how their body reacts but typically if somebody's been on the birth control pill for a very long time what are some of the things that you suggest for them to do? Kaely: Yes. So we'll start with food, right? Being in the nutrition space,[00:07:00]we always want to start there. And I always say that nutrient dense whole food diet is non-negotiable when we're talking about coming off of birth control and recovering from However long that season of life was so sticking with food and in the real form as often as we can. Kaely: So good quality proteins, nice pigmented produce, healthy fats alot of just micronutrient rich foods to help accommodate for the deficiencies that came from the pill. So we would start with that, the foundation of the diet. We'd work on supporting the gut. So looking at the types of fibers in our diet, potentially leveraging some probiotics support. Kaely: In my experience, spore based probiotics have been really helpful at trying to adjust the changes that happen post birth control. And then I love to bring insome liver gallbladder support too. So maybe we'll do things like castor oil packsor bitters or bring more bitter foods into the diet to help get that good bile flow going again. Kaely: Those would be my kind of three areas to start with.[00:08:00] Michelle: And, okay, so let's talk about spore based probiotics, because a lot of people listening might not realize the difference between the probiotics. And I, I personally love them as well. I think they're great. And just talk about the differences and why that would be more beneficial over the typical probiotics that you'll find. Kaely: Sure. Yeah. So spore based probiotics are delivered almost identical to how we would find them in nature in the soil, which I think is a cool and important detail here. So they're going to be encapsulated inside that spore, which means they have protection from our digestive process. So they're a lot less likely to get broken down by stomach acid in the stomach and actually make it to their target site, which is the large intestines. Kaely: One of the main complaints of your kind of run of the mill probiotics is that they're either not even viable, you know, at room temperature, or that once they'reingested into a body that is warm and has stomach acid and digestive enzymes, itgets broken down and denatured.[00:09:00]So the spore based probiotics, in my experience, have just been a lot more effective at actually changing the terrain of the large intestines and actually a lot better tolerated to what, which is what I've seen because they're making it to the large intestines and not the small intestines where they might contribute to some symptoms. Michelle: Right. For sure. And for SIBO, that's like the big one because sometimes people with SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, don't really do well with the type of probiotics we used to use because they already have too much bacteria so that it can also exacerbate it. Michelle: So. Yeah, I personally love spore base because it goes right to the targeted area and I've seen a lot of amazing results with my patients as well. Kaely: Absolutely. Michelle: And then another thing that you brought up, which I thought was really interesting is the bitter taste. So it's interesting because we do take a lot of supplements sometimes and those supplements are, have[00:10:00]certain bitters are supposed to be good for your liver. However, The taste of bitter is also part of the medicine, tasting it. Kaely: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, we've got those taste receptors all over our tongue and they're not there for no reason when they interact with bitter compounds in foods. They're actually stimulating our digestive juices and, you know, ancestrally speaking, bitter foods would have been a lot more common. I think the modern human palate has been refined to the most degree of comfort. Kaely: So we've like stripped the bitter stuff out of our diet. We like cut the thingsout of our food that we don't want anymore. And so we're missing out on that interplay of bitter foods and how that actually really supports digestion and evenblood sugar. So bringing in things like fennel seeds, like that's a really nice DIY bitter is just chewing on a couple of fennel seeds as we're preparing our meal, we could sip some diluted apple cider vinegar and water. Kaely: We could have a splash of cranberry juice and some sparkling water, or we could even[00:11:00]just start to bring in more bitter foods into our day to day, like adding some arugula into our salad mix instead of just spinaches or lettuces. Bringing more citrus zest into things instead of just the fruit. So I think that bitter influencing or including more bitter compounds in our diet as a whole is great. Kaely: And then we can also use bitter tinctures to actually interact with those taste receptors right before meals. Michelle: Yeah, it's it's something that for sure we've like really veered from because we do like our certain tastes. And I think about like Indian restaurants, sometimes you'll find that they have a bunch of, well, they're coated in sweetness, but they have fennel seeds and they have a bunch of seeds for people to have. Michelle: Like at the beginning of the restaurant, so you could take a little bit, putit in your hand or take it afterwards and it helps the digestive process, which Ayurveda is based on really using a lot of spices, to help digestion. And I think that's another[00:12:00]thing that we lost more modern times. Kaely: Yep. Absolutely. We've just like restricted and restricted the acceptable range of flavors to very bland things and lost out on that. Michelle: And also, I mean, another really important aspect is just all of the excess ingredients and fillers and You know, something that is really terrible for a microbiome, which is like thickeners that they use in a lot of processed foods. And it can really make a huge impacton your microbiome, which impacts how youabsorb those nutrients. Kaely: Absolutely. We have a lot of fake foods now in addition to losing out on the nutrient density of food. So we're hungrier than ever for nutrients, even though we're getting more and more processed foods. Michelle: And I tend to see a lot of people with lower progesterone symptomssuch as like mid cycle[00:13:00]spotting or like a shorter luteal phase. What are some of the things that you've seen and what have you, how have you approached that?  Kaely: Yeah, we see a ton of low progesterone in our practice. And actually something that I've said for a number of years now is that it feels like we have an epidemic of low progesterone. And that's because we only make progesterone if we ovulate. And we only ovulate if the body feels safe and has the raw materials that it needs to. Kaely: And, I'd argue that, you know, the lifestyle of the modern woman isn't conducive for safety or nutrient availability either. So, a lot of the main symptoms that we see, like the ones you mentioned, you know, a short luteal phase symptomatic periods, and that's because progesterone helps balance out the effects of estrogen. Kaely: So, without enough of it, we tend to have heavier, more painful, clottier periods. We see fertility issues because progesterone is necessary to carry a[00:14:00]pregnancy, so whether it's not conceiving at all or early miscarriages we see a lot of sleep and digestive symptoms in the luteal phase with lower progesterone. Kaely: And then because there's such a close relationship between progesterone and the thyroid, we see a lot of hypothyroidism as well with low progesterone. Michelle: And also people can in fact, ovulate, but still have low progesterone. Kaely: Absolutely. Yep. And it's all in relation to how much estrogen, right? So we could have true low progesterone or just low progesterone relative to the amount of estrogen at that time. Michelle: So if it's like estrogen dominance Kaely: Right. Michelle: And did you have you ever noticed, see, this is actually something interesting. I had a guest on talking about the menstrual cycle and she talked about how the corpus luteum, which means yellow bodyis yellow because of the, betacarotene..[00:15:00]And so she said that sometimes she will give like a therapeutic dose of beta carotene. Michelle: And I started using it in my practice and I have seen impacts. Now I wouldn't use it for everybody. I also kind of look at it as sort of a more young You know, yin and yang, it's more of like a heating, usually progesterone and kind of the second half of the menstrual cycle is more of a yang phase, which is like amore warm energetic phase of the cycle.Michelle:But if you look at also foods, and I've learned this with Ayurveda, someof the warming foods have warmer colors, which is kind of interesting in its ownbut what are your thoughts on that and have you worked with that in your practice?Kaely:Yeah. Yeah. I, I definitely agree. And I think, you know, vitamin A or betacarotene is one piece of that puzzle, but there's so the corpus luteum is soantioxidant rich or an antioxidant meeting because of the[00:16:00]mitochondrialdemand on that area. So we see a lot of benefit from vitamin a, we see vitamin E being really helpful and then some antioxidants like selenium can be really helpful for that too. Kaely: But yeah, I think if we look at warm foods highly pigmented foods, they tend to be really rich in those nutrients that we're targeting. So I think it makes a lot of sense from like an Ayurvedic perspective too. Michelle: Yeah, and I just think about egg health. I mean, cause ultimately, you know, egg health, it's like the follicle itself. And then that impacts, you know, if you have good healthy eggs, that's going to impact the corpus luteum. I mean, it's like the follicle with the egg, but it's all one part, it's a whole. And so when you're addressing all of those things, it's going to impact. Michelle: All of the different aspects, really, of the menstrual cycle. So as far as fertility goes, what are some of the common symptoms that you[00:17:00]see? The, like the most common symptoms that you'll see with the people that come into your practice. Kaely: Yeah, so for most of our clients that are seeing us for fertility, we've got probably about half of them are on the like proactive side of things they want to start trying to conceive soon, or maybe they've just recently started and realize they wanted to do some like proactive conception planning and make sure that their nutrients Kaely: And then the other half have been trying to conceive for some time, so maybe they have had no successful pregnancies or maybe they've had recurrent miscarriage. We also serve clients that have been through assisted reproductive technologies without success and want to explore things in the functional nutrition space.  Kaely: So we kind of see the whole gamut between, you know, just preparing for that season of life and then those that have been in the trenches[00:18:00]of infertility and want to explore some other options. Michelle: In our pre talk, you were talking about the downfalls of nutrition. What are some of the things that you see in general, like in society? That are impacting people's ability to truly, like, process and then get stronger from within. Kaely: Yeah, I, this is one of the things that I get most soap boxy about because I just personally really relate to it having gone to conventional schooling for nutrition and just seeing firsthand really what's being taught there and, and see how it didn't play out favorably for my own hormones. But if we think about, you know, the women in childbearing years now grew up in like the eighties, nineties. Kaely: 2000s. And there was a new diet being marketed to women, like every other day, something completely different each time we went through a season of like really low fat being the main focus, low fat, low calorie. Then we went through really low carb being the focus and cutting out, you know, even[00:19:00]things like fruits and some starchier vegetables. Kaely: We've just been through a lot of extremes all the while having the message that thinnest is best. For women. So when we take it back to the foundation of fertility, like we've talked about already, this is safety in the body and abundant energy. You know, we can't support a new life. We can't even support the hormone production and ovulation without those things. Kaely: So if we're consistently under eating either from just a caloric perspective or cutting out large amounts of macronutrients, whether it be carbs, proteins, or fats, you know, we can't expect fertility to happen. Unhinged at that point or uninhibited at that point, because we lack safety and nutrient availability. Kaely: And then even just maintaining really unrealistic goals for body composition for women can be a big hindrance for fertility as well. You know, stored body fat is. safety net. So if we have really, really low body fat as females, which would[00:20:00]be the recommendation on your average grocery store tabloid we're going to run into some fertility issues too. Kaely: So I just think between the diet culture and body image messaging that most women grew up with paired with the fact that almost no research in the nutrition space is done on women because we have the variables of hormones that make a laboratory setting, really difficult. We have, you know, half the population that is struggling to figure out how to eat in order to support their own physiology and that confusion and kind of applying what we're seeing other people doing or applying what men are doing has led to a lot of hormone infertility issues. Michelle: No doubt. I see that with intermittent fasting, too, because it was mostly tested on men. And nobody really checked on women and what I've heard is that if you were to do that, because there are some benefits of fasting to not do it all the time, maybe to do a periodically to kind of like reset the system. Michelle: But another thing too, is that I[00:21:00]see, you know, besides sometimes people being really underweight and not having the energy stores, but. Sometimes people have the energy stores, they become overweight, but they're not, it's not because they're eating a lot. It's just their body's not able to process that energy. Michelle: And perhaps they're not getting the nutrients they need to get the energy to break down the energy, if that makes sense. Kaely: Right. Absolutely. Yep. Yeah. That's that whole, you know, predicament of the modern human eating more food than ever, but being nutrient starved. You know, we're, we have access 24 seven access for the most part to really calorie dense foods, but they're not nutrient dense and we need both in order for that system to work well. Michelle: Yeah. Because if you don't have both, then you're not able to even use the energy that you do have. It just doesn't, it doesn't process. It doesn't translate. Kaely: Yep. And something that you mentioned with the intermittent fasting and just, you know, if we want to leverage the[00:22:00]benefits of fasting in women, you know, we do it in a, in a different way than we would with men. We would do things, you know, for shorter duration or for specific seasons. And I think that hits on a really big point for nutrition for women's health. Kaely: And that's having to acknowledge that we're cyclical beings. And that it's okay that we need to change our approach to food, to exercise, to the way we're living our lives based on what's going on in our cycle. And I know this is something that you speak on often. It's one of my favorite things as well. Kaely: You know, our culture thinks that we should feel the exact same way andshow up the exact same way every single day. But if you're a cycling female, I mean, you're going through four different seasons every single month and those have different demands. Michelle: Absolutely. And so what have you seen? I know how I see it from kind of a little bit more of a Chinese medicine perspective, but I'd love to hear your takeon like the different seasons and because I just love this topic. It's so much fun. Kaely: I love it too. And I think it's so liberating.[00:23:00]Yeah, it is. I remember feeling like so much relief when I realized that it's actually really normal that my motivation is not the same every single day. I remember feeling like I should show up as the same version of me all the time as a, as a business owner. Kaely: And even in, you know, my relationships and that's not the case. So what we see in our clients or just a general overview of this, you know, the, the menstruation or period phase being winter leading into spring, which is the follicular phase and the building up of estrogen and then ovulation being summer,kind of like peak. Kaely: And then coming into fall in the luteal phase and then back into winter and the hormone environment of each of those seasons influences the way that we metabolize our food and even the way that we keep blood sugar stable. So what we find to be most supportive from like a purely nutritional standpoint. Kaely: Is that we actually do better with a little bit more carbohydrate in that follicular phase. So kind of[00:24:00]spring season leading into summer because estrogen keeps us insulin sensitive so we can handle more carbohydrates more efficiently. And that can support that increased like external energy output that comes with the spring and summer seasons or follicular inovulation. Kaely: And then once we move into the fall season, so we start to have progesterone produced after ovulation, and progesterone actually helps us metabolize fats a little bit better, and then it stimulates our thyroid. So our metabolic rate and actually internal heat is highest in that second half of the cycle, but we're not quite as sensitive to insulin anymore. Kaely: So we finda little bit less carbohydrate in that season, a little bit more fats for the satiety. And then we even find reducing the intensity and even volume of exercise in that second half being really important too, because our external energy output tends to be lower in the fall and coming into winter. Kaely: And[00:25:00]then during the actual period, we see this so often in our clients, and I definitely live this personally, if we don't allow for a true winter. Like a true couple days of actually just resting and not putting our foot on the gas pedal and not forcing workouts, even if we don't feel well. If we skip that wintering, we see that impact the energy and output of the next cycle. Kaely: So if we can really honor the winter, slow down, take care of ourselves,listen to ourselves, we feel so much better throughout the subsequent cycle. Michelle: I just love that you just said that. It's so true and I, when I finally got to the point in my life where I honored it. For myself because I was I would work out throughout my period and and now I get to this place where I actually honor it and I don't and I give myself a couple of days where I'm just like allowing myself to rest and once you accept it because it's always habit. Michelle: You know, you get[00:26:00]into habits and you almost have to change your your definition of what things are, because in your mind, it's like, I have to do things in order to be productive and that's my reality. And then when you start to realize, I can also listen to what that reality could be and listen to my body and what my body's telling me. Michelle: And when you start to really honor that, it's a game changer. I mean, I'll say that it's a game changer. Kaely: Yeah. Oh yeah, I totally agree, and when I finally started to honor thatmyself, it was like a huge lightbulb moment, and it just changed things for me, you know, personally and professionally, if I could actually fill my cup during thatwinter, things just played out so much better. Michelle: Yeah. And I see it also just with how we eat, you know, and just like eating past our feeling full or not eating enough and just kind of holding out because we want to be thin and, you know, we, you discussed that before, but[00:27:00]it's just not listening to our body. Our body is so intelligent. Also, the mindfulness of eating is a big one.  Michelle: It's just, if you chew your food more, just that alone can make such a difference on how you're able to process it and getting all those enzymes from your saliva. It's like the simple things. We have teeth. For a reason, Kaely: Hmm. Yeah. And like eating away from some kind of other distraction, like the TV screen or your computer for work or scrolling emails or social media on your phone, it is, it's always the simple stuff. And I think at the end of the day, if we really want to feel amazing as women and support fertility, it's just getting back in touch with the amazing innate wisdom that the body has. Kaely: And knowing that the entire, like, diet and like, body image culture isdesigned on you being disconnected from that. So, it's literally an act of rebellionto do it differently, and it's it's really how things will change[00:28:00]in the women's health space. Michelle: It's the best kind of rebellion you can get into. And Kaely: Yes. Michelle: I'll tell you this, like another thing that is that the spleen and stomachthey, they have a very important role. I mean, they, they are the role for our digestive system in our body from a TCM traditional Chinese medicine perspective. Michelle: And the spleen, one of the functions of it, or it's connected to a lot ofthinking. So when we think too much, and it's funny, cause when I was. studying this, the guy, our first teacher when we first started said, your spleen is going to get crazy, you know, and your digestive system is going to get impacted by all the memory and all of the studying that you have to do in this course. Michelle: So just keep that in mind. You might need to start like working on it,taking extra herbs tosupport that. And. What you said was so important because when you're eating and you're watching TV or your mind's going somewhere else, then you're taking that energy, that mental energy[00:29:00]that could go towards your digestion somewhere else. Michelle: So it's interesting that we say that, but it's even separate from traditional Chinese medicine. People say that or realize that, but this is a thing in Chinesemedicine. It really is like your mental energy gets taken away from your digestive system. And if your digestive systems off, it will impact your, your gut microbiome impacts. Michelle: We know this through science, your brain activity and how you canthink and function. So I find it fascinating when. Modern daytimes, like the thingsthat we discover really do correlate and have a connection with what traditional Chinese medicine has been talking about for so many years. And Ayurvedic medicine as well. Michelle: Pretty cool.Kaely:Yeah, that's really cool. Thank you for sharing that. I also, I'm just fascinated when you see the same themes in really different schools of thought. So that's really cool. Michelle: Yeah. But it comes down to really listening to our[00:30:00]body because our bodies are so intelligent. I mean, it's before we were able to rely on any other person to tell us. You know, animals don't have that. They don't go to doctors if they're out in the wild, you know, they have, they have their instinct because their bodies have to tell you, like, it's a survival thing. Michelle: Your body has to tell you, you have to have that communication. However, our minds can overpower a lot, like our thinking brain can overpower alot of that. So coming back to yourself and your senses and your connection with your intuition. And your own body awareness to let you know, I think even if you have that down, you can even figure out what you're sensitive to, like what kind of foods agree with you, don't and most people do, they don't just don't realize it or they don't listen. Kaely: Yeah, completely agree with that. And it's something that we often work on kind of right in the beginning of serving a client is trying to get more in touch withthat[00:31:00]intuition and build that autonomy muscle, because it really does take some practice and agood Question that we like to ask, and if you're listening and curious where you fall on this, it's taking inventory of the, like, health decisions you make, and asking yourself how many of those decisions are coming from someone else's recommendation, or a list, or an idea of what you should do. Kaely: And I know when I was kind of early on in my hormone health journey myself, I was thinking like, wow, I'm eating these foods that I actually don't feel great when I eat, but I'm eating them because someone else decided that they were healthy. Or I'm limiting my intake to X. Michelle:my God. Yes. Kaely: Yeah, you know, we're doing, we're outsourcing all of those decisions andignoring the fact that we actually don't feel well, or we actually aren't seeing theoutcomes that we want to see, but we're like, somebody else said this was healthyand what I should do, so I'm gonna do it. Kaely: So I would just spend some time evaluating that. How many of thosedecisions come from someone outside of you, and are they in complete opposition with[00:32:00]how you're feeling, and where can we start to honor that? Because Like you said, you know, your body knows. It's so smart. It's so wise. And it has really great ways of communicating its needs. Kaely: We've just got to get back into the practice of listening to that.Michelle:Yeah. No doubt. I mean, even spinach. I mean, there's certain things thatare great for some people, but for other people, they just don't do well with it. And they can, you know, totally ignore that cause they're like, no, but that's supposed to be really good for you. It's your vegetables. It really, it could be the best thing ever for person A and for person B it's like the worst thing ever. Michelle: So it really depends on your, how your body's responsive to that specific food. Even bone broth, which I love, there are certain people that tend to have higher histamines when they take it. So it impacts them in a really adverse way. So it, it truly, truly depends because for some people, for many people, it's like liquidgold. Michelle: I call it, it's really great for the[00:33:00]body. It has amino acids. It's really building and has good fats, healthy fats and great for your with collagen for your gut. But for some people, they just don't dowell with it. Kaely: Yeah, we are all very unique in that sense and that's where kind of blanketed one size fits all nutrition gets us in a bad way because it plays out so different from person to person. Michelle: Yeah, for sure. So well, this is great information. I really enjoy talking to you. I think nutrition is so key. It's really, really important for anybody who's trying to conceive. And for people who want to find you or would like to work with you, how can people find you? Kaely: Yeah, so you can find me. I mostly on Instagram. So my handle is Kaley RD, so K-A-E-L-Y-R-D, and my website is the same. So you'll find information on our general philosophy and ways to work with us there. And then I believe I sent you[00:34:00]guys a link if I didn't already I will right after this call Michelle, but We've got a free six part email series on Pregnancy prep process and it outlines kind of key nutrients to be thinking about in that season some good books the typeof testing that would be helpful to do in the 6 to 12 months before conception time frame and They're just things that we've gathered over the years that can really helpPrepare someone mind body spirit for the conception journey and just a real proactive approach to that. Kaely: That's totally free Michelle: Awesome. Well, I appreciate that. Thank you so much for bringing thatto our audience. And I loved having this conversation, Kaylee. It's definitely a passion of mine and really is just so important. So thank you so much for coming on today. Kaely: Thank you so much for having me. This was a blast.

Christian Hernandez tells Richard Delevan what it takes to be a successful climate tech founder and what's surprised him in climate tech investing since setting up 2150; why interest rates matter; where he sees opportunities going forward; and who from the “Facebook mafia” and old-skool VC he's seen make the pivot to climate tech.Christian's Catalysts: The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells - and do check out his NY Times guest hosting on Ezra Klein's show.How to Avoid a Climate Disaster; The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need, by Bill Gates - which gave Christian “techno-optimism” about solutions after having the “living daylights” scared out of him by Wallace-Wells.Speed and Scale; An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now, by John Doerr.Blue Frontier, a 2150 portco rethinking air conditioning, which recently was named one of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch by MIT Tech Review.Christian also gave shoutouts to people from his old tech days that have made the pivot to climate tech like Joshua March, co-founder of Sci-Fi Foods, and Michelle You, co-founder of Supercritical. And some VCs who also made the pivot: Daniel Waterhouse at Balderton; Albert Wenger at Union Square Ventures Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Michelle dials in from Adelaide and shares her Finn related memories and associations. Stemming from the performances we talk everything from The Beatles, Aussie TV, creativity, dream premonitions, to the merits of songs written by kids (there is one here written by young Liam, and Chris's 7 year old Indie also premieres her first original tune 'Poison Candy' in the episode).Performances include: I Got You (Split Enz  - Fridays, Los Angeles 1980), Carried Away (Split Enz - Auckland 2008), Burglar Song (Neil Finn - Holland, Lalalaalive 1998), Something (Neil & Elroy Finn - Fangradio 2020), Nowhereman (Neil Finn - Holland Lalalaalive 1998), Poor Boy (Split Enz - London 1980), Try Whisting This (Neil Finn - New York 1998).Episode cover: Anytime by Michelle You can significantly support the continuation of the 240 podcast for a donation of just a couple dollars per month. This goes directly towards covering the podcast hosting fees. Big thank yous if you are in a position to help. Head over here to: http://patreon.com/240neilfinn

It's been said that to be a leader, the first person you need to lead is yourself. And often there's a lot we need to work through before we can be that successful leader. Today's guest, Michelle L. Steffes, is a coach and trainer focusing on transforming performance through her company, IPV.On this episode of The Clarity Advisors Show, Michelle and host Ken Trupke talk about self-mastery, and how it helps leaders bring out the best in everyone on the team.Timestamps(00:53): What is IPV?(01:34): Defining self-mastery(02:54): Michelle's background(04:10): What's holding leaders back?(05:32): Overcoming fear(08:10): Rewiring your brain(10:12): A story of transformation(18:31): The power of second chances(20:21): The Barry-Wehmiller story(23:12): Leadership advice for the changing workplace(25:32): Importance of coaching(30:08): Recommended reading and listening(32:26): Michelle's leadership mastery courseEpisode Quotes“What I do is I help leaders become the best version of themselves, because we can't lead unless other people can trust us, and they won't trust us unless we know how to lead ourselves.” (Michelle)“You may have the head knowledge to do what's right as the leader, but in your heart you're constantly unsure of yourself. And that uncertainty then bleeds into your ability to lead and inspire your team.” (Michelle)“I really believe that as leaders, a privilege we all have is not just to lead an organization, but to lead a human being into a better life.” (Michelle)“The whole idea behind success has to do with not only how well you know your people, but how well you're willing to give them a chance to truly shine and be the best version of themselves.” (Michelle)“What the younger generation is looking for is an opportunity to be innovative. They're looking for opportunities to for someone to actually get behind them and believe in their talents and giftings.” (Michelle) Recommended ReadingReframe and Rewire: Greatness Through Daily Routine by Michelle L. SteffesThe Machine Inside Me: How to change your brain and discover the power within you! by Michelle L. SteffesYour Journey to Greatness Through Routine: A Guide to Creating a Success Routine by Michelle L. SteffesLeaders East Last by Simon SinekRecommended ListeningReframe and Rewire Podcast with Michelle L. SteffesCraig Rochelle Leadership PodcastMinute with MaxwellA Bit of Optimism with Simon SinekFollow/Connect with Michelle L. Steffesmichelle@ipvconsulting.comIPVconsulting.com Michelle L. Steffes on LinkedIn 

Michelle You is co-founder and CEO of Supercritical, one of the world's largest carbon removal marketplaces. But Supercritcal isn't the first startup Michelle has built and scaled. Before Supercritical, Michelle was co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Songkick, a company that helped fans discover concerts from their favorite artists. Songkick was backed by investors like YC, Index, Sequoia, Access and ultimately exited to Warner Music. Michelle shares how her experience at Songkick has influenced her approach to building Supercritical. We discuss the importance of user interviews, ascertaining key insights from customers, and how to structure an analytical decision making process. These are valuable, hard-earned lessons from a serial founder that you don't want to miss.Follow Michelle directly on LinkedIn and Twitter @wreckingball37.Curious how Supercritical helps businesses reach net zero through carbon removal? Learn more on Twitter - @gosupercritical - and Linkedin.Come build your next company in Antler's studios - more information at antler.co

As a leader, sometimes you're faced with building a team from scratch, while other times you inherit an existing team. Today's guest has experience with both. Michelle Voss has spent nearly three decades in the logistics industry and is currently the Director of Special Products for L&M Transportation Services in Jacksonville, Florida. In this episode of The Clarity Advisors Show, Michelle and host Ken Trupke discuss hiring and training practices, along with the importance of focusing on what you're good at while still knowing the basics of everyone's job. They also talk about bridging the gap in generational work attitudes and how you can't be a leader without being a servant.Timestamps(01:29): Overview of Michelle's career.(02:58): Making her first hire.(04:28): Training through shadowing.(06:54): Challenges with hiring.(12:51): Logistics and the nursery business. (16:22): Inheriting a team vs. building one.(17:56): Learning from mistakes.(21:28): Focusing on what you're good at.(23:39): The value of cross training.(24:46): Generational differences.(26:47): Advice for aspiring leaders. Episode Quotes“One of the challenges I've had over the years is trying to discern the difference between the person you interview and the person who shows up to work.” (Michelle)“There's such a difference between buy-in and being aligned.” (Michelle)“My end goal in building any team is if the phone rings in our office, anybody can pick it up. Anybody can help with that problem.” (Michelle)“I think the younger generations – the newer people in the workforce – are bringing some healthier boundaries and drawing into the light some things that didn't really work that well, but nobody was going to say it out loud.” (Ken)“I don't ask anybody who works for me to do something that I wouldn't be willing to do myself. And no job is too insignificant for a leader to do it.” (Michelle)“You can't be a leader and not be a servant.” (Ken) Michelle Voss' Recommended ReadingSwitch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, by Chip and Dan HeathBeyond Belief: Awaken Potential, Focus Leadership, by John Grinnell Follow/Connect with Michelle VossMichelle.Voss@LMTS.comMichelle Voss on LinkedIn

Michelle Boulden- Hammond A woman of faith, author, song-writer, professional doing mental health, and practitioner of holistic health. Michelle shared her self-love, healing, and career journey on this episode.   Key Points; Healing outside of church We have no fear of death because we have the power. Sound frequency Earth is the frequency itself. What does the search look like to Michelle You can't tell someone who is having mental issues to get over it. How did Michelle's faith evolve? Intention is to promote healing Being a medium Adopted in the family Release people Forgiveness  Biggest pieces of a healing journey. Meeting your biological parents helps understand who you are. Healing while building a business Remember what your FOCUS is. Re-evaluate. Biggest setback Michelle experienced in her business. Michelle's go-to person How Michelle keeps her focused. Losing people along the way. Jealousy Filter what we consume Resilience as for Michelle A little bit about Michelle's music Follow Michelle Boulden- Hammond, @upfrontmindbody to stay updated on her endeavors. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michelle.bouldenhammond?mibextid=ZbWKwL   Seize a Moment  https://youtu.be/I6pgGQ7V6ug   Glorified Season https://bit.ly/3B9CPf6

Tara Lipinski, internationally acclaimed figure skater was catapulted onto the world's stage when she won the gold medal at the 1998 Nagano Olympics – earning her the distinction as the youngest individual Gold Medalist in the history of the Winter Games. As the official correspondent and commentator for the Olympics, Tara was the primetime analyst for figure skating at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing and hosted NBC's coverage of the 2021 Summer Olympics closing ceremony in Tokyo. She has served as the host and commentator for many NBC events such as the Kentucky Derby, the Superbowl, and the National Dog Show, as well as hosted Food Network's Wedding Cake Championship. Released in January 2022, she produced a three-part docuseries for NBC's streamer Peacock, entitled “Meddling: The Olympic Skating Scandal that Shocked the World.” Most recently she started a production company called May Fifth Productions with her husband, Director/Producer Todd Kapostasy. Tara recently shared her own fertility journey struggles which you can hear about in her and her husband's podcast “Unexpecting”. When I began listening to their podcast, I couldn't stop! If you are on the fertility journey, you must give their podcast a listen! Tara's website: https://taralipinski.com https://www.instagram.com/taralipinski https://www.facebook.com/TaraLipinski Unexpecting podcast: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwii__PW_fuCAxVokoQIHTeEA14QFnoECBUQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fpodcasts.apple.com%2Fus%2Fpodcast%2Ftara-lipinski-unexpecting%2Fid1703350436&usg=AOvVaw0DrbzYpVRMqngykpkd_n85&opi=89978449 For more information about Michelle, visit www.michelleoravitz.com The Wholesome Fertility facebook group is where you can find free resources and support: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2149554308396504/ Instagram: @thewholesomelotusfertility Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thewholesomelotus/ Transcript: Michelle: [00:00:00] Welcome to the podcast, Tara. Tara: Hi, so excited to be here. Michelle: I'm so excited to have you here. First of all, I'm a little starstruck. I actually remember the time when you were against Michelle Kwan. And I was like, Oh my God, I remember that. It was incredible. So, and first of all ice skating is my favorite winter sport. So Tara: Good. That's a good thing. I love it. That's Michelle: sure. Michelle: And. So I know that your story has so many ups and downs and I've been listening to the podcast and I almost don't even want to get too into detail because I don't want to ruin it if people are going to listen to the podcast. Cause I literally was hanging on the edge to listen to the next one. Michelle: And the next one, it really was like cliffhangers. Tara: I know. Michelle: And at the same time It was it definitely captured the emotion. I remember specifically episode 10. I was like bawling listening to that it was really really emotional and touching and [00:01:00] knowing your background and That you're a figure skater and that you're an athlete and just really what goes into being an athlete In that kind of competition and like the personal development that you have to have and the strength and it seems like nothing prepares you for this. Tara: Nothing does and I think that Being an athlete and growing up as an athlete You just have this mentality that the harder you work the more effort you put in Then you'll achieve your dream. You will get results. And that's just not the case with a medical diagnosis or infertility. And that was a really hard lesson for me to learn and to accept, because I'm such a type A controlling person, if I'm being honest, where I want to have control over things in my life, that it was the first time where I realized, this is so out of my, hands, this is something that I can't control, and I had to really try to learn patience and acceptance and Realize that you can't just will yourself to [00:02:00] have a baby or, you know, to, to fight this awful path that sometimes people are put on when you get an unexplained infertility diagnosis or even any type of fertility diagnosis, it still can be a day to day struggle of trying to find out what's wrong and that's It's really hard to live in that anxiety inducing space. Tara: And that's, you mentioned it with the podcast of sort of these cliffhangers. Our journey in particular felt like I was solving a mystery every single cycle and it's, it's life altering when that becomes your world. Michelle: 100%. And I remember you mentioning also, even though you went to like the best RE and she was amazing. I mean, she really was like looking into everything. She's really honest with you. Even though you did that, it still wasn't like, you couldn't figure out that you actually needed to talk to an immunologist.[00:03:00] Tara: Right, and it's because, you know, I, I think what's interesting about infertility is there's a large community and you hear, there are so many people that are experiencing pregnancy loss or going through infertility, but in the grand scheme of things. There still is a population that just gets pregnant very easily and you can have multiple children very easily without problems or complications. Tara: And IVF isn't an exact science. So, as amazing as it is, and it's incredible that we ha I wouldn't have my daughter without IVF. So, it's incredible that we have this, but it also isn't a guaranteed. Result when you go into IVF, it's not like you are guaranteed a baby and I think doctors are just trying their best to Find the problem and I think when people go into IVF The great thing is is usually within two retrievals or two transfers You have positive results, [00:04:00] and that is great that those are the statistics, but there is a community out there where, where my husband and I fell into, where that's not the case. Tara: We went through six failed transfers, we had four miscarriages, we did eight retrievals. And there's a world where you can be the best doctor in, in the world and not know exactly why my body isn't keeping a pregnancy. And, you know, my doctor says it. She said, I have tested you more than any other of my patients. Tara: And we couldn't find an answer until the reproductive immunology result came about. And we finally got a little bit more information. Michelle: yeah, and I remember like listening to your stories I loved listening to you and your husband and I love the connection that you guys have together and how you can infuse humor and you know in a time that is so difficult and just listening to like the rawness and the realness of the whole situation and I can feel the frustration like I was like like what what is it, you [00:05:00] know, cuz I'm like Following as you're going, Tara: Right. And we just hit so many different obstacles, too, where then all of a sudden, you know, I had a septum that was a residual septum and you think, oh my goodness, we found the answer. And then you lose another embryo and, you know, it's just, it really is a rollercoaster ride when you're, you're part of this world. Tara: It's traumatizing. Michelle: sure. And also, I mean, you know, everybody wants that positive pregnancy, but then when you go through that positive pregnancy and every single time you're waiting for that heartbeat and you're going through the PTSD over and over and over again. It was just, it's traumatizing for sure. Tara: It really is traumatizing and I think especially, I mean, obviously any type of loss, any type of miscarriage, but when you start having repeat or recurrent miscarriage, it really is like reliving that first trauma over and over again and it feels like the worst, you know, nightmarish movie [00:06:00] of deja vu playing out in front of you and it's, it's really hard to know how to cope and I, you know, obviously I, I started therapy, but. Tara: You know, it's just dealing with grief and loss, and that's a lot to take on while also still pursuing and going down the road of trying to build a family through it all. So I think people that don't experience pregnancy loss or infertility or any of these types of journeys or IVF, that you don't really realize what this world entails and how there are no guarantees and how there are so many failures and there's so much. Tara: grief and loss associated with every kind of failure that people are really struggling in this world, you know, emotionally and mentally, let alone the physical feats they have to put their body through. Michelle: And also the fact that you are having to perform during this time and be out in the public. And I mean, yeah, it's like one thing to be a public figure, but then all of a sudden to actually [00:07:00] express your journey with the public is a whole different level of courage. Tara: Yeah, it's terrifying. I remember for the first time, I've always been so open, but the, the night before the podcast came out and we released that we, you know, We're going to talk about this journey. It was just, you know, I was so nervous. I was so anxious. I felt so unsettled to just be sharing this information. Tara: Just because also it's, it's a subject that's not talked about enough. It's a subject that's still, there's still shame and, silence that surrounds infertility and pregnancy loss and miscarriage. So it was really hard to just put it all out there. Michelle: And so what was the final reason? I mean, obviously you probably wanted to get the story out there because you knew it was going to help a lot of people. I know it was hard for you because you were talking about how when you were speaking about it, one of the days you came home and you cried, you really felt it. Michelle: And you're like, that's weird. I thought I was like, I dealt with this. And all of a sudden all these emotions are coming up. And then also [00:08:00] did you feel on some level, it was also healing to, to speak about it? Yeah. Tara: I mean, of course, I want to help people and connect people. But I think it was something that Todd and I went through together that was, you know, very traumatic. And of course, we had tried to process all the feelings as they were happening, but that's hard to do. And I think for us, it was really nice to sit down and do this together alone. Tara: You know, there was no one else. You know part of this podcast but the two of us and to reflect back and to Really see it all laid out. And I think Todd said it in one episode where he just said, you know, you go through it and you're always getting to that next step. But when we started to plan out this podcast and write it down on cards, we really realized all that we had been through and it was healing for us to talk about it and I guess sort of even just honor our own journey and all the embryos we lost and, kind of come to terms with this was five years of our life. And at a certain point, another reason I wanted to do it was it just. It's [00:09:00] one thing to be like, oh, I went through IVF and had a loss and then had a baby and I don't really need to go into detail with the world about it, but this was such a huge, life changing, life altering thing that happened to us that I think it would have always felt very strange to just not share that part of my life and let people in on exactly what was happening. Michelle: Yeah. And I'll be honest. I mean, it's, it's a big thing. It's not easy to do that at all. Like even, if it's just sharing, a lot of people don't even share it to their families Tara: And that's fine. And I think that's another thing that I continue to say is like, protect your heart. And if you don't want to talk about it, you don't want to share, you don't have to. And there was a reason I didn't for five years because I really was not able to cope with sharing and continuing. Tara: Treatment and trying to figure out my own emotions. It was way too overwhelming to share with people and I think that's okay as well Michelle: 100%. And I think that you [00:10:00] really do have to be ready for anything. And I like that you mentioned that a lot in the podcast, you talked about if people don't feel comfortable with this, that is their journey and it has to be a personal thing. So I thought it was really important to mention. Michelle: And one thing that actually struck me is the fact that you didn't get your period until 25, that was like, wow, like nobody said anything to you at that point. Tara: no I brought that up because I just think it's it's it's an important topic of just women's reproductive health in general how So little we actually know and so little is being tested for us throughout our twenties or thirties when it comes to fertility or really the education there for us about fertility and, you know, making informed decisions about, you know, family building for me, getting my period so late, didn't have an impact on my journey and, and wasn't any part of the reason for IVF I didn't go into it because it was [00:11:00] just very long winded in the podcast, but I simultaneously were, I was having a ton of other symptoms and we found out that I had a pituitary disorder. Tara: So we had to, I went on medication, thyroid medication and we sort of addressed that with other medications as well and it immediately brought on my cycle. But it goes to show that. You know, when it comes to women's health, something like that probably would have been found way sooner if people were actually concerned about why, you know, that wasn't happening for me. Tara: And I think sometimes it's like, Oh, it's, it's okay. Or it could be because she's an athlete or Oh, it's, you know, periods are, cycles are, sort of, you know, they can be mysterious, but clearly there was a, an underlying problem and thank goodness we found that, because that could have affected my health in other ways, too. Tara: You know, but I was diagnosed with secondary pituitary thyroid disease as well when we found this, which was obviously, [00:12:00] affecting my, hormones. Michelle: One of the things too you mentioned is is going to the OB at first and then the OB is not having like the same information as the REs. Michelle: That's a big thing because a lot of times people won't know. that there's a reproductive endocrinologist and sometimes they'll think, okay, I'm not, I don't need IVF, so I shouldn't go. But it's something I mentioned a lot is just really uncovering. They understand fertility it's a little more specialized. Tara: Yes, I think to just in general, like I'm saying, whether it's women's reproductive health or fertility, it's so crazy that in 2023, we don't know so many things that would help us make, different informed decisions about our life. And I just think for, me, even just waiting until my late thirties to begin the process of family building is interesting for me to think about just because. I, I never even thought to do it sooner. Michelle: And also, when you were taking us through your journey, it's interesting to kind of note that like, initially , you were, [00:13:00] looking into the surgery for the endometriosis, but then you're like, no, and you were reading about it. And. And you were like, definitely no, like a no on that. Michelle: And then you eventually changed your mind and then you were like, thank God I did it. But what I, what was interesting about it is that that's kind of how life is. you change your mind, you look more into things. You realize that even though you make decision, it can change and that's okay. Michelle: And so that was interesting. And then similar with having a surrogate. Tara: Yes. I think for us at that point you know, that wasn't the first, journey that I ever expected that we'd be on towards, our daughter. But when you go through so much for five years, you get to a point where you stop worrying about the experience of, for me, at least I stopped worrying about the experience of pregnancy that I wanted so badly. Tara: And I had already experience for pregnancies and sort of the charm of it all was taken away from me. And it would've been lovely if I could innocently go through a pregnancy [00:14:00] and, birth a child, but that just isn't my story and it finally got to the point where I realized I wanted to get to the next step of actually having a family instead of focusing on this nine month experience. Michelle: Yeah, it's interesting how things play out but you did mention when you were going into the surrogate process That's like a whole other animal and you were also saying which is something that really struck me is you vibed with The surrogate. Michelle: You just knew it was like an intuitive knowing or feeling like, Oh my God, this, this is it. You found alignment. Tara: Yes, and I think for me, it was one of the best blessings that has come along in our journey. Not only just, you know, a surrogate in general, that we're so lucky to have surrogates who can, help families or people or women going through infertility or pregnancy loss, but to find someone who I really connected with. Tara: And to find someone that we had [00:15:00] this communication, daily communication, and we had this, this feeling of being teammates was just super special. You Michelle: Even though you had a surrogate, you still went through that initial fear. That was like the one feeling that you had and then eventually tapered down, like, once the tests came and everything was like looking Tara: It really was in the beginning so hard because it was the ultimate test, right? We had these, these genetically normal embryos that weren't working in me and now we take that variable out of the mix and we have a surrogate and we kind of felt this pressure of if it doesn't work, which of course there's a chance it wouldn't, but it really felt like there was so much hanging on this actually working to prove that, you know, our embryos were able. Tara: To produce a baby, finally, we kind of knew that it was probably the immunology [00:16:00] in my body, but now is the ultimate test and the anxiety just leading up to that was, was so overwhelming. Michelle: I mean, I felt it, I felt it listening to you guys and I felt it following your story. You could, you could really feel it, but of course you can't feel it like you guys felt it. But I felt what it must've been like to go through that because that's all you've known in the past. So it's hard to see a different future when something like. Michelle: Has repeatedly happened over and over and over again, so I can completely see how petrifying it could be. Tara: Right. And it's just, you know, what do you do then? You know, we have tried and exhausted so many options. We were just getting to the point of,, I think it was just the sitting with the fear of like, Can this be a possibility for us? Because if this doesn't work, where do we go next? Michelle: And then you were also simultaneously performing around that same time, which is the most like Tara: Right. And, Michelle: that you felt Tara: right. And to be keeping that [00:17:00] a secret as well just felt and I think that's why we did the podcast because at a certain point it just felt like, all right, Tara, just, just share because it's so hard to keep the sadness and pain and put on a smile and pretend like life is okay. When it's really not. Michelle: and you've had people approach you guys and mention or say certain comments during this journey. That you guys were having to deal with while you were going through this simultaneously. Tara: Right, and you, you, I think anyone in the infertility world experiences these feelings or during pregnancy loss or again, just an IVF journey, whatever it may be, unless you really walk in those shoes, it's hard to explain the feelings that you have and then to know that. You know, your family or your friends may not truly understand the pain you're in can make it even more isolating or make you feel even more alone.[00:18:00] Michelle: That's one of the reasons why I find like communities or people that really understand where you're coming from or going through it as well can be so healing and I noticed also you were mentioning that it brought you and your husband so close on a different type of bond Tara: we did, and we went through, you know, hard times through infertility trying to understand where he was at, where I was at, you know, at one point, I think he was really rethinking how much he, he wanted to continue, whereas I was, you know, desperate to continue, and we had to figure out how to get on the same page a lot of times. Tara: And I think infertility has helped us now, even as we move forward in life and marriage find ways to understand each other and know what each other really needs in that moment and to be able to support them because it's hard when you're going through loss or infertility to always be on the same page. Tara: But I also think the podcast has helped us too, as we had to relive all of these moments in detail and [00:19:00] not skim over them kind of like we were doing in real life. To kind of go back in and even re examine them even more and I think that's brought us closer You know, we'd finish these episodes and feel Very close and bonded obviously through what we just talked about or what we went through Michelle: I think that was just one of the amazing things about it because you don't often hear the couple, both. Talking about their different perspectives and really hearing what they went through throughout the process. Michelle: And then you do feel at times where you guys have different emotions or dealing with it in different ways. So I thought that brought more realness to the whole. Tara: Right. I'm so glad ty was able to be part of this and add his perspective because I think any partner in this situation has a lot of feelings if they're the one not going through the treatment and You know, they probably feel that they have to support their partner, but they're also feeling so many emotions and [00:20:00] they probably don't understand exactly what their partner is going through. Tara: So I hope that the podcast was able to open up those conversations or if partners listen together to, to really relate or. To re examine or think about what that other person is going through to see how they can support them even more. Michelle: No doubt. And for people listening that are still on the journey and they're still in the unknown what words would you like to share with them? Tara: You know, I never really have an advice because I don't know if I have any perfect answers and I, every time I went through it I just tried to do the best I could. And my advice would be to feel all the feelings and none of your feelings that you're feeling are abnormal. And the thing I would like to say is. Tara: More than anything, I, I see you, I hear you, I understand you. I may not know you, you may be a stranger, but we probably have a [00:21:00] shared experience that creates a bond more than, you know, many people I know in my life because we've gone and walked down this road, and I know what you're going through, and I know that type of pain, and you know, looking back at my career, the Olympics, of course, I'm proud of the things I have done, but I'm very proud of being able to get through pregnancy loss or IVF Or infertility. Tara: And those are maybe my proudest moments. So I just hope that everyone listening knows how strong they are and how proud they should be because success of a live birth is you know, one dream that people have. But you are accomplishing so many little things, even through all of those failures and losses by just being able Yeah. Tara: To get up the next day and start again, or maybe making the decision of, no, this is no longer for us. I've learned so much through this process, but I need to take care of myself in a different way. Michelle: Yeah, that's beautiful. [00:22:00] And for people who want to find you, and of course, I'm sure a lot of people are already following you, but what is your, the best way for people to reach out to you? Cause you had mentioned DMs, right? Sometimes Tara: Yes. Michelle: going through, Tara: Through the podcast, I've Michelle: I know that must be overwhelming DMs, but Tara: little overwhelming, but responding to so many DMs and connecting with all of these beautiful people, which has been so meaningful, but you can find us on Unexpecting Pod on Instagram or Tara Lipinski at Instagram, and then of course Unexpecting is on Apple, Spotify, anywhere you find your podcast, iHeart, as well as my YouTube, which is Tara Lipinski. Michelle: awesome. Tara, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story. And of course I. Suggest for everybody to listen to unexpecting. It is incredible. It's amazing. It's all the details. It's everything. It really is everything So I highly recommend. Oh, I loved I really enjoy it. I really did I really enjoy it and I couldn't stop listening to Tara: Yeah, I love it. Michelle: I want [00:23:00] to hear it happens. And I felt like, I really got to know you and your husband and the connection that you guys had together and it was just really special. So thank you so much for coming on the podcast and it was such a pleasure talking to you today. Tara: Thank you so much.  

It is hard to know what areas to focus on when building your brand. One thing is clear, you can not do everything! Felicia Gopaul shares with Michelle Jackson how trying to do everything hurt her brand and what focuses allowed her business began to thrive. https://plutusfoundation.org/2022/felicia-gopaul-misalignment/ Felicia-It's funny, we talked about how we make mistakes when building out our online brand. In the beginning I was everything. That was the biggest mistake I made and not taking the time to understand who I was online.    Michelle-If someone was to ask you what your online brand is could you share how you began positioning yourself online?   Felicia-I like to talk and to educate. I'm not ok with clients just taking what I say, I want to understand why we're doing what we're doing. I've always spoken, done workshops, etc. When I say I'm an economic catalyst because I'll educate you so you understand exactly why you should do what you're being educated to do.    Michelle-We're talking about the sins that content creators can make as they're building out their brands. One of the things that I realized was that these sins don't exist separate from each other. Could you share how inconsistency showed up in your brand and what you did to change that?   Felicia-When I first got online I had a hard time articulating who I was. I would invest with various different mentors. I would invest with Facebook, etc. and was an early adopter and can't articulate who you were and what you do so I wasn't able to get the traction that I was hoping for with those investments.    Michelle-The journey of trying different things isn't that you're inconsistent, you were testing things out. How did you recognize what worked for your audience?    Felicia-I took time off to take care of my father for 7 years and when I returned I realized that what I was doing before wasn't working. What I would say to other entrepreneurs is there is a common theme or thread throughout your business that you're comfortable doing within your business.   Michelle-Once you figured out that speaking was in alignment with your business how did you create products how did you build in consistency?     Felicia-I had to find a company that was in alignment with what I was trying to do. Recently, though, I found a company to work with that is consistent with the type of education/resources that create a synergy with my customers as well. I had a focus on creative affective content   Michelle-I want to know more. What's a day in your life look like for you? How are you getting enough people to connect with who you are and your message?   Felicia-I have a team. When I'm doing quarterly events with the company I'm partnered with I direct them to their events. I'm constantly talking to people about what I'm working on.    Michelle-You're doing ongoing messaging?   Felicia-Not an affiliate though. It's an ongoing education company. I look at what's coming up and then invite folks to those upcoming events. I know in general up to a year in advance the different events that are coming up on an annual basis. I also take the months of July and December off. I build into my schedule these breaks.    Michelle-What has the impact been scheduling those breaks? Sean DeSouza “The three month vacation” Podcast    Felicia-I started with working 4 days a week. But, that's not enough of a break. I realized that I needed a longer break and I'm married to a gentleman who gets 6 weeks off a year. If he gets six weeks off I need to take 6 weeks off too.  I also didn't want to work too much in December and want to play and relax at the end of the year.    Michelle-What was the impact for your business (taking those breaks)    Felicia-I was very worried when I first did it and I didn't announce it-I just did it. I wasn't going to ask permission to do this. I was unwilling to do that. In terms of the revenue it means that I have to get the revenue within 10 months versus 12 months. I'm willing to do that because I get 8 weeks off during there.   Michelle-What's your number one piece of advice for a content creator in this space?    Felicia-I admire that the younger entrepreneurs are open to trying stuff vs. worrying about reputation. They'll just strike out and try stuff and it may not work but there's a learning that comes from that. Know who you are and move forward.  Follow Felicia   Felicia Gopaul (everywhere)

“There is nothing wrong with doubting yourself. Having a bit of self doubt is good, because it means you're constantly trying to improve, grow and evolve.” In this week's bite-sized 40 Minute Mentor episode, we tackle a topic that is often discussed amongst Founders and leaders - imposter syndrome. Having experienced imposter syndrome on many occasions over the last 10 years of leading JBM, our host James Mitra shares some of the advice that has helped him to push through self doubt. Plus, we hear again from two previous 40 Minute Mentors - Michelle You of Supercritical and Amelia Sordell of Klowt, and their own experience with imposter syndrome. ⭐Enjoyed this episode?⭐️Keep up to date with all our latest episodes, by hitting the subscribe button on your favourite podcast platform. And for any feedback on what you enjoy the most and ideas on what we can do to make 40 Minute Mentor even better, please leave us a review on https://ratethispodcast.com/40mmPlus, if you have any questions you'd like us to answer in our bite-sized Monday episodes, please get in touch with Hannah at hannah@jbmc.co.uk 

“There's a very long list of these iconic companies that actually weren't started by first time Founders.”In this week's 40 Minute Mentor episode, we're joined by the brilliant Ian Hogarth, a hugely accomplished Entrepreneur, Angel Investor and Co-Founder of Plural Platform, an exciting new early-stage platform dedicated to investing in Europe's next generation of tech companies with global ambitions. If you've been listening to 40 Minute Mentor for a while, you may recognise Ian's name from a previous episode, in which we were joined by one of his former Songkick Co-Founders, Michelle You. Ian served as Songkick's CEO for 8 years, scaling the business to $100m in sales and 120 employees, before eventually exiting to Warner Music Group. It was such a privilege to have Ian join us on the podcast and share so much great mentorship, including: ➡️ How he found his passion for creating something new [05:09] ➡️ How this passion led him to create Songkick [08:16]➡️ The many lessons he learned as a first time CEO and why external mentorship was such a crucial part of his journey [11:09] ➡️ Why you shouldn't hire people who can't be replaced and why some hires can completely change your business [14:29] ➡️ How his experience with loss influenced his decision to step away from Songkick and the important lessons this has taught him [19:13] ➡️ Why he jumped back in the Founder seat and the mission behind Plural [24:42]➡️ Why Plural isn't following a VC model and what changes it'll drive in Europe [28:16] ➡️ What it really takes to be an incredible Founder [32:52]➡️ The types of businesses he's personally looking to invest in [36:44] ➡️ His advice for any diverse Founders looking for investment and the importance of mapping out the investors you're going to approach [38:48] ➡️ Plural's north star and the plan to get there [40:58]  ⛳ Helpful links:➡️ More about Ian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianhogarth/➡️ More about Plural Platform: https://pluralplatform.com/ ➡️ Songkick Co-Founder, Michelle You's episode: https://jbmc.co.uk/insights/40-minute-mentor/from-exiting-songkick-to-tackling-the-climate-crisis-with-supercriticals-michelle-you/ 

For more information, visit the show notes at https://plutusfoundation.org/2022/rahkim-sabree-hubris   Welcome to Series 6 of the Plutus Awards Podcast hosted by Michelle Jackson. Our community is filled with hundreds of stories from creators and entrepreneurs just like you. And through this show we share these stories of challenges and successes from bloggers to podcasters, from writers, speakers, and more. In this season we talk about a somewhat taboo topic — the deadly sins that personal finance (and other content creators) can make. We share lessons learned, how to avoid these mistakes, and the fact that we're all human, putting our creative work out there into the world. This season's conversation is about the inherent risks we're taking in developing online brands, our own hubris, and the impact that how other people perceive us can make us or break our online brand. Today's guest is Rahkim Sabree and in this episode we talk about hubris. Just because we built something doesn't mean that our audience wants it. Learn the lessons learned from the mistake of building out a product without talking to your audience. We've all done it before and how Rahkim is avoiding making that mistake in the future. Rahkim Sabree – The Sin of Hubris: How to Use Insight From Your Audience Notes and summary from this episode Rahkim-I'm Rahkim Sabree, I'm an author, columnist, speaker and financial coach. Got into financial education about 10 years ago. I talk about financial empowerment, financial trauma and financial mindset. Michelle-How would you describe what your business is to other online entrepreneurs? Rahkim-It evolves part of me feels like I act like a consultant and stepping into an influencer role. My business model is definitely digital media. Michelle-This season of the Plutus Awards Podcast we're talking about the 7 deadly sins that creators need to be aware of making in their businesses. We're definitely talking about this with a lot of empathy. How did you even get into this space? Rahkim-I fell in by accident. A happy accident. I spent 10 years in the banking industry. And one of the things I realized was that there was a lot that I didn't know about money. In my banking career I had to learn about the products in order to sell them. I realized what I wasn't exposed to growing up. For example-the idea of homeownership. It didn't occur to me that homeownership was available to me. I shared my knowledge with my friends and family because they also didn't know. Michelle-What's interesting around your brand and mission is that it's positioned around firing your boss. Rahkim-The best decision I've ever made and the hardest decision I've ever made. I had to figure out how I was going to move forward and figuring out how I was going to survive. It's been a liberating experience, but the biggest takeaway for me is that my mental health has improved significantly. The idea of “I fired my boss” is to take back your power. Michelle-What are some of the ways your building out your brand and components of your business? Rahkim-I like this question. When I first started I didn't know what to do. A lot of the growth I've experienced is based on a combination of things. Being active on Twitter, reels, etc. But, what solidified my credibility was contributing to publications and being featured. People look at you as a thought leader. Michelle-You're talking about building up your authority. What about building out how you're making money? Let's deep dive into the product's conversation and the deadly sin related to product. Rahkim-Most of my money comes from solidifying that credibility. I do a lot of writing and the writing brings in income. I wouldn't have gotten paid for my writing if I was writing for free first. I also do some social media management, get paid to speak and one-on-one financial coaching. Going into products I was approached by a coach to build out a course. I was like “oh, ok.” I'd never thought about creating a course and this should be easy. I was convinced to do it and paid the coach to help me with it. I drank the kool aid. I thought I was going to pay a high ticket price, etc. Then, I would invest in Facebook ads. I spent 4 figures in Facebook advertising no sales, 4 figures in retaining the ad agency, 4 figures for the coach. And the thing that I learned in hindsight I didn't ask my audience is this what they actually wanted (from me). The difference between my content and the course is that it's not sexy. It's not “I'm going to bring your credit score to 850 in 30 days” I was advised to market it differently and I knew that I couldn't because the content was about abstract topics and the psychology of money. Not sexy. I really didn't test the market and I assumed that I knew best and that they would buy. Michelle-That's a hard lesson especially because you developed a course and you have to factor in the time that you took to do that. I think a lot of content creators make this mistake. It's hard to hear from people to pre-sell a product. It feels weird to make sales on a product that doesn't feel real. Rahkim-The coach did give me the advice to run a pre-sell and it didn't really work. The coach and I even worked out what the revenue would like for pre-sells vs. post sales. The coach and I were friends prior to this and I trusted that their expertise was aligned with what they were articulating based on our friendship. This did have a negative impact on our friendship. There was very minimal involvement with the coach; they were theoretical versus on-hand. In hindsight I should have asked for a case study showing their results with other clients. Michelle-You're in the process of developing new products and how does this experience influence that process? Rahkim-There's definitely trauma associated with it. I haven't abandoned the course and it lives in two places and rebranded the content and repriced it. As far as moving forward, I have a better pulse on what my audience resonates with. My favorite platform to test content on is Twitter and then Instagram is a close second. And then launching a pre-sell around these products to see the pace of buy in versus engagement. Because someone likes an idea on a post doesn't mean that they're going to buy something. There's so much momentum with the Great Resignation and Work From Home because of the Pandemic. It doesn't just mean quit your job. Michelle-What types of products are you looking at and why? Rahkim-I am working on a book. That's the biggest product that has gained a lot of momentum. I've started some pre-sells around that. The process of emptying my mind of all of those experiences and the real, raw things about being in corporate America (has been hard) Michelle-I know that a lot of people in the PF space write books as a way to get in front of other people and launch your brand. Are you prepared for some of the energy around the book and the reception of the book? What are you doing to get the book out there?Are you worried about missing out on this wave of interest? Rahkim-That's a good question. But, I got burnt out. I got to a point where I felt like I was done and then I looked at the word count and it wasn't enough. I took a pause and in taking a pause to take the time to decompress and heal. I've been able to reflect and let those experiences marinate. I've asked my audience for some grace. I just continue telling my story. My audience has grown during this time due to viral posts and national television coverage. Michelle-It's an evergreen topic. I think that you've tapped into a feeling and sentiment that had really good timing with millions of people (in the U.S.) quitting. Rahkim-When I hit a one year mark having made that decision and people congratulated me. Michelle-What's your goal for next year? Rahkim-To continue to be free. Continue the momentum, continue to find ways to make income as an entrepreneur. It's a little scary. Making smart choices financially to allow me to sustain this lifestyle.

Mastering your destiny sounds intimidating, but in reality, it's actually just being able to follow your heart and allow yourself to really feel what your soul is saying to you through energy. When you complicate what your soul offers and how it is offered to you, you become overwhelmed with feeling disconnected from your soul. When in reality, it is your soul that has chosen this life for you. And it's your soul that has ensured you receive every single experience you need in order to fulfill your soul destiny in this life. But what is that destiny? It starts with you being able to fully connect with and communicate with your soul in each and every moment, so that you are able to completely express the fullness of who you are as a soul and what it is as that you, as a soul have to offer the entire universal experience. You and your life ARE that important. Much love, Michelle You can find me at: www.michellevickers.com https://www.facebook.com/restoringhumanpotential https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAtf257bM7aPqJhA2n5UShw https://www.instagram.com/consciousness.explorer/ https://twitter.com/Michell75401001 https://www.pinterest.ca/RestoringHumanPotential

“Even if we electrify everything and switch to renewables and decarbonise - we still need to remove billions of tonnes of carbon from the sky because we have polluted so much.” Ahead of World Earth Day this week, we're really excited to welcome Michelle You, Co-Founder of Songkick and Co-Founder and CEO of Supercritical, to 40 Minute Mentor. You might have heard of the popular concert ticket app Songkick before, which Michelle and her Co-Founders built to one of the most popular apps on the market. After a turbulent time navigating a lawsuit including winning an antitrust settlement from Ticketmaster, Michelle exited to Warner Music and reassessed her purpose and identity outside of Songkick. This journey led her to starting Supercritical - a software enabling businesses to measure, reduce and offset their climate impact in weeks, without the need for a sustainability team. We absolutely loved having Michelle on the podcast and can't wait for you to listen to the incredible mentorship she shares in today's episode, including: How she transitioned from studying Humanities to working in Tech [05:40]Why she started Songkick and how working in the industry has affected her relationship with music [07:56]The key lessons she learned from growing Songkick and the challenges she faced throughout [12:17]How she dealt with the grief and emotional exit from Songkick and how she found her passion to go again with Supercritical [15:17]The mission behind Supercritical and how Michelle and her team work with businesses to tackle the climate crisis [20:06]Michelle's advice on what we can all do to offset our climate impact [31:28]What Supercritical are looking for when hiring talent [33:42]How Michelle managed to build a 50/50 cap table and her advice for anyone looking for more diverse investors [35:07] 

Michelle You, co-founder and CEO of Supercritical, is on a mission to help companies get to net-zero but she refuses to sacrifice her personal life for the startup. Michelle talks with Darrell and Jordan about how motherhood has eased her imposter syndrome, the “scar tissue” she had from a tough exit of her first startup, why the planet needs more effective carbon removal methods now, and how she's using those learnings as a second-time founder.Don't miss Found Live with Toyin Ajayi from CityBlock this Thursday (3/3) at 12pm PT/ 3pm ET. RSVP: https://hopin.com/events/found-live-mar3Take our listener survey and let us know a bit about yourself and what you think of FOUND.Connect with us:On TwitterOn InstagramVia email: found@techcrunch.comCall us and leave a voicemail at (510) 936-1618

Companies of all sizes and sectors have committed to net-zero emissions targets, but getting there is not straightforward. Measuring carbon dioxide output is tricky, carbon markets are fragmented, and the quality of offsets varies hugely. Michelle You, co-founder and CEO of Supercritical, is on a mission to help companies better measure, reduce, and remove carbon emissions – and her first target is the tech sector.

Michelle You is co-founder and CEO of Supercritical, a startup that helps companies achieve Net Zero through carbon removal. Michelle is a serial entrepreneur (she was previously one of the founders of Songkick) and in this conversation, we dive into why she decided to focus on carbon removal for her next company. We also explore why the label Net Zero can be misleading, the challenges of creating new markets in carbon, and which carbon removal technologies she's most excited about.-----------------Thanks to Cofruition for consulting on and producing the show. You can learn more about Entrepreneur First at www.joinef.com and subscribe to my weekly newsletter at tib.matthewclifford.com

In this week's show, Phil talks to Michelle Barker, a Lead Front End Developer for Atomic Smash and the author of front-end blog CSS In Real Life. She likes to build fun, creative websites and side projects that are also performant and accessible. She has written articles and regularly speaks about front end development at web conferences and meetups, covering topics such as CSS Grid Layout and CSS Custom Properties. Michelle talks about the value of community and how it can energise your career development. She also discusses why learning should always be fun, and the value of taking time out to realign with what lights you up.   KEY TAKEAWAYS:   TOP CAREER TIP Find a community – online or offline – and allow the people there to help and guide you. This can greatly accelerate your personal development and growth.   WORST CAREER MOMENT When returning from maternity leave, Michelle an extra sense of pressure in terms of proving herself, along with being exhausted and overwhelmed by new parenthood. Since then, she has recognized the value of not adding pressure to oneself unnecessarily.   CAREER HIGHLIGHT Working on a project for The Grand Appeal, a Bristol children's charity, a cause close to Michelle's heart due to her own experiences with her son.   THE FUTURE OF CAREERS IN I.T The IT community itself and the many ways in which people are innovating and pushing the sector forward. Community is everything in IT, and finding the right one is a constant source of inspiration.   THE REVEAL What first attracted you to a career in I.T.? – The intersection between creativity and technical knowhow. What's the best career advice you received? – Write down your accomplishments. What's the worst career advice you received? – That we must always be coding, even in our spare time, and make work our life. What would you do if you started your career now? –Michelle would put less pressure upon herself. Your career is not a race. What are your current career objectives? – Michelle is spending far more time on writing, particularly on her blog, and now in partnership with other publications. What's your number one non-technical skill? – Working in customer services and in the events industry so as to get a better understanding of how to interact with others. How do you keep your own career energized? – Michelle enjoys creative coding as an outlet. What do you do away from technology? – Netflix and playing the drums. FINAL CAREER TIP Learning should always be fun. If you're struggling to get motivated, put down the tutorials and try to build something for fun!   BEST MOMENTS (4:00) – Michelle - “A good way to learn is to pick things up and just keep building little side projects. Follow the paths that interest you” (5:52) – Michelle - “I made so many connections just through taking the time to learn from others” (13:24) – Michelle – “You need to push past things, keep going, keep learning, and know that there aren't any shortcuts. It's not a race” (20:41) – Michelle – “Every time I make something come to life on the screen I feel that sense of accomplishment”   ABOUT THE HOST – PHIL BURGESS Phil Burgess is an independent IT consultant who has spent the last 20 years helping organizations to design, develop, and implement software solutions.  Phil has always had an interest in helping others to develop and advance their careers.  And in 2017 Phil started the I.T. Career Energizer podcast to try to help as many people as possible to learn from the career advice and experiences of those that have been, and still are, on that same career journey.   CONTACT THE HOST – PHIL BURGESS Phil can be contacted through the following Social Media platforms: Twitter: https://twitter.com/_PhilBurgess LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/philburgess Instagram: https://instagram.com/_philburgess Website: https://itcareerenergizer.com/contact Phil is also reachable by email at phil@itcareerenergizer.com and via the podcast's website, https://itcareerenergizer.com Join the I.T. Career Energizer Community on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/ITCareerEnergizer   ABOUT THE GUEST – MICHELLE BARKER Michelle Barker is a Lead Front End Developer for Atomic Smash and the author of front-end blog CSS In Real Life. She likes to build fun, creative websites and side projects that are also performant and accessible. She has written articles and regularly speaks about front end development at web conferences and meetups, covering topics such as CSS Grid Layout and CSS Custom Properties.   CONTACT THE GUEST – MICHELLE BARKER Michelle Barker can be contacted through the following Social Media platforms: Twitter: https://twitter.com/MicheBarks LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelle-barker-02819230/ Website: https://michellebarker.co.uk/ Website: https://css-irl.info/

After exiting Songkick, Michelle You was burnt out. It felt like failure and grief (her words). She spent a year backpacking around the world, living on $2 per day, trying to figure out what it took to make her happy, to figure out what mattered to her and what her next business move was. “I went camping and hiking and surfing and climbing for the first time. And it was that that made me fall in love with nature. And that was my gateway drug into the climate change crisis.” Michelle is determined not to repeat the same mistakes she made at Songkick at Supercritical, the climate tech startup helping businesses actually achieve net zero. “It took me personally lots of coaching and conversations to feel like okay, I really feel ready now to dive in again, because I was scared, you know, I was really scared of failing, I was scared of having a bad idea, scared of replicating terrible decisions, terrible experiences.” Find out how Michelle found herself again after feeling like a massive failure from her first startup, and why she's built a climate tech software platform that isn't all just planting trees.  “We measure the carbon footprint end to end. This typically takes somebody six months of working with a consultant charging five figures. And that's what I learned [during] my time at LocalGlobe. This can be done with software.” We chat about: Why the end of Songkick felt like grief The importance of a good product discovery process  Why climate is the next diversity and inclusion Sponsor links: smithandwilliamson.com/secretleaders netsuite.com/secretleaders linkedin.com/secretleaders vanta.com/secretleaders

In today's episode, listen to an interview with Michelle You, co-founder and CEO of Supercritical. We dove into the crazy world of carbon removal, different offsets you can by on the market, greenwashing, and the rocky road towards net zero.Here are some things we've discussed: The story of Supercritical £2 million is a big pre-seed round The conventional offsetting world is infuriating The tech industry generates more emissions than aviation A tour of the carbon offsetting industry We hope you enjoy(ed) the podcast! Please feel free to email us with any questions, suggestions, and opinions  to podcast@tech.eu or tweet at us @tech_eu.

Beauty and cosmetics is a multi-billion dollar industry, but how truthful and authentic is their marketing? Is it really about helping you feel like the best version of yourself? Or has the focus become more money driven? Rachel and Erin dive into the concept of women's beauty and wellness with Michelle Emmick, Amazon best-selling author of Blue-Collar Beauty. After 20 years of working in the aesthetics field, Michelle is now Editor-in-Chief of Ask Us Beauty Magazine. A place where medical professionals and coaches are educating, connecting, and sharing about beauty and wellness to help empower the real, everyday woman. The girls talk more about: Closing the comparison gap that many women find themselves in The importance of doing your research and educating yourself before going through with a life-changing decision The power of understanding people and their stories What's different about Ask Us Beauty Magazine How the magazine is content heavy with actual stories, making it a perfect weekend or travel read. (Without having to flip through endless amounts of ads) The importance of authenticity when it comes to the content that's being published How the magazine is all encompassing, from beauty products to mental health and wellness Standing by your standards and being strong in your values How there is no such thing as an “overnight success” And so much more! Resources: Michelle's Instagram: @theplasticsurgerycoach Ask Us Beauty Magazine Instagram: @askusbeautymagazine Ask Us Beauty Magazine Website: askusbeautymagazine.com Erin's Instagram: @the.erin.klein.show Rachel's Instagram: @iamrachelbrooks The Confident Woman Podcast Instagram: @theconfidentwomanpodcast The Confident Woman Collective: https://www.theconfidentwomancollective.com Quotes: “We're gonna create a magazine and we're gonna bring women together. And we're going to connect. And we're gonna share. And we're going to educate. And we're going to empower.” - Michelle “Our mission is for women to define beauty on their own terms” - Michelle “Whatever you're going to do, put in 100% effort. Make sure you feel good about doing it. And learn as much as you can.” - Michelle “You can make a difference in someone's life but you have to find their story. If you can understand their why and make sure they're doing everything for the right reasons, it can be so life-changing.” - Michelle --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/theconfidentwoman/message

In today’s Solidarity Fridays episode, Kyle, Joe, and Michelle once again meet through the airwaves to discuss recent news articles and see where that takes them.  They first talk about a North Wales police boss who wants to give prisoners controlled amounts of cannabis as a way to combat violence and drug addiction and how that questions the notion of prisoners being expected to suffer. Then, they head to "Missurah," where a bill was just introduced to remove their established provision against Schedule I substances, expanding eligibility and getting them closer to how other states use 2018's federal Right to Try Act to help people with terminal and life-threatening illnesses. They then talk about a study that showed significant reduction in alcohol consumption after MDMA use and why the sense of connection that MDMA fosters could be the reason, a self-blinding microdosing study that proved the power of the placebo (and expectation) effect and what that might mean for regular microdosers, and a listener email highlighting the importance of establishing the idea that rituals and ceremonies don’t have to have a Shaman, healer, or some other person in an all-knowing, leadership role. Other topics covered: how to make therapy cheaper, whether or not a lot of letters after someone's name matters, learning survival skills, Paul Stamets, NASA, and astromycology, Zapatistas, Star Trek: Discovery, and Pauly Shore (but only a little- hopefully more next week). Notable Quotes “I feel like they’re getting a little out of hand sometimes with how we sell these treatments. In press releases or on websites for retreat centers, it’s like: 'Cure everything that’s ever been wrong with you in one week!' and 'Addiction no more!' -all this kind of stuff. ...It’s not as sexy to sell a mushroom retreat as like: 'Start this new relationship with mushrooms and work on it every day for the rest of your life!” That’s not going to sell.” -Michelle “How essential is it that the therapist is even in the room? Can’t you just be somewhere really safe with a volunteer sitter or somebody that doesn’t have a huge student debt to pay off? Is the conversation being steered in a particular direction because of incentives like graduate degrees, licensure, etc? ...If I can consume $30 of street MDMA and not have to pay 12 grand, and I can just go to my medicare-covered therapist a few times before and after, that’s a way cheaper proposition.” -Joe “There’s a lot of great healers in the world that would be really amazing at doing a lot of this stuff, but could they afford their degree? The answer is probably no, and so they don’t get to even be at the table to make any of these decisions.” -Kyle  “We can say microdosing is all a placebo effect, but I think there’s something more interesting here on the power of the expectation effect, and how we’re almost manifesting our own mood change.” -Michelle “You don’t need a Shaman there, I think, for a spiritual experience. ...You don’t need someone in a seat of power. I also feel like Shamans and healers- they’re fascinating and they’re a deep part of human history, but so is the desire for power. ...You don’t have to get stuck in that ‘I’m nobody, the Shaman has all the power, and I need you for learning' [narrative].” -Michelle Links Bbc.com: Police boss wants cannabis trial for prisoners Marijuanamoment.net: Missouri Bill Would Add MDMA, Psilocybin Mushrooms And LSD To Right-To-Try Law Independent.co.uk: Taking MDMA could help to treat alcoholism, study suggests Dr. Ben Sessa’s appearance on Psychedelics Today Elifesciences.org: Self-blinding citizen science to explore psychedelic microdosing Drweil.com: Is The Placebo Effect Real? Nature.com: Positive expectations predict improved mental-health outcomes linked to psychedelic microdosing Paulstamets.com: Astromycology funded by NASA, Science Fiction becomes Science Fact Nasa.gov: Making Soil for Space Habitats by Seeding Asteroids with Fungi Damer.com (Dr. Bruce Damer) Mehl-madrona.com (author Lewis Mehl-Madrona) Psychedelicstoday.com: Online Psychedelic Community Options to Ride Out the Rest of Covid-19 Free Psychedelics Today Event: On Dreams, the Feminine and the Practice of Psychotherapy: An Interview with Maria Papaspyrou (with Kyle and Johanna Hilla) Support the show! Patreon Leave us a review on Facebook or iTunes Share us with your friends Join our Facebook group - Psychedelics Today group – Find the others and create community. Navigating Psychedelics  

Are pursuing better movement and better physiology mutually exclusive? There appears to be a divide between performance and health. Many argue that you cannot get bigger, stronger, faster, while still moving like boss. Others fear pushing heavy weight, relegating their program to mostly ground-based breathing resets. But does it have to be this way? That's the question that Michelle Boland, Tim Richardt, Francis Hoare, and I wrestle with, proving several examples of how this dichotomy is more often than not FALSE! In this podcast, you'll learn: How Francis was able to put on 11 pounds in one year and have better range of motion throughout his body The false dichotomy between performance and health How to increase movement in those who already have lots of muscle mass, but seek to move better and have less pain How the general population can increase fitness, muscle growth, and movement all at once Getting a training effect to those who are in pain Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for moving well Are basic resets necessary to maintain movement options? How to balance expansive vs compressive activities Pairing respiration with training How to balance client's wants and needs The big rocks to maximizing movement options How to decide what your body composition should be Ready to move better, get stronger, and become an absolute savage? Look below to watch the interview, listen to the podcast, get the show notes, and read the modified transcripts. Check the video here. Learn more about our guests More Train, Less Pain Podcast - A podcast specifically designed around engineering the adaptable athlete. Michelle Boland Michelle is the owner of Michelle Boland Training which provides many services including, in-person 1:1 training sessions, coaching people remotely, writing training programs, and educational content for fellow trainers and fitness professionals who want to take complex training concepts and turn them into real outcomes for clients. Michelle has a bachelor's degree in Nutrition, a master's degree in Strength and Conditioning, and a doctorate in Exercise Physiology. Michelle was previously a strength and conditioning coach at a Division 1 institution and Director of Education at a private training facility. Instagram: dr.michelleboland Work with Michelle: https://michelle-boland-training.mykajabi.com/Work_With_Me Tim Richardt Tim Richardt is a Doctor of Physical Therapy, Strength and Conditioning Coach, and Owner of Richardt Performance and Rehabilitation located in Denver, CO. He specializes in the treatment and preparation of humans that like to run, lift, or play in the mountains. He currently offers personal training, physical therapy, and professional mentorship services.   His website Instagram: @Tim_Richardt_dpt Francs Hoare Francis Hoare is a Performance Coach and the Member Experience Director at Elevate Sports Performance & Healthcare in Las Vegas. He has helped hundreds of people of all ages and abilities improve their health, lives,l and athletic performance. Hitting the path to your goals efficiently requires being specific. Francis excels at creating programs tailored to your needs and goals. If you need someone to hold you accountable with high energy, Francis is one of the best in our industry. His motivational tactics ensure you both get challenged and succeed. When Francis is not coaching, he spends his time with his wife and two daughters, in the mountains or devouring a pint of Ben & Jerry's.   Instagram: @FrancisHoare and @ElevateSPH Show notes Here are links to things mentioned in the interview: Here is Francis' before and after pic [caption id="attachment_13492" align="aligncenter" width="500"] More gains AND better movement? Sold![/caption] Ben House - A master of science and training Mike Israetel - A bodybuilder with a unique approach to getting hyooge! Costa Rica Underground S&C 2018 Retreat Review -  This is what we reference on the bro retreat, where we discuss hypertrophy and more Peep the video below to see how my getting fat took away my squat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEZZEWyBN78 The drunken turtle is a great move to improve backside expansion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjmjUihXtrs Lucy Hendricks - An excellent coach who does a great job of pushing physiology while improving movement options. Bill Hartman - Daddy-O Pops, the godfather of many of the movement concepts we discuss. Georgie Fear - My nutrition coach, and a master of behavior change Modified Transcripts A hypertrophy and movement case study Zac Cupples: How can I get huge as all hell while still moving well? How can I preserve these two qualities? That's why I wanted to bring my boy Francis here. He is a very effective case study of how we were able to do merge these two goals. Here's his story: Francis Hoare:  The last six years, five or six years or so, been doing a lot of running, 35, 40 miles mostly, mostly trail running. I competed in Spartan races, couple 24-hour races in there as well just for fun. I would spend quite a bit of my vacation time, go into places like Yosemite or Glacier National Park and either getting a cabin and going into the parks and doing a lot of hiking and running or backpacking. Because of my exercise choices, I had a fair bit of strength, but more biased toward rock climbing, American Ninja Warrior type stuff, a few lifting sessions per week, and about 8-10 hours of running each week. The issue was this style of training led to my like calves constantly hurting, hips constantly hurting, stuff like that. I was getting burnt out from the running. I decided to take a break, then quarantine it. It was the perfect time to put on some weight! I just met Dr. Zac and instantly, the stuff that he was talking about just captivated me. This stuff was hard. It would torture you, yet at the same time I'd feel good afterwards. I had a pump and felt more mobile. That's where it started. Zac: We spent the first couple blocks testing you and trying a few different interventions just to see what would work. And then- Francis: There was a lot of learn by doing. Because we weren't working with clients during the quarantine, I was able to wrap my head around all this stuff that Zac was talking about. It helped me troubleshoot what areas to improve movement-wise. If there were times where Zac was giving me some high-level stuff, and it just wasn't connecting with me, so we could pull the ropes back and build from the ground up. It was super beneficial as a strength coach. Once our gym, our facility was able to open up, I had a whole new set of tools to work with my members with. Zac: After you built that foundation, you took the concepts and ran with it for yourself. With more of a hypertrophy-focus. Francis: This all started in April. So, I did not rush this process at all, which, which helped me immensely. I knew I wanted to put on weight but didn't have a specific number. I just wanted to feel better and move better. My first girl was learning the basics movement-wise; starting with squatting, tucking, etc. I paired all that with eating more. I was keeping things in the 8-12 rep range, and that's how the process started. Zac: Yeah. And so, I'd say, correct me if I'm wrong, we probably spent a couple months building the movement foundation, and then you just kind of made it more hypertrophy volumes and and intensities for the last four or five months. Francis: No, I think I'm about eight weeks in to, you know, what on paper would look more like a hypertrophy phase, I was able to put on some weight again, just by hitting reps of 8 to 12 and doing new stuff and not running. Zac: Always good. Always good to know. Francis: Late October we really buckled down. Holidays are coming out and I'm going to eat a lot. So, let me take that guilt away from eating a lot by going into an official hypertrophy phase and yeah, all we did was we picked up the movements that we liked, assess how progress was going, and kept it simple over a 4–5-week span. I kept the load down and switched to what I call the 2020 workout—two seconds on the eccentric, two seconds on the concentric, no pausing in between, always staying under tension, never going all the way down or all the way up. You do that for 10 reps, obviously the time should work out to 40 seconds, doing four sets in a row with little rest. I'd do that for my big lift, then do 10 reps of three accessory moves with 30 second's rest. Four more sets of that. So, I'm doing only one movement at a time, knocking out all the sets, then I move on to the next movement. It takes about 30 minutes, which is perfect for my busy work and life schedule. Zac: How much weight have you put on over the year? Francis: 11 pounds so, from 152 to 163. Zac: That's a pretty good change in a year! On my on my end, at least with the movement testing, we had some great changes movement-wise: Hip flexion improved from (left/right) 110 bilaterally to 125/140. Hip internal rotation improved from (left/right) 35/15 to 30/40. Which I'm cool with as it's more symmetrical. I think it was really cool to see because I think a lot of people see this false dichotomy between moving well and getting big. You can only gain muscle by using machines, back squatting, and deadlifting. Yet Francis didn't do a single back squat. Francis: I haven't squatted more than 100 pounds. Zac: But you're doing things well. You're getting tension where you need to get tension. You were able to pack on size without losing movement. In fact, across the board your table measures improved. There may be a path where movement and performance diverge, but not for the overwhelming majority of us. Most of us aren't the elite bodybuilder who is debating whether or not to start using gear. Pursuing hypertrophy and better movement is absolutely doable for the general population. How those with substantial muscle mass can improve movement options Michelle Boland: Why I wanted to jump in this conversation is I want to talk about tearing down vs building up. How do you deal with less loading. I struggle with this personally because of the deep held traditional beliefs and expectations of not only my role as a strength conditioning coach and the years I've spent training. This started with a same as a Francis. Quarantine hit, and I had to think about what my training needed to look like. Evaluate the good and bad. My body shape is closer to a female cross-country runner, I enjoy running, but I went big into the bilateral lifts. Consequently, I've probably kept 12-15 pounds of muscle mass on my frame, past the point of probably where my body wants to be. I shifted to running a bit more and working out from home during the quarantine. Because I didn't track too much, I dropped about 11-12 pounds pretty quickly, and probably all that was muscle mass. This led to feeling some fear of switching my training, but I recognized some mistakes that I've made. My question involves those who have a lot of muscle mass and are currently dealing with aches and pains. If you look at the long game, this may lead to major issues like joint replacements in the future. It's a difficult perspective, but many leaders in the field have been ex-powerlifters who've had a shift in perspective.  What are some strategies these people can employ? I'm sure some muscle mass will be lost in the process, but can they maintain some and move better? Zac: What does it take to grow muscles? The big hypertrophy keys are volume and mechanical tension. That's really it. Kudos to Ben House and Ryan L'Ecuyer for teaching me that. Not once did these two mention back squat or bench press being essential. Hell, even most elite bodybuilders are doing machine-based work. Volume and tension are the key, the modalities are likely irrelevant otherwise. Michelle: Yeah, 100%. Much of what we focus on is isolation exercise to alter position and shape change. One thing I definitely missed was something that Francis stated before, and that's tempos. I think that is a huge factor, especially with pairing movements, simply phases of movements with phases of respiration, the tempo, kind of prescription of exercises is, I think, something that would have maintained kind of gains in something that I'm trying to do now. Francis: And I think stacking helps target the muscles you want better. Squats for example. If you can shift to sandbags and still torch your quads and glutes without back tension, that's a win. Tim Richardt: Another thing that Francis mentioned with what you guys outlined earlier, which I thought was really interesting was just the skew towards higher rep ranges. People talk about getting big, getting strong. 5x5 doesn't quite produce as much of the volume and mechanical tension as the higher rep ranges do. Going after 10, 15, 20 rep maxes lets you maintain movement quality, maintain the stack, and get a lot more of a training stimulus with a lot less of those deleterious secondary consequences that we're trying to step around. Zac: If you don't consider body position, then your only option to create tension is heavy loads. When I was in Costa Rica, I was teaching some bigger dudes the way I coach squatting. Admittedly, I wasn't coaching the squat as well as I am now. I was overtucking and flexing, which led to some trepidation with them. Regardless, with very little weight, their quads were absolutely destroyed. The only other way that sensation could be recreated is through heavy weight. Conversely, we just don't have data to support it one way or another aside from anecdotes. Is the only reason that you got this tension is because it's a novel position that you're not normally in? Or is it we're actually targeting the quads more? That's just something I don't know or have an answer to. What I have seen is those who do a lot of hinge-based work (I consider a back squat along this line) lose movement options. I think to preserve health of the tissues and joints, probably worthwhile to throw in at least some type of stuff that contrasts that. Francis: Depending on the person, I don't think you need to go all one way. If buy-in is limited, then give them a couple breathing resets at the beginning, for their warm up, give them one or two movements to do throughout their set. And take it from there, especially if there's someone who refuses to give up something like deadlifting or back squatting. Try to offset that with their accessory work. Michelle: I think the best thing you can do is every coach needs a coach. My current coach is Eric Huddleston. He's done a great job putting programs together that feed into what I want to be doing and will do. I told him I'm not going to lie on the ground and do resets. Some clients will be that way. ] But he does an amazing, amazing job at creating exercises that just build those concepts in; using tempos paired with phases of respiration; almost like an active reset. With this, I've noticed muscles gains and better movement quality. And he only programs about six exercises per session. The false dichotomy between performance and health Tim: I just want to circle back to something Zac mentioned a couple minutes ago, we have two somewhat incomplete truths. On one hand, we have that being strong is absolutely badass and having some muscle and the ability to produce power is kind of the sign of a healthy human right? It's the strength training is good paradigm. And then there's a lot of people that just say, you know, strength training tightens up joints and muscles, and it leads to an achy, stiff human. And neither of those two statements is completely true nor completely false. It reminds of the interplay between bulking and cutting. For 99.99% of people, it's probably not a thing.  Most individuals tend to be so detrained that they don't need to worry about a specific bulking protocol or cutting protocol. You can do both with intelligent eating and intelligent training. And I think what you guys have outlined is sort of the intelligent eating, intelligent training approach to improving movement options and improving like muscle bulk strength power output concurrently, which is cool. Zac: Even this conversation to some degree is more focused on how coaches can get themselves as jacked as possible. For most of our clients, we are lucky to get them in the gym three times per week! Francis: You definitely have those less dedicated, but I also have people I've trained for years that I'm excited to implement some of this stuff. After the quarantine ended and our gym opened up, we started focusing on stacking; spending a few phases getting good at that. We built our initial phases on that, then were able to focus on more specific qualities. It's not necessarily the what? But the how? And why? And that's where you can get really deep in all this stuff. Tim: And Zac, I might respectfully disagree with the point that you made a couple minutes ago. I think that the people that come to see, you, Francis, Michelle, myself, they tend to be people that are either bad at exercise or just really beat up. If we take those people that have a limited movement option repertoire, and a lot of things are going to hurt, if we can get them a training effect while furthering their movement options, then they don't feel like they're bad at exercise anymore. As opposed to the typical gym where someone might be back squatting on the first day of their program, potentially experiencing pain associated with that.  That's not going to retain clients very effectively. So, I think this stuff really becomes paramount to ensuring a long-term positive client experience. Zac: I would agree with you. Back squats and similar moves have a much higher technical demand than say a goblet squat or a sandbag squat. Francis: You can hand someone a 50-pound sandbag on a ramp, and torch them. It makes your coaching job that much easier. Key performance indicators for better movement Tim: I think one big problem in our industry is not defining terms especially well, this is something that Doug Kechijian talks about all the time where we say things like we want to move well, we don't want to lose motion, but we don't really have a clear idea of what that means. Zac, Francis, what were some of the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that you tracked every few weeks as Francis was putting on muscle? And how would you recommend people approach that? Zac: Francis is so lucky because I can table test him on a fairly regular basis. The issue with Francis is many of the standing measures I normally recommend he was pretty good it. His toe touch and squat were full. But if you are limited in those moves, you can always pursue getting them better. They can also be a good gauge on if you are going in a good direction or not. Personally, if I get too fat, I lose my ability to squat and I got a really good video of that happening to me. In the video, I was 200 pounds. Fat as shit. It was a Herculean effort to squat below parallel, I just couldn't do it. But now that I'm leaner, I can squat fairly easily. The key KPI is you need to find stuff that you're limited in, and then just recheck that periodically to make sure that you still have that. That could be an Apley's Scratch test where you check shoulder internal and external rotation. If you get bigger and lose motion, that doesn't mean you need to stop pursuing hypertrophy. You just need to change something to restore some of that motion. It could be getting on the ground and doing a reset. Maybe it's re-evaluating your exercise selection. It's not a matter of maintaining certain movements at all times, but can you get into positions that you should be able to. For Francis in particular, we looked at hip and shoulder range of motion predominately. Francis: Trunk rotation was another thing we tracked. But I also didn't have the toe touch down pat. Zac: You didn't? Francis: No, not at first. But an exercise like drunken turtle cleaned most things up fast. It's easy as a coach to check range of motion, but don't be afraid to use your Coach's Eye too. It can be sometimes hard to describe or put KPIs to good movement, but you also kind of know when you see it. I think this better translates to stuff clients care about as well. Zac: Another example, Lucy Hendricks, she went through a phase where her clients were deadlifting a lot, and subsequently lost their ability to perform a loaded squat well. You could use that as a KPI for your clients. Basically, you have to find a movement that is on the cusp of your capabilities, and then you would just continue to recheck that. Tim, in your case, I think a toe touch is a really good move, because you are right on the edge of being able to get that. if you started severely losing that those gains, we might look at making small tweaks to your program to get that better. Pairing resets with heavy lifting Tim: Is there still a time in place for load it up, and then we'll reset it before you leave? Zac: For me, resets are basically regressed versions of positions that you are trying to get into. For example, Michelle is a good mover and well versed in the knowledge realm. She may be able to attain the positions she needs with loaded exercises. If you can stack and achieve a full squat position under load, I don't see a need to drill down to something less than that. Because you can attain the position that you need. But with the people we work with, they don't have that movement capability. So, we have to choose an activity that has more constraints to it, or get them on their back more, because they don't know how to get their bodies in the positions they need to. Francis: We do work with athletes too and sometimes they come to us on a much shorter timeline than we would want. We understand they have to perform. We can't put our vision ahead of them for that if they are close to in-season. Sometimes the priority is pain freedom. If we can get them out of pain, that can increase buy-in and allow us to do what we need them to do. For me, I didn't deadlift for three months. If you had asked me a year ago, what was my best lift? It would have been deadlift. Me stopping deadlifting was trusting my coach. We have to ask where does this person want to go? How quickly? What kind of trust can you build with them and take it from there. There's not necessarily a broad stroke answer there. It definitely needs to be individualized. Zac: it doesn't mean that a deadlift, back squat, and bench press are bad exercises. In fact, they're quite good if you are chasing force production. I'm currently working with an optometrist and in their field, they look at convergence and divergence. Convergence is really focusing in on a specific point, and then divergence would be looking further out. And it was interesting because she was talking about that, I saw a parallel in the movement realm. She noticed that people who are really good at converging have a tendency to sit with their knees together and be more perched and upright, which is, you know, extension, internal rotation, force production-based qualities. People who are better at diverging, looking further out and seeing large amount of space, sit more chill. Divergence is more expansion and external rotation. Vision drives many of our motor responses. When she's prescribing exercises, you can totally work on convergence-based activities. But these moves can be overdone, creating a loss of divergence in the process. I think the movement realm operates similarly. You can do back squat, and you can do deadlifts. And you can do these activities that drive more force production, more internal rotation, more compression, or whatever stuff you want to say. But if that's all that you focus on, you can potentially lose the other side of that equation. It doesn't seem to be the case where if you do a lot of stuff that is more expansion-based that you lose the ability to compress, because Francis can still deadlift a fair amount. We're tweaking some of your techniques, though. Programming improved movement options Tim: Would it be fair to say that if the goal is maintaining or improving movement options, your initial bias and program is going to be towards more squatting and counternutated-types of activities? Zac: Yeah. The only time I won't do that is if a client is pursuing a sport or thoroughly enjoys a bias towards force production For example, I have one guy right now who we're working through some shoulder pain with benching, but he wants to bench and back squat. Cool, you can keep doing that, I'll just tweak everything around that. Now if I have a situation where I have free rein with someone's program, they don't deadlift for the first couple blocks. The reason being is that most people have movement restrictions. My frame of mind is to first improve movement options as much as possible so their movement menu is larger. It seems like starting with a focus on front-loaded squatting, unilateral work, and considering ribcage structure helps with that. Tim: Branching off that topic. Something I've seen Michelle do a lot is pairing different phases of breathing with different phases of motion. Is that something that you've been utilizing with yourself and with clients recently? Michelle: Yeah, absolutely. That's something I've definitely been doing with my clients and also doing on my own training. It's made a dramatic impact in how I feel. I think the key with implementing is marketing appropriate expectations and linking these activities towards the client's goals and how it can benefit them. Zac: Could you expand upon that, Michelle? Michelle: It's not that we're doing it bad. We just have to indentify our ideal clientele, and make sure I provide a clear message on how I train and what people can expect from me. By doing that, the people who approach working with me have changed. I think I just got better at talking to people about reaching their goals, while also including maybe some other factors with that. Zac, I think you do probably one of the best jobs at that; talking to people who want performance gains but also addressing any nagging aches and pains. Being clear that training or lifting weights doesn't have to hurt. The mainstream fitness industry doesn't seem to think that way. Tim: I think, you know, I think it's really interesting because when I think when Zac and I first got into the field of physical therapy, what, six, seven years ago, there was still a pretty big bifurcation between strength coaches and therapists, there weren't a lot of therapists that were strength coaches or word trainers. I mean, one doesn't even come to mind. It's positive to see both of these fields merging together, and starting to view training and rehab as the same thing, just different points on the same exact continuum. We are less in silos. We don't worry about waiting until table tests are perfect before training, yet we also don't let people go back squat until their eyes bleed. I think everybody has a much better appreciation of what loaded activities might do to a person's range of motion, as well as what ranges a person might need in order to do the activities they want. Francis: We see a lot of people who had a coach or doctor say they can't do an activity. We rephrase that by saying we can help you get there. We may need to shelve it now and work on a few other things first, then go from there. Seeing the look of relief of rewarding. We are either here to help people enjoy their life better or perform better depending on what exactly they're after. For us at elevate, it's all about physical freedom, and not telling people no, but telling them Yes. Zac: if you can keep that end goal in mind and relate activities to that goal, then it's more likely that that person is going to be up to doing things that maybe aren't as sexy, like being on your back and doing breathing exercises, or not back squatting. Francis: Or just training more. I f we get you out of pain, your likelihood of training more goes through the roof, and then your likelihood of success of success goes through the roof. Zac: You can't hit volume and mechanical tension if you can't train. Michelle: Yeah, that's, that's a difficult one. If people aren't coming to see me, you know, they're probably not training. So, getting in people in the gym for training sessions, multiple times a week can be a big challenge with a lot of general population clients. I'll just talk about myself. if I go to a physical therapist, I have a certain expectation of what that session is going to be like, versus coming to see your strength conditioning coach, I personally get a lot of people who really hard workouts. There are different expectations in those realms. Zac: Francis does a really good job with classes and custom training of marrying those two things where you can give someone a really good training effect, while still helping them favorably movement-wise. Francis: Yeah, just if you communicate with them and check to make sure they're feeling the right things, you can make all this stuff incredibly taxing and difficult in the moment for sure. They might scoff at you because they're moving less weight than what they're used to, but wait to see how they feel with it. Conversely, if they come in and they're strong. Don't be so set in your ways that you don't give them heavier weight. But that's always our job's challenge; getting people to do the right things but be happy with what they're doing. You just have to be on top of it and have conversations with your clients. Explain the “why.” Though it can be hard in classes or small group sessions. The harder it can be explaining what's going on. If it's someone new, you might have to give him a call or text after the session. Finishers and conditioning sets at the end are always a good way to get them. A couple minutes on the assault bike does wonders. Michelle: I think that's a huge point. Clients remember what you sent them home with. Francis: It helps them walk out of your session with them feeling like they achieved something. Tim: It seems like the programming keys then include: Squats Unilateral activities Alternating activities Slower tempos The stack Are there any other major keys? Zac:  Ideally, with all of the tenants that Tim outlined so eloquently, you should be doing some type of breathing during specific components. Generally, that'll involve inhaling during the eccentric, and exhaling during the concentric. But you have to look at what you are specifically trying to make eccentric? What are you trying to make concentric? Suppose I'm doing a lat pulldown. Generally, we would exhale on the pull and inhale on the way up. Well, what if my predominant limitation is actually expansion on the opposite side? Well, I could totally inhale as I pull down to open that up. But for the overwhelming majority of people, that could be a little bit too into the weeds. I probably program that more with coaches than general population. For them, it's stack, full breath excursions during iso holds, then inhale on the eccentric, exhale on the concentric. But, Michelle, I'd be curious to hear how you're incorporating phases of respiration into some of the training stuff that that you're talking about? Michelle: You hit it on the head. I'm just making sure that people are going through phases of respiration that mimic their phases of movement. So, it's the eccentric concept that you just mentioned, and then have been messing around with a lot of inhaling the top position, holding my breath down, exhaling up, just kind of getting more into that and getting my clients used to it. So, adding more and more as I go and progressing with that stuff over time. Zac: How about yourself, Tim? Tim: I think that's a really interesting idea, Michelle. I so I guess the notion there would be that you're trying to create a bunch of expansion before you go into the range of motion that you're trying to load? Michelle: Yeah, I'll have to give my coach Eric credit for that. We do a lot of oscillating isometrics—dropping an object and going to the bottom catching it. And a lot of is inhaling on the top, holding my breath down, and then exhaling up and pausing at the bottom. So, I think it's finishing that yielding strategy. So, I'll definitely give him credit for introducing me to that. Tim: With my own training, I focus on getting full respiratory excursion through a range of motion. It seems most folks are just bracing and then like getting a little bit of airflow in whatever area we tend to be more hyper mobile at. So, slowing things down, which again, that tempo helps with and actually. Also focusing on global ribcage expansion with whatever you are doing. Zac: I think another thing that's vastly underutilized if you need to get extra volume, is machines and blood flow restriction training. Both are awesome ways to incorporate volume, especially if you get someone who has a low movement menu to choose from. This is especially true if you have someone post-op or morbidly obese. So, Tim, how are we going to get you huge? Tim: I think personally the passion lies in moving very quickly up mountains. So probably we're looking to keep me tiny yet powerful so that I can charge you up some tall stuff and hopefully not perish. Zac: That's reasonable. Well, that makes sense since you said that my 13,000-foot climb was nothing! Tim: And not to talk shit on your 13,000-foot climb. I think it's so complex man. Zac: Yeah, you totally talk shit. That's fine. Ask Francis, I'm probably one of the biggest shit talkers out there. Tim: Selfishly, I'm just trying to get you out to Colorado. Deciding on body composition goals Zac: When do you decide that you need to get bigger and when do you decide that you need to get leaner? I talked with my nutrition coach Georgie Fear. If you're not following her, you should, she's really intelligent. We got myself to a point where I'm fairly lean. And it's like, where do I go from here? And she had a really good point of does your body do all the things that you want it to do? Tim, in your case, if you're trying to climb mountains, do you need to put on more or less muscle mass to be able to do that and then just let the ascetics do what they need to do? I'd be curious to hear everyone's thoughts. Francis:  If I go back to running, I'll wonder how I'll feel about things body-wise. Michelle: Aesthetics really isn't my goal. It's more of how I feel and how I perform. I think it's just kind of what you're used to. You get used to certain body image looking at yourself. Since my frame is small, missing 11 pounds is a very noticeable difference. But I think that was because of my reduced fitness that happened over quarantine. I needed to get back on a training regimen. Surprisingly, I was still capable of moving a lot of weight. I think I just needed to build consistency. My bodyweight is back down to undergrad size, but I'm still capable of moving weight. But now, I can recover a lot faster compared to when I prioritized the barbell. Sum up Performance and health can be pursued simultaneously if you use volume, tension, and good exercise selection Intensity can help muscle-bound folks move better Pursue many expansive-based exercises to offset compressive-based exercises Emphasize stacking, single arms reaches, and more to preserve movement.

Scott and Michelle offer these practices to keep in mind at any stage of a health journey. Mindfulness. Take just a few moments to be present and distraction-free. Don't overcomplicate the journey. Overthinking and overcontrolling quickly lead to anxiety and depression. Taking small, practical steps will get you where you need to be. Share your journey with others, but not everybody. Close friends can keep you accountable and motivated. But your journey is intimate and won't always be pretty.  Have the right reason. There is something intrinsically motivating you to live a better life. Don't confuse that with the urge to suddenly identify as a health nut. Living in the past isn't productive. Your body changes, and your lifestyle changes. What worked then might not work now. Take this into account when evaluating what exercise is right for you and what you expect your body to do and look like. Limit social media. It's a time suck. Sleep well and take time to relax. The hours between 11-3 AM are our best opportunity for quality sleep. Don't skip it. Let go of toxic relationships. You can't easily avoid people, but you can let certain people in closer while others remain at a distance. Setting personal boundaries with even your loved ones will lead to healthier relationships. TranscriptMichelle: Welcome to the Totality Living Well podcast where we probe into the nitty-gritty aspects of health: the good, the offbeat, and even the controversial things that aren't always discussed. Whether you've had a long-standing curiosity or simply want to know more about a topic, we're here to explore the solutions and answers to empower you in body, mindset, and spirit.Scott: Hey guys, Scott and Michelle Williams here. Healthy living consultants, certified in nutrition fitness and neuromuscular massage.Michelle: We're parents, business owners, and understand the challenges that life can bring with keeping the elements of your own health on track while ensuring that the kids, parents, pets, and loved ones in your life are also taken care of with the resources they need for health and longevity.Scott: We're so glad you joined us.Michelle: Seeking to live a life of health for many entails acknowledging a specific need, setting a goal for improvement, and then implementing the necessary steps to reach that goal. But that's not always as easy as it sounds is it, especially when it comes to all of the factors pertaining to real life. If it were that simple, then the health and wellness industry wouldn't be as big as it is. Welcome everyone to our podcast today. I am Michelle Williams, along with my fabulous husband Scott Williams from Totality Living Well. And today we're going to be addressing the one issue that can trip us up as we aspire to reach any health goal, or really any goal. And that is energy drains.Scott: That's right. The topic needs to be discussed because as health professionals, we've seen so many people out there that really and truly want to make a change. And they come to us and they're so excited about doing that. And so many things start to get in their way, and they just don't understand why they cannot get to that point.Michelle: So, the last time we left you with some tips on how to really get cruising on your health journey. And why don't you recap those for us?Scott: Practicing mindfulness in your life is such an important mindset on this. It's not just about your body, it's about your body, mind, and your spirit. Self-care is vital for us: to take care of others, we've really truly got to be able to take care of ourselves to begin with. And don't overcomplicate the journey. The journey can be simple, you just have to get moving, you don't need to assess every single thing that you see in a magazine or everything everybody else is doing.Michelle: And that leads to this valuable insight that we want to share is how to reach those goals without the distractions and those things that can deplete our journey. So, we've got a long list of sneaky little traps that can be avoided, if we know what they are. And we're just going to share those with you and just go ahead and dig in.Scott: Sounds good.Michelle: Okay, so the first one, I think it just goes in right with that third tip of don't overcomplicate the journey, and that's overthinking the journey. I guess just any client we've really worked with who gets kind of caught up in—you know, I'm guilty of doing this myself: individuals who really want to control the journey ahead, and one way to kind of think that they can do that is by overthinking. And ultimately, when I started thinking about this, I started thinking about overthinking really kind of has a couple of different underlying reasons. One is maybe a lack of organization. Two would be a lack of confidence or having self-doubt about the journey ahead, and then not fully having a defined goal or being fully committed to that goal. And then when I started thinking about that a little bit more I thought about overthinking maybe is actually something that stems from worry or desperation to really want to accomplish that goal. So, it's not really something that's counterproductive for us, and when you think about it, it's more of a mind issue. So, that effort to control the whole journey ahead by overthinking is really the one thing that makes you lose control, and it just totally self-sabotage is the entire thing. So, basically, just keep it simple.Scott: Right, exactly. Because people do come in with great goals. And I think that what they're looking for is they're looking for validation in that goal; they want you to validate what they're trying to achieve. Sometimes it might not be their actual goal, but they think, “Oh, but this is going to make me healthy and/or this is going to make my professional that I'm working with think that I'm on the right track.”Michelle: Like, I'm truly invested in that.Scott: Exactly. And sometimes you have to take a step back and figure out realistically, it's like, how do you look at the baby steps of this goal and come back to kindergarten as opposed to running as a senior. And really, and truly taking the steps to go level by level to achieve those goals.Michelle: I think one of the things that goes along with it, and it's not really part of the notes that we had kind of things that we wanted to discuss today, but also overtalking about something; just talking incessantly about, “I'm going to be a vegetarian,” “I'm a vegetarian,” “Oh, my new vegetarian diet.” I mean, just for example.Scott: Oh, yeah.Michelle: And then just that constant talk, talk, talk, it's almost like there's a way to have that proper accountability, but there's also a way that people try to convince themselves and they're not really realizing that they're convincing themselves. So, I think that overtalking goes right in hand-in-hand with overthinking.Scott: I think so too, and I think what happens is, people need to keep that to one or two people that can actually really help them kind of just grab forward and go with that, but not talk to everybody about it. Because everybody just gets tired of hearing it because all they want to see is, “Okay, you're doing that. So, what's the result? What's this look like?” You know, they look at you and go, “Well, you're a vegetarian, or you've done this, or you've done that. What was your goal truly about? And are you really achieving it, or do you look the same as you did a month ago when I saw you?”Michelle: I think one of the things, too, is like, if someone establishes a goal and it's not for the right reasons to accomplish something, but rather to make it an identity, that's when you see a lot of that happen. People are kind of wanting to establish something to be known for.Scott: Right, exactly. Because everybody wants to be popular in the public. Everybody wants to be known for something. And sometimes that is lack of what they had as a kid as far as the compliments from people as a child, and they're still trying to feed that back into their lives.Michelle: Yeah. And when we do start working with clients for their health journey, we really do assess where they are in that whole goal-setting place in life because there are different phases: there's that pre-contemplation, and then there's the contemplation, all the way up to action. And so when someone's finally in that action phase, they're still not overthinking. So, I think that that's probably a kind of a good sign of not being fully ready to move forward.Scott: It is truly. And that helps them really assess because sometimes they think they come in, and they're like, “Yep, here's the money, let's go.” And they think by hiring you, or by having someone holding you accountable, it's going to just flip a switch, and all of a sudden—and their goals are going to just happen magically. And really, and truly, we got to step back and see why.Michelle: Another big energy drainer that I see with people who do overthink is living in the past. And I know that you can speak to this just the same, where we meet with people—and let's just say middle-agers, okay. Let's just say somebody who had a great football career when they were teenagers, and they ate the house down, and they can't understand what the age of 45 they're gaining all this weight. They never had that problem before. Well, are you moving the way that you moved when you were a teenager, you know, to warrant eating that? Another thing would be from ladies, I hear, “Well, I know exactly what to do. I'm just here for the accountability, and what I've done has worked in the past.” And I kind of laugh to myself, “Well, if it worked in the past, why are we here?” Because if you lost that weight before you had children, and you were in your 20s, and you knew what to do, and you were radically going for it, and then, later on, you have children, and you haven't lost that baby weight and it's been 15 years, since you've lost that baby weight, what worked then, chances are it's not going to work now. And so we have to always be mindful and reminding ourselves and other people that what has always worked doesn't always work. I know personally, there are times in my life, I guess, I found myself wanting to detoxify from childhood, processed meats and things like that, where going vegetarian was a great thing for me. Ultimately, going vegan was nice for a little while. And I had my children and Mama wanted some meat, and so that meat-eating diet kind of came back and it was right for me at that time. And as a nutrition specialist coaching other people, one thing that we can say is that there's not a one size fits all approach to diet and to exercise, movement, that kind of thing. And you think about it: babies have a totally different requirement, from a nutrition standpoint than a toddler. A toddler's got a totally different need than a teenage boy playing football. That teenage boy playing football has a totally different dietary need than someone who's going to be hitting the big three-oh for their milestone birthday. And that person is still going to be different from what a senior needs. So, we all need different things at different times. And living in the past, it's a comfort to say, “I've been there, I've accomplished, I knew it worked,” but the mind needs new things, the body needs new approaches based on what our resources are, what our routines are, what the current body is, what we have and that kind of thing. I know, you've seen that too.Scott: Exactly. When I was in my teens I worked out, I played sports. When I got into my 20s, I started mountain biking. At that point in time, you go to mountain bike ride and burning and 3500 calories a day. And I could eat like a house, and realistically, it wasn't a big thing. Then I rolled into my 30s, kind of got away from that kind of conditioning, went back into the gym and started a little bit more about building muscle, and then I had to retain correct nutrition, and not just caloric density, to actually rebuild the body that I wanted to. And then in my 40s I started looking ahead, and all of a sudden, all the active things that I did, my joints weren't exactly wanting to do it as much anymore, and then you should have a shift of metabolism. And you have to realistically figure out what is your goal right now because what you're doing in your 40s is not what you were doing in your 20s. You have to have that reality check; you're not going to have what you had in your 20s, but how do you make your best 40s?Michelle: Right, and a 50-year-old cannot look like their 20-year-old self. It's just, it doesn't matter how many times they go to have their hair done, or go under the knife, or have all these aesthetic treatments, it's a different body, and it is about embracing what you have to work with, in the current moment.Scott: Exactly.Michelle: So, I guess I would just say, to remember that today's a new day; yesterday's the past and just don't go back. Just leave it in the past.Scott: Leave it in the past.Michelle: Yeah, set your new goals for the day ahead.Scott: Right, and just make sure that you're—just find that mindset that you're good with that. And I think that's what people stumble with is you've got to look at yourself and go, hey, I am great where I am, and I can be the best 40-year-old, 50-year-old, 60-year-old that I can be out there, versus some of the people you see out there that are in your same age range. One of the big things that we talk a little bit about as far as time and things that take away from, I want to talk a little bit about social media. Everybody wants to get on social media; social media, it's just such a trap out there. And realistically, you spend 10 minutes here, you spend 20 minutes, there, you spend 30 minutes there, and all of a sudden you say, “Well, I just don't have time to go to the gym anymore,” or, “I don't have time to eat right,” or, “I don't have time to sit and read and meditate a little bit.” If you look at some of those trackers out there, you can actually really tell what you're doing with each thing that you have on your phone, you can see how much time you're wasting.Michelle: It's crazy. I mean it, it becomes addictive.Scott: It does.Michelle: I mean, not only to the kids but adults too. I can log in not even realizing that I'm logging in to check my feed. I don't even think that I'm doing it; I'm doing it subconsciously. And I can look down and think that maybe 5 or 10 minutes has gone by, and it's been an hour plus.Scott: Right.Michelle: And I just read feeds. Boy, I could have really read a good chapter in a book. [laugh].Scott: Yeah, getting caught up. Or I could have actually got up and went for a walk, and then got some sunshine.Michelle: Yeah, no kidding. I agree; social media is a huge energy trap. And I think just checking email also, it can be a big distraction, too.Scott: Yeah, because we have so much junk email out there. If everything could filter out all of the junk, and you could truly just get the true emails you need each day, that would be great.Michelle: Yeah, I think it's the same thing. I think just setting designated times and timelines for looking at those kinds of things is a huge help.Scott: Yeah. And then beyond that, it's just like, we spend so much time doing some of that stuff, we stay up too late. We stay up too late on social media, we stay up too late in emails, we stay up too late watching TV, some people stay up too late playing video games. And when you stay up too late, you throw off your entire next day.Michelle: Well, especially when it's time and again. Because okay, yes, there's going to be the big ball game that comes on, and that's going to run late into the night, and we want to see that; we don't want to record that; we don't want to watch what's more fun to watch live. I mean, certain things need to take place in real-time.Scott: Oh, exactly.Michelle: And kids might have sports. And a lot of those times we know from when our kids were in cross country. We didn't get home until 10 o'clock at night, sometimes. It was a school night.Scott: It was crazy.Michelle: It was. So, I mean there are times when we have to kind of make the exception, but I do think it builds up, like what you're saying. And then that really wears the body down and the mind down.Scott: It really does because you actually then to start the next day, you want to eat everything that you can because your body is deprived of what it needed for rest. So, now it's going to try to replace it with calories.Michelle: Yeah, it messes up that leptin and ghrelin hormone balance of when you are hungry and how full you are, and those just get really whacked out when you don't get that sleep. And then too, I have learned from multiple sources time and again at different seminars and from various educators, that the time period that you can sleep between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. are valid for regenerating the body, resetting the body. So, yes, you can go to bed a little later than what you want to be, if you can stay asleep and get good quality sleep in that little window of time, you're at least doing yourself a favor.Scott: Definitely. But four hours sleep isn't quite enough for the night.Michelle: Yeah, not for the norm. I mean, there are some rare individual, I guess, that can get by with that, but that's certainly not me.Scott: Me either. [laugh].Michelle: And we have taken a couple of supplements before that have helped us. Obviously, we recommend everybody check with their health care provider and professional before doing anything, but we've had great experience with melatonin and [00:15:58 methionine], which is an amino acid, just bringing calm to the body, helping it turn off. Soaking in a hot bath with lavender and Epsom salt.Scott: Yeah, a lot of relaxation type things before bed.Michelle: And turning lights out. Turning lights and electronics out and just, you know, unplugging.Scott: Right. Easy, soft music, something just that relaxes you down.Michelle: Right. And you were saying that it does throw off the way we eat. So, that brings us to our fifth energy drainer. And that is living on a poor diet. I mean, you think about it, you're tired, you're running late for work, you haven't prepared anything for lunch, or even breakfast and you're going by the drive-through. First thing you're going to do is grab that fast sandwich, that biscuit, whatever, and that's not really giving you quality nutrition. So, over time, your body's getting dead food; it's getting processed food, and it can't regenerate by its divine design. It's one thing to grab that one meal on a quick whim, but to make that your lifestyle, that starts to add up, and that starts to make you feel pretty lousy. And when I teach kids, one of the slides that I have is garbage in, garbage out. So, what you take in, that's what you're going to be putting back out. And a lot of times, that's really lousy energy—Scott: It truly is.Michelle: —you know, and irritability, and not being able to be on your game. So, I even use that with the chefs that I teach at the college for the Culinary Institute. They want to know, why is healthy food, all that important? And I'm like, let's just rewind down to the basics: it's an energy drainer. You don't feel good, and you're not living that quality life.Scott: Yeah, exactly. It's one of those things that, if you were around from different decades, as we were, and if you can realize the fact that why can they still sell a hamburger for the same price they did when we were kids.Michelle: Or the ice cream sandwich that never melts on the sidewalk. [laugh].Scott: [laugh].Michelle: That's really weird.Scott: And we watched the kids get fast food type things around here that you look in a cup and it's still there the next day, and you're like, why is that still in a full form?Michelle: Yeah, that's really freaky. You know that Twinkie test, I've never taken the Twinkie test but apparently, they don't rot at all, they're so loaded. [laugh]. I remember eating Twinkies when I was a little girl. I was given one to—my mom gave it to appease me before breakfast, so I wonder if those Twinkies are still with me? Well, basically getting good fresh enzymes, and that means the colors of the rainbow that are grown in nature your red, orange, yellow, green, blue, fruits, vegetables and get those in when you can even if you do have to merge that with foods that aren't ideal, and they're more of the grab-and-go if you can grab that salad or even a juice, that's better for you, getting those life enzymes.Scott: Definitely. Exactly. When we go into another step of life as far as things that actually drain us as well, and we started looking at relationships. Being out there, and toxic relationships, and negative people, and—Michelle: No, not in this day and age. [laugh].Scott: And just the negative side of everything. You look at—if you turn on the news, everybody's hating on everybody. And it's like, when did we start becoming such a society of hate, and where did the love go? And so, the more that you can separate yourself from those types of things, the better that you do with life if you begin your day with more positivity.Michelle: There's this book that I have been reading, and it's pretty neat. It's called Your Body Believes Every Word You Say. And this lady was really ill, and she couldn't figure out how to get well. And then she started changing the way that she thought and the way that she spoke and her body responded, and it's a pretty cool story. I don't know who the author is, but it's a pretty good book. And it's true. It's like, the words that you are around and the words that you speak, they do either make or break you. And when you are around that negativity—and sometimes you can't help it. Sometimes you work with someone, and you see someone every day and they're just really a downer. But that's where you have to kind of dig deep and control the way you respond.Scott: Exactly. And when you get yourself together, the more you are in tune with your life and the more balanced you are, the more that you will start to attract. I was telling Michelle this, that when you do that, you're going to become a magnet. And people magnetize towards you that are people that love you, and people magnetize [00:20:29 who are do] people that hate you. And the responses are so different. You get people that love you, and realistically, you can't get away from them because they want more and more from you, and you get people that hate you, and they'll snub you, and walk away, or talk bad about you.Michelle: Yeah, you've kind of said, too, that when you start that positive journey in making strides for your health or trying to establish healthier habits in your lifestyle, you get people who kind of want to pull from you because they want a piece of that too. And you're a little bit stronger than they are, or you've got people who kind of… they're not so happy because it, maybe, makes them aware that they've got something that they should probably change, you know, they want to change. So, those are the people that kind of start hating on you. You know, you're going to get it both ways.Scott: And when we go places with Michelle, it's like, when she's in balance, and everything is feeling good—and that's the majority of the time, it's like, we get people that just magnetize towards her, in the stores that we go to, and they want interesting information, they want topics, they want tips. Just because we did some time on TV, they know us a little bit better. And it takes so much time out of our day sometimes, and I like to push it on through, but she magnetizes people that really and truly want part of what she has, or you see people that walk by us and kind of give us a look kind of like, “Eh, who are you?” So, it kind of feeds both ways.Michelle: Yeah. And I think having a positive attitude makes me want to engage with people as well. So—Scott: It does.Michelle: —there are those times that you tell me to just sit in the car while you run in and out. [laugh].Scott: That's right, I tell her, I say, “We only got 10 minutes, I'm going to go in here, I'm going to get this handled, and I'm going to go.” Okay because I like to say, “Hi, bye,” but I'm not wanting to overly engage because usually, I've got a time schedule to keep.Michelle: There you go. So, we've got another energy drainer. Why don't you tell us about this one?Scott: You know, this is about—Michelle: Saying yes to so much.Scott: That's right. And realistically, it's like, everybody wants to please people. So, when people want your time, when they want your volunteerism, when they want your help, we all want to say yes because we want to be a pleaser.Michelle: We want to be part of the solution.Scott: Right. We want to help people get through something. And it's so hard that realistically, you just have to stop sometime and say, “Okay. Can I really achieve this? Is this going to put me over the top? Do I really have time to do this?” And you have to say no, sometimes.Michelle: Yeah, you have to guard your time. And just remember that the opinions of others doesn't define you. And you remind me of that all the time because I want to say yes to people. I want to give. I want to help other people. But sometimes I don't reserve what I need to for my own self-growth.Scott: Exactly.Michelle: And I remember when I first started practicing it—I don't know if I'll ever master it, but I try—but I know the kids were little, and a parent asked for me to volunteer for something in a classroom, and it was the first time that I thought, “I'm going to practice saying no,” and it didn't really go over all that well. And I threw it back in her lap, I guess, and she was kind of offended, even though it was nice about it. And it's never easy. So, I think that's just an ongoing thing that I'm learning to practice. But it does; it pulls you in so many directions, and it can drain you of your energy.Scott: Oh, exactly because you'll get stressed out because you took on too much.Michelle: Yeah there are ways to say, “You know what, thank you so much for thinking of me, but I don't think that's going to work out right now.” You don't have to just do a hardcore, “No.” Or, “Heck no.” You can—Scott: Right.Michelle: —be, you know—Scott: Diplomatic.Michelle: Yeah, diplomatic. And it's very awkward at times, even being diplomatic.Scott: It is. Definitely.Michelle: I'd rather say no through text than I would face. [laugh]. So, you do. You have to guard your time. And I think that leads into our next energy drainer and that is not front-loading your day, with self-care in body, mindset, and spirit. Because we get so busy during the day and we can have all of these intentions and then they fall through and at the end of the day you think, “Well, what did I even get to do for myself?” And that can lead to resentment, more fatigue. You think, “I didn't even make any progress today.” But if we can start the beginning of the day doing some sort of self-care that—and I love to start with exercise. In an ideal world, I'd be up at 5 a.m. every day doing my gym time. Sometimes that's not very conducive, especially if I have an early morning commitment of some sort. But I do like to do that. That's one of the things that I feel like it sets those feel-good hormones, those endorphins in the right direction, and I'm able to think clearly through the day. And you, you start the day with reading, and meditating, and saying a prayer. And you're very consistent with that.Scott: But I have to be because I feel like if I don't get started off in the right boat, somewhere down the road, when the day gets overwhelming, I feel off, you know? I feel like my energy isn't there, my motivation isn't there, even just a little saddened sometimes. So, realistically, it's like, I need to take that time in the morning to start my day with who I'm going to be.Michelle: Yeah, I mean, I do think that there's a lot to that. It could be something just as simple as reading something inspirational, taking a moment to just be grateful for something, moving your body. You don't even have to go anywhere, just move for five minutes, stretch, anything like that. And then start the day with something healthy, start the day with a good hydration, something like that. It's pretty pivotal in the direction that it can take you. So, there you go; those are our energy drainers. And one of, I guess, the overlooked things that could be included in that morning routine would be making sure that you have your day planned out the night before.Scott: Yeah.Michelle: I don't know if that's an evening routine, or if that's a morning routine, but they kind of like, merge together.Scott: They do they really do because if for some reason you didn't get your clothes cleaned, you didn't prepare meals the night before, you don't have your water—I fill my water jug every night, almost every single time because I like cold water.Michelle: And I don't, and I don't like cold water. I don't fill my water jug and I end up drinking yours. [laugh].Scott: Exactly. That's what always happens, unfortunately. But those are some of the small things I put into place because I know if I do that, then the next day is going to at least start pretty well.Michelle: Yeah, exactly. So, I think that if we are mindful of these energy drainers, and we know, kind of, the impact that they can have on our lives, it just helps us to be better prepared, so that we can shift accordingly. And that doesn't say that we're going to live a life of perfection. But being mindful, that's huge.Scott: Yeah, and I think at least it helps you identify them maybe before they come, and how you're going to handle them.Michelle: Exactly. So, three tips that we want to leave our listeners with today—and we really do appreciate you listening to our insights on energy draining—that we want to leave you with: setting personal boundaries for yourself that you will and will not allow in your life. That's huge because that gives you kind of an automatic roadmap to follow.Scott: And I think one of the most important ones for me is scheduling time for yourself and holding those appointments. Don't let anybody get in your way. Don't let the kids, the dog, the cat, a client, anybody take your time because that time is valuable to your balance.Michelle: You don't have to say, “Oh, I'm getting my hair done,” or, “Oh, I'm going to take a nap,” or whatever that appointment time is with yourself, you can just say, “I'm sorry, I already have an appointment at that time.” It can be that simple. I think the third one we want to leave you with, too, is to have a saying, or an affirmation, or some sort of quote that can help you get back onto task if you feel yourself thrown off during the day. Sometimes all you need is a simple reminder to just help you refocus.Michelle: Elements of living a healthy lifestyle come in various forms. Sometimes we don't have all the answers we need, and sometimes we don't even know that we have a need until we have important discussions.Scott: That's the inspiration behind why and what we do with Totality Living Well and helping others live a life of true balance in body, mindset, and spirit.Michelle: We love hearing your comments, questions, and feedback as you navigate your own health journey. We're grateful that you've taken this time to join us. You can keep up with the latest on the podcast through Apple, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you choose to listen to podcasts.Scott: You can also follow us on Facebook or Instagram by following Totality Living Well.Michelle: And check out our website totalitylivingwell.com for other tips and customized health programs available.Scott: We'll see you next time.Michelle: Remember, keep your health front and center. It's priceless. In great health, always.

In this episode of Totality Living Well, Scott and Michelle introduce themselves and how they came to be health coaches in Knoxville, Tennessee.  Scott and Michelle began their health journeys early in life.  Scott remembers meeting Arnold Schwarzenegger and admiring his bodybuilding as much as his ballet training.  Michelle questioned everything as a kid. She wanted to figure out why her family members suffered from diabetes and heart conditions. She even questioned what lunch ladies were serving her in school, which led to some awkward conversations. Having lived in both Colorado and Tennessee, Scott and Michelle acknowledge the health gaps between Western and Southern America. The couple discuss how their love story intertwined with their health and business goals. Ebbs and flows are a part of everyone's lifestyle. When your healthy habits are right on track, Michelle says that's when real life will set you off balance. As an adult, parent, and businesswoman, she's been there and survived.  TranscriptMichelle: Welcome to the Totality Living Well podcast where we probe into the nitty-gritty aspects of health: the good, the offbeat, and even the controversial things that aren't always discussed. Whether you've had a long-standing curiosity or simply want to know more about a topic, we're here to explore the solutions and answers to empower you in body, mindset, and spirit.Scott: Hey guys, Scott and Michelle Williams here. Healthy living consultants, certified in nutrition fitness and neuromuscular massage.Michelle: We're parents, business owners, and understand the challenges that life can bring with keeping the elements of your own health on track while ensuring that the kids, parents, pets, and loved ones in your life are also taken care of with the resources they need for health and longevity.Scott: We're so glad you joined us.Michelle: Welcome listeners to the introductory Totality Living Well podcast. My name is Michelle Williams, and I am joined today by my husband Scott Williams. We are co-owners of Totality Living Well, a health and wellness company based out of Knoxville, Tennessee. And we are stepping into the podcast world to share our life experiences and expertise in health and wellness, and we are so honored that you have chosen to listen to our first episode.Scott: Thank you for joining us today. We're excited to talk a little bit about who we are and how we came about. Michelle and I met here in Knoxville about seven years ago, and we both were looking at, just, the community and basically what we felt was missing here. And basically just the concepts of health and wellness, and how people actually looked at this community and health and wellness, both coming from a different geographical area of the country. And we both looked here and said, “Wow, we could really do some great things here.”Michelle: Yeah, one of the things that we noticed, too, that the idea of health and wellness for a lot of people entailed getting a prescription filled, and then going to grab their salad at a fast-food restaurant, and maybe just doing a little bit of something here and there—mowing the yard for a little exercise. And we wanted to introduce people to a way of living that we had grown accustomed to, especially out in the West. We each came from Colorado, where it's pretty much a health mecca, but I guess we've always lived a life of health and wellness. So, Scott, why don't you just share with everybody how you got started?Scott: Yeah, when I was a young kid—I actually grew up in the Midwest, I mean Indiana, and up there was meat and potato country. They did three vegetables and boiled them to death and that was about it. But once I moved out to Colorado, I saw just a little bit more about how to treat your body, really. And then I got an opportunity. My father took me to an early contest of Arnold Schwarzenegger in Columbus, Ohio. So, I got to meet Arnold initially and was very inspired by him. But then also for people that are of our age range, I also got to meet a gentleman named Jack LaLanne. And Jack LaLanne was an icon of health wellness in the early 1900s, and he was just very inspiring. And the guy was probably in his 80s at that point in time, was strong as a house. And he just gave me advice, and he said, basically when it came to nutrition, he said he made it and he said if it came in packages, he didn't buy it. It was fruits and vegetables, if he wanted pasta, he made his own pasta, if he wanted bread, he made his own bread. He said, “You've got to stay away from the additives that are out there.” And he says that's the way for him on how he was able to keep himself in such a great condition of health and wellness. Which, you know, it went back for me as a young teenager, and I was so inspired by that. I was like, okay, right away, I went home, and it's like, I'm going to have better eating habits, I'm going to hit the gym, I'm going to exercise, I'm going to take care of myself, and just continue that the way that was, basically. And I just really got inspired by that. And I decided I wanted to help others as well.Michelle: So, Jack LaLanne asked you a question when he first met you, that actually was a life-changing question. And I ask that, a lot, of my first-time clients, too, and that question was, “How frequently do you poop, son?” [laughs].Scott: [laughs]. Exactly. And it's all about the fact is when Jack, his motto was when you ate, you should go to the bathroom. You should poop within 15 to 20 minutes after every time you eat. And, basically, if you're not doing that, then your system is not working properly.Michelle: Yeah and I think so many people, just when it comes to digestion like that, that's something that they don't really even address or think about the frequency. So, the way you eat and the way you move, all of that not only affects your digestion for the better but it also, it helps with cellular turnover and all of that. And that's just—it all fits together, and I think you saw that at an early age.Scott: Yeah, definitely. It changed my life in the way I was doing things, was before I was eating fast food, I was going out, I was doing stuff like that, and probably I didn't have very good bowel movements at that point in time. But once I got on a health train, but more vegetables in my life, and more fruits, and more things that—it made me feel so much better energetically. And it also made me just perform better as a kid. I could think better in school, I could perform better in sports. It just all around made me a better person in that way.Michelle: And then you got to meet Arnold again after you started walking that healthy lifestyle. So, tell us a little bit about that.Scott: Yeah, I mean, I got to meet Arnold a second time there. And Arnold was just such an inspiration because even though he was a bodybuilder, and everybody knew him for his muscle mass, he still was iconic because he was doing things that people didn't even think about. Arnold did ballet. And if you can believe the fact that a gentleman that size actually did ballet because, at that point in time, they didn't have any formal yoga, they didn't have a lot of formal stretching ideas. But he did ballet, which opened his body up, to be able to keep him injury free, to keep him flexible, and to be able to train harder and still care for his body in that way.Michelle: It's almost like a lot of those principles and that line of thinking is starting to come around and be more widely received, and even taught now, which is kind of cool because both of those guys were just so iconic and before their time. They just set the tone in the bar for health and wellness.Michelle: It's really cool that that all led to your next steps. And that's how you got started with your education.Scott: Yeah, so I guess basically, from that point on, I just knew that I wanted to help people. I dabbled in a couple different types of jobs, and things just weren't right for me. So, I basically knew that through personal training, through nutritional consulting, and then also 10 years, 15 years later, I went on and did neuromuscular massage work and trained in that because I started seeing the benefits of helping people that had injuries, helping people stay away from injuries, and helping people get through pain that they didn't even know they had, and how they could take that and get that out of their lives so that they actually could physically move because people would say, “I just can't exercise because my back hurts too bad.” “I can't exercise because I've got this bad neck.” But if you found a way to actually help people change that, that didn't take any effort, necessarily, for them, except for to lay on the table and actually get work done on them, and then to find out what the possibilities were. And then that always opened the door for me, too. People will say, “Well, how should I eat?” Or, “How many days a week, do you think I need to exercise?” So, basically, we could get them healthy on the table, we could change the mindset that they had. And then they start inching into interest in other realms of taking care of themselves.Michelle: And then at one point, you started helping people move, and you had this cool idea. Tell us a little bit about what you did.Scott: Yeah, so actually, um, when I was a young teenager, I decided that I was tired of the large gym scenes and all the hype about it—because all they wanted to do in the gyms were sell memberships, sell memberships, and then hope people didn't show up. Because if people didn't show up, they could keep selling memberships. If everybody showed up, they would be over-occupancy. So, I thought about it and I was talking to one of my clients at the time, and I said, “I got this great idea.” And she was a really sweet lady. She was an attorney, I think, in her probably late 50s. I had helped her—when she came to me she had a hard time lifting things. Her and her husband—I mean, her husband was like a big marathoner and she was having a hard time keeping up with him. And basically, I got her to the point where she was curling 25-pound dumbbells, and she was able to go on hikes with her husband at the end of the day and keep up with him. And so she was so excited that she wanted to help me in any way possible. So, I said, “Okay, this is my idea.” So, she said, “You know what? Come see my banker.” So, what I did in the early 90s, basically, was I started a mobile gym. So, I took a 35-foot school bus, renovated it, put equipment into it, stereo system, lights, everything you could do, and then I rolled around to businesses and homes, and I trained people in the Denver Metro area.Michelle: I love that story and I think just—I love your heart too. Of course, I'm married to you, but you've got a great heart. And then after you did that little journey with the bus, I like what you did with the bus.Scott: Well, so at that point time, when I decided to park the bus—the hard thing about the bus was the metro area was getting too busy, it was hard to get around, and truly, I needed a crew of buses. I needed five to be around different places at different locations for when people needed to be trained. So, I decided to park that situation and I got out of it, and actually got myself outdoors a little bit more. So, while I was sitting on this bus, I didn't know what to do, I thought I bought—I tried to sell it, nobody was really that interested in it. And then someone had called me up and they said, “Hey, we're really interested in your bus. We saw it.” That thing. And so basically, they came over to look at it and ended up being a family. And they were basically, like, living out of a tent. And they wanted to purchase the bus so they could actually live out of it.Michelle: I love it. And I love how your heart speaks through all of that. And I think that's part of the reason that we started working together, too. We met in Knoxville, Tennessee, after coming out here from Colorado, and you were trying to get your business up and running, and my professional background for so many years had been in marketing. And after we had become friends, I said, “Hey, let me just try pitching you to a couple of these TV stations and see what happens.” I said, “But the first thing that we need to do is, I want you to start with one word that we're going to base your whole media campaign on, your publicity.” And I said, “Take a few days, that's all you got to do.” And because this is an important word, and we need to really think carefully about that. And you said, “I don't have to think. I know my word.” I said, “What is that word?” You said, “Integrity.” I think I fell in love with you that day. [laughs]. I was like this guy really not only walks this walk, but he's got heart behind it. So, it was pretty easy to fall in love with you after that, and to start a business, and sharing our stories together and how they paralleled.Scott: You know, and I think that it was a great experience that we fell in love at that point in time. And by talking to you, I want you to tell them a little bit about your story and what drew you into health and wellness.Michelle: Okay, so I am 52. And so back in the '70s, we did not have internet, we did not have all of this immediate access to information. We had to go to the library and look things up or read the encyclopedias, and what you got from those encyclopedias, that was what you're going to get. And I was always interested in healthy eating just from a young age and noticed that a lot of my relatives kept coming down with the same types of illnesses, diabetes, gallbladder problems, heart disease, high cholesterol. Just, you name it and it was just kind of the norm. And I started thinking, “Why? Why does everybody get that when they get older?” And it was my maternal grandmother who came down with gallbladder disease. And I thought, “Well, how does that happen? What does the gallbladder do?” So, I was seven and started researching what the gallbladder did. And I learned that it metabolizes fats. And then I started looking at what we had in our foods in the way of fats, and then how we kind of started eating a lot of fats with just everything we did, a lot of processed foods. And by the time I was in fourth grade, I thought, “Well, what's it going to be like if I take 30 days, and go without sugar?” Just 30 days, no sugar at all. And then at the end of that 30 days, just binge on sugar, and go to McDonald's, and have a Sprite, and have a Big Mac, and an apple pie, or an ice cream, or anything like that. And my mom thought it was kind of funny. And so I started reading the labels. And that became not so funny to her because I was questioning everything. And then at school—I was in fourth grade—started asking the lunch ladies about what kind of sugar was in their food and nobody could tell me so I started boycotting school food. And it really wasn't funny when the principal called to meet with my mom because nobody else wanted to eat school lunch. And so that was that weird time period where everybody was like, “I want to be a movie star. I want to be a nurse, I want to be a teacher. I want to be—” anything but a nutritionist and I wanted to be a nutritionist. So, it was a fun thing for me and my grandfather. After he retired from the military, he had a huge garden in Tennessee—or in  Mississippi, rather. So, I would help him with that big garden and I learned a lot about organic gardening, which is still a big passion today with our garden, that you get to till for me every year.Scott: Of course I do.Michelle: You love me. [laughs].Scott: I do love you. That's the reason I do it.Michelle: But we do grow some superfoods. And so anyway, that was the beginning of that. And then fast forward to when I could go to college. And I did get a scholarship to a great school that had a great nutrition program. I was 17, and I chose communication of all things. But it was always a passion of mine and came back to it full circle. I now have all of the certifications in that. And I was really interested in youth nutrition when the boys were first born, and wanted to get them off to a good start. So, that was the first big interest and the first certification that I had to help them. And you and I started talking, and we realized that all generations needed good nutrition. And then I also had just my passion, hobby of running and exercising, and then I just fell in love with weight training after I met you. So, there's our story.Scott: And that's great. It's one of those things that you just evolve through life, and you really and truly grow, and you add more tools to the toolbox as you go along. And that's the nice thing about it, being a little bit more of a seasoned professional in this business is, the more people you touch and the more clients that you have, the more challenges you've seen, and the more things that you can teach them on how to apply those challenges. And all of us have challenges in life. Even today, we have our own challenges. But you have to find and look at what types of things will actually help you. And there's a lot of professionals out there, and they'll say, “You just follow my checklist. You do this, this, and this. You do it this way and you're going to have the perfect body, you're going to have the perfect life, you're going to have the perfect kids, you're going to have the perfect job.” But realistically, that doesn't work that way. Nobody out there has that perfection, and that might have worked for one individual, but that doesn't work for other people, and so you just cannot follow a standard out there. And so those are some of the things that we want to help dive into.Michelle: Yeah. And we really do take a comprehensive approach to health and wellness. And it's more than just your body which, that's a lot of what brought us into our health journey was just the interest in how movement, and nutrition, and flexibility, and all of that adds together. But then there's so much more to health. And the component of your mindset, and what you tell yourself, and the way you think, and then also your spirit. And that's what differentiates us from animals, and I think a lot of times that's overlooked with people looking at a comprehensive health and wellness program. So, when we started Totality, we said that it's going to be Totality Living Well, in body, mindset, and spirit. So, in this podcast that we are about to pursue, we're excited to just delve into all kinds of topics that maybe aren't always first and foremost in the media, or social media, or in the articles. And we're going to look at some things that can be practical in helping people move along. And I know that as a certified youth nutrition specialist, there have been many, many days with our now grown—almost grown sons who are 18 and 16, where I was like, “Do I have to really feed them today? [laughs]. It's kind of a pain. I'm getting tired of this.” And so, as parents and as business owners, we understand the challenges, and we understand real life, and we're not going to try to act like we know it all because we don't, and we are looking forward to talking with experts in different areas of health and learning from them, but then also sharing what we have learned with our listeners, and with the goal of just empowering all of you in your health journey, so you can live a quality life.Scott: And truly, that's what it's about. It's really at the end of the day, when people talk about what they want to do, so many people say, “I'm going to work hard for 30 years, 40 years, and then when I retire, everything's going to be great.” Well, you know, it really depends on what you do when you take care of yourself along the way because you can't wait until you're 55, 60 years old to start taking care of yourself. Because you'll realize the fact that, “Oh, wow, this isn't what I remember.”Michelle: Yeah. And that's one of the first things that I tell my clients. Strap in because you're about to go into a ride of your life. As soon as you commit to really taking the reins on your health, real life is going to happen like never before. And that's going to be anything from financial issues, to relationship issues, to illness. I mean, it can be anything. So, it's about walking mindfully through all of the hurdles and the challenges. And so I'm really excited about some of the things that we've got in store.Scott: I am too. And we're going to look at it from both angles because Michelle works a lot with females; I work a lot with males. And just getting a feel for what both people struggle with throughout life, and their tug of war, I would say, between taking care of themselves and taking care of their family.Michelle: Yeah. And one of the things that we want to do with our podcast, each time that we have one, is to leave our listeners with three tips. And so we started brainstorming, what could we do in this introductory podcast for three tips?And the first one is to practice mindfulness in your life with your health, but always remembering that your health is not just about your body alone. It is the body, mindset, and spirit. And I think when you do take that comprehensive view of your health, it really opens your eyes to what you can be doing for yourself.Scott: And our second step is really about self-care. It's vital. In order to take care of others, you got to take care of yourself first because if you put yourself on the back burner all the time, between your kids, your job, your husband, anything, you're going to wear yourself down. And when you wear yourself down, you're not good for anybody else.Michelle: Yeah. And then the third one, too, it's just, don't overcomplicate the journey. And I think that that comes when we do listen to so many plans that have been pre-mapped out for us. It's just like, “I've got to execute this perfectly, or it's a wash.” And it's about ebbing and flowing, and simplifying it, and just focusing on a couple of things. So, I'm very excited about some of the things that we're going to be introducing to our listeners.And we just want to thank you so much for taking the time to learn who we are and what we stand for. And we invite you to tune into our next podcast where we're going to be expanding upon the three tips that we just mentioned, and give you some valuable insights that we've discovered as health professionals in walking our lives of health.Michelle: Elements of living a healthy lifestyle come in various forms. Sometimes we don't have all the answers we need, and sometimes we don't even know that we have a need until we have important discussions.Scott: That's the inspiration behind why and what we do with Totality Living Well and helping others live a life of true balance in body, mindset, and spirit.Michelle: We love hearing your comments, questions, and feedback as you navigate your own health journey. We're grateful that you've taken this time to join us. You can keep up with the latest on the podcast through Apple, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you choose to listen to podcasts.Scott: You can also follow us on Facebook or Instagram by following Totality Living Well.Michelle: And check out our website totalitylivingwell.com for other tips and customized health programs available.Scott: We'll see you next time.Michelle: Remember, keep your health front and center. It's priceless. In great health, always.

Mike and Teeg had a podcast back before podcasts were cool – The Fish Schtick, a fishing podcast with Brian Bennett from MoldyChum.com.Now, Mike hosts Wild & Exposed – an awesome podcast for people who are interested in wildlife, photography, and for sure wildlife photography.Mike sent an amazing case of candy, and we dig into it today. We don’t try it all, but we give away a giant gummy hamburger that Mike sent to us.First candy is the Super Cola. Super Japanese. Smells like a cleaning product. Michelle spits it out immediately. Ryan is shocked. Tastes like a cleaning product at first. You have to power through that, and then it’s like having flat generic cola.Ryan, “It’s like an extreme lemon drop dipped in Lysol.”Michelle, “I can’t remember the last time candy caused physical pain.”Ryan, “On some of the trips we go on, you’re in the field for 10 or 15 days. If I had this, I’d gut through it on those trips because you get so hungry for sugar.”This candy came from an Asian market in Chicago. It’s like a bunch of little food trucks, but inside. You order by picture. But in addition to that they have a grocery store, and they have these crazy candy aisles. So Mike went through there, and got the funkiest stuff he could find.10 years ago, Mike & Teeg shot a TV pilot. Michelle helped with one of the early versions. Randy Joe Heaven, Marcia Rubin were the co-hosts.We were going to fish 50 states in 50 days, you’d see it as it’s being made with daily “webisodes.” There would be events every three days or so, so people could be PART of the show. We were before our time – the world wasn’t ready for that kind of thing. We had some network offers but they were bad offers.We were going to start in Hawaii and end in Alaska.The pilot: https://vimeo.com/4668897?fbclid=IwAR3wGAAyGz5ZUKQ8IeoZWKUcpzUzCjh3f_4Y12rcxOAMqe6Tu39-W5i8XYUDifferent Edit: https://vimeo.com/9728709Mike has shot other pilots and full shows – but rather than digging into that, we dug into one of his most recent adventures. He rebuilt a 1987 Toyota truck that he always loved. Then he drove the Al-Can highway from Denver to Anchorage by way of Yellowstone … that’s like 3500 miles. First breakdown happened by the time they reached Yellowstone.Canada is just so vast … and by the time you get to Alaska, you still have 10 hours to drive. You don’t see other people. You might see one car an hour up in the Yukon.There are two routes, they did the northern route because it has more settlements. The other way is prettier, but they wanted to play it safer with this old vehicle.They thought they’d camp along the way, but not knowing if it would have been safe, they ended up staying in little hotels.Mike’s advice: if you ever do it, give yourself three weeks minimum, one-way.Jumping into Candy #2 – another Michael Mauro find. Japanese Flower Kiss Candy. The wrappers are all different colors, but the candy inside all seems to be the same. This is Grandma candy dish candy. It’s good. It’s kind of like the strawberry wrapped hard candies. Fruity and good. Nice. Sweet. Sweeter than a lot of Asian candy. Like American candy sweet.Michelle: “I’ll carry these in my purse in about 20 years.”Mike: “Kind of like grapefruit, passion fruit, lychee.”Ryan: “Too bad it’s not Durian!”Mike started out in biology, and he tells his origin story at Mesa Verde National Park. He chaperoned a photographer in the back country.The gear changed a lot, he was shooting just stills when he went to Antarctica but back then, carried a mix of film and digital.Going to Antarctica on a Russian icebreaker crossing the Drake Passage, one of the roughest pieces of sea in the world. The crew didn’t speak English, so Mike just watched their faces “to see if they seemed nervous.”There were 110 or 120 people on the ship, and the first morning, only 10 showed up for breakfast. The seas are so rough that everyone has an upset stomach. Walking down the halls was like being a pinball in a pinball machine. Laying down in your bunk and looking out the window, you’d see sky … then sea … sky … then sea.Mike was hired not just to take photos there, but to teach people on the way there during the over-seas passage how to take good photos. He was a presenter.You’d expect Antarctica to be all ice. In reality, you see beaches, cobblestones, rocks, grass. The ship would be in the bay, and they’d run ashore in inflatable Zodiac rafts. They photographed all kinds of penguins, seals, whales and birds like cormorants.Since those animals see so few humans, they’re not afraid of us. But the fur seals will run you down.Beaches were surrounded in ice, and glaciers and icebergs calved off all the time. You could gauge if it was a big enough piece of ice to get you wet by if the penguins would run.Teeg can’t resist post-holiday candy, so Teeg had to get us into some after-Easter super discount candy.Russell Stover Truffle Eggs and Russell Stover Sours Watermelon Eggs.The Truffle Eggs are of course delicious.The Sours … it’s impossible to imagine that any company made this with the intention of producing pleasure.Ryan: “This is uncool. It’s white chocolate with sour watermelon flavor, but it’s extremely gross.”Michael: “THE AFTERTASTE!”Ryan: “It’s like someone said, ‘Hey, I got an idea!’ And now they’re fired.”Michelle: “You know how Super Cola started disgusting and then got OK? This starts OK and then gets awful.”Teeg starts out liking it … keeps on liking it … conversation about potted meat … STRUCK BY ABHORRANT AFTER TASTE comes later, and Teeg can barely talk.Meanwhile, Mike talks about eating food in Africa. “You never know what you’re eating. It’s some sort of meat in a sauce with noodles or something.”He gets sick every time he’s in Africa … but he doesn’t think it’s from the food. He thinks it’s from weird germs over there.Eating zoo animals: “I had elephant and I didn’t like it. They cherish it. It was dried meat. I wouldn’t search it out, but I’d eat it if I was really hungry.”The best eating is in Argentina. The best meat in the world.But Mike also lives in Alaska part of the time, so he eats moose, elk and bear. He doesn’t hunt bear, but he gets it from people. Favorite is moose. If you like bison, you’d like moose. It’s the most natural eating.Mike hung out with Sean James, the guy from the myselfreliance YouTube channel for a week. Sean follows the footsteps of Dick Proenneke. He has a cabin out in the wilderness of Alaska.Last show we had Teeg’s brother Ben on, he has the Benstown YouTube channel, he built a cabin and does antique tool restoration.Mike’s taken an interest to watching YouTube channels about guys building tiny experimental planes, and he’s had his share of time flying into the back country in small planes, landing on skis or floats.We rate the candy, talk about Sporting Dog Podcast, and Mike teases a potential future show: our friend Travis Ford recently shot a documentary about a chocolate maker in Guatemala.

This week on CTL, host MacKenzie Koppa has a fun chat with Leeann Dearing and Michelle Fortin, the dynamic comedy duo known simply as Leeann & Michelle. Both wives and mothers having backgrounds in acting and television, Leeann and Michelle are passionate about using comedy to bring a smile to the faces of those in their audience. We think their conversation with MacKenzie will do that for you, as well! How Michelle and Leeann met and immediately formed a deep friendship How they started turning their parodies and sketches into a business The way their backgrounds helped them have success What got Leeann and Michelle into doing Enneagram type comedy What it is like playing their own types as well as the others How they each handle filming in public locations Michelle talks about how they divide up the work MacKenzie talks about the fun she remembers from her time in a theatre troupe Michelle and Leeann try to narrow down their videos to one favorite Leeann talks about what it is like doing live shows What it has been like creating content during the corona crisis The value of getting feedback in creating content A typical day for Leeann and Michelle in their own families and work Current Lovelies- Leeann: having an impromptu “distance picnic” with Michelle and their kids Michelle: painting rocks with her kids and placing them around the neighborhood for others to find Resources Mentioned- Books: (Amazon affiliate links are used in this content.) The Road Back to You by Ian Crohn The Honest Enneagram by Sarajane Case Movies: Gone with the Wind The Sound of Music The King and I Dumb and Dumber Podcasts: Typology Jen Hatmaker The Popcast The Dearing Studio Find Leeann and Michelle- You can find Leeann and Michelle on their YouTube Channel Leeann & Michelle and their website LeeannandMichelle.com. You can also follow them on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Find MacKenzie- You can find MacKenzie Koppa on Instagram, Facebook, and the CTL Facebook Group, of course! Join us on Patreon at Patreon.com/CultivatingtheLovely. Thanks to Our Sponsors- Today’s episode of Cultivating the Lovely is sponsored by Theragun. Try Theragun risk-free for 30 days with this special offer for CTL listeners. Go to Theragun.com/lovely to get up to $150 off your device. This episode of Cultivating the Lovely is brought to you by Literati. For a limited time, go to Literati.com/lovely for 25% OFF your first two orders.

Zach chats with Michelle Kim, co-founder and CEO of Awaken, in this episode centered around effectively creating inclusive leadership cultures. Michelle shares her journey into social justice work with us, including what led to the creation of Awaken, and she explains why she and her organization prioritize the needs of the most marginalized people in the room.Connect with Michelle - she's on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn!Check out Awaken's website and social media pages! Twitter, IG, FB, LinkedInYou can read Awaken's Medium blog by clicking here.Want to learn more about Build Tech We Trust? Here's their website and Twitter!Click here to read the Salon piece mentioned in the show.Visit our website!TRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, everybody? It's Zach. Yes, again, it's me. Your boy, your host, your friend, your co-worker--maybe your co-worker, I don't know. If you work with me you know that I have this podcast, and, I mean, hopefully if you're checking it out, you know, hopefully you're having a good time. Shout-out to you. I'm not gonna say your name, but you know I'm talking to you. What's up? Look, you know what we do. We serve to amplify the voices of black and brown people at work, and we do that by talking to black and brown people in a variety of spaces, right? So these could be executives, public servants, activists, creatives, entrepreneurs, anybody, and we try to have these conversations in approachable and authentic ways, centering black and brown and otherwise underrepresented experiences and perspectives at work, and today we have with us a very special guest, Michelle Kim. Michelle is the founder and CEO of Awaken, a firm that empowers leaders and teams to lead inclusively and authentically through modern interactive and action-oriented workshops. Prior to Awaken, she had a successful consulting career working with C-suite and VP-level executives at high-performing companies around the world, helping them set ambitious business goals and align their teams to achieve them. While working in management consulting and technology start-ups, she experienced and validated first-hand the urgent need for modern, up-to-date education that empowers leaders to be more empathetic, agile, and culturally aware. Come on, now. Culturally aware. Pay attention. Michelle's experience in organizational change management, strategic goal setting and social justice activism set the groundwork for Awaken's multi-disciplinary and action-oriented learning programs. As an immigrant queer woman of color, Michelle has been a life-long social justice activist and community organizer. Michelle, what's going on? Welcome to the show.Michelle: Hey, thank you for having me. I'm so honored.[yay sfx]Zach: No doubt. It's a pleasure. It's a pleasure. Michelle: Those are the sound effects that you told me about. [laughing]Zach: Yes, yes. So for those who are newer to the show, I have a soundboard. I have all types of sounds on here, you know what I'm saying? You know, we add a few things from time to time, and, you know, just enjoy yourself. If you're new to this space, sit back, grab something to drink--it doesn't have to be alcoholic, you know? I respect your choices, your boundaries. But enjoy the soundscapes that are gonna be coming to you in this episode and many more to come.Michelle: I love the production.Zach: You know what? We gotta add a little bit of razzmatazz, just from time to time. So let's do this. You know, I gave a little bit of an intro, but for those of us who don't know you, would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself?Michelle: Sure. Hi, everyone. Thanks for having me. Thanks, Zach, for the intro. I think you covered a lot in my intro, but I think something that some people might be familiar with is actually my writing. I am an [?] writer. That's how I communicate my thoughts and perspectives to the world, in addition to facilitating workshops and doing speaking like this one or on stages all over the country. My passion is in really closing the gap between how we talk about social justice in our society today and how, you know, quote-unquote diversity and inclusion gets done, and quickly. So I think that there's a lot of work that we can do to help bridge the gap in understanding and awareness of how we communicate with each other. And also a fun fact about me is I'm a Virgo.Zach: Shout-out to Virgos. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. You said you're a Virgo?Michelle: I'm a Virgo.Zach: Man, shout-out to the Virgos one time. I'm also a Virgo. [air horns sfx] You know what I'm saying? They don't know about us like that. But please, tell us about your Virgoness.Michelle: You know, a lot of my friends who know me closely know my tendencies to be highly critical, but I also think that's what--I think being critical gets a bad rep, but I actually think that being critical is what makes me decent at my job. I also think that I have perfectionist tendencies, which I don't think is healthy, so I'm working on that. I like being organized. I am a huge fan of to-do lists. And I love--my love language is acts of service, so I think that also aligns with me being a Virgo. So I tend to, you know, go overboard when it comes to supporting other people, sometimes to a fault, 'cause I need to prioritize self-care and boundaries and all of that, but I'm not. I'm not perfect at that stuff.Zach: I just feel so--I feel so seen in you talking about yourself.Michelle: [laughing] Good. I'm glad, I'm glad. Virgos unite.Zach: They do. And honestly, like, you know, here we are, two people who over-extend for others sitting down, having a conversation that really helps to amplify one another. Isn't that something? [look at us sfx] Not me, you know what I'm saying?Michelle: That's right.Zach: [laughs] You were about to say something.Michelle: I said "Do you know who else is a Virgo?"Zach: Beyonce.Michelle: Beyonce's a Virgo. So whenever I feel like I need to be [?] about being a Virgo, I look to Beyonce for inspiration.[ow sfx]Zach: I'm right there with you. I mean, if she can do it, certainly I can do it. And, you know, my dad's a Virgo, so shout-out to my dad. He was born on the 6th, I was born on the 4th, and, you know, we're a lot alike. Okay, so yeah. Let's talk a little bit about your inspiration for social justice, and I really want to--'cause social justice is such a broad term. It's often even, like, used as a pejorative these days. So, like, when you say social justice in, like, your history, what does that look like for you?Michelle: That's a great question. My journey into social justice work really began with the lens of being a queer person. You know, I think my journey really started with my coming out. So I came out as queer and bisexual when I was 16. So I was in high school, and I was really confused. I didn't know about, you know, any social justice issues beyond--I think what people were talking about then were women's rights, and, you know, now I understand that to be white women's rights, but we'll get into that more. But when I came out as queer I didn't have a lot of resources, so I was really actively searching for community and support to make sense of who I was [and what I could do about my identity.] I was really fortunate to have found a great support group within my high school that was kind of an underground support group, and through that I found out about this program happening out of UC Santa Barbara where they were doing youth activism summer camp kind of stuff for LGBTQ young people. So that was my entryway into social justice work, and that's where I learned how to organize, how to, you know, stage protests and knowing my rights as a student activist, and that's where I learned about social justice activism and writers who wrote about social justice, like Audre Lorde. So that was my entryway into understanding social justice, is through the frame of my being queer and learning from queer trans activists, also young people, and that's also where I learned about the intersections of being queer and also being a person of color and all of the nuances of the different identities and the intersections of different types of marginalization and oppression and how often times they all come from the same root and source of, you know, patriarchy or white supremacy. So, you know, I'm throwing a lot of [?] here, but really at the end of it, for me social justice is about, you know, understanding that we're all in this struggle together, and in order for us to achieve equity and equality and justice that we need to have solidarity in this frame of social justice.Zach: And so I'm really curious, right? Let me talk to you a little bit about my perspective, it being singular and limited, right? So I don't believe this is the way it is. This has been, like, my perception as I look--a cishet black man, Christian black man, looking across this, like, D&I space, right? Like, I'm seeing, like, different camps and groups, right? So I see this group that is largely white and who--like, they're invited to a lot of the fancy things, but they're not necessarily credentialed other than being in a certain social strata, but they're not really credentialed in any type of lived experience, nor are they credentialed in any specific level of education, but they're credentialed in, like, certain experiences from, like, again, just being in certain spaces, right, that are afforded to them because of their class and race. I then see another group of people that are very much so, like, activists. Like, they're on the street. If they're using social media, it's to mobilize something tangible. It's to affect a change in some type of grassroots community level. And then I see, like, another group that is kind of--like, they're in the corporate space and they're doing a few things, but they're not necessarily really, like, enacting anything beyond whatever the company needs them to do to kind of mitigate litigious risk, but I think--I'm kind of seeing, like, tensions against each of these groups. I'm curious about, like, your perspective, considering your social activist background and the work you do today. Do you see similar camps in the space, and, like, if not, what are you seeing? Do you think I'm oversimplifying kind of, like, the various camps and groups, or, like, what's your perspective on that?Michelle: I don't think you're oversimplifying per se, 'cause I do see what you're saying. I hear you in terms of there being different--because identities [are?] also a different approach to doing diversity and inclusion work inside the workplace. I think--a couple things that I want to clarify in terms of my beliefs is that I don't think anyone can truly call themselves a D&I expert. I certainly don't call myself a D&I expert, because I believe fundamentally diversity and inclusion is about lived experiences, so it's all about how we make sense of our lived experiences in relation to the systems that we inhabit, so I think everybody's an expert in their own lived experience, and I can't ever claim that I'm an expert in your life, right? So I think that's one belief that I have, that we all are experts in our owned lived experiences. And then another belief that I have is that, you know, social justice activism isn't just about being out in the street and marching and protesting. You know, there's a lot of activism happening inside of workplaces today as well through corporate activism, but also just daily acts of survival for a lot of folks, especially black and brown people, underrepresented people of color and trans and queer people inside workplaces. I think what they're doing, just by mere survival and speaking up when they can, is an act of activism. I think there is a greater sense of responsibility that I'd love for D&I professionals to have, whether they're inside or outside of the workplaces, in really making sense of how change happens and pushing the boundaries to serve the most marginalized people in the room. I think that's where my criticality comes in, when you start to talk about mostly white--I think I've seen a lot of white women take up the role of head of D&I. That's where I start to question whether, you know, are they understanding the positionality of being a white person, doing this work inside workplaces, holding a position of power? And, you know, I start to question sort of how change is being [assisted?] inside companies while prioritizing the needs of the most marginalized people. So I do think that people without the social justice frame, as in--you know, I think the root of my education and the foundation of my social justice education that I've gotten from, you know, activists who were organizers at the community level, what they've taught me is that in order for us to enact change, we need community, we need solidarity, and we need to approach everything through the lens of centering the most marginalized people and their needs, 'cause then everybody in-between and all of us will rise together. So that is sort of my approach when it comes to education or policies, whatever organizational design we're talking about. If we can center the most marginalized people, then everybody else will benefit. So that's the social justice framing that I use to approach all of my work, but I think I see some D&I people in the corporate space doing D&I work as if this is a new discipline that's not tied to social justice at all, right? That this is--in a vacuum, this is just about recruiting the most, you know, diverse set of candidates, that it's about retaining those people once they get there, but it's sort of in a vacuum without the understanding of systemic issues and history that has fueled D&I to exist in the first place. I think that's my biggest sort of criticism about how D&I gets done in the corporate space today.Zach: And I get that, right? It resonates with me, which is why I was so excited, because I really enjoyed--like, I've read some of your written work, and of course I follow you on social media. I love what Awaken is doing, right? And really, based on what you're sharing, I'm curious, how does that translate into the work that Awaken does? Because everything you're saying, I'm hearing it, right? But I guess I'm trying to understand--how does that effectively translate in majority-white spaces in the work that--and I'm making an assumption that the spaces that you engage are largely white. If they're not correct me, but from what I'm looking at it seems like the spaces are largely white, and it seems to be that when I talk to other D&I professionals, the subtext of a lot of the work, and even some of the, like, backhanded critique that I've received--because I'm often times received as "Well, you're passionate, but you're not really credentialed, right?" Like, "You're a person of color and you have a certain lived experience, but, you know, you don't have the same foundation that I may have as a quote-unquote D&I expert, so your point of view only goes so far," or it's only limited to the black experience. There seems to be, like, a subtext of "Let's not make people too uncomfortable," but the work that you're talking about in centering underrepresented or the most marginalized, that--I feel as if the argument could be made that you're automatically making other people uncomfortable. So again, just what does all of that look like as it translates into your work with Awaken?Michelle: Yeah, that's a great question. And I'm also so curious about these credentials, right? [both laughing] 'Cause I see these credential programs or certification programs. Like, what are you certifying people for? I'm so curious. I think there are absolutely some skills that we can learn, whether that's facilitation or curriculum development or policy design, that we can get better at, but in terms of understanding other people's lived experiences and the identities that folks hold and the complexities that come with that, I don't know if we can truly ever be credentialed enough to be, you know, discounting other people's experiences and opinions. So that's my perspective on it. And in terms of how our approach translates into our work, you know, I think we can talk about sort of the founding story, why we were created in the first place. So, you know, after having done organizing work when I was in high school and college, I decided to pursue a career in, you know, the for-profit space because I needed to make money, let's be real, and I was told actually by my activist mentors, who have gone onto pursuing social justice careers as career organizers and non-profit folks, that they were also experiencing very sort of similar harm, because even non-profits are predominantly led by white people, right? So I think the issues that we think are non-existent in progressive--quote-unquote "more progressive" spaces, they continue to exist, while folks are not making enough money to make ends meet. So--[straight up sfx]Michelle: [laughs] I love the sound effects. Knowing that and knowing my situation as a--you know, I grew up low-income, and I needed money to support my family. The advice I got from my mentors was "Hey, you can create change in certain spaces." They warned me about the toxic culture, but I went in sort of ignorant about what I was getting myself into. So I also really am grateful for my journey, having started my career in management consulting and in tech. I think I have experienced a lot of different things that I wasn't ready for but I'm grateful for nonetheless. But when I entered in those spaces, I was exposed to and I searched for D&I spaces, right? Because I thought that that was what I knew to be social justice work. So when I joined an employee resource group, I was, you know, disappointed at the level of conversations that were being had around what it means to be inclusive, what it means to be a diverse place, and I was surprised and disappointed and disillusioned by what companies were talking about as D&I was quite surface-level and marketing-oriented rather than real actionable behavioral change or cultural change that were being modeled by leaders of the company. So, you know, I was going through different workshops and trainings and just kept feeling like I was not seeing the level of conversations that actually needed to take place in these spaces, and it felt really safe. It felt safe. It felt white-washed. It felt diluted. As, you know, somebody who was just sitting in the room and constantly challenging the facilitator, I felt like I was doing all of the work. [Zach laughs] And after the [?] is over, you know, unfortunately the burden of re-educating other people who went through the workshop who now thinks that they are quote-unquote "woke" or who say that they checked the box, right? "Okay, we went through this unconscious bias training, so now we're good. Now I'm back to being a progressive person who cares about this issue." [Zach laughs] You know, [it was?] a challenge to really think differently, but the burden of their action, their unchanging behavior, their unawareness, and they're now feeling like they know what they're talking about, falls on the most marginalized people in the room, and I think that was a frustration that kept coming up for me as I was going through different types of trainings, whether that was done by external vendors or internal people, that people weren't pushing people enough, and I genuinely felt the need for a compassionate space for uncomfortable conversations, and that's our mission statement, to create a compassionate space for uncomfortable conversations to developing inclusive leaders and teams, and the way that we do that is by centering the needs of the most marginalized people, meaning we don't pat on ourselves on the back when a workshop goes well from the perspective of a bunch of white men saying that that workshop was great, you know? That may be true, but if, you know, the one black person in the room says that that workshop wasn't good while a bunch of white people say that the workshop was great, we don't pat ourselves on the back for that, right? But if we can support the most marginalized people in the room, you know, in tech and also in many other spaces as predominantly black and brown folks, trans, queer, people of color, if they give us the stamp of approval, if they feel like they were seen and heard and lifted and that they didn't have to do all the work, that's success for us, right? So by designing our curriculum to speak truth to them and to, you know, have that frame of "Can we lessen the burden on people who are the most marginalized in these spaces by saying the things that they can't say because there are too many risks and repercussions that they fear?" That's our job, and I don't think enough D&I practitioners out there are taking that approach, because, you know, if they're internal, their job is at risk. I get that. So I think as a third-party, we coming in--we have a different level of risk that we get to take because we don't have that kind of repercussion that we need to worry about, besides not being able to come back to that place again.Zach: Right. And, I mean, at that point that, you know, they don't let you back, I mean, you already got the bag anyway, so... [cha-ching sfx] You know? Michelle: [laughs] Well, and usually we can come back, because we don't often take on one-off workshops. I think that approach is pretty harmful, and, you know, companies come to us and say, "Hey, we just want to do a one-day, like, [?]." We tend to say no to those engagements because we really believe in delivering impact and working with people who are genuinely interested in real change. So, you know, I think the mistake people make is thinking that meeting people where they're at needs to be done by diluting the message. I don't think that's true. You can meet people where they're at with compassion and criticality. So you don't have to coddle people, but I think you can be compacted and make your content accessible for folks that they understand and they can move along the journey while feeling and embracing some tension and discomfort that comes with challenging their beliefs.Zach: So it's funny, because you see, like, even in, like, our current political tone and tambor today from, like, mainstream media, it's still around, like, the idea of respectability and quote-unquote kindness, kind of pushing against this idea of, like, call-out culture or just, like, keeping it real, like, just saying how things are, and it's interesting, and I hear what you're saying about, like, coddling versus accessibility. Do you have an example of what it looks like to effectively call something for what it is while at the same time making it accessible for folks to actually grasp and understand. Like, I don't think there's enough work that you could do to cater to or mitigate against fragility, but I would love to hear, like, kind of what Awaken does and, like, what that looks like for you.Michelle: Mm-hmm. Hm, let me think of an example. I think that's a great question, and I'd love to be able to contextualize it just a little though with an example. I think--I don't know why this example keeps coming up in my head. I think it's because we're designing a curriculum right now around inclusive interviewing practices, and one of the common questions that comes up is this idea of not lowering the bar and hiring in this sort of notion of meritocracy, and I think, you know, one way to approach that is really sort of making the person who said that feel like they don't know what they're talking about and, you know, calling them racist and all of that... I think is one way. [both laugh] I think another way could be really helping unpack why meritocracy doesn't currently exist, even though that is an ideal that we can strive for together, and how people who are currently in companies today may not have been hired purely based on merit. Zach: And how do you prove that though?Michelle: How do you prove that?Zach: Yeah.Michelle: I think there's a lot of data that actually backs up the claim around how meritocracy doesn't exist. I mean, what we often talk about is that, you know, meritocracy is a concept that was created as a vision that we can all work toward, but we falsely believe that right now there is sort of meritocracy in a sense, but there's lots of data that shows that actually there's a lot of biases in the hiring process, whether it's from the referral stage or, you know, the interview stage or the deliberation stage. I think there's a lot of data that actually shows discrepancies in the ways that we make decisions, and I think, you know, calling that out specifically I think is really helpful. I think the harmful alternative of sort of diluting that fact of, you know, not having meritocracy is that I have sometimes heard, you know, folks explain that to people in a way that actually equates hiring people of color or women as lowering the bar and that being sort of the, you know, unfortunate short-term solution. Like, yeah, but we need to hire more people of color and women, so, you know, we want to make sure that we are getting that quota filled. So I think there's, like, a lot of weird ways of people explaining difficult concepts to make people feel comfortable, because the discomfort in this conversation is the fact that you may not have been hired based on your merit, right? I think that's the tension, is that if we debunk meritocracy, people who have these jobs in higher-paying positions, they are feeling attacked because they feel like they warrant--they didn't get to where they are purely based on merit, and recognizing that they've had privileges that weren't afforded to another demographic groups, I think that in and of itself is the discomfort, and I think a lot of folks have a hard time calling that out, because we're then directly sort of highlighting the fact this may be an awful position that they're in. And I think talking about privilege in general is something that's really difficult for people. It's not an easy topic for any of us to really grapple with, but I think if we can't have those tougher conversations where we are directly highlighting and shining light on the fact that, you know, there are--"Yes, we worked hard, and there are struggles that we didn't have to go through to get to where they are." I think if that conversation doesn't happen, it would be a huge miss.Zach: You know, Michelle, when you and I first spoke, you know--we do our thing, we try to get to know each other first, and then we do the episode. A little bit of background behind the scenes for y'all, but anyway, when you and I first spoke we talked about people of color and that term, right? And we had conversations about Living Corporate and how, you know, we don't really use the term "people of color," we say black and brown. And then you and I had a conversation about how you don't really consider, or you don't count, Asian-American or, like, that space, East Asian, in the "people of color" category. Can you talk to me a little bit more about that?Michelle: Yeah. I think that's a great question. So I think, just to clarify, I do count Asians as a part of the people of color community, but I think there's context that we need to put into place whenever we're using the term. So I think the term people of color is a useful term when we're talking specifically about non-white people in the context of talking about white supremacy and how that impacts all people who are not white who experience racism and other forms of oppression because of their race. Where I don't feel comfortable using the term people of color is when we're discussing specific issues that impact black and brown communities. For example, when we're talking about police brutality or the murders of black trans women, I think it's really important for us to be specific about who we're talking about, because as an East Asian person, I don't have the same type of fear or risk when I'm around police. I think that is really important for us to specify, and I think that understanding around how there are very specific forms of racism, like anti-black racism. I think that clarity is so needed in having this conversation in a more effective way, and also for, you know, Asian-American folks to be able to show up in solidarity with folks who are experiencing very specific forms of marginalization. Zach: I just... you know, one sound we don't have on the soundboard is, like, finger snaps. [snapping fingers] But I'ma put these in there. Yeah, I love it. And it's interesting because, you know, we're moving at the speed of the Internet when it comes to a lot of this stuff, right? And certain things become trendy or become--I don't know. They kind of just catch fire, and I think the term people of color, it has a place, and I've seen it be used interchangably when people are just talking about black folk, right? It's like, "Why are we using that term right now when--" If we're really talking about something targeted for black Americans, if we're talking about something that's targeted for Latinx trans Americans--these groups, as niche or as just unique or small as they may seem to you, these represent actual human beings. So I think it's great that we're using them, but sometimes for me--it sometimes almost gets used as, like, a catch-all, and you end up erasing a lot of identities and experiences and points of view.Michelle: Totally, and I think if we can't be specific about the actual issue, then how can we solution around it, right? If we can't name what the actual issue is? It's not police brutality against all people of color, right? It's [?] against black and brown people specifically, you know? People who are seen as a quote-unquote "threat" to cops. I think it's really important for us to get specific around that so that we can solution around it, because it wouldn't make sense for us to do--you know, to solve for all people of color experiencing police brutality because that's not true. I think, you know, when we talk about black maternal [debts?], that's not happening to Asian-Americans that it's happening to black folks who are giving birth. So, you know, I think specificity is important for solutioning the right outcomes, and also, like you said, it doesn't erase people's experiences. I think tech is starting to incorporate more of the term around underrepresented POC, because, you know, Asian-Americans are overrepresented in many tech companies, but, you know, Asian-American also, similar to POC, is a very broad terminology, so I'd love to be able to see some dis-aggregated terms that we can use to also talk about underrepresented Asian-Americans. But yeah, I think specific language is always helpful in most cases, and I think there's also purpose to the term people of color when we can really mobilize and build a coalition across all people of color.Zach: I think it's just so interesting. I do think a function of white supremacy is, like, keeping things as surface as possible so that--because the more surface you can be, like, to your point, the less specific and targeted you can be in your solutioning, and if you're not targeting your solutioning, then you're not really gonna be able to affect true change. 'Cause, you know, and the last thing about this in terms of, like, just keeping things general and grouping people all together is, like--I know that in Europe there's a term that's called... it's black--it's like people of color to the max, right? So it's called "BAM," black, Asian, and Middle-Eastern. Like, what is that? Michelle, like, that's--that is nuts. You can't--huh? Like, when someone told me that--like, I just learned about this maybe, I don't know, like, a couple months ago. Like, a colleague told me, and I said, "How is that possible?" Like, those are thousands of identities and experiences and cultures and languages and histories. Like, how are you just going to just lump--so you're just gonna take all the non-white people and put 'em in one big cluster? Huh? Considering the history of, like, colonialism and, like--oh, my gosh. Like, that's nuts. You can't do that. And so, anyway... okay, okay, so from this conversation, what I'm hearing, I don't think that we always give, like, members of the majority enough credit in their ability to have an honest conversation when it's framed effectively, right? I think a lot of times it's kind of like, "Well, we don't want to bring that up because then that makes people uncomfortable," or "We don't want to bring that up because then they shut off," and it's like... eh. I mean, yes, people are fragile, but, like, come on. We've got to be able to have some type of--some level of authentic conversation around something. So that's--Michelle: Yeah. I wouldn't go as far as giving them credit. [both laughing] You know? I think there is a reason why--you know, why people are hesitant to have that conversation. I think it's because of the backlash. It's because of the fragility and it's because of [?] and also frankly the repercussions that people face. So I think while we sort of finesse the way that we deliver certain messages without losing the criticality but also having compassion and being accessible, what we also need to be doing is building the resiliency on the part of the dominant or the privileged group so that we can receive that information and check their fragility or check their defensiveness, and I think that education needs to be more prioritized than the other stuff.Zach: I agree, and thank you. Thank you for pushing back. [laughing] I do think there's a low level of fluency and stamina, right, when it comes to these conversations, and it's interesting because I just read an article, and it was published on Salon, and it was called "Diversity is for white people: the big lie behind a well-intended word." Have you read that yet?Michelle: I have not.Zach: Yo, I'ma send this to you. But it's just interesting because it's really this conversation in a really tactful rant form just around, like, how D&I is often phrased today, and it's, like, phrased with, like, white comfort in mind as opposed to the perspective and experiences of the marginalized in mind, and so I just find that very interesting. Okay, so look, you're the first East Asian-American person that we've had on the show, and so first of all, you know what I'm saying, shout-out to you. [air horns sfx] You know, shout-out to you for that and just being here, you know? [coin sfx] Michelle: Thank you for having me. I'm honored.Zach: Nah, I'm honored. I mean, I'm excited. I think there's this--like, despite civil rights history and all of the work especially done, like, within California, L.A., Oakland, in the '60s, and of course, like, during the era of the Black Panthers, there's this stereotype that Asian-Americans don't really care about social justice. Like, have you heard this before, and, like, why do you think that that is?Michelle: Yeah. Yes, I have heard that before, and I continue to hear it quite often. I think something that I hear when I meet people for the first time and I talk about what I do and we get to know each other a bit better, a weird sort of form of compliment or they think it's a compliment that they pay me is this fact that, you know, I'm one of the unique ones, right? Like, "Oh, wow. I've never met another Asian person who is like you," or "I'm so glad you're doing this work, because we need more Asian people doing this," and I have mixed emotions about that, because while I appreciate the acknowledgement of the work, I think that there's also this continuing erasure of the historical work that different Asian-American activists have done, whether that's the labor movement that was led by Filipino activists or folks marching [?] or even current activists working as prison abolistionists who are Asian-American racial justice organizer or disability justice organizers like [?], queer trans [?] activists. I think there's a lot of folks who are doing really radical work who continually get erased, so it leaves sort of a bitter taste in my mouth when I hear that because I think that with that simple sentiment we're erasing so much of history and current work that's being done. I also think that some of that comment is valid in that, you know, I do see a lot more work that can be done on the part of Asian-Americans specifically. You know, East Asians in tech is sort of the reputation that I hear about where people can be more active in doing D&I work or social justice work, and I think there's a real sort of lack of awareness or even the sense of solidarity amongst Asian-Americans in what their place is, like, what our place is in this conversation around social justice activism. So I think it's a complex topic. I do think that we can do more. I think all groups can do more, and I think there's a serious lack of education around Asian-American history and sort of--even the current facts around, you know, the struggles that Asian-Americans are going through, that if more Asians knew about that and if more Asian folks found commonality between our oppression and other marginalized communities' depression that we may be able to build a coalition to do more amazing work.Zach: One, thank you for--that's a really thoughtful answer. All of your answers have been very thoughtful. It's almost like you're very... awake. [haha sfx] What's really interesting, to your point around just, like, history, is as much as the Black Panthers--I really think that the way that we think about--and when I say we, I mean just, like, Americans, right? Like, the way that Americans categorize and think about the Black Panthers has to be, like, some of the most effective example of American government propaganda, right? Like, we think of Black Panthers as the equivalent of the KKK, like, the black equivalent, like they're these terrorists and that it's just full of these angry black people, and we don't think about the fact that Richard Aoki was--he was a founding member of the Black Panthers, right? Asian-American. And he's not, like, this ancient figure. Like, he passed away in 2009, but we don't really talk about that, and I'm really curious as to--'cause, like, the Black Panther Party, and, like--not the new Black Panther Party, but the initial, original Black Panther Party was not, like, hundreds of years ago, and so it's just so interesting how we are uneducated, right? We're uneducated just on civil rights history, and we're certainly--I don't remember in high school or in college hearing anything about Asian-American participation or engagement in the civil rights movement. That was not anything that I remember being taught, nor do I remember that being something that was, like, readily available for me to learn, you know?Michelle: Right. And I think that lack of education is within the Asian-American community itself, right? I think I feel like sometimes I know more about, you know, black history than my own sort of Asian-American history here in the U.S., and I'm an immigrant, so I think I grew up with a different set of history lessons. So there's a lot of catching up for me to do as well, and I think that the--I mean, even in the school system, I'm sure you've been talking to your guests around the lack of real education around what really happened in history too, right? Not just for Asian-Americans, but for, you know, black Americans and, you know, Latinx Americans. I think there's a lot of, you know, untrue history that's being taught to our youth, which is problem #1, and I also think there's a lot of internalized racism and oppression that exists in the Asian-American community, and there's a lot of complex topics that I don't know if we have time to get into, but things like the--Zach: Well, pick one. Let's go. I have time.Michelle: You know, the myth of Asians being closer to white people and the sort of model minority myth, and that's a very prevalent stereotype, and I think there's a lot of interrogating that we need to do when we talk about those things around, "Well, who were the initial group of Asian-Americans that were allowed to come to the country? What were the ramifications of that? What are some of the current statistics that we can talk about, even in the workplace, around Asian-Americans being the least likely group to advance to senior leadership positions even though they are overrepresented in industries like tech and, you know, [?] in an analyst position?" "How does that impact the continuing stereotypes and narratives around Asian-Americans?" Being good at math, and, you know, I think there's a lot of complex, intertwined stories that we tell about our people, Asian-Americans, and also we're combining an entire continent when talking about Asian-Americans as this monolith of a people when if we were to dis-aggregate that data, there's actually a ton of lessons to be learned around who's actually marginalized within the Asian-American community, right? I recently learned that 1 in 7--I think that's the stat--1 in 7 Asian-Americans are undocumented, and they're the fastest-growing population that's undocumented in the United States currently, but we don't hear about that, right? We don't hear about that narrative, and I think the way that white supremacy works is this sort of untrue and erasing of different stories that make the people of color the collective question and also not able to work alongside each other, and I think that's the--the most difficult thing that I see in the sort of solidarity that we need to be able to move the needle on this work is that there's so much of a lack of education on everyone's part, including myself, that we need to do a lot of work to be able to, you know, truly practice that solidarity with each other.Zach: Man. You know, and, like, Michelle, you've been just casually dropping just bombs, like, this whole conversation, right? So I just gotta give you at least one. [Flex bomb sfx] 'Cause it's been ridiculous. But one thing you said--and it brought something back to my memory. So I'm not gonna say the consulting firm. If y'all want to look on my LinkedIn, y'all can make a guess as to where this was. It's not the one that I'm at right now, but I'll never forget, Michelle, I was at a team dinner--this was some years ago--and we were talking about... so, you know, I'm at the table, and then there's senior leaders, and then there's, like, super senior leaders, and there's me, and I was, like, a junior-level person at this point in time, right? This was, like, five or six years ago. And so I'm a pretty junior person, and there's somebody in there talking about this one particular employee, and they said, "Oh, Insert Name Here is the perfect little Asian. He just does exactly what I tell him to do. He does his work and then he goes home." And I remember I was just eating my dinner--I literally stopped, I looked at the person who said it and was like, "Oh, my God. I can't believe you just said that." And she looked at me, and then you could tell that she, like, quickly averted her eyes and was kind of, like, "Oop--" You know, like, she got caught, but just that idea of this subservient just worker bee that just does whatever I tell them to do... that just stuck with me forever. I was like, "Oh, my gosh." Like, that's not--I'm still flabbergasted by that, as you can tell, and I told my coach. I said, "Hey, this is not okay," right? I said, "This is what happened." And they were like, "Oh, well, you shouldn't have heard that." I was like, "No, no, no. It's not about me shouldn't have hearing it. Like, they shouldn't have said that, but beyond them saying it, they shouldn't believe that." So yeah, I just wanted to share that. Like, I'll never forget me hearing that. And, like, they were talking about the person like they were a--you know, like a resource, and, you know, they call talent that in consulting, resources, but in a genuine, like, piece of property [way], right? And it makes you just question, like, "Well, damn, okay. You felt comfortable enough to say this at a team dinner." And it was a white woman, by the way. But, like, you felt comfortable enough saying this in, like, a mixed group at a team dinner. Like, God forbid, what are you saying about me, what are you saying about other people, what are you saying about this person in, like, more private settings, you know what I mean?Michelle: Right. Well, the scary thing though is that sometimes that kind of trope or narrative is almost seen as a compliment, as if we should be celebrating that. "Well, you know, why is it so bad for us to say Asians are good workers or Asians are good at following orders?" And what have you. I think sometimes that trope gets weaponized to divide the people of color community even further, which is--you know, I think we saw that divide also in the recent affirmative action case, right, where Asian-Americans--there were arguments on both sides around how Asians are being discriminated against for getting good grades and all of that kind of unfortunate, annoying [?], but that's a conversation for another time.Zach: No, you're absolutely right. And to be specific for our listeners who may not be abreast, recently that was the affirmative action case that went before Harvard, correct?Michelle: Correct.Zach: Yeah, and so it was interesting--so, like my perspective, as I was kind of, like, reading and understanding it was, like, some people were saying--so I'm on this app called Fishbowl... this is not an ad, but Fishbowl is, like, this anonymous posting app for consultants and other, like, different industry professionals, and people on there were talking about the case, and so basically the commentary was, "Yeah, you're excluding us and you're letting in these black and brown people who aren't smart enough to get in, but you're trying to fill in these racial quotas." And I was like, "Wow." I don't think that that's the point, and I think the data showed that the people who are the most advantaged by this current system of applications and acceptances were legacy students, right? It was people that--but again, like, to your point, then you'd see people arguing, then you'd see black and brown people arguing with Asian-Americans about, you know, "Well, we deserve to be here--" Again, I think that's--white supremacy is winning again when we start having those types of... when it starts devolving in that way, you know what I mean?Michelle: Right, exactly. And I think it also comes from the fact that a lot of people don't understand the point of affirmative action and why it got started in the first place. It's almost like people think that we're just trying to fill quotas or, you know, have diversity for the sake of diversity, but I think this is where the concept of D&I falls short 'cause we're not actually ever talking about justice and correcting past mistakes or historical oppression. So I think there's a lot of conversations that we need to have that we're not having right now around this concept of justice and sort of historical wrong-doings being corrected with some type of mechanism, and I think similar conversations, you know, are being had in tech and other industries where they're focused on quote-unquote "diversity recruiting" where folks are talking about that concept of, you know, lowering the bar for the sake of diversity and, like, all of that stuff I feel like are interconnected and they're just happening in different spheres, and I think for me it's always coming back to the lack of basic communication around history and social justice concepts and people not understanding how all of these struggles are connected. I think there's just a lot of room for improvement in how we're talking about these issues.Zach: You know, we gotta have you back to talk about the connection--like, to really talk about justice in diversity, equity and inclusion work, because, like, I have all these questions, but I want to respect your time. [both laugh] So let's do this. First of all, let's make sure we have you back. We definitely consider you a friend of the pod.Michelle: Thank you.Zach: Yeah, no, straight up. So thank you for being here with us today. Now, look, y'all--now, I don't know what else y'all want from me. I'm talking to the audience now. You know, look, we come at y'all, we bring y'all some amazing guests, you know, we're having these really dope conversations. I mean, [what more do you want from me? sfx] what more do you want? Like, I'm not even trying to martyr myself. I'm just saying, like, "What do you want?" And when I say me, I mean Living Corporate. Like, you see this guest. Michelle Kim is a beast. Like, thank you so much. This has been a great conversation. Now, look, before we get out of here though, Michelle, I have just a couple more questions. First of all, where can people learn more about Awaken?Michelle: You can learn more about Awaken at our website, www.visionawaken.com. You can also follow on Twitter @AwakenCo and our blog. Please check out our blog on Medium, www.medium.com/Awaken-blog. I'm all on Twitter, I'm on LinkedIn. You can follow me. I also have an Instagram. So all of the social media platforms there's gonna be me or Awaken, so please follow us and subscribe to our newsletter.Zach: All right, y'all. Now, look, she said all the stuff. Mm-mm, hold on, 'cause you're probably driving or you're doing something, you know? You're in your car or maybe you're typing something up on your phone, but what I really need y'all to do is I need you to stop... [record scratch sfx] and check out the links in the show notes, okay? Make sure y'all hit up all those things. I want y'all clicking on them links like [blatblatblatblat sfx]. You know, check them out, okay? We'll make sure we have everything right there for you. Now, Michelle, any shout-outs or parting words before you get out of here?Michelle: Well, I think we're living in a really interesting time right now. There's a lot going on in so many different communities and our society, so my shout-out is to everyone who is doing their best to survive and to thrive to take care of themselves, to stay vigiliant, to educate themselves, and to be in community with people that care about you. I think that's so important in this climate. One last shout-out I want to give is to this new initiative that I'm a part of called Build Tech We Trust. It's a coalition of different CEOs and tech leaders who have come together to say enough is enough around white supremacy spreading online on social media platforms and other tech platforms. It was founded by Y-Vonne Hutchinson and Karla Monterroso of Code2040, and check out our work. We're doing some really important work to build coalition around this issue of radicalization happening on tech platforms. So Build Tech We Trust, and I can send you the URL so you can link it.Zach: Please do. Y'all, this has been--first of all, Michelle, again, thank you. Great conversation. We look forward to having you back, because we will be having you back. If you would like to come back--it's not a directive, you have agency. Michelle: [laughing] Of course. I'd love to. I'd be honored.Zach: Okay, super cool. Listen, y'all. This has been the Living Corporate podcast. You know, make sure you check us on Twitter @LivingCorp_Pod, Instagram @LivingCorporate, and then--now, the websites. Now, look, y'all hear me rattle off all these websites every time - livingcorporate.co, livingcorporate.org, livingcorporate.tv, livingcorporate.net, right? Livingcorporate.us I think we even have. We have every livingcorporate, Michelle, except livingcorporate.com, but we do have living-corporate--please say the dash--dot com. Now, if you have any questions or any feedback for the show, just hit us up. We're at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com. Hit us up on DM. All of our DMs are wide open for your convenience. That's right. We take on the emotional labor of keeping our DMs open so that you can reach out to us, okay? So you hit us up and you let us know if you need anything. If there's anything else, just Google us, right? Type in Living Corporate on your browser. We're gonna pop up. We're on all the different streaming mediums. Make sure to tell your momma about Living Corporate, your cousin, or your weird uncle, or your racist uncle at Thanksgiving. So you make sure you--come on, shoot the link over. We got all kinds of stuff on there, so we out here, okay? What else? I think that's it. Shout-out to Aaron [thank you], shout-out to all the listeners, and God bless y'all. Or, you know what I'm saying, bless y'all, 'cause I'm not trying to offend anybody, but bless y'all, okay? And what else? I think that's it. This has been Zach. You've been listening to Michelle Kim, founder, educator, activist, public speaker, and of course CEO of Awaken. Catch y'all next time. Peace.

James: Hey, audience. Welcome to Achieve Wealth podcast. Achieve Wealth podcast focuses on value add real estate investing. I'm James Kandasamy. Today I have an accomplished couple, Jack and Michelle Bosch. And Jack and Michelle Bosch have done more than 4000 land flips across the nation. Land flips is something very interesting to me. And, you know, it's an asset class, or an asset class, which I think is very interesting. And you can learn how we make money out of it. They've done a lot of single-family houses. And they also have done apartments; 330 units apartments. And, you know, they are continuing to look for more and apartments as well, but I think they are the masters of land flip. Hey Jack and Michelle, welcome to the show. Michelle: Thank you so much for having us, James we're excited to be here. Jack: Thank you for having us, James. James: Tell me, did I miss out anything in your credentials or you know, did I -- Jack: No, other than we're both immigrants, we both came from other countries. So we started here with, just like you, just came over from another country and so we have that in common. But now we flip now 4000 pieces of land. We teach it now; so we have seminars on that. But then for asset allocation, basically the money we make for land flips and whichever way rental properties now, we rolled that into more and more two apartments now. Michelle: Yes. James: Got it. Michelle: To produce what we call one-time cash with the land flips like you work for a once and you get paid once. We're also able to produce some cash flow because we are also able to sell those properties using seller financing, you know. James: Got it. Michelle: And so you do get some mailbox money, but those notes usually come to an end once the property is paid off. And so, we're always in the back of our minds is okay, let's roll cash profits and cash flow into what we call forever cash, which would be a partner. James: Got it. Before we go into the detail of land flipping, I want to understand your background because I know all of us are immigrants So can you tell me when did you guys move to the country? And how did you move? Were you already successful on the day that you land in this country? Michelle: Oh no. Jack: Of course, we're like, we're a billionaire. James: Did you find gold outside the boat? Jack: No. So, Michelle… Michelle: Yes, for me I came from Honduras here in 1995 to study. I came to a tiny little town like about three hours South-West of Chicago called McComb, Illinois, that's where I met this man in the middle of the cornfields. It's basically university town, you know, and nothing else to do.I came here for a business degree, my undergrad, and I was in my senior year there, my third and last year when I met Jack. We shared some upper finance courses together because he was here for an MBA, 10 months. He met me and then he couldn't leave anymore. James: Got stuck, you got stuck in the US. Jack: She's right. She summarized it. I came in 1997, Michelle was in her last year in undergrad. I did come in for a Masters to that same university that had an exchange program with the university I used to go to Germany. And I was kind of like be able to kind of accomplish three goals in one year. Number one; I was able to get an MBA in the United States because it was an accredited school and I was studying business Germany. Already had enough credits and I just needed these 10 months, was enough to give me the American MBA. They give me, I tested out and all of these other things. Number two, I was able to get credit for the missing classes in Germany. So with that, I didn't have to go back to Germany to do more classes. I completed my degree in Germany, those same classes gave me the MBA. Also helped me complete my degree in Germany and improve my English. And the fourth and most important thing, I met this one. Michelle: But to answer your question as to whether we came here successful, absolutely not. I came in with two suitcases to my name, Jack pretty much the same. You know, I was raised by a single mom and my father passed away when we were very, you know when I was very young. And it was, you know, she was sending me here to study with a lot of sacrifices. I had to take several courses, you know, take seven courses per semester, like advanced as much as possible, because I couldn't afford to be in the US for more than two and a half, three years, you know what I mean? And eating soup towards the end of the semester when you run out of money. And, but I didn't have, I did have in the back of my mind the thought that real estate has been incredibly good for my family. You know, before my father passed, he had made an amazing decision. And it was to buy a piece of commercial property that to this day spits out cash, you know, for my mother. And so -- Jack: And that piece of property brought her to college here in the -- Michelle: Got me through college. Jack: And still sustains her mom over there. Yes, in my case and my dad's, again the same thing my mom, not the same thing but similar. My dad is a high school teacher, retired now. My mom's a stay at home mom. So no, I came here with student debt. I came here with enough money to pay for one semester, I didn't have, really didn't have a clue, how I would even pay for the second semester. Luckily, I got a job at school. The first car that I bought in the US was a $900 old Chevy caprice, like the old [inaudible05:31] car that they use to drive around -- James: It had four wheels, right? Four wheels? Jack: Four wheels, yes. Michelle: And I was like Jack, why did you get this, I mean, there are so many cars, why did you get this car? And his answer was like, cars in Germany are so tiny, I was looking for the biggest car possible in the US. Jack: Like Germans and every single one of them bought the biggest car that they could find. James: That's good. That's good. Yes, I like to, that's a very interesting story from both of you, right. So I like to, I mean before we go into the technicality of the commercial real estate and all that, I like to understand a lot about the thought process and you know, the people behind it, right. Because I think that's what makes everybody successful. It's not about the tool like real estate, right. So tell me about what was your family thinking when looking about the US from outside, right? Did they think the US is the land of opportunity, easy to get rich? Or how I mean, can you talk about the process that when families outside of the country when they want to send their children to the US, what do they usually think, you know, what do they think that you kids will get here? Jack: Well, I think Michelle's mom was perhaps not thrilled that she would stay here. Michelle: Yes. James: But not thrilled? Michelle: No, yes. James: Okay. Michelle: The whole point was to come here, study, not find a husband, go back home and basically help her manage, you know, this piece of real estate and hopefully, you know, continue growing the legacy that was left to us. James: Okay. Jack: Next, get a job, right? Michelle: Yes, yes. Jack: Same thing here. My parents were absolutely not thrilled that I was staying here behind. They, I literally had the job lined up in Germany. I had the, I just put my student furniture in my parents' basement. I had a good degree from a good university and good things and they're like, what are you doing? What are you staying there? What's going on there, you're so far away. In particular, my mom had a really hard time with it for several years. But then once they saw our success, particularly once we entered real estate, and once we saw success and what that success actually means for them too and for us. It's like we don't, we see our parents, this year we see my parents three or four times even though they live in Germany. And it's like, and they, we support them a little bit financially. They get to come here and they get to spend time here. And they see that they don't have to worry about us like we're the one or like, we're my, Michelle and our family, they don't, they're like a peace of mind. They're okay. They're good. They're happy financially, they're good. So, you know what as a parent you wonder, you want to have that feeling. So they know, ultimately, it's a good decision and took them like 15 years to say that, but they did. Michelle: Yes, I mean, we also contributed to, you know, being able to retire Jack's dad before time. You know, a couple of years before he had been working as a school teacher for many, many years. And he was just at the point where he just didn't want to do it anymore but he couldn't leave it because, you know, that involved a big reduction in his pension if he did. And so we put the pedal to the metal back then and it was just through land flipping, to be able to make up for that, you know, for those two years of early retirement and being able to retire him early. So -- Jack: So he ended up retiring a year and a half, two and a half years early because of that and James: Wow, awesome. Jack: And so overall so now they totally have changed. Michelle: Yes, so family has been always I think also big why for us, a big driver to get things done. James: Got it. That's absolutely what happened, you can come here and help out your family back home. It's just sometimes people, I mean sometimes they think that okay we want to come to the US and stay here but that was not the case for both of you, right? I mean, you came to study and you're supposed to go back. But you got stuck with each other. Jack: The United States is a wonderful country to be. But then we also, we realized, I don't want to live in Honduras, Michelle didn't want to live in Germany. Nothing wrong with these two countries, they are beautiful countries but language barriers, cultural barriers [inaudible09:40] we're already here, let's try to make this work here. We got lucky, we both got jobs here. We got the job that got the visa, the h1B visa, took five and a half years to get to that process. Michelle: And it was a job, jobs we both hated. But we were handcuffed because of the, you know, green card situation. And so we had to stay but -- Jack: Yes, but yes, it was just something, let's see if we can make this work here because we like it here. And we -- James: Got it. Jack: Beautiful neutral ground also for us. James: So do you think that as an immigrant, did that whole life situation gave you a boost, a reason for you to be successful in the US? Michelle: Absolutely, it like, I think it was incredible, it gives you an incredible drive and hunger. Like I don't come from a wealthy society like Jack's, you know. I was going back to a third world country, you know, yes, from a middle-class family, but still to a very poor society. And so for me, yes, that, you know, that was an incredible drive, you know. You still go back home and those wealth disparities between the haves and have nots are brutal. And so you definitely don't want to be caught in the haves not part. You want to be caught in the other group of people. So, yes, that was definitely a big, big drive for me for sure. Jack: Yes, absolutely, yes, same here. I mean, but a different way. Here, it's more like I could, anytime I could have left and go to Germany, first-class country, Mercedes Benz, would've gotten a good job with a BMW as a business car and expense budget and staying in nice hotels and all those kind of stuff. But the overall I mean, there's something really amazing about the US and I keep saying and it's not like blind nationalism. It's just for business and for success and for comfort, and for just that particular business. It's just an amazing country. It's like so once we started setting our eyes on that, it's like, it's so easy to do this. And definitely helps to be an immigrant, I don't know if the hardship helps if you use them, right. Michelle: Yes. Jack: So we use them as fuel. We used them as a reason why we needed to succeed because we did not want to live a life like I was travelling 100%. I mean, sounds glamorous, like I was jumping the plane on Monday morning going somewhere. But I was staying in Holiday Inn Express where ants were crawling up the walls. And in some cases, and usually, in small towns, where there are five restaurants, three of them are fast foods and I was like working in some companies up till midnight and I didn't enjoy it. So I use those things as fuel to say okay, I really got to do something extra in order to succeed. Now, having said that, being an immigrant here, which as you can probably confirm, is you start, you see way more opportunity that the non-immigrant see. Because it's not normal to you, what you see around you is all new. So as it's new, you look at it from a different angle and you see the holes in it, based on compared to what you see in other places in the world. And it's like well, and any kind of opportunity that ever existed is really masking itself as a problem. So you see, like anything that created like glasses, have been created because people don't see up with eyesight anymore. The problem is the eyesight gives is the solution. So anything even multifamily is the solution to a problem. You take a problem, you take a problem property that's been run down and you make it into the prettiest property in the neighbourhood. You provide a solution for people who want to save, solid, good well-working place, affordable place to live you can make something out of that. And it's true for everything and as an immigrant, I have a feeling you see that much more than then if you're born and raised here and it's everything is just normal. James: Yes, yes. Hey, I had a friend from the UK and he left the UK came to the US and he kept on telling me this. I don't know whether the UK or entire Europe, right, I mean it's a well to do country, it's a rich country but there's no easy part to break out from your circle.You can't break out as a breakout and go to the next level, you’re always within that, you're probably working, you're earning, you're learning, you are living an average life like everybody else, but you can't break out to the next level. So I'm not sure how is that in Germany, but in the US. Jack: Plus Germans, they don't move a lot. So you're on top of it, almost like down by your social circles, that like there's a party, a thing and a friendship. So if you start breaking out, you become you're almost alienating the people around you. Michelle: An anomaly. Jack: An anomaly. James: Okay. Jack: And if you don't have the stamina to keep that off and build a new circle of friendships or so, then you're going to be pulled back down. And that's another benefit as an immigrant, it's like, hey, it's like you didn't burn the boat but you cut the ties. It's a brand new world, it's a brand new opportunity, you associate yourself and make friends with those people that you want to make friends with. And it's just a, it's almost, it's a brand new world. It's a different thing. James: Got it. Michelle: I think especially in Jack's case, you know, resonates with that because he comes from a very small town in Germany. And he's like, there are some people that even though I didn't want to socialize, I had to because it was such a small town. James: Yes, that's true. Jack: Once when I was younger I was in college, I went to study in Spain for half a year. I came back went to my favourite bar and they just asked me, hey you looked tan, what do you want to drink? So nothing changed in like eight months or so. And not a single thing had changed, the same people were sitting at the same desk, tables, in the same bar, drinking the same drink. And 20 years later, still is nothing has changed. It's still, you know, look older and unhealthier but other than that it's the same thing. James: Yes. That's maybe that's why the index happiness index is much higher in some European country. People are just happy with the way they are, right? Jack: Yes, and there's no judgment in that. Michelle: Yes. James: Why do you want to rush? Why do you want to rush? Why do you want to get rich just leave as it is, right so? Jack: Yes, there's nothing set to be there but if you have ambitions if you enjoy growth, like a bit like we enjoy personal growth. We're really on a personal growth journey, it comes with challenges, it comes with new hurdles, it comes with expansion and so it wouldn't be my work. Michelle: And those challenges, you know, are our part, we know are part of the journey. And you think that the goal is you know, a worth goal, but it's really, the goal is a being on a constant process of becoming, an expansion kinda like what Jack said. Jack: And the wealth comes as a side benefit of that. James: Got it. Got it. So let's go to your businesses. So you guys, you had your green card, you came here. You worked for how many years did you work on a corporate life? Jack: Five and a half. Michelle: Five and a half. James: Five and a half, so what happened after five and a half? When did you start your land flipping thing? Jack: Well, the land business, we started about three years in or two years in we realized this is not what we want to do with this job thing. So we started dabbling with real estate. And we really didn't find success until about four years into it, until the end of 2002. So -- James: Hold on, on the two years that you realize that your work is not the thing that you all wanting to do, right? Jack: Right. James: What was that ah-ha moment, say that? Jack: The ah-ha moment was actually, for me was the first particular day that the company of 7000 people, let go a 1000 people in one day. Michelle: Right after September 11. Jack: And the economy did a massive shift downwards, the software company that had grown from 500 people when I joined them to 7000 people, three years later to two or three years later, we're starting to go back down from 7000 to 4000 people. And they did that in one year. As a matter of fact, it was within three days, during that one year. James: Wow. Jack: So one day 1000, another day 1000, another day 1000. These cuts were like for a few months apart from each other. But the first time that happened was when they literally, left and right when they when we were at the customer side, there was a software company. But I don't know anything about software and just wasn't a business, account department. They, business analyst, we were so worried about the customer side, that the phone would ring and our network was shut down. Usually, connect the internet to our corporate networks to get to files and stuff, all of a sudden, nobody could get into the network. It's like, oh, you get it, you get it. Michelle: You know what's happening, right? Jack: We started calling people in other offices, what's going on, you get in, no, nobody could get in. It's like oh, our network is down. Next thing you know, few of them, was over the phone rings, the guy picks up and all the colour leaves his face. And three minutes later, he picks up, he grabs his stuff and says, hey guys, nice meeting you. I was just fired. And he basically picks up his stuff and leaves. And that's it. And I was like, what you mean that's it? Like, again, Germany, if somebody fires you, they have to give you three months, -- Michelle: Three months. Jack: Three months notice. James: I thought it was 12 months notice. Michelle: Yes, so then you can actually train your replacement. Jack: Train your replacement and so on and or least have to pay for three months, some company say go home, but they have to pay for three months. Here, you're off and they gave him I think of four weeks severance if they signed something that they wouldn't sue the company. So and then during the course of the day, a whole bunch of people that I knew were let go. And I was sweating bullets, obviously, you know, we both were sweating bullets, because obviously, we work -- Michelle: And at that point, I had joined actually Jack's immigration, you know, files and paperwork because we figured, okay, there are very few people trying to emigrate from Germany. And there's so many more coming from south of the border, that stuck on Jack's application. And so we were both, you know, on his paperwork. Jack: So if I would have lost that job, we would have 60 days to find another job or leave the country. So at that moment, we realized, okay, this is, we're so breaking replaceable here, we're just a number in this big wheel of 7000 people. And after the day only 6000 people were like, okay, we got it, we got to do something else. We don't like it. After five and a half in an industry, you're almost like pigeonholed in that industry. I didn't want to stay for the rest of my career in that industry. So we wanted to get out. And we didn't know how to do that we just looked around. And after a few months or weeks of looking, we came across real estate, tried all kinds of different things, but couldn't get anything to work until we came across land flip. Michelle: And I think the land flipping thing was even, like falling forward. Jack: Yes, like pure coincidences, just like -- Michelle: We're looking into taxing and taxing you know, taxing investing. And I had gone up to somewhere in Northern California to a taxing option and stumbled upon, you know, a piece of land, a lady that owned a piece of land and we auction it off. And we're like, oh my gosh, you know, how could we do something like this? But instead of waiting until an auction happens, you know, how can we get to people much, much sooner. And because if she's a, you know, an owner of vacant land and wanted out, there must be other people. Jack: So we started sending direct mail to owners of real estate who have back taxes. And only people that own land, call us back. And -- James: You know what, that is exactly happened to me. I was trying to look for houses and all the people with land call me back. I said I don't want land, I want houses. Jack: There you go, you just missed out on a big opportunity right there. James: Yes, I should have known you guys. Jack: And then one guy had a property, it was worth about $8,000. But he hadn't done it, what's called a percolation test to make sure to put a septic tank in there, to see how the water, how fast the water sinks in the ground and it hasn't passed the septic test. So to him, it was worthless and he was leaving the state and he was wanting to leave. And he's like you guys can have that thing. And it's like, well, how about $400, he's like take it. So we got this thing for $400. And we sold it literally the next day to the neighbor across the street for $4000. James: Wow. Jack: And that became the beginning -- Michelle: And that's because our negotiation skills sucked. We were, the neighbor shows up Jack: And they just offered 4000 and we said, yes. Michelle: We were ecstatic, you know. Jack: Instead of like negotiating, we're just like -- James: You were like 10 times more, that's it, done, right? Jack: Right. And then the next deal was 10,000, the next deal, babe then we got to deal with like 21 properties for $30,000 that we sold for over $100,000. And then all of a sudden things started working. And then we also realize that most people that want to get rid of these properties don't actually even own property taxes. So now we go after all the general land and we generated millions of dollars, and we started doing this part-time then. Then Michelle quit her job because she was on the visa, started this full time. And then in March of 2003, I got, we got the green card. And then a few months later we felt comfortable. Michelle: I retire again. Jack: Retire, exactly. James: So my wife styles me. Jack: Then so in October of 2003, we quit our job, but it just we stumbled into that, bonded, built it up. And then for several years, we put the blinders on and all we did was land flipping. We only put our head up when the market crashed and everyone around us was losing money and we're still making lots of money. And then that's when we started buying single families and then later apartments. Michelle: Because we could buy houses here for forty, fifty thousand dollars, you know, with five grand in repairs and rent them for anywhere between $900 to $1100. James: Yes. Michelle: So you know, it made sense. And we had all the cash profits, you know, from the land business, because that land business actually, we're able to grow it very rapidly to almost an eight-figure business. You know, the first year we did about 60 deals, the second year, we did about 120 deals, 130. Jack: The third deal, 3800 deals. Michelle: Because we use them, we figured out a way to flush a lot of these properties. And by using auctions. So we used to have big live auctions, you know, we advertise on TV, radio, billboards, periodicals, online flyers. And get like 600 people to a room here in the Phoenix Convention Center, and sell them in one day 250, 200 to 250 parcels. And so we were quickly able to scale that and -- Jack: Build a bigger operation then, with like 40 full-time people. At the auction days, we had 120 people work for us, it was a big operation and we built them. And then we use those profits to then get into the forever cash market meaning buy, put asset allocation, as I call it, take the money we made and roll it over into something that brings cash flow for the rest of our lives. Now we have like 50, completely free and clear rental properties, which now have quadrupled in value. And we still own. James: That's awesome. Awesome. It's very interesting on how you stumble upon doing yellow letters. So that's how, I mean, I was looking for houses. And I believe I look at tax lien lease, if I'm not mistaken, people who didn't pay tax because most of the people who have an empty land, they don't want to pay the tax, right? Jack: Right. James: Because I think there's no cash flow, there's nothing coming. So Jack: Exactly. James: So many calls coming back, I was surprised at the number of response, people calling, but was calling all for empty land. And I say, I'm not going to buy that. So but looks like you guys monetize that I, I should have known that. Michelle: And you know, and even there, it's like in our countries, there's no way that you're going to lose your property over for taxes. But here in the US, you do, you know, the tax lien foreclosure method or through the tax [inaudible 0:25:16]. So those are opportunities that perhaps we were able to really, you know, hold on to because neither of our country's -- Jack: We would like, it blows away that people would even let these properties go for taxes, it was a perfect opening for us. And yes, so we monetize it in two ways. We learn, we wholesale them, we wholesale them. And we still do that, we just sold one week, actually two last week and, I don't know, every week there are sales. And we wholesale them, basically we buy something for $2,000 and go sell it for 10, that's not a bad profit, right? James: Absolutely. Jack: You can live off that. And plus, they're very affordable these properties. Or what we also do is we sell a seller financing. So a couple of months ago, there was one particular deal I want to highlight, is we bought the property for $5,000, an empty lot here in the city of Phoenix. And we sold it for $64,000 with a $6,500 down payment. So if you do the math, we paid five for them, and we got 6,500. So we got all ready -- Michelle: Our money is back. Jack: The moment we sell the property, our money is back. And now for the next 20 years, we get $500 a month and we'll make over $112,000 total on a property that we have zero money in, the moment we sold it. James: That's awesome. That's awesome. So let's walk through the land, the best land flipping strategy. Right? Jack: Okay. James: Because you guys have done it many times, right? So first is where do you get the list of landowners? What the, where's the best place to find? Michelle: So there are three possible places, we are still in love with a more difficult one. Because the harder it is for me, the harder it is for everyone else. James: Correct. Michelle: So there are places like Rebel gateway or Agent Pro, where you can get lists. And I think these two -- Jack: Lists services. Michelle: List services that basically, Jack: Online lists services, James: Lists source, right? Is it list source or -- Jack: List source or logic or agent pro 24/7.com. There's a whole host of different websites. James: What kind of list should we look for? Jack: We're looking for land lists, ones with value James: Other criteria, right? Jack: Yes, land, the other criteria is that the land value is below $100,000. Typically, because we found that to be our sweet spot, now you can go up above, but then your response rates are going to drop. [inaudible27:41] the pay for these properties just skyrockets and so on. But you can do those deals like we have a student the other day that made $192,000 flipping a deal that he put on the contract for much more than we usually put the properties under contract for. It went for 80 and he sold then for, what is that, close to 270 or something or 300. And then he made his offer to closing costs 192,000. But usually beyond that, we like out of state owners, but they don't have to be out of state. So there's a couple of other criteria. Then once you get that list, -- Michelle: You send them you know, you send them a letter and you can either you know printing stuff and stamped and lick all your envelopes and your letters. Or you can send it through a mailing house if you want to outsource that and send out letters and just hold on to your seat because you're going to get -- James: You're gonna get a lot of calls. Michelle: A lot of calls. Jack: Right, you're going to get a lot of calls, exactly. We did, for example, yes, when you send out these letters also, so we don't use the yellow letter, we've developed our own letter and split tested that hundreds of times until we got it to a point where we could not improve the performance of it anymore. And so our letter sometimes, there are a few counties where you get lower response rates, but usually, you get at least a four or five, six percent response rate. And it can go as high as 15 to 20%. James: So let's say now someone calling you, say I will land to sell, can you buy from me? What are the things you look for, to see whether you want to take down their number and follow up with them? Jack: First thing is motivation. Michelle: Yes. Jack: Because almost any kind of land sells, it's just if you get it cheap enough. Now, having said that, there are certain areas, certain pockets that we don't buy. I mean, there are areas in Arizona, where its land, an acre of land is worth $500, that's not worth pursuing. So the value needs to be there. So we typically don't just go below $100,000. We also start above 10,000. So that we have, -- Michelle: So you don't get crap. Jack: So you don't get crap. Michelle: Yes. Jack: So good language here. So you gotta get you together, you don't get junk land. James: Thanks for being nice. Jack: Yes, we have that ongoing, she's the foul mouth in the family. Michelle: Hey, you throw me under the bus. Jack: So then you, yes, you sent out these letters, I thin I forget the question. James: The question is, once they call, what are the criteria -- Jack: You asked them a few questions, you go through a list of questions that we created the script for and asked like if there's early access, if there is utility to the properties, and none of those things is a deal-breaker, they just determine how much you ultimately going to offer for property. James: Got it. And how do you determine what you gonna offer? Jack: Comparables, you run for market comparables similar to houses plus there are a few extra ways, like for example, particularly in rural areas, there might not be comparables of the same size. So if you're looking at five acre parcel, and you only have like 10 and 20 acre parcels, and there's no other five acres to sold or listed, you gotta adjust for size sometimes. So basically, a 10-acre parcel is listed or sold for $30,000. Well, five acres, not automatically worth 15, it's more worth a little bit more, because in rural areas, the smaller the parcel, the higher the price per acre. Michelle: Yes. Jack: So you get down, it's like the other way around, the bigger you go, the more kind of volume discount you get on the acreage. So going from 20 to 40 is not a doubling, it's more like a one and a half times in value. James: Got it. Jack: So 20 is, so the value over 20 years because of comparable shows you that's $40,000 and an 80 is not a 20 to 40 or 40-acre parcel is not $80,000. It's more like $60,000. So there's kind of you can adjust for those things. But the nice part is we buy our properties for five to 25 cents on the dollar. So that's the key to this entire thing. Because when you buy at 10, 15, 20 cents on the dollar, you can be off in your analysis and still make money. And you can make money by selling the reseller of financing and getting a down payment that pays for the property. And you have so much margin of error and so much offer in there that it's almost impossible and I'm not saying it is but it's almost impossible to screw up. James: Yes, yes. And what tool do you use to find those comparables? Jack: We use, we go on Zillow, we go on Redfin, we go on realtor.com, we go on landwatch.com, the same free websites, because I ideally go on the MLS, but the MLS only has, doesn't have all the land is allowed land it sells like owner to owner. And also even if you have access to the MLS, we do deals from Hawaii to Florida. Our students do deals out of the country, you usually only have access to the MLS in one little pocket. So it's impossible to almost have access to the MLS all over the country. Michelle: And it's relatively easy to do the comparable analysis we develop, like our own proprietary software that basically connects through you know, to Zillow, Redfin and all these services. So when I'm at a record, you know, and I'm looking at it immediately it populates for me, you know, whatever comparables. And if it's a little bit, you know, more, if it takes a little bit longer for me to do that, it's maybe eight to 10 minutes, you know, to look up a record elsewhere, specifically, like if it's an info lot, and it's completely built out, you kind of have to like back into the value of the land by figuring out, you know, what are the average, you know, prices in homes in this area? What is the average square foot? How much would it take a builder to, you know, building your house and, and kind of that way back into the value by -- Jack: So we build five methods to the value of the thing, not less, not the least is actually assessed value, any counties the assessed value as a relationship to the market value. And if you can prove over the first 10, 20 analysis that you do that this relationship is reliable, and you can just use the assessed value too for evaluation. Michelle: In a particular county. Yes. James: So you have to pay property tax on all this land, right? Do you try to flip it within the year so that you don't pay property taxes? Jack: As a matter of fact, the way most of our students are doing this is that they don't actually ever buy the property. What they do is that they put the property on a contract and then go market the property right away, and then either do an assignment or do it what's called a double closing, where they use the same day transaction where they buy it and sell it both in the same day. And the buyer brings up all the funds that pays everyone. So -- James: That's a wholesaling technique, right? Jack: It's a wholesaling technique, James: Yes, like in houses, that's what -- Jack: Exactly it's same, the same technique just that we use land for it. And the nice part about land is there's no tenants, no toilets, no termites, there's no repairs. There's no you don't have to show anyone the property. Michelle: James and in the competition -- Jack: Is almost none. James: That's why so many people call me. Jack: Somebody on this podcast just told us that he walked away from owning land because he didn't know -- James: I know. You know, I was thinking that time why are these people selling all their land. I mean, there must be some business here. But I was so busy looking at houses, right. And I thought… Jack: Right and that's the normal thing. So there's almost no competition. And for the last 12 years, we have done this entirely, virtually we have not looked at a single piece of land ourselves. James: Yes. Jack: Google Maps, Google Earth, you can see it all, you don't, Google Street View, you can just drive by your lot, take pictures. And it's all there, no reason to get dirty and dusty out there. Michelle: And that's another thing that I think I want to add in terms of like how simple it is. And now that we've like perfected our system, how predictable it is, you know, is that when we started looking into real estate, because we're both not from here, we had no clue completely clueless about construction, about estimating repairs for kitchen or bathrooms, for flooring, for roofing, we had no idea. And you don't have to deal with any contractors, any, you don't have to deal with any of those headaches that usually you have to deal with improve property when you're dealing with land. So that's something else we forgot to mention. Jack: And that's actually why we also, the main reason why we didn't jump from that multifamily right away, but we took the bridge of single families because we first needed to learn the details of how much does it cost to rehab a kitchen and the bathroom, and the flooring and windows and things like that. We didn't want to tackle a $10 million project first. We wanted to go, start small, so we bought some rental houses with their own money so if we make mistakes, it costs us money and not our investors. And little by little we then learned and after realizing that we can manage those also remotely because our houses are in three different markets; Phoenix, Cleveland, Omaha and an even though new houses in Cleveland, I just hold a show last week. I may have a few houses that I couldn't even find anymore because I haven't, the last time I saw them was like eight years ago, and they spit out cash flow every month. The property management companies who charge them, everything is good. So after that experience was like we're ready for a step up and now buy the bigger buildings and manage them. And we can also do that remotely. James: Okay, that's awesome. So I'm thinking why did I miss this opportunity, right? And I think the answer to my question was, I do not know who to sell to. So how did y'all solve the problem? How do you go to market, okay, today you get land, how do you go and find the seller? Jack: So initially, we started with eBay and newspapers and then we figured out this big land auctions. But the big land auction stopped working about 2007, 2008. Michelle: And started doing online auctions. Jack: And then we started doing online auctions, we shifted, started everything online. So since about 2008, the middle of 2008 now, we have been pursuing and we have been selling all our land online through websites like Craigslist, through Zillow, through MLS. If you own the property, if you have a paragraph in it, it's just that you're allowed to market it. You can even a property if you own it, it's easy to sell it on the MLS anyway, if you don't own it, you can have a paragraph in your contract which we have, that allows you to market this then you can put it off to the brokerlessMLS.com for $99 goes on the MLS. Again, but in other, this land specific websites like land watch, landfliprealtor.com again, land of America and the biggest one that is right now driving the most traffic for us and everyone else is the Facebook marketplace. James: So they are people looking to buy land from people? Jack: Oh, lots of people like -- Michelle: Facebook marketplace and Facebook groups land, land groups. Jack: Yes, Facebook land groups. Yes, there's a big market. I mean, we focus on three kinds of land. Number one [inaudible 0:38:34] lots, can sell immediately to a builder. Number two, the lots in the outskirts of town, right, if this is the city right on the outskirts of the city, that's where we still buy land because it's in the path of growth. Cities like San Antonio, cities like Austin, cities like Dallas, cities like Phoenix, cities like LA, like Denver, all over the country, they're growing, their growing infill. They're there. They're growing in the outskirts of town we're there and there are two ways and the third way is we're focusing on larger acreage in the more rural areas. And that is for the multi-billion dollar market off RV, ATV's, hunters, campers, how would you love to have a 40-acre ranch out into the hills of East Texas, right? Wouldn't that be beautiful? James: Yes. Absolutely, Jack: Yes. And there's millions of people that are looking for that. And then we put the one on top because we get so cheap. If you offer those properties with seller financing, they sell very quickly. Michelle: Or a discount -- Jack: Or discount or market value, wholesale, there is price, will advertise it's a good property, it sells very quickly. And for example, one of our students just posted something that they put, they put an ad on the Facebook marketplace and within 24 hours that has 4250 people look at it and comment and message them. And obviously, they had to take the ad down and had multiple offers on the ads in one day. Now that's not necessarily typical, it might take a few weeks for the property to sell. But there are buyers with it's a b2c market right, we're the business to the consumer market. And the end consumer buys a lot of these lots and the [inaudible40:18] lots are B2B to the builders. Michelle: Yes. James: And how do you check the entitlement of the land? What is it zoned and all that? Jack: There's another company, Michelle: Yes, so you go through a title company, make sure titles free and clear. Jack: There are title companies that we use are not the same companies, different department that we use when buying a $10 million apartment complex than when we buy for it for a $30,000 piece of land. Obviously, the cost is different because they charge us a minimum cost, which is usually anywhere between $700 and $1200 a deal. But if you're about to make $50,000 on there, you can pay $800 and then make 14,200, still okay. James: What about land, which has a utility or going to get utilities, is that much higher price than? Jack: Usually it is and usually it's already, Michelle you can. Michelle: Go ahead. Jack: Usually, it's already in the assessed value included, occasionally it's not because the assessors like a year or two behind. But it's definitely already when you run your comparables, it's already in the market because that word is out and then other properties in the market are going to be listed higher, which tells you, okay, or listed or sold higher, which shows you the market value is higher. So your offer is going to be higher and the seller is going to be happy to accept it. And you make more money in the process. Michelle: And it's much more attractive to buyers too. Jack: And it sells quicker. Yes. James: Yes. So I can see people like me doing this, right, because I already have done the yellow letter marketing, I know all the languages and you know all that. But so anybody can do that, right? It's a simple business, which makes a lot of money. And you are basically bridging the gap between people who need the land versus marketing to their direct seller who is in a distressed situation or who just want to get out from. Most of the time they inherited the land, they don't want to pay tax and they just get rid of it. Jack: Looks like you talk to a few of them. James: I did, talk to a few of them. A lot of them said hey, you know, my mom gave me and she died and now I have to pay property tax on it. And can you buy it or not? Jack: Exactly right. Michelle: So you're helping them and then you're helping your buyers too. And I think the how quickly you sell the property has a lot to do with how you market the property, how what kind of listing you create, you know. There's a lot of crap where you just show a piece of dirt and no, you need to dream it, you know, you have a catchy headline. I mean, you have to understand a little bit of marketing and copy and grabbing people's attention and so on and so forth. But nothing that you can't learn. James: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And what do you think? I mean, you have a property software on it, right? What problem does it solve? Michelle: So what that does is, so back in the day, when we were starting, and we were doing in just a few deals, you know, we could manage to keep our stuff, you know, on paper, on an Excel spreadsheet. But the moment we basically started really scaling this, you know, at the point that we started doing the auctions, we could no longer continue using Excel spreadsheets, we really needed you know, a CRM. And not just a CRM to keep track of our buyers and our sellers, but to keep us organized in our process flow. From the moment that the mailing went out to the inbound call being received to are we ready on the status where we've done research and ready to send an offer, has the offer come back, accept it and we sent this out to title escrow, is it back? Is it ready to be put into the catalogue for the auction, you know, for sale? And so it basically it's a process deal flow from beginning to end for land specifically. Jack: And we build the software in-house that guides you along step by step through the process of buying a property, keep them organized, like statistics, as tax, there is a built-in buyers website, seller's website, calculator for the numbers and things like that. James: So why do you need like, you know, like you said, you have like 15 staffs, right, you have the CRM, what function does the staff do? Jack: The staff does the work, I mean, the CRM organize to work for you, but somebody needs to put in the data. And somebody really needs to press the buttons and do the -- Michelle: And somebody needs to pick up the calls from the buyers. Like we have a lady that is just in charge of that as of this position, basically, there are other people making sure that the phone rings and she's just answering them. Jack: But having said that, this is us, right, we want to spend our time with our 11-year-old daughter travelling the world. We want to spend our time focusing on apartment complexes and not focusing but spending our time, we love learning right and looking at complex deals and things like that. So after building our land business to the level that wanted to build it, we started putting a team in place of it. Having said that, we have many students that run one of them, at the top of the head, I think of one of them is also a coaching organization. He is on track this year to do 120 deals alone with one assistant with one virtual assistant. So the thing is, because it's simple because you don't have to rehab anything, because if you don't have to do anything like that, he can do a, he can do 120 deals just as a two-man or a man and woman, kind of show. And so you don't need a big staff is a point, we have a staff of like somebody picks up the phone calls, answer them they, you can outsource everything. So we use a mailing and a call center to take the phone calls, we use a mailing house to send out the letters. So what we have inhouse is somebody does the deal analysis to figure out what the properties are worth, and somebody who team of two people that prepare the listings and go sell the properties. Anything else you don't really need, anything else you can do, you can outsource. Michelle: And documentation, unless you like to work with documents, paperwork. Jack: But all of that is electronic. Again, it comes in we have buyers signed by DocuSign. We have, we scan things, we put it on to Dropbox, we use different files. We attach them to our CRM and stuff. But it doesn't require a lot of people to do this, which makes it even more profitable. James: Yes, yes. I mean, I think you've sequence it very nicely so that you can scale gracefully and you can have your own time too, awesome. Jack: Probably the biggest thing I think that this business because there's no competition and as you said the sellers have people that are, there are people that inherited this property, they're not getting 25 letters a week, like the hospitals. They're getting nothing a week, so when your letter comes in and when you make that offer, we sent the offer by mail to them, we give them 10 days to actually accept the offer. Then when we buy it, we get a contract and we have three months or four months or six months, whichever we want to close on it. So it destresses the entire thing. That means we can design this business around our lives. And so the life designing with a life -- Michelle: Retrofitting it into the business, Jack: Yes, determining when we have free time. So it's truly a business that can be done based on everyone's work schedule and in full time can be designed such that you work with around the things that are important in your life. James: So does it still work now in this economic cycle? Jack: It's actually right now is the best market that we have seen in probably 15 years. Michelle: Yes. James: Why is that? Jack: Because the market is up so it means that buyers are, still buyers will, the sellers will always be there. James: Sellers always be there, yes. Jack: There's always going to be people that inherited the property and don't want it anymore. But the buyers are right out there, right now out there in the market. They're positive, they're upbeat, they want to buy these properties. They want to take them up, take their RV's up there. Michelle: Ride their RTV's. Jack: Ride their RTV's, spilled something on it so the properties are flying off the shelves, and probably the big right now our properties and our students' properties, we see the highest margins that we've probably seen since we teach this. James: Awesome, awesome. Michelle: We have people that are doing this that are you know, stay at home moms, single moms to Rob, who's a dentist, he no longer is a, well, he will always be a dentist, I guess. But he sold his practice because, you know, 10 months into the land flip he's like, I don't need to be behind the chair anymore. And now his wife who is also a dentist is looking to sell her practice as well, to people that are having a job still in parallel because they, you know, they are already 30 something years in it. And they're like they have just one more year for their pension. So they don't want to go back and are doing it in parallel. I mean, we have -- Jack: It's across the board. Michelle: It's across the broad, from all works of life. James: Yeah, I can see anybody doing this, right? It doesn't take a lot of time and effort, not like house flipping or even rentals or… Michelle: Yes, in the house flipping world, you get a call from a seller and he says I'm interested. I mean, you better meet him at the property, like within a few hours, because you're going to have two or three people that are chasing the same house. James: Yes, yes, yes. That's what happened to me. I missed out on the land flipping, I went house flipping, life has become so busy. So coming back to the next level commercial asset, not the next level. I mean, the other commercial asset class that you guys are doing, which is multifamily, right. And you said you're doing it so can you explain that to me why you're doing that? Jack: Yes, we're doing that for long term generational wealth. So in other words, right now we do syndicate deals. So we have some deals that we make very good money, but and we have our assets and our paid-off properties. But so we wanted to take the next step in complexity, the next step and leverage the next step in personal growth. So we -- Michelle: Exactly, I think our investing has really followed our own personal journey, you know, of development and growth. So Jack: Right, so one of the things, so we started buying these properties. And the first one, we realized, we syndicate it with our investors. And then the second one, the first few we syndicate investors. As a matter of fact, the first one we came in as a junior partner. So we raised the thing, the guy that couldn't raise all the money. And the moment he was about to lose this deal and he basically said, like, if you guys raise half of the money, you get half of the deal, which is obviously a great, great deal. I've never come across that. Michelle: And we're gonna learn how to do it, as he has been doing this for many years. I'm like, that sounds like a perfect situation. Jack: But we also needed to put in $80,000 in escrow deposit, which we could have lost. So it was, he asks for something and he gave something, was a great deal. So we came in, we ended up raising 60% of the money. And doesn't matter, we didn't get more than 50% of the deal. We got in we learned a ton and then we started doing this on our own. And the first few deals like there was just, we have a lot of income, but we have like your cash availability is not always $3 million, right? So we basically looked at it as like we needed $3 million. Let's put some money in ourselves and let's raise the rest through syndications. So we did a syndication for the last few deals. And at some point of time, we might transition into doing deals without investors, the reading hold on for the long term, 10, 20, 30 years, and then our daughter can potentially then inherit and she can keep them or sell them and upgrade them and so on. But in essence, it's a way to, what attracted us to it over the single families is that there's another layer of management, another layer of separation between us and the actual issues on the problem. Michelle: Yes, because now all of a sudden, you know, when you're looking at 100 doors at a time, and that scale allows you to have you know, on the ground, a full time, you know, leasing person, a full-time person for repairs or maintenance. Another one that is turning units around, you know, we have the regional director with, you know, with the property management. And so for us, it's really a lot of asset management, but not the everyday thing of like, would you approve, you know, the repair on a toilet or on this, small things-- Jack: Which, today, I got two more in our single families because they have an authorization limit of $500 on me there because I don't trust them with more. So on a single family, so everything over $500 goes to me, which is literally something three or four things a week that happen especially in summer when it's hot, and AC breaks and so on, that are just like driving me crazy. Because every single time it's like they don't give you the information you need. They don't give you the details you need, you have to jump on the phone call, you have to email back a few times. They don't follow the instructions and how to submit it versus when you operate on a larger property, you can distance, you're removed from these things. You get a status report, you can dive in with your expert partner on the deal, I mean, the regional manager into it. And more than anything, the other thing we realized is you very well know, you can force appreciation and you can force value increase rent, which on the single-family house, you can just, you just cannot do. Michelle: Yes. And elevation is not based on the income but it's fixed but based on other properties. James: Yes, yes I always say that you can build a house, painted with gold, on real gold but the value is still going to be following the other houses surrounding it. Jack: Exactly. James: Are you guys using the depreciation from multifamily to offset the active income on your land? Jack: Yes. Of course, yes. Big time. I mean we -- Jame: That's double right. Jack: We have done on all the units we have, we have done the cost segregation study, and it is literally. Michelle: It shows a lot of the profits from the land flipping even from the educational business, you know, it's a very purpose-driven business for [inaudible 0:54:03] and it throws a nice chunk of cash. And I'm like, we need to, you know, protect that. And so we're, it feels like, you know, with apartment investing, we get to have the cake and eat it too, in terms of, you know, getting the cash flow in. Jack: We get cash flow, we get income, any cash flow, we get appreciation and we get the tax benefits that wipes out almost the entire income of the other things that we do. So it's a it's like a dream come true. Yes. James: Yes. So you want to consider real estate professional, not because of the land, but because of that single-family homes? Jack: Because of really everything I mean, Michelle: That's all we do. James: If you do just land, are you considering real estate professional? Jack: Yes, the land is real estate. As a matter of fact, I always say that when somebody says I've never dealt with land, only do houses. I said like, it's actually I said, it is actually an incorrect statement. Because you have never bought a house -- James: Without the land? Jack: What you buy is the land and the house on it. James: Yes, correct. Jack: That's truly a land transaction that had a house on it. The legal description of the property is not the house, it doesn't say it's a four-bedroom, three bath house, no, you're buying this lot, lot number 23 with whatever it happens to be on it. And what is on it is a luxury house or a dump is just defines the value differences. But so with a real estate professional, doesn't have to be defined by analysis, or commercial, or you can be land too James: Got it, got it. So let's go to a bit more personal side of it. So no technicals? So why do you guys do what you do? Michelle: I think for me, you know, in the beginning, it was about us having freedom of money, time, you know, relationships. And right now, it's about freedom of purpose, you know. It has you kind of like, you know, when you're struggling, somebody is listening to this, they're struggling, or they have a job they hate or whatever, the very first thing that you look at is how can you take care of your immediate family? When you have that taken care of, then you start looking at, okay, how can I, you know, start, you know, helping them my church or helping in my community or helping on a much, much larger scale. So for me, you know, a lot of my, you know, what drives me right now, and my purpose and my why is to become a mentor and a leader. You know, for other women to start investing in real estate, to start, you know, having their money work for them, for example, and set an example, you know, I want to be a hero for my daughter. And I want her to also grow into a lady that you know, knows how to manage your finances, that is very comfortable with investments, whether small or large and so on. So, Jack: For me, along the similar lines, I remember the year 2007, when we were and we had accomplished our first major, big financial goal, which was a certain number, I feel everyone has their number and goal in mind. And we had just moved into a gorgeous, semi-custom home that we designed from scratch up and all of a sudden, we're like, you reach those goals, and you almost like fall into a hole. And we fall in that hole because you expect to be like all candy and rainbows and everything and unicorns, but actually the quite opposite of that. But it's like for a moment you celebrate and then you're like, what now, right? So we basically sat down and was like, okay, so we can sit down now and we can go retire in essence, we can go sit down, we can do nothing. But we realized, for example, there's a charity in Michelle's home country Honduras, that we said we could go work in charities, in charitable work. But we realized, we're really very good at getting businesses to a profitable stage, we're good at kind of creating money, Michelle: That's kind of like our genius. Jack: And so that we are not the person that's going to live in the Honduran in rain forest jungle and feeding the poor, so but it's close to our heart. So why don't we stick to what we love doing Michelle: Our strength. Jack: So that we generate the money that we can be more impactful in those kinds of things. And as a side thing, I love real estate, I mean, I don't see myself not doing real estate ever. I mean, I hate it the entire the IT industry. I'm not personally involved in the continuous development of our software, because I'm kind of scarred from that time in the IT industry. I get involved into the what the vision is of it, but, and then we have a great guy that drives the implementation of these things. But we focus on deals, we focus on and if I can focus deals for the rest of my life and opportunities then I'm a happy camper, it's just what I love doing. So and it throws off money and that allows us to help more people, that is awesome. Michelle: And be transformational in the way, you know, and the way we treat our investors and the way that you know, people that want to participate in our deals. Jack: So the teaching side of things, we started the teaching side of things also kind of like almost like a mission kind of the point of view that not that we need the rest to save the world. But there are so many people out there that do real estate either the wrong way or that they don't know that there's an easier and simpler way that you can do real estate. And learn and grow build the confidence and capability in your life that then allows you to do whatever the heck you want to do afterwards that we feel like I was called to teach this and show the land flipping part of things to people. So they can also get on their own feet. And we have had years where we lost money in that business where we put it on their own pocket for and it was still fulfilling because we see the difference that it makes in the people's life. So we were committed and our core values are to be transformational. Michelle: Yes. And it's not just walking a person through a deal by really sculpting someone's spirit you know, someone's confidence, someone's courage through the process of a real estate deal. So it's incredibly rewarding work for sure. James: Okay, okay. So why don't you tell about how to find you guys. How can the listeners find you? Jack: Easiest way to find us on the land flipping side is to go to landprofitgenerator.com and you can also go to www.orbitinvestments.com, there's a link over to the land flipping side. There's a couple of other links on too. James: Okay. Michelle: I'm on Facebook Michelle Bosch, Instagram michelleboschofficial. Jack: And again on the land site we since we don't teach the apartment complex things, you do that. We have no educational things about that, we just, we do syndicate with investors. We do probably similar deals and but on our website like all the educational things all about land flipping. So we have a Facebook group called Land Profit Generator Real Estate Group. So everything we do on the land side is called land profit generator. So you look for land profit generator, you find us and orbit investments is more like the overall holding company above everything else with links to all the different pieces that we do. James: Awesome. Well, Jack and Michelle, thanks for coming in. I learned so much and I learned what I didn't miss too, but I'm sure the listeners learned a lot of things from today's podcast. Thank you for coming in. Michelle: Thank you so much for having us, absolutely. Jack: Looking forward to seeing you at the next mastermind. James: Absolutely. Thank you Michelle: Thank you, bye.

#45 The YOU Revolution; The Journey of a Better Being | Michelle Zellner Over the past 22 years, Michelle has built a thriving business Better Beings around helping people become healthier humans, aka Better Beings, and credits much of her business success to sharing the challenges and strategies along her own wellness journey. Her book grew out of her successful program she built for Denver Public Schools and other Denver-based corporations. In her new book, the YOU Revolution: the Journey of a Better Being, Denver-based wellness guru, Michell Zellner, explains that wellness isn’t only about fitting into clothes or avoiding illness, it’s about taking a holistic approach to mental, physical and emotional health and wellbeing. Want more from Michelle? You can send her an email here michelle@betterbeings.net and check out what she is up to at https://betterbeings.net/ --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/not-another-wellness-podcast/message

                  THE PROCESS: Part 4 (Sketching, Narrowing Options, & Executing Your Design) - Episode 090 It's week 5 of our series on Brandi's *patented* process. This week we continue our series on Brandi's design process. This is the fifth installment and Brandi goes over the sketching phase of the process, or narrowing your options and executing the design.  Process Series Part 4: Sketching, Narrowing Options, & Executing Design Brandi’s Definition/The order of this step: Sketch Narrow your options Execute the design or get on the computer Sketching: Is an actual tool Helps you to get all your ideas out, even if it seems dumb. Your first idea is not always your best idea Allows you to not be confined by software Saves you time in the long run Keeps you from deleting “bad” ideas. You can see how you got to your final design.  Make these as thumbnail sketches (one inch by two-inch rectangle or square). And either fill a set number of pages, or draw as many as you can in a set amount of time, or draw until you can't think of any more ideas. Helps you zero in on a direction  Do only as much detail as is necessary at this point   Narrow your options:  Find the themes from those sketches and mark the one that makes the most sense Circle what’s working, refer back to your concept    Execute Design: Go to the computer with no more than 3 or 4 rough but focused ideas Have all of the elements that you need to include  Now you find photos or whatever it may be that you found in your word map and your research to start building. You have boundaries to search for what you need  Before getting on the computer decide what thing is more important than another thing (hierarchy)     Quotes from this week's episode: “Blank things are very overwhelming” -Brandi Sea “Sketching ignites your creativity in a way that you just can’t get digitally” -Brandi Sea “The closer you stick to this process, the more fluid things fall into place.” -Michelle “You have more freedom and flexibility when you sketch.” -Brandi Sea “Doing the research on your typefaces and your colors is another thing that's gonna set you apart.” -Brandi Sea   This Month’s book: We are doing book reviews on the podcast every month! If you would like to read along, THIS MONTH, we've been reading, Called to Create, by Jordan Raynor. Want to support us? Go to Patreon and help support our podcast!   Find us on all forms of social media via @BrandiSea on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and you can email us any burning questions you want Brandi to answer on an episode at brandi@brandisea.com.   THANK YOU to the ultra-talented  Vesperteen (Colin Rigsby) for letting us use his (“Shatter in The Night”) track in every episode of Design Speaks.             TRANSCRIPTION: Intro dude: 00:03 Welcome to Design Speaks. This lovely podcast is brought to you by a graphic design geek and a regular human being, Aka a non-designer. We're here to chat about music, pop culture, cool places, and basically, whatever we feel is relevant. Brandi: 00:19 Hey guys, I'm Brandi Sea. Michelle: 00:21 And I'm Michelle. Brandi: 00:22 And you are listening to episode 88 of Design Speaks. Michelle: 00:25 Welcome to it. Today we're continuing our process series. Um, and we are going to be talking about Brandi: 00:32 Sketching, narrowing your options and executing the design. Michelle: 00:36 Yes. Brandi: 00:36 So this is like the make it happen. Michelle: 00:39 Make it happen. Brandi: 00:40 Captain. Michelle: 00:41 This is the, is this the executing bit of it? Brandi: 00:45 I mean, Michelle: 00:45 What'd you, would you call it it that? Brandi: 00:46 My definition of executing is when you're getting on the computer. So we are talking about sketching first,

Michelle Ives is a long-time listener of The Clever Girls know podcast and she got in touch with me because Clever Girl Finance has been a part of her financial education and she wanted to share her incredible story with all of us! About Michelle Ives: Michelle is a copywriter and brand strategist for her own business, Wordy and Smith. She lives in Sydney with her husband, Andy, and together, they’re well on their way to having saved their first half a million.   Formerly a journalist, Michelle spent over a decade working as a published writer (and a few other odd jobs). She learnt the in’s and out’s of how to build (and market) a successful business through two startups, as their respective Head of Communications. Just like the company's lean marketing budget, Michelle had to learn how to manage her personal one much the same way.   Michelle has a goal of fully retiring by the time she is 35, living solely off of the passive income generated through her assets in savings, property, shares, and superannuation. This will allow her to travel freely, volunteer full-time for causes she is passionate about and write for passion, not profit. To date, Michelle and her husband Andy, have saved and invested well over $400k, with another $100k rapidly piling up - and a clear strategy for success. What Michelle discussed in this episode: - The reasons why retiring early is a goal of hers. - How observing her husband was the turning point that caused her to take her finances seriously - What the experience of saving has been like, as well as the life-changing mindset and habit shifts she adopted to reach those numbers and much more. How to keep up with Michelle: - You can find Michelle on her website at https://thatgirlonfire.com/ - On Instagram: That Girl On Fire (@thatgirl_onfire) - On Facebook: That Girl On Fire (@TGOFire)

In this special interview, Heather chats with Michelle Durand, Tears to Treasures, about the difficult of creating a business around a sensitive topic.  We talk about how you can take any business virtually and reach more people around the world.  Michelle share her learning about the importance of listening to your gut and setting boundaries. “Even through we know what our purpose is, and we know what our passion is, it isn't always easy. It's work!” – Michelle Durand Who is Michelle Durand: Michelle is a life and business coach in Austin, TX. She is the Founder of Tears to Treasures, helping women and men find healing and closure from past abortion experiences. Michelle’s personal abortion story has been created into a very powerful movie called “Holly’s Story” in 2003 by Cross Wind Productions. Michelle shares her powerful story all over the world including Indonesia where she started a pregnancy resource center. Michelle  speaks at schools, youth groups, banquets, fundraisers and churches and Walk for Life events just to name a few. She realized right away that once she shares her “secret” then others feel safe to share theirs. This is actually how Tears to Treasures got started in 2001…by Michelle sharing her SECRET at a Pregnancy Resource Center and NOW to the WORLD via social media. Highlights: 2:25 Why Michelle started a business focused on such a difficult topic 5:45 Michelle's journey from a corporate job to her calling and passion 8:45 Evolving from a non profit to a virtual coaching business 11:50 You can reach people all over the world 14:05 You can take any business virtual 16:15 Listen to your intuition 17:20 The value of all the roles we have as women 19:00 The power of community and support from other women 22:20 Stop listening to all the "shoulds" and trust your gut 26:35 Set boundaries and put yourself first 31:45 Creating a business around a sensitive topic - Abortion 35:00 Having a very specific niche makes you memorable 38:50 People need to know what you have to offer 42:45 Michelle's favourite quote: “I now arise from the negativity of the past, I am free to live a new life” ~ unknown 43:00 Michelle's parting message: "Go for it! Whatever it is, if you are feeling lead in your heart, in your passion, and your gut is telling you to do something and you're scared as heck. Got for it!" Connect with Michelle: “You have to start taking care of your first. If I can't take care of myself, I can't take care of my family, my business or my clients.”– Michelle Durand Website: www.tearstotreasures.com Facebook: www.facebook.com/tearstotreasures/ Private Facebook Group: www.facebook.com/groups/tears2treasures/ Connect with Heather: Join our Facebook Community: Ready For More! Women Business Owners Circle Facebook: www.facebook.com/igniteyourmarket/ LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/cameronheather/ Download Your Should Buster: www.igniteyourmarket.com/shouldbuster

Michelle You, co-founder of the music ticketing and concert discovery platform Songkick, tells Jonathan Moules about the fun of creating a business, and the sense of failure she felt after the company was acquired by Time Warner. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We're getting personal on this one! We're wedding planners. You know that, right? But what do we WEDDING PLANNERS really think about our clients? What do we wish you knew? What drives us crazy?! We're gonna tell you. Buckle up. Click HERE to become a premium subscriber and unlock all of the amazingness:       Ad-free, full length episodes      The TBWPP Wedding Planning Resource Center with  Access to 6 mini courses of The Big Wedding Planning Master Class  Wedding Planning Templates and Tools Big Takeaways 10(ish) Things Wedding Planners Wish Clients Knew **Listen to the episode for our elaborations! Come Prepared to a wedding meeting. Especially if it's an initial consultation. Look at the vendor's website at the VERY least. Communication is VITAL. We're talking about between the client and planner, but it goes for life generally too. Be open, be honest. Make decisions! In a timely fashion. When you hem-and-haw, you frustrate everyone and you slow down the process of wedding planning. Yes, there are big decisions...there are also deadlines. Embrace the deadlines Once you find what you are looking for, stop looking. Instead of a hard number for your budget, have a range. Make sure you have the funds for the TOP of your budget range. You don't need to let your vendors in on your entire decision-making process. Vendors need final decisions. Emailing them everytime you change your mind is probably not necessary and could muddle and confuse things. Keep it simple. Be smart about how you display your seating assignments! And don't worry if someone cancels the day before the wedding...no need to mark up that perfect seating chart sign that you printed. BUFFER time. Know it, love it. You need it. Definitely consider the hair/makeup micro-timeline, and definitely consider the shuttle/transportation schedule. Be prepared for an extra 10-30 minutes of buffer time. Hair and Makeup stylist should stay past the ceremony if possible! 9.5. Embrace every moment. This is a challenge, so choose to practice mindfulness during the wedding planning process so that you are ready to live in the moment on your wedding day! Your wedding party shouldn't act like assholes to your wedding planner. Links we referenced http://www.dreamalittledreamevents.com Quotes “We wouldn't have done this at the beginning of the podcast, because it's a little bit ‘circle of trust.' We're giving you OUR opinions about this wedding planner / couple relationship. We're giving you the inside track.” - Christy, with the CliffNotes preface for today's episode. Warning! It's about to get candid. “It's so important that you keep an open line of communication with your planner, whether it's positive or negative. You're not going to piss them off...and if you do, maybe you shouldn't be working with that person.” - Michelle “You can go on to Pinterest and you can go down a black hole. Yes, be specific about what you want. Yes, aim high. But also...when you find it...say yes and turn the page. Once you find it, please stop looking.” - Christy on decision making “There's Pinterest, and then there's reality.” - Michelle - oh man, if we had a dime for everytime we said this… “Don't you put your time constraints on me, wedding planner! I am a lash expert. And I have to make this perfect!” - Christy, imagining what makeup artists really want to say to us Get In Touch The Big Wedding Planning Podcast is… Hosted and produced by Michelle Martinez  Music by Steph Altman of Mophonics  On Instagram @thebigweddingplanningpodcast and be sure to use #planthatwedding when posting, so you can get our attention! Easy to get in touch with. Email us at hello@thebigweddingplanningpodcast.com or Call and leave a message at 415-723-1625 and you might hear your voice on an episode Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're getting personal on this one! We're wedding planners. You know that, right? But what do we WEDDING PLANNERS really think about our clients? What do we wish you knew? What drives us crazy?! We're gonna tell you. Buckle up. Big Takeaways 10(ish) Things Wedding Planners Wish Clients Knew **Listen to the episode for our elaborations! Come Prepared to a wedding meeting. Especially if it's an initial consultation. Look at the vendor's website at the VERY least. Communication is VITAL. We're talking about between the client and planner, but it goes for life generally too. Be open, be honest. Make decisions! In a timely fashion. When you hem-and-haw, you frustrate everyone and you slow down the process of wedding planning. Yes, there are big decisions...there are also deadlines. Embrace the deadlines Once you find what you are looking for, stop looking. Instead of a hard number for your budget, have a range. Make sure you have the funds for the TOP of your budget range. You don't need to let your vendors in on your entire decision-making process. Vendors need final decisions. Emailing them everytime you change your mind is probably not necessary and could muddle and confuse things. Keep it simple. Be smart about how you display your seating assignments! And don't worry if someone cancels the day before the wedding...no need to mark up that perfect seating chart sign that you printed. BUFFER time. Know it, love it. You need it. Definitely consider the hair/makeup micro-timeline, and definitely consider the shuttle/transportation schedule. Be prepared for an extra 10-30 minutes of buffer time. Hair and Makeup stylist should stay past the ceremony if possible! 9.5. Embrace every moment. This is a challenge, so choose to practice mindfulness during the wedding planning process so that you are ready to live in the moment on your wedding day! Your wedding party shouldn't act like assholes to your wedding planner. Links we referenced http://www.dreamalittledreamevents.com Quotes “We wouldn't have done this at the beginning of the podcast, because it's a little bit ‘circle of trust.' We're giving you OUR opinions about this wedding planner / couple relationship. We're giving you the inside track.” - Christy, with the CliffNotes preface for today's episode. Warning! It's about to get candid. “It's so important that you keep an open line of communication with your planner, whether it's positive or negative. You're not going to piss them off...and if you do, maybe you shouldn't be working with that person.” - Michelle “You can go on to Pinterest and you can go down a black hole. Yes, be specific about what you want. Yes, aim high. But also...when you find it...say yes and turn the page. Once you find it, please stop looking.” - Christy on decision making “There's Pinterest, and then there's reality.” - Michelle - oh man, if we had a dime for everytime we said this… “Don't you put your time constraints on me, wedding planner! I am a lash expert. And I have to make this perfect!” - Christy, imagining what makeup artists really want to say to us Get In Touch EMAIL: thebigweddingplanningpodcast@gmail.com FACEBOOK: @TBWPpodcast INSTAGRAM: @thebigweddingplanningpodcast BE SURE TO USE THE HASHTAG: #planthatwedding TWITTER: @TBWPpodcast PHONE: (415) 723-1625 Leave us a message and you might hear your voice on the show! PATREON: www.patreon.com/thebigweddingplanningpodcast

Michelle and Christy are awesome wedding planners. Fact. But one thing that we don't usually do with clients is outfit the wedding party or dress the bride from head to toe. So we called in some experts - Trista and Alex from BTS Management based in Scottsdale AZ (links below) are event planners that focus on the styling aspect of the event, and they work closely with their clients to dress, style and push the fashion boundaries of every wedding. We had a lot of fun talking to them about wedding trends, fashion shows, bomb bridesmaids and breaking the fashion rules. Big Takeaways These two gorgeous ladies - Alex and Trista - showed up for our Skype session in full makeup, good lighting and it even looked like they were wearing pants. WHAT?! We immediately made jokes about our appearance inadequacies and asked if they were related. They get that a lot. Also, one of them (Alex) looks just like Daenerys Targaryen. And off we went! BTS produced and hosted a bridal fashion show event called “Dream” with the Omni Resort - they wanted to bring a bridal show to the market, but do it thinking outside of the box. It was a priority to be the best. The final product featured Randy Fenoli as the official host, and designs from couture high-end designers from around the world. The planning process got them invited to NY Fashion Week. And that over-the-top experience got the wheels turning for the Dream event this year. “Following the No Rule Rule” It's important that any woman (anyone, really!) in your wedding party feels confident in what she's wearing. She'll be happier and it will show! The whole day can be informed and experienced by how amazing everyone feels in what they're wearing. That's the power of fashion! Think outside the box - you don't have to wear white just because you're the bride. The women in your wedding party don't have to wear dresses...jumpsuits or tailored suits are hot right now. Be unique! Do your thing! Trends Trista and Alex are predicting: For men: mixing and matching patterns and colors. Burgundy suits, brighter blue suits. Wearing something different than the groomsmen. Changing into a white dinner coat for the reception. For women: dresses that push the envelope more with more skin tone showing through, high leg slits, plunging necklines… you know, stuff for the confident bride! Trumpet shape is out and princess dress tulle drama is sticking around. Stiff fabrics are out. Modern is in. Lace and embellishment detail...in. Requesting that the guests wear a specific color...it's a thing! Put it on the invitation and the wedding website and you can pretty much style your photos before the guests even arrive. Imagine all the guests in black and red...and then you and your partner rocking sleek white suits. The photos are on point and everything else in the room is there to elevate the theme. It's cohesive and fun. We dig it! Links we referenced BTS Event Management: http://btseventmanagement.com BTS instagram: https://www.instagram.com/btseventmanagement/ Dream Couture Event: https://www.omnihotels.com/hotels/scottsdale-montelucia/things-to-do/upcoming-events/dream-event Quotes “I've been told I look like Ricki Lake.” - Michelle “I've been told I look like Celine Dion.” - Christy LOL “We're all doing something fun, and something that we love, and that we're passionate about.” - Michelle, working mamas unite! “This needed to be cutting edge and high fashion and show stopping and just really kind of attention-grabbing. It needed to be done right.” - Trista on the Dream Couture Bridal Event “All of us as wedding professionals...we're always trying to find that ‘something different' for our clients.” - Michelle “You should look like YOU on your wedding day. Just the highest degree of you.” - Christy, does that make sense? “There's nothing more unflattering that when a girl where's something that she's uncomfortable with. You can see it all over her face...so we really want to pay attention.” - Alex “Our guys are becoming such divas and we love it.” - Alex and Trista, on grooms with ‘tude “The fashion runway is where we are going to look for design inspiration because they are so cutting edge. It's something that's never been seen before.” - Alex, on where she draws inspiration Get In Touch Let us know if you have any questions you need answered on the show or if you want to share your own wedding planning experiences! #planthatwedding INSTAGRAM: @thebigweddingplanningpodcast FACEBOOK: @TBWPpodcast TWITTER: @TBWPpodcast EMAIL: thebigweddingplanningpodcast@gmail.com

This is an educational episode! We are zooming in on two specifics parts of the wedding day timeline - the set-up and the breakdown. How much time do you need to allocate for these parts of the day? What exactly happens during set-up anyway? Can't we ‘breakdown' in 10 minutes if we get all of our friends to help at midnight? (NO.) We answer these and many more questions as we address two important parts of your wedding day. Don't forget about these details...they start to add up and being organized as you go will help relieve some wedding planning stress! Big Takeaways First, we had a listener leave an awesome iTunes review! Michelle and Christy LOVE these reviews - thank you! The more you rate and review, the more visible we are to people searching for a new podcast to listen to. We invite you all to send us your questions - thebigweddingplanningpodcast@gmail.com. The more specific, the better! Can we talk about how awesome ugly UGGs are? So comfy. So warm. Ok - that's all we have to say about that. In the most basic terms: you need at least 2 hours for set-up and 1 hour for breakdown is pretty standard. Some venues will give you a 12 hour block, some venues will make their clients cram everything into a 5 hour window - hard stop. Make sure you carefully read this part of the venue rental contract, or the venue package contract. Some venues let couples add (pay for) extra hours. This may even be a negotiable term. A tiny set-up window can cost you extra money because vendors may raise prices in order to load in during that small, specific window. Staffing, trucks, parking, traffic...vendors have to consider a lot of factors when they book an event with a ‘tricky' set-up policy. ‘Getting Ready' is a big part of the wedding day timeline. Hair, Makeup, First Look, Family Portraits...lots goes on in the couple of hours before your ceremony begins. And none of this fun stuff counts as ‘set-up'! If your venue lets you get ready there, you will be getting ready while vendors are taking care of the set-up of the venue. If you don't have a planner, you will need someone to lead the charge. If you are getting your makeup done in the dressing room while the DJ is setting up the ceremony speakers, you don't want to be the one answering the DJ's questions! Tables have to be set on the floor before the linens can be set up. Linens have to be on the tables before the florist can set up. The cake baker needs her cake table in place, dressed and needs the flowers from the florist ready to go when the she arrives with the cake. Lots of moving parts, y'all! This is a strategically timed event. Hiring a wedding planner will make scheduling all of this infinitely easier. You are going to have many tangible items that you want set up at your wedding ceremony or reception. Start a list! For example: escort cards, table numbers, chuppah, toasting flutes, pictures, cake knife and server, flowers, decorations, linens, favors, programs, signage, lawn games… Consider how long it will take to set these up. Make sure every item has a plan - who, where, when. And make sure you designate which items you want back at the end of the night. If your DJ or musicians or AV company recommend you book a dedicated sound technician for a couple hours, do it. Consider it insurance. Links we referenced Our Podcast, Eps 17, 18, 20 - the 3-part Timeline Series (http://www.thebigweddingplanningpodcast.com/the-wedding-day-timeline-part-1-of-3) - listen to this for a greater scope of how to create your wedding day timeline Quotes “We're just happy that we are helping people here! And that people are listening.” - Michelle, giddy from another iTunes review! “There was no rush and no stress for these two brides, because we just had so much time.” - Christy “What time does everything have to be out at the end of the night? You need to know that before you get all these grand ideas about what visuals you want happening at the wedding.” - Michelle “You can do it in 2 hours. But it's a lot easier to do it in 5 or 6 hours!” - Christy “I'm doing a lot of lawn games for cocktail hours. And those are a bitch to set up and they can't just be thrown out ready to play.” - Christy “Put on your Type-A hat and just solve the problems.” - Christy “You're going to have multiple timelines that layer over each other.” - Christy Get In Touch Let us know if you have any questions you need answered on the show or if you want to share your own wedding planning experiences! TWITTER: @TBWPpodcast EMAIL: thebigweddingplanningpodcast@gmail.com FACEBOOK:@TBWPpodcast (https://www.facebook.com/TBWPpodcast/?view_public_for=1020006734764802)

It's our anniversary! We are SO STOKED to celebrate this one year mark with you, our dear listeners. We've had such a great time doing this podcast and we're so f*%king proud of our first year. Can we just pat ourselves on the back a little? Sure, we can! Here's a whole episode devoted to us, our guests, our love for each other, and it serves as a testament to our labor of love: The Big Wedding Planning Podcast. Take a walk with us down memory lane as we recall our favorite moments, pull some of our favorite quotes (montage!) and just love on one another...Including a toast! Get in touch with us! Tell us what you want to hear on the podcast. Also, share your stories and ideas with us. We are so open to chatting with our listeners...if you have a crazy story or random wedding question, hit us up! We want to take on a social media guru - non-paid, obviously. Well, you'll get to be on the show, you'll get to be a part of the show and we'll serve as mentors! If you have the skills and want to be a part of the team, please email us thebigweddingplanningpodcast@gmail.com, subject: ‘social media help'. Links we referenced Just our own show! Quotes “Never fear, dear listeners. We already have a list for our second year and it's always being added to: guests we want to have on, topics we want to tackle, and things we want to revisit.” - Christy, on the next chapter “This was something that caused me an intense amount of anxiety and grief and it made me angry.” - Christy, on one episode that lead to so much more “I want to thank my hot man, my husband, Jose Luis Martinez who does all things visual for us...he spends a lot of time and I'm a real pain in the ass.” - Michelle, to her husband “To Michelle, a tribute: In the words of the Golden Girls theme song: You are a friend and a confidant that I am so happy to be on this journey with.” - Christy, to Michelle “You're making me feel like when a couple each writes their vows and one of them is way better than the other and the other is like, oh shit.” - Michelle, to Christy “Here we are ten years later...and in those ten years, we've worked together, you were in my house with me, we at Chipotle, we planned tons of weddings, we bore children...and here we are professing our love for one another on this podcast that we created together!” - Michelle, to Christy “I am toasting to commitment, women empowering women, and to staying cool as we get old.” - Michelle, wrapping it up! “From now on, all the rest of the podcasts I do, I'll say it was a sex injury.” - Christy “Wedding Planning: It's a real doozy.” - Amanda, our guest Get In Touch Let us know if you have any questions you need answered on the show or if you want to share your own wedding planning experiences! TWITTER: @TBWPpodcast EMAIL: thebigweddingplanningpodcast@gmail.com

Intro: Hi! This is Glenn McQueenie, and welcome to 20 Minutes of Insider Secrets of Successful Niches. This is where you learn the insider secrets to dominate your target market. You'll learn to work with high-margin, super-happy clients, and build a tribe of loyal, raving fans for your business. So excited to have you join me today, so sit back and enjoy 20 Minutes of Insider Secrets of Successful Niches. Glenn: Well hello, and welcome again to another of my podcasts in my Success Series formula. I'm just so thrilled to have Michelle Morgan join me on this podcast. How are you, Michelle? Michelle: I'm great, Glenn. Thanks for having me. Glenn: Oh, it's my pleasure. You're just of so much respect and you've got so much wisdom to share that I'm really excited about this call. So before we start, I just want to give everyone a little background about Michelle. She began her journey as a young woman to be a model and enter into the fashion industry. She got a diploma from Fashion Arts from Humber College and then continued in that industry for over 15 years, working with a lot of different modeling agencies in Toronto. She continued after that to explore, “What do I really want to do?” and decided that, deep down, there was this passion for getting into real estate. So she went to OREA, she got her license, and since then, Michelle has just been very successful, growing a great business. She started out individually, and she's worked with teams, and now what she's done is really found this really neat niche called Women Building Wealth. And that's the niche that I'm so excited to talk about today. So Michelle, why don't you tell the audience just a little bit about your journey into building a really cool business? Michelle: Sure. I feel like in order for the audience to understand, I'm going to take it back a little bit, just to understand where I'm coming from. So my parents were really interested in real estate. They were investors. We had tenants. They bought and sold their own properties, and I had that household where, on Boxing Day, all the other kids went to the mall, and my parents somehow found the one open house that was open. We just were always looking at homes, so I guess I probably didn't even realize it back then, but when I look back now, I was that kid that was always sitting at the table, feet dangling off the chair, and watching the deal happen. And it kind of just seeped into my pores. So, as time went on, my dad would tell me, “You know, you probably should get into real estate.” And I was always like, “No, Dad. I'm going to be in fashion.” Which, you heard, I did proceed and continue with, and I loved it. And I still have an appreciation for that industry. But at the time, I probably didn't realize how much real estate had actually seeped into my pores. So fast-forward, I found myself a single mom, realizing that, as much as I loved the fashion industry, I did want to make a change. And I wanted to love what I was doing as much, if not more, than fashion. I got my license. I did that in 2008. So I'd fast-forward then to about a year and a half ago, and I had done the Double Your Income Coaching with you, Glenn, and that really showed me some patterns in my business. I was doing well in real estate, and you had me really circle in on who my clients were, and I learned that the second largest group of people I was helping with real estate purchases were women, and that was second to couples. I helped couples, young couples in particular, buy and sell their homes. And then I had this group of women that were coming to me from all walks of life, all ages, status. They wanted real estate investing advice, and they would go on to purchase their home almost in an investor mentality, I'd say. And they were purchasing these homes on their own. And it was just inspiring to me, because I could relate to this group of women, again as a single woman and as a single mom. And probably because of my background with the real estate, it just led to me growing and us brainstorming into this whole niche marketing business. And so it was really cool, and then Build Her Wealth was born. And the goal really was to help women build wealth through real estate. And I could really help them, and I just became passionate about it, because reward-wise, I could help them fulfill this goal. And we'd sit down and say, “Well, what do you want?” And they're like, “Well, this is my 5 or 10-year goal.” Maybe it was a retirement goal, but whatever it was, I could master a plan through real estate investing for them to help them accomplish the goal. So today, Build Her Wealth, it's a niche market real estate business. My clients are mostly women in that field, and then I get to meet some really cool, smart, funny, they're really articulate, they're educated, they're hardworking women, all really with the same goal of wanting to use real estate as a tool to help them build their financial future. So yeah, that's pretty cool. Glenn: So, first of all, how do you guys meet? What is the format of the group? Michelle: So usually, we have seminars. We have fun with it. So we have Wealth and Wine nights, and it could be the wine that brings the ladies there, but I won't say that that's why, and we just have seminars that really help them understand what the different types of real estate investing opportunities are for them. So again, it's women from all different walks of life. So some have maybe never invested in real estate before, and then others might be in their journey. So whether we're there to show you how to invest in real estate, or help support your journey, we're all there as women, we're going through the steps. And then I'll bring in professionals to help with that, whether it's a mortgage broker that needs to come in to answer some questions, a lawyer, an accountant, what have you. I just bring in the professional that will also help them attain their goals. Glenn: So I think that's just so brilliant, that format you created of Build Her Wealth, where you get people, usually single women – not all single women – but a lot of women. And I love that edge and attitude that you bring to it, too. It's like, “Listen. You're responsible for your own wealth here. You don't need a man. You don't need a woman.” If you want to become free, and have freedom in the real sense of time, and so you can spend more time in relationships with other people, and find your purpose, what better way than to get a group of like-minded women together into a format of building their wealth through real estate investing? And I love how you bring them together, and you bring in the wine element. And it's really almost like a book club, but it's a women building wealth club. And the only people who are going to want to come to that club are the people who want to build their wealth. So you've created such a great magnet for only the people who come there. You'll never attract the people who don't want to attract wealth. And you'll just find, when you're creating your tribe, as I see you building your niche tribe, that birds of a feather flock together. And if you can be the ringleader of it, which you are, it's just really amazing. So what's been the payoff, just over the last year and a half? What have you learned from going really deep into your niche? Michelle: I'd say really the payoff is that I had to figure out more about me. So once I did that and figured out what my big “why” is and understanding my big “why” was helping people. So the big payoff really is helping. So I have the niche market, I get to sit down, really understand my clients, their lives, their goals, sometimes it's their fears, or sometimes it's their pain. But, “what's your ultimate dream? What are your wishes? What do you want for your family and your loved ones?” And then I get to really help them create this plan for them, their financial futures, how to help build their goals, how to create hope, and it just becomes almost a lifelong bond. And I guess that's the best payoff. I've learned a lot about myself, and I've learned I love helping people, and it's rewarding to then help that person, and then see it through all the way to the finish line. So that's awesome. Glenn: That is awesome. So why do you think that the conventional wisdom of two hours of cold calling or door-knocking to people they don't even know. Like a lot of agents seem to want to follow this lead. That's the only lead-generation strategy. And I love how you've kind of broken that mould, and you're doing what you love to do. But why do you think it's so prevalent, rather than your more focused approach? Michelle: Well, I mean, I come from that background. So I mean, I came from a background of door-knocking every single day. I door-knocked Monday-Friday, 9:30-11:30 a.m., and it did help my business. I mean, I don't know that one is wrong, per se, or better than the other, but I find for me, because in our industry we do have to get in front of people, and we do have to talk to people about our business and let them know about us, or they're not going to. So I think that the general thought is, that's a great way to do it. And again, it has helped my business. However, as an individual agent, and as a business owner, it is important for agents to understand that there's a shift occurring, and you do need to be aware that teams and niche market agents are statistically gaining market share. So on the flip side of that, consumers are noticing, and they're looking for agents that fit their specific needs, rather than maybe the generalist agent. So it was more me wanting to, in my case, just wanting to get in front of that shift, rather than chase the shift that I could see was about to occur, and grow the niche market. So yeah, I get it. I come from that background. But it is going to change, and it's changing now. Glenn: Yeah, and I don't think you're saying “Don't do it.” And I think we're probably on the same page on this. If that's what you really love to do, then go and do it, if that's what your natural abilities are. But if you're dragging yourself to do it, and you don't like it and you hate it, what a miserable way to wake up every morning and have to do something you hate, instead of what you're doing. I just love listening to you when you're saying, like, “I just want to help people.” And when you help enough people get what they want, Zig Ziglar says, then you get what you want. And it's because it's a perfect transfer. You're coming from contribution first. You're creating value first. You're creating this whole seminar series. And if some of those people in the class don't buy, it's not like you get kicked out. It's like you still feel like you're on your purpose. Michelle: So true. And I think, too, real estate agents, we got into the market, or into the industry because most of us wanted some form of freedom there. Most of us did not want to be in that typical 9-5 scenario, and to put yourself in a scenario where you wake up every morning and still do not like what you do, is unfortunate – so don't do it. Glenn: So what would be the first step for someone listening to this podcast right now? What advice would you give them if you were coaching them, on how they should find their niche? What would you say? Michelle: Well for me, finding my niche actually came through you. The steps that you have written about in your McQueenie Method book were the steps that I took to help me find Build Her Wealth. So, truthfully, I mean, I would say, sure, go out there and learn as much and get educated, but that was my route that I took. So I would have to say The McQueenie Method steps. And I mean, Glenn and I, we sat down and we brainstormed, we talked about it. And you helped me so much along this journey, just really almost like a light bulb moment: You love to help people, and you identify with women. So go get the book, and do the steps step by step by step, because that's exactly what helped me get to where I am. Glenn: Wow. Thanks for the plug! I appreciate it, Michelle. Michelle: Yeah. You can pay me later. Glenn: So, if you're saying to somebody, apart from the book, which I appreciate, but if you were saying to somebody, what would just be that first step? I mean, to me – I don't want to put words in your mouth – but to me, it's more about just finding who you are, and being comfortable with that, and then taking those strengths to the marketplace. Michelle: You really have to figure out who you are. So that's exactly where we started. Why did you get into real estate? What is your big “why?” I mean, learning that, and you kind of know it, but you have to keep asking yourself “Why? Why? Why?” And you peel away these layers, and you start to realize why are you where you are? And for me, it was my twin daughters. That's my big “why.” That's my motivation to wake up every morning and do the things I do. And you really have to figure out why. What motivates you, why are you where you are, and where do you want to be, and how are you going to get there. It's almost like an onion. You're peeling away these layers, and then it's just like this “A-ha!” moment, like I said, that makes you go “Right. This is where I need to be.” And that's my niche.Glenn: That's a great way to look at it, Michelle. What were some of the roadblocks that you encountered on your journey? I mean, it didn't just go “Poof! Magic! Got my niche!” Even just getting this whole tribe together, what were some of the roadblocks you faced?Michelle: The biggest roadblock for me is if I would be losing business because I was targeting a female market only. I had a hard time, even though I loved the idea, I had a hard time with the concept that it was only going to be women building wealth. It was Build Her Wealth. And would I in turn lose business? And the answer to that ended up being no. I had to get out of my own way though, and realize that, funnily enough, I was getting more followers, and it was not holding back my business. I mean, if anything, it was just this group of women, almost like a sisterhood of women coming together, lifting each other up. And truth be told, I've had a couple men come to the events, and it's all been good. Like I said, not all women are single, so I have had a couple women bring their significant other or their husband with them to the event, and it's been great. I don't only want to see women invest in real estate and not help men. That was not the thought. I was worried that it would look that way. But in fact, it did not in any way, shape, or form, slow down my business. I think my roadblock was more my mindset and my own worry and my own fear of it, and once I let that go, then it grew. And you just let it go. You let it go where it's going. Let it grow, and let it go where it's taking you, and let it be authentic. Glenn: And I think as this keeps growing, you could almost build complementary niches and build an even bigger business. I mean, you could license this idea in every city in North America. There's going to be women who want to build their wealth, and as that keeps on growing, couldn't you do a Build His Wealth? Michelle: Already thought about it! Glenn: Yeah! And isn't that the beautiful thing, once you go really narrow into one niche, and then you discover all the nuances and the wisdom inside of it, you start to see the bigger possibility of how you can go wide within that niche. And I know I find when I'm coaching agents that the biggest problem is what you mentioned earlier, when you said, “I was worried that I was limiting myself, and I was cutting myself off.” And I start thinking, if you look at a great sculpture, it started as a block of marble. It was really the artist subtracting everything until they got their finished product. And I think it's almost subtraction and then multiplication. So you subtract, subtract, subtract, go super-narrow in your niche, and then you multiply the niche around it. And I just love to hear you say that, and that's really what you're building. This isn't just going to be one business. This is like, “I'm going to build this, and it's going to be great.” And it's going to give you even more freedom. And then, as you build it, you just get to help more people. And I think, for you, Michelle, because I know you, that keeps you on your purpose. And at the end of the day, that's what you want to do. Michelle: Very true. That's very true. Glenn: So what's the one piece of advice that you would give aspiring agents right now in creating their niche market? Michelle: I think it goes back to what we were saying. Really figure out your big “why.” Really, what you did was you helped me figure out what my Unique Ability was. And it wasn't something that I had to come up with on my own. I think the exercise was that we had to ask our loved ones and friends what they thought our Unique Ability was. And so it was very interesting to get these letters back of people letting you know all the things that they thought you were great at. For me, I got a lot of “Well, when I'm in your presence, you make me feel important” or “You make me feel listened to.” So you start to learn through other people what your Unique Ability is, and from that, those are things you don't even have to try at. You're just good at doing that. And then you have to figure out your “why” and really zero in on what makes you happy. And again, I mean, you really are going to have to pay me for this, but I've got to say The McQueenie Method really helped because the steps are all outlined there. And those were the steps that I took. And it was literally, “Own Your Niche, Own Your Market,” right? So it really helped to know what the steps are and then just go step by step. You learn about you and figure out what your next steps are to help you get there. And your niche really just shows up. It's like all of a sudden, you're like “Wow.” You do the steps, and then you figure out your niche. And it's mind-blowing. Glenn: And I love the way you did it in a way, too, because you really reverse engineered it. It wasn't, “Oh, this is what the marketplace wants.” You started hearing from the marketplace that there were a lot of women in your position who didn't really have a place to go to find out about real estate investing, because most of them think it's “I've got to put money in my RSPs,” because the financial industry does dominate the ad and mind share there. But once you start hearing that these people are looking for a forum, you almost planned it from their point of view, like, “What's keeping them awake at night?” And then I love how you're just like, “Well, let's get them all together, and let's build a group.” Because the biggest gift you can give somebody is the feeling that they're not alone, is to get them out of their own isolation. They're not alone. And even the people listening to this podcast will be thinking that, too. “Oh, I'm not alone anymore. Other people have felt the way I have.” And then, as you got the group together, they're like, “Wow. Now we have a whole new group of friends who all have a common interest.” And it's no different than the local book club. It's just people who want to do what they want to do. And I think that's the brilliance in what you've created, Michelle. Is there anything else that you'd like to add? I really appreciate your time. I know you're a really big deal, so is there any questions I didn't ask you, or anything you'd just like to add just before we wrap up? Michelle: You know what? I think the main thing is, just go out and do it and don't be afraid. Don't think to yourself that it's not possible or don't think that it will hinder your business. Just go out and do it. Because like I said, it's showing in numbers that the teams and the niche markets are taking over, and if you're an individual agent, you're going to love it, because not only am I helping the women, but I've got to say, they're helping me, too. In all of this, I have learned so much from them. And that I get to bring my daughters now to these events, and it's really because they're helping me pull together the events, and they're staying for it, and then I'm watching my daughters turn to me and say, “Well, you know what? I'm going to have to get an investment property.” That's just amazing, because my girls are now 20, and they're kind of challenging each other at, “Do you think we can get an investment property by 21?” Like it's amazing to see what it can even do, not only for yourself, but then your family, right? So it really does grow. The positive energy grows in your life. You love what you're doing. And when you love what you're doing, the business follows, and then you're just happier all around. So don't hold back, don't stop yourself. Get out of your own way, and go for it. Glenn: Wiser words have never been said. Thank you so much, Michelle. You are amazing. I've loved what you're creating and building, and I love just the exchange that's happening in that group. It's like a great friendship. I give to you, they give back to you, and everybody grows and gets better from it. So, you're the best. Thank you so much, Michelle. Have a great day. Michelle: Thank you, Glenn. You too. Take care. Bye! Closing: Thank you for listening to my 20-minute podcast on Insights of Successful Niches. My goal is to give you more financial freedom by helping you take your natural strengths to a target market of people you'd love to work with. You could find out more information by downloading my book for free for a limited time. The book's called “The McQueenie Method: Own Your Niche, Own Your Market” and you can download it at TheMcQueenieMethodbook.com. That's TheMcQueenieMethodbook.com. Imagine what it'd be like to spend two days with me in person to help you find your niche market. I will help you take your natural strengths and unique abilities to a target market of people you'd love to work with. You'll build a tribe of happy clients who become raving fans of your business. So, just go to TheMcQueenieMethod.com for upcoming dates. Thanks again and have a great day.

Letting Go of Your Past & Embracing Your Gift with Michelle Dempsey. In this episode of the Boss Mom Podcast, Michelle shares her passions in business and empowering women, and how she thrives in community. Sponsored by Throwing Pinecones Gathering.   Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes:  In this episode you’ll hear: Michelle's fast but fierce journey into business and motherhood. What act, receive, believe means in her business. How she's built her business into a thriving business. The importance of having a niche. What strategy means to Michelle. The power of telling your why. Michelle's passion to empower women, and how she uses her business in that passion. How a rock bottom moment changed Michelle's life. Our Podcast Sponsor: Throwing Pinecones Gathering The Throwing Pincones Gathering is a one-day event in Portland, OR, to help Christian women foster vulnerability, growth and depth in Christ. At the Throwing Pinecones Gathering, you will be equipped with the tools you need to seek this strength and courage and empower you to utilize them. All proceeds of the event go to benefit the human trafficking education and awareness through the organization She Has a Name. To get your ticket to the event, visit their website, Throwing Pinecones. Recommended links and resources: Scary Mommy blog Zoom - affiliate link PACE center for girls Boss Mom Academy Boss Mom Facebook Community Can I quote you on that?  I turned my blog into a business, blood, sweat and tears, with the help of my tribe. - Michelle You have to sell yourself better than anyone else can. - Michelle I'm a fierce believer in the 'girl gang'. - Michelle A strategy is just a fancy word for a plan. It's like a roadmap. - Michelle When you're putting yourself out as a new business person, everything needs to make sense in your brand. - Michelle My past is something that's going to make a difference for tomorrow. - Michelle A lot of women who can't get their business started is because they're holding themselves back. - Dana More about our guest, Michelle Dempsey. A writer, a dreamer, an entrepreneur, and above all things, a mother, Michelle Dempsey recently turned a passionate hobby into a thriving career. Internationally published and known for her ability to connect with readers on a deeper level, Michelle launched her own business, Michelle Dempsey: Very Well-Written, offering writing and editing services, business coaching, branding expertise, and social media strategy to businesses of all kinds. She speaks to female audiences regularly on topics including empowerment, personal development, and business success. Visit any of her websites to read more of her work, or her personal blog, The Trusted Mama, to read her honest tales of motherhood, marriage, everything in between. Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn / Instagram Connect with Dana: Instagram / The Boss Mom Facebook community (her total happy place) We love hearing from you guys! If you’ve got a question about today’s episode or want to leave us some inbox love, you can email us at hello@boss-mom.com Or, you can always find both Dana hanging out in our Boss Mom Facebook Community.  We would LOVE it if you’d leave a podcast rating or review on iTunes. We also know it can be kind of tricky to figure out. Here are a few step by step instructions on how to leave an iTunes rating or review for a podcast from your iPhone or iPad Launch Apple’s Podcast app. Tap the Search tab. Enter the name of the podcast you want to rate or review. Tap the blue Search key at the bottom right. Tap the album art for the podcast. Tap the Reviews tab. Tap Write a Review at the bottom. Enter your iTunes password to login. Tap the Stars to leave a rating. Enter title text and content to leave a review. Tap Send.

The pod continues its U.K. road trip, meeting up with three startup founders -- including one startup accelerator programme -- to discuss the entrepreneurial ecosystem in London and more broadly the U.K. and Europe. Let's be clear upfront: London is not the center of the universe when it comes to technology. But the diversity of industries and thinking in the British capital brings with it advantages when starting a tech company, say our guests on this segment of the podcast, which includes Michelle You, co-founder of Songkick; co-founder of Lifecake, and former Skype engineer Nick Babaian; and Matt Clifford, co-founder of London-based accelerator Entrepreneur First. So what does it take to build flourishing startup communities?

In this episode, Michelle Carter and I discuss some of the mistakes that bloggers make which result in a lawsuit.  This can include trademark infringement (naming a blog after a registered trademark), copyright infringement (in pictures and music), and defamation. Here is a lightly-edited transcript of the episode: Anthony Verna: Hi there. Welcome to the Law & Business Podcast. I'm joined with the lovely, beautiful, smart, intelligent Michelle Carter. How you doing? Michelle Carter: I am great. Thanks for having me again. Anthony: Anytime. I'm going to let you kick it off cause this topic was kind of your idea wasn't it? Michelle Carter: Indeed it was. I think today we're going to be talking about the five things as a blogger that can get you sued. Anthony: And I'm sure there's more than five now that I think about it, but we've got five in mind though. Michelle: You're the attorney so you would know better than I, but, I think that we have both found that there are five common mistakes that bloggers make that will tend to get them in hot water if not right away then in time because eventually they will find you and catch up with you. Anthony: We'll go with that. I'll say this is a caveat to the show topic is that we're giving five tips or five things to be wary of, but ultimately there's always more than that. And these are five main ideas and five main thoughts. But, but anybody out there who has a blog in order to make money in order to advertise in order to keep business going, there's just more than these five. Michelle: Fair enough. So number one on our list of five things that can get you sued as a blogger is naming your blog after another business. Anthony: Some examples that come to mind are IkeaHacker. Michelle: I can answer you Forever 21. Anthony: That's a good one. Michelle: A Kindle Fire Department. One of my favorites of all time is Regretsry. Anthony: Right. And Regretsy is not around anymore. Michelle: No. April has moved on, but it was a great blog while it lasted. So, so why is it that naming your blog after another business could get you sued? Anthony: Well, for a lot of these businesses, obviously the business name is, is a trademark. And let me take a step back because I know not everybody listening has been listening since episode one. But the trademark is a business name, a business, a slogan, a logo that relates back to a business. Usually business people can own trademarks, but it basically identifies the source of goods and services and the quality of those goods and services. So something like Ikea, you think of Swedish furniture there. There you go. Swedish, that's made in China. Right? Okay. Isn't it all? But the idea of, of, of more than just Swedish furniture is I would say modular furniture, modern furniture. And what a website like - was it Ikea Hacks, Ikea hackers.net did, and I'm still not sure why you would want to do this, but they basically had their own ways of putting together Ikea furniture so that you could put together your bookshelf as a desk instead. They had a lot of different projects, like they had one where you could buy an end table and make a guitar out of it. Is this fair use, or, why not? Yeah. Honestly, it may be. It's, I know I read at least one comment where people said it was cheaper to buy Ikea furniture than it was to go to your local home improvement store and buy wood. So, and it's already cut. It's already polished. It's already finished there. There are a lot of different projects. We certainly can't fault them for their creativity. I wouldn't want to do anything like that, though. Michelle: Okay. Your opinions on this website aside the, the fact is it was a very popular website. They had a lot of readers. Anthony: Yes, absolutely. And there is delineation here as to why Ikea decided to stay away from a lawsuit. And then they went to start the trademark infringement suit because ikeahackers.

asset title: Grammar Lesson 9: Possessive Pronouns, How to Dress Like an American filename: tafalado_gra_09.mp3 track number: 35/46 time: 12:29 size: 8.78 MB bitrate: 96 kbps Who would have ever guessed that Valdo and Michelle think that jeans and flip flops make a strange combination? Looks like we've just seen one more thing that makes Americans stand out. Note that this picture has got three Brazilians trying to dress like North Americans! Oh yes, and grammar-wise, we're talking about possessive pronouns. You might say, OUR comments to YOUR lesson.DialogPortugueseMichelle: Valdo, olha pra aquela menina ... veja a bolsa dela!Valdo: O que é que tem a bolsa dela? É parecida com a sua bolsa.Michelle: Você sabe, no Brasil a gente nunca usaria uma bolsa de paetê como a dela durante o dia.Valdo: É verdade! Olha a calça dele ... jeans com chinelo!Michelle: Eh, por aí a gente percebe a diferença entre a roupa deles e a nossa.Valdo: Mas esse é o nosso conceito, como brasileiros, sobre a roupa deles. Será que aos olhos deles as suas roupas também não são um pouco bregas? SpanishMichelle: Valdo, mira aquella chica ... mira su bolsa.Valdo: ¿Cuál es el problema con su bolsa? Se parece a tu bolsa.Michelle: Tú sabes, en el Brasil nunca usaríamos una bolsa de lentejuelas como la de ella durante el día.Valdo: Es verdad! Mira sus pantalones ... vaqueros con chinelas!Michelle: Por aquí te das cuenta de la diferencia entre su ropa y la nuestra.Valdo: Pero esa es nuestra idea, como brasileños, sobre su ropa. ¿Será que para ellos la ropa tuya sería un poco rara también?EnglishMichelle: Valdo, look at that girl ... look at her purse!Valdo: What wrong with her purse? I looks like your purse.Michelle: You know, in Brazil we'd never use a sequined purse like she's got during the daytime.Valdo: You're right! And look at her pants ... jeans with flip flops!Michelle: Yea, around here you notice the difference between their clothing and ours.Valdo: But that is our idea, as Brazilians, about their clothes. Don't you think that in from their perspective your clothes might seem a little tacky too?

Let's see if we have this right? Michelle's family gave her the nickname 'witch' because of how moody she became when under stress at school, right? Wow, that's a mean nickname, at least from a North American point of view. This lesson is a bit different in that we don't look at pronunciation directly, but we do look at the little extra words that people add to their speech, like, you know, umm, well, like, whatever, you know? Dialog Portuguese Michelle: Cê sabe que os americanos acham estranho certos apelidos que a gente coloca nas pessoas. Valdo: Diga aí ... vem cá, eles não usam apelidos? Michelle: Então, veja só ... quando eu digo que meu apelido no Brasil é 'bruxa' ninguém acredita. Eles acham estranho, um pouco cruel, sabe? Valdo: Peraí ... eles não usam apelidos como 'gordo', 'magrela', 'baixinho', 'alemão'? Pô, isso é uma forma de demonstrar, tipo, amizade no Brasil, né? Michelle: Viu, não é que eles não usam apelidos aqui, mas é diferente, entende? Geralmente é só um diminutivo do nome, como 'Liz' para Elizabeth, 'Bob' para Robert, tá vendo? Valdo: Ah, tá ... não é um nome engraçado como os que a gente usa e que vem de uma característica física que a pessoa tenha, por exemplo. Ah, sei ... Bom, então a gente se fala mais tarde, falô? Spanish Michelle: Sabe que los americanos consideran raros los apodos que les damos nosotros a outros. Valdo: Dime, ven acá, ¿no utilizan ellos apodos? Michelle: Entonces, mira, cuando les digo que mi apodo en Brasil es 'bruja' nadie lo cree. Ellos piensan que es muy raro y un poco cruel, ¿sabe? Valdo: Espera, ¿no usan ellos apodos como 'gordo', 'flaquito', 'bajito', 'alemán'? Pues, eso es una forma de mostrarles, a ver, amistad en Brasil, ¿no? Michelle: 'Bob' para Robert, tá vendo? Ves, no es que no utilizan apodos aquí, pero es diferente, ¿sabe? Generalmente es una forma diminutivo del nombre, como 'Liz para Elizabeth, 'Bob' para Robert, ¿lo ves? Valdo: Está bien, no serúa un nombre chistoso como los que nosotros usamos, estos que vienen de las características físicas que la persona tenga por ejemplo. Bien, entonces podemos hablar más de eso más tarde, ¿está bien? English Michelle: You know that Americans think it is strange the way we give nicknames to other people. Valdo: Come on, tell me, you mean they don't use nicknames? Michelle: So, look, when I tell them that my nickname in Brazil is 'witch' nobody believes it. They think it is strange and a little cruel, you know? Valdo: Hold on ... you mean they don't say things like 'fat', 'skinny', 'short', 'German'? Wow, this is the way that we show, you know, friendship in Brazil, right? Michelle: You know, it's not that they don't use nicknames, but it's different, you know? Generally they just use diminutive forms of a name like 'Liz for Elizabeth, 'Bob' for Robert, you see? Valdo: OK then, so it's not a funny name like the ones that we use that come from some physical characteristic that the person hás for example. I've got it, OK, we'll talk more later, OK?

asset title: Lesson 23: Cool Little Words, Nicknames filename: tafalado_23.mp3 track number: 24/46 time: 9:11 size: 6.46 MB bitrate: 96 kbps Let's see if we have this right? Michelle's family gave her the nickname 'witch' because of how moody she became when under stress at school, right? Wow, that's a mean nickname, at least from a North American point of view. This lesson is a bit different in that we don't look at pronunciation directly, but we do look at the little extra words that people add to their speech, like, you know, umm, well, like, whatever, you know?DialogPortugueseMichelle: Cê sabe que os americanos acham estranho certos apelidos que a gente coloca nas pessoas.Valdo: Diga aí ... vem cá, eles não usam apelidos?Michelle: Então, veja só ... quando eu digo que meu apelido no Brasil é 'bruxa' ninguém acredita. Eles acham estranho, um pouco cruel, sabe?Valdo: Peraí ... eles não usam apelidos como 'gordo', 'magrela', 'baixinho', 'alemão'? Pô, isso é uma forma de demonstrar, tipo, amizade no Brasil, né?Michelle: Viu, não é que eles não usam apelidos aqui, mas é diferente, entende? Geralmente é só um diminutivo do nome, como 'Liz' para Elizabeth, 'Bob' para Robert, tá vendo?Valdo: Ah, tá ... não é um nome engraçado como os que a gente usa e que vem de uma característica física que a pessoa tenha, por exemplo. Ah, sei ... Bom, então a gente se fala mais tarde, falô?SpanishMichelle: Sabe que los americanos consideran raros los apodos que les damos nosotros a outros.Valdo: Dime, ven acá, ¿no utilizan ellos apodos?Michelle: Entonces, mira, cuando les digo que mi apodo en Brasil es 'bruja' nadie lo cree. Ellos piensan que es muy raro y un poco cruel, ¿sabe?Valdo: Espera, ¿no usan ellos apodos como 'gordo', 'flaquito', 'bajito', 'alemán'? Pues, eso es una forma de mostrarles, a ver, amistad en Brasil, ¿no?Michelle: 'Bob' para Robert, tá vendo?Ves, no es que no utilizan apodos aquí, pero es diferente, ¿sabe? Generalmente es una forma diminutivo del nombre, como 'Liz para Elizabeth, 'Bob' para Robert, ¿lo ves?Valdo: Está bien, no serúa un nombre chistoso como los que nosotros usamos, estos que vienen de las características físicas que la persona tenga por ejemplo. Bien, entonces podemos hablar más de eso más tarde, ¿está bien?EnglishMichelle: You know that Americans think it is strange the way we give nicknames to other people.Valdo: Come on, tell me, you mean they don't use nicknames?Michelle: So, look, when I tell them that my nickname in Brazil is 'witch' nobody believes it. They think it is strange and a little cruel, you know?Valdo: Hold on ... you mean they don't say things like 'fat', 'skinny', 'short', 'German'? Wow, this is the way that we show, you know, friendship in Brazil, right?Michelle: You know, it's not that they don't use nicknames, but it's different, you know? Generally they just use diminutive forms of a name like 'Liz for Elizabeth, 'Bob' for Robert, you see?Valdo: OK then, so it's not a funny name like the ones that we use that come from some physical characteristic that the person hás for example. I've got it, OK, we'll talk more later, OK?

asset title: Lesson 1: Pronunciation of /i/, Getting the Check at a Restaurant filename: tafalado_01.mp3 track number: 1/46 time: 10:32 size: 7.41 MB bitrate: 96 kbps There's only one Lesson #1. We'll never have a first again. Today we introduce listeners to the team: Orlando, Valdo, Michelle, and José Luis. Pronunciation wise, we'll look at when Brazilians say words with the sound [i] and culturally Michelle and Valdo talk about what it was like to get the bill in restaurants in the United States. Tune in, join our discussion, download the lesson notes, and become part of Brazilpod. Dialog Portuguese Valdo: Que bife gostoso. Acho que vou pedir mais. Michelle: Mas ele já trouxe a conta. E agora? Valdo: Eh, você me disse que aqui era assim. Acho isso uma falta de educação. Michelle: É o sistema deles, né? Mas se você continua com fome, pede. Valdo: Ah, vou pedir um monte então. Michelle: É isso aí. Spanish Valdo: Qué biftec sabroso. Creo que voy a pedir más. Michelle: Pero él ya trajo la cuenta. ¿Y ahora? Valdo: Me dijiste que aquí era así. Creo que esto es una falta de educación. Michelle: Es el sistema de ellos, ¿verdad? Pero si tú sigues con hambre, pída-lo. Valdo: Ah, voy a pedir un montón, entonces. Michelle: Eso es. English Valdo: What a tasty steak. I think I'll ask for more. Michelle: But he already brought the check. Now what? Valdo: Yea, you told me that this is what they do here. I think that it's really rude. Michelle: That's the way they do things here, right? But if you're still hungry, go ahead and ask. Valdo: OK, I'm going to ask for a whole bunch then. Michelle: You go for it.