Podcasts about ok i'll

How do the words "LIVE VIDEO" make you feel??!!!? Like puking? Sweating profusely? Ha ha ha me too girl!!! me toooo! Here's the REAL DEAL! Live video is an INCREDIBLE tool for growing your business, and in today's episode I am gonna tell you one secret that will change the way you feel about it! Ok I'll just tell you right here. IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU BOO!!!!! There I said it. There is a woman out there that NEEDS your solution. And live video is the best way to get your solution and message in front of her. Ok so now that I've made it a little more enticing for you to consider live video, jump into today's episode for some tips on what to include, and how to make it a little less scary. Oh and here's one thing: There will NEVER be a time where you just feel like "Today's the day I am ready to go live." Sorry to burst your bubble. LOL But seriously, there won't. Ready is a Lie. Nothing great ever came from comfort zones, and someone out there is waiting for you to show up. Hands shaking ... Let's GOOOO! I'm right here with you girl! 

Two titans are in the studio today and— pew pew pew pew LOOKOUT! Whew, thankfully I'm really good at dodging stormtrooper laser blasty thingies. Anyway, I don't have much time so enjoy the episode because it's Rogue ONEderful! Seriously, we're going ROGUE...one. Ok I'll leave. Sorry. pew pew AHHHHH my shoulder! I SAID I'LL LEAVE! RELAX! Ugh my friggin' shoulder. Jeez. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are you having a hard time getting motivated to work out or eat healthy? Me too! There are many more people in the boat with you, that's OK I'll give you my secrets to motivation here. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jaime-riske/support

Ok I'll let you know when I get the car out of the office for the rest of my life with you and I will see what I can find out if they played with a friend of mine who is going to be in the same room as a reference on the handicapped spot for me. You are a very beautiful woman and I will get you a check for the recent update on this order and refund my money back or not I am going to have a lot of fun with your friends and family and I have a lot to learn how to go poo so discombobulated beyond my control and the family?

How do you see money? Do you see it as dirty? Do you see it as your friend? In this episode, Nikki Hartley teaches us how to develop a positive relationship with money. Nikki is a Meditation Teacher, Yoga Teacher, Psychotherapist, and much, much more! She teaches at the University of Colorado. Follow her at www.mindbodymana.com and @mindbodymana.   Julie's Reiki Certification & Angel School Course 2 Days Only - Saturday, April 13 & Sunday, April 14 ONLY 6 SPOTS LEFT! Students will:  Earn 2 certifications in one weekend. Become a certified Master Teacher in Reiki Energy Healing. Learn How to Communicate with Angels and Loved Ones (and bring through messages). Develop Your Spiritual Gifts. Learn Energy Healing. Receive Supervised Practice. Become a Jancius Angel Energy Advanced Practitioner which gives you the ability to work on clients (and accept payment from clients) after level 3. Learn more & register for the Course at:  www.jancius.com/courses   Continue the Conversation on Instagram! Follow Julie, then ask a question on social media and Julie may answer it on the podcast! Or she might just ask you to be on the show! Instagram: www.instagram.com/angelpodcast/ Facebook: www.facebook.com/angelpodcast/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLOL5Dgsssv7A4C7SLvyqWg?view_as=subscriber   Be on The Show Want to record a session for the podcast or tell a story about your loved ones coming through from the Other Side? Have a story about Angels helping you? Email us at: juliejancius@gmail.com   Meet Julie in Person! Blonde Boutique in Glen Ellyn April 11, 2019 from 6 - 10 pm Julie will be giving mini-Angel Message Readings that night! Blonde Boutique Website Blonde Boutique Instagram   Prayer Jar Add your name (or the name of a family member/friend) to Julie's prayer jar, and she will pray for you/them every morning. All you have to do is subscribe on Julie's website:  www.jancius.com   Show Notes *Show notes recorded by Sonix.AI. I know it's not the best transcription, but being a mom too, I don't have time to go in and edit it! If anyone wants to volunteer for this job, let me know! : ) [00:00:00] Hello friends. It's Julie and I am so excited because I have a dream coming true right now, and I am so excited to share it with you. So for the last couple of years I've been daydreaming in my meditation.   [00:00:14] I've been going into it and seeing the words Angel school. It's something that spirit has really brought to me and it's really coming to fruition. So I want you to know about it. Through this angel school that I'm going to be starting in April. It's just one weekend one weekend only April 13th and 14th.   [00:00:38] Well through this angel school what you're going to learn to do is Reiki and how to bring through your spiritual gifts. So you will get certified in two separate things. If you come to my course you will get Reiki certification, you will be a Reiki master teacher and you will also get certified in my angel school in bringing through Angel messages learning how to communicate with your angels how to really develop your spiritual gifts you're going to learn how I do energy healing what my processes how I work with my clients how I hear from the other side and bring through those messages. Now if you're thinking, "Well that's awesome Julie, I'd really like to learn that but I don't think I want to be a Reiki teacher." That's OK. You don't have to go into this full time. You don't have to make this your profession. There are so many people out there who just want to learn how to connect with the other side or themselves. And if that's you that's awesome. That's beautiful. And really this class will help you shape your life in every different aspect of your life. So really groundbreaking really fine amazing work that we're doing here and I'm just so excited to share it with you.   [00:02:00] So in this class here's what you're gonna get. You're gonna become a Reiki master teacher. You're going to learn how to communicate with Angels how I bring through messages you're going to learn how to develop your spiritual gift because as you go through this course over these two days your gifts are gonna come out and we're gonna show you how to work with them. You're also going to learn energy healing through supervised practice on other people. So working on people really helps you to understand what you're hearing and when somebody talks back to you and says you know yes. Oh my gosh you're bringing through exactly what I needed to hear. It just is so validating and it helps you really develop your gifts and you're also going to learn all the insights into how I do what I do and that is Angel School. So if you'd like more details go online to my Web site. www.jancius.com   [00:03:02] You can also email me for details at juliejancius@gmail.com. I'll send those to you. But again it is coming up soon.   [00:03:08] It's Saturday April 13th and Sunday April 14th, again that's Saturday April 13th and Sunday April 14th. So I am so excited I hope you guys are pumped too and I hope you guys go online or e-mail me to learn more   [00:03:34] Hello friends. I am so so excited about our guests today. Nikki Hartley and I have to say, even before we get started, Nikki is a complete saint.   [00:03:45] We have tried this podcast three different times and she has just worked with me on it, because it didn't work, the audio it didn't record it, and we just couldn't get a good recording. So she's back. She's still working with us. We've got great information for you today and you're just going to absolutely love her like I do. So as I just said I've gotten the opportunity to talk with Nikki four hours before I interviewed her. Nikki is an expert in many holistic fields. She's a registered hypnotherapist a psychotherapist a meditation teacher yoga teacher mindset coach. She's based in Boulder Colorado and she's even taught at the University of Colorado. She's also a mom to two young kiddos. Yeah. Nikki and I both share a passion for understanding how the brain works and how it can heal itself through various methods. So we're going to cover it all today. Nikki thank you so much for being here.   [00:04:50] Thank you Julie for inviting me. I'm so excited to be here.   [00:04:53] Yay. In the introduction what did I miss. Is there anything else that you want to share with people.   [00:04:59] No actually it sounds like you covered it all.   [00:05:02] Oh good. And you know some people like it at the beginning some people like to hear it at the end. But for people who are online right now and they want to check you out where can they find you.   [00:05:11] Oh my Web site is www.mindbodymana.com   [00:05:21] Perfect. So today we're really going to talk about let's start with the brain.   [00:05:27] The brain works how it's tied to our spiritual selves. Let's talk about neuroplasticity for those who don't know what neuroplasticity is. Can you explain it from ground zero.   [00:05:42] So neuroplasticity is when the brain requires itself.   [00:05:46] When we put in new thoughts or new beliefs or new habits the synopsis in the brain actually change and they started growing together in a different way letting go of the way our brain used to wire and think and behave.   [00:06:00] That's awesome. So really by changing our thoughts we can really change our lives. Right.   [00:06:06] Oh absolutely. When you change your thoughts you do change your life. And there's this there's so many wonderful tools to get to those changes people to see to find what resonates with them.   [00:06:19] So how did they start with that.   [00:06:21] So when I do mindset coaching I try to give various tools. One of them might be meditation. Meditation is a great tool to help people get into a different brain state. Brain waves activate differently when you're in meditation so that you can make those changes subconsciously if you want a faster track.   [00:06:41] You would use something like Kipnis therapy because you would change the brainwaves pretty quickly like immediately actually from theta to theta or Alpha and then you can use really easy things like journaling I know journaling super popular but it really does change the way that we have our external experiences because we're putting we're cementing or putting in concrete our thoughts.   [00:07:08] And then when we write it down it kind of makes it more concrete tangible like you have this more visceral reaction to what you experienced earlier.   [00:07:19] And then there are other ways that you can change brain by like changing habits like things that you do daily like if you wake up earlier and you do something differently in the morning like that can totally set the tone for how you're going to live your life and like do things the rest of the day if you start an exercise routine yoga routine meditation routine again. Let's see what else do I recommend.   [00:07:45] Because once you like once you're in it for that many days you're really concrete. How many days did you say it is.   [00:07:53] Oh I did it on but it usually takes 21 to 30 days to change your mindset or a habit or develop a habit because sometimes habits are good and you want to get a new habit. But yet 21 to 30 days typically and you have to do it diligently you can't do it once they like. It's been 21 days and I did that one thing.   [00:08:14] So let's go through some common examples that I see with my clients of mindset because a lot of these mindsets come in in our younger years right. There's different ones that we develop as kids you know sometimes if our parents don't have a good relationship we create this mindset of well I'm like them so I'm not going to have a good relationship too. Or if mom and dad maybe struggled with money. We saw that as younger kids and we come in. We say well I'm going to struggle with money to struggling with money is a part of life and some things that I find my clients tell themselves with in their mind. So how would you show people in those two instances to get out of that mindset.   [00:09:04] And that's a great question. So you basically need to go back to the brain state that you're in and the time period that that anchored in infants are typically in a Delta brain state.   [00:09:20] And so they're really connected to the subconscious and then kids between the ages of 2 to 7 are in an alpha brain state which is like they're aware but like they're really easily put into like a dreamlike state. So that's why kids have such an easy time playing pretend like you could tell your kid like pretend you're a tree and they'll pretend they're a tree and then like hours later they're like I'm still a tree.   [00:09:46] It's because they're in that alpha type brain state where there's a ton of creativity happening and then around 12 they slip into beta which is where there's a huge range and beta brainwaves from know normal awake state to like really high functioning beta where you're stressed out. Anyway as I say all that because in those alpha states between the ages of two to seven is when that pretend stage is happening and if they see negative external circumstances or they hear negative replies or they get negative feedback that kind of starts to anchor in their belief system and they play pretend I use air quotes that reality. So if they have a lot of hardship they have a lot of trauma they have a lot of difficulty they might be resilient because they're not going to really fully understand reality because they're in that create the Alpha Brain Wave like a different reality but it's still going to set the tone for how they're going to behave later. That's why kids everyone's like teenagers are so difficult while teenagers are mimicking and acting out now when they gain the autonomy to what they saw in their early life. And then when we become adults we still have the ability to do like change things and see things like shiny objects so we distract ourselves. So to change the beliefs about money you really have to create a new belief and a new habits and how money comes money can come from source or all that is or the universe whatever your higher believing belief system is from an infinite amount of ways like we try to control how we receive money right we go to work we get a paycheck and then if you run out of that paycheck you're like I'm out of money or there's not enough money or there's always all these bills coming.   [00:11:42] While that may be true but then you're closing yourself off from trusting that money can come from an infinite amount of ways more than we are aware or allow ourselves to believe.   [00:11:55] And so we really have to start opening our belief system to the idea that money doesn't have to come from a job. Money can come from any place and then we have to change our relationship with money.   [00:12:10] You have to start believing that you're worthy of money that your frequencies are going to attract money and if you're living in these lower vibe frequencies like a fear mentality fear based lack struggle then you're going to push money away like source is not going to bring in these things because it's you're putting out the energetic frequency if I'm scared of it or I'm not and I'm not worthy of it or I'm not good enough for money doesn't like me.   [00:12:41] So you have to create a different energy. I mean money is just energy.   [00:12:44] It's like we can spend money without actually holding it. You know we have debit cards and or we can have the tangible money like that we hold in our hands. However it's all just numbers and digital and like it's just an energy exchange right.   [00:13:00] It's just an energy exchange. So you have to change the relationship with money and become friends with money and you hang out differently.   [00:13:07] And like you might spend something. That's why people always say like you get more by giving. And it's so true because when you have more to give or you have this energy of like I have this in abundance then you seem to always have enough and more than enough because you're able to share.   [00:13:25] So really changing your belief system about money changing your ideas of how money works and then creating new habits of how you interact with money are going to 100 percent change the relationship. In the money that comes to you and there's plenty of different ways to do that again you have to find what resonates with you.   [00:13:48] Some examples off the top of my head. Some people like to use old checkbooks and write themselves like a paper check. And then like they deposit it again air quotes deposit it mentally in there.   [00:14:03] Like thinking they deposit it not in real life. Yeah I know what you're saying. I'm just making sure everybody else knew.   [00:14:09] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or like some people even create a web of a spreadsheet like income spreadsheets online like in Google Docs or something and everyday you deposit fifty dollars and you're like got fifty dollars and so you're just open to getting the 50 dollars not controlling where it comes from. Some people leave money jars around the house and like if they get changed and the like drop it in one jar they have cash they'll drop it in another jar if they have a check they'll put it in another jar and then you just visually see this abundance of money all around you.   [00:14:42] I really like that one. I think I'm going to use that one.   [00:14:47] You really are like wow I have all this money I'm never in black I always have enough there's money all around me all the time because you can put the jars in different rooms and another one would be to spend money like you already have it. That one is a little tricky because if you're still on that real fear based mentality and you haven't really shifted into the trust of the universe bringing you money from infinite amount of ways then if you go out and put a bunch of expensive stuff on your credit cards if you're in that fear based mentality then you're just gonna be in debt.   [00:15:24] So I suggest if it's an old anchored belief and they've been dealing with money struggle for a long time. Start either with the checks that you write you know you hypothetically write yourself the spreadsheets or district collecting change and put it in the little jars the little money jars throughout your house.   [00:15:46] Yeah because we you know it's interesting. What. And you know I love the analytical part of me I love you know the woohoo and this is probably too analytical for the Lulu.   [00:15:58] But you know one of the examples that I've seen is you know without even any names or who anybody is. But I have somebody who came to see me who said you know here's the situation where about three months away from losing our house.   [00:16:16] So my husband says I know this money is coming I feel like it's coming but I don't want to sell the house I don't want to sell the house but the message that had been coming through to her the entire year that she had been coming to see me was sell the house sell the house and I said Have you sat down to look at the finances. And she said no I don't want to look at the finances. So I think you know I totally agree I totally believing and having that mentality. But at the same time we can't totally turn like this blind eye. She even threw back at me she said you know well I went to see somebody else and they told me that I'm going to win the lottery. So I'm just thinking I'm winning the lottery. And I said you can't. Now look at your finances you can't not. Has she said My husband wanted to sit down with me my husband wanted to sit down and she won't sit down and look at it. So what was spiritually shows me is we have to give 100 percent and then they give 100 percent right. If we're not given that hundred percent and we're not open to the truth of it all to me it just gets a little dicey.   [00:17:32] Oh true and it sounds like she was still being fearful around looking at money instead of being like all right friend let's negotiate. Let's see what you have to bring to the table and then how can we work together. It sounded like she's like Oh no I'm just going to avoid this and hope it goes away or solves itself. And you're right. So when we are really upfront and honest and like we look at a situation that might be uncomfortable or unpleasant regarding money because we do live in a society where we need money most of us do to like pay our mortgage or pay our car payments or the utilities food.   [00:18:10] When you actually look at like how that relationship's going if you're telling money like I don't deserve you all I know is there's not enough of you to go around and you make me upset and all you do is cause stress in my life.   [00:18:24] And that energy exchange is going to be really difficult. It wouldn't be the same as if you treated another human that way. Right. So if you were constantly like this is my friend this is my roommate we live together. But every time they're around they totally freak me out. I don't really like them here. I don't feel like I deserve a roommate because I'm totally messy and they probably don't even like living with me like then you're gonna have a really strange relationship.   [00:18:53] Everything in this world in this universe is an energy exchange every single thing. So change your relationship with money change how you interact with money change how you think about money change how you have a relationship with money the same you would do with a human or a pet or your garden. Have you seen those videos where people like talk to plants and like they're really mean to the plants and they're like you're ugly you're worthless and the plant dies. Yes same thing. It's an energy exchange like there's something really powerful with words obviously but that energy that's there behind it.   [00:19:30] So you did this with water and rice too and the rice that was in the water that was spoken mainly and negatively too grew mold done it. Whereas the other one didn't. It's it's amazing it's so fascinating.   [00:19:45] So if you're talking ugly or thinking ugly about money what do you think's going to happen. It's going to shrivel up and die and grow mold or it's going to stay away from you.   [00:19:57] So don't do that.   [00:19:59] Talk to money like your best friends. Like I love you so much. Let's hang out. Let's go have fun together.   [00:20:04] Yeah well I did. That is interesting because you know I'm still doing some work on this myself but I tend to see it as dirty.   [00:20:13] Yeah.   [00:20:13] And in the spiritual like the things that you and I do we feel and because of our backgrounds I think that there is a little bit of residual belief or guilt behind money and receiving money for helping others when our gifts are so natural we think like oh I should just help everybody freely from the kindness of my heart. And that would be great if we could pay our bills in kindness.   [00:20:42] Yeah. And you know and I do eat.   [00:20:44] That's so true because that happens quite often actually people call and ask for a free reading and you know I would love to be able to help as many as people as I can and where I can I do provide discounts to people if they really do need that help and they reach out to me. But I have to be able to contribute to the monthly income. Otherwise we're in a deficit every month.   [00:21:09] True. And when I went through my Reiki master training I was living in Hawaii and I had the most amazing reiki master as my teacher and she told me in Reiki is an energy exchange. It's a Japanese form of energy healing. However if what you need whatever you need.   [00:21:29] We always try to take care of ourselves and whatever you need for the other person to receive the highest benefit from you is what you should receive. And Dr. Tsui the man who is responsible for creating reiki and bringing it over here. He even wrote recognize that in his own teachings he was trying to help all these people by giving them reiki and healing their energy and improving their lives.   [00:21:57] And he realized when there wasn't a good energy exchange that they resorted back to who they were and they went back to living in a lower frequency or going back to committing crimes or living on the street because they didn't value his offerings. And so the good energy exchange whatever people decide to put on it if it's if you if you feel good about doing the job and they feel like they've invested in themselves that's a better energy exchange so that both people benefit. Otherwise if you do something for free and you're kind of like miffed about it like this isn't serving me I don't get anything out of this the attitude you're going to bring to the situation is I don't want to be here and then you cut yourself off from source.   [00:22:47] Right. Right. That's true. Let's talk about vibrations a little bit because you know one of the things that we talk about on this podcast and one of the things that Spirit shows me is where we're touching on this but I want to go deeper into it.   [00:23:01] So when we talk about human being the humanist is the body the beingness is the soul the body has one set of vibrations or frequencies to it and we can optimize those frequencies to be of its best health. But that's not what we're talking about today. I want to talk about the soul and the different set of frequencies vibrations that the soul has to it because what came out about in our conversation and I think really what I've been searching for since my dad passed away and I got into this is I can tap into this higher frequency through my crown chakra and I've taught so many people how to do this too.   [00:23:45] I really feel like it's a huge component of the work that I do.   [00:23:52] And aides called so many different things right. I mean they think that this is what Eckhart Tolle is talking about when he calls it a Power of Now. You know people are calling it so many different words and terms but you had mentioned alpha beta and theta states. And what I'm wondering as I'm bringing this knowledge to our listeners I want to talk more and more with people who are scientifically knowledgeable about this wondering if I should go to one of the scientists out there who are studying Alpha Beta Theta states.   [00:24:28] Is it a theta state. Is that with that frequency is.   [00:24:32] Absolutely.   [00:24:32] So when we I think I mentioned this a little earlier but the average person when they're awake is running on Beta Beta is our conscious state and there's a huge frequency range and Beta 2 where you can be like reading a book that's a relaxed beta state and then the next level would be like learning where you're engaged you're a little bit more aware and alert but you're taking processing information you're taking it in.   [00:25:02] Then there's high beta where it's survival fight or flight cortisol pumpin like you are stressed out like there's a bear chasing me.   [00:25:12] Now most people live somewhere between that learning and engaged beta state which is like the medium one to like even a high beta states where they are just like my job a stressful family stressful traffic is stressful paying my bills stressful stressful and they are just constantly getting all the brain to pump all these different hormones and all of these different neurotransmitters into the nervous system which is called the sympathetic nervous system where they are just going to be on high alert all the time.   [00:25:47] You're not going to take an information you're going to be very disconnected and it's the lowest frequency or vibe that we can meet that is the that that is the frequency that most human beings are operating at right now within their body that is more the body's frequency right.   [00:26:07] Correct. And you can test this like if you look at a EEG machine like there's been all these tests where it's just that frequency is being emitted.   [00:26:16] And so to change that to change the frequency to change how you to put your body out of the M.S. and into the passenger seat because you really want the mind to be in control then you have to go into meditation which is going to take you to an alpha state it's where you're relaxed you know you're not you're not as stressed you're more like in a nice daydream state theta is where your brain goes into awareness but your body is asleep. You have now taken the body completely out of the driver's seat and you're in your subconscious mind. However yes you're still aware and you're really able to get into the reprogramming of the brain you're able to let go of the old habits old beliefs negative thinking and theta theta can happen if you're really well practiced in meditation or I hypnotherapy where you bypass the alpha state right into theta the body's sleep the minds are aware and you can start reprogramming when you're an alpha brainwaves. We talked on this earlier with kids where they're able to play so you get out of that survival mode and beta and you get into that creative place. That's what the alpha is going to do.   [00:27:36] You're actually functioning in your daily life while you're living. And it's it's like a meditative state but it's so much more than that it's a blissed out.   [00:27:47] Yeah. So you're aware and you're mindful that's where all the Mindful talk comes in. It's like how can I. What is Mindfulness. What is Mindfulness. Mindfulness is getting you out of beta into alpha in you're just really present really super presence of everything happening in your life and you can say things like I'm angry but then you're gonna go why am I angry. Oh because I'm sitting in traffic and this person in front of me is driving really slow and I have to be at work in five minutes you can have that analytical conversation like you would in beta but you're just more present and then you're able to stop yourself and go I'm going to get there. It's not a big deal. It's like you're just more present and aware of what's happening in your day to day life where beta you're just like I need to get there I'm angry. This person needs to move out of my way like kids or you're just like I'm angry and you say it I'm angry and you don't really reflect on what's causing it and how you can help yourself and figure out what you need. But yes. So high frequencies would be theta. Delta is when you're just completely knocked out like it's when we're dreaming asleep so Delta is that past Alpha.   [00:28:56] Yeah. So they're the alpha. I mean I'm just gonna put it in order and so be like Alpha Beta Delta and there's gamma and then theta.   [00:29:07] But yeah so theta is the state where we're aware but we're connected to that subconscious level we're connected to our higher self.   [00:29:15] We can't even get into theta with prayer or feel like if people use mala beads and they're doing their mantras. So that's a great way to also get into theta because you're getting into something bigger than you you're.   [00:29:29] That's what I tell people too. I tell people you know the first place that I ever really felt this was at church and I was praying at church when I was younger.   [00:29:38] I think I was getting into theta state.   [00:29:42] Thank you. Yeah. Yeah some people too I want to ask you about this. Some people say that when you're in state a state they describe it as you feel like you're living in a different dimension.   [00:29:54] Sure. I mean we can all have different responses feelings thoughts sensations emotions that come up when we're in a state that shuts off our external senses. So if somebody is like oh I feel like I'm somewhere else. Well that's definitely what you're experiencing. Some people in meditation they're like I saw colors. What does that mean I'm like It doesn't mean anything. You just you saw go like but you're accessing something bigger than you because you're turning off the external senses. Like I said so it feels different. It's not ignore where we're really connecting to in our inner self. And however that is displayed. We're like oh wow that's new because it's so foreign.   [00:30:39] Yeah yeah that's awesome. So let's talk about this so we have the ego like mind. Thirty thousand rapid fire thoughts a day. Not really even focusing on one thing and we we live from that ego we're really tending to live from the past or the anxiety of the future. So how do you teach people how to remove that. How to really tap into their essence their intuition more and turn down the volume on those thirty thousand rapid fire thoughts today.   [00:31:13] Good question. So ego gets a really bad rap.   [00:31:18] I thought we should tell him first tell him first. Oh my gosh. It's 11:00 11:00 a.m. right now.   [00:31:23] I don't know if you see that ego.   [00:31:26] What is that thing that you have that saying about ego isn't like the 13 year I know it is that 13 year old at the party.   [00:31:33] Yeah. So it goes like your 13 year olds like a 13 year old at the party but you don't want to leave them in charge. You know they're functional they have their purpose. They can do some good stuff.   [00:31:44] But you know they might burn the house to help I love that because ever since you told me that I think that is my ego my 13 year old self so true but ego wants to help us survive.   [00:31:56] Like it keeps us at this survival mode but it also is very self serving like what's in it for me and it.   [00:32:05] But they're such good and that like there can be moments if you don't have ego then you're gonna be taken advantage of or that you would put yourself in harmful situations or that you wouldn't really think like well should I do this or not. Like so there's definitely a place for ego however ego should like the body should not be in the driver's seat ego should be a passenger to your mind or your higher self and ego has this great way of helping.   [00:32:41] Like I said to keep us safe and like help us do what's best for us. You just don't want to leave it in charge because then you can become very self-serving like I said and you can also only think about yourself and you don't think about others. So to transform the relationship and you have that good energy exchange with ego. You want to again practice something that gets you out of the beat of brainwave state and put you into alpha where you're more creative in your more present and you can go. This is. This is safe to do and and it will then align with your values. So that ego will keep you safe but you just kind of want to like dial it back and just be like All right. I see what you want me to do here however I need to do this. It's just a very quick internal judgment that we have and we have to do it through practice. Everything's through practice. We don't become good at something immediately because we decide we want to be dialing down.   [00:33:49] Ego is best done. Yeah. When.   [00:33:52] When you have a practice where you get out of yourself when you remove the me me me me me thoughts and you're able to see the bigger picture and how we connect with everything around us then ego kind of takes a back seat.   [00:34:07] It's like OK you're in charge not me. Listen. I like that.   [00:34:13] So in order for us to come into this more in our society we're going to have to start to talk about it more to talk about our intuition and what I find is that we don't openly share with one another even like our close family and friends when we get these strong whispers in our heart when we're hearing our intuition. Why is the intuition tabu. Why don't we talk about it more.   [00:34:41] I believe it's because we're still kind of dealing with the repercussions of when people did talk about these things they were shunned or they were told they were bad you know like the Salem witch trials or how paganism wasn't a part of a religion and like we all had this very fear based idea about people who could explain things that we usually can't.   [00:35:11] However it's really funny and I know you probably get this all the time but if you talk to people one on one typically if they know like you have this gift or that you're able to talk to spirit all of a sudden everyone has their own example of something that's happened to them in their life.   [00:35:33] That is a form of intuition or spirit communication. We all have a sixth sense. We all have intuitive abilities. We just don't practice them or we feel like oh I can't tell people that I have them because people think I'm crazy or bad or charlatan or that it's embarrassing you know depending on your background and the type of community that you grew up in. So we do we really need to change the conversation that we have around it and understand this isn't an 8 thing that all of us possess inside of us every single one of us even animals are so intuitive. And when we come to that realization and have that acceptance and realize it's not bad just lean into it and cultivate whatever and however you receive messages so that it can best serve you in how you live your day to day life. I tell people all the time. Like the difference in how you receive messages. The easiest way to figure it out is yes or no. And so when you ask a question and you can ask spirit or God or you know the universe or all that is whatever you believe in like Is this good for me. And if there's something in your heart or your head where you get a resounding yes. And like everything in your body gets goose bumps and you're so pumped.   [00:36:57] That is your your soul or you're into it intuitions or higher selves. Way of saying this is a good thing to do. This is joyous.   [00:37:07] This is happy when you get those feelings where it feels like the pit of your stomach is dropping and the like you freeze up in like you feel like I can't move or I'm gonna be sick or oh my gosh I need to like hide my head in the sand or run away. That's your intuitions way of saying no don't do this. This is bad. Like stop where you are. Those are intuitive messages. Those are two physiological responses that we can get from our own intuition our own higher self our own soul. And then as you practice and become more familiar with your own abilities you'll realize that you get messages in different ways. So some of us have the gifts like you do where we can talk to angels and spirits and some of us just have knowing and some of us have visions we all have different gifts.   [00:37:56] We actually do. One hundred percent. You know what. Going back to what you said earlier the ladies who you're working with who see the color. I love that gift because I don't have it I can't see color at all. So I always wonder what would that look like. So I have them describe it.   [00:38:17] And yeah I know everybody does definitely have a spiritual gift it just.   [00:38:23] They're also different. Absolutely. And I think that's what really draws us into different types of congregations where we want to find the familiarity and we want to have a sense of community with people who do have similar experiences. That's where those bonds happen of like where that resounding like me too happens and then you have a different emotional response to your life and you have different experiences because you're able to share those commonalities. And I think that's what works so well and very different sectors of like spiritual practice. I think it can be a really great thing to find somebody that helps you cultivate your own spirituality or your own intuition or your own gifts.   [00:39:05] Yeah which is why it's great that there are so many different people out there like us that you can work with locally because it's nice to follow people like on a bigger national level. But it's also nice to have somebody local that you can actually get face to face with and really learn from one on one for sure.   [00:39:26] Absolutely. Some of my best training has come in communities and not necessarily in like a higher education setting. And it's because you're able to express your vulnerability ask questions and really be seen witnessed or heard by people who are not going to judge you and allow it allows for some tremendous spiritual growth when you are one on one and are able to have that bond that relationship that that great energy exchange. Yeah yeah yeah.   [00:39:58] You know I know we talked about this a little bit when we were talking about money but one of the cool things that had come out of our last talk was quantum theory because when we were talking about quantum theory we were talking about the realm of possibility.   [00:40:14] So I wondering if you could explain what quantum theory is to our listeners because I just think it's so fascinating the science behind it and then how it works in a different example other than money.   [00:40:30] Ok. All right. Let me see if I can do this.   [00:40:33] So quantum theory or the realm of possibility is when you have a thought and as soon as you have that thought it is now in the realm of possibility like you pictured it in your mind's eye or you have felt an energetic response to it or an emotional response to it and now it is actually a possibility if you sit down and contemplate on that thought that goal that dream that aspiration that you have created you now have action steps that you can take to attain that goal that dream in that realm of possibility and so that quantum theory uses that idea to help us manifest. So if you anything that you can perceive you can achieve and I think that's what's the really great part of using thought to help us when we cultivate our thoughts and we use it to help us manifest or to bring something into form then that's a really powerful tool. And so to think of something like That's not money that you want to manifest. Using quantum theory or realm of possibility would be so OK I can give a personal example of that. When my husband and I were still living in Hawaii we he knew that he was going to go to school somewhere but we didn't know where and he asked me really generously like if you could choose where we live where would you want to go and I was like Boulder.   [00:42:18] So the odds of us getting to actually move to Boulder rely on the fact of he has to get accepted to this program. He has to pass this program. Then he has to get accepted to the University of Colorado. Then we have to like there was all these big hurdles in the way of actually of us actually getting to Boulder. However what I did it as I was like nope we're moving to Boulder. That's it that we are going to live in Boulder. And I started probably six months before my husband went to this school so I didn't know he got accepted to this school and I'm not UC but like ah see you. But he got accepted into this program where he was going to go somewhere. We still didn't know where but I was like nope I've decided we're going to Boulder. So I started looking at houses in Boulder. I started researching the kind of clothes I would need to wear in Boulder. I started looking at jobs in Boulder. I started looking at office spaces in Boulder. I started thinking about the type of house and the type of neighborhood I wanted to live in in Boulder. My whole perception was already we're moving to Boulder.   [00:43:29] Like there's no other. That's just it. Like I was so adamant so determined so hard core believed it was happening. So my husband the whole time was just like you're putting all your ducks in one basket or whatever that expression as you're putting all your eggs in one basket. You don't know like you need to look at other places. And I was like Hush now. We're moving to Boulder. And so I I was looking on the internet looking at different houses found the house that we live in now. I'm like that's the house I want. And he was like We're not even moving for like six more months. That house will probably not even be available. I'm like No that's our house. And I started looking at it and was like oh this would our couch will go here how I want this kind of couch made a Pinterest board. I made a Pinterest board for this house. I didn't even know we were going to move into. I love it. I was fully believing this isn't this is it. So I think using that realm of possibility that thought I had.   [00:44:34] We're moving here and then living as if it already exists. That's the key to change using quantum theory live as if it already exists. Then that is how I manifested this house. That's how we ended up in Boulder. Like I just. And that's the way quantum theory works is that when you start believing in a new reality that thought that you had that realm of possibility and you live it and believe it to be true your external experiences have no other option than to match that perceived reality. So that's how manifestation works. That is how law of attraction works when you use a thought and you use action steps and start believing it already is real. That is your reality. Everything in your life shifts so that it does become your perceived reality.   [00:45:32] Yeah this came to me in a crazy way. I'm going to tell this story on a different podcast coming up soon but I was on a bus going to go on a business trip.   [00:45:42] I was in the airport I was in this huge cafe area in the airport out at O'Hare and there was no seating anywhere. This guy came and he sat right down and out. Well he asked Can I sit down next to you and I was like yeah you know come on over.   [00:46:01] I started talking to him. He was an inspirational speaker taught me all of this at a really young age.   [00:46:10] Oh cool. I know I know. So we talk a lot about this on the podcast so thank you so much for explaining though the science behind it and actually putting a name on it with quantum theory because I think it just helps to have the background info and oh there's I was going to ask you that ties into this. Oh you know I was gonna tell you.   [00:46:33] It's connecting to energy because I am connecting to people's loved ones and the other side. A lot of times they'll tell me I need the person that you're working with Julie.   [00:46:46] I need them to understand how to connect with me themselves and what they teach me and what they show me to tell you is you have to see them as if they're there right in front of you.   [00:47:00] You have to see what they look like what it would be like to look into their eyes. Give them a hug.   [00:47:06] Touch their hand and as you are connecting with your loved one who is in heaven on the other side through this visualization what you're doing is calling to their energy bringing their energy closer to you.   [00:47:22] And I really believe that because as you were talking to me what I was seeing from them is that it's the exact same thing with quantum theory. It's just with things that we want to manifest in our lives.   [00:47:34] Right. And not only is it that energy exchange then you also have the emotional response. That's why a lot of people say like even though your loved ones are gone they're still around you or you can keep their memory alive whenever we think about our loved ones even if they're not around or not just the loved ones like if you think about a new place that you want to live and a job that you want to have the money that you want to create.   [00:48:00] It's that energy exchange again like you just said. Like if you have a loving kind happy joyous response to it then you're going to get more of that. Like it's no more. It's a higher frequency emotional reality or perception like you will be closer to that loved one who is on the other side when you can picture like a moment that you had together how they looked when you saw them the hugs that they gave you and funny things that they said you're having that emotional response and that's a beautiful energy.   [00:48:37] Same with no money or a job or a place to live or good health you know like when you love your body your body responds so differently. For me I know that like I struggled for a little bit with was like doing that last ten pound weight loss after I had my second kid and I wasn't treating my body very nice like I was you know doing yoga. I was doing the bare minimum. I'll be honest. But when I really started like loving my body eating well you know I completely cut out booze doing yoga every day meditating every day my body responded and said Oh you do love me and that the weight released a lot easier and I had been busting my booty at the gym for a year and I was so mad. I was like Why am I not losing weight. This is ridiculous. I hyperventilated twice today   [00:49:32] Because my body is like but you're not ready to lose it because you're still treating me like crap. And so I just had to really change that relationship that energy exchange I was having with my body to like for it to go OK I'll respond positively now I'll give you the results you want. Also I had to believe that it was going to happen by making these changes. So I feel like we've been talking a lot and it's been awesome about good energy exchange.   [00:49:59] No I love it. You know we talked a lot about a lot of different things today but I think a lot of our listeners are at different points.   [00:50:06] You know some are beginners summer intermediate summer advanced and I'm just wondering you're kind of like I am you've read a lot. You've looked at a lot of different things. People are just getting started in this. Are there some books that you could recommend that they picked up.   [00:50:20] Oh man so many you know I really I do like Esther and Jerry Hicks I feel like that's the really good starter into the woo woo or not necessarily remote but understanding how Spirit works.   [00:50:40] I think Esther has this ability to tap in to connect that communication with Spirit. That was my toe in. And also like the alchemist. Did you ever read that book.   [00:50:55] You know a long time ago. Yeah.   [00:50:59] I think it's a great book that you can either take. It's just a really great explanation of the journey and how things unfold and manifest for higher self when we truly believe and. Yeah. Esther and Jerry Hicks are great.   [00:51:16] It's the toad don't know very much about them I'll have to check them out so they are the ones that did Law of Attraction. They coins the whole law of attraction. The secret. I feel like that's one What the Bleep Do We Know. That's also it's also a documentary and not just a book. But those are good like. Way to dip your toe in.   [00:51:35] Did you see the new documentary. This is the one I love so much right now it's on Netflix it's called Heal.   [00:51:42] No but you're the third person to tell me to watch you.   [00:51:44] Oh get out of here. Yeah it's fantastic. H e l. And if you've got Netflix it's right on there. But it is a great great documentary.   [00:51:55] Oh I'll. I'll definitely check it out. Yeah. There's a lot of different books that people can use to dip their toe in and be like. Does this resonate with me. Yes. Awesome. Take what you need leave the rest.   [00:52:06] Totally. That's awesome. So Nikki you know the other one that you really recommended and I highly recommend him to is Joe dispenser.   [00:52:16] I love Joe. I love him so much. I love his work. He yeah he resonates with me. I think just so much.   [00:52:24] Oh yeah. He's really brilliant. And I really just like his vibe his personality I like how he's scientifically explains the woo. Something that definitely and might obviously resonate with myself where it just makes it more under my little analytical mind. I just really like the way he explains how things work and how we can make that connection. Totally. Yeah. And Dr. John Cabot Zen another great guy. Turn him in. OK. I'll check it out. Yeah. So wherever you go there you are.   [00:52:59] He wrote that book about meditation really great box them as well and for people who want to find you online again where can they go. So Facebook the Graham I know kids are calling these days   [00:53:14] Is all mind body mana and then my web sites Mind Body money.com.   [00:53:18] Oh I see them. Thank you so much. Inherently for being on the show. I just really appreciate your time.   [00:53:25] Thank you so much for inviting me Julie. It's always so fun to talk to you.   [00:53:28] Oh thank you. Have a great day everyone. Friends I almost miss the best part Nicky Hartley meditation guru meditation teacher.   [00:53:40] She did her own meditation for us to try. It's about 40 minutes long so I know it's a little bit longer than we normally do but I'd love for you to sit down and try her meditation. We're going to put it up right here on the podcast. Again it's a completely separate episode so that you don't have to go through and tinker around and try and find the exact time to do the meditation. It is strictly the meditation and yet I'm so excited about it. Try meditation out. Tell us how you like it. Join the conversation over on Instagram. Follow me on Instagram at Angel podcast and I'd love for you to ask questions over there. We'll just have a lot of fun and your questions that you ask on Instagram. They might just be answered on this podcast.   [00:54:31] Thanks so much everybody. Have a great day and really open your heart to all of those unexpected blessings. That spirit is trying to bring into your life right now   [00:54:54] Disclaimer this podcast provides general information and discussion about energy healing spiritual topics and related subjects the conversations and other content provided in this podcast and in any linked materials are not intended and should not be construed as medical psychological and or professional advice. If the listener or any other person has a medical concern he or she should consult with an appropriately licensed physician or other health care professional. Never make any medical or health related decision based in whole or even in part on anything contained in the angels in awakening podcast or in any of our linked materials. You should not rely on any information contained in this podcast and related materials and making medical health related or other decisions. You should consult a licensed physician or appropriately credentialed health care worker in your community in all matters relating to your health. If you think you may have a medical emergency call your doctor or nine one one immediately. Again Angel messages energy healing and the information you receive here does not constitute legal psychological medical business relationship or financial advice. Do not take any of the advice given and any angels in awakening podcasts or sessions in lieu of medical psychological legal financial or general professional advice. Please note angels in awakening is a podcast produced by Chicago energy healing a company with locations in Wheaton and Naperville Illinois.   KEY WORDS: God, Universe, Source, Spirit, Guardian Angel, Angel, Angel Message, Angel Messages, Angel Reader, Angel Readers, Angel Whisper, Angels, Anxiety, Archangel, Archangels, Arch Angel, Archangel Gabriel, Archangel Michael, Archangel Raphael, Ask Angels, Attraction, Law of Attraction, The Secret, Oprah, Super Soul Sunday, Soul Sunday, Aura, Aura Field, Author, Awakening, Being, Bliss, Bible, Bible Verse, Bliss and Grit, Buddhism, Catholic, Chakra, Chalene, the Chalene Show, Realitv, Change Your Life, Chicago, Naperville, Wheaton, Chicagoland, Christian, Christianity, Church, Pastor, Preacher, Priest, Co Create, cocreate, Consciousness, Spirit Guide, counselor, therapist, Dax Shepard, Death, Depression, Died, Grief, Divine, Doctor, Dream, Angel Therapy, Gabrielle Bernstein, Ego, Empath, Energy, Energy Healing, Enlightened, Zen, Enlightenment, Enneagram, Fabulous, Faith Hunter, Family, Feelings, Goal Digger, Jenna Kutcher, Ancient wisdom, Brandon Beachum, girl boss, badass, life coach, sivana, good, gratitude, great, school of greatness, greatness, the school of greatness, lewis howes, the Charlene show, rise podcast, Rachel Hollis, Tony Robbins, the Tony Robbins Podcast, guardian angels, guides, happy, happier, happiness, Hay House, summit, hayhouse, healed, healing, health, heart, heart math, heaven, help, high vibration, higher self, highest self, holy, I AM, illness, inner peace, inspiration, intention, intuitive, jewish, joy, Julia Treat, Julie Jancius, learn, lesson, light worker, Louise Hay, Love, Marriage, Magical, Manifest, Manifesting, Marie Kondo, Master Class, Meditate, Meditation, Medium, Mediumship, the Long Island Medium, the Hollywood Medium, Message, Metaphysics, ACIM, A Course In Miracles, Method, Mindful, Mindfulness, Miracles, Mom, Motherhood, Naturopath, New Age, Passed Away, Past Lives, Peace, Positive, Power, Pray, Prayer, Prosperity, Psychic, Psychic Medium, Psychology, Purpose, Quantum Physics, Life Purpose, Ray of Light, Reiki, Relax, Religion, Robcast, Sadness, Depression, Sahara Rose, School, Science, Shaman Durek, Shift, Sleep, Soul, Source, Spirit, Spirit Team, Spiritual, Spiritual Awakening, Spiritual Gifts, Spirituality, Stress, Synchronicity, Tara Williams, Tarot, Teacher, Thinking, Thoughts, Transcended State, Transcendence, Universe, Vibration, Vortex, Wellness, Worry, Worship, Yoga, Zen, Afterlife. 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On the latest episode of Not Rocket Science, I explain my giddy enthusiasm for the release of Red Dead Redemption 2 which finally comes this week and how it will essentially ruin my life for the next month or two. I hope the GF doesn't leave me. Anywayyyyy..... I also dive into the latest in my ongoing "What's Elon Musk doing now" saga, go over getting my skinny-fat self back in the gym and analyze the world of finance information services. You know... the ones that tell which shady cryptocurrency or pot stock to buy. Are they legit? Are they snake oil salesmen? Well, I've been analyzing these types of institutions for multiple years and now and I give you the complete low-down on whether these types of subscriptions are worth it. P.S. If you don't mind, please give us a follow on the social mediazzzz and what not if you haven't already @nrs_show (IG & twitter), it would be super dope! (homeboy from the Oaktown)...that's an MC Hammer reference...OK I'll stop. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/not-rocket-science/support

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OK - I'll admit to being a little curious. About Duluth. If you look at it on a map, it looks like the kind of small too-far-north city that might be artistically limited to Soviet-style number stations and not much more than that. But whether you are talking punk, techno or ambient work, Duluth seems to generate way more than its share of great music. From that milieu comes Dean Berlinerblau. Dean first contacted me regarding the Music SDP project, a Max-based modular system for audio processing. It's a cool system, and we talk a bit about it in the 'cast. But as we talked more, I found out about his recent release (Transformational Variances, as Modify), as well as his work developing local Duluth shows and interesting views on performance. He was willing to come down for a visit, and we recorded a nice chat. I hope you enjoy my discussion with Dean, and take the time to check out both his vision and his recording. Cheers!

Athletes spend their lives fighting for a spot in a field of 2,000 triathletes in the most grueling competition on Earth. Their prize? Thrashing through a 2.4 mile open-water swim in the Pacific, fighting trade winds and a convection oven of heat on a 112-mile bike and finishing with a marathon - a 26.2-mile run. Becoming an IRONMAN at the World Championships at Kona wasn't a dream of Jen Ator's. As Fitness Director at Women's Health and author of The Women's Health Fitness Fix, she was happy to fit runs through Manhattan and no-nonsense strength-training workouts into her busy days. That all changed when reps from Chocolate Milk called with an offer to make her an IRONMAN. And while she said it took her a few days to accept the branid's invitation - an invitation to compete in a race that allows athletes 17 hours to finish - she now counts it as the goal she's proudest of accomplishing. Alongside her on the journey to Kona that she details on this week's episode of #WeGotGoals was an all-star cast. Eight-time Olympic medalist in speed skating Apolo Ohno would train with her and both Ator of Ohno received guidance from world-class coach and seven-time IRONMAN World champion Paula Newby-Fraser (a woman who does not know the word quit). Like most audacious goals, it didn't come without brief periods of imposter syndrome. Three months before her trip to Kona, Ator recounts a night spent crying and questioning her own abilities as the minutes slipped away between her and her first half IRONMAN race - a 1.2-mile swim, 56-mile bike and 13.1-mile run. "Kind of by a act of God or stroke of grace or something, my watch kind of malfunctioned after the swim in the transition to the bike," she recalled of the race. "All I could do was be in the moment and do it. And I kind of just plugged along and I worked the plan that me and my coach had figured it out and really paid attention to my effort." Ator blew her "self-deprecating goal" out of the water and turned her new confidence and attention to Kona - the true test of her training. Because Ator was among an elite group of invite-only participants at Kona, she wasn't required to qualify for the race like the majority of participants. The thought of that made her feel unworthy of the field of competition. "I had a talk with one of the pro Ironman athletes before and he said, 'look Jen, maybe at the beginning of this you didn't deserve to be here. Sure maybe at the very beginning. But now you've done everything that all these other athletes have done to get here,'" She said. "That kind of attitude kind of helped carry me through the rest of the day." Even, she recalled, in the lava fields known for their heat and for the clear path that's left for unexpected gusts of wind known to knock riders clear off of their bikes. The wind was everything she'd heard. Ator recalled riding her ultra-light road bike in what's known as the arrow position. As she leaned over her handle bars, she shook with the fear that she may too have her race cut short by a fall. Newby-fraser preparing Ator for that exact moment: "You're going to be tempted to sit up and sit back because that's the instinct that feels safer ... that is the time that you need to lean in and commit because the safest thing you can do, practically speaking, is lean over that front wheel." Listen to how Ator's run at Kona concluded and where this author, editor and IRONMAN is setting her sights next. And if you like what you hear, be sure to rate and review #WeGotGoals on iTunes and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. --- JAC:Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by aSweatLife.com on which we talked to high achievers about their goals. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen; with me, I have Kristin Geil and Maggie Umberger. KG: Good morning Jeana. JAC: Good morning. MU: Good morning. Jeana,  you spoke with Jen Ator, who is the fitness director of Women's Health this week. JAC:I sure did. And what an inspiration Jen is. Throughout our talk I think I gasped, I had a smile across my face and I definitely cried. MU:Good summary. And she is also an Ironman Kona finisher which I didn't know what that was prior to hearing this interview. JAC: So what’s actually really interesting about this is the campaign that Jen was a part of with chocolate milk is actually something I worked on in my past life the year before she was on it. So in 2013 I was a part of that campaign working on chocolate milk. And I got to see sort of the journey that she went through and I just missed her by a year. So throughout her explanation of sort of what she went through and how she was trained by Paula Newby-Fraser and how she had these incredible teammates like Apolo Ohno I could identify with that journey so deeply because I'd seen it once before. But her sort of personal take on it was so interesting to hear, one because she had been an athlete before and two because she had this sort of wavering journey of self-doubt accomplishment and in believing in herself just as I feel anyone does. The first time they do anything. KG: While she was training with chocolate milk team she had some sort of realization that she mentioned during the podcast. Can you speak to that and describe what her big epiphany was? JAC:She realized that she was the thing standing in her way which was incredible to hear her say because I believe that was the moment I cried. So Jen realized at the end of her half Ironman which is a 1.2 mile swim of 56 mile bike ride and a thirteen point one mile run she realized that she blew her own projected time out of the water because she wasn't running with a watch and there was a malfunction with it in her actual swim. She saw that she actually could accomplish so much more than she was giving herself credit for when she just sort of let go and was in the moment as an athlete and trusted her training. MU: And her training really is pretty simple she talks about loving just straight strength and running amidst being the fitness director of Women's Health. JAC: Yes. So her preferred training normally is not Ironman training. Ironman training is really involved. Oftentimes athletes will have to do two disciplines in one day sometimes morning sometimes evening or sometimes they'll have to stack them in a brick workout. But she is generally a big fan of just down and dirty strength training program sort of similar to what you'll see on the pages of Women's Health and also in the pages of her new and second book Fitness Fix. They have a mix of a lot of different things but they'll always have the sort of tried and true, pick up some dumbbells and do this workout kind of routine. And that's her preference and it works for her. But when she was training for Ironman she was doing these long workouts these distance workouts. She was running more than five or six miles because she had to finish a day of fitness with a marathon. JACShe'd never run a marathon before doing Ironman Kona which is sort of nuts to think about but she did it. She got through it and she was able to hug her dad at the finish line. MU: We can't wait to hear your interview with Jen here. JAC:I’m Jeana Anderson Cohen and I'm here with Jen Ator, who is the fitness director at Women's Health. Jen, thank you for joining me. JA: Thank you so much for having me. JAC: So Jen you have a really cool job and we're so excited to have you but you're also an accomplished athlete and a writer and a published author. Can you tell me a little bit about how you spend your days? JA:Yeah you know the kind of beauty and madness of my job and my career is that no two days are ever the same in fact rarely are two days ever even remotely the same. As the fitness director here at Women's Health, I balance a lot of different responsibilities. First and foremost I'm responsible for the stories and the editing of the fitness content inside our magazine. So that involves a lot of working back and forth with writers getting stories approved. Coming up with the monthly lineups that I pitch to our editor in chief and writing a lot of the stories myself and kind of managing our internal team and all the goals and deadlines that we have here. I also work on our online content. I do a lot of our videos so there'll be days where I might take a two hour break in the middle of the day to change into some workout clothes and go record some videos for our social team and our online team. And then there's other days where I'm doing I do a lot of press and interviews with the different objectives and things that we're working on for the brand. So yesterday I was in Atlanta doing a bunch of press at the CNN headquarters there. So you know that's kind of one of the more glorious looking days where you know you're getting hair and makeup and you're running on and off set and trying to catch up frantically with your e-mails as you're in between everything. But a lot of the days are just plugging behind a desk and you know working very long hours. I always joke that there's rarely days where I don't have a second job, where I don't go home at the end of the night and and have another big chunk of assignments or things that I need to work on. So there's plenty of days where it's just kind of grinding through a very very big long to do list and then you know I get to mix in some opportunities to have some fun and go check out new brands and new workouts and talk to experts and just kind of experience a lot of the cool stuff happening inside the fitness scene. JAC:So before I asked you our two big questions I need to know what is your favorite workout right now? JA: You know I I probably buck the trend of most fitness centers. I'm not I'm I'm I'm a pretty traditionalist. I am not somebody who—you know I check out a lot of the new workouts. I love them for what they give to different people and I love them for first and foremost being vessels to bring more people into fitness. I'm somebody who's lived my life with sport and fitness as a huge centerpiece of it. So for me anything that brings more people into it I'm I'm so jazzed about but I think just with my schedule and you know the different fitness goals that I tend to be working towards I tend to be a pretty straightforward, a pretty basic fundamental—I like a good run good solo run, a good long swim by myself and some pretty basic strength training. Some simple circuits and pair dumbbells or resistance band and a good playlist and I'm good to go. JAC: Gets the job done. JA:It does. JAC:Yeah I get it the same way and this is not about me but I'm kind of the same way or I will a couple days a week opt to work out alone because it just clears your head. JA:Yeah and I think you know especially in the field that I’m in we have access to so much so it's such an amazing thing to be able to go check out the latest spin studio and you know go to the latest yoga class or the latest fusion class and sometimes it can get murky of, is this my job or am I doing this for my fitness? You know and so I kind of tend to keep the two pretty separate and my workouts are my workouts and like I said you know it gives me so much and I have my own goals and objectives of why I have my own why of why I workout. So for me that just tends to be easier to do in my own kind of bubble rather than going to all the different classes. But certainly like Tone House is a great one, that's always a lot of fun to go with a group. And Swerve is a cycling studio here in New York that I've really been liking so there's there's definitely ones that you know I always have a great time whenever I get an opportunity to check them out. But I tend to be a go at my own speed type person. JAC:I love it. Know who you are. So can you tell me about a big goal that you accomplished and how you got there. JA:Yeah probably the biggest goal I've accomplished is I completed the Ironman, the World Championship Ironman in Kona and that was back in 2014. And it was by far, the process of it was by far the most transformative thing I've ever done. And like I said I've been an athlete my whole life. I played D1 lacrosse I have fitness in my job title but this was really pushing it for me. I had never done any type of endurance efforts before and for anyone listening that that isn't familiar with Ironman. It's a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike and then a full marathon at the end just in case you felt like you hadn't done enough. And I had done one sprint triathlon. I had done maybe two half marathons prior to tearing my ACL and having ACL and meniscus reconstruction. So I had been approached by chocolate milk, who we had worked with a bunch with work stuff and they were putting together a program and wanted one female everyday athlete and then they had a male pro athlete who was Apolo Ohno the speed skater. And they said, hey, like we would love for you to join him and we want to kind of document the two of you trying to reach this big goal that neither of you have any experience to be able to do. And it took me probably three weeks to answer you know there was there was a lot of gut check soul searching because it was so far outside my comfort zone. It was something that I truly did not know if I could do. I had never clipped into a road bike before. I was terrified of swimming in the open water. I don't particularly love ocean swimming. So while I grew up a competitive swimmer I I was not experienced in open water swimming. And I never run a marathon before and at that point I was only running about three miles a few times a week. I was about 13 months postop so I had a lot of doubts. A lot of insecurity about doing it because not only was I going to try to do it I was going to try to do it in six months and I was also going to do it while sharing our experience with a large audience. And it was really intimidating. But you know I think at the end of the day it was an opportunity to do a arguably one of the most famed and historic and legendary races that I've watched you know year after year those NBC broadcast. I mean I watch them I cry to them it's always so moving. You know it is an opportunity to do something that I had so much respect and reverence for. And also it was an opportunity to really see what I was made of. And you know I realized at that point in my life, I admit I had built a career out of trying to encourage women and people to chase their big goals and I'd spent my career interviewing athletes and then you know putting those into stories that people could read and be inspired by. And yet I was kind of sitting on the sideline a little bit and I was intimidated by the challenge of it for myself. And so you know I decided just to say OK I'll do it. I'll try and I'll try my best. And you know win lose or draw, I’ll put everything I can into it and then began some of the hardest months of my life. Thankfully my workplace was very understanding it's not like I could just be out of work for half the day to go train. But they were more understanding if you know if I squeeze in a swim in the morning and come in with a little bit wet hair you know they they kind of gave me some passes here and there. But you know I really I they teamed us up with some coaching staff and some nutrition staff members that really to just day after day give us the tools to be able to go out and do this. Because I certainly would not have been able to do it on my own. So I had a one on one coach, I used this great app called Training Peaks which you can use for free and just kind of log your workouts. It allows you to kind of like set your plan for the week and then as you complete them it syncs with your watches and it'll show you if you were like green and did an amazing job in your workout or yellow and you know kind of got there or like red you didn't do it. But I also had a coach that would then can go in and I would leave notes for him. He was really big on—he wanted me to leave emotional notes as well as performance notes so not only you know how did it go, how did it feel, how was your knee, how was you know this and that but how did you feel. So it was really an interesting process of watching how much your emotional state you know being stressed from work or you know coming back on a red eye from a business trip and you know feeling really exhausted and run down or having a lot of anxiety over a workout that felt kind of you know too much for me at that time. It showed in the performance you know it reflected in the workouts that maybe went really well or didn't go so well and he really took all that into account and would adjust my schedule and my workouts based on not just my physical progress but you know my emotional things that were going on too and my logistical things that were going on and so yeah, I basically just really committed to the plan and had a lot of doubts had no idea how all the pieces were going to fit together. About three months in, we did a half Ironman. Apolo did Boise. Then three weeks later I did Muncie, Muncie, Indiana. I found myself doing a half Ironman which is 70.3 so half the distance of the full Ironman and I was super intimidated and even going into that I didn't think I was going to able to do it. You know I was crying the night before I. I was I was certain that I had not done enough work to be able to do this. And kind of by a act of God or stroke of grace or something my watch kind of malfunctioned after the swim in the transition to the bike. So I was getting nothing—I had no idea where I was at. I think it was recording the whole time but it was showing me weird screens. So I had no perception of what I was doing. All I could do was be in the moment and do it. And I kind of just plugged along and I worked the plan that me and my coach had figured it out and really paid attention to my effort. And I finished that had no idea about what my time was and I'll never forget the moment where you know I was I was with my dad and a couple of our other, you know, our team that was working on this project and they told me my time and it was easily like two hours faster than what I had projected for myself. Like. My really like self-deprecating goal just got blown out of the water. And I think that was probably the most eye opening moment. Obviously then three months later finishing the race in Kona was probably the most emotional moment—but that one in Muncie Indiana was was the most eye opening of wow. Like I can do so much more than I think I can. Like I I am the thing in my way. I really grabbed onto that moment and really let it kind of fully you know affect me because I was so blown away that the whole time I mean my whole support staff, everybody else thought I could do this. You know everybody else was like hey your training's going really well you're doing the work outs. But me as the individual as the self doubting individual was so certain that I hadn't done enough that I wasn't measuring up that I wasn't going to be able to do it. And then to exceed you know I hadn't even thought I would succeed. I definitely thought I was going to fail and then to not only succeed but to blow out any perception that I had of how I could do, it was really a turning point for me. And so from then I was able to kind of you know it didn't get mentally easier. There were plenty of really tough workouts and I did a lot of it on my own. And a lot of people said oh well you should join a running group here in the city or you should join a biking group here in the city because then you’ll have people to share these huge workouts with. And for me it was really important because I knew when I got to that Ironman I was going to be doing it alone. There wasn't going to be anybody running with me there wasn't going to be anybody biking with me. And I was going to spend that time possibly up to 17 hours of my life alone. And so for me it was important to spend those months practicing that. And for me that meant having to do the workouts by myself. And so you know there were a lot of really towards the peak of that training cycle. And I was probably doing lower mileage than other people in Ironman training plans because we were trying to be really cautious of my knee to not you know get injured and to do just enough that I needed to to complete the race because I wasn't trying to race the race. And so yeah I I remember I mean on a Friday I would do a 4-mile swim; on a  Saturday then I would wake up and do 110 miles on the bike and then get right off and run 7 to 9 miles. JAC:Wow. JA: And then the Sunday I would run 20 miles. So this was all so new to me and so so outside of what I'd ever done before. And so yeah there were a lot of very humbling moments during all that but I really you know after that half Ironman I was able to just say hey OK something's working I don't have to understand it but I'm going to respect what they're putting together for me and what they're telling me to do and I'm going to trust that I've got really smart people helping me do this and if I do what they tell me to do to my best to the best of my ability I'll be able to do this thing. And so yeah October rolled around race was here we went to Kona two weeks early to adjust to the heat and kind of get used to everything there and even still I really did not think I'd be able do it. It's just such a massive massive thing. And I remember the night before crying to my dad who was there with me. And I said What are you know what are they going to do? We had been recording these you know little videos that ran on YouTube and we did eight of them to kind of show the journey and I said, What are they going to do if I don't finish? What are they going to—everybody is going to see that? How are they going to make the last … you know I was so nervous about letting other people down are so nervous about the external perception of taking on something like that that was so big and you know. At the end of the day I woke up this morning and said—I still have the alarm on my phone the alarm notification on my phone because I never want to forget it but I just set up the alarm to say, Cherish this day. And I really felt like at the end of those six months I had already gone so far outside of what I thought I could do for myself that you know no matter what happened—I feel like a lot of times when we get into races and we you know are chasing the big goals we immediately are focusing on the negative of it. You know the performance or I want to reach this goal or I want to do this thing. I just said you know I've put in so much work like this has already been like the most transformative thing I've ever done in my life. I just want to go out and enjoy it and I don't want to waste this once in a lifetime opportunity that I'm being given on being caught up on the nerves or being caught up in the anxiety of what if I fail or anything like that. And so I went out and I had a very thought through mental game plan because for me the the performance side was a little bit more straightforward. You know it's basically just figuring out that yellow type of effort that that feels comfortable to sustain. And you know I kind of broke up the race in three parts. The swim, my mantra was I can and I just kept repeating I can do this I can do this I can do this. And for me that was a huge part of reaching a level of deservedness to be there. Because these are the best athletes in the country. These these people have worked some of them their lives to be there. And you know I kind of got a fast pass to be able to enter this race through this opportunity that I was given. And I took it so seriously but I also felt so undeserving because of all these other amazing athletes that were around me and you know I really had to I had a talk with one of the pro Ironman athletes before and he said look Jen, maybe at the beginning of this you didn't deserve to be here. Sure maybe at the very beginning. But now you've done everything that all these other athletes have done to get here. Like you've put in the work. So you have to kind of remember that that you've put in the work. So that kind of attitude kind of helped carry me through the rest of the day. During the bike I said I am doing this am doing this I am doing this I am doing this because I needed to be present. I needed to be focused on the mile I was and I needed to not be worried about the run that was coming up. I knew that I needed to be very very present because the bike to me was the way the most technical, the thing that I had to be the most you know concentrated on getting my nutrition at the right time getting my speed at the right time focusing on my pedal stroke all of those things. So, I am doing this. And then the run was, I will do this because you know I I knew it needed to be emotional for me. I knew I knew it was going to be emotional for me. And I remember talking to my dad at the very start of this and and we mapped out you know we broke down there's different cutoff points for this race. And you have 17 hours to complete it. So we had figured out OK well you know even if you if you make it through the bike cut off then you have eight hours to do the marathon. So technically you could walk it. You could walk it. You could walk an entire marathon. And that was kind of one of the questions that I had to answer myself before I said Yes. I said, am I willing to walk an entire marathon depending on whatever happens that day, because I've no idea. Would I be willing to walk for 26.2 miles? And I said yeah you know? To be able to walk on historic ground like that to be able to follow through on something that I’m going to set out to do. Yeah I would be willing to walk it even though I'd be a very long long part of a day. So thankfully I got there and I didn't have to walk. And I was able to to run the whole thing but I just kept saying, I will do this. And I I broke it down by thinking about one person every mile. Because you're also not allowed to use headphones so I'm a big music person when I run other races I listen to music and you couldn't have anything. So there's there's a lot of thinking that goes on during that day and you’ve gotta manage your your headspace more so than your you know physical space. And so I said you know I'm going to I'm in a force myself to only think about one person for every mile. And I dedicated a mile to each, to 26 people that had really been the reason that I was there. You know from from my doctor who gave me the green light and then you know help monitor everything that was going on and making sure my knee was solid. To Apolo being such a great team mate and supportive friend. To you know my best friend in high school who I played lacrosse with and she's always been an inspiration to me. You know, just different people that along the way and I get choked up even just thinking about it now. You know who have built me up and supported me and given me the confidence that I didn't have in order to do something like this because like I said I I did not believe I could do it. But they all did. And you know I think one of the greatest gifts you can give somebody is is your confidence in them and you know I'm kind of living proof of that. I know I have been the result of people giving me their confidence in me and that lifted me up enough to take on big goals and to chase things that seem intimidating and so that that run is probably one of the most memorable runs I've ever had. And you know I got I got back after and wrote a letter to each person and told them you know what I was thinking of, and what part of the race I was in and which mile I dedicated to them and it really just brought the whole thing full circle. And you know I got to cross that finish line 13 hours and 17 minutes after I started. JAC: Wow. JA: Yeah a very long day. I got to do that and I got to run to my dad and hug my dad who was standing at the finish line. But it was really such a beautiful race to remember that you know to be able to finish it remembering that I'm really here because of so many people and I got to share this with so many people. And for me that made it so much more meaningful than just if I had accomplished a singular goal on my own. So yeah that very long winded story is definitely my biggest goal that I've accomplished. JAC: Jen. What an incredible saga is the best way. It was like Odyssean. JA:It felt it, it felt it during the time. JAC:So I have so many questions. First and foremost I think it's so interesting that you sort of felt the weight of your decision to say yes to this throughout. Just hearing you talk about it at different points: What if I don't succeed? What if I don't succeed? And then just seeing yourself not only succeed finish crush it. You didn't walk a marathon you probably stopped a couple times if you had to eat something but like just hear you tell it, you killed it! Was there any point during the bike during the swim during the run when you didn't think you could do it? JA:Yes. There was one specific point in the race where I did not think I could do it. And I was approaching the climb to Hawi so the road to Hawi is kind of a signature point of the Ironman World Championship bike course. And it's about a 7 mile climb, just a steady low grade inline but steady for I believe about 7 miles. And then when you get there that's the turnaround point of the bike race and I'm climbing and it had been a really tough—again, I'm not a strong cyclist but I was climbing and you know it's really hard and there weren’t a ton of women in the race. There's probably about I think 635 the year I did it and total about 1200 age group guys. So lot of guys, not that many women. As I'm climbing this woman and all hot pink hot pink like helmet, hot pink tri suit, hot pink bike, hot pink shoes, everything. Starts climbing past me. And she's like oh, man the heat and wind are brutal today. I was like oh yeah. You could tell this woman had done this. She just looked so pro like she was like just jacked and so impressive and a slightly older woman and just looked like, OK, she's been here before and so I was like I'm glad to hear you say that because this is my first time. And she's like just keep going just keep pedaling. You're almost there. Thank you. Thank you. And she's like keep it up. Great job. And you know it was so nice because throughout the entire race whenever a woman passed you or you passed a woman there was there was a real solidarity and there was a very, everybody cheered for each other, everybody is support each other. It was really nice. So she passed me up she went you know that was it. And I get to the turnaround point. I'm coming back. And now you're going down a downhill and throughout the race you're kind of going through these lava fields and some of them have these kind of like big rocks that you're going through. So you're facing a lot of headwind but then you're also because of how these rocks are you get these sudden bursts of sidewinds that kind of come out of nowhere and you know our coach coaching staff and team had told us about this so they had said you know you're going to feel you could feel the gusts coming from the side. And it's it's a little bit shaky at times. I mean these bikes are super light. I feel like my bike weighed probably 12 pounds you know and you're coming downhill. And all of a sudden the the sidewinds are really starting to pick up and I'm looking down and I wasn't always super comfortable in that aero position where you’re leaned over the bars and you're really down low on your bike that that was intimidating to me to get used to, especially when going downhill. And one of our coaches was the legendary Paula Newby-Fraser. And she's the queen of Kona. And I remember her saying to me there are going to be times where you get scared and where that wind comes out of nowhere and hits you on the side and you feel shaken. And she's like, you're going to be tempted to sit up on your bike. You're going to be tempted to sit up, sit back because that's the instinct that feels safer and she's like that is the time that you need to lean in and commit because the safest thing you can do practically speaking is lean over that front wheel because these bikes are so light that if you're sitting up and sitting back that front wheel can get picked up a lot easier from these gusts up side wind. So I'd remembered that she said that to me I was trying to stay down,  was trying to stay down. And all of a sudden I look up and I see all these people in front of me are swerving around something and I can't tell what's going on but they're clearly like really moving around something. And as I get closer I see the all pink everything. And the woman was being carried off in a stretcher. JAC: Oh God. JA: And I mean I was shaking. I was tearing up. I had to actively be like, oh my gosh calm down calm down because it was the only moment where—I had passed the point of thinking, oh my gosh can I do this. Once I got through the swim I was like oh man, all right. We'll figure this out. We're going to we're going to get through this. It was the only point of the race where I thought maybe I won't be able to do this because there's somebody who is clearly more experienced than me clearly has done this before and she's not even able to finish because of freak—you know maybe she was reaching for her water or when when a gust of wind came in and wiped  her out. Or maybe—who knows? You know and anything like that could happen. And I I could just be I could be done. And again I found myself kind of sitting up and I was trying to get my composure and I heard Paula you know as I'm like shaking trying not to cry and trying to push through it and I just found myself saying commit commit

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Today we're going to talk about chatbots. Using Chat Bots to Triple Your Sales Conversions without being tech savvy.  With Heather Havenwood all about using Chatbots within Facebook to grow your business. I'm happy to have a returning guest with us Heather Havenwood. And we had her on a while ago and she offered up some awesome content to know who you're selling to. So, after this episode, you might want to go and listen to that episode of know who you're selling to. But today we're going to talk about chatbots. How to triple your conversion rates with your sales without being tech savvy. So, if you don't know about Heather let me tell you a little bit about her. She is CEO of Hazelwood worldwide. She's sexy boss, a serial entrepreneur and is regarded as a top 40 in internet marketing business strategies and marketing. She since marketing her first online business in 1999, brings together clients and personal coaches. She has played an active role in online marketing world since before most of us even had computers. In 2006 she started developing and growing online information marketing publishing company from ground zero to over a million dollars sales in less than 12 months starting with a list of the product name or an offer. Heather and molded her clients into successful gurus now known as the expert in this field. She is awesome, and she really knows her stuff. So, let's welcome Heather today. Heather so great to have you again. And I'm just so excited to really talk about chatbots. I know it's something new that I've heard about a little but almost nothing. So, this is going to be exciting. Thanks so much for being with us. Thank you for having me. This is going to be a lot of fun so it's going to be different and chatbots, feel like what's a chatbot, I will explain all of that. Awesome. OK. All right. So, here's what chatbot is. I mean just kind of dive into it if you're ok with that. My name is. My name is Heather Havenwood and I'm a marketer in an online marketing for since 2001 and I had my, I actually got my online degree my master's degree in 2010. My first million online was in 2005 right so I've been around a long time in one of the things about me is I'm an early adopter. Not everyone's like that. I got that from my father actually. Whenever there was a change of technology from BETA to VHS to like those discs we had for a while he was like the first one out the gate to buy the technology. In fact, in 1985 just to give you I guess when I get this from 1985 he had a physical bone in his car wired in his car he drove 80 miles from our house to the nearest train and when the train ran by he called his buddy and said look I'm, I'm in my car and a car phone is like 1985. OK. Wow. And I think it was like 50 dollars a minute or whatever it was. But this is before the bag phone. He was one of the first people in Houston Texas in the 80s to get a phone and he was very proud of that. So that's just I think that's where I get it from. I'm a true early adopter and I kind of have it. It's like I've heard about it. I'm probably late. I just have this kind of weird thing. But, I will say with chatbots it's a little bit different technology, but it really is the future. So, let's kind of take you back down to a technology lane if you will. Right. Let's start with good old-fashioned Yellow Pages. Yellow Pages. I remember going up we have yellow pages. My grandmother lived on her yellow pages. He wanted a plumber, or they wanted a roofer, they wanted whatever they open the yellow pages and all the market people talked about the yellow page remember that. Yeah absolutely. All right the bigger the ad the more people who will get to read the copy. And then what you trying to get them to do. You tried to get them to do what. Call the office sure. That was the thing. And then you got them to convert from there. Then we had the big explosion of online marketing in the last couple least of decades. Is it all about ads. Now no longer Yellow Pages but now that it was newspaper ads direct mail it's all about no matter what your ad is Facebook, online, Google, Yelp what are you going to do. Call. You still want them to call or go to your Web site and call. Especially with service-based businesses. Absolutely. Mainly because you want to say what's going on what's happening. When can we meet? Here's what's happening with text messaging. So, let me give you kind of an example. Go back three years. I opened a weight loss company here in Austin. So, it was a service-based business. Local business right. And it was kind of a new business and so what we want to do is again like you guys we wanted them to call to set an appointment. But from the beginning, I knew that a couple of things one of our target markets was women in the construction business even though it's predominantly male-dominated the customer is the woman. Absolutely right. She's the one dealing with the leaky roof she's the one dealing with all of that. The plumbing situation even though maybe you know the man comes in to fix it. The customer is a woman. Absolutely. Go back to this weight loss program. I knew the market was women and women like texting more than men. There's stats on that. OK. So, I thought to myself OK well we're going to set this phone number up. Obviously, we said the phone number, but it was a virtual number for the beginning. There's all kinds of companies you can use Grasshopper, Google Voice, whatever. And the number one thing that I said the company we have to make sure the phone number is textable and the like really __, it has to be textable and it has to be text was such a way that no matter who is working that day, myself I work in the office as virtual or anybody that we actually had in the office that they physically, they could text message back the customer as fast as they possibly could. So, it first happened my staff was like no one's going to text us or on my watch. Sure, enough we put on all our ads either on the Website, Yelp, Google ads whatever our thing was when we did even radio we said call or text number, call or text number. And guess what happened. We had people text and they say: “I just heard your ad on, I just saw your ad on Yelp, whatever can you tell me more about it?” Now here's what's happening. People are busy. They got their lives going on their moms or whatever they're busy lives right. They go oh I really want to try that. I'll send them a text but they don't really want to have the time to call and have this big conversation. Right. Right. So, it's their way of kind of like oh I'll start something and then like a follow-up. But they don't want to e-mail either because they kind of want to talk to somebody, so they text. Now here's another example. So, we actually had a huge amount still, do have you drop people texting. And then what we do is we'll text back and forth a little bit and then go hey is this a good time to call you so we can now continue the conversation get your schedule and then they’ll go “Yeah, come in 10 minutes or actually give me five minutes. Yeah. Call me now” Boom. Now we’re calling, we've had we've had a connection, come on the phones, schedule an appointment, you'd be surprised. Well the interesting thing, I’m hearing you're going through the whole sequence. You’re texting back and forth and you're creating a dialogue and a familiarity and then you're asking them permission to call them which then they're saying yes. Yeah exactly. They reached out with the text which is what I call a soft connection. No commitment. And then-then we would always encourage our staff to say try to get on the phones as fast as possibly can so they can answer questions faster. Of course, and get an appointment. And but when you're in that dialogue then you can have a permission-based conversation where you're like hey is a good time call you when should I call you? Perfect timing I'm driving. Great. You know or hey you're going to be on speaker with the kids. No problem. You know so now you're calling them and they are inviting us to call them. I know that's so awesome. It is also, that we did. So, here's another thing and give me another example here just in case you're just like oh I don't believe it. I had a gentleman who was in a mastermind with me who his agency did all was managing all the lawyer infomercials to just commercials right across the country and that the lawyer was one of those ones where it's like: “Do you this crazy sickness I can never say it. OK. I can't say I call this number does you have this. This is, call this number. You know your part of a class action lawsuit” So that was his agency like blasting this and their conversion wasn't getting very high and they didn't understand. So, they, once someone said someone called in the customers who are feeling like and she goes well someone called in the other day and said they tried to text the number and nothing happened. And of course, everyone in the agencies that text the number that they go to. Why don't you make the number textable and see what happens? So, said what we could do that. Right. So, they made the same phone number. No changes really textable. And I think on the ad they put, call or text. What do you think happened? They got and ended with texts because nobody wants the call and really talk to somebody right now. Exactly. They don't want to be sold. Right. And you also don't know maybe they're in a loud factory or maybe a hospital, maybe they didn't want to actually talk to, they can't, maybe they legally can't, maybe are in front of people they don't want to have a conversation about right. Oh yes, let’s talk to a lawyer right. So, there are all kinds of reasons why people text versus call. Sure. Right. My sister, when she's in a certain area of her work. She can't take calls because for some reason the area is restricted. She's like I can text you but I can't call you back. Right. So, stuff like this you just realize that you can still get in communication and so give the customer through text so what they did they made it textable and they got inundated their conversion went way up and they're all happy. Right. Yeah. Instead, they made the customer service people take the text and they, it’s just like chat nowadays. I mean I go when I do customer service for clients or I go into a software that I'm purchasing the first thing I do is chat right because I have music in the background or I have you know kids screaming the background the dogs, but I can chat through what I need but I can't get a call. So, the point do you want to do more of that and that's where chatbots come in. OK So, here's what's happening now because people are already used to texting. And sometimes people don't even want to give out their phone number because when they text you, you’re the front of them. Yeah. What's happening now is Facebook early 2017. They opened up their API. We will talk for a second. They opened up their API for their messenger which is their texting communication right. They opened it up, API really from the concept of what do we do with this thing. We want more people on our platform. We pretty much want to take over the world. We don't want anyone anymore to even use their phone. They want us to call and voice call and video call and do everything with Facebook. How can we get more businesses to use our services? How can we get more businesses on our platform? They go well let's open up the API and see what happens. They open up the API. Kind of like OK developers go. We don't know how to sell this so why don't we just open up the platform. And there's about 40, 50 companies in San Francisco area and they are kind of tap the shoulders on and said OK. You start your own company and we're going to let you API into our service. It's not for the public it's just for like who we tap and see if you can find a way that will you know will basically increase the amount of businesses on our platform. So that's what happened. And it's only been around pretty much since the first quarter of  2017 and what's happened now is there are all these different services trying to figure this out where they are now no longer on their Website no longer saying things like click to my Website or click to chat or click to call. They're saying hey click here to talk to somebody right away. And it opens up the Facebook messenger app on desktop as well as mobile. And so, what happens is you now are engaging with the company via their Facebook app, via their fan page or their business page immediately. Interesting. Yeah. So, then you can move them from there to wherever you want. Here's a link to site for a service. You know why don't you give us a call I'm available right now. By the way, you're on our fan page if you click on this link it takes you to our service agreement whatever you want. What they're trying to do is have it so that business is really no longer would have Websites they just have business pages. Wow. That’s interesting. And that's why I think it is. And it's clickable so here's how it hits it and then I would go to the next level of this. So, I'm going to give you my chatbot link right now and I want everyone listening to go to this URL and engage with my chatbot and notice how different it is than going into our website to opt-in or just calling me or anything like that. Notice the differences here 's the URL, ready? Yup. www. askheatherann.com.  My name is Heather Anne so, askheatherann.com. Now you put that in URL, no matter if you’re on desktop, no matter if your iPad, or your phone it's going to happen. It's going to open it and it's going to turn, you'll see that like open and open again, and it will go right to Facebook Messenger. Wow. Ok. . Yes. So that once you experience it now mine's customized and the first thing it says is like “Hi” and it starts to have a conversation like Hi I'm Heather Havenwood. This is what I do, you know. And then I ask it a question. The first question I ask when I ask you is “What's your name?” What am I doing? I'm building a list near you. David, you're like great Dave. They'll say tell you what do you own a business because that's what I do. Right. And you can say yes or no. “Great!” right you're in a business that's awesome because that's what I do I help businesses expand their space expand their revenue through different through exposure visibility and profitability. You go, “Great!” And it will tell you what I like because “I'm a bot. I don't know if you're man or woman. Will you tell me if you're man or a woman? Then you say, “Man” Type in MAN. “Great!” Right. Expands things, I go, tell you what I should give your free gifts just for your time today. Here is. Will you please give me your e-mail address? You type your e-mail address. Press ‘send’. Awesome. Here is your gift. I just had an entire interaction with you. Yeah, that's pretty amazing. Now here's what's cool about it. Why you're having that interaction. If I can actually watch you do this entire process live. Like I can be sitting at my desk as a customer service person or the CEO of the company. Watching people interact and at any moment in the middle of the conversation. I could just like come in and go “Hey”, “Hey, how's it going?” And I can totally take away the competition of the bot and just literally have a conversation with you. I don't know what to do. And the chatbots going. You can literally have someone go Oh hey you know I'm here right now we're available we can get someone out. Can I get your number to call you right now and what's going on? What's your address? Now, what can we do for you? Start actually communicating with the right way via chatbot and everything's recorded and everything you can see at any time. Wow. That's way, way better than a Web site. It's way better than a website right. First of all, it doesn't go there then opt-in and you get autoresponder. You just need a whole process right. And so, you can so much time. But here's the cool piece. It also brands you it has a conversation. There's a company here in Austin called the Reliant plumbing. And oh my god they, they do the best ads. They really do.  I have to give them credit. The radio ads and ads and its husband-wife team. I’ve never used them but I hear their stuff all the time. And, the radio ads. it's husband-wife team. And they have this kind of brand, the whole fun team going on. But they’re still on plumbing for God’s sake.  And you got to rate it, it’s funny. So, they lost the whole brand through fame. Now they just drive people to the website of course and their brand and their phone number. And I don't they do text messaging but they've created this kind of funny brand. Between them, you know between the husband-wife. He acts like these guys as goofy guy and she acts like she's like seriously honey you know like that whole thing. Imagine if you had a cartoon of them were few ones with chatbots and high, and all of a sudden you had the spokespeople the CEO's husband-wife team basically talked to you go “Hey!” And they had this little fun banter for ten seconds. You're reengaging with them and you're reengaging with your brand. And that's key because we want to, at the end of the day businesses what do business people it's human to human interaction. They don't run businesses with brands. But what they what they what we're doing now with artificial intelligence basically is rebuilding connection with bots which is aka a cartoon of Disney. We have a relationship to Winnie the Pooh. We have a relationship to Mickey Mouse. We can have a relationship with a cartoon right represent something to us. Remember that the movie with Tom Hanks where he's alone on an island for forever. He literally had a relationship with a volleyball called Wilson. Right. Right. He built this interaction with it. We have this is old school, Wendy’s. You know we've had interactions with the dog, Spot. I think it was Budweiser. We've had we've had relationships with inanimate objects before and cartoons. That is a way to connect with an audience. So that's how Chat Bots allow, you to do that and it also allows you going at one level but also alleged that sustained interaction fast speed connection with the with the with your customer and you don't have to have a big hole. You know there are services you get that are called chat services. Yeah. Yes, that's true. That takes a little more manpower right because any anybody in your office can be logged into and be a part of the Facebook business page. And anybody can be having a conversation with a client. It starts with the CEO. Yes. Yeah. It's kind of interesting because it's like you know even when you get a text on your phone or you check it always before you will an e-mail. So, the chatbots if you’re on the other end you just know that it's up and running all the time and you would be able to use it so much better than answering the phone ain’t it? Yeah absolutely. And plus, on top of that you know you again you don't know are people going on in the background their world right. Being able to chat and have a conversation with a service provider like Hey I like to have you come out roofing. I've got a hole Yeah, I live in South Elvis or the South Austin. I really rather have it on Tuesday and how this whole conversation and go Yeah. Well, we have something available 2;00 on Tuesday. Here's my address. Thank you so much. We'll follow up with you in a week. All that can be done. In fact, my head my AC go out actually three months ago and believe it not I was very impressed. This company texts me a text me but the only thing that I think they did incorrectly is that I had a phone number I called. And then the text came directly from the technician. The problem with that is a different phone number. Wouldn't it be that everything comes from one place? That's the beauty of Chat Bot. You don't have three numbers right. It could be anyone. Right. Because the technician can leave. They can leave the company tomorrow, in a year, and you really don’t want to have that right. When you want to own the customer. And with all the technology there is today you can have all your phone numbers from the company forwarded from one out. Yeah. So, if I have five technicians they could all be routed through that one number. Exactly. Yeah. So that way. Anyway, like I said with Facebook how Facebook as if I own a Facebook page and I own a business I can have you as they call it editor. I don't have this system. I can have a business manager all the editors at any moment. Everyone's texting from the same location to the customer. So that's continuity. Right, it’s continuity to the customer, so a customer's text via Facebook Messenger. They used to clock smart. That sounds great. Awesome. And then all of a sudden you have the technician Mike go “Hey Sarah. This is Mike your technician”. And again, it's coming from the same place it's coming from Facebook Messenger. Just want to let you know I'm on my way. I'll be there in 15 minutes 20 minutes. I'm running late. Whatever. You know if there's any problems or any changes please just text back to this Facebook Messenger and either myself or someone from our team will help you. Right. And that's a cool thing to do because like now I and my other business have people when I talk to them though I'll ask them what method you prefer. And they probably say text me the most. Most of them are saying text now because they're on the go and no glance at a text and no answer. Or you know at times I’ll call somebody and knows you know on my phone and says I can't take the message now so they end up getting a text right. They got texts right. And I've actually had a situation where it was a service provider and I said I can't get on your calendar. You could text me and like well we don't text them you need to step up. They are in the real world so the point is that you want to have both right now. I think having your phone number textable. You can do this you can do that through Central, you can do that through Grasshopper, Google Voices is a lot of different areas you can do that is OK. But then also having the Facebook ad or the Yelp ad, you can literally text have the URL go right to the messenger. So askheatheranne.com goes right to the chat box experience. It doesn't go to my page. And then you click. No, it goes right. Right. Right. The Chat Box experienced first thing actually the interaction. And you can actually like you so you say you can give a free report or give me a free gift from there. Absolutely. Absolutely. And then you can then you can send them to your web page if you so desire to. Exactly then definitely. I mean you'd be surprised nowadays. I mean just the other day I went to Facebook I'm looking for a new gem on something. I went their Facebook page, their business page and this was me testing them. So, went their Facebook page a business page. And I went to their message and I started texting them questions. Now, it was late at night. Like it was late, was like ten o'clock and I didn't expect them to respond at all like I expected either they weren't going to respond, or two, may or may not respond in the morning if someone's actually managing their Facebook page. What's interesting about it is the owner, she responded in 20 minutes. She’s like “hey yeah, I was sleeping. It’s all right, Sure, you know what Why don’t we give you a free weekend.  Love for you to come in. My name is Sam, I’m the owner.     I love to connect with you and see how we can support you. I was like “Awesome!”. Because well have the days of weak control of when people buy over. The nine to five is over. And so, I'm not saying you have to sit there all night. You know, and you can't ever turn your hours off and you can but have to allow people to connect with you when they want to connect with you. And lots of times it happens at seven o'clock at night when they're at dinner and their husbands like we got to fix the plumbing Let’s push it in the morning. Doesn't work anymore. It's like you know what I'll text them right now and they'll get it in the morning and they'll call me when I'm running around 8 o'clock in the morning because of so many of those in our weight loss company people text as after hours. Really? You know the interesting thing too is like I've done a lot of research, not research but you know playing with other people's websites and see how they respond. You know to email him or send him an email from their website and nobody virtually nobody checks the email that they get from their websites. Yeah, that's really strange to me. I get a lot of people don't. But if you do a texting and it is going right to you in a different format than you know, I think that's pretty awesome just the way that that whole thing set up. I’m going to have to check it out. So how did you pick up your URL? You just put it into when you set it up. Yes, you can buy your URL anywhere, of course, godaddy.com or whatever. And then ask. It doesn't make sense. I just I had I had it sitting there and now you can make it whatever you want. You can make it your company.com/contact us what you can make it whatever you want it's just an easier redirect obviously, because we’re sitting here sitting here the audio you know you know I've explained to you what it is or what's happened with the API with Facebook the techie is to notice nowadays your Facebook Messenger is now an entirely different URL M./ What Facebook did is basically, Facebook now has two websites, it’s Facebook.com and m.com. Yes, so that's why your app you have an app for Facebook and an app for messenger. OK. From a distance, so your Facebook business page Messenger is literally an entire another URL. And so, this is new to me. So, I could have Facebook off. Right. So that's how I open up my desktop with Facebook because it's too much drama. But I can communicate with business people all day long on Facebook Messenger. So, I close Facebook, but I open that messenger and I go to m.com/ you know and that opens up my messenger so all I see on the desktop is messenger. Anyone talking to me. I don't see any of the blog posts or drama or ads or any of that stuff because that's turned off okay. So, it's two, it's two entities at this point. You look at Facebook as if there's two companies two URLs and that's why the messenger literally is its own world and they're going to start. They've already started but they're slowly rolling it out. They're going to start so that you can actually advertise inside of messenger. So eventually, especially 2019. That's a good or bad thing. Yeah right. The cool thing though about that for a local business right. Save money or whatnot. A local business you can really you can really focus on people that are in their message or app at 10-mile radius or at a 50-mile radius. The other thing with that is here's what's really cool which I forgot. So, let's the moment you start interacting with my chatbot and I mean the moment all you have to say is hello. And that's considered it opt-in. So, what's happening in the background is I'm connected to a third-party service remember this third-party company I told you about I'm connected to a third-party server I pay $20 a month and there are tons of out there. One of them is called many chat spells it M A N Y C H A T.com, 20 bucks a month. What it's doing and again it's this open API company okay. What it's doing is at the moment you say “hello”. OK. On my page the moment, many chat considers that an opt-in. You've interacted. You've interacted therefore you are at opt-in. Therefore, you're now on my list. I can broadcast. I can send a New Year’s Eve or Christmas Eve special to anyone that's ever interacted with my business page messenger ever. You're on my list. The cool thing about that looking e-mail list right is the messenger app is an 80-90% open rate. Message my broadcast my message list. I'm going to get a huge open rate versus an emailing blasting my list. Wow. This is just the beginning it's only been around not 11 months or so yet. It's a whole new world the about ready to explode. It is. It is and it's geared towards businesses. It really is geared towards businesses because Facebook wants to pretty much take over the business page. They want to take over the Yellow Pages right. They want to be the pages for the world so they don't know how to do that. So that's how they opened it up and now all these things are kind of coming about with entrepreneurs and they're all figuring it out. I mean a chance really expands $20 a month. All it does is basically talk to Facebook and as a third party or you know interaction that they've got the blessing from Facebook. So basically, what the Many chat does is it take everyone that interacts with you it just takes their information, stores it with you it just takes her information stored it for you. It's pretty good. So, think of it like a Manychat, board member or eye contact where you log in and you say I want to send a broadcast tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. and I want to have a little image. You don't make the thing about Chat Bots you know broadcasting for Chat Bots as you make it short like a taxi you'll see like an image in like a little thing like “Awesome offer new year's offer click here or call us now for your offer” like Texas small. Yeah. Right. But then you press a button and the system sends it to everyone on your broadcast list. So, 90% open rate of your offer. Wow, that's pretty awesome.  It is awesome, right? I'm just thinking about what awesome possibilities. So, so what I do. I work with companies to do that. I mean I set their Chat Bots and it starts around a thousand dollars to do a full set up. And the reason why it takes that much money is that yes you can do it yourself there are many chat bot but I do an entire process and a marketing process of how are you using text now and how can we integrate that with your current system. Consulting involved. So, it starts with thousand usually about a two or $2,500. But I mean how many clients do you need to make up one, you know $2,400. Right. One or two in the construction business. Sure. Especially if what you are selling off its roofs. It's one deal if it fits windows and doors are its kitchens and yeah, it's one deal. Take care of it in an armpit. So, I hope that helps and I love for people to get a hold of me at www.heatherann.com and that is my own private page. So, I am the one answering questions of you really seriously have a question you can just literally message me and it's me because I'm the one logged in. Or you can go to call with www.callwithheather.com, callwithheather.com and that is my schedule on the phone with me and have a conversation and let me know how I see you I can help you know to consult with you and your marketing. I do marketing advice right, so I work with service providers as well as authors and speakers specifically and how do they increase their ROI their current marketing. I do a lot of local businesses so lawyers, Service providers, Weight loss. That's cool. That's awesome. Yeah. And if they if they get in touch with you and www.askheatherann.com then they'll get a whole preview of what they can possibly expect to get you know on the short side. Yes absolutely. And are actually looking at. Call and interacts with them. So that's pretty cool. This has really been cool. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. This is just killer information like the last time I know how to do the Chat Bots that's the last time was. Know who your customer is so you can sell them. Yeah. Forgot about that other piece about that know who your customers. Just circling back. Yeah. Though women like to text more than men. Like I said that earlier. That is why if your target market is women, this is just brilliant. I mean it really is brilliant. Really. I know that the technicians usually are men were generalizing of course but women are usually the ones writing the check. Right. I agree. Just like my daughter, she has six kids don't even think about calling her. Oh my. Oh my God yeah. Text her, and if one of the other kids see this they'll pick up the phone and text back. But she barely really answers the phone. Well, I can only imagine. Right. So yes, I'm surprised she can even text but a good example. A lot of what I mean. Yeah. You’d be surprise texting I'll do stop in there. They're doing all kinds of things and they'll text. But getting a phone call out of them is like forget about it. You'd be surprised how just doing this one thing can really just increase your conversion. Because remember your target market is. And if you're over there going I'm old school. What the hell are you talking about Heather? I’m like “What? look you're not your market. You're not the one writing the check. Yeah. They’d get up to speed or die, it’s about it. Let the millennial business owner take your spot in the market. Exactly. My father last, I checked I haven't even tried it in a couple of years. He hadn’t a flip phone. You know like he doesn’t even get texts but he's an early adopter too which always makes me like what happened to you. I think he got retirees, forget it I’m not an early adopter anymore. But I did my first text message in 1988. 1988. And it was. I was working for a telecom company and we, of course, have the cell phone and that Nokia; the Nokia dealer was there at the offices way back. You remember that. And they were explaining to us text message and were all in the conference room about 10 of us. And I never forget it. And I said to my friend Brad, “Brad I'm going to text you ok. Hold on a sec” I put HI. You know you heard his little phone go ding ding. He’s like WOW, I got it. He's like OK I'll text you back. Hi. Oh my God, Oh, my god. We are in the same conference room. It was like, Woah, that’s so, really, how did you get to. So, things had changed a lot.  Oh yeah. We still want to talk to humans. We still want to have a relationship with the people that we're giving money to. So, believe it or not, text us. Text us here. No, it's not something that's going to get progressively more interesting let’s put it that way to interact and engage with our customers. So, thanks for having me I really appreciate this. I really appreciate you being with us this morning. It has been an awesome day. This has really been some awesome content. Heather has just given us some tremendous information on how you can jump ahead of the game. Jump ahead of your competition and be that guy or gal that's in control of what's going on within your business triple your conversion rates. Figure out how to use chatbots is just another tool in your toolbox. That's all it is. So, until the next time, we meet be profitable, have fun enjoy your business. . You may visit these websites to connect with Heather Havenwood: www.askheatherann.com www.heatherann.com www.callwithheather.com There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the web site and pick up the free download.   4 Hot Marketing Strategies That Can Flood Your Business with Customers   If you have a story to tell and would like to be a guest on this podcast email my assistant Shell at Shell@contractorssecretweapon.com   and she will send you our guest sheet.       Our sponsors   Would you like your phone to ring more with qualified buyers people looking to buy now? Then let’s make that happen. Best Home Services Leads is dedicated to making your phone ring with qualified buyers wanting to buy now. Go to and fill out the form to get more information.       http://contractorssecretweapon.com/money   How about 100 free postcards sent out to your best prospective customers. 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Ro from Drinking on Sunday's joins the podcast to discuss how an "Ok I'll do it" decision lead him to be one the most effective mentors of young black men in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia. Ro's ability to reach kids from broken homes and over worked families has really opened the eyes to the possibilities they have within their grasp. When it comes to the affect social media is having on the people he's mentoring, there seems to be a common theme from people from the age of 15-25 when it comes to engaging into negative communication. "Why would you argue with someone you don't even know?" is what Ro finds himself saying multiple times while mentoring young adults. A lot of great insight on how mentoring is needed for the community and what we can do to be apart of it.

If you don't work at an organization that doesn't specifically work with people with disabilities, you don't have to worry about making your fundraising events accessible, right?  Wrong.  So wrong.  As our guest Christy Herzing from Paraquad says, "Making your event accessible speaks to a level of inclusion that can increase your donor base." That's something we all want, right?  Christy was joined by her colleague Sandy Jones also from Paraquad to talk to Marjorie about what basic accessibility accomodations you should look for in planning events to save yourself time and trouble in the long run and how to think outside of the box to make sure that all of your guests feel comfortable and welcome.  Connect with Christy at cherzing@paraquad.org, on Facebook, on LinkedIn, or by calling her at 314-289-4264.  Connect with Sandy at sjones@paraquad.org, on Facebook, on LinkedIn, or by calling her at 314-289-4274. Connect with Us! Natalie on LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/in/nataliejablonski Marjorie on LinkedIn- http://www.linkedin.com/in/marjorie-moore   501Crossroads on Facebook- http://www.facebook.com/501crossroads 501Crossroads on Twitter- http://www.twitter.com/501crossroads 501Crossroads on YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC06RxW8CDSTZF05S9bK9UoA    Listen to this episode on... Apple Podcasts Stitcher Overcast TuneIn YouTube       Transcript:  Marjorie:                             00:02                     Welcome to 501Crossroads, your show all about nonprofits and the people that make the mission happen. I'm Marjorie Moore, President & CEO of MindsEye and my personal mission is to make nonprofit stronger by identifying and fixing the rubs that so often come up between people and the mission. Natalie is at the dojo again today. Marjorie:                             00:15                     She's taken a lot of days off here for training, but I am excited because today we have two guests in the studio with us. We have Sandy Jones who is the community relations and events coordinator for Parquad here in St. Louis and Christy Herzing, the community access coordinator, also at Paraquad. Sandy, Christy welcome. Sandy:                                  00:38                     Thank you for having us. Marjorie:                             00:39                     So Sandy tell us a little bit about you and what you do at Paraquad maybe introduce Paraquad a little bit because I'm going to guess most of our listeners are not in St. Louis and have never heard of it. Sandy:                                  00:49                     So Parquad is St. Louis a center for independent living. We work with people with disabilities to empower them to live their lives as independently as they choose. I have the privilege of planning events for Paraquad. So I work, ah, we have several different events throughout the year every year though you're pretty much guaranteed to have our Shine the Light Gala and our Ramp Up for Accessibility Day which actually just happened yesterday. Marjorie:                             01:13                     Awesome. And Christy, what about you what do you do there at Parquad. Christy:                                 01:16                     So I am the community access coordinator and I manage our Accessible STL program. And so through our Accessible STL program we're working with businesses and organizations to provide a site survey so we're looking at their facilities and determining if they are accessible based upon the Americans With Disabilities Act standards and then we also provide training and education on being more inclusive for people with disabilities as well as. A whole lot of other services just for businesses that want to be more inclusive, consulting,  you name, it we kind of do it on the business end of things and we also have what Sandy's talking about with the events. We also have a training on how to make meetings and events more accessible.  Marjorie:                             02:07                     It's awesome well that is why we are here today. One of the things that I hear probably way too often when about community talking to other exec directors or event planners who aren't in an organization that is specifically serving people with disabilities. They'll say well, "there's no blind people coming to my event or there's nobody that's going to be in a wheelchair or all of my guests can hear perfectly fine, like why do I need to do this" So why is it important for events especially fundraising events to be accessible in the first place? Christy:                                 02:40                     So it's important for them to be accessible in the first place because you don't know who's coming in the door, so you don't particularly fundraising events. You don't know who that next donor is going to be or who that donor's family member is going to be. Christy:                                 02:58                     So to be accessible and to think about that from the beginning because if you don't think about accessibility from the very beginning then if you wait for someone to ask for an accommodation then you could find yourself in a spot where someone asks for "I need this accommodation because I use a wheelchair," and oops we have picked an event location that doesn't have an entrance with a ramp that is accessible and then all of a sudden we're trying to figure out what we need to do. So thinking about accessibility from the beginning is very important but also making your event accessible is it speaks to a level of inclusion that then can help increase that donor base because donor bases are aging as well. And so that's very important to keep in mind as well. Marjorie:                             03:49                     I guess the other thing is that I guess we have we have this picture in our mind, I think sometimes of a younger person that has a disability. But I think the one thing that we all know since we all work in that field is a lot of times it's our friends and our donors who have been with us for years maybe that donor giving you $25 for 50 years, well look, they're 70 now and maybe there's a mobility disability and maybe hearing's not so good anymore. Sandy:                                  04:17                     Kind of aging into that disability and what does that mean moving forward. And how to make something inclusive for them as well. Marjorie:                             04:24                     So let's talk about some horror stories or some not to do is what have you guys seen out there it. And we've all been there. I'm going I'm going to it right from the beginning. I've screwed this up. And like I mentioned you know we work with people who are visually impaired at MindsEye.  But you know we we screwed it up a couple of years ago we had a table full of people the varying levels of vision and they were supposed to be served first at our gala.  And for some reason the people set out the buffet food and then the rest of our guests just decided to get up and get all their food before all the things.  And so our guests had no idea that there was food there. The other problem that we had actually that year too was or for some reason our wait staff didn't think to specifically ask our guests with disabilities if they wanted the food that was just being passed around on trays. So we've since trained them.   So what if you guys heard or seen? Sandy:                                  05:27                     So I'm going to give a couple of examples from my own personal experience. They've both been events with Paraquad. So I mentioned earlier our Shine the Light event. It is a large formal gala this past year took place at the Ritz-Carlton. And we do everything we can to ensure that all accommodations are met. We are very open in the beginning, "Hey if you need the accommodation just email Sandy she'll take care of it." And we do that and we account for absolutely everything and then we add in some cushion and know that there may be people who didn't tell me or things that I already know because we have a good relationship with them all that kind of stuff. So we had a guest who was deaf and needed sign language interpreters we always have sign language interpreter at our events. Sandy:                                  06:17                     That's no big deal. We have one on stage to interpret everything that's happening on stage. And then we also have one at the table for table conversations during the event. We had set up the camera and everything to have a picture and picture show so that when the let's say the screen is got like a video on it showing the person who's on stage there is a smaller picture on the bottom that has the interpreter visible. So  it's two different cameras. Both of them are on the same screen. So we get the first of the evening started and our interpreter is in the dark. They're up there. They're interpreting. There's a camera on them but the camera is not completely focused on them and the interpreter is in the dark. So our guest who is deaf could not see the picture on picture screen of the interpreter interpreting. So I had to kind of run around get our production crew which was fantastic and they got on it right away. They started playing with the camera as they started playing with the lighting they started playing with the the mark where the interpreter was supposed to be standing. All of that was going on. I had to go over to the table where our deaf guest was sitting and say hey let me have this interpreter interpret for you...Can you see the interpreter because the lights are low because the screens are on. Can't see the interpreter at the table so I have to turn the lights up so that that person can see the interpreter sitting at their table. All of this sounds really long and probably for less than five to ten minutes, by that time everything was fixed. But at the time it definitely felt like oh my gosh how do we make this happen? You know we had everything set up right. It was going to you know it should have worked out great. But there are just like minor cues so now we we work to get our interpreters there a little bit earlier so that we can make sure the camera is focusing properly on them and make sure that everything will be good event. Sandy:                                  08:13                     Because a lot of times interpreters will switch out onstage because they get fatigued so kind of make sure that our camera is set up for both of the interpreters who will be switching out all night and make sure that everything is taken care of in that way. Sandy:                                  08:25                     So that's that's one of one of the ones that we've had recently and another one was we had a foreign film. We had some guests from out of the country. They brought some films with them and they had subtitles on them. So we're like OK great there sound there are  subtitles. Everything's great. We've taken care of everyone's needs. The sound was in a foreign language so our guests who were blind or low vision were not able to hear what was being said. Sandy:                                  08:53                     So we were able to get a couple of our staff to go and sit next to people and kind of read the subtitles to them as well. But that was another one of those like, oh my gosh how do we fix this? I can't believe this just happened right now. And those are definitely both learning moments to make sure that we're addressing those kinds of issues too. Marjorie:                             09:11                     So for all of us out there feel feel OK the pros get it wrong too.  So what I do after that is is learning and trying and making sure that like you putting forth the effort and you're trying to think about in advance and when you get it right, it's so much better. Christy, what have you seen? Christy:                                 09:27                     So as someone who has a visual impairment the things that Sandy was just talking about the last description that she was talking about, I go to a lot of conferences and things like that. And a lot of times they will play videos up on the screen and there will be words that are put out there and they'll have closed captioning for people who are deaf or hard of hearing but a lot of times are messages that are on the screen that are put into words and they're not spoken. And so when we can't see that, we don't get nearly the same message that everyone else gets. A,, couple of other things that I've seen. I've been to many different national conferences and tends to be that disability is forgotten about. And I went to one where the venue was more the issue than anything else there was it was a conference for a program that mostly people with disabilities were running and they had two small elevators that got you up and down to anywhere in the hotel. And so for people who were using wheelchairs it was never ending, all day process to get up and down the elevators. So things like that, you know ,that really everything has to be taken into consideration and everybody gets it wrong, occasionally and it's OK to get it wrong as long as you learn from it in the process. Christy:                                 10:55                     But it definitely that was like one of my first conferences I ever went to, and I mean I only knew so much about accessibility at that point, and I went, "Wait, what? How did this happen?" It was it was definitely a moment where there were a lot of people saying. "How... what are we supposed to do now." I think one time the elevators got used so much that the elevators actually stopped. Christy:                                 11:23                     It was just that bad. Marjorie:                             11:34                     No that is not good.So let's talk a little bit about what are some some best practices you know from from right from the beginning to let people with disabilities know without being like Hey!!! That you're accessible so that if somebody is coming maybe with their spouse that's having some hearing difficulties that they know that, oh OK, it's going to be alright or if they know they're going to have a walker. They know that they're going to be able to get out. What are some best practices to let people know so that maybe they don't have to like shout and say hey I need help. Sandy:                                  12:04                     So now it's a little unique for Paraquad because we are disability services organizations so inherently we do everything we possibly can to accommodate for many different types of disabilities. But we found the thing that helps the most is to just let people know that it's OK to ask for those accommodations so on every invitation that we create for any of our events we always say something like, please ask for an accommodation or to ask for an accommodation contact this person or you know anything like that. So it's already right there like if you're willing to be asked for an accommodation, your event is probably already on its way to being accessible and inclusive for people with disabilities. So that's probably the best thing that we do. Again like I said, we're all different because that's what our focus is. But if I see something that says, for an accommodation please contact them, I'm like OK, it doesn't matter that I need this accommodation.  This person's going to welcome me and make sure that I'm included and involved in the  event Marjorie:                             13:03                     And that actually may even help people who have had transplants or things like that or people that have different food needs even now. It's not necessarily disability, but definitely somebody that might need a little bit of a little bit of different help. So it's always good. And you know the more people that you can bring in the better right? Marjorie:                             13:22                     So let's talk about specific things to accommodate maybe some different disability. So what would you recommend if you knew that you were going to have somebody who was low vision or blind at your event. Christy:                                 13:37                     So the first thing I would recommend is and we say this all the time, and you'll hear this recommendation come from us all the time is when a person calls you and tells you they need an accommodation because of a specific disability. The first thing you want to do is make sure you ask that person what they need, because certainly for someone who is blind or low vision, you want to make sure you have alternative formats such as large print and braille or being able to offer those formats and anything that you have in an electronic format. But what that person's individual needs are may be very different. So a good example of that for this particular group is I was once at an event, and another one of those horror stories at an event and given some materials.   So I have no vision in the right eye and then very limited vision to my left eye. And so I was given basically a legal size piece of paper with the font was like Arial Bold 36 and it was something that someone else was able to use. Well but for me I can only see about one letter in my vision. So it was not even usable for me and I was not asked what works best for me. So that's number one is making sure that you're asking. Number two for people who are blind or low vision, alternative formats are the top thing. The other thing that I would recommend is if they need assistance. So if they need any assistance navigating this space making sure that you have a volunteer maybe from your organization or volunteer that's working that can help them navigate.  Do you have anything you want to add? Sandy:                                  15:28                     I think that's true of pretty much any kind of disability really because the same thing to be said of a person who is deaf or hard of hearing. It's not every person who is deaf or hard of hearing uses American Sign Language. Not every person who has ever heard of hearing can read lips. So it just kind of depends on each individual and what they want the same as for a person who uses a wheelchair. Some people who use wheelchairs would like to transfer into the same chair that everyone else is sitting in a dinner rather than having the chair removed for them. Some people who use a wheelchair cannot transfer and so they would like to wheel up to the table in their chair. So just always trying to find out what that individual wants and providing it for them, but also being flexible that if you have provided something that is not what the person needs to find a way to provide what it is that they do need. So for the person using a wheelchair example, it's very simple. Either grab a chair or move or move the chair away from the table. Very easy to help accommodate that. It takes a little bit more planning for something like Christy was talking about because if you need it in an electronic format you have to make sure that you prepared that ahead of time, if you need it in Braille. You also have to make sure you prepare that ahead of time.  Marjorie:                             15:28                     Braille, a lot more, you have to get that program done  a week before! Sandy:                                  16:48                     Yes exactly. So that is the key for just about any accommodation is listening to that individual's needs and not assuming that you know what's best because you happen to have a friend who is also got that same kind of disability. Marjorie:                             17:01                     And I think that's huge because I've seen a lot of the same things and I've certainly seen low vision people being handed Braille.  And you know, 10 percent of people who are blind or low vision read Braille and it's one of those things. So but I think all of sighted people said "well..."  I assume it's very similar with the American sign language.  So I am not an expert at all in ASL... Sandy:                                  17:33                     And there are a lot of different sign language modes. So not everyone uses American Sign Language. I don't know all of the different sign language. I believe it's called a mode.  But not everyone uses American Sign Language even if they do use some form of sign language. So like when you're getting an interpreter, you want to make sure that you're getting the right kind of interpreter. We have interpreting services at Paraquad. And so for most of our events we do need ASL but our interpreting services have several different languages available depending on what a person might need at any given time.  Marjorie:                             18:07                     Very cool. Yeah. And I had no idea of the multiple. It makes sense that you know Sandy:                                  18:12                     It's just it's just like spoken word there and there are different dialects as well. Marjorie:                             18:17                     Yeah. So let's you know try to kind of do some brainstorming so that people kind of know maybe what they should be plan planning for. Again, always want to talk to the person.  But  let's say that you know your former Board Chair has had its back issues she is she's using a walker. What things can you do in advance you know to to get ready for her to be at the event. Sandy:                                  18:45                     OK I'll go. So one of the big things especially in that is clear paths of travel, making sure there's enough space for people to easily navigate. Also anything that's one level, you know if the bathrooms are all on the same level as the event, if you don't have to go up a single set. A lot of times I notice even myself I notice a lot more now since I've started working at Paraquad and working specifically on making events more accessible. They'll be one step into a room and you don't even realize it because you can walk up that one step but not everyone can. And  so if from the get go you're like OK everything's I be on one floor. There's not going to be any steps involved. The restroom is going to be same floor same level no steps involved in that. I'm going to make sure my tables are wide enough to accommodate someone who's using a mobility device to get between tables. Sometimes that gets a little hairy because especially for non-profits at fundraisers you want to stuff that room as full as possible. But you know make a little space that everyone can get through all the different aisles. And then also having chairs available you know if you have a cocktail hour that's great, but maybe have some low cocktail tables in there as well with chairs and maybe you know maybe just have three chairs so that if there is a person with a wheelchair they can join in the conversation as well. Sandy:                                  20:05                     But that way if a person is using a walker as an example they still feel comfortable and able to sit at the cocktail table rather than attempting to stand for a long period of time at a high cocktail table with the rest of the group. They can be joined down at their level. Anything to add Christy? Christy:                                 20:24                     No you covered it very well. Marjorie:                             20:26                     OK. Let's say we're having an outdoor event maybe a picnic type of thing and we've got a single speaker as our P.A. system because we're nonprofits and you know we begged and borrowed that from our Program director's kid who's in a band. And so what what should we be doing if we know that perhaps it is volunteer appreciation and we know that a couple of our volunteers use hearing aids. But we know from interactions with them that they do not hear well. What should we be doing and thinking about that situation. Christy:                                 21:06                     You  actually dealt with a lot of this stuff. Sandy:                                  21:09                     So first of all, if you know the person, ask them what would be most beneficial for them. Say "You know this is our situation, we want to make sure you're included." Perhaps it's making sure that the table they sit at is the closest to speaker, perhaps it's taking that script of what you are going to say and printing it for them so they can read along.  As someone is talking perhaps you know I know there is technology to have an audio like descriptive listening device if you know that works for people who are low hearing as well not just for people who are blind or visually impaired. You want to give them that option. If that's an option due to costs see if it helps to have someone there live talking, helping them understand anything that they may miss. Marjorie:                             22:02                     Excellent. OK so let's say that part of our mission is to have a a movie that we screened together maybe they're educational of some kind. Each week or monthly.  And one of our participants is has low vision. But next month we're going to do a silent film. What do we do? Christy:                                 22:29                     That's a tough one. So what I would probably suggest in that case is to think about probably looking through the movie itself and putting a transcript together of what is happening within the film and doing that ahead of time. And number one you could email that to a person electronically and then they could actually bring that with them on say their phone. And so like technology is the best thing for people who are blind or visually impaired. And you know they could use their phone and put their ear buds into their phone and then hear that description of it using like their voiceover mechanism on their phone or whatever the Android version is. So that be my suggestion on something that you could do for the silent piece because you have to give them descriptions of what's going on because they can be sitting in a room with all the silence going on and people are cracking up laughing at something and they have no idea what it is. So you know a lot of times people always say, do people who are blind or visually impaired go to a movies? And my responses is Yeah! But I might also ask you what's going on during a fight scene or you know during something else where I'm not quite picking up the actions of what's happening. And oftentimes that's usually how we accommodate that for ourselves just asking someone who's with us. So that would be my suggestion is looking at it in sort of making a transcript and then emailing that to the person and that way the person can use our phone with their voiceover. And if they themselves don't have a phone, let's say you have someone who just doesn't have a smartphone yet then maybe you can put that onto a device of your own and then allow them to use that during the film. Marjorie:                             24:28                     I will admit this was an instance that we got thrown at us a couple of months ago and we actually... so MindsEye, as an aside has an audio description program where we have volunteers go into the community and actually describe really whatever people want. And this happened at the U City Library. And so we took our equipment out there we had a volunteer basically talking into the listener's ear which was kind of cool. My volunteer was very tired at the end of the hour and a half. She was like, "I guess I was the movie!"  So those are available across the country too. There's lots of places that do that which is cool. It's becoming a bigger thing which I think is really awesome. s Christy:                                 25:08                     It's fantastic because it used to be that you know in St. Louis, anyway it was basically the Muny and nobody else really did a whole lot of audio description until you guys kind of took it on and now it's just spreading in St. Louis which is fantastic. Marjorie:                             25:24                     We like that that's that's the that's real job time. So OK we'll do one more. What about if we know that we've got to say it's a sporting event and we know that one of our participants is in a wheelchair.  Let's say it's baseball because otherwise it could be anything. Can we accommodate that person can we have that person play on the team. And if so how. Sandy:                                  25:55                     So we're talking about playing on the team now not spectating. Marjorie:                             25:59                     They want to play. OK. Maybe it's like your community. Sandy:                                  26:03                     So this is not one that I personally have experienced to tell you the truth. I know that there are a lot of adaptive sports available as far, as playing on a community team I guess it depends you know what the rules are. There's nowhere in the rules that says a person who is using a mobility device can't play then you you include a lot of times a person who wants to play a sport has the ability to do so. Sandy:                                  26:31                     And this is one of those like general teachable moments if you will, people with disabilities can do a lot of things. They can do anything. Right? Give them a moment. They might do it differently than you would, but they can do it. And so if a person is wanting to play, they probably are able to. And it maybe that they wheel their wheelchair around the bases instead of running around the bases or however it happens to work out. But if it's allowable in your specific league, then go for it. Let them join in and listen to what they're saying if they're saying yes I can run around these bases and let them run around the bases. Marjorie:                             27:15                     Excellent. I love that answer because that goes to just asking people, "How do you think we should do that?" Christy:                                 27:26                     That's absolutely it is. I was in a meeting earlier today and we were having a conversation.  And I was being told that you know this person could not use the accommodation that they had available to them. And I said so did the person who said they couldn't use it because it was not the person with a disability who said they could use it. So did they ask that person? And they looked at me and said I don't think so. And I said well you know that's not necessarily as you as the organization is not necessarily on you would be the leader of the group that needed to ask. I said but the reality is they probably didn't because they didn't know how or they were too afraid. So then you totally changed everything because you didn't think that person could use an accommodation. But they weren't asked. And so it's those kind of things like Sandy saying you have no idea what the abilities are of a person with a disability and how you actually communicate and you actually engage in talk to them about the accommodation that they need. Christy:                                 28:31                     Or maybe they don't need an accommodation at all like in your baseball scenario. So many may not need an accommodation at all other than being able to wheel around the bases rather than run. And you know then you might occasionally hear people say well is that an unfair advantage. I don't think so. Not when you're talking about wheeling a wheelchair through dirt versus running, it can't be any easier. So  Sandy:                                  28:58                     This is also a community league. So you're there to have fun and just enjoy the games, relax a little bit. Sandy:                                  29:07                     But you know that's that's a good. And for anyone you know when you're out in the community if you encounter personal the disability your instinct is often to run up and help them do whatever it is they're doing. It's not necessary. You are you know it is your your free will to walk up and say hey can I help you with something? And if that person says no that's fine. Respectfully walk away. It's kind of the same concept for for any kind of an accommodation that they may need as well. Listening to what it is that they needrather than what you think they need. Christy:                                 29:40                     And I often like to say I use it as almost the offering assistance equation. So I say it seems very simple but it's stop, ask, and listen. Stop take a moment ask how can I help you? Is there anything I can do to help you? And don't forget to listen, because sometimes what happens is people will ask and then they'll sort of jump in and do with what is believed to be what needs to be done. And it might actually be harmful to the person or to the individual and or they may not want to help at all. So listening to the response is as important as asking the question and that is really good rule. Marjorie:                             30:22                     One last question I have. Can I pet the guide dogs? Christy:                                 30:26                     No ask first ask first ask first. Sandy:                                  30:32                     We do have a couple of people in our office who use service animals, either seeing eye dog or or another kind of assistance. And you know the general rule of thumb, it's a dog, everyone wants a pet it. Now I understand I love my dog. It's great. But that dog is doing a job. Sandy:                                  30:50                     So you know if you distract the dog you could be putting the person who's using the services of those dogs in harm's way or risk or something. Those dogs don't just work. They get time to play but they get time to run around and interact and.  Be just like your pet at home. But when they've got either a harness on or a bandana or some kind of indication that they are working you can ask but you'll probably be told no. And then just say OK thank you and let it be because that dog is doing a job. Christy:                                 31:23                     The thing I would add to that is that if this was something that we ourselves as we were training we're a little confused about. So someone said if I bring if someone brings a service dog in, number one can I ask for documentation. The answer is no. The only thing is you can ask on a service animal is. "Is this a service animal? And what task is the service animal been trained to do?" But then number two I often get the question of where they brought the dog and said it was a service animal but it didn't have the harness it didn't have the vest. It only had a leash. And so initially my response was always well if it didn't have that then I'm sure it wasn't a service animal. However, what I've since learned is by the definition in the Americans With Disabilities Act is the dog does not have to have those identifiers that we're used to seeing, but it does have to be leashed. So the things that we're used to seeing are that harness and that harness in the vest but that's just what we think of to be as a service animal. But  it can just be leash without it and still be a working service animal Marjorie:                             32:35                     That's really good to know because I feel like that is an area that people really get confused about as you know this person wants to bring their Chihuahua in and I let them they're saying it's a service animal. And I think some people abuse the law and it hurts those that actually have well trained service animals. Sandy:                                  32:53                     if it's you know is important to note that service animals do a whole lot of different things and they're not just use for people who are blind or low vision as an animal to assist with sight. There are lots of different uses for service dogs. They can they can help with opening doors that can help with picking things up. They can help you know some people who have seizures have dogs who can help identify when a seizure is coming. So there are a lot of different things that a service dog can do. They are not all golden retrievers, so it is possible for a small dog to also be a service dog. So just throwing that up because a lot of people again have that same misconception that they're not on a seeing eye dog harness they must not be an actual service dog. Christy:                                 33:38                     And the other thing they're probably two things that I would love to add to this before we finish which is the first, a lot of people think that if someone is using a service dog and they don't look like they have a disability that must not be a service animal. That's not true. Service animals are being used for so many more things than just guide dogs as we're used to seeing. The other thing I would say to sort of add to what Sandy was saying about you know even little dogs can be service animals. One of my mentors has brittle bone disease. And she also is hard of hearing and she has a hearing dog and her dog is very very small because she has brittle bone disease so she couldn't have a big Labrador retriever that if she's in a hotel room trying to wake her up if there's a smoke alarm or something like that so it's a very small dog.  And so there were even a lot of people asking me when we met her the first time. What does that dog do. It's very small. It doesn't look like a service animal. And so I explained what the dog does and why it's small because of her disability. And so you just never know. You know what that dog is what it's been trained to do. What it's a service animal for. And just because it doesn't look like a service animal doesn't mean it's not in just because someone doesn't look like they have a disability doesn't mean the dog they have with them is just their pet. Marjorie:                             35:07                     Oh man we didn't even get into invisible disabilities. I'm going to have to have you guys back!  Well I do appreciate it, but we're out of time but I appreciate you guys coming.  Sandy really quickly, how can we get ahold of you if we need to catch up with you. Sandy:                                  35:21                     You can e-mail me my email is sjones@paraquad.org  happy to answer any kind of questions or help direct you to someone else who might have a little bit better knowledge than me. Marjorie:                             35:33                     Excellent. Christy how about you. Christy:                                 35:33                     You can also e-mail me at cherzing@paraquad.org. And we are always happy to answer your questions and do anything that we can to make everything more inclusive and more accessible for people with disabilities. Marjorie:                             35:49                     Thank you both so much. Thank you. Marjorie:                             35:51                     And thank you to all of you for joining us on 501Crossroads. 501Crossroads is recorded at the studios of MindsEye Radio is produced and hosted by me, Marjorie Moore. Mike Curtis is our sound engineer. Please go to iTunes or Stitcher or your favorite app and subscribe and leave us some feedback so others can find us. You can find us on Facebook at 501Crossroads. Thank you for listening. And remember we're all working towards the same outcomes.  

Download MP3 ８月の５週間は、恒例の「超濃縮！やさしい英語会話」です。この８年間に配信した259本の「やさしい英語会話」よりエピソードを厳選し、毎回４本分を濃縮してお届けします。ナチュラルスピードの会話をスクリプトとともにお楽しみください。 最近社会現象になったあのゲームなど、ゲームは世代を問わず人を夢中にさせるもの。今回は"Life Is a Game"をテーマに、パーティでのゲームや言葉のゲームも含めた、様々なゲームの会話を４本選びました。 Image credit: ぱくたそ. （初級〜中級）Drinking Games M: Chizuko! Do you want to go drinking tonight? W: Not really. Matt, you know I hate drinking. M: Come on. Alex is throwing a huge party. I bet lots of guys will come. W: Hmm. Nah. I think I'll pass on tonight. I don't really like drinking. And I hate drunk guys. M: Come on. I promise it'll be fun. If you don't have fun, you never have to come out again. There will be tons of games. W: Hmm. Games? What kind of games? Like Playstation games? M: Not exactly. W: Like Truth or Dare? Or I never? M: No way! Although those would be pretty fun, now that you mention it. There'll be drinking games. You know, like beer pong and flip cup. W: What? What are those? I've never played them before. M: What? I can't believe you never played those games. Every college student in America knows those games. W: Wait, I'm Japanese. I don't count. M: Still, you've been here for four months. W: Fine, tell me how to play. M: OK. Let's see. In beer pong, you try to throw ping pong balls into the other teams' cups. The losing team drinks. W: Yeah. That actually sounds pretty fun if I don't have to drink. OK, I'll go tonight if you're my partner and you drink all of the beers for me. M: No. You have to drink half of the beers. W: Fine. I'll just stay home. M: Fine, I'll drink all of your beers. Man, I'm going to get drunk tonight. W: What is that supposed to mean? Are you saying I'm going to make us lose? M: Maybe. But it's OK. You just have to deal with me after. W: Great. Just don't puke on me or try hitting on me. M: Sorry in advance. Sometimes, I just can't help myself. W: Maybe, I'll just stay home tonight. (Written by Kyle Kumashiro) How Do You Make a Game? M: Hey, Nobuko, how do you make a game? W: You mean a video game, I presume? Um, that's rather difficult. As difficult as creating a movie, maybe even more! Games contain images, sounds, plot, special effects. They also have interactivity. As well as goals, challenges, rewards… M: Whoa-whoa, cut the lecture. Can't you explain simpler? And a little closer to the actual thing? W: I see: no appreciation for the theoretical part? OK, well, basically a game is a compiled computer code together with images, sounds, and other resources it makes use of. M: Uh-huh, so I have to know how to write code? W: I see. No appreciation for the noble art of a software engineer! You don't have to know how to program. There are many game-creating software tools, such as Sploder and Stencyl. Such software already contains all the necessary game components - you only need to put it together in the way you want, like in a construction set. Of course, simplicity comes with a price of fewer possibilities. M: Oh, bummer. World of Warcraft and such are out of the question? W: Most definitely! In general, you won't be able to create anything complex or truly original unless you learn how to code. There are some exceptions to this rule, of course… Wait, actually I don't know any. M: It matters not! I will make my own game, which will be just like Super Mario, but with a cat instead of a plumber. It'll be a huge success. And being a famous game developer, I'll get money, fame, free lunches... you name it! W: I see. A couch potato with tacky dreams, and little respect for other people's intellectual property? Well, good luck! You'll need it. Ciao! M: I wonder why she would get so angry and call me names? It matters not! My fortune is just around the corner. Hey, wait! Isn't it time for my favourite TV drama? I guess I can leave game development for later! (Written by Dmitry Mamchur) Playing the "Would You Rather…" Game M: Hey, I have a good idea. Let's play the ‘Would you rather…” game! W: What's that? M: It's a game where I give you two really BAD situations, and you have to choose which one you'd prefer. W: Ah… That sounds like a horrible game. M: That's sort of the point, though! Alright, I'll start! Hmm… let me think… would you rather live in Antarctica or Death Valley? W: Oh, both are bad. OK… I'll choose Antarctica. At least I could build myself an igloo! Haha… OK. It's my turn now. Um… would you rather be trapped underground, or endlessly float through space? M: Um… I'm claustrophobic, so I choose ‘Endlessly floating through space'. W: I'd probably choose the same. Both are pretty crappy situations, though. M: I'd say! Alright… Would you rather… have a condition that made you sweat 10 times more than usual, or have really bad breath that was incurable? W: Bad breath! Most definitely bad breath! Can I use mints constantly? M: Mints don't work. It's an incurable condition, remember? W: Nooo! Alright, but I'm still sticking with bad breath. I'll just wear a mask for the rest of my life and will be known as the ‘masked beauty'. M: Haaaahhh, you DON'T need to wear a mask to be beautiful. W: Oh, how flattering… M: (laughs) OK, last one! Would you rather… go on a date with me, or go on a date with an old hairy lumberjack? W: Smooth… Um, I'll go with the old hairy lumberjack. M: Wow, what a lucky guy! W: Tomorrow at 7 pm. I'll be waiting outside my apartment. M: Hey, what are you trying to say? That I'm old and hairy? Anyway, I'm looking forward to it! (Written by Lauren Johnson) Are Game Arcades a Waste of Money? W: Hey Greg! What're you doing here? M: Eh? Oh hey Sarah. I just came here to try to win something for my girlfriend from one of these claw machine things. W: You mean UFO Catchers? You know those things are a huge rip-off, right? You really shouldn't be wasting your money on them. M: Ha ha. Yeah, I know they're a rip off, but I really need to win this figurine for my girlfriend! She told me she'd break up with me unless I got it for her for her birthday. W: Geez, why don't you just BUY the figure online if you need it so badly? You're gonna spend more money on this stupid machine than you would actually just buying it online. M: Trust me, I know that. It's just that I can't find this exact one online anywhere. It's a limited edition, and she's gotta have it. W: You know Greg, if I didn't know any better, I'd say your girlfriend is taking advantage of you. M: (Sigh) That may be true, but if I blow it with her, I may be alone for the rest of my life! (Greg begins shaking the machine vigorously) W: You know Greg, there's plenty of other girls out there who would date a guy like you. M: Really? Like who? (Continues to shake the machine as hard as he can) W: (blushes) Um, someone like-- (Sarah gets cut off as an alarm starts sounding from the machine.) Arcade Employee: Hey you! No shaking the machines! Get out of here! M: Ah! All I wanted was to win this stupid figurine! W: (sighs) (The two of them are ushered out of the arcade by a staff member.)　　　 (Written by David Shaner)

Download MP3 ８月の５週間は、恒例の「超濃縮！やさしい英語会話」です。この８年間に配信した259本の「やさしい英語会話」よりエピソードを厳選し、毎回４本分を濃縮してお届けします。ナチュラルスピードの会話をスクリプトとともにお楽しみください。 最近社会現象になったあのゲームなど、ゲームは世代を問わず人を夢中にさせるもの。今回は"Life Is a Game"をテーマに、パーティでのゲームや言葉のゲームも含めた、様々なゲームの会話を４本選びました。 Image credit: ぱくたそ. （初級〜中級）Drinking Games M: Chizuko! Do you want to go drinking tonight? W: Not really. Matt, you know I hate drinking. M: Come on. Alex is throwing a huge party. I bet lots of guys will come. W: Hmm. Nah. I think I'll pass on tonight. I don't really like drinking. And I hate drunk guys. M: Come on. I promise it'll be fun. If you don't have fun, you never have to come out again. There will be tons of games. W: Hmm. Games? What kind of games? Like Playstation games? M: Not exactly. W: Like Truth or Dare? Or I never? M: No way! Although those would be pretty fun, now that you mention it. There'll be drinking games. You know, like beer pong and flip cup. W: What? What are those? I've never played them before. M: What? I can't believe you never played those games. Every college student in America knows those games. W: Wait, I'm Japanese. I don't count. M: Still, you've been here for four months. W: Fine, tell me how to play. M: OK. Let's see. In beer pong, you try to throw ping pong balls into the other teams' cups. The losing team drinks. W: Yeah. That actually sounds pretty fun if I don't have to drink. OK, I'll go tonight if you're my partner and you drink all of the beers for me. M: No. You have to drink half of the beers. W: Fine. I'll just stay home. M: Fine, I'll drink all of your beers. Man, I'm going to get drunk tonight. W: What is that supposed to mean? Are you saying I'm going to make us lose? M: Maybe. But it's OK. You just have to deal with me after. W: Great. Just don't puke on me or try hitting on me. M: Sorry in advance. Sometimes, I just can't help myself. W: Maybe, I'll just stay home tonight. (Written by Kyle Kumashiro) How Do You Make a Game? M: Hey, Nobuko, how do you make a game? W: You mean a video game, I presume? Um, that's rather difficult. As difficult as creating a movie, maybe even more! Games contain images, sounds, plot, special effects. They also have interactivity. As well as goals, challenges, rewards… M: Whoa-whoa, cut the lecture. Can't you explain simpler? And a little closer to the actual thing? W: I see: no appreciation for the theoretical part? OK, well, basically a game is a compiled computer code together with images, sounds, and other resources it makes use of. M: Uh-huh, so I have to know how to write code? W: I see. No appreciation for the noble art of a software engineer! You don't have to know how to program. There are many game-creating software tools, such as Sploder and Stencyl. Such software already contains all the necessary game components - you only need to put it together in the way you want, like in a construction set. Of course, simplicity comes with a price of fewer possibilities. M: Oh, bummer. World of Warcraft and such are out of the question? W: Most definitely! In general, you won't be able to create anything complex or truly original unless you learn how to code. There are some exceptions to this rule, of course… Wait, actually I don't know any. M: It matters not! I will make my own game, which will be just like Super Mario, but with a cat instead of a plumber. It'll be a huge success. And being a famous game developer, I'll get money, fame, free lunches... you name it! W: I see. A couch potato with tacky dreams, and little respect for other people's intellectual property? Well, good luck! You'll need it. Ciao! M: I wonder why she would get so angry and call me names? It matters not! My fortune is just around the corner. Hey, wait! Isn't it time for my favourite TV drama? I guess I can leave game development for later! (Written by Dmitry Mamchur) Playing the "Would You Rather…" Game M: Hey, I have a good idea. Let's play the ‘Would you rather…” game! W: What's that? M: It's a game where I give you two really BAD situations, and you have to choose which one you'd prefer. W: Ah… That sounds like a horrible game. M: That's sort of the point, though! Alright, I'll start! Hmm… let me think… would you rather live in Antarctica or Death Valley? W: Oh, both are bad. OK… I'll choose Antarctica. At least I could build myself an igloo! Haha… OK. It's my turn now. Um… would you rather be trapped underground, or endlessly float through space? M: Um… I'm claustrophobic, so I choose ‘Endlessly floating through space'. W: I'd probably choose the same. Both are pretty crappy situations, though. M: I'd say! Alright… Would you rather… have a condition that made you sweat 10 times more than usual, or have really bad breath that was incurable? W: Bad breath! Most definitely bad breath! Can I use mints constantly? M: Mints don't work. It's an incurable condition, remember? W: Nooo! Alright, but I'm still sticking with bad breath. I'll just wear a mask for the rest of my life and will be known as the ‘masked beauty'. M: Haaaahhh, you DON'T need to wear a mask to be beautiful. W: Oh, how flattering… M: (laughs) OK, last one! Would you rather… go on a date with me, or go on a date with an old hairy lumberjack? W: Smooth… Um, I'll go with the old hairy lumberjack. M: Wow, what a lucky guy! W: Tomorrow at 7 pm. I'll be waiting outside my apartment. M: Hey, what are you trying to say? That I'm old and hairy? Anyway, I'm looking forward to it! (Written by Lauren Johnson) Are Game Arcades a Waste of Money? W: Hey Greg! What're you doing here? M: Eh? Oh hey Sarah. I just came here to try to win something for my girlfriend from one of these claw machine things. W: You mean UFO Catchers? You know those things are a huge rip-off, right? You really shouldn't be wasting your money on them. M: Ha ha. Yeah, I know they're a rip off, but I really need to win this figurine for my girlfriend! She told me she'd break up with me unless I got it for her for her birthday. W: Geez, why don't you just BUY the figure online if you need it so badly? You're gonna spend more money on this stupid machine than you would actually just buying it online. M: Trust me, I know that. It's just that I can't find this exact one online anywhere. It's a limited edition, and she's gotta have it. W: You know Greg, if I didn't know any better, I'd say your girlfriend is taking advantage of you. M: (Sigh) That may be true, but if I blow it with her, I may be alone for the rest of my life! (Greg begins shaking the machine vigorously) W: You know Greg, there's plenty of other girls out there who would date a guy like you. M: Really? Like who? (Continues to shake the machine as hard as he can) W: (blushes) Um, someone like-- (Sarah gets cut off as an alarm starts sounding from the machine.) Arcade Employee: Hey you! No shaking the machines! Get out of here! M: Ah! All I wanted was to win this stupid figurine! W: (sighs) (The two of them are ushered out of the arcade by a staff member.)　　　 (Written by David Shaner)

Ok I'll admit that the title is a little sensational, but it is true that a priory was shut down near Oxford in the 16th century due to mismanagement and nuns behaving badly. Rachel and Charlotte take a break from s'mores and campfires to to discuss the findings of the recent excavation of Littlemore priory.

今回から「やさしい英語会話」は新しい学生アシスタント、Keiさんとともにお届けします。明るく元気な大学１年生で、先週までのAkariさんと同様に、楽しく番組を進行していきます。ところでKeiさんの高校時代の留学先は、Joeと接点があるようですね…。 今回お届けするのは"Would You Rather..?" Gameのお話。どちらも微妙な二つの選択肢の中から、究極の選択を行うゲームです。英語のスピーキングを楽しく練習できるゲームなので、ぜひ試してみましょう。会話の中では、どんな質問が登場するのでしょうか…？ Image credit: (Antarctica) Clayoquot via Wikipedia. CC BY-SA 3.0. (Death Valley) Complex01 via Wikipedia. CC BY-SA 3.0. *Click here to download MP3* （初級〜中級） *** It's a Good Expression *** （今回の重要表現） That's sort of the point. = そこがこのゲームのキモのようなものさ。 ※That's the point.（そこがポイントだ）とsort of 〜（どちらかといえば〜的な。=kind of）を組み合わせた表現 〜, though. まあ〜なんだけどね。 ※文末に"〜, though."をつけることで、柔らかい逆説表現になる。日本人があまり発想しない英語表現なので、ぜひ使ってみよう。 Death Valley 「死の谷」（カリフォルニア州の観光地。非常に暑く、乾燥した場所として知られる） an igloo （イヌイットの作る）かまくら claustrophobic 閉所恐怖の crappy = terrible ※若者言葉なので使用には注意。 I'd say. = I agree. bad breath 口臭 mint ミント not work 効かない to stick with 〜 〜にこだわる wear a mask マスクをする how flattering... お世辞が上手ね。 ※名詞形の「お世辞」はflattery。Flattery will get you nowhere.で「おだてたって何も出ないよ」 hairy 毛むくじゃらの a lumberjack 木こり Smooth うまいわね。 *** Script *** Playing the "Would You Rather…" Game M: Hey, I have a good idea. Let's play the ‘Would you rather…” game! W: What's that? M: It's a game where I give you two really BAD situations, and you have to choose which one you'd prefer. W: Ah… That sounds like a horrible game. M: That's sort of the point, though! Alright, I'll start! Hmm… let me think… would you rather live in Antarctica or Death Valley? W: Oh, both are bad. OK… I'll choose Antarctica. At least I could build myself an igloo! Haha… OK. It's my turn now. Um… would you rather be trapped underground, or endlessly float through space? M: Um… I'm claustrophobic, so I choose ‘Endlessly floating through space'. W: I'd probably choose the same. Both are pretty crappy situations, though. M: I'd say! Alright… Would you rather… have a condition that made you sweat 10 times more than usual, or have really bad breath that was incurable? W: Bad breath! Most definitely bad breath! Can I use mints constantly? M: Mints don't work. It's an incurable condition, remember? W: Nooo! Alright, but I'm still sticking with bad breath. I'll just wear a mask for the rest of my life and will be known as the ‘masked beauty'. M: Haaaahhh, you DON'T need to wear a mask to be beautiful. W: Oh, how flattering… M: (laughs) OK, last one! Would you rather… go on a date with me, or go on a date with an old hairy lumberjack? W: Smooth… Um, I'll go with the old hairy lumberjack. M: Wow, what a lucky guy! W: Tomorrow at 7 pm. I'll be waiting outside my apartment. M: Hey, what are you trying to say? That I'm old and hairy? Anyway, I'm looking forward to it!    (Written by Lauren Johnson)

今回から「やさしい英語会話」は新しい学生アシスタント、Keiさんとともにお届けします。明るく元気な大学１年生で、先週までのAkariさんと同様に、楽しく番組を進行していきます。ところでKeiさんの高校時代の留学先は、Joeと接点があるようですね…。 今回お届けするのは"Would You Rather..?" Gameのお話。どちらも微妙な二つの選択肢の中から、究極の選択を行うゲームです。英語のスピーキングを楽しく練習できるゲームなので、ぜひ試してみましょう。会話の中では、どんな質問が登場するのでしょうか…？ Image credit: (Antarctica) Clayoquot via Wikipedia. CC BY-SA 3.0. (Death Valley) Complex01 via Wikipedia. CC BY-SA 3.0. *Click here to download MP3* （初級〜中級） *** It's a Good Expression *** （今回の重要表現） That's sort of the point. = そこがこのゲームのキモのようなものさ。 ※That's the point.（そこがポイントだ）とsort of 〜（どちらかといえば〜的な。=kind of）を組み合わせた表現 〜, though. まあ〜なんだけどね。 ※文末に"〜, though."をつけることで、柔らかい逆説表現になる。日本人があまり発想しない英語表現なので、ぜひ使ってみよう。 Death Valley 「死の谷」（カリフォルニア州の観光地。非常に暑く、乾燥した場所として知られる） an igloo （イヌイットの作る）かまくら claustrophobic 閉所恐怖の crappy = terrible ※若者言葉なので使用には注意。 I'd say. = I agree. bad breath 口臭 mint ミント not work 効かない to stick with 〜 〜にこだわる wear a mask マスクをする how flattering... お世辞が上手ね。 ※名詞形の「お世辞」はflattery。Flattery will get you nowhere.で「おだてたって何も出ないよ」 hairy 毛むくじゃらの a lumberjack 木こり Smooth うまいわね。 *** Script *** Playing the "Would You Rather…" Game M: Hey, I have a good idea. Let's play the ‘Would you rather…” game! W: What's that? M: It's a game where I give you two really BAD situations, and you have to choose which one you'd prefer. W: Ah… That sounds like a horrible game. M: That's sort of the point, though! Alright, I'll start! Hmm… let me think… would you rather live in Antarctica or Death Valley? W: Oh, both are bad. OK… I'll choose Antarctica. At least I could build myself an igloo! Haha… OK. It's my turn now. Um… would you rather be trapped underground, or endlessly float through space? M: Um… I'm claustrophobic, so I choose ‘Endlessly floating through space'. W: I'd probably choose the same. Both are pretty crappy situations, though. M: I'd say! Alright… Would you rather… have a condition that made you sweat 10 times more than usual, or have really bad breath that was incurable? W: Bad breath! Most definitely bad breath! Can I use mints constantly? M: Mints don't work. It's an incurable condition, remember? W: Nooo! Alright, but I'm still sticking with bad breath. I'll just wear a mask for the rest of my life and will be known as the ‘masked beauty'. M: Haaaahhh, you DON'T need to wear a mask to be beautiful. W: Oh, how flattering… M: (laughs) OK, last one! Would you rather… go on a date with me, or go on a date with an old hairy lumberjack? W: Smooth… Um, I'll go with the old hairy lumberjack. M: Wow, what a lucky guy! W: Tomorrow at 7 pm. I'll be waiting outside my apartment. M: Hey, what are you trying to say? That I'm old and hairy? Anyway, I'm looking forward to it!    (Written by Lauren Johnson)

Aprender ingles gratis con La Mansion del Ingles. Un podcast para mejorar la gramatica, el vocabulario y la pronunciacion del ingles. Una leccion del ingles con ejemplos y ejercicios. Learn English free with podcasts from La Mansion del Ingles. Improve your grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. This English lesson contains examples and exercises. Hello, hello, hello! A big "thank you" to all of you for downloading this Mansión Inglés podcast. This is podcast number 55 recorded for November 2012. Este mes, en el nivel básico, hemos practicado las colacaciones de los verbos y habia un listening para practicar los sonidos vocales. In the intermediate section there was a translation exercise and an exercise to practise any, some, either, neither etc. which can be confusing. More idioms and a gap fill text in the advanced section. There's business vocabulary as usual, and many more ideas and resources to help you improve your English and take it to the next level. En los podcasts mensuales hablamos de los temas, vocabulario y ejercicios que salen en nuestro cuaderno mensual. Así podáis practicar la pronunciación y repasar el material del cuaderno. Si quieres recibir gratis el cuaderno cada mes, ver la trascripción de este podcast o leer los anteriores, vete a mansioningles.com y sigue los enlaces en la página principal.   Ok so, let's begin then as usual with el nivel básico. Escucha y repite las siguientes colocaciónes: Get dressed - I get dressed after my shower. - Repite: shower - after my shower - I get dressed -  I get dressed after my shower. Take the dog for a walk - I take the dog for a walk every day. - Repite: every day - walk - fora - fora walk - the dog for a walk - I take - I take the dog for a walk - I take the dog for a walk every day. Have a shower - I have a shower after breakfast. ¡OJO! - Se dice "have a shower" no se dice X"Chave a shower"X. Repite: have - have a shower - breakfast - after breakfast - have a - have a shower - I have a shower after breakfast. Do your homework - Do your homework every day. - Please help me with my homework! Repite: homework -¡OJO! - homework. No se dice X"chomework"X -  my homework - with my homework - please help me - please help me with my homework! Go shopping - I go shopping with my wife. Repite: my wife - with my wife - shopping with my wife - go shopping with my wife - I go shopping with my wife - husband - I go shopping with my husband - Children - I go shopping with my children - We go shopping together - hacemos la compra juntos. Repite: We go - We go shopping - We go shopping together. ¡Muy bien! - Very good! En el segundo ejercicio del nivel básico, hemos practicado un 'listening' con los vocales y los sonidos débiles en inglés. Por ejemplo la diferencia entre angry - enfadado/a y hungry - hambriento. Repite: /ӕ / angry I'm angry -  /˄/ hungry - I'm hungry Where were you born? - Where were you born? es un poco difícil también. Escucha: Were -  Where were - Repite: Were - Where were - Where were you - Where were you born? - La intonación sube y baja - Escucha: Where were you born? - Repite: Where were you born?- I was born in London. Where were you born? What time is it? - It's a quarter to twelve. - Repite: /ә/ - It's a - quarter - It's a quarter - to - It's a quarter to - It's a quarter to twelve. - It's a quarter to twelve. - It's a quarter to one. - It's a quarter to two. - It's a quarter to three. - It's a quarter to eleven. Escucha: It costs seventeen pounds -  It costs seventy pounds - los números 13 hasta 19 llevan el estres en la segunda silaba: 13, 14, 15, 16 etc. y los números 20, 30, 40, 50 etc. tiene el estrés en la primera silaba. Repite: 13 - 30. 14 - 40, 15 - 50, 16 - 60, 17 - 70, 18 - 80, 19 - 90 Repite: It costs seventeen pounds -  It costs seventy pounds She gets home at seven - to get home significa llegar a casa. Es más común en el inglés hablado decir 'get home' que 'arrive home'. Repite: seven - at seven - home at seven - gets home at seven. No olvides la 's' de la tercera persona - She gets home. Repite: She gets home - she gets home at seven - She gets home at seven. Escucha: The first of December - Repite: first - The first of December - second - The second of December - third - The third of December - forth - The forth of December - fifth - The fifth of December - sixth - The sixth of December - seventh - The seventh of December - eighth - The eighth of December - ninth - The ninth of December - tenth - The tenth of December. El último ejemplo de este ejercicio fue la diferencia entre el sonido /˄/ como en la palabra uncle - tío, y el sonido /ӕ / como en la palabra ankle - tobillo. Repite: /ӕ/ - ankle - My ankle hurts - me duele el tobillo Repite: My ankle hurts - I hurt my ankle. Repite: /˄/ - uncle - I love my uncle - Yo amo a mi tío - My uncle is wonderful. Good!   In the intermediate section this month, we translated some sentences from Spanish into English. I'm going to say the Spanish sentences with my terrible pronunciation, so please don't laugh! I want you to try to say the English sentence before I do. You can also pause this podcast if you need more time to think. Are you ready? Here's the first sentence for you to translate: En verano me gusta acostarme tarde. - I like going to bed late in summer. - I like going to bed late in summer. 2. No nos gusta jugar a las cartas.    - We don’t like playing cards. - We don’t like playing cards. 3. Odian ir de compras.    - They hate going shopping. - They hate going shopping. 4. ¿Os gusta ver peliculas en version original?     - Do you like watching films in original version? - Do you like watching films in original version? 5. Le encanta (a ella) desayunar en la cama.  She loves having breakfast in bed. - She loves having breakfast in bed. 6. Odia (el) trabajar con el ordenador. - He hates working with the computer. - He hates working with the computer. 7. No sé nadar muy bien pero me gusta.   - I can’t swim very well but I like it. - I can’t swim very well but I like it. 8. ¿Que le gusta hacer a tu hermana?  - What does your sister like doing? - What does your sister like doing? 9. Odio oir a los politicos!  - I hate listening to politicians! - I hate listening to politicians! 10. Les encanta navegar por internet.  - They love surfing the net. - They love surfing the net. 11. Odio probar me ropa.  - I hate trying on clothes. - I hate trying on clothes. 12. ¿Les gusta viajar en avión?    - Do they like travelling by plane? Do they like travelling by plane? Good! Ok, moving on then to the next exercise we practised confusing words like any, some, either and neither. So, listen and repeat the following sentences. Would you like some cake? I'll have some cheese. Is there any beer? I like some classical music, but not all. I'll listen to any hip hop music. I love it. We have Irish whisky and Scotch Whisky. Which would you prefer? I've got some money. Not much though. How much wine is there? All of you helped me. None of you complained. I don't know anyone who speaks German. There's someone at the door. No there isn't! There's no one there! Very good! - ¡Muy bien!   If you like these podcasts, if you are learning more English with these podcasts, you can buy full lessons for only 1 euro and 40 centimos from our online shop - nuestra tienda online. Las lecciones están a nivel intermedio (B1). Puedes encontrarlas en mansioninglesdescargas.wazala.com that's: mansioninglesdescargas - todo junto - punto . wazala.com. Cada leccion vale 1.40 euros y dura approx. 1 hora y 15 minutos y cada leccion está en el formato mp3 lleva su trascripcion en formato PDF. There were more idioms this month in the advanced section. Let's see if you can remember the idioms if I say the Spanish equivalent. For example, De lo perdido saca lo que puedas. - in English it's Make the best of it. - Make the best of a bad situation. - Make the best of it. You can also say, "Make the most of it" - Repeat: make the most of it. The next idiom is: Poderoso caballero es don Dinero. - Money talks bullsh*t walks - It's common to hear only the first part. Money talks. Next was De Guatemala a Guatepeor - In English we say "Out of the frying pan, into the fire" - To go from a bad situation to a worse one. I know that our friends in Guatemala don't like this expression, but I don't know any other translation. So if you can help me and tell me another way to say 'Out of the frying pan and into the fire', please send me an email at mansionteachers@yahoo.com or send me a message on our Facebook page 'La Mansion del Ingles' The next idiom was: En los nidos de antaño, no hay pajaros hogaño. -  Time doesn't stand still. - Time stands still for no man. Desgraciado en el juego, afortunado en amores - is a direct translation to English. It's 'Unlucky in cards, lucky in love'. Unfortunately, I have always been both unlucky at cards and in love! The last one is A perro flaco, todo son pulgas. - Misery loves company. This is something that you say which means that people who are feeling sad usually want the people they are with to also feel sad, for example:  "On a bad day, she isn't satisfied till the entire family is in tears. Misery loves company." Also in the advanced section this month there was a gap-fill text. I'm going to read the text twice. The first time, just listen. The second time I'll stop in different places. When I stop, try to say the next word before I do. Even if you can't remember, you can guess what the next word might be. Children and Convenience Foods Nowadays, parents often feel guilty if they don't give their children healthy food for every single meal. Packaged food is frequently known as 'junk food' but in many instances that simply isn't so. Of course children should eat well, but meals should also be relaxed, enthusiastic and compatible with family life today. And it's essential to remember that most parents of young children are by definition, extremely busy people. Convenience foods are here to stay and they can be a valuable aid to the pursuit of happiness. Parents must seek out the best and aim for a balance between real food and practicality. With all these convenience foods, you can balance out the meal by adding something fresh and home-made. When your children beg for ice-cream give them frozen yoghurt with fresh fruit. Indeed, a home where the fruit bowl needs refilling regularly is a home where people eat well. The crucial point is balance. What is at stake is your child's gastronomic happiness. Ok I'll read the test again. Remember, when I stop try to say the next word before I do. Even if you can't remember, you can guess what the next word might be. Children and Convenience Foods Nowadays, parents often feel....... guilty if they don't give their children healthy........ food for every single......... meal. Packaged food is frequently known as......... 'junk food' but in many instances that simply isn't so. Of course children should eat......... well, but meals should also be relaxed, enthusiastic and compatible with family......... life today. And it's essential to......... remember that most parents of young........ children are by definition, extremely......... busy people. Convenience foods are here to....... stay and they can be a valuable aid to the pursuit of...... happiness. Parents must seek out the best and aim for a balance between real........ food and practicality. With all these convenience foods, you can balance out the......... meal by adding something........ fresh and........ home-made. When your children beg for........ ice-cream give them frozen ........yoghurt with fresh........ fruit. Indeed, a home where the fruit........ bowl needs refilling regularly is a home where people eat........ well. The crucial point is......... balance. What is at stake is your child's gastronomic .........happiness. Very good! Well done! Moving on to Business English, let's practise some business vocabulary. Be careful of the difference between convenient and comfortable. A chair is comfortable, a bed is comfortable. You can be in a comfortable, or an uncomfortable, situation. Shoes and clothes are comfortable or uncomfortable. However, if something is convenient for you it suits you. For example. Let's meet tomorrow. Is 3 o'clock convenient? Is 3 o'clock a good time for you? I can't meet you before 3 o'clock, because I have to work. It's not convenient for me to meet you before 3. I would not use 'comfortable' in this context. If you pay money upfront, you pay before, at the beginning. When you pay someone to paint your flat, for example, the painter has to buy the paint before he or she starts. So when you agree a price, you might pay some money upfront so that the painter can buy the materials. Remember that you apply for a job and you apply to a company or a person. I'm applying to Microsoft for the position of software developer. I'm applying for a job at Microsoft. To switch means to make a change. We have recently switched from the telephone company to cable for out internet connection. I've switched to a different brand of tomato sauce because it's cheaper. If something sees the light of day, it means to be made available or to be known about. For example. The company agreed the ad was an embarrassment and promised it would never again see the light of day. Don't confuse remind with remember. Remind is hacerle acordar a alguien and remember is acordarse. Remind usually has a direct object. Remind me to buy fruit. Repeat: Remind me to buy fruit. Remind us to send a birthday card. Repeat: Remind us to send a birthday card. Did you remind her about the doctor's appointment? Repeat: Did you remind her about the doctor's appointment. Hmmm, that reminds me, I need to get back to working on the 4th eBook in our series for teachers on Teaching Conversation, but don't worry, we'll be back with you next month with another podcast from our monthly newsletter, our cuaderno de inglés mensual. Remember you can listen to all our previous podcasts at mansioningles.com and on iTunes. Si te gusta este podcast, puedes hacernos un gran favor y escribe una corta critíca en iTunes. ¿Como se dice crítica o reseña en inglés? - Review - to write a review. If you write a review on iTunes (si escibes una crítica en iTunes) más personas pueden escucharnos porque subimos en el 'ranking' de iTunes. Thank you very much for listening to this podcast, and for being part of the community of La Mansión del Inglés. Remember, If you want to contact us you can find us on Facebook. Just search Facebook for La Mansión del Inglés and join our growing community of fans. Or send an email to: mansionteachers@yahoo.es. You can also follow us on Twitter. Our Twitter name is MansionTwit. Puedes ver el cuaderno mensual de este mes, y todos los cuadernos anteriores en www.cuadernodeingles.com/ Until next month then, take care, keep practising and taking your English to the next level! Bye for now!   The music in this month’s podcast is by Revolution Void, the album is The Politics of Desire and the track is called Outer Orbit.                                            

In Which we talk to a very old friend and remind ourselves that its much better to be older if not wiser. Wait. Ok I'll let that pass cause its pretty much absolutely true. We like girls with nice teeth, big black hair and deliberate fashion sense. Episode Star: Douglas Burke