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Recap of Episode 22 of Australian Survivor Brains V Brawn 2 - Battle of the Brains! Thanks for listening! Follow us: Instagram @ATASurvivor TikTok @ATASurvivor Email us: ATAustralianSurvivor@gmail.com Transcript: 00;00;00;00 - 00;00;03;43 Rachel Hello and welcome to American stock Australian survivor I'm Rachel. 00;00;03;45 - 00;00;04;17 Leah I'm Leah. 00;00;04;21 - 00;00;05;39 Matt And I'm Matt. 00;00;05;44 - 00;00;25;34 Rachel Thanks for joining us. We just watched episode 22 of Australian Survivor brains versus brawn two. And there will be spoilers ahead. We open up on the final five. Woo hoo! Wow. It's been a long journey for these players, but they are proud of themselves and they have made it to a huge accomplishment on any season of survivor to make it to the final. 00;00;25;34 - 00;00;29;09 Leah 544 days. It's unbelievable. 00;00;29;14 - 00;00;31;49 Matt You start to get nervous now right? 00;00;31;54 - 00;00;45;36 Rachel Yeah, and they should be, because we see Miles and Zahra talking on the beach. And Miles and Miles really wants to sit next to Zahra at the end. He thinks he can beat her and he thinks it's time to target age. It's number one. 00;00;45;41 - 00;00;47;57 Leah I don't want AJ to go boo. 00;00;48;02 - 00;01;05;54 Rachel Well, you know, I mean, I think we talked last episode about Kate and Morgan turning on each other and how how they didn't turn on each other because they have such a close alliance and how it's tough to watch that on survivor because you say, oh, it's a game, you've got to vote out your friends. And now here we go. 00;01;05;54 - 00;01;11;48 Rachel We see Miles being a survivor player, saying, I'm going to vote for my friend because I want to win this game, right? 00;01;11;51 - 00;01;15;11 Leah You did. He kept saying that I'm going to win the game. 00;01;15;22 - 00;01;32;04 Matt And with all the seasons of survivor we've watched, there's always people saying we're going to be friends for the rest of our lives. On the outside, we're going to stay in touch. So I mean, they become very good friends with when you eat, sleep and drink with somebody all day for weeks. 00;01;32;08 - 00;01;37;50 Rachel Yeah. And I think that Myles and AJ both have enough respect for the game that they'll be friends outside of this for sure. 00;01;37;52 - 00;01;41;37 Leah Well, Miles even said that that he thinks that data will respect them. 00;01;41;37 - 00;01;42;02 Leah Exactly. 00;01;42;10 - 00;01;43;30 Rachel So he's thinking that yeah. 00;01;43;37 - 00;01;45;42 Matt Yeah. When I vote you out, you'll respect me. 00;01;45;43 - 00;01;46;00 Leah Yeah. 00;01;46;00 - 00;01;59;27 Rachel One thing that Myles did say to Zara is when I take out AJ, the jury's going to be wowed. So Myles is already taking credit for this move. That hasn't happened yet that he needs Zara to help with. 00;01;59;31 - 00;02;00;15 Matt It's funny all. 00;02;00;15 - 00;02;01;01 Leah These all these. 00;02;01;09 - 00;02;04;27 Matt Plans it seems like a battle of the brains is really coming. Coming true. 00;02;04;31 - 00;02;16;13 Rachel Yeah. We've barely heard about Kate by the beginning part of the episode. She was almost gone last night and now she seems to have skated on by because the post grads are turning on each other, right? 00;02;16;20 - 00;02;22;25 Leah Yes. Well, I think it's interesting that there are four brains left. And last season, Hayley won 00;02;22;25 - 00;02;27;24 Leah the last brawn versus brains. So it's interesting. The brains. Here they go again. 00;02;27;28 - 00;02;31;36 Rachel It certainly looks like the brains are victorious against the brawn. 00;02;31;45 - 00;02;34;51 Matt If you could just get through those first couple of ones that you lose 00;02;34;51 - 00;02;35;33 Matt the brawn 00;02;35;33 - 00;02;42;18 Matt finishes all the, the tribal, the challenges and wins them all. If you can just get through those, you have a better chance, right? 00;02;42;27 - 00;02;44;49 Rachel Being a brain if you can make it to the merge. Right. 00;02;45;26 - 00;02;59;34 Rachel Well we see the brains all talking to each other. The postgraduates and Myles is expressing that Kate is next. And AJ being the great poker player that he is. Says that's ridiculous. He's definitely got something else up his sleeve. 00;02;59;37 - 00;03;00;56 Leah Yeah. 00;03;01;00 - 00;03;06;23 Rachel So he knows him well. Yeah. He doesn't know that he's the target, but he certainly knows him well. 00;03;06;28 - 00;03;11;15 Matt Right? He thinks it's Kaitlyn. Yeah, AJ thinks my Myles is going to vote Kaitlyn. 00;03;11;15 - 00;03;13;00 Leah Right? And he tells Kaitlyn that. 00;03;13;00 - 00;03;16;49 Rachel And he also tells Art, which is interesting that Zar is getting all A's. 00;03;16;54 - 00;03;17;27 Leah Yeah right. 00;03;17;39 - 00;03;31;03 Matt And I thought for sure at this point that AJ was going to say and Myles has a now an idol but he didn't. He kept it like a good poker player. Kept it close to his chest. Didn't let other people see what he knows. 00;03;31;03 - 00;03;49;22 Rachel Well now it's time to get into the immunity challenge. So. Right at the beginning, we talked about, you know, how Kaitlyn's won so many. And AJ announces to the group that he wants Kaitlyn to win every single one in hopes that he doesn't stop. Which is an interesting thing to say about your competitor. 00;03;49;27 - 00;04;04;53 Leah I think AJ is such a good friend to Kaitlyn. He really sincerely wants him to keep winning and maybe he knows since he is good friends with Kaitlyn, Kaitlyn will protect him with that with immunity. I guess it's better to have your friend win it than someone else. 00;04;04;58 - 00;04;09;19 Rachel Yeah, and I guess AJ probably could beat Kaitlyn at the end. I think that's what he's thinking. 00;04;09;24 - 00;04;10;34 Leah I think so. 00;04;10;39 - 00;04;15;06 Matt I guess so. So if Kaitlyn wins everyone, that's okay because he'll take me with him. 00;04;15;11 - 00;04;16;20 Leah Yeah. 00;04;16;25 - 00;04;19;24 Rachel Yeah I don't know if AJ has told us who his top 00;04;19;24 - 00;04;20;33 Rachel person said Kaitlyn. 00;04;20;33 - 00;04;22;44 Leah I thought he so did. Yeah I think he said both and. 00;04;22;44 - 00;04;26;34 Rachel It makes me. Yeah yeah makes sense that he wants Kaitlyn to keep winning immunities. 00;04;26;34 - 00;04;29;27 Matt But did he ever tell Myles that he was that they were. 00;04;29;34 - 00;04;32;28 Leah I think Myles and AJ know that they can't take each other. 00;04;32;30 - 00;04;34;04 Matt Okay. They're smart enough. 00;04;34;05 - 00;04;34;27 Leah Yeah. 00;04;34;29 - 00;04;38;49 Rachel Yeah. Yeah. They know they can't sit next to each other. But what what how would that be. That would be. 00;04;38;49 - 00;04;44;55 Leah Awesome. I would be the best. The absolutely best. And who would win? Yeah. All right, so off to the immunity challenge, 00;04;44;55 - 00;05;05;23 Rachel Yeah. So they have to take these blocks over a little obstacle where you can, you know, trip it and wobble your stack, and you have to stack up 12 blocks. So it feels kind of similar to last night's, challenge at tribal council where, you know, you're stacking things and it's balance and it's precision. Right? So I, I was a little frustrated that it was quite similar. 00;05;05;24 - 00;05;08;42 Rachel I would have wanted something a little bit different. Right. Back to back. 00;05;08;43 - 00;05;09;07 Leah Challenges. 00;05;09;11 - 00;05;12;41 Matt Similar to immunity challenge number two from from the previous. 00;05;12;41 - 00;05;34;13 Leah Episode. Well, what I didn't like is that they didn't base it on height. Like AJ had an extremely difficult time getting under the, gate. And, Jonathan even said something about being like, I don't know, something about tall. Yeah, it was a challenge, so that just doesn't seem fair. Why not make it so everyone has an equal, distance? 00;05;34;18 - 00;05;36;08 Matt Okay. Should be based on your body, right? 00;05;36;09 - 00;05;36;42 Leah Correct. 00;05;36;54 - 00;05;43;59 Rachel Because, yeah, for the strength ones, they do it by percentage of your body weight. So it should be the same thing. It should be based on your height. 00;05;44;00 - 00;05;44;31 Leah Yes. 00;05;44;42 - 00;05;49;42 Matt And someone with shorter legs has a harder time because they have to lift their feet up higher. So maybe they're just saying it's, 00;05;49;42 - 00;05;58;10 Matt both, you know, taller people have to duck down lower. Shorter people have to lift their feet higher. But I think you got to lift your feet higher a lot more. I don't know. It should be. 00;05;58;21 - 00;06;01;03 Matt I feel like it should be the same for everybody. Based on your height. 00;06;01;03 - 00;06;01;38 Leah I agree. 00;06;01;48 - 00;06;03;18 Rachel They never take our advice. What 00;06;03;18 - 00;06;05;25 Rachel changes are they working on? 00;06;05;30 - 00;06;10;25 Leah Yes I know. Yeah. All right, so Caitlin's in the lead, right? 00;06;10;30 - 00;06;14;01 Rachel Yeah. To no one's surprise, Kate and Caitlin are both doing well. 00;06;14;06 - 00;06;15;27 Leah Right? Very well. 00;06;15;27 - 00;06;18;19 Rachel it looks like Caitlin's about to pull through, but he drops. 00;06;18;25 - 00;06;23;34 Leah Oh. All right, number 11. How upsetting. Oh, down. Wow. Had to be hard. 00;06;23;38 - 00;06;29;11 Rachel And he was, you know, preparing himself, taking a deep breath before he went in. So that was really too bad. 00;06;29;16 - 00;06;30;56 Leah Now okay. So that's the lead, right? 00;06;30;56 - 00;06;47;33 Rachel Yeah. So it's everyone's anyone's game really at this point. And this is one of those this is kind of fun about these sort of challenges is that you see people build up their stack and then they fall, and then someone else is in the lead and then someone else builds up. So it's kind of like a revolving door of who is leading the challenge. 00;06;47;33 - 00;06;49;31 Rachel So that's always a little exciting. 00;06;49;31 - 00;06;59;14 Rachel We see a lot of people drop. We see Myles drop on his absolute 12th block, yet the last one I need to set to take away the oh I couldn't get it. 00;06;59;14 - 00;07;01;27 Rachel So he looked really upset about that. 00;07;01;32 - 00;07;05;14 Leah And Zara wins. Yeah for Zara. 00;07;05;19 - 00;07;10;04 Rachel I don't think she dropped at all. She finally hurt as J. Upset. Finally. Yeah. 00;07;10;04 - 00;07;11;46 Leah Yeah, right. I honestly. 00;07;11;51 - 00;07;17;34 Matt I think that was an odd thing to say. Well yeah somebody is winning them all. And then you win one fight. 00;07;17;35 - 00;07;26;50 Leah Right right right. Well maybe but she did a great job. Like she's slow and steady. And congratulations to Zara. That was really incredible. And it. 00;07;26;54 - 00;07;30;20 Matt Was great at the end even as they were leaving the stack was still standing. 00;07;30;25 - 00;07;34;27 Leah Right in the background and she was doing a little dance. Yeah, right. 00;07;34;32 - 00;07;35;13 Rachel She seemed very. 00;07;35;13 - 00;07;38;30 Leah Proud. Yeah. For sure. Yeah, it was great. 00;07;38;35 - 00;07;39;42 Rachel I don't think we. 00;07;39;45 - 00;07;46;11 Leah Could do that. Yeah. No. Yeah. It was fun to see her so happy. Yeah, right. She's a very serious player, so that was nice. 00;07;46;11 - 00;08;03;20 Rachel So let me get back to camp. And Myles and Zara are still gunning for, AJ and they're really thinking ahead. They say we're going to tell Kate to vote for Kaitlyn. And then on the next vote at the Final Four, we're going to say, hey, Kaitlyn, remember when Kate voted for you? We've got to get her out. 00;08;03;20 - 00;08;11;17 Rachel So they're thinking, you know, multiple steps ahead of how to get people mad at each other. So you have to appreciate the good gameplay. 00;08;11;22 - 00;08;20;21 Leah I do, but Zara made a good point. She said. If we fail this, it's not going to be good, right? So they have to make sure they do not fail at this vote. 00;08;20;21 - 00;08;27;29 Rachel Yeah, so they're planning to do two votes on, Kate, two votes on AJ and then one vote somewhere else. 00;08;27;29 - 00;08;29;00 Matt On Kaitlyn, I think. 00;08;29;05 - 00;08;34;12 Rachel On Kaitlyn. And then they're going to revote and then it's going to be two. So they've got a. 00;08;34;12 - 00;08;35;37 Leah Lot of right. 00;08;35;47 - 00;08;40;42 Matt Then there's only the two of them who can vote. And then they can both vote off whoever they want to vote. 00;08;40;42 - 00;08;46;53 Rachel AJ dizzying to think about all these different strategies that everyone has going on with only five votes. 00;08;46;59 - 00;08;53;56 Leah I don't know how they do this. They're so tired. And now, you know, I haven't had anything to eat. But here, they're very good. 00;08;54;01 - 00;08;54;44 Rachel They're good. 00;08;54;44 - 00;09;01;16 Matt But it's interesting that they could, that Myles comes up with a 2 to 1 vote. And then AJ comes up with two one. 00;09;01;18 - 00;09;04;15 Leah Yes. Well that's why they're friends. 00;09;04;20 - 00;09;05;33 Rachel Yeah. They think alike. 00;09;05;35 - 00;09;06;15 Leah Really. 00;09;06;20 - 00;09;21;29 Rachel Well Kaitlyn had a great plan to set a rat trap. So he thinks that he's pretty worried about Myles idol. So I guess Kaitlyn knows about the idol. It's hard to keep track of who knows about the idol and who doesn't, but I guess Kaitlyn knows. 00;09;21;29 - 00;09;23;52 Rachel He thinks that's going to come down to Myles versus Kate. 00;09;23;52 - 00;09;30;44 Rachel So he's like, if Myles plays his idol, then K goes home. If Myles plays his idol for Kate trying to send Kaitlyn home. Yeah. And Myles goes home. 00;09;30;44 - 00;09;31;02 Leah So 00;09;31;02 - 00;09;35;13 Leah yeah he's thinking. He was thinking I like Kaitlyn's plan. I thought it was a good plan. 00;09;35;17 - 00;09;50;43 Rachel Yeah. And then AJ says you know we're gonna have two votes on Myles. Gonna have two votes on Kate. Then we're going to revote on Kate. And it's just a lot of a lot of re votes allotted two on two splits. But it's interesting that AJ is gunning for Kate who he tried so hard to save last night. 00;09;50;54 - 00;09;54;43 Leah Well I think he's a postgraduate graduate. Must be loyal to them. 00;09;54;43 - 00;09;55;53 Matt Sticking to the four. 00;09;55;56 - 00;10;02;51 Leah Yeah, yeah. So I think them working together they said since the beginning right. So yeah. 00;10;02;51 - 00;10;05;48 Matt He spent every day with two days with Sara. 00;10;05;53 - 00;10;06;46 Leah Yeah. Yeah. 00;10;06;50 - 00;10;11;01 Rachel Do they really known each other. Yeah. Yeah. Like a month and a half together. That's crazy. 00;10;11;02 - 00;10;11;58 Matt Gosh. 00;10;12;03 - 00;10;14;16 Rachel No breaks to go to work and come back. 00;10;14;19 - 00;10;15;00 Leah Okay. Go to. 00;10;15;01 - 00;10;15;55 Matt Sleep. You can't. 00;10;16;06 - 00;10;17;11 Rachel Drive all the time and drive. 00;10;17;11 - 00;10;18;44 Matt In your car and listen to a podcast. 00;10;18;49 - 00;10;25;31 Rachel Well, it is nice to see that AJ has sort of finally left. Kate's a spell. You seem to really be, 00;10;25;31 - 00;10;35;00 Rachel you know, siding with her quite a bit on a lot of these votes. But it seems like for whatever reason, he has flipped a switch and he's no longer, trying to save Kate. He's actually looking to get her out. 00;10;35;00 - 00;10;50;33 Rachel then we see Zara say that she is, you know, obviously she's thinking about AJ, but she also doesn't want Kate to make it to the final three because as we know, Kate and Zara are both good at endurance. Right? And Zara needs to set herself up to win for that situation. 00;10;50;38 - 00;11;00;19 Leah And so you see Kate and Zara talking, right? Yeah. And Kate tells Zara that Miles told her to vote for Kaitlyn and Zara seems quite surprised. 00;11;00;19 - 00;11;08;11 Rachel Yeah, because Kate is following Myles and not AJ, which is not what you would have expected from Kate. So this really flips things around for Zara. 00;11;08;23 - 00;11;11;41 Matt Well, Myles also did give her kind of an ultimatum. You have no choice. 00;11;11;41 - 00;11;14;39 Leah Yeah he's not very nice and for sure you know. 00;11;14;44 - 00;11;18;42 Rachel That does seem to be his go to strategy to say well you've got to do my way. You have no choice. 00;11;18;49 - 00;11;20;54 Leah Well, I think it's funny that Zara became. 00;11;20;55 - 00;11;22;12 Matt Really vote for whoever she wants. 00;11;22;12 - 00;11;33;56 Leah Yeah, but Zara ends up being the swing vote. It looks like. Right. If Kate's going to go with Myles, then it looks like she Zara will figure out. 00;11;34;01 - 00;11;35;14 Rachel But yeah. So deciding. 00;11;35;14 - 00;11;36;36 Leah Oh sorry. Go ahead. 00;11;36;41 - 00;11;53;22 Rachel Susanna has figured out that all four players on the beach are voting for each other, so Kate's voting for Caitlin. Myles is voting for AJ, Kaitlyn's voting for Miles and is voting for Kate. So there's four people eligible to receive votes and they all have one accounted for. And Zara gets to be the deciding. 00;11;53;22 - 00;11;55;07 Leah Vote, right? I know right? 00;11;55;12 - 00;11;59;15 Matt A huge move for her that all just kind of like fell in line. 00;11;59;20 - 00;12;05;04 Leah Well I think the big thing also is that Kate is finally looking for an idol. 00;12;05;04 - 00;12;06;21 Rachel Next time. 00;12;06;25 - 00;12;09;22 Leah But Myles is filing her and, you know. 00;12;09;29 - 00;12;10;48 Matt Half heartedly it seems like. 00;12;10;48 - 00;12;14;10 Leah Yeah, but still we still. Oh, are you looking for an idol? Yeah. Yeah, 00;12;14;10 - 00;12;17;28 Rachel It is nice to see Kate finally taking our advice and writing. 00;12;17;28 - 00;12;18;26 Leah For the night. 00;12;18;31 - 00;12;21;47 Matt We're 48 hours and the end of the game. You gonna look for an idol now, right? 00;12;21;56 - 00;12;22;23 Leah Right. 00;12;22;25 - 00;12;23;36 Rachel Well, better late than never, 00;12;23;36 - 00;12;39;29 Rachel Well, it is interesting to kind of think about Zara's plan here, so I'm thinking, well, she knows that she needs a big move because she played a really good game pre merge directly after the merge. I think she did a really nice job, but lately she hasn't really been doing quite as much. 00;12;39;29 - 00;12;49;30 Rachel So if she were to get out AJ yeah that's huge for her resume. But what if she ends up sitting next to Max? That's really Miles's move. More so than Zara's move, right? 00;12;49;30 - 00;12;53;33 Matt Right. And she could end up sitting next to Kate and she doesn't want to do that. 00;12;53;38 - 00;13;01;07 Rachel Well, yeah. So Kate's a big competition, but it's the easy vote. It doesn't have a huge mark on her resume. 00;13;01;12 - 00;13;04;57 Leah Yes, but the brains are thinking, right. Yeah, yeah. 00;13;05;02 - 00;13;10;53 Rachel But I'm thinking if I were Zara, I think the best move is to target Myles at this point because 00;13;10;53 - 00;13;22;14 Rachel AJ is not her original move Myles you know Kaitlyn's already voting for him, but it doesn't seem like anyone else thinks he's going home. And he really wouldn't suspect it at this point. So I think that would have been a big move. 00;13;22;24 - 00;13;23;26 Leah But yeah, the idol. 00;13;23;40 - 00;13;32;00 Rachel He does have the idol, so she's got a lot of choices, but it's hard to pick out like an exact good choice for Zara at this point in the game. 00;13;32;05 - 00;13;40;22 Matt Right? I don't feel like we got that from Kate. From Zara that she should vote for Myles she didn't even, like, considered. It didn't seem like. 00;13;40;22 - 00;13;41;31 Leah No. 00;13;41;35 - 00;13;47;19 Matt And we don't know that she knows he has an idol. So it seems odd that that part was missing. 00;13;47;24 - 00;13;51;43 Leah Well, I thought it was interesting because then you see Myles and AJ sitting on the beach 00;13;51;43 - 00;13;56;40 Leah AJ says I don't trust you for a moment to Myles. 00;13;56;45 - 00;14;18;57 Rachel So this is kind of sad. It's like their final goodbye almost their final chat on the beach. And Myles is tearing up and yes National. And it was it was kind of bittersweet to think about all the times that those two have sat on the beach together scheming away. And now there's like this underlying current where it's like, well, you can't tell me your plan, but I hope you don't vote for me, right? 00;14;19;00 - 00;14;30;23 Rachel Oh, it is, and it's I don't know, I think it's every, duo seems to get to this point in the game, but it's always I mean, it's just interesting to see. It's kind of emotional to watch. 00;14;30;27 - 00;14;38;23 Leah Yeah. Right. Well, I think also AJ said, Kaitlyn will take me to the end. No one else will. So that's interesting. 00;14;38;23 - 00;14;44;52 Leah Yeah, he he thinks Kaitlyn is the only one who's going to take him to the end. And I think he must believe that he'll beat Kaitlyn. 00;14;44;57 - 00;14;45;52 Rachel No, I think he can. 00;14;45;52 - 00;14;47;11 Leah Yeah, I can. 00;14;47;11 - 00;14;54;27 Matt Yeah, but that's that's a good point because he's probably right. Everyone else knows he's a good player. So why would you take him? 00;14;54;32 - 00;14;55;01 Leah Yeah. 00;14;55;06 - 00;14;59;16 Matt Right. Don't you think everybody is going to take Kaitlyn? 00;14;59;21 - 00;15;01;40 Rachel Yeah, I guess it's hard to say. 00;15;01;45 - 00;15;03;58 Leah But there's more surprises at tribal. 00;15;03;58 - 00;15;05;48 Leah What about the jury? Oh, I just. 00;15;05;48 - 00;15;11;55 Rachel We saw that Morgan has left the game. She's opted not to sit on the jury, but actually to go home instead. 00;15;11;55 - 00;15;19;10 Leah I mean, she took someone's place. She did not play this game, and now she leaves. Yeah, I think that's a really bad. 00;15;19;16 - 00;15;20;15 Matt So disappointing. 00;15;20;15 - 00;15;20;44 Leah Yeah. 00;15;20;49 - 00;15;34;36 Rachel Yeah. I was thinking about, Do you guys remember Noonan from the beginning of the season? She loved. Yeah, the game of survivor. So much. It's palpable on the screen. And I was just thinking, you know, she would love to sit on the jury. She would I sure. You know, it's an honor. 00;15;34;36 - 00;15;39;17 Matt And I would have been so excited to be there and hearing their stories, seeing what's happening. Yeah. 00;15;39;22 - 00;16;01;16 Rachel Yeah, she was a good player on the jury. Yeah. Well, it's, you know, a huge honor to be on the jury because you get to stay in the final, sole survivor of your season. You get to decide who wins the game. And it's such a huge part of the game. It's the jury. And to leave, it's like at that point, you may as well just quit the game because you already are not seeing it through to the end. 00;16;01;20 - 00;16;03;48 Rachel And I was yeah, it's very disappointing to see this. 00;16;03;59 - 00;16;05;40 Leah It's very upsetting actually. 00;16;05;45 - 00;16;11;24 Rachel You know, a morgan's an Olympian. So we know that she's been dedicated to things in the past and you just don't, 00;16;11;24 - 00;16;16;38 Rachel you know, expect someone as an Olympian to be, you know, quitting a game in the middle of it. Really. 00;16;16;43 - 00;16;17;53 Leah And she doesn't seem. 00;16;17;53 - 00;16;24;58 Matt That upset that she was leaving. Right? It's not like, you know, I've worked so hard for this, and this is my dream, and now I'm going to get voted off. 00;16;24;59 - 00;16;31;52 Leah And maybe someone told her, hey, why don't you go on survivor? And she just did it, but really doesn't care about it. I mean, she just didn't seem to care. 00;16;31;52 - 00;16;38;07 Matt I have read that in American Survivor they do go after certain people. They approach people. 00;16;38;12 - 00;16;38;42 Leah Who don't even. 00;16;38;42 - 00;16;40;43 Matt Apply and say, hey, you would be good on. 00;16;40;43 - 00;16;42;51 Leah Survivor. Oh, really? Yeah. 00;16;42;56 - 00;16;48;11 Rachel So maybe she didn't. She may have never even watch the game. Maybe she doesn't even know how important the jury is. 00;16;48;25 - 00;16;52;48 Leah Well, I'm sorry, you just made a good point about Noonan. I wish she would have made it farther. 00;16;52;48 - 00;17;10;09 Rachel I know she was fine. You know, she was terrified. The game was passionate about it. Who understands the role of the jury, the responsibility. And, you know, this is altering the game to not have your vote at the end, playing, you know, giving a say into how the game ends. It alters the game. 00;17;10;13 - 00;17;14;12 Leah Right. And Kate probably was pretty disappointed to not see her. 00;17;14;12 - 00;17;14;40 Rachel Yeah. 00;17;14;40 - 00;17;17;11 Matt Yeah. Especially if she was hoping for a vote from her. 00;17;17;11 - 00;17;17;59 Leah Yeah. So yeah. 00;17;17;59 - 00;17;19;48 Leah So that was crazy. 00;17;19;53 - 00;17;23;01 Rachel Yeah. So very disappointing. Interesting that, 00;17;23;01 - 00;17;31;52 Rachel think it was Ben at the beginning of the season, quit kind of unexpectedly from the brains, from tribe and, Morgan from the brawn tribe. Right. So it's. 00;17;31;52 - 00;17;32;59 Matt Season. 00;17;33;04 - 00;17;42;39 Rachel And it's not looking good for brains versus brawn. It looks like the bronze are quitting. They're not making it as far in the game. It's right. Looking like the brains are victorious overall. 00;17;42;41 - 00;17;50;40 Matt And I wonder if the four brains. I wonder what the reaction was when they heard that Morgan wasn't there. Probably like good. 00;17;50;45 - 00;17;53;26 Leah Yeah, because Morgan didn't like any of them. Right. 00;17;53;31 - 00;18;08;52 Rachel Yeah. I wonder if it even changed Zara's. I mean, I don't think it did, but I wonder if it made Zara reconsider her vote, knowing that if she were to sit next to Kate, she would not have that guaranteed vote for Morgan. 00;18;08;57 - 00;18;11;11 Leah I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. 00;18;11;16 - 00;18;16;05 Rachel Well, probably not, because, the tribal they're discussing, 00;18;16;05 - 00;18;21;52 Rachel you know, when to make a big move is it time to turn on the core four? It's going to be so awkward for. 00;18;21;53 - 00;18;22;57 Matt Bell to get awkward. 00;18;22;57 - 00;18;28;02 Rachel And when is it time to make your last big move, or, you know, one of your last big moves? 00;18;28;11 - 00;18;50;32 Leah Well, I like it that they showed us everyone but Sara. Their votes. So AJ voted for Kate, Kaitlyn voted for Myles. So that was weird because AJ was supposed to vote for Myles mapper, but I guess he just couldn't do it. Kate voted for Kaitlyn as Myles told her to do and Myles voted for AJ. So now all of them have a vote so we don't know if she's great, who Zara's going to pick. 00;18;50;32 - 00;18;52;40 Leah And that was very, very interesting. 00;18;52;45 - 00;19;00;12 Matt So it worked out perfectly for the producers. Yes, let's do it this way. I was like, yes, we knew what was going to happen up until the last vote. 00;19;00;17 - 00;19;01;56 Leah Yeah, that was really good. 00;19;02;01 - 00;19;05;13 Rachel But before they could read the votes, we had another twist. 00;19;05;13 - 00;19;10;01 Rachel Number four Myles plays idol number four for himself. 00;19;10;05 - 00;19;11;59 Matt And the jury is just like, 00;19;12;04 - 00;19;14;10 Leah Yeah. Thank you. Nothing like it was. 00;19;14;19 - 00;19;22;48 Rachel Yeah. Four idols. That's wild. And, you know, I mean Myles would be the one to ask, but there's got to be close to a record to play for. 00;19;22;48 - 00;19;26;03 Leah I was right, I went Indian. Oh yeah. That was awesome. 00;19;26;03 - 00;19;28;38 Matt That would have been funny if he would have said that. I believe this is a record. 00;19;28;53 - 00;19;35;58 Leah If anybody knows what the record is for how many idols a player? Yeah, yeah. Please let us know. Yeah. 00;19;36;03 - 00;19;46;37 Rachel All right. Yeah. So he played three correctly so far. This last one was incorrect. But that's okay. It's the last chance to play it. May as well and save himself just to be sure. 00;19;46;39 - 00;19;50;22 Matt Right. Well that would have been pretty bad to play it for Kate. And then he goes home, right? 00;19;50;22 - 00;19;50;47 Leah Yeah. 00;19;50;47 - 00;19;57;38 Rachel So we get down to it. And the very first vote out of the urn is for Myles. Does not count. Then the jury was shocked. 00;19;57;42 - 00;19;59;04 Leah Yeah. They were. 00;19;59;04 - 00;20;09;01 Rachel And then as we knew it was going to happen everyone got a vote. And there's one more vote. And at this point I'm thinking oh it's got to be AJ you know. Oh this is so sad. Here it goes H. 00;20;09;03 - 00;20;10;04 Leah Yes I'm thinking. 00;20;10;04 - 00;20;12;15 Matt It's going to be Myles and there's going to be a revote. 00;20;12;21 - 00;20;15;40 Leah Oh I doubt it's going to be AJ I was so scared because I don't want AJ that. 00;20;15;55 - 00;20;21;44 Matt People couldn't vote. So Myles would have been able to vote. Yeah Zoro would have been able to vote. 00;20;22;33 - 00;20;23;52 Rachel That would've been interesting to see. 00;20;23;52 - 00;20;24;53 Leah The exciting to see. 00;20;24;53 - 00;20;26;10 Rachel Oh, that would've been good, right? 00;20;26;10 - 00;20;26;19 Leah Yeah. 00;20;26;19 - 00;20;29;11 Matt And then if they couldn't agree on it. 00;20;29;16 - 00;20;29;41 Leah Yeah. 00;20;29;41 - 00;20;35;41 Rachel Well, it came down to Kate, I was shocked. I really was not expecting Kate to go home tonight. 00;20;35;54 - 00;20;55;21 Leah I know that, Zara has not wanted Kate the game because for it since the beginning, it seems like they do it since they were together. But, I was surprised. But did you see the big surprise from The Graduate? They were just like, whoa, AJ, I mean, it looked like none of them could believe that Kate was going home. 00;20;55;21 - 00;20;57;25 Leah So they were very, very surprised. 00;20;57;27 - 00;21;02;42 Matt AJ was quite surprised to get a vote. Yeah. He asked Myles, would you vote for. 00;21;02;47 - 00;21;03;37 Leah Yeah, yeah. 00;21;03;38 - 00;21;05;28 Matt File says you. 00;21;05;33 - 00;21;31;23 Leah Me yeah. So as I predicted, if this fails, there's going to be a lot of trouble. So and I think that's what's going to happen. But the interesting thing is the postgraduates and the brains are still here. So now the no bronze, they're all gone. So, just like Haley and King George. Two brains. Yeah. They're, you know, who knows who these four will end up being the two, but they're going to be brains. 00;21;31;23 - 00;21;32;47 Leah So. Yeah. 00;21;32;55 - 00;21;36;23 Matt Interesting. I think it looks in the previews. It looks awkward for me. 00;21;36;23 - 00;21;37;08 Leah It does. 00;21;37;13 - 00;21;39;25 Rachel Oh yeah. He's in a bad spot. 00;21;39;30 - 00;21;51;06 Leah But it's always funny going back to the beginning. You look at the players who like the Bryan have to win. I mean there's no way the brains are going to win. But here the muscles, right? 00;21;51;11 - 00;21;53;13 Matt Everybody's got a great body right. 00;21;53;18 - 00;22;00;12 Rachel Well thinking back to our initial predictions. So Matt you chose Myles. So it's looking like he's doing pretty well. 00;22;00;12 - 00;22;01;06 Leah Yeah. 00;22;01;11 - 00;22;02;32 Matt He's final four. 00;22;02;37 - 00;22;03;08 Leah Yeah. 00;22;03;20 - 00;22;05;08 Matt Hopefully further than that Morgan. 00;22;05;08 - 00;22;18;16 Rachel Yeah you chose Morgan. But I just point out yeah yeah. So that wasn't what you expected now. And I chose Karen. Of course. The only one of the graduates to be sitting on the jury and not in the Final Four. 00;22;18;20 - 00;22;19;32 Matt She's in the jury. 00;22;19;37 - 00;22;20;11 Leah Yeah, she's. 00;22;20;11 - 00;22;20;42 Rachel In the jury. 00;22;20;42 - 00;22;41;44 Leah But she was a very good player. She should be right there. Actually, when I think about it, I know Zara has done quite well, but I think Karen was more active in her gameplay. She was more like Myles in AJ. I think that's right. So I, I though Zara deserves to be where she is. I think it would be or AJ or Myles or Kaitlyn. 00;22;41;58 - 00;22;50;20 Leah I think it would be nice if Karen was up there also. I don't know who who she would replace. I'm just saying I think she should be up there because she was a good player. 00;22;50;20 - 00;22;50;58 Leah Yeah. 00;22;50;58 - 00;22;58;19 Rachel Well, it's been an interesting season and it's not over yet. I cannot wait for Sunday to see what's going to happen. 00;22;58;19 - 00;22;58;51 Leah Oh, boy. 00;22;58;51 - 00;22;59;21 Rachel Hey, Jim. 00;22;59;33 - 00;23;01;13 Leah I I'm sorry. 00;23;01;17 - 00;23;17;05 Rachel I think I'll go ahead. You know, if AJ would have gone home tonight, I think after the game they could have repaired things and said, you know, oh it's part of the game. Not a big deal. But now that he didn't go home this is really going to blow up. They're going to be are you are they going to be able to recover? 00;23;17;05 - 00;23;20;37 Rachel I don't think AJ is going to see it as just game play anymore. 00;23;20;48 - 00;23;28;23 Matt Right. And hopefully they come back at night. I mean, hopefully they show us more of what happens as soon as they get back to camp instead of when the sun comes up. 00;23;28;23 - 00;23;30;46 Leah I yeah, I think they will. I hope they, I think they will. 00;23;30;50 - 00;23;34;06 Matt But anyway, I hope you guys continue to help me support Myles. 00;23;34;06 - 00;23;34;42 Leah Sorry, 00;23;34;42 - 00;23;37;32 Leah I'm not supporting Myles. Sorry. Oh, jeez. 00;23;37;32 - 00;23;50;47 Rachel I think I would say Miles deserves to win out of all five of these. I think I'm rooting for Myles to win at this point or at all for players left because he I mean he played for idols. He has a crazy story. 00;23;50;47 - 00;23;51;30 Leah What you guys have. 00;23;51;32 - 00;23;59;02 Rachel Really doing very well. And I think he deserves the title of Sole Survivor. If he can get himself to the final two, which is going to be tough. 00;23;59;04 - 00;24;02;27 Leah But what about AJ? I guess AJ didn't play as much as Myles. 00;24;02;29 - 00;24;05;29 Matt What about Kaitlyn winning all the immunity. Yeah you know. 00;24;05;34 - 00;24;06;41 Leah And Zara still. 00;24;06;46 - 00;24;20;15 Rachel Saying yeah. The great thing about this Final Four is that everyone has a chance of winning and everyone deserves their spot here. We've seen a lot of seasons where someone's dragged along and it's not that fun, but I think this is a great final four. 00;24;20;15 - 00;24;22;33 Leah Yes, I agree is a separate car. 00;24;22;37 - 00;24;25;31 Matt I can't wait till Sunday to see what happens. 00;24;25;35 - 00;24;46;20 Rachel Yeah. So let us know what you think about this Final Four. Do you feel that everyone deserves to be there? And who do you think will be the sole survivor out of the postgraduates? Let us know on Instagram at survivor, TikTok at survivor and send us an email at eight. Australian Survivor at gmail.com. Thanks and we'll see you next week. 00;24;46;20 - 00;24;46;50 Leah Bye bye. 00;24;46;50 - 00;24;47;23 Matt Bye.  

Rachel and David discuss strategies for getting through the holiday season after divorce - again.  DD151 started the talk and this podcast will close it out.  They also discuss setting boundaries, the importance of self-care, the lack of Christmas spirit, creating new traditions, and finding ways to honor your feelings.  They also encourage acts of kindness, reflect on the positives, and the importance of mindfulness and gratitude journaling while maybe exploring new hobbies.  Key Takeaways:The holiday season after divorce can be challenging, but it's important to find ways to take care of yourself and honor your feelings.Setting boundaries is crucial, both with family and with yourself. It's okay to say no and prioritize your own well-being.Creating new traditions and exploring new hobbies can help bring joy and excitement back into the holiday season.Acts of kindness, such as volunteering or helping others, can bring a sense of fulfillment and gratitude.Reflecting on the positives of the season and practicing mindfulness can help shift your perspective and find joy in the present moment.Quotes:"It's okay to ask for help, whether it's going to the doctor or going to the therapist. Those are all parts of taking care of yourself." - Rachel"You have to be willing to say, okay, Christmas is still going to come. It's what I make of it." - Rachel"Setting a boundary doesn't stop. You're going to set a boundary. You got two pissed off people now because you set the boundary." - Rachel"Get yourself out there. Try something new. Get out of your comfort zone." - David"Engage in acts of kindness. Go out and do kind things with people." - DavidDiscussions of:Lucky Charms and the LeprechaunWe are both in a Christmas funkSocial media can be a killer during the holidaysOverthinkingPound wood, stay safeHobbyist voyeurSerial datingKindness to your exHelp others and help your soulDIVORCE DEVIL PODCAST WEBSITE

Rachel Dines, Head of Product and Technical Marketing at Chronosphere, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss why creating a cloud-native observability strategy is so critical, and the challenges that come with both defining and accomplishing that strategy to fit your current and future observability needs. Rachel explains how Chronosphere is taking an open-source approach to observability, and why it's more important than ever to acknowledge that the stakes and costs are much higher when it comes to observability in the cloud. About RachelRachel leads product and technical marketing for Chronosphere. Previously, Rachel wore lots of marketing hats at CloudHealth (acquired by VMware), and before that, she led product marketing for cloud-integrated storage at NetApp. She also spent many years as an analyst at Forrester Research. Outside of work, Rachel tries to keep up with her young son and hyper-active dog, and when she has time, enjoys crafting and eating out at local restaurants in Boston where she's based.Links Referenced: Chronosphere: https://chronosphere.io/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rdines/ TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. Today's featured guest episode is brought to us by our friends at Chronosphere, and they have also brought us Rachel Dines, their Head of Product and Solutions Marketing. Rachel, great to talk to you again.Rachel: Hi, Corey. Yeah, great to talk to you, too.Corey: Watching your trajectory has been really interesting, just because starting off, when we first started, I guess, learning who each other were, you were working at CloudHealth which has since become VMware. And I was trying to figure out, huh, the cloud runs on money. How about that? It feels like it was a thousand years ago, but neither one of us is quite that old.Rachel: It does feel like several lifetimes ago. You were just this snarky guy with a few followers on Twitter, and I was trying to figure out what you were doing mucking around with my customers [laugh]. Then [laugh] we kind of both figured out what we're doing, right?Corey: So, speaking of that iterative process, today, you are at Chronosphere, which is an observability company. We would have called it a monitoring company five years ago, but now that's become an insult after the observability war dust has settled. So, I want to talk to you about something that I've been kicking around for a while because I feel like there's a gap somewhere. Let's say that I build a crappy web app—because all of my web apps inherently are crappy—and it makes money through some mystical form of alchemy. And I have a bunch of users, and I eventually realize, huh, I should probably have a better observability story than waiting for the phone to ring and a customer telling me it's broken.So, I start instrumenting various aspects of it that seem to make sense. Maybe I go too low level, like looking at all the discs on every server to tell me if they're getting full or not, like their ancient servers. Maybe I just have a Pingdom equivalent of is the website up enough to respond to a packet? And as I wind up experiencing different failure modes and getting yelled at by different constituencies—in my own career trajectory, my own boss—you start instrumenting for all those different kinds of breakages, you start aggregating the logs somewhere and the volume gets bigger and bigger with time. But it feels like it's sort of a reactive process as you stumble through that entire environment.And I know it's not just me because I've seen this unfold in similar ways in a bunch of different companies. It feels to me, very strongly, like it is something that happens to you, rather than something you set about from day one with a strategy in mind. What's your take on an effective way to think about strategy when it comes to observability?Rachel: You just nailed it. That's exactly the kind of progression that we so often see. And that's what I really was excited to talk with you about today—Corey: Oh, thank God. I was worried for a minute there that you'd be like, “What the hell are you talking about? Are you just, like, some sort of crap engineer?” And, “Yes, but it's mean of you to say it.” But yeah, what I'm trying to figure out is there some magic that I just was never connecting? Because it always feels like you're in trouble because the site's always broken, and oh, like, if the disk fills up, yeah, oh, now we're going to start monitoring to make sure the disk doesn't fill up. Then you wind up getting barraged with alerts, and no one wins, and it's an uncomfortable period of time.Rachel: Uncomfortable period of time. That is one very polite way to put it. I mean, I will say, it is very rare to find a company that actually sits down and thinks, “This is our observability strategy. This is what we want to get out of observability.” Like, you can think about a strategy and, like, the old school sense, and you know, as an industry analyst, so I'm going to have to go back to, like, my roots at Forrester with thinking about, like, the people, and the process, and the technology.But really what the bigger component here is like, what's the business impact? What do you want to get out of your observability platform? What are you trying to achieve? And a lot of the time, people have thought, “Oh, observability strategy. Great, I'm just going to buy a tool. That's it. Like, that's my strategy.”And I hate to bring it to you, but buying tools is not a strategy. I'm not going to say, like, buy this tool. I'm not even going to say, “Buy Chronosphere.” That's not a strategy. Well, you should buy Chronosphere. But that's not a strategy.Corey: Of course. I'm going to throw the money by the wheelbarrow at various observability vendors, and hope it solves my problem. But if that solved the problem—I've got to be direct—I've never spoken to those customers.Rachel: Exactly. I mean, that's why this space is such a great one to come in and be very disruptive in. And I think, back in the days when we were running in data centers, maybe even before virtual machines, you could probably get away with not having a monitoring strategy—I'm not going to call it observability; it's not we call the back then—you could get away with not having a strategy because what was the worst that was going to happen, right? It wasn't like there was a finite amount that your monitoring bill could be, there was a finite amount that your customer impact could be. Like, you're paying the penny slots, right?We're not on the penny slots anymore. We're in the $50 craps table, and it's Las Vegas, and if you lose the game, you're going to have to run down the street without your shirt. Like, the game and the stakes have changed, and we're still pretending like we're playing penny slots, and we're not anymore.Corey: That's a good way of framing it. I mean, I still remember some of my biggest observability challenges were building highly available rsyslog clusters so that you could bounce a member and not lose any log data because some of that was transactionally important. And we've gone beyond that to a stupendous degree, but it still feels like you don't wind up building this into the application from day one. More's the pity because if you did, and did that intelligently, that opens up a whole world of possibilities. I dream of that changing where one day, whenever you start to build an app, oh, and we just push the button and automatically instrument with OTel, so you instrument the thing once everywhere it makes sense to do it, and then you can do your vendor selection and what you said were decisions later in time. But these days, we're not there.Rachel: Well, I mean, and there's also the question of just the legacy environment and the tech debt. Even if you wanted to, the—actually I was having a beer yesterday with a friend who's a VP of Engineering, and he's got his new environment that they're building with observability instrumented from the start. How beautiful. They've got OTel, they're going to have tracing. And then he's got his legacy environment, which is a hot mess.So, you know, there's always going to be this bridge of the old and the new. But this was where it comes back to no matter where you're at, you can stop and think, like, “What are we doing and why?” What is the cost of this? And not just cost in dollars, which I know you and I could talk about very deeply for a long period of time, but like, the opportunity costs. Developers are working on stuff that they could be working on something that's more valuable.Or like the cost of making people work round the clock, trying to troubleshoot issues when there could be an easier way. So, I think it's like stepping back and thinking about cost in terms of dollar sense, time, opportunity, and then also impact, and starting to make some decisions about what you're going to do in the future that's different. Once again, you might be stuck with some legacy stuff that you can't really change that much, but [laugh] you got to be realistic about where you're at.Corey: I think that that is a… it's a hard lesson to be very direct, in that, companies need to learn it the hard way, for better or worse. Honestly, this is one of the things that I always noticed in startup land, where you had a whole bunch of, frankly, relatively early-career engineers in their early-20s, if not younger. But then the ops person was always significantly older because the thing you actually want to hear from your ops person, regardless of how you slice it, is, “Oh, yeah, I've seen this kind of problem before. Here's how we fixed it.” Or even better, “Here's the thing we're doing, and I know how that's going to become a problem. Let's fix it before it does.” It's the, “What are you buying by bringing that person in?” “Experience, mostly.”Rachel: Yeah, that's an interesting point you make, and it kind of leads me down this little bit of a side note, but a really interesting antipattern that I've been seeing in a lot of companies is that more seasoned ops person, they're the one who everyone calls when something goes wrong. Like, they're the one who, like, “Oh, my God, I don't know how to fix it. This is a big hairy problem,” I call that one ops person, or I call that very experienced person. That experience person then becomes this huge bottleneck into solving problems that people don't really—they might even be the only one who knows how to use the observability tool. So, if we can't find a way to democratize our observability tooling a little bit more so, like, just day-to-day engineers, like, more junior engineers, newer ones, people who are still ramping, can actually use the tool and be successful, we're going to have a big problem when these ops people walk out the door, maybe they retire, maybe they just get sick of it. We have these massive bottlenecks in organizations, whether it's ops or DevOps or whatever, that I see often exacerbated by observability tools. Just a side note.Corey: Yeah. On some level, it feels like a lot of these things can be fixed with tooling. And I'm not going to say that tools aren't important. You ever tried to implement observability by hand? It doesn't work. There have to be computers somewhere in the loop, if nothing else.And then it just seems to devolve into a giant swamp of different companies, doing different things, taking different approaches. And, on some level, whenever you read the marketing or hear the stories any of these companies tell you also to normalize it from translating from whatever marketing language they've got into something that comports with the reality of your own environment and seeing if they align. And that feels like it is so much easier said than done.Rachel: This is a noisy space, that is for sure. And you know, I think we could go out to ten people right now and ask those ten people to define observability, and we would come back with ten different definitions. And then if you throw a marketing person in the mix, right—guilty as charged, and I know you're a marketing person, too, Corey, so you got to take some of the blame—it gets mucky, right? But like I said a minute ago, the answer is not tools. Tools can be part of the strategy, but if you're just thinking, “I'm going to buy a tool and that's going to solve my problem,” you're going to end up like this company I was talking to recently that has 25 different observability tools.And not only do they have 25 different observability tools, what's worse is they have 25 different definitions for their SLOs and 25 different names for the same metric. And to be honest, it's just a mess. I'm not saying, like, go be Draconian and, you know, tell all the engineers, like, “You can only use this tool [unintelligible 00:10:34] use that tool,” you got to figure out this kind of balance of, like, hands-on, hands-off, you know? How much do you centralize, how much do you push and standardize? Otherwise, you end up with just a huge mess.Corey: On some level, it feels like it was easier back in the days of building it yourself with Nagios because there's only one answer, and it sucks, unless you want to start going down the world of HP OpenView. Which step one: hire a 50-person team to manage OpenView. Okay, that's not going to solve my problem either. So, let's get a little more specific. How does Chronosphere approach this?Because historically, when I've spoken to folks at Chronosphere, there isn't that much of a day one story, in that, “I'm going to build a crappy web app. Let's instrument it for Chronosphere.” There's a certain, “You must be at least this tall to ride,” implicit expectation built into the product just based upon its origins. And I'm not saying that doesn't make sense, but it also means there's really no such thing as a greenfield build out for you either.Rachel: Well, yes and no. I mean, I think there's no green fields out there because everyone's doing something for observability, or monitoring, or whatever you want to call it, right? Whether they've got Nagios, whether they've got the Dog, whether they've got something else in there, they have some way of introspecting their systems, right? So, one of the things that Chronosphere is built on, that I actually think this is part of something—a way you might think about building out an observability strategy as well, is this concept of control and open-source compatibility. So, we only can collect data via open-source standards. You have to send this data via Prometheus, via Open Telemetry, it could be older standards, like, you know, statsd, Graphite, but we don't have any proprietary instrumentation.And if I was making a recommendation to somebody building out their observability strategy right now, I would say open, open, open, all day long because that gives you a huge amount of flexibility in the future. Because guess what? You know, you might put together an observability strategy that seems like it makes sense for right now—actually, I was talking to a B2B SaaS company that told me that they made a choice a couple of years ago on an observability tool. It seemed like the right choice at the time. They were growing so fast, they very quickly realized it was a terrible choice.But now, it's going to be really hard for them to migrate because it's all based on proprietary standards. Now, of course, a few years ago, they didn't have the luxury of Open Telemetry and all of these, but now that we have this, we can use these to kind of future-proof our mistakes. So, that's one big area that, once again, both my recommendation and happens to be our approach at Chronosphere.Corey: I think that that's a fair way of viewing it. It's a constant challenge, too, just because increasingly—you mentioned the Dog earlier, for example—I will say that for years, I have been asked whether or not at The Duckbill Group, we look at Azure bills or GCP bills. Nope, we are pure AWS. Recently, we started to hear that same inquiry specifically around Datadog, to the point where it has become a board-level concern at very large companies. And that is a challenge, on some level.I don't deviate from my typical path of I fix AWS bills, and that's enough impossible problems for one lifetime, but there is a strong sense of you want to record as much as possible for a variety of excellent reasons, but there's an implicit cost to doing that, and in many cases, the cost of observability becomes a massive contributor to the overall cost. Netflix has said in talks before that they're effectively an observability company that also happens to stream movies, just because it takes so much effort, engineering, and raw computing resources in order to get that data do something actionable with it. It's a hard problem.Rachel: It's a huge problem, and it's a big part of why I work at Chronosphere, to be honest. Because when I was—you know, towards the tail end at my previous company in cloud cost management, I had a lot of customers coming to me saying, “Hey, when are you going to tackle our Dog or our New Relic or whatever?” Similar to the experience you're having now, Corey, this was happening to me three, four years ago. And I noticed that there is definitely a correlation between people who are having these really big challenges with their observability bills and people that were adopting, like Kubernetes, and microservices and cloud-native. And it was around that time that I met the Chronosphere team, which is exactly what we do, right? We focus on observability for these cloud-native environments where observability data just goes, like, wild.We see 10X 20X as much observability data and that's what's driving up these costs. And yeah, it is becoming a board-level concern. I mean, and coming back to the concept of strategy, like if observability is the second or third most expensive item in your engineering bill—like, obviously, cloud infrastructure, number one—number two and number three is probably observability. How can you not have a strategy for that? How can this be something the board asks you about, and you're like, “What are we trying to get out of this? What's our purpose?” “Uhhhh… troubleshooting?”Corey: Right because it turns into business metrics as well. It's not just about is the site up or not. There's a—like, one of the things that always drove me nuts not just in the observability space, but even in cloud costing is where, okay, your costs have gone up this week so you get a frowny face, or it's in red, like traffic light coloring. Cool, but for a lot of architectures and a lot of customers, that's because you're doing a lot more volume. That translates directly into increased revenues, increased things you care about. You don't have the position or the context to say, “That's good,” or, “That's bad.” It simply is. And you can start deriving business insight from that. And I think that is the real observability story that I think has largely gone untold at tech conferences, at least.Rachel: It's so right. I mean, spending more on something is not inherently bad if you're getting more value out of it. And it definitely a challenge on the cloud cost management side. “My costs are going up, but my revenue is going up a lot faster, so I'm okay.” And I think some of the plays, like you know, we put observability in this box of, like, it's for low-level troubleshooting, but really, if you step back and think about it, there's a lot of larger, bigger picture initiatives that observability can contribute to in an org, like digital transformation. I know that's a buzzword, but, like that is a legit thing that a lot of CTOs are out there thinking about. Like, how do we, you know, get out of the tech debt world, and how do we get into cloud-native?Maybe it's developer efficiency. God, there's a lot of people talking about developer efficiency. Last week at KubeCon, that was one of the big, big topics. I mean, and yeah, what [laugh] what about cost savings? To me, we've put observability in a smaller box, and it needs to bust out.And I see this also in our customer base, you know? Customers like DoorDash use observability, not just to look at their infrastructure and their applications, but also look at their business. At any given minute, they know how many Dashers are on the road, how many orders are being placed, cut by geos, down to the—actually down to the second, and they can use that to make decisions.Corey: This is one of those things that I always found a little strange coming from the world of running systems in large [unintelligible 00:17:28] environments to fixing AWS bills. There's nothing that even resembles a fast, reactive response in the world of AWS billing. You wind up with a runaway bill, they're going to resolve that over a period of weeks, on Seattle business hours. If you wind up spinning something up that creates a whole bunch of very expensive drivers behind your bill, it's going to take three days, in most cases, before that starts showing up anywhere that you can reasonably expect to get at it. The idea of near real time is a lie unless you want to start instrumenting everything that you're doing to trap the calls and then run cost extrapolation from there. That's hard to do.Observability is a very different story, where latencies start to matter, where being able to get leading indicators of certain events—be a technical or business—start to be very important. But it seems like it's so hard to wind up getting there from where most people are. Because I know we like to talk dismissively about the past, but let's face it, conference-ware is the stuff we're the proudest of. The reality is the burning dumpster of regret in our data centers that still also drives giant piles of revenue, so you can't turn it off, nor would you want to, but you feel bad about it as a result. It just feels like it's such a big leap.Rachel: It is a big leap. And I think the very first step I would say is trying to get to this point of clarity and being honest with yourself about where you're at and where you want to be. And sometimes not making a choice is a choice, right, as well. So, sticking with the status quo is making a choice. And so, like, as we get into things like the holiday season right now, and I know there's going to be people that are on-call 24/7 during the holidays, potentially, to keep something that's just duct-taped together barely up and running, I'm making a choice; you're make a choice to do that. So, I think that's like the first step is the kind of… at least acknowledging where you're at, where you want to be, and if you're not going to make a change, just understanding the cost and being realistic about it.Corey: Yeah, being realistic, I think, is one of the hardest challenges because it's easy to wind up going for the aspirational story of, “In the future when everything's great.” Like, “Okay, cool. I appreciate the need to plant that flag on the hill somewhere. What's the next step? What can we get done by the end of this week that materially improves us from where we started the week?” And I think that with the aspirational conference-ware stories, it's hard to break that down into things that are actionable, that don't feel like they're going to be an interminable slog across your entire existing environment.Rachel: No, I get it. And for things like, you know, instrumenting and adding tracing and adding OTEL, a lot of the time, the return that you get on that investment is… it's not quite like, “I put a dollar in, I get a dollar out,” I mean, something like tracing, you can't get to 60% instrumentation and get 60% of the value. You need to be able to get to, like, 80, 90%, and then you'll get a huge amount of value. So, it's sort of like you're trudging up this hill, you're charging up this hill, and then finally you get to the plateau, and it's beautiful. But that hill is steep, and it's long, and it's not pretty. And I don't know what to say other than there's a plateau near the top. And those companies that do this well really get a ton of value out of it. And that's the dream, that we want to help customers get up that hill. But yeah, I'm not going to lie, the hill can be steep.Corey: One thing that I find interesting is there's almost a bimodal distribution in companies that I talk to. On the one side, you have companies like, I don't know, a Chronosphere is a good example of this. Presumably you have a cloud bill somewhere and the majority of your cloud spend will be on what amounts to a single application, probably in your case called, I don't know, Chronosphere. It shares the name of the company. The other side of that distribution is the large enterprise conglomerates where they're spending, I don't know, $400 million a year on cloud, but their largest workload is 3 million bucks, and it's just a very long tail of a whole bunch of different workloads, applications, teams, et cetera.So, what I'm curious about from the Chronosphere perspective—or the product you have, not the ‘you' in this metaphor, which gets confusing—is, it feels easier to instrument a Chronosphere-like company that has a primary workload that is the massive driver of most things and get that instrumented and start getting an observability story around that than it does to try and go to a giant company and, “Okay, 1500 teams need to all implement this thing that are all going in different directions.” How do you see it playing out among your customer base, if that bimodal distribution holds up in your world?Rachel: It does and it doesn't. So, first of all, for a lot of our customers, we often start with metrics. And starting with metrics means Prometheus. And Prometheus has hundreds of exporters. It is basically built into Kubernetes. So, if you're running Kubernetes, getting Prometheus metrics out, actually not a very big lift. So, we find that we start with Prometheus, we start with getting metrics in, and we can get a lot—I mean, customers—we have a lot of customers that use us just for metrics, and they get a massive amount of value.But then once they're ready, they can start instrumenting for OTEL and start getting traces in as well. And yeah, in large organizations, it does tend to be one team, one application, one service, one department that kind of goes at it and gets all that instrumented. But I've even seen very large organizations, when they get their act together and decide, like, “No, we're doing this,” they can get OTel instrumented fairly quickly. So, I guess it's, like, a lining up. It's more of a people issue than a technical issue a lot of the time.Like, getting everyone lined up and making sure that like, yes, we all agree. We're on board. We're going to do this. But it's usually, like, it's a start small, and it doesn't have to be all or nothing. We also just recently added the ability to ingest events, which is actually a really beautiful thing, and it's very, very straightforward.It basically just—we connect to your existing other DevOps tools, so whether it's, like, a Buildkite, or a GitHub, or, like, a LaunchDarkly, and then anytime something happens in one of those tools, that gets registered as an event in Chronosphere. And then we overlay those events over your alerts. So, when an alert fires, then first thing I do is I go look at the alert page, and it says, “Hey, someone did a deploy five minutes ago,” or, “There was a feature flag flipped three minutes ago,” I solved the problem right then. I don't think of this as—there's not an all or nothing nature to any of this stuff. Yes, tracing is a little bit of a—you know, like I said, it's one of those things where you have to make a lot of investment before you get a big reward, but that's not the case in all areas of observability.Corey: Yeah. I would agree. Do you find that there's a significant easy, early win when customers start adopting Chronosphere? Because one of the problems that I've found, especially with things that are holistic, and as you talk about tracing, well, you need to get to a certain point of coverage before you see value. But human psychology being what it is, you kind of want to be able to demonstrate, oh, see, the Meantime To Dopamine needs to come down, to borrow an old phrase. Do you find that some of there's some easy wins that start to help people to see the light? Because otherwise, it just feels like a whole bunch of work for no discernible benefit to them.Rachel: Yeah, at least for the Chronosphere customer base, one of the areas where we're seeing a lot of traction this year is in optimizing the costs, like, coming back to the cost story of their overall observability bill. So, we have this concept of the control plane in our product where all the data that we ingest hits the control plane. At that point, that customer can look at the data, analyze it, and decide this is useful, this is not useful. And actually, not just decide that, but we show them what's useful, what's not useful. What's being used, what's high cardinality, but—and high cost, but maybe no one's touched it.And then we can make decisions around aggregating it, dropping it, combining it, doing all sorts of fancy things, changing the—you know, downsampling it. We can do this, on the trace side, we can do it both head based and tail based. On the metrics side, it's as it hits the control plane and then streams out. And then they only pay for the data that we store. So typically, customers are—they come on board and immediately reduce their observability dataset by 60%. Like, that's just straight up, that's the average.And we've seen some customers get really aggressive, get up to, like, in the 90s, where they realize we're only using 10% of this data. Let's get rid of the rest of it. We're not going to pay for it. So, paying a lot less helps in a lot of ways. It also helps companies get more coverage of their observability. It also helps customers get more coverage of their overall stack. So, I was talking recently with an autonomous vehicle driving company that recently came to us from the Dog, and they had made some really tough choices and were no longer monitoring their pre-prod environments at all because they just couldn't afford to do it anymore. It's like, well, now they can, and we're still saving the money.Corey: I think that there's also the downstream effect of the money saving to that, for example, I don't fix observability bills directly. But, “Huh, why is your CloudWatch bill through the roof?” Or data egress charges in some cases? It's oh because your observability vendor is pounding the crap out of those endpoints and pulling all your log data across the internet, et cetera. And that tends to mean, oh, yeah, it's not just the first-order effect; it's the second and third and fourth-order effects this winds up having. It becomes almost a holistic challenge. I think that trying to put observability in its own bucket, on some level—when you're looking at it from a cost perspective—starts to be a, I guess, a structure that makes less and less sense in the fullness of time.Rachel: Yeah, I would agree with that. I think that just looking at the bill from your vendor is one very small piece of the overall cost you're incurring. I mean, all of the things you mentioned, the egress, the CloudWatch, the other services, it's impacting, what about the people?Corey: Yeah, it sure is great that your team works for free.Rachel: [laugh]. Exactly, right? I know, and it makes me think a little bit about that viral story about that particular company with a certain vendor that had a $65 million per year observability bill. And that impacted not just them, but, like, it showed up in both vendors' financial filings. Like, how did you get there? How did you get to that point? And I think this all comes back to the value in the ROI equation. Yes, we can all sit in our armchairs and be like, “Well, that was dumb,” but I know there are very smart people out there that just got into a bad situation by kicking the can down the road on not thinking about the strategy.Corey: Absolutely. I really want to thank you for taking the time to speak with me about, I guess, the bigger picture questions rather than the nuts and bolts of a product. I like understanding the overall view that drives a lot of these things. I don't feel I get to have enough of those conversations some weeks, so thank you for humoring me. If people want to learn more, where's the best place for them to go?Rachel: So, they should definitely check out the Chronosphere website. Brand new beautiful spankin' new website: chronosphere.io. And you can also find me on LinkedIn. I'm not really on the Twitters so much anymore, but I'd love to chat with you on LinkedIn and hear what you have to say.Corey: And we will, of course, put links to all of that in the [show notes 00:28:26]. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. It's appreciated.Rachel: Thank you, Corey. Always fun.Corey: Rachel Dines, Head of Product and Solutions Marketing at Chronosphere. This has been a featured guest episode brought to us by our friends at Chronosphere, and I'm Corey Quinn. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with an angry and insulting comment that I will one day read once I finished building my highly available rsyslog system to consume it with.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business, and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.

Rachel Cooke | Lead Above Noise | Modern Mentor Podcast   Katty: Today, I have the pleasure of welcoming Rachel Cooke to our session here today and talking about the employee experience and why it is so impactful for both engagement as well as retention in our companies. Welcome, Rachel. So happy to have you here. I'm excited to talk to you about this incredibly impactful journey that our employees go through and that we go through as business owners and as managers of our teams. Katty: I had the pleasure of hearing and meeting Rachel at the Association of Talent Development Conference in San Diego. We've been talking about having her on here so that we can talk about the WHY of this amazing initiative, as well as the road trip that Rachel refers to when she talks about the employee experience. Why don't we start there? Let's talk about this journey, this road trip that we're on. Rachel: That's awesome. You have such a good memory, Katty. I do love a good metaphor when I talk about these things. I use the road trip metaphor, you could pick many, but I think sometimes, something like the employee experience can feel kind of cloudy and ethereal and nobody quite knows how to wrap their hands around it. And so, I like to say that the employee experience is a journey and I think about it as a road trip and it has these three core elements. To take a successful road trip, you need a destination; you need to understand where you are going, you need a road map; you need some turn-by-turn directions, and then hopefully you've got some fuel in the tank, and if you're lucky, some snacks and a playlist, but something to sort of fuel you or give momentum to your journey. That's how I like to think about it. Katty: I love that. Can we start at the beginning of that employee experience? We're in the recruitment space here at Artisan Creative and I sometimes get the impression that the employee experience for some companies starts after the onboarding. But we see the employee experience, the candidate experience if you will, even before being hired. You know how the interviews are conducted, how they're being responded to during that whole application process. So maybe it's the pre-journey of the journey, right, the conversation, and that state. Can you talk a little bit about that? Rachel: Yeah, I see your pre-candidate experience and I would say it goes back even further than that which is the experience that your existing employees are having within your organization, such that they are going to be ambassadors of and successful recruiters of that talent to whom you want to deliver that amazing candidate experience. I do think it is always ongoing and continuous. I think fundamentally for me, what stands out about the employee experience and where a lot of well-intentioned companies are getting it wrong, is that I think companies tend to think about the work that we're doing and then the employee experience,  that we think about later when we have free time. Which spoiler, we never have free time. I believe that a real powerful employee experience fuels rather than follows the work. I think employee experience is not about free food, foosball tables, and sort of fancy cocktail parties. It begins with how we enable our employees to deliver the work that we have hired them to do. I think that resonates even in the interview process. Even in the recruitment process, I see organizations posting roles and then running these potential candidates through the wringer with really complex application processes. You've got applicant tracking systems, you've got recruiters that have this as #17 on the priority list and people are interviewing with 27 different people and then waiting months and months and frankly, in a buyers' market, which we may not be in right now but we will be in again it's an off-putting experience for somebody to have. For me, the fundamental first question is what can we be doing as organizations to streamline and simplify how we are finding, attracting, and recruiting top talent? Where can we strip out some of the noise I can guarantee, there is plenty in there. Katty: Absolutely. I 100% agree with you. I recorded a mini session on the whole interviewing journey and that's what I talked about. Sometimes, our intent as a company is to make sure all stakeholders are involved, make sure everybody has a voice, and everybody has had the chance to meet the new candidate, the new prospect if you will. But the implication of that is very different and how it lands on someone could be very different. Sometimes we don't look at that side of it as to how it is my six-step interview process and assessment reflecting on us as a company. Rachel: I could not agree more. You might recall that in the presentation I gave at ATD, I talked about these four pillars of the employee experience which are very much about asking the question, what are we as an organization doing to enable our teams to effectively deliver, develop, connect, and thrive? To me, when we get those things right, we are both fueling work results and outcomes and we are effectively engaging our employees. In that parlance, going back to this recruitment experience, in recruitment engagement, our goal is to find top talent and bring them into the organization, right? What we should be asking in the organization is if we want our existing talent to do our internal recruiters or hiring leaders,  what we need them to deliver in this context is top talent to our organization. We need to be asking questions about what we can do to help them deliver that result more effectively and often it is stripping out extra voices, extra process steps, and extra approvals. It is streamlining the process. It is getting to the heart of the matter. It's not having 17 different people ask this person the same 25 questions. So on when we're thinking about it  all of our work, all of the pieces of the employee life cycle through this lens of how to help people deliver, develop, connect, and thrive. That first question is to deliver and so I think in so many recruiting processes we have all of these extra steps and overwrought decision-making processes and approvals, and, you know we have 17 different systems that need to talk to each other. We have made it so much harder for our internal recruiters to deliver, which means finding the candidate and bringing them in. How do we simplify it? How do we streamline it? How do we empower the right people to get it done quickly and effectively? Katty: I love that. Can you dive a little bit more into each of those steps and what could a company do as they're trying to enhance their employee experience, what can they do in the delivery stage, the development stage, the connect stage, and the thrive stage that really would deliver that? Rachel: When we were at the ATD conference, and we had the good fortune of watching a keynote delivered by Adam Grant, who is a tremendously renowned Organizational Psychologist, Leadership Researcher, and Speaker, something he said that resonated with me was that in the current environment that we're in, the number one most critical leadership capability he said it's not a lot of intelligence, it's not charisma, it's not vision, it's not all these things. The number one most critical leadership capability that any leader needs today is agility; the ability to quickly pivot and to see what's happening at the moment and be able to flex. That resonated with me because that very much aligns with the way that I think about the employee experience. I think that what's happening is that organizations are looking for those best practices out there. What are the experts saying we should do around development? What are the experts saying we should be doing to drive connection? The way that I think about it is the best way to enable your employees to deliver their best results, and their best impact, the best way to get them to develop new skills and to feel invested in and grow and be coached. The best way to help them connect, whether you are hybrid or remote, you know the best way to help them connect, with customer with purposes, and finally, the best ways to help them thrive, which to me is about feeling well and balanced and whole is you've got to understand where they are today and where they need to be. I think where so many people are seeking those external best practices, what they need to be doing is seeking the expertise of their internal experts, which are their teams, and their employees. When I run an employee experience audit with a company, what I don't do is come in and tell them what to do. What I do is I come in and help them understand this framework. Why are these the four pillars? And we talk about some data around why delivering, developing, connecting, and thriving are so important. But the expertise that I bring is in the asking and the facilitating and the synthesizing. So my expertise is not in the ideas or the tactics. My expertise is in framing and asking and soliciting ideas from employees so that I can come back to a leadership team and say, here's how well your employees are currently able to deliver, develop, connect, and thrive. Here are some of your blind spots, your opportunity areas. We're going to assume positive intent, you mean to do well, but here is a place where people are struggling to deliver because they're struggling to access this system. These types of decisions take too long to make. Or in the develop bucket, you've got a million courses in your learning management system, but nobody can find time to do the learning, or there's not a culture of coaching. What about upskilling your leaders? My expertise and the value I bring to an organization is tapping into the wisdom that they are sitting on and they didn't even realize it. When an organization can open its ears and be agile and say, OK, whatever employees need at the moment, that's what we're going to do. That's where we're going to leverage that Adam Grant wisdom that's where I see the employee experience start to shift quickly and meaningfully. Katty: Love that. And I should have known that because agility is one of our core values. But the word was just out of my mind. Rachel: You're doing it so organically, you don't even think about it. Katty: There you go. That must be it. But thank you for saying that because you are right. We forget that sometimes those little things may seem little and I will get to it later, but impact what that experience is. Not being able to have your different technology pieces talk to each other and having to do ten steps to do something that would only take two steps in reality and so forth. So I love this notion of every organization has its potential and its opportunity bucket. You go in there and you can find out what that is. I would imagine part of that whole component of that employee experience also is how much they feel heard and seen and belonging and that whole component of that teamwork plays profoundly around that. Rachel: Absolutely. I so often go into organizations that have these robust employee engagement surveys that they run once a year and then they get all the data and they spend months crunching and analyzing and slicing and dicing, and from the employee perspective, they're like we took the survey three months ago, I haven't heard squat. My voice doesn't matter and I'm not going to waste my time doing next year's survey. Whereas with these employee experience pulse checks, I call them, it is fast. I go in, I run these focus groups and we turn around results within a week and we deliver a set of actions. Recommended, small actions. They don't need lots of dollars and lots of approvals. Tweaks. It's a series of experiments. Let's try making all of our 60-minute meeting default is now 45 minutes versus 60. Or we don't do meetings on Fridays. Or let's experiment with instead of me, the leader always running our team meetings, we're going to take turns running them because people want an opportunity to have that leadership experience. We look for these small, quick-to-implement experiments that we can run and we run them through the language of employee experience. So we invite employees into these focus groups, we capture their ideas, and we reported out quickly. Then as we start implementing ideas, we say we're doing this,  “we're changing our meeting times, we're changing how we run meetings because of your voice, because of your input, it matters”. Employees feel heard and they feel valued. One of the conversations I love having is when I run these pulse checks and I sit down with the clients and I report out the results and the client says, “Well, where do we start”? I love to be able to say you already have started. Just through the action of asking these questions, not in a survey where people are filling out boxes,  it's very static to solicit action-oriented intelligence. You want to invite people into a dialogue and by inviting them into a dialogue and just letting them ventilate, letting them get their voices heard, letting them say, “Oh my God, thank you for asking. I have spent 27 hours over the past year wrangling this process when it could be so much cleaner, but nobody's asked.” Just by asking and listening and playing it back to them, you've already started the journey. You've already given them that space, you've invited them in and you've heard them. You're already past the finish line. I find that clients kind of get excited about that. We're already at step two. That's fabulous. Let's keep going. Katty: Beautiful. There's so much wisdom in what you're saying because sometimes just because we've done things a certain way all along doesn't mean there's not an opportunity to make a change. Hearing that coming from somebody else's voice is so impactful. Some people see things differently, so why not listen to them? Rachel: Absolutely. And these are the people executing the processes. These are the people who are engaging with your customers or engaging with your candidates. They're the ones who see and feel the pain points. So their inputs matter more than anyone's. Katty: Exactly. This brings me to the development component of your 4 pillars. You talk often about career development and just that internal mobility and just having this opportunity to have your voice heard and showcase what you're capable of is a great opportunity to hopefully advance within your team, advance within your company. When it comes to the recruitment phase, bringing it back to that, I often ask our clients, "Have you looked within? Is there anyone on your team that can do this or you can train or is there an opportunity for that before we start looking outside?” That's the last thing I want is to be looking outside it, then somebody internally not being recognized or at the 11th hour the client said, oh, we found somebody internal. Let's have that conversation ahead of the game. Rachel: Absolutely. I'm not a recruitment expert, but I did use to work as an HR business partner and so I partnered with recruitment one of the things that I always found with my business partners is what they would put together, you know a job description or job rack and there would be like 17 required. Do you really like the person who's going to do this job? If you want to prioritize these 17 required skills and rank them one through 17, can you do that? And they would do that. And I would say, let's look at numbers 13 through 17, what if somebody didn't have those? Could they still be successful at that job? And the answer was almost always yes. And then I would say, well, what about numbers 9 through 13? I think as leaders we tend to write these job descriptions, and like the fantasy person would be amazing at absolutely everything. When the reality is, we need to be more discerning at hiring leaders around what fundamentally does this person need to be able to do on day one? Where can we leverage somebody who may have less, let's say technical capability, but they've been within our organization for three years and they know how things work and they got our culture and they have relationships with our clients. How do we think about weighing the value of those things relative to expertise in the XYZ system? Right, because that stuff is trainable. But this three years' worth of interior knowledge and understanding of how to get things done, that just takes three years. You can't quickly onboard somebody to that. I do love to challenge organizations to think a little bit more differently and openly about what is really required and what is maybe the value of some of your internal candidates that you are taking for granted and where can we start to weigh the value of what somebody internally brings versus somebody external. Katty: I love that we are so aligned on that. I often talk about what are the must-have skills and what are the nice-to-haves. Nice-to-haves are great to have, but are they a deal breaker? If they're not, let's somehow distinguish them on that job description and also the hard skills versus the soft skills; the EQ piece of it is so important. What if somebody had all the technical skills but didn't have any of the soft skills that you're looking for? They didn't have the communication skills, didn't have the leadership skills, didn't have a teamwork mindset, like all of those things, are almost even more important because you can teach the technical component if needed. Rachel: Absolutely and not to mention, and I don't want to take us too far on a tangent, but there's a ton of data out there and I'm sure you've seen it that shows statistically a woman is much less likely to apply for a job unless she possesses 100% of the skills listed, whereas a man statistically pretty much he just needs three and he's going to go for it, right? So we are unwittingly limiting our talent pool and frankly limiting our ability to build pipelines of women leaders, which I think a lot of organizations are focusing on right now. The more skills we require, the more heavily we're going to wait for our applicant pool towards men. This is women, and I think that's something we just need to be aware of. Katty: Very valid point. Thank you for bringing that up. Can we talk about “Filtering Out the Ins”? Can you talk a little bit about that and what that was in greater detail? Rachel: I think that part of what confuses people about the employee experience, like I was saying earlier, I think we can feel kind of like everything, right? What isn't the employee experience? For me the question to be asking isn't what is and what isn't the employee experience. A better question to ask is where can we have an impact on the employee experience? I talk about filtering out the four Ins and I'll tell you what they are in just a second. But for me, the four In's are areas that do touch the employee experience, but they are not where we get the bang for our buck. I'd like to filter them out so that we can focus on where we do get impact. The first one is what I call the intangible and that is your organizational culture. I think of organizational culture like the weather, it's like the climate, it touches us, it impacts the choices that we make, but it takes many, many actions. Over long stretches of time to shift the weather, shift the climate, shift organizational culture. So it matters, but it's not where we get impact, so I filter it out. The second “in” that I filter out is what I call the inaccessible. These are things like your compensation philosophy, the location, or the layout of your physical building. They are things that again impact our employee experience, but they are only informed by decisions made at the very top of your organization, right? Leaders in most organizations are not able to influence your comp philosophy or your physical location. So again, not a lot of bang for your buck when only C-level executives can touch it. So we filter it out, we filter out the intangible and we filter out the inaccessible. The third that I filter out is what I call the indelible or the unerasable. And these are things that I consider table stakes. Things like having fair market rate compensation, having basic policies that keep people feeling safe, and having an equitable approach to leading your workforce. These are the things that if you get them right, they're invisible. They're not winning you in any contest, but if you get them wrong, they're going to destroy your employee experience. So just get them to baseline and then. Nobody wins the employee experience contest by having fair, inequitable policies. So that's the third one, the indelible. Then the 4th one I adorably call incase you have money to burn. And these are what I think of as sexy extras. These are the free food, the foosball tables, and the fancy holiday parties. I call these the sizzle and fizzle. So they're like a sugar rush to your employee experience. They're exciting, they're fun, and then we acclimate. They're not the things that drive our experience. So when you can filter out the intangible, which is culture, and the inaccessible, which are those things only decided by the top. The indelible, are your hygiene factors or your table stakes, and then in case you have money to burn or your sexy extras, you filter those out, where you're left is focusing on creating the conditions that allow us to deliver, develop, connect, and thrive. And that's how I get there. We've taken the road trip backward. But I still love it. Katty: Well you know sometimes when you're on a road trip you have to make sure that you're not taking a turn in the wrong direction. Rachel: We're checking the rearview. Katty: We're making sure that our Google Maps is connected to the satellite still. How's that for just taking that analogy and just running with it? Rachel: I love it. I love what you did there. How would you encourage a management team to start looking at this puzzle piece? For some companies, it is a puzzle piece. They may not even know where to start. I would say there's a macro and a micro. There's the employee experience from an organizational standpoint. But, also really looking at each team and how that team leads is leading that experience within that. So how would you say for someone who's never done this before, maybe they don't even have an onboarding program. This is another conversation for another day, but how would they even begin this process? Rachel: I believe that the process genuinely begins with education and alignment. I go into several organizations and I'll talk to a handful of senior leaders, and each one has a completely different definition of what the employee experience is or what matters. So I think if it begins with just bringing a leadership team together, having a conversation, providing an education on why these four pillars, right, What's the data behind why these are the four that matter and what do they mean, right? What are the things,  when we think about what helps organizations deliver, we think about things like. Do we have the right number of priorities? Do we have alignment? Do we have tools and resources? Do we have obstacles being stripped out? When we think about what helps teams develop, do we have a culture of coaching? Do we know how to give feedback? Do we have on-the-job experience? Do we have peer mentors? So bringing a leadership team together, giving them the language of delivering, developing, connecting, and thriving, and just helping them understand what are some of. Those bullets are underneath each of these pillars. I think it starts there because you cannot move an employee experience until you begin by just understanding what constitutes it.  So I always begin there. A lot of my engagements will begin with a keynote or an interactive workshop with the leadership team just to start building that language. From there, I love to encourage a leadership team or senior leaders to just start using that language within the organization because again, you've got employees walking around saying well I think the employee experience at Google is better because they do free food. What I think is important is that leadership teams start to talk about the employee experience through the lens of we want to fuel and not follow the real work. So it begins with conversations, from there, I think the next step is just a little bit of observation. Once we start thinking about the employee experience through the lens of deliver, develop, connect, and thrive, it helps us to put on a filter that suddenly now we can start to spot. Oh, you know what? I recognize as a senior leader, I've been sitting on this decision for three weeks and I'm now realizing seventeen people in this organization who have not been able to get anything done because I'm sitting with this thing on my desk. It helps us just to start to notice some of these opportunities. I think that that's really where it begins. From a macro perspective, I think the executive leader's job is to have this language, have this awareness, start to talk about it, start to cascade it down to their leaders, and start to infuse it into the organization. I think you're right, Katty, that there are things that need to happen at the team level as well because a lot of times what's keeping the marketing team able to deliver is very different from what's holding back the HR team, the recruiting team, the finance team, and so on. Giving leaders at the function or team level some tools and some skills around what are some questions you can ask your team to solicit their ideas? How can you facilitate candid dialogues such that your employees will not just have the ideas but feel safe? Been offering them speaking up, How can you as a leader at that level start to implement experiments and have a sense to know if it's working or if it's not working, what's working well and how do we continue this? I also love to talk about starting to infuse practice sharing conversation. So over time bringing leaders of different functions or teams together to share strategies. Oh, I tried this with my team and it worked incredibly well. Maybe you want to try this with your team. So I think it's a very organic process and this is why I call it a road trip. It's not a project it doesn't have you know it's not a one-month thing. It is a journey, right? It is always kind of ongoing, but you have to have clarity of that North Star and then invite your team to help you inform the road map or build the steps. Katty: Sometimes it's not a straight line. There are bumps in the road and there are some curves and so forth. So a final question. And it's a big one it has to do with the hybrid workforce and this, you know, that we have to admit, work has changed. My company's been remote for 12 years, so having a remote workforce is a normal thing. We came together and we built culture, probably in a more focused and intentional culture building because we are remote. But now we're in the space of people wanting people back in the office and or trying to navigate the whole hybrid space, can we talk about the employee experience as it relates to the remote and or the hybrid workforce? Rachel: Yeah, absolutely. I mean there is no doubt that things have changed significantly, and I don't believe anybody has cracked the nut on this yet. I think we've learned a lot. I think we still have a lot more to learn. I love to tell people one of the things I like to do in my free time is go hiking, very gently. I like a gentle hike. Sometimes you go to a public park and you will see a sign that says something like a “$500 fine for littering, be warned.” Other times you'll see a sign that says “Please help keep our parks clean, take your trash out with you”, and at the end of the day those both drive the same behavior in me. Either way, I am going to throw out my trash and not litter, but in that first example, that sort of threat-based example it makes, you know, this makes me wanna revolt. It's almost like, well, can I sneak a piece of trash in there? Don't talk to me that way. I'm a grown-up. But when you invite me to be a part of something bigger, you invite me to be one of the many who are keeping this beautiful public space clean. That inspires me and that excites me and I think about that. The principle is, the way that we are bringing our teams together I think too many organizations in my opinion and my experience are going with the must be in the office three days a week or everyone's in on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which to me is sort of like that don't litter or will fine you sign because people resent it, right. When you are threatened and when you are forced, what you are compelled to do, the human reaction, the human gut reaction is “No, no, don't tell me what to do.” I think companies are without purpose, forcing people to do a thing that is backfiring. I'm not focused on keeping the park clean. I am focused on how angry I am at that sign. What organizations want to be doing is driving engagement and driving in connection and by forcing people into an office, I think it's having the opposite effect. What I'm encouraging leadership teams to do is to be thoughtful about it. Rather than Tuesdays and Thursdays, infuse purpose into those days. How about people come in when we're bringing customers in? Or people come in when there's a big brainstorming day. Or people come in when we're doing a leadership offsite or a learning event, when we infuse a sense of purpose and we're all together into bringing people physically into an office. I think that that can be so much more powerful. I think forcing people's hands is not the way to do it. I just ran a meeting  a couple of weeks ago. It was a 25-person leadership team. 50% of those people were physically together, including me. 50% were remote and I was not granted, I am a facilitator, so this is what I do for a living and I understand not every leader can be so thoughtful, but I was really thoughtful in how I designed that experience such that we made it feel, as much as possible, like everybody had an equivalent experience of that day. I think the more thoughtful we can be when we're operating in a hybrid way to make sure that we're not doing exercises where half the people see things on the wall and half the people don't. To make sure that we are leveraging that virtual technology, I had people buddy up. So everybody who was participating remotely had a buddy in the room, and that was just their point of contact. And so if somebody participating remotely had an idea but couldn't raise their hand or couldn't hear something, they would ping their buddy, and their buddy would ping me. That's just one tactic but I think about being thoughtful about how we equalize the experience when we are operating remotely and not make people feel like first and second-class citizens based on where they're participating. These are just some of the things I have started to pick up along the way. Katty: I appreciate that. I appreciate the buddy system quite a bit because sometimes, you may forget the person who's on the screen or not, you know. Sometimes they don't realize they're on mute and they're trying to say something and it's just not working. So we appreciate that buddy system. So Rachel, as we wrap up, we talked a little bit about your expertise and what you bring to the table, but can you talk about Lead Above Noise, how it came to be, and where you see yourself growing in your practice? Rachel: I started to Lead Above Noise in 2015, and I named the organization because I had worked for many years as an HR practitioner in big corporate America, and I found that as organizations, we just keep throwing more and more stuff at leaders and it feels like the leader's job is to somehow juggle more and more. Whereas, I believe that is the crux of being an effective leader and being a successful organization is really about understanding how to filter out all the noise and understand what to focus on and it's so hard to say no to the things that aren't going to fuel you forward and yet I think it's one of the most important things that we can do as leaders. I really, truly believe that the most successful organizations in the world, I don't care how good your product or service is, your organization will only ever be as strong as the talent you've hired to deliver your products and services. So investing in your talent, understanding their experiences, and developing your leaders, I think is truly the secret to success. That is what we specialize in in Lead Above the Noise, we focus on employee experience. We do keynotes and we run these audits within organizations to help them build these action plans. And then I also run a group coaching program for leaders which is called SIMPLE, which is an acronym that focuses on building what I believe is kind of the six core skills, the six foundational skills. You used the phrase earlier, the must-have and the nice-to-have. I think especially when people are stepping into new leadership roles, they're trying to boil the ocean, they're trying to learn everything and I think I run this cohort-based program that helps leaders understand what they need most critically, start by building those skills and get really comfortable, confident, and then they can add other skills over time. So that's really where I spend my time.   Katty: I love it. There's a through line in everything that you've said, wrapping it up with SIMPLE, pretty much everything you've said from when we were talking about the job description. Taking things out of the job descriptions that aren't necessary, the four INs, you know, the Ins that you were talking about, taking those out of the, filtering them out, and then with the leadership that you just spoke about is, you know, just let's focus and simplify it. Let's just really get to the core of what it is that we need to do. Anyways, there is so much noise around us and so much noise. Hard. But yeah, we've got to keep filtering. Yeah. Well, I appreciate your time. Thank you for being here, and thank you for sharing your wisdom with our audience. I loved this conversation.

“In the deserts of the heart  Let the healing fountain start.” W.H. Auden (1907-1973)  “The road of cleansing goes through that desert. It shall be named the way of holiness.” Isaiah 35.8 (LXX) It has been said that all true renewal within the life of the church comes through the desert fathers, or rather through the embrace of their wisdom. For it is not a worldly wisdom but the wisdom of the gospel, the wisdom of the kingdom that they set before us; not in an abstract fashion but through lived experience.  The desert fathers looked deep within; precisely where Christ directs us to search for the kingdom. It's not an easy thing to do; to look deep within oneself. Often what begins to emerge can seem ugly and repulsive to us. Sin has not left us untouched. We know its darkness, its suffering, and how it shapes the way we view ourselves, the world, and others.  However, this inward gaze and the ascetic life aids us in seeing with a greater clarity not only our sin but the image of something beautiful beyond imagination; the soul made in the image and likeness of God, transformed and transfigured by his grace. Even in the midst of the struggle, the beauty of God‘s mercy and grace begins to manifest itself, and to reshape the human heart. We begin to understand that the perfection to which we are called is not moral perfection; nor is it the perfection of our natural virtues. It is to share in the very life of God. Christ strength is to become our strength. His virtue is to become our virtue.  It has been said the Christ is the most beautiful of all human beings. In him, we see what we shall be through the grace of God. All that is dark in us, all that becomes an impediment to our ability to love gradually begins to fade away. We no longer cling to the demands of our own will or the pettiness of our ego. We begin to see that in Christ we have all and lack nothing. It is in this realization that we become truly free and capable of love. How beautiful! --- Text of chat during the group: 00:05:20 FrDavid Abernethy: Starting Hypothesis 42 page 367   00:13:23 FrDavid Abernethy: Starting Hypothesis 42 page 367   00:20:45 John: Kind of reminds me of the Jews who went out to see John the Baptist to ask who he was - though I don't think they were being critical.   00:20:59 Ren Witter: For Father David's favorite comic about Stylites: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=6720341144666823&set=pb.100000730124605.-2207520000.&type=3   00:21:39 John: Reacted to "For Father David's f..." with

“I worked with all of these different things for about a year and a half. And when I had another blood test, those autoimmune antibodies were gone,” shares Rachel Tudor, True Nature Movement Specialist. Rachel is a former ballet dancer turned quantum practitioner and internationally recognized presenter on bio tensegrity and fascia. In 2021, her health went completely haywire due to an adverse reaction to a heavily recommended pharmaceutical injection. Discovering the circadian lifestyle and understanding the gradual healing process of the body ultimately gave Rachel the quantum health strategies necessary to heal from her body's debilitating autoimmune reaction. In this episode, Rachel explains how she paired holistic movement with quantum biology to recover her health. When Rachel's autoimmune nightmare began, she was experiencing a multitude of symptoms including severe and immobilizing vertigo, neurological changes that mimicked a TBI, histamine reactivity, chronic pain, and extreme fatigue. She tried nearly every suggestion to heal herself, from supplements to medications, but she continued to get worse and worse. Everything started to change when Rachel discovered quantum health and began following a circadian lifestyle. Since she was fully immobile, her husband carried her outside daily for UVA and UVB exposure, where she engaged in healing frequencies through wiggling her fingers and humming. After months of doing this, she became strong enough to return to Jin Shin Jyutsu, an energy healing art that ended up dramatically improving her vertigo. She understood that repatterning the fascia in her body would take time and consistency. Sticking to the circadian lifestyle and combining it with holistic movement ultimately paid off, healing her body's autoimmune reaction and drastically improving her quality of life. It takes time to change your body's habits and the patterning of your fascia. By leveraging your external environment and aligning your lifestyle to your natural biology, you can help move the repatterning process along. Even though Rachel's autoimmune reaction was largely a mystery to doctors and there was very little information available on how to treat it, she did not give up. Instead, she fully committed to living a circadian lifestyle and applied quantum health modalities to the healing power of movement, stunning her doctors with a complete reversal of her autoimmune dysfunction.  Quotes “You're just one whole integrated being, and that's all you've ever been.” (6:33-6:37 | Rachel)  “It's not like, go outside and do this for a week and bam, you'll be better…slowly but surely, like I was saying, things started to improve.” (39:54-40:29 | Rachel)  “The efficacy of those kinds of modalities is increased if you're also living a circadian life.” (41:06-41:15 | Rachel) “You can be looking at six months to two years to really bring on long lasting change in terms of the structure of your fascia.” (44:46-44:58 | Rachel) “I worked with all of these different things for about a year and a half. And when I had another blood test, those autoimmune antibodies were gone.” (55:13-55:25 | Rachel)   Links Connect with Rachel Tudor: Website: https://www.truenaturemvmt.com/ Instagram: @r_tudor   To find a practitioner who understand the health principles of quantum biology: www.quantumbiologycollective.org    To take our 8 week practitioner certification in the science of quantum biology so that you can add it to your existing area of expertise: www.appliedquantumbiology.com    Follow on Twitter, Instagram & Facebook: @quantumhealthtv    Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

I met the Yonder Oak Wood team back in March to discover how this landscape will be transformed for people and wildlife, and what designing a new wood involves. The vision is to attract plentiful wildlife with healthy habitat that offers refuge from weather extremes and fights climate change. The local community has been involved from the off - volunteer Sally Burton joins us to explain what she gets up to, how excited everyone is about the future and what volunteering means to her. We also hear of efforts to make the site more sustainable, from re-usable fences to tree guard trials, and I get my hands dirty planting a tree. Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk Transcript You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant trees for people, for wildlife. Adam: Well, today I'm off to, well, the wonderfully named Yonder Oak Wood. And although it's called a wood, it's not really a wood yet. This is a very exciting project, but it's in the very early stages of creation. It's near Exmouth in Devon. The Woodland Trust plans on planting, I think something like 13,000 trees there, creating a new environment for nature and wildlife to bounce back. Sounds a great place to go, I'm going to meet a few people there. First off, though, is my contact at the Woodland Trust today, Rachel Harries. Rachel: So this site is Yonder Oak Wood, it's not quite a wood yet, as you can see, but the Woodland Trust bought it in March last year with the aim of creating, creating a new wooded landscape here. So it's 54 hectares, we think it is the biggest woodland creation site that the Trust has done in the South West in in 20 years, so 54 hectares, that's equivalent to about 100 football pitches, and it sits on the sort of two sides of a hidden valley, just a couple of miles inland from the South Coast of Devon. So where we're stood, we can actually see out to the mouth of the Exe estuary, to Dawlish and and possibly to Torquay there as well. Adam: I I think you can just see the estuary over there can't you, just beyond that last bunch of trees is that right? Rachel: You absolutely can, yeah, you absolutely can. And actually the other day when I was here, I saw a white bird fly over that was an egret that was obviously based in the estuary, so really exciting. Adam: And why, now this site, I happen to know is, it it's quite important because of the anniversary and just explain to me, explain to me a little bit about that. Rachel: That's right. Last year was the 50th anniversary of the Woodland Trust and the first site that our founder Ken Watkins ever bought was in Devon. So it's really emblematic that we are now creating a new woodland, probably I think it's about 30 miles away as the crow flies from the Avon Valley Woods where we were started. But we're now creating a new woodland in the county of our birthplace, which is incredibly exciting, and we wanted to create something that would have meaning for local people and it would like, it would be tied into the local environment, so we did things like we looked at the name of the stream, we looked at old field names and we came up with a shortlist of names that we could then offer out to the local community and ask them which one, which one they wanted and what they wanted to call this new site. And one of the field names was Yonder Oak Park. And that's really quite special because as you look across the site, you can see all these incredible old oak trees over yonder, off in the distance. So I have to admit that was my favourite but we let the community choose and they voted for Yonder Oak Wood. Adam: Right well you're gonna take me on a little walk around here, so just explain to me a little bit about what we're gonna see. Rachel: OK. Well, we're starting here on a sloping field that has old oak trees dotted about the landscape. Some of these are a couple of hundred years old and there's one in particular which we can see just off in the distance, which is one of my, one of my favourites that is standing almost on on stilts. And the stilts are actually its roots that would have once been embedded in a Devon bank, which is a sort of a solid hedgerow that we find in Devon that has trees planted on the top and the hedgerow and the bank has been taken away. So the tree now kind of stands about a metre above the height that it would have once been. Adam: Which one, I can't tell which one that is? Rachel: So can you see there's two in that field over there, we'll walk past it so we can have another look at it. Adam: Yes, I see that, I see that. OK, maybe my eyesight's not very good. So and this goes, these are currently separate fields and there's what a field and then a hedgerow, another field, then another hedgerow, then the tree supposedly on stilts and beyond that what looks like a solar panel farm. So is this the, what will be the new woodland all the way up to the solar panels? Rachel: We've worked to design a mixture of of habitats here, so we have about 5 different fields where we're doing much more intensive planting and that's what people would kind of imagine that would grow into what people would imagine a woodland would look like, but then in some of these other fields, so the field that we're stood in and a couple of other fields that you can kind of see off in the distance there, we're going to do a mix of open space, glades and groves. We'll plant some more of these kind of trees that will be allowed to to thrive and to spread on their own, but we'll also plant a mixture of of scrub and shrubs, so that's more lower growing trees, things like blackthorn, hawthorn dogrose, spindle, just to create a really good mix of habitats for all the birds and insects and bats that we, you know, we know are going to thrive here. Adam: And you, you've arranged for us to meet a a couple of people, haven't you? Rachel: Yeah. So we're going to be walking around with Paul Allen, he's our site manager and we're going to meet Sally Burton, who is one of our volunteers here. Adam: The weather's been kind to us so far, but it is a little nippy so we shouldn't keep them waiting. So do you wanna lead on and we'll go meet them. Rachel: Yes, let's go. Adam: And I'm told there there was some sea shantying going on here, which strikes me as odd because we're not, we're not in the middle of the sea or anything. So what's the story behind that? Rachel: Well, we're not far from the sea. We can see, we can see the, we can see the sea here. But we were contacted by a a group of local acapella singers who were inspired by what we're doing here and had decided to take some modern folk songs and to rewrite them to to reference the wood. So they came out one weekend and they sang to our to all of our planters, but we also talked a little bit about sea shanties, which I like the idea of becoming tree shanties. So they took a traditional sea shanty and they changed the lyrics. So we now have a song all about Yonder Oak Wood that we could sing along to. Adam: Great. And that we're going to hear that now from from you. So here's Rachel with her tree shanty. Is that right? No? Rachel *laughs* I don't think so. Adam: Do you have a recording of it? Rachel: I we do have a recording of it actually, yes. Adam: You never know. I don't know. Maybe a couple of teas or beers later, I might persuade you to sing. Alright. Brilliant, Rachel. Thank you very much. Rachel: Thank you. That's great. So here's Paul. He's the site manager and he's going to take us on a little walk down through Yonder Oak Wood. Adam: Paul, thank you very much. Nice to see you. So you are the site manager. Paul: Hello there. I am. Yes, I'm responsible for turning these fields into a wild, wildlife rich area. Adam: OK. Well, go on. Let's lead on. We can have a chat about that. Brilliant. So yeah. So these are early days, Paul. I understand you you are responsible for designing the woodland. What does that actually involve? Paul: So really, I mean the the the first place you you start is is kind of kind of getting a sense of where the place is and what the place is and the the key bit here as we walk through it is you can see these big old oak trees and so we've based a lot of the design on that. So you can picture in the future lots more of these big old trees that will have lots of deadwood, lots of rot holes where birds can nest, and invertebrates burrow in. And the way we're kind of going to maintain it is we're we're going to put animals in and have low intensity grazing and then you kind of build in where the views are. Adam: I mean it must be really exciting because it can't be that often that you you get actually a green field or literally a greenfield site. But it's more or less bare. It's a plain piece of paper for you to design. That's quite, I mean, it's exciting, quite an honour, perhaps a little daunting? Paul: I've I've done probably 30 years of nature conservation and most of what you do is you take bits of habitat and you try and restore them, you try and protect them. You very rarely get a chance to actually create something brand spanking new. It is really phenomenally exciting for all of us, because if you think about it in the future, 100 years time, this place will be on maps. It will be on aerial photographs, you know so not only are we doing stuff that's great for wildlife and great for climate, we're effectively creating history as well, which is an awesome thing to be a part of. Adam: Yeah, so on the map it should say Yonder Oak Wood, brackets Paul Allen. *both laugh* Rachel's in the background going it's my wood, it's my wood. There might be a battle for the name. Paul: I'm I'm doing the design that says it from the sky it'll say Paul was here. *both laugh* Adam: Yes, yes very good, on Google Maps you can, you know, in 100 years time they'll go well how did those trees get planted in the shape of Paul? *laughs* So, OK, look, we're, we're, I've paused because we're at the we're at the top of the hill, almost. So what will happen around us? At the moment there are three or four trees in a line and not much else. So what will be here? Paul: So if you if you picture it in the future, what we'll have is we'll have a a, a a scattering of big old oak trees like we can see across the site and if you look over to our left, you can see an area that actually was the former quarry on the site. But if you look at it, you can see gorse that's currently in flower, even though we're in a freezing day at the beginning of March. And all of that is really good for wildlife. It's got lots of pollen and and nectar and lots of edge that birds and insects really like. And essentially what we're gonna get in the future is a combination of these big old oak trees and that lovely scrubby stuff that's great for wildlife. Adam: So here not too dense? Paul: Not too dense here no, not at all. Adam: So you get the view, you get a nice view and it's a mixed habitat. Paul: You, you, you, you get a view, it's it's very, we've we've constantly said we're creating a kind of a wooded landscape not a wood. Adam: Right. Well, we should carry on walking out, I have a tendency, just not to walk. I can see right over there some white poles which look like tree guards. Which does raise this issue I mean of how you're going to protect the trees because plastic tree guards have become quite controversial. Do you have a plan around that? Paul: Yeah, so we've got we've got, last year the the Woodland Trust decided that it would stop using the virgin plastic tree guards on its sites, which is actually a bit problematic because there aren't really any other types of tree guard that are commercially available at scale, so we're doing a combination of things here. The the main way is we're going to deer fence the site to stop the deer coming in and then we're also in some places we're trialling different types of tree tubes, so we're looking at one at the moment that bizarrely, has been made of sugar beet so it smells like golden syrup when you walk up to it, which is quite weird, and the ones you can see over there are actually recycled from another site. So we're, we're still, we're still using the tree guards that are effectively usable. Adam: Right. You talk about trying to protect the trees from deer. Which does raise the issue of other wildlife. I mean, clearly, we're gonna be hoping that wildlife get attracted into the area once this starts growing. At the moment though, have you have you seen much evidence of sort of new wildlife or any wildlife? Paul: It's still very early days yet. But we've seen lots of buzzards there's there's actually quite a lot of hornets nests in, in the existing oak trees. Adam: Is that a good thing? That sounds terrifying. Paul: *laughs* I I I personally I quite like it. Adam: You're pleased about that, OK. I think a lot of people always feel it takes generations and generations to plant trees. I know I have been at planting events where some young people have planted and said, oh, I think my children and my grandchildren might come to see this tree and then are surprised, actually, they come back to see their own tree and it grows quicker than they might expect. How quickly is this going to develop into anything recognisable as woodland? Paul: So I mean, with within 10 years, it will absolutely look like a woodland, although obviously still a young woodland and different tree species grow at different rates. So the silver birches and the rowans will actually be 6 foot high within two or three years potentially, whereas the the oak trees clearly will grow a lot slower. Adam: Wow, silver birch and rowan, 6 foot high in how long? Paul: Two or three years, if they if they take well. I mean it it it it varies depending on the soil type and all that sort of stuff, but they do grow very, very quickly. Adam: Blimey. And tell me a bit about how you got into all of this. I mean, I know you say you've been doing this a while. Paul: I started well I started off volunteering actually with the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers a long time ago, and I got known by the Norfolk Wildlife Trust and rather randomly, I was having a beer in a pub and they went, do you fancy a job, and I went, alright then. Adam: Very good. So you've learnt on the job about trees? Paul: I I reeducated a few, some time ago but yeah a lot of it was learned as I went along. Adam: I've been very insulting, you've you've probably got a PhD in trees or something. But I do like the idea of, I got my job from a pub, I think I think that's always, I remember a story, so I don't know if you remember a film critic called Barry Norman, he always used to say, I I remember him telling a story, there's a pub around the BBC called, I think it's the White, White Horse or something like that. And he went when he was unemployed, he used to sit there pretending he was writing scripts so that BBC producers would come in for a lunchtime beer, which they don't do anymore, but they used to and they would go, oh, Barry, yeah there's a job we have and he wasn't working at all, he was just trying to be in the pub around and that's how he got his work, so that's clearly not just media, it's it's the tree world as well. Paul: It's it's it's very much very very clearly, a lot harder now than it was, because at that point in time, I guess nature conservation really wasn't a career. Adam: Yeah. We've come across a locked fence, but Paul has a key, there we are. There we are. Into the next next field. Ah, right away. Here's a very different type of fence, and I presume this is to keep the deer out. So first of all, massive fence, is this to keep the deer out? Paul: This is to keep the deer out. Yes, absolutely. And what will happen where we're standing, the hedgerow will creep out into the fence and obviously the wood that we're planting inside will also start to hide the fence. So the fence over time will disappear apart from the gateways. Adam: So I mean, there's a good 7 odd foot here between the hedgerow and the fence. You're saying that that hedgerow will naturally grow another 7 foot? Paul: Yep. So what what what we've got in this hedgerow, actually it's it's it's quite specific to this area is we've got a lot of a lot of small leaved elm and we've also got a lot of blackthorn in it and both of those sucker. So as as we've taken the the the intensive farming off the land the the shrubs will just sucker out and gradually spread into the field. Adam: And look, and we're standing by the main gate and there's a huge tree trunk here, which is holding the post. And I can see the bark coming off. Now is that is that deer trying to get in there do you think? Paul: No, that that's actually that's just part of the process of actually creating the post. Adam: Ohh, that's just that's just me being an idiot. OK, I thought I was being a clever nature detective *laughs* Paul: I mean what one of the one of the key bits about this fence though, is that that the Woodland Trust is now focusing very heavily on sustainability with everything it does. The, the, the reduction in use of plastic is one of those key bits. But these are sweet chestnut posts, so they there's no chemical preservatives in them or anything like that, and they're kind of the the the main posts at the corners, if you like, of the fence. And then we're using a metal fence with metal posts and and the idea is that when the trees have grown up after 20 years and they're no longer a threat from the deer, we can take this and reuse it elsewhere, so we're constantly thinking about that sustainability stuff all the time. Adam: Right. So we're in this more protected field. Which I can see has been laid out actually. Is this for the planting scheme, little posts and sort of lines of rope? Paul: Yeah. So one of the issues with going plastic free is it becomes very difficult to actually see what you've planted. Because if you look at here it just still looks like a field but actually there's somewhere in the region of well around 2 to 3000 trees already in there. Adam: Oh gosh, I didn't realise that. So yes, with the plastic safe, plastic guards on a tree you see these white telescopes sticking up all over the field, so there's thousands of trees here, we just can't see them. Right and a a lot of that has been planted by volunteers? Paul: We've had somewhere in the region of 400-500 members of the public come over four days, so we've got a a set of volunteers who have who've have have they've been brilliant actually, they've come and they've helped kind of manage all the public and they've helped work with the schools, they've helped us set out where the trees are going, we couldn't have done it without them at all. And here is one of our volunteers now, here's Sally. Adam: Brilliant. Alright, well, let's go over and chat to Sally. So Sally. Sally Burton. Hello. So I've heard lots of lovely things about you. So just tell me you're a volunteer, which in this context means what? Sally: Hello. That's nice. All sorts of things. I've helped this in during February with the public planting days and with the school planting days, helped children dig holes, some of the children are too small to get the spade in the ground very easily. I've planted quite a lot of trees myself. Adam: And why why did you get involved? Sally: I'd been looking for a while to volunteer for an organisation that does things outdoors and something a bit physical and so when the Woodland Trust appeared in the village hall I just went up and said do you need volunteers and they said yes please so I signed up straight away. Adam: And I mean, what does it offer you? Why is it a fun thing to do? Sally: I enjoy working with the other people. The staff are great and the other volunteers have been great fun. In fact, I've reconnected with someone I knew a few years ago and she's been helping up here as well, so that's been great. I like being outside, I love being outdoors. I don't mind about the weather. I like doing physical things and it's it's great to see, to make a difference. Adam: So yeah, so what what sort of difference do you feel you're making then? Sally: Well contributing to turning this basically what looks like an empty field into a forest. That's really amazing. People have been very excited about it. Lots of local people came up and planted on the public open days. Everyone's looking forward to being able to come up here and experience it themselves and enjoy the trees and the views obviously the views across the estuary and out to sea are beautiful. And there are lots of birds already. It's a very beautiful place. Adam: And so how much of your time does it actually take up? Sally: Well, during February and the beginning of March, quite a lot, I've been coming up for days, getting here about 8:15 and going home about 4 o'clock. Adam: Right. So why is that, why is that the the busy period? Sally: Because that's when the tree planting has been going on. Adam: First time you've ever planted a tree? Sally: I've planted a couple on my allotment, but certainly the first time I've planted on such a scale. Adam: Right. Have you kept count, how many trees are you in? Sally: No. Well, on one of the public planting days, I'd finished registering people and I planted 25 I kept count of those and on Wednesday this week, a school was in and when they cleared off, I finished planting the trees in their little area. And I think there was about 30 there. I'm not sure I lost count after about 12. Adam: There should be scouts or sort of brownie badges, shouldn't there, I'm I'm 100 tree-er, you know. Very good. Fantastic. Well, look, thank you very much. I can't believe this is the the the the field in which you've planted. Sally: It is, you can't see many of the trees. Adam: I I can't see any of the trees, what do you mean many of them. Ohh a couple yes. Sally: Across there you can see some with leaves on those are sessile oaks which were planted a little while ago, and they show up. Adam: Any of those yours? Sally: Possibly *laughs* They show up because of the leaves. But over there, most of the area there is planted. Adam: OK, brilliant. You're talking about planting, Rachel has appeared over the hill. She's brandishing a erm Sally: A spade. Adam: A spade *laughs* I forgot the name. You can see how ill equipped I am to do this. I forgot the name of what she's, so I think she's tempting us to go plant so let's go off. Adam: *coughs* Sorry, I'm already having a heart attack from the idea of physical exercise, I haven't done anything yet. OK, so we we have a spade and this is a virgin bit of land, no, no trees planted yet? Sally: No trees in this section yet. Adam: So I get the honour of planting the first tree. Sally: The first one. Adam: So you're gonna talk me through this and I'm gonna. Sally: So the first job... Adam: Oh yes alright, I'm already jumping ahead of myself. Sally: The first job is to screef? To screef the area... Adam: What what is what is screefing? Sally: ...which is where you do this to kick away the grass with your shoe to make a square or an area to get rid of the grass, doesn't have to be too big, not much wider than the blade of the spade, put the spade in there, and then don't lift it yet come round that side and make a square on that side. Yeah, cut it down. Then on that side... Adam: I feel I've hit the... Sally: One of the pebbles. And then the final side and then you could probably lever out a lump of turf. Adam: Then I can lift it out. Sally: OK, here's a tree. And we need to make sure when it's in the hole, the soil covers up to just above the top of the the highest root. So if we test that, that's not deep enough, so need to go deeper. Adam: It's not deep enough. Overall, I'm not doing particularly well I have to say. Sally: Let's have a look. That's looking good there. Adam: You think that's all right? Sally: Yeah, that's OK. So the next job is to crumble the soil. Adam: With our hands? Sally: With our hands, back into the hole, loose bits first. Adam: They didn't say I was actually gonna get my hands dirty. Sally: *laughs* And then if you've got any clods that have got grass on them make sure they go in with the grass facing down. Adam: Ok do you know why? Sally: So that the grass will die and then it won't be in competition with the tree as the grass uses a lot of the water. Adam: It's a bit leaning a bit, isn't it? Sally: It is a bit, let's push some more soil in. Adam: You see, it's fine now, in 20 years time, someone will come and go, who the hell planted that tree, it's at 45 degrees! Sally: Then the last job is you stand up. Adam: Yeah, stand up. Sally: And use your heel to press the soil down to push out all the gaps so that it doesn't dry out if it's sunny. Adam: And how compact, we don't want to make it too compact. Sally: Quite firm, quite firm. Adam: Yeah? Do you know what I don't, I feel that's leaning, that's no good. Sally: Don't worry, it'll straighten itself up. And the final thing is you do the tug test. Where you just get hold of it and just pull it gently. And if it stays where it is, then it's planted properly. Adam: I name this tree, well and truly planted. Sally: Congratulations. Adam: Thank you very much. Very good. That's brilliant. Well, I have to say although me and Sally were planting, Rachel and Paul were looking were looking on. So Paul's still here, how did I do? Paul: Well, let me just check, shall I? Adam: *laughs* You're doing the tug test. Paul: It's it's been really fun actually with with, with the the the public when you come and kind of just check it, you can see them all hold their breath to make sure they're doing it right. Adam: And it comes out *laughs* Is it alright? Paul: No, it's grand. Absolutely brilliant. Dog rose it, it's a little bit crooked, but you know dog rose will naturally straighten itself up. Adam: Will it correct itself? Paul: Yeah and it's kind of you can already see it's a bit of a straggly thing and it'll do its thing and it'll be fine. Adam: Fantastic. What is your sense, really, of of what this might be in the future and how exciting is that for you? Paul: I think in the future, you know, we're we're we're we've got something here that at the very beginning that is gonna be hopefully really important for wildlife and that most of the design is about trying to get as much wildlife here as possible because we're close to the pebblebed heaths it will it will act as a little bit of a refuge in the heat as potentially the climate heats up in the future and that's all really brilliant. And then the other exciting bit is the fact that we've started from the beginning with people involved. That, that, that scenario, but when you look in the future, the you know the the trees that we're planting today are going to be like these big old oak trees in 3-4 hundred years time that when you get your head around it is really quite amazing. And these trees and this wood will be on maps in in the future, and you know, we're creating history, we're changing landscapes and it's all such a a positive thing to be involved in. Adam: That is amazing that in 3-4 hundred years there'll be a woodland here, the history of who planted it, the history of us being here today will be lost. They won't know who planted these trees perhaps, they won't know the story, but the trees will be here. They'll be there, they'll tell their own story in the future. It's an amazing thing to be part of isn't it. Paul: Yeah and you know if if you think about how many times do you get to do something that will still be here in three, four, 500 years time? That's just incredible. Adam: Well, if you want to find a wood near you and don't have any idea of where to look, do go to the Woodland Trust website and its woodlandtrust.org.uk/findawood, so that's woodlandtrust.org.uk/findawood. Until next time, happy wandering. Thank you for listening to the Woodland Trust Woodland Walks with Adam Shaw. Join us next month, when Adam will be taking another walk in the company of Woodland Trust staff, partners and volunteers. Don't forget to subscribe to the series on iTunes or wherever you're listening to us and do give us a review and a rating. And why not send us a recording of your favourite woodland walk to be included in a future podcast? Keep it to a maximum of five minutes and please tell us what makes your woodland walk special or send us an e-mail with details of your favourite walk and what makes it special to you. Send any audio files to podcast@woodlandtrust.org.uk. We look forward to hearing from you.

How striking it is to hear the nature of the struggle with gluttony and the need for fasting spoken of with such zeal and clarity! Such practices have for the most part fallen by the wayside or have been minimized to such an extent as to be equally nonexistent. The unfortunate fruit of this is that we often have never tasted the freedom and the strength comes through ordering our appetite for food. Thus, the humbling of the mind and the body and the deepening of the experience of prayer through the stilling of the thoughts is also rarely experienced.  We need to take hold of the wisdom of the fathers and their zeal that will allow us to put it into practice.  St. John tells us that when God sees the movement of the mind abs the heart towards Him through these practices that He will aid us with His grace.  We also see that the fathers have a very clear sense of the workings of the human mind and how we experience our bodily appetites. Their observations of what takes place on a physiological level are astute and reveal the depth of their experience. All of it is meant to fashion within our hearts a renewed desire for the ascetic life.  We must see that which is uniquely an distinctively Christian about these practices. For while St. John and the other fathers speak of them so frequently, they also understand that their beginning and end is found in one's relationship with God. The desire for God's love must compel us.  --- Text of chat during the group: 00:05:51 FrDavid Abernethy: page 136. paragraph 17   00:11:08 FrDavid Abernethy: page 136 paragraph 17   00:17:21 Bridget McGinley: Whose end is destruction; whose God is their belly; and whose glory is in their shame; who mind earthly things- Philippians 3:19   00:23:45 Emma C: I have a question!   00:24:02 Emma C: I was wondering can fasting help with other attachments to the world like shopping?   00:24:10 Brett Pavia, BCMA: I have a question …   00:24:15 Emma C: Excessive shopping*   00:36:18 Rachel : That's a fantastic idea.   00:36:40 Anthony: The back of the Publican's Prayer Book has a guide to ease into fasting, written by Patriarch Gregorios III. Also, Italian food is a LOT of peasant food (cucina povera).   00:41:40 Rachel : You have good friends. In Cali, you can find something at a steakhouse though.   00:42:12 Rachel : "Crab feed"   00:42:19 Anthony: This one does.  Fish is usually penance.  So is soup. ;)   00:42:21 Ambrose Little, OP: I dunno. Ours is plain, and I don't like fish.

Rachel shares her inspiring story of how she confronted her struggles with love and sex addiction. With the help of a love addiction specialist, Rachel was able to move from a place of deep lows to a place of hope and healing. Host Brianne Davis also discusses the importance of seeking help, and how powerful it can be to take ownership of one's own behavior and thoughts. This engaging and encouraging episode is a must-listen for anyone seeking support on their journey of healing._____If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction, depression, trauma, sexual abuse or feeling overwhelmed, we've compiled a list of resources at secretlifepodcast.com.______To share your secret and be a guest on the show email secretlifepodcast@icloud.com_____SECRET LIFE'S TOPICS INCLUDE:addiction recovery, mental health, alcoholism, drug addiction, sex addiction, love addiction, OCD, ADHD, dyslexia, eating disorders, debt & money issues, anorexia, depression, shoplifting,  molestation, sexual assault, trauma, relationships, self-love, friendships, community, secrets, self-care, courage, freedom, and happiness._____Create and Host Your Podcast with the same host we use - RedCircle_____Get your copy of SECRET LIFE OF A HOLLYWOOD SEX & LOVE ADDICT -- Secret Life Novel or on Amazon______HOW CAN I SUPPORT THE SHOW?Tell Your Friends & Share Online!Follow, Rate & Review: Apple Podcasts | SpotifyFollow & Listen iHeart | Stitcher | Google Podcasts | Amazon | PandoraSpread the word via social mediaInstagramTwitterFacebook#SecretLifePodcastDonate - You can also support the show with a one-time or monthly donation via PayPal (make payment to secretlifepodcast@icloud.com) or at our WEBSITE.Connect with Brianne Davis-Gantt (@thebriannedavis)Official WebsiteInstagramFacebookTwitterConnect with Mark Gantt (@markgantt)Main WebsiteDirecting WebsiteInstagramFacebookTwitterTranscript[0:00:00] Rachel: I watched my life start to both elevate in really weird ways and then deteriorate into this like, deep bottomless pit of I can't do anything without this man in my life. And he was like a drug. Like could not get enough, like was addicted.[0:00:28] Brianne Davis: Welcome to the Secret Life Podcast. Tell me your secret, I'll tell you mine. Sometimes you have to go through the darkness to reach the light. That's what I did. After twelve years of recovery in sex and love addiction, I finally found my soulmate myself. Please join me in my novel, secret Life of a Hollywood sex and love Addict. A four time bestseller on Amazon. It's a brutal, honest, raw, gnarly ride, but hilarious at the same time. Check it out now on Amazon. Welcome to Secret Live Podcast. I'm Brianne Davis Gantt. Today I'm pulling back the curtains of all kinds of human secrets. We'll hear about what people are hiding from themselves or others. You know those deep, dark secrets we probably want to go to our grave with are those lighter, funnier secrets that are just plain embarrassing. Really.[0:01:28] Brianne Davis: The how, what, when, where, and why of it all. Today. My guest is Rachel. Now, Rachel, I have a question for you. Dun, dun dun. What is your secret?[0:01:39] Rachel: Well, thank you for having me on. And my secret is that when I was in my late twenty s, I had an on and off scandalous relationship with an 18 year old gentleman. And it literally threw my life down the tubes and I almost tapped out on life as a result of it.[0:02:05] Brianne Davis: Wow. Okay, let's go back. So what started this relationship?[0:02:12] Rachel: So I had been in on and off long term relationships with different men and none of them seemed to pan out. And I was on my hot shit.[0:02:24] Brianne Davis: Your shit down stink.[0:02:26] Rachel: Yeah, I was like, you know what? Fuck a relationship. I'm going to just get some young tail and see what happens. And honestly, I'd never been with anybody younger, but this guy was catnip. He was like kryptonite at this catnip and kryptonite all wrapped up into one package. And I watched my life start to both elevate in really weird ways and then deteriorate into this deep bottomless pit of I can't do anything without this man in my life. And he was like a drug, could not get enough, was addicted.[0:03:02] Brianne Davis: So can we talk about first how you said elevate? How did things elevate during that time?[0:03:11] Rachel: This young man came from a really amazing family. And in my relationship with him, or pseudo relationship we'll call it, I got exposed to motherly love, I got exposed to fatherly love. I got exposed to family in a way that I'd never felt cared for and seen. And it was almost like the missing puzzle piece in my life. And so I felt powerful at times, but then the low was like unmanageable, crying in my bed, staring at my phone for 12 hours waiting for text messages, like, kind of crazy, terrible.[0:03:48] Brianne Davis: So it was almost like was an obsession came over you about him. Did other people know about your relationship at the time?[0:03:56] Rachel: They did, but they didn't know to what extent I was choosing to participate in to the point where I would call my friends religiously for support, but they'd be like, Just stop seeing that guy. And then the later it would get at night, I would end up on an app called Whisper and releasing my deepest darkest, like, please help me get this guy in my life. Who do I have to be in order to have him in my life forever? And it was terrifying. I was addicted, I was obsessed, I was compulsive. I was spending hours like an FBI investigator on social media. I look back on that part of my life and go, I just want to hug that girl.[0:04:53] Brianne Davis: So did you stalk him? Was he an available young buck?[0:05:05] Rachel: As available as an 18 year old can be. I mean, he still lived at home. Like, I supported him in moving out of his parents house. Maybe in ten years, he would have been relationship material, but he was a baby.[0:05:30] Brianne Davis: A baby. But here's the thing. So your friends knew about the relationship. Did they know how young he was?[0:05:37] Rachel: They did know, but they didn't see to the extent I was involved. They saw like, okay, well, Rachel's not around anymore, so she must be doing something else. And he and I shared an activity in the world together, so I was always doing, quote unquote, that activity. And what I was really doing was just, like, upending my life and turning myself into bending myself into whatever sort of gumby character I could be that I thought he would want me to be, which included not being anywhere near anybody I was friends with.[0:06:16] Brianne Davis: So you really isolated yourself in this situation from people, so everything shut out and made it about this one person.[0:06:28] Rachel: Yeah. And seemingly from the outside, everything seemed fine. I was successful. I had a six figure income, I had my own place. I had it all together. And, yeah, it was jarring, to say the least. When I hit that bottom of, like, I don't want to do life anymore because of this relationship with this person, it was like a two week on, two week off.[0:06:57] Brianne Davis: So what was that bottom? Can you describe the moment where it just all came just rushing?[0:07:04] Rachel: Yeah, it was five years ago and five years ago in June, and I had planned my birthday and the girl he had cheated on me with probably three or four times, he was pulling away again. And I uncovered in my social media findings that he had planned a beach day with her on my birthday, and my birthday was going to be at the beach. So after he had just professed his undying love for me, and we were going to be together, and he never wants to see anybody else. And it was just like, I'm canceling my birthday, I'm getting in the car and I'm leaving town, and I'm never coming back. Yeah, it was gnarly. It was very traumatic. It was like I was living in an emergency room, emotional emergency room, 24 hours a day. My adrenaline, my nervous system was just tapped.[0:08:04] Brianne Davis: Wow. Did you get in that car and drive and go?[0:08:08] Rachel: I did. I went to where I am from and really had a hard time explaining why I was there and made some excuse why I was there and just found myself driving around and figuring out which telephone pole is just going to run my car into.[0:08:29] Brianne Davis: I have heard similar people say when they've been in that same situation, like they didn't want to kill themselves, they just didn't want to be around anymore. Is that how you felt?[0:08:42] Rachel: Yeah, I would say that it just hurt so bad that I didn't want it to hurt anymore.[0:08:49] Brianne Davis: Right.[0:08:50] Rachel: And my best thinking was like, there's no way this feeling is ever going to go away unless I end it. And I had exposed myself so deeply to the community that he and I were both in. Just people just like, they looked at me and go, you're a grown woman. What are you doing?[0:09:12] Brianne Davis: So I had all this judgment from other people because they saw it.[0:09:17] Rachel: Yeah. There were moments where people would pull him aside and be like, hey, she's dangerous. Don't talk with her anymore. Really had his best interest at heart, but they didn't see the inner workings of what actually was happening. And I'm fully responsible for creating what I created with him, and we co created it together.[0:09:46] Brianne Davis: I love what you just said because it seems like the blame got put on you, even though, you know, it was both you and him, but it seemed like, did it all come on you all the judgment came on you than him.[0:10:00] Rachel: I'm sure it didn't. I mean, there's my truth, his truth, their truth, and then the truth.[0:10:08] Brianne Davis: Did they say in God's truth because God sees it?[0:10:12] Rachel: God's truth? There's that too.[0:10:15] Brianne Davis: But.[0:10:19] Rachel: I think over the last five years, looking at somebody's, like, if you're looking at somebody and you're like, oh, they totally hate me, they totally hate me, they're thinking the worst of me. And then you will go up and ask them, hey, what are you thinking about? I'm thinking about eating a sandwich.[0:10:34] Brianne Davis: Yeah. It has nothing to do with you ever.[0:10:37] Rachel: Don't actually give a shit. And if they do, it's because it triggers something inside of them. So I don't truly know, but I know that there were people that pulled them aside and said, like, hey, this isn't a good thing for you. You're young, you're free. Don't get wrapped up in some old ladies stuff.[0:10:58] Brianne Davis: So here's my next question for you. How did you get out of it?[0:11:03] Rachel: I reached for a lifeline. I called somebody who had always given a trace to me, talk to me straight and direct with me. And she said, you get to go to a twelve step meeting and you get to get your butt into a counselor and have a conversation about love addiction. Because this isn't you that's dealing this and creating this. This is a part of you that is sick and you get to get help. And boy, I couldn't pick up the phone quick enough that day. Where I found myself driving around telephone to hit myself into a telephone pole was the day I called her. And within an hour of that incident, I was on a phone, phone call, phone therapy session with a love addiction specialist. And she was like, yeah, you are not alone. This is to tee the description of love addiction. And there's hope.[0:12:02] Brianne Davis: Here's my question for you. And a lot of people ask me this. I've already said I'm out ten years sober in sex and love addiction. And my question for you is do you think you can have a love addictive relationship with one person and then have a healthy one in another? Or are you always going to have love addicted qualities or traits?[0:12:25] Rachel: Are you saying simultaneously, like, I can be love addicted to somebody else and then at the same time be in a healthy relationship with somebody or like segueing from one to the next, one to the next? Over the last five years, what I've uncovered is that I'm on the spectrum of sex and love addiction. So there are days where I feel anorexic emotionally, there's days where I feel avoidance, there's days where my intrigue button is really high. And for those of you that are listening, there's all different types of sex and love addiction. There's a range. It could even be codependence. Just straight up 101 codependence. I can fall under the umbrella of that. And in the work that I've done, it's when I choose to come from responsibility and ownership and I'm willing to go to the deepest cut of why I'm acting the way that I'm acting or showing up in the world, then I have the option to be in a healthy partnership. But it is only when I'm willing to do that work.[0:13:27] Brianne Davis: I love how you say that because sometimes with love addiction it's so hard to explain that there are so many different aspects, there's so many different of that personality that can come out at one time. I can go anorexic, I can become obsessive, I can want to flirt an intrigue and it's like, I don't know each day what that character defect will flare up or that behavior will want to act out. So how you just said that, I hope it explained to the listeners that this can come in all forms. It's not just one way.[0:14:01] Rachel: It's a daily reprieve. Right. One day at a time. I choose to show up as a sober woman that's connected to something greater than myself. And without that spiritual practice, that foundation that I choose into every morning, I'm liable to be right back in that car five years ago, finding the telephone pole or digging into my partner's phone records or something. Yeah.[0:14:34] Brianne Davis: Because we only have control over ourselves. We don't have control over the person. Love addiction is you're addicted to a person. So they're human. They're going to have their flaws. My husband's going to trigger me sometimes, and I'm going to be like, See you. In other days. I'm going to be like, I love you, but that's okay. I have to do the inner work. So I stay connected and an authentic person.[0:14:57] Rachel: Yeah. And it has nothing to do with them. If I'm getting triggered by something someone else is doing, it's a gift to me to look at what value or belief that is toxic is arising and doing the work to get in there and rewrite that. This human projected all of the magical qualities that I wanted and a dad and a best friend and a partner and a brother. I mean, he fit every single mold of who I would have wanted to be kept safe by. So I was constantly lefting after that safety from somebody else. And then envy strikes a chord with me growing up, triangulating with other women. So the envy of, I don't want her to have what I want, you can't have it, but I can. So triangulating with men, particularly this one, who would, if at all possible, find the next available woman in whatever room we're in to create that dynamic with.[0:15:57] Brianne Davis: Wow. So you would walk into a room and that dynamic. Another woman would be, like, psychologically chosen, and you would play out that dynamic.[0:16:07] Rachel: Almost every time I was in a space with him.[0:16:11] Brianne Davis: Yeah. Can you name one incident that happened?[0:16:14] Rachel: Yeah, this activity we were participating in. I walked in one day, and there was a woman in the space that walked by. The space.[0:16:29] Brianne Davis: I just simply walked by, just walked.[0:16:31] Rachel: By, walking her dog. And I saw him walk across the room, look out the window, and then within 24 hours, they were having lunch together. And by day three, I confronted him straight up, and he was like, yeah. What? There was no proof. I had no proof that anything had happened. But my gut was like, up. Here we go again. She fits the mold of what he's after, and we were off to the races. And it's not just jealousy for me. It's the idea of creating situations where I'll be abandoned.[0:17:09] Brianne Davis: Right. That you'll always be like the less than one. Yeah. And I seem like I used to do that, to have a greater than less than with women in different ways. So when you're talking about it's like, oh, I always was either one up or one below a woman with somebody. You know what I mean? But that was your instinct, that you trusted your instinct. There was something inside of you, because lots of people just ignore that. Him looking out a window with a woman. Yeah, but you saw it and then you called it out, which I'm like, that never happens.[0:17:45] Rachel: Well, I guess it never happens, but the fact that I was calling it out was so that I could be right about being rejected or abandoned. And it's funny because even even after that relationship ended and I really got into the work, I would talk about walking into a room and scanning for who's the prettiest person in the room versus am I the prettiest girl in the room? So that I could assert control and power to be safe. Like, there was a very young part of me that just wanted to be safe everywhere that I went. And what I realized is that it had nothing to do with him. It was just another opportunity to play out the story that I'm not safe.[0:18:25] Brianne Davis: Oh, my God. That's like Mike drop information that no matter what it was, it was just you setting up that scenario in your head.[0:18:35] Rachel: Yeah. So the good old cerny prayer that's the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can. And it's crazy and feel like a magician sometimes, but when I take ownership and I am in ownership of my own behaviors, thoughts, feelings, attitudes, sensations, inner dialogue, no shit, my reality changes.[0:19:01] Brianne Davis: Yeah. It's really 100% when I let go of wanting to have control out of anything outside of myself and just have responsibility for myself. It's so free.[0:19:15] Rachel: Yeah, it's amazing. I mean, there's been times where I've been in a relationship where I'm like, this person is an alcoholic. They are an alcoholic. I've taken their inventory, and when I took off the magnifying the magnifying glass and picked up the mirror, within a week or two, that person wasn't drinking anymore. They did not have a problem with alcohol. It wasn't even an issue. And it was like, when I really show up and stay on my side of the street, everything I want to.[0:19:46] Brianne Davis: Manifest, manifest my gosh, I almost have chill bumps right now. I mean, I am having them a little bit. You should see my arm people.[0:19:54] Rachel: You get it.[0:19:56] Brianne Davis: But here's my next question. So having this secret relationship, secret like, pattern with this 18 year old guy, who do you think that benefited and who do you think it harmed?[0:20:14] Rachel: There are so many benefits and so many harms. I would say the harms were subconscious on both of our parts, and the benefits were intentional. You know, like, he learned things from me about life that he never would have learned if he hadn't met me. And there are things I learned about life that I never would have learned if I'd never met him. And I would say that that relationship saved my life or gave me the opportunity to create my life. I often refer to that relationship as, like, I was living in black or white and was forced to go into or chose to go into an emergency room. And when I walked out of the emergency room into the real world again, all I could see was color. And it was like, Holy shit. How have I been missing the taste of things? How have I been missing the color of things? I can feel and hear sound in a way that I never have before because all of my focus was on black or white before. So I benefited massively from that relationship as detrimental and traumatizing and scary and uncomfortable and juicy for a lack of better work.[0:21:33] Brianne Davis: But here's the thing, and I think this is for me, too. Sometimes the darkest situation and the darkest relationship has seen it for what it was and then moving out of it like you're saying and seeing color, that you actually step out of that horrible fantasy and into reality. And I think I used to think a relationship is what gave the world color, but that's not true. Do you know what I mean? I was so worried about losing that high of dramatic relationship, but really that's not living in truth. That's living in black and white is what you're saying.[0:22:19] Rachel: Yeah. It's also another way I like to look at it is I no longer I have bumpers on my life. Now I know if I get too high, I hit a ceiling instead of going even further than I would have. And sometimes living within those bumpers or value systems or boundaries. Or boundaries, my favorite word guidelines for my life. There's a little part that's sad that knows what the experience of being high or extremely low feels like. And sometimes life doesn't offer that same level of it's like eating candy or having a meal. I choose to eat meals now instead of binging on candy or soda all day and looking back and going, dude, candy was fun, and going, yeah, okay, I saw what life was like that, and I got really sick.[0:23:15] Brianne Davis: Yeah. Listen, I'm not saying there's not a little like, oh, that part of my life is over. And then you see somebody doing it, like a friend or somebody, and you're like, that was fun, but you know where that fun leads.[0:23:30] Rachel: You know, we're good and fast.[0:23:34] Brianne Davis: And you were hitting that telephone pole.[0:23:37] Rachel: Yeah, I know that it leads to a hijacking experience, and I'm just not willing to put myself through that. But did it benefit me to go through that at such a young age? Yeah. I mean, I'm seeing people that are in their sometimes 70s who have never even acknowledged that they've been living decades this way. So for me, I feel grateful to have, I would say, course correct in my life. Choosing to get on a path of reality and ownership at an early age.[0:24:11] Brianne Davis: I love that. Oh my God, you are dropping so many bombs today. For me, I just needed to hear them. But I do have one last question. If somebody is in a type of relationship that has a lot of drama, that's not stable, that they're not really happy with, but they're addicted to, what would be your advice to them?[0:24:34] Rachel: First and foremost, I would say some people can exist in those relationships and it's fine. I couldn't. So the question I would ask is, like, is your life unmanageable? Is your emotional life unmanageable? Make a list of the things that you're powerless over in this relationship. And then I would have them write out what their vision is, what do they want in relationship? And I would have them hold those two lists together and say, like, are these two things matching up? Is it time to do something about it? And then every person I mean, twelve step isn't right for everybody. It's not fit for everybody.[0:25:07] Brianne Davis: Yeah, I agree. It's not.[0:25:09] Rachel: There's transformational tools, there's leadership tools, there's twelve step tools, there's therapy, there's holistic tools. There's all kinds of ways to move from dysfunction to thriving, from surviving to thriving. And the one thing I will say is if you are in a space of losing your mind, you're not alone. There's somebody probably on your block that's having the same exact experience for some different reason or maybe even the same one. So pick up the phone and call somebody and that secrets will keep you sick. The sooner you can let it go and let it out and find a safe space to do that. I'm sure Brian would be willing to be a safe space for anybody knowing that that's what she's up to here. Reach out.[0:25:57] Brianne Davis: Reach out. And that is where we're going to end. So if you want to be on the show, please email me at secretlifepodcast@icloud.com. Until next time, thanks again for listening to the show. Please subscribe rate share or send me a note secretlifepodcast@icloud.com. And if you'd like to check out my book, head over to secretlifenovel.com or Amazon to pick up a copy for yourself or someone you love. Thanks again. See you soon.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Rounding Up Season 1 | Episode 5 – Learning Targets Guest: Dr. Rachel Harrington Mike Wallus: As a 17-year-veteran classroom teacher, I can't even begin to count the number of learning targets that I've written over the years. Whether it's writing ‘I can' statements or developing success criteria, there's no denying that writing learning targets is an important part of teacher practice. That said, the thinking about what makes a strong learning target continues to evolve and the language that we select for those targets has implications for instructional practice. Today on the podcast, we're talking with Dr. Rachel Harrington from Western Oregon University about creating powerful and productive learning targets. Welcome to the podcast. Rachel Harrington: Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. Mike: Sure. So I'd love to just start our conversation by having you talk a little bit about how the ideas around learning targets have evolved, even just in the course of your own teaching career. Rachel: I started out as a pre-service teacher in the late '90s and got a lot of practice in undergrad teacher education, thinking about writing those objectives. And we were always told to start with, ‘The student will be able to … ,' and then we needed to have some skill and then it needed to end with a percentage of performance. So we need percent of accuracy. And so I got a lot of practice writing things that way, and we always were very strategic with our percentages. We might say 80 percent because we planned to give them five questions at the end and we wanted four out of five to be correct. And then we could check the box that the students had done what we wanted. And I felt like it was really critical. We always were kind of drilled into us that it must be measurable. You have to be able to measure that objective. And so that percentage was really important. Rachel: In my experience though, as a teacher, that, that didn't feel as helpful. And it wasn't something that I did as a classroom teacher very often. As I transitioned into working in teacher preparation, now we have shifted the way we talk about things. Instead of saying a learning objective, we talk more about learning targets. And we talk about using active verbs that, when we phrase the learning target or the learning goal, it's using a verb that is more active and not so much ‘Student will be able to … .' And so we might use verbs like compare, explain, classify, analyze, thinking more about that. And then, rather than thinking about an assessment at the end, with five questions where they get four correct, we want to think about multiple times throughout the lesson where the teacher is assessing that learning goal and the progress towards that goal. Sometimes those assessments might be more classroom-based. Other times you might be looking more at an individual student and collecting data on their progress as well. But it's more progress towards a goal rather than something that's met at the end of the lesson with a certain percentage of accuracy. Mike: You named the thing that I think stood out for me, which is you're moving from a process where you're thinking about an outcome versus what's the action, be that cognitive or in the way that students are solving. The focus is really on what's happening and how it's happening as opposed to just an outcome. Rachel: Uh-hm. And I feel like when I started in teacher preparation, the standards were a little more siloed by grade level. It was sort of like, this is what we do in fourth grade and it starts and ends in fourth grade. Whereas with the Common Core State Standards, we see these learning progressions that stretch across the child's whole math experience. And so I think that's shifted a little bit the way we think about targets as well and learning goals and whatever title you've given them. Now, we don't think so much as, ‘What are you accomplishing at the end of today?' but sort of your progress across a learning progression and, and what progress are you making towards a longer-term goal? Mike: I think that's a really profound shift though. There are two things that come to mind: One is really thinking about how that impacts my practice as a teacher. If I'm just thinking about what happens at the end of today, in all of these little discreet iterations, versus what's the pathway that the child is on, right? I'm really interested in, how is their thinking shifting? And that the end of the day is not the end of that shift. It's really something that happens over time. Does that make sense to you? Rachel: Definitely. And I think it's really critical when we're teaching in a mixed-ability classroom, and we're thinking about children making progress at their own pace and not expecting every child to learn the same thing every single day, but we can have individual goals for our kids. We can have ideas about, as long as they are making progress in their math journey, then we're going to be OK with that. And we're helping them in that progress. And I think it's also more evidence as to why curriculum needs to cycle back to previously taught concepts because those concepts may or may not be mastered by all the children or understood by all the children at the end of the lesson. We're going to keep revisiting it. And children get multiple opportunities to think about this idea, and they will make progress on their own at their pace. Mike: Well, that's in stark contrast to my own childhood math experiences. You got through your unit on fractions in fourth grade, and… Rachel: Yep. Mike: ... if you didn't get it, well … Rachel: So sad. Mike: ... good, good luck in fifth grade! Rachel: ( laughs ) Mike: ( laughs ) Um, but it's really an entirely different way of thinking about the child's development of ideas.  Rachel: Yep. I remember teaching multiplication of fractions on a Monday followed by a division of fractions on a Tuesday. It was really just like, you know, when we moved past this idea that multiplication of fractions is a procedure that, that students will master. Then we need to start thinking about it as happening more than just on Monday. Mike: We've already started to address the second question I had, which is: What are some of the pitfalls that schools and teachers might fall into or might encounter when they're thinking about learning targets?  Rachel: I think some folks have put pressure on teachers to take the idea of a learning target and phrase it into an ‘I can' statement or a student-friendly language—which, I am not at all opposed to the idea of making things into student-friendly language. I think that's actually really critical in math class. Mike: Uh-hm. Rachel: But I think it can be problematic. When we start the lesson with an ‘I can' statement, are we giving away the ending of the lesson right at the beginning? Mike: Yeah. Rachel: Are we taking away their joy of that discovery and that excitement of finding out this, understanding this new concept? I don't want to remove that magic out of math class by just saying, ‘Hey, I'm going to tell you the ending right before we get started.' And I also worry a little bit that sometimes those ‘I can' statements and those things that we put up on the board at the beginning of class are done under the guise of ‘holding teachers accountable,' which I think is a phrase that is very ( chuckles ) problematic.  Rachel: I tend to err on the side of trusting teachers; that they can be trusted to know what they're doing in the classroom and that they have a goal in mind. And I assume that they are planning for teaching without telling me exactly and explicitly on the whiteboard that they are doing that. But I also recognize that the presence of that learning target or that ‘I can' statement on the board at the beginning is an easy thing to check off. All of the different things that are happening in math class are really complex and really hard to understand and notice. And it can take years and tons of experience before we're able to notice all the things that are happening. And so as an administrator that maybe has limited experience teaching mathematics, I could see where it would be difficult coming into the classroom and really being able to recognize what is happening. You might look around the room and be like, ‘Is this some kind of birthday party? What's going on? All these kids are cutting things out and gluing things. This doesn't look like math class.' Rachel: But if I can see that statement written up on the board, that's something that's kind of concrete and measurable. I also just think this idea of capturing learning as a daily objective can be problematic, especially when we're thinking about building really complex ideas in mathematics. You know, that's not going to happen in one lesson, in one session of curriculum. It might build over multiple days. It might cycle back into multiple units. And so we need to make sure that students are developing alongside their peers and, but maybe not out at the same pace. And I think that's OK. Mike: Yeah. You made me think about a couple different things, Rachel. One is the idea that the way that learning targets have been kind of introduced into classrooms really feels more like compliance as opposed to something that has value in terms of your instructional practice. And I, I've lived that world, too, as a classroom teacher. I think the other thing that really hits me from what you said is, I started thinking about whole-number multiplication, right? If I'm just thinking about the end product—meaning students being able to perform multiplication—there's so much richness that has been missed ( chuckles ) in that process. Rachel: ( chuckles )  Mike: I mean, we're trying to help children move from thinking additively to thinking multiplicatively. You're going to move along that kind of continuum of understanding over time. Honestly, I would say it shouldn't happen in one day. Rachel: Yeah. What can you really learn in just one lesson? And learn, not, I wouldn't say just perform a skill. Mike: Yeah. Rachel: I think skills, performing a skill and memorizing an algorithm, that is something that can be taught in a really concrete chunk of time, potentially. But the real conceptual understanding of what's happening with multiplication—how it's connected to addition, how it's connected to geometric concepts and things like that—that all comes and builds. And I feel like it also builds in fits and spurts. Some kids are going to make a big leap at one point and then make some smaller steps before they make another big leap. It's not a linear progression that … Mike: Right. Rachel: … they're going through. And so we have to allow that to happen and give room for that to happen. And if we say everyone in the class will do this by the end of the lesson with this amount of accuracy, we don't make room for that to happen. Mike: Yeah. I think what you're highlighting is the difference between what I would call like a learning goal and a performance goal. And I'm wondering if you could help unpack that. Because for me, when I started thinking about learning targets in that framework, it really opened my eyes to some of the places where I'd gotten it right in the classroom and some of the places where, boy, I wish I had a do-over. Rachel: Yeah. I think the language that the National Council of Teachers in Mathematics has brought to us, is this idea of contrasting performance goals with learning goals. And I find myself turning to the ‘Taking Action' series of books. Specifically, K–5 when we're thinking about elementary. There's a chapter of that book I have found to be really powerful. Sadly, I think it's one that we can sometimes gloss over a little bit in our reading. Because for some folks, they look at that and they say, ‘Well, I don't choose the learning goal. My curriculum chooses the learning goal or my school district tells me what the learning goal is.' But when you really look at what a learning goal is, as opposed to a performance goal, that's really not what's dictated by your curriculum or by your school district. And so in the 'Taking Action' book, I think they do a really nice job of contrasting the difference between a learning goal and a performance goal. And I would say a performance goal is sort of what I described earlier when I was talking about ‘The student will be able to … ' Mike: Uh-hm. Yeah. Rachel: … at a certain amount of accuracy. So, an example. If you do have access to the book, it talks about ‘Students will solve a variety of multiplication word problems and write the related multiplication equations.' And (given) that, I could see that as the type of thing I would've written maybe with a certain amount of accuracy ( laughs ) at the end of it. And I would've given them maybe five word problems and then assessed if they could get at least four out of the five correct equations. And so that's a really good example of a performance goal. And, and they talk about this idea of a performance is, what is the student doing? What's something that we can look and observe and measure and count.  Mike: That's so hard though! Because what's missing in that goal is ‘how'!  Rachel: Right.  Mike: You know ( laughs ), like …  Rachel: Or ‘why'! ( laughs )  Mike: ( laughs) Or ‘why'! Right?  Rachel: Yep, yep.  Mike: Like when you actually look at the student's work, what does that tell you about how they arrived there? And then what does that tell you about what that child needs to continue making sense of mathematics? You gave an example of a performance goal around multiplication and word problems. What might that sound like as a learning goal instead?  Rachel: So an example of that same—probably aligned to the exact same standard and the Common Core State Standards—would be that students will understand the structure of multiplication as comprising equal groups, within visual or physical representations, understand numbers and multiplication equations, and connect those representations to equations. So that learning goal really describes what you're hoping the students learn. Not just what they do, but what do they carry forward with them as they move into more and more complex mathematics? I think you'll also recognize the verbs in there are much more complex. In the previous performance goal, we talked about students solving and writing. They're solving, and they're writing. But in the learning goal, we're looking at understanding, connecting, and representing those different ways of thinking about it and bringing them together. Putting those pieces together. And again, that might be something that develops over a long period of time. They might be working on one piece of it, which is looking at an array and connecting that to an equation. But maybe later on, they're connecting the context of the task to the equation. Or they're taking a context and recognizing, ‘Wouldn't an array model be a great way to solve this? And wouldn't an equation model be a great way to solve this?'  Mike: Uh-hm.  Rachel: And that's really developing over time.  Mike: Yeah. I was just going to say, you mentioned ‘Taking Action.' The, the chapter on learning goals is actually my most dogeared, uh, chapter in the book. I want to read you something that I think is really powerful though. Very first chapter on learning goals, the way that they describe it is: ‘Identifying what students will come to understand about mathematics rather than focusing on what students will do.' I've read that, underlined it, highlighted it. And I've got a Post-It note on that page because I think it just fundamentally changes what I think my role is as a teacher in preparing and also in a moment with children.  Rachel: Yep. It's not so much about, they're going to be able to cut this out and do this thing and perform this action. But it's really, what's the purpose? Why are we doing this? Why would they cut that out? Why would they do this action? What is that contributing to their long-term understanding? I do appreciate NCTM's guidance on this. I think they're leading the pack. And this is really cutting-edge … Mike: Yeah. Rachel: … thinking about how we set goals for our classroom. It's not commonly held in the field or applied in the field yet. Mike: Uh-hm. Rachel: But I think folks are really starting to understand its importance. That if, as we change the way we teach mathematics and the outcomes we expect for students, we have to start thinking differently about how we set up learning goals. We can't keep having these performance goals and expecting what's happening in the classroom to change. If we're really going to go towards the type of instruction we want to see in a classroom, we've got to think about learning goals instead of focus so much on just performance. Mike: I actually had a chance to talk to DeAnn Huinker, who's one of the co-writers of ‘Taking Action,' and she used the phrase, ‘What are the mathematical conversations you want children to have?' And I was really struck by, like, that's a really interesting question for me to think about if I'm thinking about my learning goals. But even if I'm just thinking about planning and preparing for a lesson or a unit of study. Rachel: Definitely. I don't think that's something that's thought a lot about. I mean, I might see for my students and their lesson plan: ‘Turn and talk to your neighbor.' But if you don't really think carefully about what kind of conversation you want to happen during that turn and talk … . Or I'll see in their lesson plan that ‘We will have a discussion about students' various solutions.' And what does that mean? You know, what's going to happen in that time? What's the point … Mike: Uh-hm. Rachel: … of that time? I can't remember who, I think it was Elham Kazemi that said something once about, ‘In math class folks will present,' and it's like that old football cheer, you know, ‘stand up, sit down, clap, clap, clap.' That's what we do in math class. Mike: Yeah. Rachel: We have kids stand up, we sit down, we all politely listen, and then we clap. And that's it. We move on. But if you really focus on those conversations that you want kids to have, what are the interesting things that you want them to be thinking about? That's a complete shift in how we've taught math. Mike: Yeah, it really is. It makes me think about, on a practical level, if I'm a person who's listening to this podcast, what I might be starting to think about is, ‘How do I take action'—no pun intended—'on this idea of thinking deeply about learning goals, integrating them into my practice?' And, for me at least, the first place I went when I read this was to think about shifting what I did in my preparation and my planning. Rachel: Uh-hm. But I think when it comes to planning, we need to be thinking, first of all, kind of the three parts that ‘Taking Action' talks about, is setting a goal that's clear. It should be clear in your mind what the children are learning. And so that can take some reading, right? It can take reading through the session, reading through the overviews, thinking about the learning progressions, always keeping your eye on that mathematical horizon, making those learning goals clear. But then also thinking about the fact that I am situating those learning goals into a learning progression. And I'm thinking about what this lesson that I'm doing on Tuesday, where does it fit in the math journey? So that makes me think about two things. First, what is this lesson building on? What foundation do these students come with that I can build on? But then also, what is it leading toward? Rachel: Where are we going from here? And what is the important role that this idea we're looking at today plays in the whole mathematical journey? And then using that as your foundation for your instruction. So if you're finding that the activity that you had planned isn't meeting that learning goal. So it isn't helping you with this clear understanding of what you want them to know. If it isn't helping build toward something that you want them to be able to understand, then what are the changes you need to make? Mike: Uh-hm. Rachel: What are some things you want to adjust? Where do you want to spend more time? How do you add those conversations? Things like that. Mike: Uh-hm. I think you led back to the thing that I wanted to unpack, which is: I worried that at different points in this conversation, people might think, ‘Well, they're just suggesting that learning goals or learning targets don't really have a role.' We're not saying that. We're saying that they really stretch over time. And I think your description was really elegant in thinking about, what does this session contribute to that larger goal of understanding the meaning of multiplication? What is the intent of this session in helping that development proceed? Rachel: Yeah. What is the big idea? What is this leading towards? Because if you don't see it, then that's when you, as a teacher, need to make some decisions. Do I need to do more reading? Do I need to do more understanding about this particular content area? Do I need to adjust the lesson itself? Is there something that I need to change or add or incorporate so that it does play a stronger role? Plus, you know your students. So if we're thinking about this session being a part of a learning progression, and it's building on something they already have, if you feel like maybe they don't have what they need to engage with today's lesson—now I'm going to think about some ways to reengage them with this content. I think especially over the next few years, that's going to be critical. But yeah, I definitely agree with you, Mike. Cause I think NCTM, the authors would say the first thing about a learning target or a learning goal is that it has to be clear, and it has to guide and be the foundation for instruction. And so, they're really important. It's just maybe the way that we've talked about them in the past hasn't been helpful. Mike: Yeah. The other place you bring me to, Rachel, is the idea that if I'm really clear on my learning goal, what is it that children will come to understand? And where is this lesson situated in that journey? That actually has a lot of value because I can think about, ‘What are some of the questions that I want to ask to try to either assess where kids are at or advance their thinking?' Or when I think about what children might do, ‘Which kids do I want to strategically highlight at a closure?' So I think understanding that learning goal really does have value for folks. It's just a different way of constructing them. And then also thinking, what do you do next? Rachel: And I also think, again, I'll take this back to the idea of assessing those learning goals. 'Cause I do think assessment and goals cannot be separated. You're going to always be thinking about that, right? Why set a goal if you don't have any way of knowing whether students are making progress towards that goal? When you establish them in that way and you think about them as less of something that's going to be accomplished by the end of this session, we allow room for students to progress at different ways and learn different things in the class. And then that's when we can have those rich conversations at the end, when we're drawing things together. If every child's going to do everything the exact same way in my classroom, then there's no opportunity for interesting conversations. The interesting conversations happen when kids are doing things differently and making progress in different ways, and heading in different directions towards the same goal. Rachel: Then we start learning from each other. We can see what our partner is doing and try to understand what they're doing. That's when interesting math happens. And I want to encourage teachers to feel confident in thinking about these as the idea of a learning goal. And even starting to incorporate this into student-friendly language. You know, a learning goal doesn't have to be written as an ‘I can' statement for kids to be able to understand it. And I also want teachers to feel confident in their abilities for advocating. Um, when they see learning goals being used in a problematic way, when we see pitfalls and things that we talked about at the beginning happening in their classroom—be confident in your abilities and your knowledge and what you know is best for students. You know your students better than anyone else does. The teacher does. And you know how to think about those individual needs and the individual growth of each child in your classroom. Rachel: So rest assured in that confidence. But go to the resources that are available to you as well. When you're struggling with the idea of where these lessons or these concepts or these ideas you're teaching fit, go to the learning progressions, go to the ‘Taking Action' book, go to the NCTM resources. Um, read your session overviews in your curriculum. Have conversations with your colleagues. Have conversations with the colleagues that teach grades above you and grades below you. That's really critical if we're think about taking away this silo idea of teaching mathematics, we need to start thinking about have these conversations across grade levels. And, and knowing, you know, if you're struggling with where this idea is going, talk to the teacher who comes next. And even just ask them, ‘What reason do you think a child would need to learn this?' Mike: Yeah. Rachel: You know, and then they might be able to help you see where it fits in the progression. Mike: Well, and I was going to say, look at the scope and sequence and notice, where do the ideas come back? How are they coming back? How are they being developed? And then the icing on the cake would be to do what you said. Let's take a look at how this manifests itself in the next grade or perhaps in the grade prior. Rachel: I think that's also a role for math leaders in elementary and in the building instructional coaches, that's a vision that they can help teachers with 'cause they get the opportunity to be in multiple grades in multiple classrooms. And they also have more space to read through the progressions, and they might have more time for those sorts of things. And so I want to push math leaders to be doing that as well. Not just the classroom teachers, help your teachers to see where these ideas carry across into future grades and how they build on previous content and facilitate those conversations. Mike: Yeah. You know, I'm so glad that you brought that up. Because it makes me think about, there are some things about the way that we've organized education that just, are givens, right? We have primarily grade-level classrooms, right? And so, I taught first grade for eight years. I intimately knew my first-grade standards. I did not clearly have a vision of necessarily how that was going to play out in second grade and third grade and fourth grade and so on. And I think that's one of the inadvertent problems that we're stuck with is, if we don't have a vertical understanding of: How are these ideas going to support children over time? It might be easy to say, ‘Well, I just need them to be able to do X by the time they get out of third grade.' Not really understanding that, actually I need to have them understand X, so then they can, in fact, understand all these other concepts that are coming. Rachel: I've just seen this year, so much, what is happening in fifth grade is dictating how you understand algebra. You know, it's like … Mike: Yes! Rachel: … what we see in the fifth-grade standards. If you are not really understanding those concepts, you might be OK for a little while. And then once you're into your algebra classes, you're realizing that all of that foundational knowledge came from what you learned in fifth grade and what you understand about rational numbers. And so, I totally agree. I don't think we've done a good job in education in general of those cross grade-level conversations. But I think we're getting better with this idea of having instructional leaders, instructional coaches that are really there to support the instruction … Mike: Yeah. Rachel: … that's happening. So I know I work with math leaders and that's one of the things I really encourage them, is not only should they know the entire curriculum or continuum, but how are they helping their classroom teachers understand that? 'Cause I think there's a lot of power in having a teacher spend eight years in first grade and really knowing those standards intimately. But there's also some value in, in once you've taught third grade going back to first grade and realizing, ‘Wow, this is where it was all going.' Mike: Absolutely. Yeah. I had a role at one point where I was a K–12 curriculum director for math. Rachel: Oh, yeah. Mike: And it was the most eye-opening experience because, as you said, you recognize how, if kids walk out of elementary school without a deep foundational understanding—and if it's just really a surface set of performance skills ... wow—that catches up with kids when they get into sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. Rachel: Yep. For sure. And those concepts become more abstract when we start this idea of variables and thinking about things algebraically. That if you didn't have that foundation in the concrete, the abstract is too much. It's too much to ask of kids. And so then we find ourselves reteaching and wondering, ‘What happened?' And yeah, I just, I wish more conversations were happening across those grade levels.  Mike: Absolutely. Well, thank you again, Rachel.  Rachel: Yeah!  Mike: It was lovely to have you. I think a lot of folks are going to find this really helpful, and maybe validating in the experience they've had. And also a vision for what they might do in the future. And hopefully we'll have you back at some point.  Rachel: I'm always here for you. ( laughs )  Mike: Thank you so much. All right, bye bye.  Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability.  © 2022 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org

“I never really say get rid of your stress. We have to find a way to manage our stress,” shares Rachel Martin, IFM Certified Practitioner and Family Nurse Practitioner of 6 years. Rachel was drawn to functional medicine when her third child was born with a rare genetic disorder called congenital central hypoventilation syndrome. Then, Rachel was under a massive amount of chronic stress from taking care of her older children, opening her practice, and managing her youngest child's condition, and her gut health was getting worse and worse. The standard medical interventions for treating digestive problems were not helping because they weren't addressing the root cause of the problems. As Rachel began to learn more about functional medicine, she realized that the way to really help people make long term health changes was to tackle the root cause and focus on the gut-brain connection.    It is not possible to fix gut issues long term without taking into account the psychological component. The gut and the brain are intricately connected and in times of stress, people will often find their digestive problems getting worse. When people are stressed, they often aren't eating properly or sleeping enough and all of these factors need to be considered. Some issues that many people face when starting functional medicine treatment are that they overdo it on the supplements or they get into a neverending elimination diet with no attempt to work any of the foods back in later on. Rachel helps her patients to go a step beyond the basic elimination diet and supplements by incorporating daily rituals that help reduce stress. She recommends walking, yoga, and meditation to her patients in place of more high intensity exercises to help them bring mindfulness into their day. She also focuses more on helping clients know what to eat, rather than only focusing on what to avoid.    If you want to improve your health long-term, you need to address the root causes like stress, diet, and sleep. The gut and brain are very much connected and when you improve your mental health and take time for self-care, you will improve your physical health simultaneously. Tune into this week's episode of The Catalyst to learn more about daily rituals you can add to your routine to help reduce stress and heal your gut-brain connection.    Quotes • “It's not enough to work on the gut. You have to address the gut-brain connection. And you have to address stress.” (6:08-6:14 | Rachel)  • “I never really say get rid of your stress. We have to find a way to manage our stress.” (8:54-9:00 | Rachel) • “You should not have a part-time job taking supplements, nor should you have to have a part-time job to afford all of your supplements because you're taking so many.” (13:56-14:04 | Rachel) • “I've had so many people who have come to me, they're all in their 30s and they're exhausted. They're like, ‘I'm doing everything right.' And then their quote, unquote, right is intermittent fasting, low carb diets, and high intensity interval training. And I'm like, this is just too much for you right now.” (16:46-17:06 | Rachel) • “I want them to literally not see me for years or maybe we have the occasional maintenance. But I want my patients to stay well.” (25:00-25:09 | Rachel) • “Stop focusing on don't eat this, don't eat that. Tell me what to eat.” (28:34-28:38 | Rachel)   Links Connect with Rachel Martin: Website: www.rootandritualfxmed.com Instagram: @rootandritualfxmed    Functional Micropractice Checklist   Connect with Lara:  Website: https://drlarasalyer.com Instagram: @drlarasalyer Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drlarasalyer Linked-In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drlarasalyer/ YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/DrLaraSalyer TikTok: @Creativity.Doctor   Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

We are called to be conformed to Christ. How easy it is to say such a thing. Yet, so often, our understanding of faith, obedience, humility, and charity is defined within the narrow limits of human reason and understanding. We grow very uncomfortable with what is undefined or what lacks boundaries. Allowing our souls to be stretched by faith, to be drawn along by wonder and led by the Spirit can feel terrifyingly vulnerable. The ego is most often the center of our existence. To let go of the false-self and to seek one's identity and dignity in Christ is challenging to say the least. In fact, only God can bring us to such a place. Our striving, our ascetical life, our responsiveness to the grace of God is important. Yet in the end it is God alone who can purify the heart and who can open our eyes through the gift of faith to see the beauty of self-sacrificing love and obedience. --- Text of chat during the group:  00:10:26 FrDavid Abernethy: page 95 para 114   00:26:40 Ashley Kaschl: Was just about to say…Reminds me of how Christ was silent before His accusers during the Passion   00:28:23 Cindy Moran: This over-sensitivity is called taking umbrage.   00:31:55 Ren: (Concerning paragraph 116). Something that is coming to mind is that, in doing this, I could easily see a danger of becoming resentful for silently accepting abuse, and then following it with an apology - and one that might not be all that sincere. How would we do this, without allowing a spirit of anger to take root?   00:33:10 Anthony: Gluttony had an extra connotation at the time, since food and wine or beer was more scarce, took more work, was more tied to the seasons and was therefore more precious, and eating too much is a wound on other people who by right had a share in the common food.  It's not like John could drive over to the Kroger and buy Boars Head cold cuts at will if someone ate too much.   00:43:14 Daniel Allen: I think resentment also comes when one thinks one is unjustly accused or put down, when in reality what tends to confront us is more true (in one way or another) than we want to admit. And when it may not be a fair accusation on the surface, in one way or another it is likely true. When we realize our own sin put to death God Himself, what accusation could be false? How could distinction still matter. And when it's still difficult then what St. Philip Neri said can always apply, there except for the grace of God go I? Remembering one's own sinfulness makes this easy. Forgetting it makes it excruciating to bear.   00:50:02 Rachel: yep   00:50:40 Johnny Ross: The gap between ought and is represents a fundamental dichotomy in our identity. Isn't unity the ultimate trajectory of our walk in Christ. Individual unity, unity with the Church and, ultimately, Unity with God.   00:53:00 Rachel: You touched upon something I have been wondering about and that is how we find the ego everywhere. Where one has to really discern how one or, why, what motivates one to follow Christ. If at all!   00:53:35 Rachel: And I think this is where patience comes in to support one in the spiritual life   00:54:11 iPhone: I heard a sermon on Sunday in which the priest told about his struggle w/ anger & his spiritual director encouraged him to continue in his prayer over time…suggesting to him that he was lacking courage when he wished to give up the struggle.  The struggle took a full year — patience & courage.   00:54:23 Rachel: We must patiently, with love wait for Christ to reveal himself to us, in a way that He chooses to reveal Himseld.   00:57:31 Rachel: lol   01:17:27 Ashley Kaschl: My app updated and I don't know how to raise my hand so sorry this is past time

As menopause gains traction and public awareness grows, there is an increasing number of interesting people and companies in the field who deserve to be mentioned. One of them is Ann Garnier, the founder and CEO of Lisa Health, a company that helps women transform the menopause life stage and empowers them to thrive in it. Midday is their new an app launched in collaboration with the Mayo Clinic that helps women track their menopause and navigate all of the problems and solutions that arise during this stage of life. Ann Garnier is a healthcare leader who has assisted in the creation and release of many innovative companies and products. She is absolutely passionate about using technology to help women thrive in midlife and celebrate the beginning of a new era. The menopause project coincided with her own menopause transition, which helped her understand the subject more deeply and personally, and this innovative tech solution was born as a result. If you want to learn more about Midday, take a seat and press play! You can subscribe or listen to previous episodes of the Busine$$ of the V podcast by clicking here. TOPICS COVERED: Meeting Ann Garnier and learning about Lisa Health's journey. Ann's decades of experience in the health tech space, which she used to create this amazing tech-enabled solution for menopausal women. Midday is the app that can help when you feel like nothing works for you anymore and you want to be supported through your menopausal journey. Dweck notes that this app sounds far more involved than a typical telehealth appointment. If women want to share the data with their care provider, they can simply download the report for menopausal hormone therapy from Midday. Rachel is curious about what they do with the data and how they maintain the database. In addition to providing advice, this app offers a product marketplace where women can find any product they may require. The Elephant in the Room: Dr. Dweck wants to know how Lisa Health manages liability. Lisa Health's perspective on future collaborations and what they look for in potential partners. Lisa Health has a lot of exciting plans for the future: menopause in the workplace, wearable technology for detecting and predicting symptoms, and much more. HOT FLASH: Based on a recent Forbes article, it seems that 73% of women don't treat their menopause symptoms. This is not necessarily a good thing because hot flashes, night sweats and even vaginal dryness may go unattended, unmanaged, and women may be suffering.   QUOTES: “Thankfully, the world is now starting to have discussions about menopause on a very regular basis.” (Rachel) “You sound literally like the Swan Study. People put you out there to set up a platform for menopause and, as it turned out, they got a whole lot of valuable information about menopause.” (Dr. Dweck) “We know that women have many needs during this life stage, so we wanted to support them with an end-to-end platform.” (Ann) “We know that many women don't have access to a healthcare clinician who's trained in menopausal care, so at least they know that now there is someone they can go to.” (Ann) “One of the learnings that we had early on is that women want a one stop shop. They're super busy.” (Ann) “I think I'll make a bold call here that 2023 is going to be the year of menopause in the workplace.” (Ann) “I can truly appreciate the whole workplace importance because of the thermostat wars I hear about in boardrooms. Nobody should have to grin and bear that one.” (Dr. Dweck) FURTHER RESOURCES: Website: midday.health Lisa Health blog.lisahealth.com Ann @LinkedIn  LINKS FOR BUSINE$$ OF THE V: Website: www.businessofthev.com Dr. Alyssa Dweck: https://drdweck.com Rachel Braun Scherl: www.sparksolutionsforgrowth.com/about-rachel-braun-scherl/

Do you feel overqualified and underpaid in your career?  If so, you're not alone. Lots of aspiring professionals in the nonprofit space get stuck in an endless cycle of punching the clock for a fraction of what they know they're worth. The challenge isn't so much in recognizing that the cycle must be broken, the challenge is having the courage to break it in the first place. My guest today is the Honorable Rachel Waterman. Rachel is a thinker, published author, award-winning researcher, professional artist, and mother of two with over 25 years of community development and grant writing experience creating a business on her own terms since 2008.  This episode covers:  What it means to be a humanitarian entrepreneur The difference between being a freelancer with a backpack and an entrepreneur with a business The value of networking The importance of pricing and screening clients How to reduce burnout in the grant-writing profession And much more! Thanks again for listening to the Humanitarian Entrepreneur podcast! Don't forget to share this episode with the humanitarian entrepreneurs you know who might feel they are overqualified and underpaid in their own professions. Together, we'll change the world on our own terms while getting paid what we're worth and avoiding burnout along the way. Enjoy my conversation with Rachel!   In This Episode: [1:25] – We're introduced to today's guest, the Honorable Rachel Waterman, and we're taken back to when it all started for Rachel in 2008. [4:30] – This is why Rachel was excited to come on the Humanitarian Entrepreneur podcast. [5:29] – Rachel explains her first consulting job. [7:26] – There's a leap between being a freelancer with a backpack and being an entrepreneur with a business. Here's what that means. [8:50] – How Rachel navigated imposter syndrome early on.  [11:06] – Partnerships and making connections is important in work and in life. [13:39] – What does Rachel know now about pricing and screening clients that she wished she knew earlier in her career? [16:16] – The problem that pro bono services can create for the grant consulting industry, according to Rachel. [18:14] – Rachel continues to learn about pricing every time she gets burned. [20:54] – Grant writers are the people that help people that help people, but the burnout is so high. [23:52] – Rachel reveals the most critical element to grant writing.     Resources: To connect with Tiffany to solve problems or affect the kind of change you want: calendly.com/humanitarianentrepreneur   Website:https://humanitarian-entrepreneur.com    Connect with Rachel: You can learn more about Global Development Solutions at https://www.gdsgrants.com/ and if you want to connect with Rachel directly, reach out to her on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelwaterman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/global-development-solutions-grants/?viewAsMember=true https://www.grantmanagementmadeeasy.com Use code: HUMANITARIAN for 10% off an annual subscription   Additional articles: https://grantprofessionals.org/news/news.asp?id=573736 https://grantprofessionals.org/news/577525/Zen-and-the-Art-of-Better-Grant-Writing-Gigs--Part-II--Firing-Clients-for-Professional-Survival.htm

We continued to listen to the Father‘s counsel on avoiding relationships or circumstances that can bring us spiritual harm. Such thought is not guided by a lack of love or charity or hospitality; rather it is rooted in an understanding that we are first to love the Lord our God with all of our mind, soul, heart, and strength. It is only having our love ordered and directed toward Him that our love of the things and and people within the world can be rightly ordered. We were given one example after another of how necessary it is to discern when relationships are drawing us away from God or the ways that the devil can use us through our negligence to harm others spiritually. We don't engage in the spiritual battle in a state of isolation. Nor do we seek to live the life of virtue simply for ourselves. Love demands that we be attentive to loving God above all things in order that we might draw all toward Christ.  Such simplicity and clarity in the way that one views the world and oneself, creates the purity of heart that is necessary to discern the path and the will of God. --- Text of chat during the group:  00:29:57 Anthony: This is how I learned there was something wrong with some Catholic commentators.  They left me agitated about the legal aspect of the Faith....am I searching myself well enough, did I do this good enough? etc.  Jansenism   00:30:31 Anthony: on the church   00:30:37 Anthony: correcting the Novus ordo   00:30:42 Anthony: noveau telogie   00:32:36 Emma C: Where do we see the line between judging others vs judging their actions to know who to avoid?   00:35:42 Kevin Clay: I think we need to see that we can be that “foolish and thoughtless friend” to ourselves and not just others. We can be unwise, greedy, quarrelsome, arrogant, etc. We need to separate ourselves from our passions and the things that stir the passions.   00:44:37 Rachel: I was wondering about what you just mentioned. About being detached from ego. I was told recently to " Be at peace." in relation to something I did not realize was a distraction. At first, it made me wonder and uncomfortable. Since if I am not at peace, then something of what I spoke of must not be of God. It reminded me instantly of what a holy and wise priest told me. He said, not to speculate over matters. and it was clear, that the only thing needed was to stay in the moment with Our Lord.   00:45:35 Rachel: That these distractions are a result of idle distractions,no matter how good they appear. That God will take care of each moment and situation in His good Providence.   00:50:27 Debra: St. Bonaventure has a beautiful post-Communion prayer   https://tinyurl.com/4de5cj7z   00:50:54 Anthony: Thinking of just yourself and God:  In "A Man for All Seasons," St. Thomas More tries to break Richard Rich from avarice by telling him of the honor he would have as a mere teacher before God as his audience.  Had Richard Rich followed this advice, he would have avoided his moral downfall later on, and maybe even in his saving his soul, much of England would have been spared some of the violence of the 1500s. "Acquire a spirit of peace and thousands around you will be saved." ~ St. Seraphim of Sarov   00:58:18 carolnypaver: If he had just said “no” the people would have wondered if the “brigand” would have been released IF ONLY the Elder had asked.  The Elder removed all doubt.   01:03:03 Rachel: I left a comment above about something you addressed. It seems his current reading ties into the discipline it takes to be detached not only from the things of this world but from oneself as well. Since our nous can be darkened, idle curiosities and distractions can wreak havoc in one's own life and those around them. Since the person given to these distractions will act from that skewed vision instead of the pure place of ordering everything to God and His good will alone   01:18:14 Rachel: You mentioned that purity in our day will be like the martyrs, because of the way the world is..in a beautiful homily our priest once gave, he mentioned St. Catherine of Siena. How she felt desperately that our Lord had left her in grave temptations. Yetm he reassured her that not only had he not left her but that she was more pleasing to him.   01:18:40 Rachel: So, it seems that fighting to stay with our Lord wont always feel rosy.   01:19:15 Ambrose Little: Advertising is not like in the old days. Moby Dick was a 900 page advert for the whaling industry.

About RachelRachel leads product and technical marketing for Chronosphere. Previously, Rachel wore lots of marketing hats at CloudHealth (acquired by VMware), and before that, she led product marketing for cloud-integrated storage at NetApp. She also spent many years as an analyst at Forrester Research. Outside of work, Rachel tries to keep up with her young son and hyper-active dog, and when she has time, enjoys crafting and eating out at local restaurants in Boston where she's based.Links: Chronosphere: https://chronosphere.io Twitter: https://twitter.com/RachelDines Email: rachel@chronosphere.io TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: The company 0x4447 builds products to increase standardization and security in AWS organizations. They do this with automated pipelines that use well-structured projects to create secure, easy-to-maintain and fail-tolerant solutions, one of which is their VPN product built on top of the popular OpenVPN project which has no license restrictions; you are only limited by the network card in the instance. To learn more visit: snark.cloud/deployandgoCorey: Couchbase Capella Database-as-a-Service is flexible, full-featured and fully managed with built in access via key-value, SQL, and full-text search. Flexible JSON documents aligned to your applications and workloads. Build faster with blazing fast in-memory performance and automated replication and scaling while reducing cost. Capella has the best price performance of any fully managed document database. Visit couchbase.com/screaminginthecloud to try Capella today for free and be up and running in three minutes with no credit card required. Couchbase Capella: make your data sing.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. A repeat guest joins me today, and instead of talking about where she works, instead we're going to talk about how she got there. Rachel Dines is the Head of Product and Technical Marketing at Chronosphere. Rachel, thank you for joining me.Rachel: Thanks, Corey. It's great to be here again.Corey: So, back in the early days of me getting started, well, I guess all this nonsense, I was an independent consultant working in the world of cloud cost management and you were over at CloudHealth, which was effectively the 800-pound gorilla in that space. I've gotten louder, and of course, that means noisier as well. You wound up going through the acquisition by VMware at CloudHealth, and now you're over at Chronosphere. We're going to get to all of that, but I'd rather start at the beginning, which, you know, when you're telling stories seems like a reasonable place to start. Your first job out of school, to my understanding, was as an analyst at Forrester is that correct?Rachel: It was yeah. Actually, I started as a research associate at Forrester and eventually became an analyst. But yes, it was Forrester. And when I was leaving school—you know, I studied art history and computer science, which is a great combination, makes a ton of sense—I can explain it another time—and I really wanted to go work at the equivalent of FAANG back then, which was just Google. I really wanted to go work at Google.And I did the whole song-and-dance interview there and did not get the job. Best thing that's ever happened to me because the next day a Forrester recruiter called. I didn't know what Forrester was—once again, I was right out of college—I said, “This sounds kind of interesting. I'll check it out.” Seven years later, I was a principal analyst covering, you know, cloud-to-cloud resiliency and backup to the cloud and cloud storage. And that was an amazing start to my career, that really, I'm credited a lot of the things I've learned and done since then on that start at Forrester.Corey: Well, I'll admit this: I was disturbingly far into my 30s before I started to realize what it is that Forrester and its endless brethren did. I'm almost certain you can tell that story better than I can, so what is it that Forrester does? What is its place in the ecosystem?Rachel: Forrester is one of the two or three biggest industry analyst firms. So, the people that work there—the analysts there—are basically paid to be, like, big thinkers and strategists and analysts, right? There's a reason it's called that. And so the way that we spent all of our time was, you know, talking to interesting large, typically enterprise IT, and I was in the infrastructure and operations group, so I was speaking to infrastructure, ops, precursors to DevOps—DevOps wasn't really a thing back in ye olden times, but we're speaking to them and learning their best practices and publishing reports about the technology, the people and the process that they dealt with. And so you know, over a course of a year, I would talk to hundreds of different large enterprises, the infrastructure and ops leaders at everyone from, like, American Express to Johnson & Johnson to Monsanto, learn from them, write research and reports, and also do things like inquiries and speaking engagements and that kind of stuff.So, the idea of industry analysts is that they're neutral, they're objective. You can go to them for advice, and they can tell you, you know, these are the shortlist of vendors you should consider and this is what you should look for in a solution.Corey: I love the idea of what that role is, but it took me a while as a condescending engineer to really wrap my head around it because I viewed it as oh, it's just for a cover your ass exercise so that when a big company makes a decision, they don't get yelled at later, and they said, “Well, it seemed like the right thing to do. You can't blame us.” And that is an overwhelmingly cynical perspective. But the way it was explained to me, it really was put into context—of all things—by way of using the AWS bill as a lens. There's a whole bunch of tools and scripts and whatnot on GitHub that will tell you different things about your AWS environment, and if I run them in my environment, yeah, they work super well.I run them in a client environment and the thing explodes because it's not designed to work at a scale of 10,000 instances in a single availability zone. It's not designed to do backing off so it doesn't exhaust rate limits across the board. It requires a rethinking at that scale. When you're talking about enterprise-scale, a lot of the Twitter zeitgeist, as it were, about what tools work well and what tools don't for various startups, they fail to cross over into the bowels of a regulated entity that has a bunch of other governance and management concerns that don't really apply. So, there's this idea of okay, now that we're a large, going entity with serious revenue behind this, and migrating to any of these things is a substantial lift. What is the right answer? And that is sort of how I see the role of these companies in the ecosystem playing out. Is that directionally correct?Rachel: I would definitely agree that that is directionally correct. And it was the direction that it was going when I was there at Forrester. And by the way, I've been gone from there for, I think, eight-plus years. So, you know, it's definitely evolved it this space—Corey: A lifetime in tech.Rachel: Literally feels like a lifetime. Towards the end of my time there was when we were starting to get briefings from this bookstore company—you might have heard of them—um, Amazon?Corey: Barnes and Noble.Rachel: Yes. And Barnes and Noble. Yes. So, we're starting to get briefings from Amazon, you know, about Amazon Web Services, and S3 had just been introduced. And I got really excited about Netflix and chaos engineering—this was 2012, right?—and so I did a bunch of research on chaos engineering and tried to figure out how it could apply to the enterprises.And I would, like, bring it to Capital One, and they were like, “Ya crazy.” Turns out I think I was just a little bit ahead of my time, and I'm seeing a lot more of the industry analysts now today looking at like, “Okay, well, yeah, what is Uber doing? Like, what is Netflix doing?” And figure out how that can translate to the enterprise. And it's not a one-to-one, right, just because the people and the structures and the process is so different, so the technology can't just, like, make the leap on its own. But yes, I would definitely agree with that, but it hasn't necessarily always been that way.Corey: Oh, yeah. Like, these days, we're seeing serverless adoption on some levels being driven by enterprises. I mean, Liberty Mutual is doing stuff there that is really at the avant-garde that startups are learning from. It's really neat to see that being turned on its head because you always see these big enterprises saying, “We're like a startup,” but you never see a startup saying, “We're like a big enterprise.” Because that's evocative of something that isn't generally compelling.“Well, what does that mean, exactly? You take forever to do expense reports, and then you get super finicky about it, and you have so much bureaucracy?” No, no, no, it's, “Now, that we're process bound, it's that we understand data sovereignty and things like that.” But you didn't stay there forever. You at some point decided, okay, talking to people who are working in this industry is all well and good, but time for you to go work in that industry yourself. And you went to, I believe, NetApp by way of Riverbed.Rachel: Yes, yeah. So, I left Forrester and I went over to Riverbed to work on their cloud storage solution as a product marketing. And I had an amazing six months at Riverbed, but I happened to join, unfortunately, right around the time they were being taken private, and they ended up divesting their storage product line off to NetApp. And they divested some of their other product lines to some other companies as part of the whole deal going private. So, it was a short stint at Riverbed, although I've met some people that I've stayed in touch with and are still my friends, you know, many years later.And so, yeah, ended up over at NetApp. And it wasn't necessarily what I had initially planned for, but it was a really fun opportunity to take a cloud-integrated storage product—so it was an appliance that people put in their data centers; you could send backups to it, and it shipped those backups on the back end to S3 and then to Glacier when that came out—trying to make that successful in a company that was really not overly associated with cloud. That was a really fun process and a fun journey. And now I look at NetApp and where they are today, and they've acquired Spot and they've acquired CloudCheckr, and they're, like, really going all-in in public cloud. And I like to think, like, “Hey, I was in the early days of that.” But yeah, so that was an interesting time in my life for multiple reasons.Corey: Yeah, Spot was a fascinating product, and I was surprised to see it go to NetApp. It was one of those acquisitions that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me at the time. NetApp has always been one of those companies I hold in relatively high regard. Back when I was coming up in the industry, a bit before the 2012s or so, it was routinely ranked as the number one tech employer on a whole bunch of surveys. And I don't think these were the kinds of surveys you can just buy your way to the top of.People who worked there seemed genuinely happy, the technology was fantastic, and it was, for example, the one use case in which I would run a database where its data store lived on a network file system. I kept whining at the EFS people over at AWS for years that well, EFS is great and all but it's no NetApp. Then they released NetApps on tap on FSX as a first-party service, in which case, okay, thank you. You have now solved every last reservation I have around this. Onward.And I still hold the system in high regard. But it has, on some level, seen an erosion. We're no longer in a world where I am hurling big money—or medium money by enterprise standards—off to NetApp for their filers. It instead is something that the cloud providers are providing, and last time I checked, no matter how much I spend on AWS they wouldn't let me shove a NetApp filer into us-east-1 without asking some very uncomfortable questions.Rachel: Yeah. The whole storage industry is changing really quickly, and more of the traditional on-premises storage vendors have needed to adapt or… not, you know, be very successful. I think that NetApp's done a nice job of adapting in recent years. But I'd been in storage and backup for my entire career at that point, and I was like, I need to get out. I'm done with storage. I'm done with backup. I'm done with disaster recovery. I had that time; I want to go try something totally new.And that was how I ended up leaving NetApp and joining CloudHealth. Because I'd never really done the startup thing. I done a medium-sized company at Riverbed; I'd done a pretty big company at NetApp. I've always been an entrepreneur at heart. I started my first business on the playground in second grade, and it was reselling sticks of gum. Like, I would go use my allowance to buy a big pack of gum, and then I sold the sticks individually for ten cents apiece, making a killer margin. And it was a subscription, actually. [laugh].Corey: Administrations generally—at least public schools—generally tend to turn a—have a dim view of those things, as I recall from my misspent youth.Rachel: Yeah. I was shut down pretty quickly, but it was a brilliant business model. It was—so you had to join the club to even be able to buy into getting the sticks of gum. I was, you know, all over the subscription business [laugh] back then.Corey: And area I want to explore here is you mentioned that you double-majored. One of those majors was computer science—art history was sort of set aside for the moment, it doesn't really align with either direction here—then you served as a research associate turned analyst, and then you went into product marketing, which is an interesting direction to go in. Why'd you do it?Rachel: You know, product marketing and industry analysts are there's a lot of synergy; there's a lot of things that are in common between those two. And in fact, when you see people moving back and forth from the analyst world to the vendor side, a lot of the time it is to product marketing or product management. I mean, product marketing, our whole job is to take really complex technical concepts and relate them back to business concepts and make them make sense of the broader world and tell a narrative around it. That's a lot of what an analyst is doing too. So, you know, analysts are writing, they're giving public talks, they're coming up with big ideas; that's what a great product marketer is doing also.So, for me, that shift was actually very natural. And by the way, like, when I graduated from school, I knew I was never going to code for a living. I had learned all I was going to learn and I knew it wasn't for me. Huge props, like, you know, all the people that do code for a living, I knew I couldn't do it. I wasn't cut out for it.Corey: I found somewhat similar discoveries on my own journey. I can configure things for a living, it's fun, but I still need to work with people, past a certain point. I know I've talked about this before on some of these shows, but for me, when starting out independently, I sort of assumed at some level, I was going to shut it down, and well, and then I'll go back to being an SRE or managing an ops team. And it was only somewhat recently that I had the revelation that if everything that I'm building here collapses out from under me or gets acquired or whatnot and I have to go get a real job again, I'll almost certainly be doing something in the marketing space as opposed to the engineering space. And that was an interesting adjustment to my self-image as I went through it.Because I've built everything that I've been doing up until this point, aligned at… a certain level of technical delivery and building things as an engineer, admittedly a mediocre one. And it took me a fair bit of time to get, I guess, over the idea of myself in that context of, “Wow, you're not really an engineer. Are you a tech worker?” Kind of. And I sort of find myself existing in the in-between spaces.Did you have similar reticence when you went down the marketing path or was it something that you had, I guess, a more mature view of it [laugh] than I did and said, “Yeah, I see the value immediately,” whereas I had to basically be dragged there kicking and screaming?Rachel: Well, first of all, Corey, congratulations for coming to terms with the fact that you are a marketer. I saw it in you from the minute I met you, and I think I've known you since before you were famous. That's my claim to fame is that I knew you before you were famous. But for me personally, no, I didn't actually have that stigma. But that does exist in this industry.I mean, I think people are—think they look down on marketing as kind of like ugh, you know, “The product sells itself. The product markets itself. We don't need that.” But when you're on the inside, you know you can have an amazing product and if you don't position it well and if you don't message it well, it's never going to succeed.Corey: Our consulting [sub-projects 00:14:31] are basically if you bring us in, you will turn a profit on the engaging. We are selling what basically [unintelligible 00:14:37] money. It is one of the easiest ROI calculations. And it still requires a significant amount of work on positioning even on the sales process alone. There's no such thing as an easy enterprise sale.And you're right, in fact, I think the first time we met, I was still running a DevOps team at a company and I was deploying the product that you were doing marketing for. And that was quite the experience. Honestly, it was one of the—please don't take this the wrong way at all—but you were at CloudHealth at the time and the entire point was that it was effectively positioned in such a way of, right, this winds up solving a lot of the problems that we have in the AWS bill. And looking at how some of those things were working, it was this is an annoying, obnoxious problem that I wish I could pay to make someone else's problem, just to make it go away. Well, that indirectly led to exactly where we are now.And it's really been an interesting ride, just seeing how that whole thing has evolved. How did you wind up finding yourself at CloudHealth? Because after VMware, you said it was time to go to a startup. And it's interesting because I look at where you've been now, and CloudHealth itself gets dwarfed by VMware, which is sort of the exact opposite of a startup, due to the acquisition. But CloudHealth was independent for years while you were there.Rachel: Yeah, it was. I was at CloudHealth for about three-plus years before we were acquired. You know, how did I end up there? It's… it's all hazy. I was looking at a lot of startups, I was looking for, like, you know, a Series B company, about 50 people, I wanted something in the public cloud space, but not storage—if I could get away from storage that was the dream—and I met the folks from CloudHealth, and obviously, I hadn't heard about—I didn't know about cloud cost management or cloud governance or FinOps, like, none of those were things back then, but I was I just was really attracted to the vision of the founders.The founders were, you know, Joe Kinsella and Dan Phillips and Dave Eicher, and I was like, “Hey, they've built startups before. They've got a great idea.” Joe had felt this pain when he was a customer of AWS in the early days, and so I was like—Corey: As have we all.Rachel: Right?Corey: I don't think you'll find anyone in this space who hasn't been a customer in that situation and realized just how painful and maddening the whole space is.Rachel: Exactly, yeah. And he was an early customer back in, I think, 2014, 2015. So yeah, I met the team, I really believed in their vision, and I jumped in. And it was really amazing journey, and I got to build a pretty big team over time. By the time we were acquired a couple of years later, I think we were maybe three or 400 people. And actually, fun story. We were acquired the same week my son was born, so that was an exciting experience. A lot of change happened in my life all at once.But during the time there, I got to, you know, work with some really, really cool large cloud-scale organizations. And that was during that time that I started to learn more about Kubernetes and Mesos at the time, and started on the journey that led me to where I am now. But that was one of the happiest accidents, similar to the happy accident of, like, how did I end up at Forrester? Well, I didn't get the job at Google. [laugh]. How did I end up at CloudHealth? I got connected with the founders and their story was really inspiring.Corey: Couchbase Capella Database-as-a-Service is flexible, full-featured and fully managed with built in access via key-value, SQL, and full-text search. Flexible JSON documents aligned to your applications and workloads. Build faster with blazing fast in-memory performance and automated replication and scaling while reducing cost. Capella has the best price performance of any fully managed document database. Visit couchbase.com/screaminginthecloud to try Capella today for free and be up and running in three minutes with no credit card required. Couchbase Capella: make your data sing.Corey: It's amusing to me the idea that, oh, you're at NetApp if you want to go do something that is absolutely not storage. Great. So, you go work at CloudHealth. You're like, “All right. Things are great.” Now, to take a big sip of scalding hot coffee and see just how big AWS billing data could possibly be. Yeah, oops, you're a storage company all over again.Some of our, honestly, our largest bills these days are RDS, Athena, and of course, S3 for all of the bills storage we wind up doing for our customers. And it is… it is not small. And that has become sort of an eye-opener for me just the fact that this is, on some level, a big data problem.Rachel: Yeah.Corey: And how do you wind up even understanding all the data that lives in just the outputs of the billing system? Which I feel is sort of a good setup for the next question of after the acquisition, you stayed at VMware for a while and then matriculated out to where you are now where you're the Head of Product and Technical Marketing at Chronosphere, which is in the observability space. How did you get there from cloud bills?Rachel: Yeah. So, it all makes sense when I piece it together in my mind. So, when I was at CloudHealth, one of the big, big pain points I was seeing from a lot of our customers was the growth in their monitoring bills. Like, they would be like, “Okay, thanks. You helped us, you know, with our EC2 reservations, and we did right-sizing, and you help with this. But, like, can you help with our Datadog bill? Like, can you help with our New Relic bill?”And that was becoming the next biggest line item for them. And in some cases, they were spending more on monitoring and APM and like, what we now call some things observability, they were spending more on that than they were on their public cloud, which is just bananas. So, I would see them making really kind of bizarre and sometimes they'd have to make choices that were really not the best choices. Like, “I guess we're not going to monitor the lab anymore. We're just going to uninstall the agents because we can't pay this anymore.”Corey: Going down from full observability into sampling. I remember that. The New Relic shuffle is what I believe we call it at the time. Let's be clear, they have since fixed a lot of their pricing challenges, but it was the idea of great suddenly we're doing a lot more staging environments, and they come knocking asking for more money but it's a—I don't need that level of visibility in the pre-prod environments, I guess. I hate doing it that way because then you have a divergence between pre-prod and actual prod. But it was economically just a challenge. Yeah, because again, when it comes to cloud, architecture and cost are really one and the same.Rachel: Exactly. And it's not so much that, like—sure, you know, you can fix the pricing model, but there's still the underlying issue of it's not black and white, right? My pre-prod data is not the same value as my prod data, so I shouldn't have to treat it the same way, shouldn't have to pay for it the same way. So, seeing that trend on the one hand, and then, on the other hand, 2017, 2018, I started working on the container cost allocation products at CloudHealth, and we were—you know, this was even before that, maybe 2017, we were arguing about, like, Mesos and Kubernetes and which one was going to be, and I got kind of—got very interested in that world.And so once again, as I was getting to the point where I was ready to leave CloudHealth, I was like, okay, there's two key things I'm seeing in the market. One is people need a change in their monitoring and observability; what they're doing now isn't working. And two, cloud-native is coming up, coming fast, and it's going to really disrupt this market. So, I went looking for someone that was at the intersection of the two. And that's when I met the team at Chronosphere, and just immediately hit it off with the founders in a similar way to where I hit it off with the founders that CloudHealth. At Chronosphere, the founders had felt pain—Corey: Team is so important in these things.Rachel: It's really the only thing to me. Like, you spend so much time at work. You need to love who you work with. You need to love your—not love them, but, you know, you need to work with people that you enjoy working with and people that you learn from.Corey: You don't have to love all your coworkers, and at best you can get away with just being civil with them, but it's so much nicer when you can have a productive, working relationship. And that is very far from we're going to go hang out, have beers after work because that leads to a monoculture. But the ability to really enjoy the people that you work with is so important and I wish that more folks paid attention to that.Rachel: Yeah, that's so important to me. And so I met the team, the team was fantastic, just incredibly smart and dedicated people. And then the technology, it makes sense. We like to joke that we're not just taking the box—the observability box—and writing Kubernetes in Crayon on the outside. It was built from the ground up for cloud-native, right?So, it's built for this speed, containers coming and going all the time, for the scale, just how much more metrics and observability data that containers emit, the interdependencies between all of your microservices and your containers, like, all of that stuff. When you combine it makes the older… let's call them legacy. It's crazy to call, like, some of these SaaS solutions legacy but they really are; they weren't built for cloud-native, they were built for VMs and a more traditional cloud infrastructure, and they're starting to fall over. So, that's how I got involved. It's actually, as we record, it's my one-year anniversary at Chronosphere. Which is, it's been a really wild year. We've grown a lot.Corey: Congratulations. I usually celebrate those by having a surprise meeting with my boss and someone I've never met before from HR. They don't offer your coffee. They have the manila envelope of doom in front of them and hold on, it's going to be a wild meeting. But on the plus side, you get to leave work early today.Rachel: So, good thing you run in your own business now, Corey.Corey: Yeah, it's way harder for me to wind up getting surprise-fired. I see it coming [laugh]—Rachel: [laugh].Corey: —aways away now, and it looks like an economic industry trend.Rachel: [sigh]. Oh, man. Well, anyhow.Corey: Selfishly, I have to ask. You spent a lot of time working in cloud cost, to a point where I learned an awful lot from you as I was exploring the space and learning as I went. And, on some level, for me at least, it's become an aspect of my identity, for better or worse. What was it like for you to leave and go into an orthogonal space? And sure, there's significant overlap, but it's a very different problem aimed at different buyers, and honestly, I think it is a more exciting problem that you are in now, from a business strategic perspective because there's a limited amount of what you can cut off that goes up theoretically to a hundred percent of the cloud bill. But getting better observability means you can accelerate your feature velocity and that turns into something rather significant rather quickly. But what was it like?Rachel: It's uncomfortable, for sure. And I tend to do this to myself. I get a little bit itchy the same way I wanted to get out of storage. It's not because there's anything wrong with storage; I just wanted to go try something different. I tend to, I guess, do this to myself every five years ago, I make a slightly orthogonal switch in the space that I'm in.And I think it's because I love learning something new. The jumping into something new and having the fresh eyes is so terrifying, but it's also really fun. And so it was really hard to leave cloud cost management. I mean, I got to Chronosphere and I was like, “Show me the cloud bill.” And I was like, “Do we have Reserved Instances?” Like, “Are we doing Committed Use Discounts with Google?”I just needed to know. And then that helped. Okay, I got a look at the cloud bill. I felt a little better. I made a few optimizations and then I got back to my actual job which was, you know, running product marketing for Chronosphere. And I still love to jump in and just make just a little recommendation here and there. Like, “Oh, I noticed the costs are creeping up on this. Did we consider this?”Corey: Oh, I still get a kick out of that where I was talking to an Amazonian whose side project was 110 bucks a month, and he's like, yeah, I don't think you could do much over here. It's like, “Mmm, I'll bet you a drink I can.”—Rachel: Challenge accepted.Corey: —it's like, “All right. You're on.” Cut it to 40 bucks. And he's like, “How did you do that?” It's because I know what I'm doing and this pattern repeats.And it's, are the architectural misconfigurations bounded by contacts that turn into so much. And I still maintain that I can look at the AWS bill for most environments for last month and have a pretty good idea, based upon nothing other than that, what's going on in the environment. It turns out that maybe that's a relatively crappy observability system when all is said and done, but it tells an awful lot. I can definitely see the appeal of wanting to get away from purely cost-driven or cost-side information and into things that give a lot more context into how things are behaving, how they're performing. I think there's been something of an industry rebrand away from monitoring, alerting, and trending over time to calling it observability.And I know that people are going to have angry opinions about that—and it's imperative that you not email me—but it all is getting down to the same thing of is my site up or down? Or in larger distributed systems, how down is it? And I still think we're learning an awful lot. I cringe at the early days of Nagios when that was what I was depending upon to tell me whether my site was up or not. And oh, yeah, turns out that when the Nagios server goes down, you have some other problems you need to think about. It became this iterative, piling up on and piling up on and piling up on until you can get sort of good at it.But the entire ecosystem around understanding what's going on in your application has just exploded since the last time I was really running production sites of any scale, in anger. So, it really would be a different world today.Rachel: It's changing so fast and that's part of what makes it really exciting. And the other big thing that I love about this is, like, this is a must-have. This is not table stakes. This is not optional. Like, a great observability solution is the difference between conquering a market or being overrun.If you look at what our founders—our founders at Chronosphere came from Uber, right? They ran the observability team at Uber. And they truly believe—and I believe them, too—that this was a competitive advantage for them. The fact that you could go to Uber and it's always up and it's always running and you know you're not going to have an issue, that became an advantage to them that helped them conquer new markets. We do the same thing for our customers. Corey: The entire idea around how these things are talked about in terms of downtime and the rest is just sort of ludicrous, on some level, because we take specific cases as industry truths. Like, I still remember, when Amazon was down one day when I was trying to buy a pair of underwear. And by that theory, it was—great, I hit a 404 page and a picture of a dog. Well, according to a lot of these industry truisms, then, well, one day a week for that entire rotation of underpants, I should have just been not wearing any. But no here in reality, I went back an hour later and bought underpants.Now, counterpoint: If every third time I wound up trying to check out at Amazon, I wound up hitting that error page, I would spend a lot more money at Target. There is a point at which repeated downtime comes at a cost. But one-offs for some businesses are just fine. Counterpoint with if Uber is down when you're trying to get a ride, well, that ride [unintelligible 00:28:36] may very well be lost for them and there is a definitive cost. No one's going to go back and click on an ad as well, for example, and Amazon is increasingly an advertising company.So, there's a lot of nuance to it. I think we can generally say that across the board, in most cases, downtime bad. But as far as how much that is and what form that looks like and what impact that has on your company, it really becomes situationally dependent.Rachel: I'm just going to gloss over the fact that you buy your underwear on Amazon and really not make any commentary on that. But I mean—Corey: They sell everything there. And the problem, of course, is the crappy counterfeit underwear under the Amazon Basics brand that they ripped off from the good underwear brands. But that's a whole ‘nother kettle of wax for a different podcast.Rachel: Yep. Once again, not making any commentary on your—on that. Sorry, I lost my train of thought. I work in my dining room. My husband, my dog are all just—welcome to pandemic life here.Corey: No, it's fair. They live there. We don't, as a general rule.Rachel: [laugh]. Very true. Yeah. You're not usually in my dining room, all of you but—oh, so uptime downtime, also not such a simple conversation, right? It's not like all of Amazon is down or all of DoorDash is down. It might just be one individual service or one individual region or something that is—Corey: One service in one subset of one availability zone. And this is the problem. People complain about the Amazon status page, but if every time something was down, it reflected there, you'd see a never ending sea of red, and that would absolutely erode confidence in the platform. Counterpoint when things are down for you and it's not red. It's maddening. And there's no good answer.Rachel: No. There's no good answer. There's no good answer. And the [laugh] yeah, the Amazon status page. And this is something I—bringing me back to my Forrester days, availability and resiliency in the cloud was one of the areas I focused on.And, you know, this was once again, early days of public cloud, but remember when Netflix went down on Christmas Eve, and—God, what year was this? Maybe… 2012, and that was the worst possible time they could have had downtime because so many people are with their families watching their Doctor Who Christmas Specials, which is what I was trying to watch at the time.Corey: Yeah, now you can't watch it. You have to actually talk to those people, and none of us can stand them. And oh, dear Lord, yeah—Rachel: What a nightmare.Corey: —brutal for the family dynamic. Observability is one of those things as well that unlike you know, the AWS bill, it's very easy to explain to people who are not deep in the space where it's, “Oh, great. Okay. So, you have a website. It goes well. Then you want—it gets slow, so you put it on two computers. Great. Now, it puts on five computers. Now, it's on 100 computers, half on the East Coast, half on the West Coast. Two of those computers are down. How do you tell?”And it turns in—like, they start to understand the idea of understanding what's going on in a complex system. “All right, how many people work at your company?” “2000,” “Great. Three laptops are broken. How do you figure out which ones are broken?” If you're one of the people with a broken laptop, how do you figure out whether it's your laptop or the entire system? And it lends itself really well to analogies, whereas if I'm not careful when I describe what I do, people think I can get them a better deal on underpants. No, not that kind of Amazon bill. I'm sorry.Rachel: [laugh]. Yeah, or they started to think that you're some kind of accountant or a tax advisor, but.Corey: Which I prefer, as opposed to people at neighborhood block parties thinking that I'm the computer guy because then it's, “Oh, I'm having trouble with the printer.” It's, “Great. Have you tried [laugh] throwing away and buying a new one? That's what I do.”Rachel: This is a huge problem I have in my life of everyone thinking I'm going to fix all of their computer and cloud things. And I come from a big tech family. My whole family is in tech, yet somehow I'm the one at family gatherings doing, “Did you turn it off and turn it back on again?” Like, somehow that's become my job.Corey: People get really annoyed when you say that and even more annoyed when it fixes the problem.Rachel: Usually does. So, the thread I wanted to pick back up on though before I got distracted by my husband and dog wandering around—at least my son is not in the room with us because he'd have a lot to say—is that the standard industry definition of observability—so once again, people are going to write to us, I'm sure; they can write to me, not you, Corey, about observability, it's just the latest buzzword. It's just monitoring, or you know—Corey: It's hipster monitoring.Rachel: Hipster monitoring. That's what you like to call it. I don't really care what we call it. The important thing is it gets us through three phases, right? The first is knowing that something is wrong. If you don't know what's wrong, how are you supposed to ever go fix it, right? So, you need to know that those three laptops are broken.The next thing is you need to know how bad is it? Like, if those three laptops are broken is the CEO, the COO, and the CRO, that's real bad. If it's three, you know, random peons in marketing, maybe not so bad. So, you need to triage, you need to understand roughly, like, the order of magnitude of it, and then you need to fix it. [laugh].Once you fix it, you can go back and then say, all right, what was the root cause of this? How do we make sure this doesn't happen again? So, the way you go through that cycle, you're going to use metrics, you might use logs, you might use traces, but that's not the definition of observability. Observability is all about getting through that, know, then triage, then fix it, then understand.Corey: I really want to thank you for taking the time to speak with me today. If people do want to learn more, give you their unfiltered opinions, where's the best place to find you?Rachel: Well, you can find me on Twitter, I'm @RachelDines. You can also email me, rachel@chronosphere.io. I hope I don't regret giving out that email address. That's a good way you can come and argue with me about what is observability. I will not be giving advice on cloud bills. For that, you should go to Corey. But yeah, that's a good way to get in touch.Corey: Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.Rachel: Yeah, thank you.Corey: Rachel Dines, Head of Product and Technical Marketing at Chronosphere. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, and castigate me with an angry comment telling me that I really should have followed the thread between the obvious link between art history and AWS billing, which is almost certainly a more disturbing Caravaggio.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

Tonight we concluded letter 75. This letter and those that follow all focus on particular temptations that Anastasia is facing as she approaches her decision to enter into the religious life. Theophan in Letter 75 focuses on the tricks of the enemy to dissuade her or throw her into despair because of the weaknesses, sins, and poverty that she sees within herself. His counsel to her is to allow these things to humble her but not to throw her into despair. Her endurance of the struggle is for the sake of crowns, he tells her; that is, the growth and perfection of the virtues.  In letter 76, Theophan begins to focus on the temptations that come from unbelievers. These are much more subtle, he warns her, and those who engage her will seek to cram a lot of worthless garbage into her head. They might be wise and clever in the ways of the world but underneath their words can be a malicious spirit that poses a threat to her faith. She must be willing to let what they say go in one ear and out the other and not purposely expose herself to the narrow mindedness and hard heartedness of those opposed to the faith. She must examine her own bewilderment and leave no trace of it within her mind and heart. Faith is a gift of God instilled within us by our very creation. It is older and greater than education and society. These things pass on knowledge to a new generation.  However, we must understand that religious belief is part of every race because it is also the part of every man. In fact, “man is not man”, Theophan says, without it. To cast away our faith, to undermine it through neglect, is to distort and mutilate ourselves. He who does not have faith departs from the fundamental reality of who we are as human beings and in the process can make himself freakish on both a moral and psychological level. The perception and experience of reality is undermined by cutting oneself off from He who is Reality itself. Our response to this must be to embrace our faith fully and to allow it to transform us without any opposition; to allow the grace of God to inflame and purify our hearts. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:05:42 FrDavid Abernethy, CO: bottom of page 289   00:14:16 Rachel:

Have you been looking for a group of like-minded women who you can learn, grow and thrive with in both life and business? If so, then look no further. Today, Erin and Rachel are sharing what The Confident Woman Collective is and why it may be the perfect fit for YOU! Here are few highlights: - Learning from multiple people in different speciality areas within the Collective - The live weekly trainings you'll will receive - Who the Collective is meant for (hint: it's probably you!) - The relationships you will gain from being a part of the Collective - How this membership was born out of Rachel's own experience - And so much more! If you've been thinking about joining The Confident Woman Collective, what are you waiting for? The Collective is a safe space, (a container), for other female creators, entrepreneurs, coaches, leaders of all stages. Inside women give and receive community, connection, belonging, sisterhood, create memorable experiences, and do life and biz together. It's your one-stop shop for complete access to multiple coaches, mentors, guides, creators, entrepreneurs that are experts in different fields, disciplines, and areas in life and business. Now is the time to become a founding member of the Collective! Join us in the Collective by heading to https://www.theconfidentwomancollective.com! Resources: Chasing Perfection Book: http://chasingperfectionbook.com The Confident Woman Collective: https://www.theconfidentwomancollective.com The Confident Woman Community (Free): https://www.iamrachelbrooks.com/community 20-Ways to Build Self-Confidence (Free Gift): https://www.iamrachelbrooks.com/selfconfidence Connect with us: Erin's Instagram: @the.erin.klein.show Rachel's Instagram: @iamrachelbrooks The Confident Woman Podcast Instagram: @theconfidentwomanpodcast Quotes: “You're sitting at a table with like-minded women, all on a journey, all on the same outcome to become a better version of yourself.” - Rachel “You can talk about those hard things. People will get you. That people will understand you. And we're here to encourage you along the way.” - Rachel --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/theconfidentwoman/message

How does being positive 24/7 affect you? Toxic Positivity has been a hot topic as of late. Just like how it can be difficult to be around someone who is negative all the time, it can also be just as difficult to be around someone who is so positive all the time. In this episode, Rachel and Erin dig a little deeper into what exactly toxic positivity is and their thoughts on the subject. The girls cover: + Taking a second look at our natural emotional response + The importance of compassion, understanding, and empathy + Finding balance + Different ways to preface conversations when you just want an ear to listen + How we, as women, are more alike than we are different Resources: Erin's Instagram: @the.erin.klein.show Rachel's Instagram: @iamrachelbrooks The Confident Woman Podcast Instagram: @theconfidentwomanpodcast The Confident Woman Collective: https://www.theconfidentwomancollective.com Quotes: “Toxic Positivity is being so overly positive all the time, about every situation, that sometimes it's looked down upon to experience any other emotion that isn't positive or happy.” - Erin “There's really a fine line. You want to be positive and encouraging but yet you also don't want to minimize emotions and make that person feel like whatever they are feeling isn't valid.” - Rachel “You have to have different people in your life to talk to about certain things.” - Erin “People want to feel better and to feel more positive but they want to feel validated for how they feel in the moment as well.” - Erin --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/theconfidentwoman/message

What comes to mind when you hear the word leadership? Are you ready to become a leader yourself? Today, Erin and Rachel dive into the real definition of leadership and how you can start to exemplify leadership in all facets of your life! The girls talk more on: + What leadership actually means (hint: it's not what you think!) + The #1 thing you cannot let hinder the conversation + Why being in a leadership position isn't actually necessary in order to lead + The importance of having open and honest communication + How being an extra set of eyes can shed light on things others might not see + The best ways to approach those in leadership positions with your thoughts and ideas + And so much more! Resources: Erin's Instagram: @the.erin.klein.show Rachel's Instagram: @iamrachelbrooks The Confident Woman Podcast Instagram: @theconfidentwomanpodcast Quotes: “They notice you as somebody who's willing to step up and bring something to light that needs to be brought to light.” - Erin “People will follow a leader with a bigger heart than their skill set.” - Erin “Ultimately it comes down to respect for the bigger picture, not necessarily that individual.” - Rachel “You need to come to the table with an open heart and open mind.” - Rachel --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/theconfidentwoman/message

Females In Business with Rachel Edlich In this episode, Rachel Edlich shares how she started as an entrepreneur, the influence her father had on her success today, her partnership with her sister, how she learned to be a successful product creator and marketer and so much more. Radical Skincare, the business she co-founded with her sister Liz Edlich, is a powerhouse skincare line that can be found in over 900 retail stores and in more than 17 countries. They also have a Brand Partner program that is empowering mostly women and some men, to be successful entrepreneurs in their own right. This was an enjoyable conversation with Rachel and I look forward to interviewing her again down the road at their next successful milestone. Also, check out their book "Get Radical: Secrets to Living a Life You Love": https://amzn.to/3jkyoFD As always, thanks so much for listening! Joe Rachel Edlich Co-founder - Radical Skincare Website: https://radicalskincare.com Discount Code: Costello10 Their Book "Get Radical: Secrets to Living a Life You Love" Our affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3jkyoFD Instagram: @radicalskincare Facebook: @RadicalSkincare YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/radicalskincare Twitter:@radicalskincare LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/radical-skincare Email: customercare@radicalskincare.com Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: "Out and About", Song: "Chicken & Scotch" 2014 Andy's Links: http://andygalore.com/ https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit: https://joecostelloglobal.libsyn.com Subscribe, Rate & Review: I would love if you could subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest rating & review. This will encourage other people to listen and allow us to grow as a community. The bigger we get as a community, the bigger the impact we can have on the world. Sign up for Joe's email newsletter at: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#signup For transcripts of episodes, go to: https://joecostelloglobal.lybsyn.com Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joecostello Transcript Joe: Rachel, welcome to the show. I'm excited to have you. I thought I might also see this, but I guess Liz is not going to be here with us. So you're going to have to answer all the questions that I have. Rachel: That's great. I'm ready. I'm Joe: Ok, Rachel: Ready. Joe: Ok, OK. First off, the company's name is Radical Skincare. Is that correct? Rachel: That's right. Joe: Ok, this is really cool because I don't have a lot of women on the show as much as I would like to have more women, because I think there's a big separation in the amount of exposure to women that are running, businesses that are successful. So, first of all, thank you so much for coming on the show. Rachel: It's my pleasure, thank you so much for having me here. Joe: Yeah. Awesome. OK, so I always like to get a back story from my guests because I think it's really important that a lot of times podcast will just kick off and people either know the guest that they don't and they'll do a little reading on them and not saying me as the host, but people that might listen to it don't know who someone is. But more importantly, I think how you got to where you are today stems from all that happened before at this point. And I think so much of that is missed on a lot of podcasts. People all of a sudden they just start talking about what they're doing today. And the newest book that they have out and all this other stuff. So if you don't mind, I would love for you to give a little bit of history and you can go back as far as you want. I've had people go back to kindergarten, so I don't care. And and since Liz isn't here, you can also, if you want, put in a little bit about that whole, you know, how it happened with her and you and the connection of all of it. So now I will be quiet and let you click. Rachel: Ok, no problem, while I was going to say how much time do we have? Joe: Yes. Rachel: It's like if I go back to kindergarten. Yeah. So, you know, so for for us, we were raised in Virginia on an 18 acre farm, and our father was a very well known worldwide reconstructive surgeon who specialized in wound healing and skin rejuvenation. And he started the burn unit at University of Virginia. He invented stere strips. He invented dissolvable sutures. So, you know, his commitment was really to science and changing the world like that was my dad and my mom was a bit different. She was an actress on Broadway. She was in West Side Story. But, you know, she basically was just God kissed her and said, you will sing. And so she was in West Side Story, but then decided, hey, I'm going to I'm going to have kids. And then she met my dad. So we were really bookended by two very interesting people. And it was my sister, my brother and I. And growing up on a farm surrounded by my father's brilliance. And we were pretty much we'd go to the hospital with him, work in the lab. We did research with him if there was ever a problem. My dad was like, we'll invent it. See, my brother, my brother broke his clavicle and he's like, we're inventing the shoulder of the perfect shoulder pads. We did. Rachel: I've done I don't know how many research papers on lacrosse injuries because I was a lacrosse player or whatever. So it was like, you know, we we really were raised in that environment all the time. And we got a very, very strong work ethic, because imagine we were basically the ones running a farm as well. So from that, you know, I ended up wanting to really follow being able to help other people. I thought, gosh, I think I might become a therapist, that, you know, that's what I'm going to go and I'm going to I'm good at communicating with other people. I think I read situations really well. So I went to college. My sister went to we all went to actually we all went to the same college. And I got a counseling degree. And then I was like, OK, well, you know, if I really want to sit in a room all day and go through that process. So I ended up running a Boys and girls club for like 800 children. And I love working with kids and developing programs and drug prevention programs and all the different things that the Boys and Girls Club provided. But at the same time, I love to be able to give back that way. I also wanted to make money. Joe: This is. Rachel: I'm like, OK, you know, I love working with children and, you know, especially where a lot of them were in really tough situations. But I said I could do that as my volunteer time. So my sister was living in L.A. and we were always super close. And she's like, well, just come move out here. And it's like, I can't move without a job. You know, it's like having all these reasons why I can't. And I was like, you know what? I'm doing it. I was like, Liz, I can't come without a job. And she's like, well, you know, I just raised money for a company. She was in money management and venture capital, and she was like, and they actually need someone and to run their customer service department. And I was like, I can do that. So, you know, you're young. You Joe: Right. Rachel: Can make me make these big moves. So I packed up my dog in my house and I moved out to L.A. and Liz and I started working together and deciding we were going to start a company. Really wanted to always at the core of us is like it has to be driven with purpose. We have to have like we always need that passion. We're very entrepreneurial because we just can't help ourselves. It's like that's just our nature. So we got into the skincare business and in 1999 and doing, you know, product development, a lot of research, science, of course, you know, coming from a science background with my father, that was that like completely made sense to us. So we started creating products for celebrities, for retailers or QVC, Aitchison, a lot of brand development. So that was kind of our entree into working together. And I know everyone's like the big question is, how do you work with your sister? Joe: It's right, it's tough. Rachel: Everyone's like, how do you guys do it? And we're super blessed. I know we're rare. We're like or like a rare breed, but we're both different in our strengths. So we are able to really complement. Each other and I think there's the bond of our family and that we look after each other. And I mean, that's been probably one of the most special things about our relationship and being in business together, kind of coming into how Radical happened was we were doing our business. We were like at one hundred and fifty million dollars and sales. I mean, we were doing amazing, loving what we were doing. And then I had my second child and I developed rosacea. So, you know, life throws in like little things to move things around, make you start thinking. And I was like, wow, you know, I've always had good skin and my skin was red, splotchy, irritated. I tried putting makeup on. It made it worse. It was the first time where I had actually had this level of insecurity. Like I'd walk into a room and it's like my face walked in first and people I'm like, are they looking at me? Oh, my gosh. They can tell. And, you know, it's like this weird thing that you go through when you're when you're experiencing how you look on the outside matter so much. So you have to like say, OK, it's how you feel on the inside. It's a this is an inside job. You know, work life is not perfect. We don't we're not going to always look perfect. Right. Joe: Mm hmm. Rachel: So, you know, how we feel on the inside is felt by the world. And I went to the dermatologist. They basically said, you'll be on medication for the rest of your life. I'm like, are you joking about it? This is like a little quick fix. You know, you're going to Joe: Right. Rachel: Give me some cream and it's going to be gone and then I'm done. Poof, right. And they're like, no. I was like, oh, great. So I ended up trying on everything they gave me. And my skin was always more inflamed, burning. It was on fire. My face was on fire. And my sister, she's six years older. And since she's not with us, I can always like make her the older sister. Joe: Yes. Rachel: But she Joe: Yeah. Rachel: Is. Joe: There we go, I knew this was going to start sooner Rachel: Yeah, Joe: Or later. Rachel: Exactly. That's what happens when we're not together Joe: That's right. Rachel: On the Joe: That's Rachel: Podcast. Joe: What she gets for not being here. Rachel: Right. Joe: Right. Rachel: Right. So I'll make sure she listens to this. So she's like, Rachel, I'm older than you. It's going to be happening to you, too, but I'm looking in the mirror and gravity is really, truly real. Like this stuff is happening. My skin is just now bouncing back the way I used to, that I wanted it to. And I said, OK, Liz. Well, I guess this is the perfect storm. This is like between the two of us. And I said we have to create the strongest skin care for antiaging, but design for sensitive skin. So thank goodness we had the brilliance of my father and his ability for science and research. And then we got together with a team of chemists and we basically said we are going to put the best of the best in the bottle. We had no intentions of selling it. It wasn't like, oh, we need to be in another skin care business. Not at all. We were like, put the best of the best in the bottle. We didn't care about the cost. We weren't worried about the margins. We weren't worried. We're just like, let's just fix our face. So we got with the scientist, we really started to look at some of the leading reasons for aging skin coming up with solutions for that and coming up with a technology which was our TRALA cell technology, where we're able to deliver all the powerful ingredients to the skin without irritation. Rachel: And after my skin, after just three weeks, my skin completely transformed. I was able to get off all my medication. I'm telling you, it was like adversity brought complete opportunity for us in that moment. And my sister, people were noticing her skin changing. We gave it to friends and family and like little bottles that were like serum moisturizer, you know, it's like in the back of the lab, we're like, okay, here you go. You got a tray. And and people were like calling us like, what is this stuff? So listen, I looked at each other and we said, you know, that's pretty radical. And that's kind of where Radical was born. And we said, you know, our dad always said, if you have an asset sitting on the shelf that no one else knows about, it's not OK. You have to share with the world because there's other people going through what you're going through. You're not in this little world of just Rachel and rosacea. There's millions of people out there that are struggling with rosacea or problematic skin or sensitive skin. And the more research we did, it was like 80 percent of women believe they have sensitive skin. And so they're very particular about what they're putting on their skin and the irritation. So we really took a lot of time and developing our products to make sure they were consciously clean, that we were delivering radical results. Rachel: So we had science behind it. You know, we did clinical on our products because we like to prove out whatever we're going to say. We want to be there with confidence. So we launched in 17 different countries, in over 900 stores and just two years. And Liz and I hit the road and started to work with all the prestige retailers and training. And the interesting thing that we found is this yearning and hunger from all the associates and customers that we talked to about that feeling of were inner self meets. Outer beauty, which is so important to us, is, you know, how we feel on the inside is felt by the world. And we've been really blessed with working with Bob Proctor, who was very close to us and a lot of personal development work where we knew that there was a method to really getting amazing skincare science, to getting radical results. But also there is a technology for creating a life you love. And so we ended up really looking at that closely and listening to people really wanting more there or there are hungry for more purpose and passion in their lives. So that was like our aha moment. And we said when we came back to the states, we're a global so we have a global footprint where in Australia, Switzerland, the UK, all over the place. But in the US, we decided that we were going to buy our products back off of the shelf. Rachel: We we wrote our book, which is "Get Radical: Create Secrets to Creating a Life You Love." And then we said, we're going to buy all of our products back off the retail shelves, take the profit that we normally give to the retailers. Take our science. Take all of our from clinical to all the press that we've gotten over the 11 years and the investment of 20 million dollars into our brand and give that as a turnkey opportunity for others to be able to create passion, purpose, health and wealth. And that's when our brand partner program was born. And we did that. That was kind of like born out of. Covid and a lot of it and and that's just caught on fire because we have the selfcare element, that purpose element. We're a movement that matters. And we always know that if we stay close to our purpose and our passion, Liz and I, we've had moments, we've gotten off track where you're not waking up feeling passionate or purpose driven. Then it's like, OK, OK, I'm going to go do that today. And that was important to us. We wanted to we want to touch millions of people's lives. And we know through our brand partner program, we can touch more people than through any retail store ever. So that's kind of our journey to where we are today. Joe: Well, there's a lot to unpack here, Rachel: I know. Joe: Because any time you can correct me, but I would I would say that this is going to be a unique episode, because for the listeners are out there that are women. This will speak to them more than it will. Guys, I don't even know if you have any men in the brand partner program. Rachel: We do, actually, Joe: Ok, Rachel: We Joe: So Rachel: Do. Joe: See, that's why I wanted to ask you. Rachel: But Joe: Ok. Rachel: It's the majority, a majority of them are women. Yeah. Joe: Ok. And then the products that you have, are they mostly all women? Are there some men? And that's why you have a couple of men and the brand ambassador Rachel: Our Joe: For that. Rachel: Our brand is very unisex Joe: Ok. Rachel: From our packaging all the way through, it delivers amazing results. We do a lot of coaching, even with a lot of the women that are like, oh, what do we offer to the man? And it's like these core products that men just absolutely love. Like we were in Barneys, we were in the men's department there when we launched, and because we did so well and with the men as well. Joe: Ok, so here's the part where we're going to rewind, because Rachel: Ak. Joe: This is this is how I think your story and there's this story and this product and how you did all of this will really help the listeners and especially the women listeners. So you came from a background that was science based because of your father. It sounds like a brilliant man. Is he still with us or is Rachel: No. Joe: Not OK? Rachel: Yeah, my father had multiple sclerosis on top of everything else Joe: Yeah, Rachel: And Joe: I saw that, and Rachel: Yeah. Joe: So I was I was so I didn't know if he was still around, but Rachel: Would Joe: When Rachel: You Joe: You Rachel: Have. Joe: Started this process of wanting to do this with your sister, was he around to help with the initial part of it? Rachel: Yes, Joe: Ok. Rachel: My my dad basically, when I moved to or before I moved to L.A., was saying to my sister, you two need to work together. Like he he's like family. You need to work together. Joe: Right. Well, that's awesome. Okay, cool. So I'm going to put a pin in that one piece of it because I have to come back to that again, because there's more questions than if I Rachel: Sure. Joe: Was listening. I would be like, OK, there's one thing that was a plus for the both of you. Rachel: For sure. Joe: So I'll get to it. I'll explain where I'm going. And I'm sure you Rachel: Ok. Joe: Already understand. Your sister was a stockbroker, an investment banker, a stockbroker, whatever. She she took that route. And then I noticed that there was a company called One World Live. Is that Rachel: Mm Joe: Correct? Rachel: Hmm. That's Joe: Ok, Rachel: Right. Joe: So this is the company that she ended up creating, purchasing, investing, one of those. Right. Rachel: Well, it was actually a company prior to that that she invested money in, and I came out and I worked for that particular company. Joe: Ok. Rachel: But One World Life we created together, and that was really driven from product to we had a lot of celebrities with where we would do merchandising for them with their product. Yeah. So that was where we really got into product development, like the the whole process of making products, whether it was weight loss, whether it was jewelry, whether it was skincare. And that's where we actually had our first experience with skincare at that time. Joe: Ok, so if I was sitting and listening to this, I'd be like, OK, how do two women that are not in this world make this jump into this competitive marketing product delivery business? People usually have some sort of experience that they initially get in that and then they go, hey, I can do this, and then they go out on their own and start it. So explain to me how your system leaves doing the investment banking piece of this. You leave what you're doing and you move out and all of a sudden you're this powerhouse marketing team Rachel: Right. Joe: That has this company. And there's a there's a gap there that I want you to Rachel: Got Joe: Fill Rachel: It. Joe: Forms. Rachel: Ok, so my sister raised money for a company that had a weight loss product. That was the company that I started working for. And I started to learn about infomercials, commercials, direct mail catalog. That was kind of where I first learned like, oh, who was right when infomercials hit in 94, it was like all of a sudden it's like, what's this infomercial thing? And so we. Joe: But wait, there's more. Rachel: Yes, exactly. Hey, you know exactly what I'm talking about, Joe: Yeah. Rachel: And I'm so yeah, so we. I worked for that company and unfortunately the people that were running the company were not doing the right things with the finances. So I told my sister, hey, heads up, my check is bouncing. She's she has investors in the company. So she ended up having to go in and basically take over the company. And that's called like you're just thrown into the waters. You have no idea what you're doing. And it was crazy. She had to sue the company, a lot of the players, and she won, which was unbelievable and won the company. So then we all of a sudden inherited a weight loss company that was doing really, really well. But, you know, we didn't have a lot of experience at the time. So it was something that I do primarily and anything like all my businesses. If I don't know something, I get really smart really quick. And I talk to a lot of people that know a lot more than me. And so like no one Joe: Right. Rachel: Will find someone that knows more than you. Joe: Yeah. Rachel: And so that's what we did. And we worked with different individuals and started to understand the business more and how media spin worked. And I had to manage the media spend and I had to managed print campaigns and I had to buy inventory for all these products. I was like, buy what I like. All right, let's let's break open a spreadsheet and start getting organized. That was point one. But I actually realize I have a I'm super strong at doing those type of like I can operationally managing and dealing with a lot of moving parts and seeing how all the pieces fit together. So, listen, I basically kind of divided and conquered with that particular product. And then we did another weight loss product where we had investors involved in that. And then that launched. And then Liz decided that she was going to go back more into the investment banking. So I took the weight loss product and I went to another company and brought our product with us and had their infrastructure supports our product. But also, it was a great opportunity for me to learn side by side with other people that have been doing it for a long time. So it was for me like that part where we I worked with another company necessarily wasn't necessarily like my happiest time, to be really honest, because a little more entrepreneurial and. But I did that for two years and I was like, I'm going to get so good at all of this. I'm going to be so good. Like I'm going to just be a sponge. Rachel: I'm going to learn. I'm going to learn. I'm going to learn until I feel like I got my arms around this, all these tentacles that were flying around me and feeling proficient in that. And that was a really graceful time of firsts. Sometimes you're feeling and that feeling of uncertainty. And I'm sure everyone up there is gone through that feeling like lack of confidence, whatever it might be in that certain area. But again, I felt like one of the things that Liz and I had done is we surround ourselves with people that are mentors that can help teach and guide and trust me, you're going to pay it forward because there will be a time when someone's going to work for you that you can teach and you can guide. And so from that, I was Liz was doing her thing. So she started is a big thinker, a lot of creative ideas. And she she she and this other person decided we're going to start this company. And she called me up and she's like, rich, like, I can't do it without you. Like I need you. You know how to get it all done. You know, I had to make it all. I'll put all the wheels on the bus and make it go forward. And, you know, you've been in the business. And I actually haven't been in that part of the business. But we're going to kind of do that business again in a different way. And I was like, let's do it in our. So that's how one world was actually created. And. Joe: And what year was that? Rachel: That was in 19, I think it was 1999 is when one world was was created. I Joe: And Rachel: Actually. Joe: When did you when did you move out to L.A. from Virginia? Rachel: 94. Joe: Ok, so five years later is when Rachel: Yes. Joe: This happened, OK, Rachel: Yep. Joe: So you've had all that time. Rachel: Exactly. To Joe: It. OK. Rachel: Learn fast. Joe: Yeah. Have. Rachel: It was like a fire hose experience, like, OK, open Rachel, Joe: Yeah. Rachel: Insert all information. Yeah. So from there, that's when one world leader was born. And we did that for we still have that company. We still have a product line that we have on QVC. And so we had a. And we really had it was the that company was going to we were looking at it as a public, the public traded opportunity to do an IPO. And it was when the technology just fell, fell apart. And we ended up having to really pivot fast because a lot of money was raised for the company. And at that point, we had we had probably almost a hundred employees. We had a lot of VC and investors. And Liz, that was primarily her responsibility to deal with them. But at that point, they just weren't investing. And unless you were a true technology, you know, like you're an app or you're, you know, so we ended up really bringing back through our direct marketing, our direct response. We had we did infomercials the whole time. So we had a lot of things going on. And that's really when we got into the skincare business, it was an infomercial of skincare. And then I developed the whole line, which had about say about 30 skews. So I did all the product development, all the research, creative and just learned, learned a lot about science, working with manufacturers, working with the chemists. Of course, we were fortunate enough with our dad for hours. But the chemists, we started to really learn about product development ingredients, raw materials, clean, clean beauty. And that kind of took us on our journey to Radical. Joe: Ok, so here we go Rachel: Ok. Joe: Is I have to ask because it's I know that even if I was listening to this and I just reframed it to be something that a guy would do, I have ideas all the time. But we stop ourselves because of things that we think are going to be roadblocks. So my first question is, let's talk about your father and the science and all of that without that piece. Some of the audience listeners might be saying to themselves, well, that's that's a huge chunk like that help having that experience, having your father to lean on, having that around you, to be able to start the process of creating products. Because if you start thinking about it, it's like, OK, I'm not going to go in my kitchen and start putting all sorts of things in a little bowl and seeing it smells nice and it works nice and right. So Rachel: Right. Joe: What would you say to any of the women listening? They don't have that science background. They don't have that father with that Rachel: Mm Joe: Brain Rachel: Hmm. Joe: And that intelligence Rachel: Right. Joe: And background. BILLINA. Can they still accomplish this? Rachel: Absolutely. So, yes, we were very blessed, and we we understand that so much. But we also know, like when we were developing products for One World Lives, I was in product development all the time. But I lean on my manufacturers. I wasn't calling my dad saying, hey, dad, like what do you think about this? Because it wasn't personal then. It was just like, oh, I'm creating products for a client and this is what they want. Some of the benefits to be or I look at like what the story is like, what is it that they're trying to say about, you know, themselves and their skincare brand. So it makes like it's makes sense. And then I talk to my manufacturer, who has chemists on staff, and I go and I sit with them and I talk to raw material houses. There's shows that you can go to that have all the raw material houses that go there that are talking about a unique ingredients that they're using. But I find a lot I get a lot from the chemists that are from the manufacturers about what's new, what's hot, what's working, what's an alternative to like we have right now that we just launched are an alternative to a retinol cream, which outperforms retinol without all the side effects. I went I researched, I talked to my chemist. What's what is out there right now? It took us it's not an overnight experience, like, oh, poof, we we just developed a product because then you want to prove the results, right? So you want to have some science. So you have confidence that if you're saying any kind of a claim, that you can substantiate that. So the process for Radical, it was with our dad, but that was like the beginning of the ideas and the science footprint. But I leaned heavily on all of the chemists to really help direct and come up with formulations that we know were going to give radical results. Joe: Ok, great, so I appreciate that answer. Rachel: Yeah. Joe: The next thing that I put a pin in my own mental brain was the money portion of this. Right. None of this has to be divulged. I just but let's say your father was a successful reconstructive surgeon, potentially. He made a good living doing that. At the same time, I know when I read doing my own research that when M.S. came around, that was also a financial burden. Right. So. Rachel: Big Joe: So. Rachel: Time. Joe: Right. So we can just let's say we eliminate that fact that he could have helped you at all. But then you have you have Liz being this smart financial person. So potentially she made a decent amount of money in what she was doing to then be able to back this whole thing. So my second question. Oh, yeah. Well, it's easy when you have a lot of money. You have someone who's able to bring in voices and start out with a chunk of capital and all of that. So can you address that both in either how it helped you and how you still think people can do it without having all of that? Rachel: So a couple of things, I think absolutely you can do it without having all of all of that and the that that we had pretty much for one world. I went to a lot of overhead because we had so many people, because it was such it was the One World Live Web site was really like the hub of what that company was. And so there was a lot of big talent being thrown at that because the VCs wanted to see a certain thing. Right. So in product development, if you want to launch a product, I mean, it can be in skin care, whatever it may be. I know that I can go and create a product with a chemist. I can call packaging companies and get samples of what the packaging might be. And I can come up with a marketing plan. And you you can get small business loans to support you on your initial growth. And I am really believe in a grassroots approach. So Radical has like our new business, which is that our Brand Partners program where we're treating that as a brand new business. So just because our our retail business we have from a global that took us a lot of years to put together and create success that doesn't come into my brand partner like I really keep those separated because I want to have this sitting and standing on its own. We could have gone to raise money. We could have, you know, tried to find people that would invest in it. But for us, we actually didn't want to have to deal with investors. We've done that. There's there is a side to having investors in your company that is a lot of work. So there is something really cool about owning your own company and you owning your own company and not having to answer to five other people and tell them what you're doing and why you know that it's on you. So. Joe: I second that, amen, I Rachel: Yeah, Joe: Say that. Rachel: Trust me, we've we've done it, we've had it where it's been investors and we now we have it where it's our own and we much prefer it as our own. Joe: Mm hmm. Rachel: And we're not willing to bring in money to fund our brand partners program because we want that to be it can be done organically. It might not be as fast as the guy that has five million sitting next to me, but does it have the heart and soul that I have? Does it does it have the you know, the credibility that my brand has? Like there's so many different things and who my audience is. So there's always ways of getting into a business without needing lots and lots of money to do it. You just have to take it slow and bit by bit and grow, you know, have a plan in place that you're you're following into doing your own projections, giving yourself like, OK, you can you can go and get private label products, which sometimes is an interesting way of testing a concept where you don't you can buy 100. You can test it on a Web site. I mean, Joe: Mm Rachel: There's Joe: Hmm. Rachel: So many different ways that you can go through your social media, Bienen, you know, you can be your own influencer and whatever it is that your passion and dream might be. So there's definitely ways of starting your business and not being like, oh, gosh, you need millions and millions of dollars to do it. Joe: Ok, great. I love all these answers, because to me, it's encouraging to the audience. And I was hoping that I even though I backed you into a corner on these questions, I know that reading part of your story and empowering women, this is important. And so that's why I want to talk about it as much as I want to make sure that we talk about your business. And trust me, we'll get the word out about Radical. But I think it's important that what this business means to you. I can tell is coming through this interview. And that's what I think is even more important, because that is really what people are attracted to, people who care about people. Right. And there's something that you keep saying that's a great saying that I'm going to steal from you at some point, but I forget what it is. But you'll say it again, I'm sure. And Rachel: Ranchero. Joe: I'll be like, OK, I got to remember that. So quickly, explain to me then the the science part of it, where if you end up working with the chemist, let's say someone out there has an idea and they want to do something. How painful and how long is that process of tweaking and creating the product? And then do products that you sell have to get FDA approval? Rachel: Ok, so no so in skin care, you have ones that are considered like over the counter, which would be an SPF. So those have to go through certain testing in the United States for skin care in the U.S.. It's actually it's pretty loose. It's actually not very rigorous at all. So we are global, so we're EU compliant. So we have a compliance person in the EU that goes through all of our formulations. I make sure they're checking it against the list of all the ingredients that are not allowed on the market or about to not be allowed on the market. It goes down to the like the raw materials, make sure they're paraben free, that they're not using any preservative systems that to be able to make certain claims. Like I can say, I'm paraben free in the U.S. It's not as rigorous. It has some things. And you can literally like look them up online, but they're not regulated. Like people are not regulating your formulas to say what's in it is OK. And think about how many you have a lot of people that make up their own skincare and will sell it even locally that don't have, you know, strong preservative systems in it where, you know, you don't know really how long they can last and that they're good for. But I always encourage that when you're doing development and you're talking to your chemists to make sure that you're being as clean as possible, there's a list on like even on our website that shows all the ingredients that we do not have in under our consciously clean tab. So, Joe: I saw that, which I Rachel: Yeah. Joe: Thought was brilliant, that there's Rachel: Yeah. Joe: No you're not hiding anything, it's all right. There it was. Rachel: Exactly. Joe: It Rachel: So Joe: Was Rachel: It's Joe: Very Rachel: Actually Joe: Impressive. Rachel: It's a resource for other people, honestly, Joe: Yep, Rachel: So, Joe: Yep. Rachel: Which is great. You know, just knowing what you don't want to have going into your product, and the chemist usually have a pretty good handle on that if you're working with a good, good manufacturer. What is regulated is the FTC regulates claims. So you can't make a product and go on Instagram and say, my product reduces fine lines and wrinkles, 400 percent and then show before and after. That's not necessarily the right one or whatever. Like that's where you get in trouble in the U.S. So they regulate that really, really closely. So you do have to be with your marketing. You have to be accurate in your claims and making sure that you're not misleading a customer. Joe: Ok, let's talk about. So now I understand that you still have the global retail business that's still happening in over 900 stores, and I had a note down here in 17 countries, probably Berklee. Now it's 20. So this is amazing. What is the team that you have? So you said you kept you keep the two businesses separate. So what is the team that's running Radical as opposed to the team that's running the ambassador brand program? Rachel: Right. OK, so we used to have a team in London, an office in London, office in Paris, one in Hong Kong, and Liz and I, we're looking at each other saying this does not make sense. And this was when we started Radical. We had definitely some big players involved, which were more on the state lotor level. And so us being entrepreneurial or we're not like corporate girls at all. So put us into a corporate environment or like what do we do here? We're like, we have to clock in and clock out. We're like Joe: Yeah. Rachel: We work. We work 24/7 anyway. Joe: Right. Right. Rachel: That's being an owner of your own company. They wanted to have this really broad footprint. And Liz and I, they were the experts and prestige and we really weren't. So we really follow their lead. And we noticed that like we we built it. We had all the locations. But you really have to have boots on the ground everywhere. So, listen, I ended up saying, you know what, we're going to buy our company back and we're going to do this in a smart way where we have distributors internationally. So like, for instance, in Australia, we work with Mekka, who's the largest skincare or any cosmetics retailer there. It's like the Safar of the U.S. and but they handle everything. I don't have to put freelancer's in the store. I don't have to do anything. They own it and they do an amazing job. And then in the U.K., I have a distributor there, and in Switzerland I have a distributor there. So my international business is very much distributor driven. So they manage their own markets, they invest in their own markets. They have certain things that they're supposed to do in order to maintain their exclusivity there. But that operates pretty much separately. The U.S. it's I have a core team that works just on the brand partners program. And it's a small team because like I said, we're doing this in a very organic way and obviously bringing people that have the experience and building a peer to peer business. So that's been super exciting. And that's that's what's worked by just having a core team that works for only on brand partner business. Joe: Ok, can you talk more about the the brand the ambassador program, just so that we can get an understanding if someone is listening to this and saying, I love this, I love the idea. They go to your website and they look at all of this. They get hit up all the time with all these other programs to sell cosmetics and skin care. It's sometimes it's a hard sell for them. They end up dropping off or they just they can't figure out how to get into something like this. And I'd like to know what your program is about so they know and then why it's different. And obviously that the ingredients that you use that's really coming to the forefront these days is that you're not putting ingredients in that can harm someone. So that's another really important thing. So can you talk a little bit about that program? Rachel: Yes, absolutely. So we kind of what I talked about earlier is that we just started to recognize that our brand is so much more than skin deep, and it always has been. It's just been listen, I speak from the place of possibility all the time. And we with all of our brand partners were like invested in their future. That's like we are invested in their future. That's why we call them brand partners, like you are our partner in this. And that's a big shift in how you are within a company, because we've created such a turnkey solution and support to help you get to wherever it is that you want to go. And we are building a very, very strong core community. We have a our comp plan is very, very simple. We noticed and the different types of ambassador brand partner type programs where there's this exclusion element, if you don't do certain things and you are not a part and our part is you are included. We're like, you can participate with us, however it works for you. So we have people that just are more like influencers are on there. You know, they're selling through their social channels and they're making great money. Then we have people that are like, oh, my gosh, I've got like I want to build a business. Like I want to invest Radical like my new baby. And you guys have handed over the keys with science, clinical backing, credibility. You've been in prestige. You have press for over the past ten years, you know, steeped in science about a movement that matters. And our company is always listen, I only see things like it has to be larger than us. Like everything we do has to be larger than us. Rachel: It's not money. It's not it's like it has to be bigger than us. And so like our vision is and goal will be we're going to be a billion dollar company. And that means that we are we are making millions of dreams come true. Millions. And that is our number one goal is to do that. So and within our community, we have like our deep dive, which we just did on Monday, where we open that up to customers or brand partners, where we do a chapter in our book and we like unpack it and we talk about it. And it's always amazing because it speaks to people wherever they are, whatever they're going through. We have the opportunity to interact and communicate and share ideas. It's great. And then we have a lot of other activities where, you know, we'll be traveling some to meet different people. And we have a shared pool for company sales where you can earn into the share pool. That's three percent of our company. So we're taking profit for all of our brand partners to be able to participate and based on whatever their performance is. So it's like they are profiting. And we have a founder's club, which is a group of individuals that are just working super hard and achieving different levels. So it's it's really a straightforward program. And we have one of the best ladies on our team that really focuses on helping individuals figure out how to incorporate that into their life, understanding comp plans. And she's like the best cheerleader in town, like you want her behind you. You know what I'm saying? She's like, come on, you got Joe: Right. Rachel: This. You know, I call her like Joe: That's awesome. Rachel: So. Yeah, Joe: Ok, cool. Rachel: And it's super easy. You can go on to our website and it says, just become a brand partner. You just click on it and has a lot of information there. Joe: Great. OK. I don't. We're getting close to the end, and I want to keep you longer than I promise. So talk to me about the book, "Get Radical: Secrets to Living a Life You Love." Rachel: Yeah, yes. So that was a labor of love. It was definitely time consuming for the both of us. Like what? What an experience writing a book. Never did we think I mean, my father is like such a. He's like published like 3000 peer review articles. Written books. I mean, it's like that's like no, no problem for him. And Liz and I like we really want to put this to paper, like we want to share through the mentors that we have met. And just the stories, because we really know that there is a technology to getting a life that you love, whether, you know, really getting those fundamentals of goal setting visualization and then what gets in your way. So the fear of failing, you know, people get stuck in making decisions like paralysis. So we talk about a lot of that throughout the story. And we bring in different mentors that share stories that are super relatable, that you can be like, oh, my gosh, that's happened to me. Oh, yeah, I've been through that. Oh, I love that. And at the end of every chapter is really a Radical recap where it gives you back the ideas of like, OK, these are the things that you may want to focus on, the questions you may want to ask yourself some you know, some guided ideas of how to get where you want to go to creating that passion, purpose, health and wealth, you know, whatever that is for you. Joe: Yep. OK. That's awesome. A question I wanted to ask earlier that I forgot, which I think is important in any partnership, because I grew up observing my father in a family business. And it's really tough when you have your own family in the business. It's tough when you are in a partner relationship because a lot of them don't work out as we know, as entrepreneurs. We've heard the horror stories. So with you and Liz, you talked about it earlier, how you both have your strengths and weaknesses. Right. And you use those to conduct this business. Do you recommend or do you have a line in the sand that says, OK, Liz, you are handling all of the financial part of this and anything that comes out of this financial related, that's your baby. I'm doing all the product stuff or whatever. So I'm not putting words in your mouth, Rachel: Right, Joe: But I'm just Rachel: Right, Joe: Trying Rachel: Right. Joe: To give you an example of can you explain how that division works? Rachel: Gosh, I wish it was that clear cut. Joe: Yes. Rachel: Like I'm like, here, take that hat. Oh, wait, wait, I'll Joe: Right. Rachel: Wear Joe: Right. Rachel: This one today. Joe: Exactly. Rachel: That's Joe: Well, Rachel: Kind of. Joe: I think the fear is, is that with businesses and partnerships, it's stuff sometimes somebody say, wait, I thought you were handling that. It's one of those things or you did it, but you didn't do it as well as I would have done. You know, so I'm trying to make sure we get this out to explain that you really have to be honest with yourself and say, I'm really not any good at marketing, so I'm not doing it. And if you don't want to do it as my partner, then we need to get somebody who does. Rachel: Exactly. Joe: So. Rachel: Well, first off, I would always say really, you know, know your family dynamics like how you operate with whether it's a brother or a sister or a family business. And we been fortunate because we we both see things. We both have the same goals, right, so I always say like, know that first, do you do you are you in alignment on what your goals are for your company and what purpose you both have in that? Like make sure you're on the same page? Because if one person sees the company for something else and you see it, then it's always going to be like this. Right? So you have to be on the same page, an alignment on your goals and your vision for what it is that you want. So that's like the biggest thing I can say. Everything else for us. We both have a lot of creative ideas. So I would say that we take our creative ideas and then I do more a lot more on that implement and manage. She does a lot more in the network. And, you know, big picture of whatever it is that we might be be doing. So it's very we complement one another. So I think you do. I think if you can make some more clear boundaries, I wouldn't say we were maybe the perfect example. We're kind of a weird group because we can just kind of work together. Well, I don't know. Maybe since we've been doing it since 1994, I think my sister and I have had maybe two arguments in business, and they went for a good quality like ten minutes and it was over. But yeah, I think having a making sure your visions are in alignment really takes away a lot of the issues. Joe: Ok, so the website is radicalskincare.com. Rachel: Yes. Joe: There is the whole retail side of the business that if any of those people are listening, they can contact you for distributorship wholesale or whatever that might be. And then there's the whole brand ambassador side, Rachel: Yes. Joe: Which is really to empower mostly I think it leans towards women, and I think that's great. But obviously, we talked about earlier that men can get involved because you said that the products are Rachel: Unisex, Joe: What was the word, unisex, Rachel: Unisex. Joe: Right. Is there anything else that I missed that you wanted to talk about before I let you go? Rachel: No, I mean, I guess back to I always just feel like you want to be part of a movement that matters, like really having a movement that matters. And Joe: That's it, I think that's the saying, Rachel: That was Joe: You Rachel: That. Joe: Keep saying, that's Rachel: See, Joe: It. Rachel: I told you it was going to happen. Joe: I love it. Rachel: I Joe: I'm Rachel: Was going Joe: Still Rachel: To get it in right at the end for you. Joe: I'm stealing it. I'm stealing. Rachel: Yeah. So that's like really what we we stand for and being a part of something that's bigger than yourself. And that's what really Radical is all about. It is we're in herself meets outer beauty. And, you know, your purpose is our promise. And that's that's what we want, you know, surrounding yourself in life around like minded people. That's just a beautiful thing. And I think that's what we we want to be able to help others with, to really get to, you know, living a life that they love and dream and going above and beyond. And so we really appreciate you having me on today. And Joe: Yeah, Rachel: I was Joe: Absolutely. Rachel: Really I was happy to be able to distinguish that I'm the younger sister, Joe: Well, Rachel: Older Joe: That's how she Rachel: Man. Joe: Gets that, too. That's what Liz gets. And you can tell her that even though we've never talked, I'm no longer talking to her. Rachel: Right. Yes, OK, we're on the same page. Joe: And I want the I want the audience, the listeners, and then eventually the viewers. But right now, the listeners that listen to the podcast, your message, what you are accomplishing with this is very sincere. And the integrity is there. I hear it in your voice. I see it in your face. So when the viewers go to watch this episode on YouTube, they, too, will understand that this means a lot to you. This is not about making money. This is about empowering people to live the life that they love and to just do great things and feel good about themselves. And it's both with having potentially a small business of their own or a large business through this. It's about making some extra money on the side. It's it's about feeling good, both financially, physically, inside and outside. And I think it's awesome what you're doing. And I just I could tell. Like, I interview a lot of people and the comment maybe it's an L.A. thing, but the calmness in you is not this sales motivated conversation that we're having. It's a conversation from the heart that you love what you do. This is something you wanted to do to help us. And it comes across. So I wanted you to know that that I was hoping so much that it would be this and not be this powerful woman who is just like sell, sell, sell, sell. And if you get this and you come into our program and you can drive a Mercedes in a year Rachel: No, Joe: And Rachel: No, no, Joe: All Rachel: No. Joe: Of that stuff. So this was wonderful. I loved Rachel: Yeah. Joe: It. Rachel: Yeah, well, we're not those girls, Joe: Yeah, Rachel: We're we're definitely heart centered, so. Joe: Perfect. I will put in the show notes all the ways to get in contact with you, the website and all of that, if there unless there's any special spot that you like to communicate. If there's I don't know if your Instagram fan and that's where you like to do it, or just like people to contact through the company email. But now's your chance to tell me Rachel: Yeah, Joe: Or the audience. Rachel: Either way and I was also Joe: Ok. Rachel: Going to do a code, so people Joe: Beautiful. Rachel: That are listening that Joe: Yeah, that'd Rachel: They Joe: Be great. Rachel: Can they can get a 10 percent discount on our products, but also we can send them an eBook. Joe: Beautiful. Rachel: So, yeah, we'd love Joe: Ok. Rachel: To do that so we can do Castelo 10. Joe: Beautiful, I'm going to write it down because I'm old and I'll forget Rachel: There's the old. Joe: It. All right, Castelo, 10 is the code to get 10 percent off. I love Rachel: That's Joe: It. Rachel: Right. Joe: Ok. Beautiful. Rachel, thank you so much. I appreciate your time. This was really cool. It was an honor to speak with you. I love what you're doing. And again, please tell Liz to that. I don't know. I don't ever want to talk to her. Rachel: Ok, Joe: No, it can't. Rachel: I'll call her right now. Joe: Yeah. They say you had one chance to come on Rachel: You Joe: Joe Rachel: Know, Joe: Show Rachel: You had Joe: And you Rachel: It, Joe: And you blew it. Rachel: She Joe: And Rachel: Missed Joe: We. Rachel: You missed the best podcast ever. Joe: Well, we had so much fun and Rachel: We did Joe: Ok, Rachel: The clip. Joe: Thank you so much, and I wish you all the best and I look forward to seeing your progress with everything. And it was really an honor to talk with you. Rachel: Thank you. Thank you so much.

Today, I am talking with my friend Rachel Bearbower, a coffee lover, a fundraiser, a former nonprofit executive director, and founder of Small Shop Strategies. Rachel has been in the very same situation many of us find ourselves in at some point: working diligently in an underfunded, systemless organization.  In our conversation, we explore how Rachel's business journey led her all the way to creating her business after running a nonprofit. We also explore how Rachel serves her clients, how she manages her numbers, and what guidance she'd offer any entrepreneur or leader who's feeling overworked, underfunded, and overwhelmed.  So, if those feelings sound familiar to you, you won't want to miss what Rachel shares with us today. Today We'll Explore:  How creating and working on her first nonprofit allowed Rachel to see an area of need that she addresses with her own business The common challenges that people, especially executive directors who work in the nonprofit sector need to navigate and how Rachel helps change the game How to navigate imposter syndrome and a scarcity mindset in your business Why women entrepreneurs having money and numbers conversations is so vital and why making money is a form of self-care What it means to start trusting your gut, shifting your mindset, taking risks, and getting a handle on your finances with confidence  We share all of our show notes and exclusive bonus content at 100degreesconsulting.com/podcast Connect with Rachel You can find Rachel on her website at www.smallshopstrategies.com and check out her membership program at www.smallshopstrategies.com/beproductive Let's connect! Follow me on Instagram: @stephanie.skry (And be sure to tag me in your screenshots of the podcast so I can share them!) Let's get to know your numbers. Get your copy of The Profit Playbook, a  template that will help you create a step-by-step roadmap to reach your business goals.  Best of all: You can set it up in minutes! Pick up yours at www.100degreesconsulting.com/profit

Healing with Sarah From 'Sarah's little book of Healing'. This is a spontaneous live I did recently on facebook after we'd had a very transformative full moon & I was inspired to offer some Sarah support! I read out a healing channeling from Sarah and we do a lovely meditation with Sarah & her Angels. Bright Sarah Blessings, Rachel ❤️❤️❤️ You can find 'Sarah's little book of Healing' on Amazon Worldwide and here on the US site https://www.amazon.com/SARAHS-little-book-HEALING-Techniques/dp/B08JF5FYK8 As a thank you, if you'd like to treat Rachel to a cup of coffee, you can do so here! https://www.buymeacoffee.com/rachelgo

If you are tired of loathing yourself and are ready to fall in love with the real YOU, then you need to listen into this week's live episode of The Confident Woman Podcast. In part 10 of our 12 week series, Erin and Rachel dive into how you can transform from self-loathing to self-loving one step at a time! You'll hear more on: ❥ The big shift in focus you will need to make ❥ Why checking your emotions and changing your mindset are key ❥ What the journey actually looks like going from self-loathing to self-love ❥ Who you need to become best friends with (it might just surprise you!) ❥ The importance of recognizing that self-love is the highest form of love ❥ And so much more! Let's take a listen! Resources: Erin's Instagram: @erin_travelsforlife Rachel's Instagram: @iamrachelbrooks The Confident Woman Podcast Instagram: @theconfidentwomanpodcast Quotes: “You shouldn't have this feeling of arrogance for liking yourself.” - Erin “If you're purposefully looking in the mirror and you're already feeling down about yourself, don't give it a second thought.” - Rachel “You're a product of your environment.” - Rachel “When you receive a compliment, you don't have to be defensive or pay it back right away.” - Rachel “If you wouldn't take it from somebody else, don't give it yourself.” - Erin --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/theconfidentwoman/message

Ever wonder what the journey to self-mastery might look like? In part 9 of our 12-week series on the podcast, Erin and Rachel are sharing how you can master your journey through healing, forgiveness, and letting go of who you believe you are so you can step into who you're created to be—The Confident Woman. You'll hear more on: ❥ What these 3 actions really are ❥ The one big benefit of this journey ❥ Why this journey never truly ends (and for good reason!) ❥ The ongoing commitment you need to make to yourself ❥ ...And so much more! Let's take a listen! Resources: Erin's Instagram: @erin_travelsforlife Rachel's Instagram: @iamrachelbrooks The Confident Woman Podcast Instagram: @theconfidentwomanpodcast Quotes: “To forgive is to forget.” - Erin “It's not fair for us to carry the burden and actions of somebody else's wrongdoing.” - Rachel “You're giving all that power away and you're letting that one isolated incident rob you of your entire life.” - Erin “There will always be ghosts in a sense to remind you of where you came from.” - Rachel --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/theconfidentwoman/message

EPISODE SYNOPSIS When chef and food writer Rachel Khoo isn’t running in -12 degrees Stockholm, she is creating TV shows, writing cookbooks, judging The Great British Menu, and being a mum (not necessarily in that order). In other words, she’s a force of creative nature intent on using 2021 for self-improvement and developing a whole host of new work projects. In this episode of The Filling with Anna Barnett podcast, Zooming in from her home in the Swedish capital, Rachel shares her experiences; from her previous life in fashion PR, to her first TV show filmed from her Paris flat, to prioritising diversity in her production teams. This is an episode full of appetite, work/life balance, and chat about butter! EPISODE NOTES 21:00 – 25:00) Rachel details her life in Stockholm from the joys of afternoon fika and ice- skating on the frozen waterways to the struggles with the lack of sunlight in winter. 35:00 – 38:00) With the Swedish TV industry working on a much smaller, here Rachel explains the struggle of finding diversity in local production teams. 41:00 – 44:20) In this fascinating section, Rachel and Anna discuss veganism, sustainability, and food waste and the complexities of finding an appropriate balance. 50:00 – 51:40) Here Rachel explains why she moved to Paris at a pivotal time in her life giving up a great job in London. Juts how easy is it to study patisserie without speaking French? 52:15 – 53:30) A mixed-race heritage means Rachels has her feet in many cultures, here she explains how she navigates her feelings of provenance between Austria, Britain, and Malaysia. 56:00 – 59:00) Establishing human connection through food is at the base of Rachel’s work ethos. Here she details how this started with her first TV project, The Little Paris Kitchen. TOP QUOTES “I always feel like I’ve succeeded in life if I’ve brushed my teeth and made my bed.” Rachel “You should hear me swearing – I’m worse than Gordon Ramsay when I’m running.” Rachel “I hit 40 and I feel like I know who I am and what I want.” Rachel “Find your tribe and find your cheerleaders.” Rachel “You Marie Kondo’d your cookbooks.” Anna “Butter makes everything better.” Rachel RESOURCES www.rachelkhoo.com www.rubiesintherubble.com www.meerasodha.com www.fattpundit.co.uk www.mdghs.se/en/green-rabbit/ ABOUT THE GUEST Equipped with her highly attuned arsenal of culinary and creative credentials, Rachel Khoo is a multi- talented bon vivant breathing fresh air, colourful flair, and the practiced skills of a chef onto the world stage – and, into the kitchens and living rooms of home cooks internationally. As an esteemed TV producer, presenter, podcast broadcaster, food writer and best-selling cookbook author – of six books, translated into fourteen languages – and a global culinary consultant, this whisk-wielding, innovative gourmet demonstrates her gastronomic prowess while wearing many hats. She can currently be seen as the new judge on BBC’s The Great British Menu. Instagram: @rachelkhooks ABOUT THE HOST Anna Barnett displayed an enthusiastic interest in food, cooking (and especially eating) early in life; eagerly joining her nan in the kitchen to observe and learn the traditional baking, ingredients, and recipe techniques that would prove to serve her in the future. After a number of years working in TV production and fashion, Anna’s natural culinary passion and energy led to a series of supper clubs, pop-up restaurants, and professional catering. Subsequently, Anna released her debut cookery book ‘Eat the Week’ in 2015 and spent several years writing ‘The Reluctant Vegetarian’ blog for The Independent newspaper as well as contributing to Vogue. For over a year and a half Anna wrote the food pages for Grazia magazine, and now has a column writing for The Evening Standard online where she shares recipes and food & travel recommendations, as well as interviewing some of the world’s most eminent...

Losing weight. Getting skinnier. Fitting in the smaller pant size. That's what health and fitness are all about, right? WRONG! In part 6 of our 12-week series, Erin and Rachel sit down to chat about what health and fitness really mean and how you can start taking action today! Tune in as we discuss: ❥ Creating an overall healthy lifestyle from within ❥ How you can create and manage to build a maintain a body you love ❥The trifecta to living life as your best and most confident self - a healthy body, a positive mindset, and a soul filled with self-love and gratitude ❥ And so much more! Let's take a listen! Resources: Erin's Instagram: @erin_travelsforlife Rachel's Instagram: @iamrachelbrooks The Confident Woman Podcast Instagram: @theconfidentwomanpodcast Quotes: “Where is the longevity and what is your end goal?” - Rachel “Take a nice little cruise for life.” - Erin “How would life look different if we didn't even have to lose the weight to get to the fun stuff? - Rachel “You can find things that you enjoy doing that you like, but you can make them a part of a healthy lifestyle for you.” - Erin “Finding the fun in fitness is so important.” - Rachel --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/theconfidentwoman/message

Todd: Rachel, I thought we would talk a little bit about items and their shelf life, like how long will you keep something? For example, like a book or clothing, because yesterday I was talking to my students and they were surprised when I admitted that the shirt I was wearing, I had had for over 10 years. Now, they're young and they can't imagine that.Rachel: No, that might be a function of being young.Todd: Right, exactly.Rachel: Because their clothes of 10 years ago are obviously too small.Todd: Yeah.Rachel: It depends on the clothes.Todd: Do you like to keep your clothes a long time?Rachel: If I really like them, I might.Todd: Yeah. How often do you toss out your clothes?Rachel: I toss out clothes once or twice a year. I'll go through my wardrobe and throw out things that are too small or have started to look shabby. But there are other things that I just keep year after year after year, probably things people don't see as often like pajamas might last a little longer.Todd: Yeah.Rachel: Some people advise that if you haven't worn something for six months, you should throw it out, but that seems to me to be not logical, given that there are four seasons and they last a year. If you haven't worn something for a year, maybe you should consider throwing it out. But yeah, definitely, at the start of the season, not in the opposite season. You have to think about the weather.Todd: Yeah. What about food? We live in Japan. We're both teachers in Japan. One thing I often wonder about is the sashimi and the sushi, the raw fish. How long can you keep it before you eat it? They say you're supposed to have it that night, but I sometimes eat it the next morning or even for lunch.Rachel: With fish, as well as other meats, I think it's very easy to tell, because you can tell by the smell whether something's good or not. I actually think that rice is more dangerous.Todd: Oh really?Rachel: Yeah, because it will grow bacteria. Because it's been warm, it will grow bacteria easily at room temperature. The rice is the part you need to be careful about.Todd: Oh. Well what about other foods? Like are you somebody who's really strict about the expiration date?Rachel: I'm not. I think the expiration date on most products errs on the side of safety. And another thing is people confuse the best by date with the expiring date.Todd: Right.Rachel: The best by date is just about freshness, flavor. For example with spices ...Todd: And that's the date they put on the package in the store.Rachel: That's often the date that people go by.Todd: Sell by, yeah.Rachel: Yeah, sell by and best by. For example spices might have a best by date. After that, they might plump a little, they might lose a little flavor, but they're not dangerous.Todd: You can still eat it.Rachel: You can still use them, yeah.Todd: My rule is always three days. So, I'll eat anything if it's within ... except for meat, maybe, but anything if it's within three days of the expiration date or the sell-by date on the store's ...Rachel: Oh, I think that matters ... To me it makes an enormous difference what it is. For example, moyashi, which is bean sprouts, I'll eat them on the day or the day after, but not after that. They start getting bad really quickly. But, for example, a jar of pickles, that's going to last much longer than the three days after.Todd: Right. I think the big one, I guess, you're right about time, is dairy. Milk is obvious, because milk you can smell. But cheese ...Rachel: But on the other hand, it just turns into yogurt.Todd: Right, yes. So that's the other one is yogurt. So yogurt, I'll see it in the fridge and I'm like, "How long can I keep this?" Like sometimes it'll be past the expiration date, but it smells fine, it looks fine.Rachel: Well, yogurt is soured milk, so it's difficult to say at which point it sours, because it's already sour.Todd: Yeah, and cheese too lasts forever it seems like.Rachel: Pretty much. You can see the mold on cheese.Todd: Yeah. So what about if you see bread and there's a little mold on the bread?Rachel: No.Todd: Are you old school? Will you cut around it?Rachel: No. I used to and I used to cut the mold off cheese, but having learned more about visible mold is only a small amount of it and parts of mold you can't see are branching into the food.Todd: Oh, I see.Rachel: Yeah. So that makes it a little dodgier. So, no I probably wouldn't eat bread that had any kind of mold on it. And I'm dodgy about cheese to. That's got the wrong sort of mold on it.Todd: Right.Rachel: There's the right sort of mold like a blue cheese, and that's fine.Todd: Right. And I should clarify here, neither of us are medical professionals.Rachel: Don't take this advise.Todd: We're just talking about our own habits here, so ...Rachel: Another thing that ...Todd: What about juice? What about juice? Like how long can you keep juice? Can you smell when juice is bad?Rachel: I don't usually buy juice, so I don't really know.Todd: Oh, yeah.Rachel: Maybe you can smell it.Todd: Maybe you can smell it.Rachel: Yeah, I'd probably toss juice because I'm not experienced enough with it, obviously, to have made my own mind up about it, so I'd probably go by the date with that one.Todd: What's interesting is when you see some foods that you think would last forever, but actually they won't, they just have an expiration date that's way in the future, like canned goods.Rachel: Yes.Todd: Sometimes it's surprising when you're like, "Oh, there actually is an expiration date on there."Rachel: There is.Todd: But it's way in the future.Rachel: It's way in the future, as long as the can's not dented, I think ...Todd: Or rusty, right?Rachel: ... is the rule for that. Yeah.Todd: Yeah. Interesting topic.

Todd: Rachel, I thought we would talk a little bit about items and their shelf life, like how long will you keep something? For example, like a book or clothing, because yesterday I was talking to my students and they were surprised when I admitted that the shirt I was wearing, I had had for over 10 years. Now, they're young and they can't imagine that.Rachel: No, that might be a function of being young.Todd: Right, exactly.Rachel: Because their clothes of 10 years ago are obviously too small.Todd: Yeah.Rachel: It depends on the clothes.Todd: Do you like to keep your clothes a long time?Rachel: If I really like them, I might.Todd: Yeah. How often do you toss out your clothes?Rachel: I toss out clothes once or twice a year. I'll go through my wardrobe and throw out things that are too small or have started to look shabby. But there are other things that I just keep year after year after year, probably things people don't see as often like pajamas might last a little longer.Todd: Yeah.Rachel: Some people advise that if you haven't worn something for six months, you should throw it out, but that seems to me to be not logical, given that there are four seasons and they last a year. If you haven't worn something for a year, maybe you should consider throwing it out. But yeah, definitely, at the start of the season, not in the opposite season. You have to think about the weather.Todd: Yeah. What about food? We live in Japan. We're both teachers in Japan. One thing I often wonder about is the sashimi and the sushi, the raw fish. How long can you keep it before you eat it? They say you're supposed to have it that night, but I sometimes eat it the next morning or even for lunch.Rachel: With fish, as well as other meats, I think it's very easy to tell, because you can tell by the smell whether something's good or not. I actually think that rice is more dangerous.Todd: Oh really?Rachel: Yeah, because it will grow bacteria. Because it's been warm, it will grow bacteria easily at room temperature. The rice is the part you need to be careful about.Todd: Oh. Well what about other foods? Like are you somebody who's really strict about the expiration date?Rachel: I'm not. I think the expiration date on most products errs on the side of safety. And another thing is people confuse the best by date with the expiring date.Todd: Right.Rachel: The best by date is just about freshness, flavor. For example with spices ...Todd: And that's the date they put on the package in the store.Rachel: That's often the date that people go by.Todd: Sell by, yeah.Rachel: Yeah, sell by and best by. For example spices might have a best by date. After that, they might plump a little, they might lose a little flavor, but they're not dangerous.Todd: You can still eat it.Rachel: You can still use them, yeah.Todd: My rule is always three days. So, I'll eat anything if it's within ... except for meat, maybe, but anything if it's within three days of the expiration date or the sell-by date on the store's ...Rachel: Oh, I think that matters ... To me it makes an enormous difference what it is. For example, moyashi, which is bean sprouts, I'll eat them on the day or the day after, but not after that. They start getting bad really quickly. But, for example, a jar of pickles, that's going to last much longer than the three days after.Todd: Right. I think the big one, I guess, you're right about time, is dairy. Milk is obvious, because milk you can smell. But cheese ...Rachel: But on the other hand, it just turns into yogurt.Todd: Right, yes. So that's the other one is yogurt. So yogurt, I'll see it in the fridge and I'm like, "How long can I keep this?" Like sometimes it'll be past the expiration date, but it smells fine, it looks fine.Rachel: Well, yogurt is soured milk, so it's difficult to say at which point it sours, because it's already sour.Todd: Yeah, and cheese too lasts forever it seems like.Rachel: Pretty much. You can see the mold on cheese.Todd: Yeah. So what about if you see bread and there's a little mold on the bread?Rachel: No.Todd: Are you old school? Will you cut around it?Rachel: No. I used to and I used to cut the mold off cheese, but having learned more about visible mold is only a small amount of it and parts of mold you can't see are branching into the food.Todd: Oh, I see.Rachel: Yeah. So that makes it a little dodgier. So, no I probably wouldn't eat bread that had any kind of mold on it. And I'm dodgy about cheese to. That's got the wrong sort of mold on it.Todd: Right.Rachel: There's the right sort of mold like a blue cheese, and that's fine.Todd: Right. And I should clarify here, neither of us are medical professionals.Rachel: Don't take this advise.Todd: We're just talking about our own habits here, so ...Rachel: Another thing that ...Todd: What about juice? What about juice? Like how long can you keep juice? Can you smell when juice is bad?Rachel: I don't usually buy juice, so I don't really know.Todd: Oh, yeah.Rachel: Maybe you can smell it.Todd: Maybe you can smell it.Rachel: Yeah, I'd probably toss juice because I'm not experienced enough with it, obviously, to have made my own mind up about it, so I'd probably go by the date with that one.Todd: What's interesting is when you see some foods that you think would last forever, but actually they won't, they just have an expiration date that's way in the future, like canned goods.Rachel: Yes.Todd: Sometimes it's surprising when you're like, "Oh, there actually is an expiration date on there."Rachel: There is.Todd: But it's way in the future.Rachel: It's way in the future, as long as the can's not dented, I think ...Todd: Or rusty, right?Rachel: ... is the rule for that. Yeah.Todd: Yeah. Interesting topic.

Todd: Rachel, I thought we would talk a little bit about items and their shelf life, like how long will you keep something? For example, like a book or clothing, because yesterday I was talking to my students and they were surprised when I admitted that the shirt I was wearing, I had had for over 10 years. Now, they're young and they can't imagine that.Rachel: No, that might be a function of being young.Todd: Right, exactly.Rachel: Because their clothes of 10 years ago are obviously too small.Todd: Yeah.Rachel: It depends on the clothes.Todd: Do you like to keep your clothes a long time?Rachel: If I really like them, I might.Todd: Yeah. How often do you toss out your clothes?Rachel: I toss out clothes once or twice a year. I'll go through my wardrobe and throw out things that are too small or have started to look shabby. But there are other things that I just keep year after year after year, probably things people don't see as often like pajamas might last a little longer.Todd: Yeah.Rachel: Some people advise that if you haven't worn something for six months, you should throw it out, but that seems to me to be not logical, given that there are four seasons and they last a year. If you haven't worn something for a year, maybe you should consider throwing it out. But yeah, definitely, at the start of the season, not in the opposite season. You have to think about the weather.Todd: Yeah. What about food? We live in Japan. We're both teachers in Japan. One thing I often wonder about is the sashimi and the sushi, the raw fish. How long can you keep it before you eat it? They say you're supposed to have it that night, but I sometimes eat it the next morning or even for lunch.Rachel: With fish, as well as other meats, I think it's very easy to tell, because you can tell by the smell whether something's good or not. I actually think that rice is more dangerous.Todd: Oh really?Rachel: Yeah, because it will grow bacteria. Because it's been warm, it will grow bacteria easily at room temperature. The rice is the part you need to be careful about.Todd: Oh. Well what about other foods? Like are you somebody who's really strict about the expiration date?Rachel: I'm not. I think the expiration date on most products errs on the side of safety. And another thing is people confuse the best by date with the expiring date.Todd: Right.Rachel: The best by date is just about freshness, flavor. For example with spices ...Todd: And that's the date they put on the package in the store.Rachel: That's often the date that people go by.Todd: Sell by, yeah.Rachel: Yeah, sell by and best by. For example spices might have a best by date. After that, they might plump a little, they might lose a little flavor, but they're not dangerous.Todd: You can still eat it.Rachel: You can still use them, yeah.Todd: My rule is always three days. So, I'll eat anything if it's within ... except for meat, maybe, but anything if it's within three days of the expiration date or the sell-by date on the store's ...Rachel: Oh, I think that matters ... To me it makes an enormous difference what it is. For example, moyashi, which is bean sprouts, I'll eat them on the day or the day after, but not after that. They start getting bad really quickly. But, for example, a jar of pickles, that's going to last much longer than the three days after.Todd: Right. I think the big one, I guess, you're right about time, is dairy. Milk is obvious, because milk you can smell. But cheese ...Rachel: But on the other hand, it just turns into yogurt.Todd: Right, yes. So that's the other one is yogurt. So yogurt, I'll see it in the fridge and I'm like, "How long can I keep this?" Like sometimes it'll be past the expiration date, but it smells fine, it looks fine.Rachel: Well, yogurt is soured milk, so it's difficult to say at which point it sours, because it's already sour.Todd: Yeah, and cheese too lasts forever it seems like.Rachel: Pretty much. You can see the mold on cheese.Todd: Yeah. So what about if you see bread and there's a little mold on the bread?Rachel: No.Todd: Are you old school? Will you cut around it?Rachel: No. I used to and I used to cut the mold off cheese, but having learned more about visible mold is only a small amount of it and parts of mold you can't see are branching into the food.Todd: Oh, I see.Rachel: Yeah. So that makes it a little dodgier. So, no I probably wouldn't eat bread that had any kind of mold on it. And I'm dodgy about cheese to. That's got the wrong sort of mold on it.Todd: Right.Rachel: There's the right sort of mold like a blue cheese, and that's fine.Todd: Right. And I should clarify here, neither of us are medical professionals.Rachel: Don't take this advise.Todd: We're just talking about our own habits here, so ...Rachel: Another thing that ...Todd: What about juice? What about juice? Like how long can you keep juice? Can you smell when juice is bad?Rachel: I don't usually buy juice, so I don't really know.Todd: Oh, yeah.Rachel: Maybe you can smell it.Todd: Maybe you can smell it.Rachel: Yeah, I'd probably toss juice because I'm not experienced enough with it, obviously, to have made my own mind up about it, so I'd probably go by the date with that one.Todd: What's interesting is when you see some foods that you think would last forever, but actually they won't, they just have an expiration date that's way in the future, like canned goods.Rachel: Yes.Todd: Sometimes it's surprising when you're like, "Oh, there actually is an expiration date on there."Rachel: There is.Todd: But it's way in the future.Rachel: It's way in the future, as long as the can's not dented, I think ...Todd: Or rusty, right?Rachel: ... is the rule for that. Yeah.Todd: Yeah. Interesting topic.

Todd: So Rachel, you said that in your home country, New Zealand, there're lots of birds that don't fly?Rachel: Yes, there are a lot of birds that don't fly.Todd: Wow, so I only new of the kiwi and of course the penguin, but I didn't know of other ones. So first the kiwi. It doesn't fly, right?Rachel: That's the famous one.Todd: Right.Rachel: They don't fly but they can run very fast. I've seen them.Todd: Liike and are the kiwi all over? Like are there different types of kiwi?Rachel: Yeah, there are several different varieties. They're very rare though, and they're nocturanal.Todd: Oh, nocturnal.Rachel: I'd say most New Zealanders have never seen one in the wild. I've only seen them in Kiwi parks.Todd: Oh, really.Rachel: Yeah, you don't see them.Todd: So, I thought they'd be like kangaroos in Australia, or something like you go and there's one.Rachel: No, they're very precious and very rare. One that you see more often is the pukeko which is ... it looks a little bit like a stork I suppose except it's dark blue.Todd: What's it called?Rachel: Pukeko.Todd: Pukeko.Rachel: Ah, yeah, and they're a lot more commom. And takahe is another oneTodd: So the first one ...Rachel: You can see them along the side of the road. When you're driving through the countryside they're much more common.Todd: So this pukeko, does it fly?Rachel: No, they don't fly.Todd: Really, and it's like a stork. It has long legs?Rachel: It has quite long legs. Yeah, it a very cute little bird, but it's very dark.Todd: How tall is it? Like up to your knee? Up to your hip?Rachel: Up to your knees.Todd: Really.Rachel: Cute little bird.Todd: That's awesome. So what was the other one you mentioned?Rachel: Takahe. It's very similar looking to that one. It's a little different. It's difficult to tell apart.Todd: Really, and it's also kind of dark blueish.Rachel: Yeah, another one's a kakapo. A very famous one. It's New Zealand's flightless green parrot. It's kind of like a large fat parrot that lives on the ground.Todd: Really.Rachel: It's extremely rare. I'm not sure what the numbers are now, but around twenty years ago I think there were only 45 leftTodd: Oh, that is rare.Rachel: Extremely rare, so there's an intensive breeding program for them, and of course nobody's seen those in the wild.Todd: Yeah, you have to be careful or it'll go like the way of the Tasmanian tiger.Rachel: Yeah, they breed and they nest on the ground. They lay their eggs on the ground, so they're very vulnerable to introduced predators, to any animals.Todd: Yeah, I know that, you don't have snakes, but I know that snakes when they got into Guam they like decimated the bird population.Rachel: Yep. That's what would happen and that's why New Zealand immigration customs is very strict about what kind of animals you can bring in. We don't even have snakes in zoos.Todd: That's smart.Rachel: Michael Jackson famously came to New Zealand in the 1980's and wanted to bring his pet snake with him and he wasn't allowed to.Todd: Oh, good on you.Rachel: There were no exceptions to that rule.Todd: Are there any other birds that don't fly? For example do you have penguins?Rachel: Oh, yes, there's lots of penguins in New Zealand.Todd: In the south right?Rachel: Yeah, in the south. Oh, they come up to the north sometimes.Todd: Really, that far north?Rachel: Yeah, occasionally. The big colonies are down south.Todd: Ah, that's amazing. How cool. Any other birds that don't fly?Rachel: Not that I can think of off the top of my head. I'd have to look it up on the Internet.Todd: No, that's still though ... that's quite a few. That's so nice.Rachel: The most famous was the moa of course.Todd: The moa?Rachel: Which is an ostrich sized bird.Todd: Oh, really.Rachel: Yeah, but they were ... they were killed off before Europeans arrived in New Zealand.Todd: Oh, easy hunting.Rachel: They were easy hunting. Yeah. And a big feast.Todd: It's funny how when you go to a place, you really want to see like a local animal, so last year I went to the Middle East. I went to U.A.E and Oman, and I just wanted to see a camel. I wanted to see a camel so bad, and I thought like I'd go down the road..Rachel: Everyone drives a Mercedes these days.Todd: and there'd be a camel, and I was kind of going out in the countryside. I wasn't just in the city, and I never saw a camel, and I was asking people that work there, and they're like, "yeah, you do see them" but I was just so heartbroken that I never saw a camel.Rachel: Ooh!Todd: It's one of my favorite animals. I just think they look so cool, so when I go to New Zealand, I have to make sure I see a kiwi.Rachel: But you'll have to go to the kiwi house.Todd: The Kiwi House.Rachel: The Kiwi House it's called. Or just look up zoos.Todd: And they got 'em?Rachel: Yep, they got 'em there. But you won't just see them driving around.

Todd: So Rachel, you said that in your home country, New Zealand, there're lots of birds that don't fly?Rachel: Yes, there are a lot of birds that don't fly.Todd: Wow, so I only new of the kiwi and of course the penguin, but I didn't know of other ones. So first the kiwi. It doesn't fly, right?Rachel: That's the famous one.Todd: Right.Rachel: They don't fly but they can run very fast. I've seen them.Todd: Liike and are the kiwi all over? Like are there different types of kiwi?Rachel: Yeah, there are several different varieties. They're very rare though, and they're nocturanal.Todd: Oh, nocturnal.Rachel: I'd say most New Zealanders have never seen one in the wild. I've only seen them in Kiwi parks.Todd: Oh, really.Rachel: Yeah, you don't see them.Todd: So, I thought they'd be like kangaroos in Australia, or something like you go and there's one.Rachel: No, they're very precious and very rare. One that you see more often is the pukeko which is ... it looks a little bit like a stork I suppose except it's dark blue.Todd: What's it called?Rachel: Pukeko.Todd: Pukeko.Rachel: Ah, yeah, and they're a lot more commom. And takahe is another oneTodd: So the first one ...Rachel: You can see them along the side of the road. When you're driving through the countryside they're much more common.Todd: So this pukeko, does it fly?Rachel: No, they don't fly.Todd: Really, and it's like a stork. It has long legs?Rachel: It has quite long legs. Yeah, it a very cute little bird, but it's very dark.Todd: How tall is it? Like up to your knee? Up to your hip?Rachel: Up to your knees.Todd: Really.Rachel: Cute little bird.Todd: That's awesome. So what was the other one you mentioned?Rachel: Takahe. It's very similar looking to that one. It's a little different. It's difficult to tell apart.Todd: Really, and it's also kind of dark blueish.Rachel: Yeah, another one's a kakapo. A very famous one. It's New Zealand's flightless green parrot. It's kind of like a large fat parrot that lives on the ground.Todd: Really.Rachel: It's extremely rare. I'm not sure what the numbers are now, but around twenty years ago I think there were only 45 leftTodd: Oh, that is rare.Rachel: Extremely rare, so there's an intensive breeding program for them, and of course nobody's seen those in the wild.Todd: Yeah, you have to be careful or it'll go like the way of the Tasmanian tiger.Rachel: Yeah, they breed and they nest on the ground. They lay their eggs on the ground, so they're very vulnerable to introduced predators, to any animals.Todd: Yeah, I know that, you don't have snakes, but I know that snakes when they got into Guam they like decimated the bird population.Rachel: Yep. That's what would happen and that's why New Zealand immigration customs is very strict about what kind of animals you can bring in. We don't even have snakes in zoos.Todd: That's smart.Rachel: Michael Jackson famously came to New Zealand in the 1980's and wanted to bring his pet snake with him and he wasn't allowed to.Todd: Oh, good on you.Rachel: There were no exceptions to that rule.Todd: Are there any other birds that don't fly? For example do you have penguins?Rachel: Oh, yes, there's lots of penguins in New Zealand.Todd: In the south right?Rachel: Yeah, in the south. Oh, they come up to the north sometimes.Todd: Really, that far north?Rachel: Yeah, occasionally. The big colonies are down south.Todd: Ah, that's amazing. How cool. Any other birds that don't fly?Rachel: Not that I can think of off the top of my head. I'd have to look it up on the Internet.Todd: No, that's still though ... that's quite a few. That's so nice.Rachel: The most famous was the moa of course.Todd: The moa?Rachel: Which is an ostrich sized bird.Todd: Oh, really.Rachel: Yeah, but they were ... they were killed off before Europeans arrived in New Zealand.Todd: Oh, easy hunting.Rachel: They were easy hunting. Yeah. And a big feast.Todd: It's funny how when you go to a place, you really want to see like a local animal, so last year I went to the Middle East. I went to U.A.E and Oman, and I just wanted to see a camel. I wanted to see a camel so bad, and I thought like I'd go down the road..Rachel: Everyone drives a Mercedes these days.Todd: and there'd be a camel, and I was kind of going out in the countryside. I wasn't just in the city, and I never saw a camel, and I was asking people that work there, and they're like, "yeah, you do see them" but I was just so heartbroken that I never saw a camel.Rachel: Ooh!Todd: It's one of my favorite animals. I just think they look so cool, so when I go to New Zealand, I have to make sure I see a kiwi.Rachel: But you'll have to go to the kiwi house.Todd: The Kiwi House.Rachel: The Kiwi House it's called. Or just look up zoos.Todd: And they got 'em?Rachel: Yep, they got 'em there. But you won't just see them driving around.

Todd: So Rachel, you said that in your home country, New Zealand, there're lots of birds that don't fly?Rachel: Yes, there are a lot of birds that don't fly.Todd: Wow, so I only new of the kiwi and of course the penguin, but I didn't know of other ones. So first the kiwi. It doesn't fly, right?Rachel: That's the famous one.Todd: Right.Rachel: They don't fly but they can run very fast. I've seen them.Todd: Liike and are the kiwi all over? Like are there different types of kiwi?Rachel: Yeah, there are several different varieties. They're very rare though, and they're nocturanal.Todd: Oh, nocturnal.Rachel: I'd say most New Zealanders have never seen one in the wild. I've only seen them in Kiwi parks.Todd: Oh, really.Rachel: Yeah, you don't see them.Todd: So, I thought they'd be like kangaroos in Australia, or something like you go and there's one.Rachel: No, they're very precious and very rare. One that you see more often is the pukeko which is ... it looks a little bit like a stork I suppose except it's dark blue.Todd: What's it called?Rachel: Pukeko.Todd: Pukeko.Rachel: Ah, yeah, and they're a lot more commom. And takahe is another oneTodd: So the first one ...Rachel: You can see them along the side of the road. When you're driving through the countryside they're much more common.Todd: So this pukeko, does it fly?Rachel: No, they don't fly.Todd: Really, and it's like a stork. It has long legs?Rachel: It has quite long legs. Yeah, it a very cute little bird, but it's very dark.Todd: How tall is it? Like up to your knee? Up to your hip?Rachel: Up to your knees.Todd: Really.Rachel: Cute little bird.Todd: That's awesome. So what was the other one you mentioned?Rachel: Takahe. It's very similar looking to that one. It's a little different. It's difficult to tell apart.Todd: Really, and it's also kind of dark blueish.Rachel: Yeah, another one's a kakapo. A very famous one. It's New Zealand's flightless green parrot. It's kind of like a large fat parrot that lives on the ground.Todd: Really.Rachel: It's extremely rare. I'm not sure what the numbers are now, but around twenty years ago I think there were only 45 leftTodd: Oh, that is rare.Rachel: Extremely rare, so there's an intensive breeding program for them, and of course nobody's seen those in the wild.Todd: Yeah, you have to be careful or it'll go like the way of the Tasmanian tiger.Rachel: Yeah, they breed and they nest on the ground. They lay their eggs on the ground, so they're very vulnerable to introduced predators, to any animals.Todd: Yeah, I know that, you don't have snakes, but I know that snakes when they got into Guam they like decimated the bird population.Rachel: Yep. That's what would happen and that's why New Zealand immigration customs is very strict about what kind of animals you can bring in. We don't even have snakes in zoos.Todd: That's smart.Rachel: Michael Jackson famously came to New Zealand in the 1980's and wanted to bring his pet snake with him and he wasn't allowed to.Todd: Oh, good on you.Rachel: There were no exceptions to that rule.Todd: Are there any other birds that don't fly? For example do you have penguins?Rachel: Oh, yes, there's lots of penguins in New Zealand.Todd: In the south right?Rachel: Yeah, in the south. Oh, they come up to the north sometimes.Todd: Really, that far north?Rachel: Yeah, occasionally. The big colonies are down south.Todd: Ah, that's amazing. How cool. Any other birds that don't fly?Rachel: Not that I can think of off the top of my head. I'd have to look it up on the Internet.Todd: No, that's still though ... that's quite a few. That's so nice.Rachel: The most famous was the moa of course.Todd: The moa?Rachel: Which is an ostrich sized bird.Todd: Oh, really.Rachel: Yeah, but they were ... they were killed off before Europeans arrived in New Zealand.Todd: Oh, easy hunting.Rachel: They were easy hunting. Yeah. And a big feast.Todd: It's funny how when you go to a place, you really want to see like a local animal, so last year I went to the Middle East. I went to U.A.E and Oman, and I just wanted to see a camel. I wanted to see a camel so bad, and I thought like I'd go down the road..Rachel: Everyone drives a Mercedes these days.Todd: and there'd be a camel, and I was kind of going out in the countryside. I wasn't just in the city, and I never saw a camel, and I was asking people that work there, and they're like, "yeah, you do see them" but I was just so heartbroken that I never saw a camel.Rachel: Ooh!Todd: It's one of my favorite animals. I just think they look so cool, so when I go to New Zealand, I have to make sure I see a kiwi.Rachel: But you'll have to go to the kiwi house.Todd: The Kiwi House.Rachel: The Kiwi House it's called. Or just look up zoos.Todd: And they got 'em?Rachel: Yep, they got 'em there. But you won't just see them driving around.

This episode is part three of a four part mini-series on the NEH-funded project "Toward a Pedagogy from Crisis.” Jolie speaks with Dr. Rachel Rickard Rebellino, an assistant professor in children’s and adolescent literature, and a “camp counselor” for a month-long summer program for humanities faculty on adaptive teaching and learning during the COVID-19 crisis. Tiffany Scarola, an instructor in the University Writing Program, joins to share her experience as a camp attendee. They discuss building just and equitable learning communities within larger, and frequently inequitable, institutions. Announcer: From Bowling Green State University and the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society, this is BG Ideas. Musical Intro: I'm going to show you this with a wonderful experiment. Jolie: Hello, and welcome back to the BG Ideas podcast brought to you by the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society and the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University. I'm Dr. Jolie Sheffer. This episode is part of a mini series focusing on a National Endowment for the Humanities sponsored project called "Toward A Pedagogy From Crisis: Adaptive Teaching and Learning at Bowling Green State University during COVID-19." Due to the ongoing pandemic, we are not recording in the studio, but are at home talking via phone and computer. As always, the opinions expressed on the podcast are those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of BGSU or its employees. Bowling Green State University is located in the great black swamp, long a meeting place of the Wyandotte, Shawnee, Lenape, Ottawa, Kickapoo, Fox, Potawatomie, Erie, Miami, Peoria, Chippewa, and Seneca Indian tribes. We honor the rich history of this land and its indigenous inhabitants past and present. Today I'm very pleased to be joined by Dr. Rachel Rickard Rebellino and Tiffany Scarola. Rachel serves as one of the NEH project's camp counselors during the summer camp. She teaches courses on children's and adolescent literature for the English department. Her research examines digital youth cultures, girlhood studies, and social justice themes and children's literature. Tiffany is an instructor in the University Writing Program where she teaches first year composition, and she was in an NEH camp participant this summer. Her research interests include encouraging student cognitive processing and establishing a cult of vulnerability in classroom environments. Rachel and Tiffany, thank you very much for joining me today. Rachel: Thank you for having me. Tiffany: Yeah. Thank you for having us. Jolie: Equity, accessibility and social justice are clear priorities in the NEH project, and they're also at the heart of the research and the teaching that both of you do. Rachel, could you start off by talking about how your research on youth literature is a catalyst for conversations about equity injustice? Is this a relatively new phenomenon in children's literature or is there a longer history of that kind of connection? Rachel: That's a great question. There is a pretty long history of youth literature being a tool for conversations around equity and justice. So I'm thinking specifically of the example of The Brownies' Book, that was a magazine that was specifically put out to address perceived gaps, real gaps, in the literature that was being written for Black and brown youth. And the purposes of that magazine were very, very explicit that it would be to lift up Black youth, to help them to really see their value in a society that was devaluing them. And this was in the 1920s, I don't think I said that initially. Rachel: And since then, youth literature has definitely served kind of a conservative function in upholding social values in some capacities, but there has always been youth literature that is breaking boundaries and that is really pushing for more complex conversations. And I think because youth literature is a space where cultural values are really taught and disseminated to young people, it makes sense that we kind of see both sides of that. That we might see more conservative sides of that, but we also see sides that are very like pushing forward and trying to work toward equity. Jolie: How does your own research in this area inform your teaching? Rachel: A lot of my research deals with how... It's kind of at the intersections of education and literary studies. So I look at a lot how teachers might use certain books in their classrooms to have conversations around equity and justice. So you might imagine that that then kind of bleeds over into my own classroom of how I'm using the books that I'm working with in my classroom to have conversations with pre-service teachers and other students taking my classes around social justice. So for example, this semester I'm teaching a class on American histories in youth literature, where we're really looking at how certain dominant narratives of the history of the United States are countered or questioned through contemporary youth literature. And I'm taking some of the research that I've done about how books like Thanhha Lai's Inside Out and Back Again, which is a verse novel about the Vietnam war, how that book really offers a different kind of narrative around the experience of Vietnamese refugees and the experience of refugees in general. And then kind of flips that on its head for child audiences and for adult audiences, as well. Jolie: Tiffany, you focus on breaking down barriers in writing classrooms through de-centering yourself as the instructor and using what you call "unusual teaching methods," such as bringing in popular culture and social media as a tool for teaching research and writing. Can you give some examples and explain how you are re-imagining pedagogy for your current students? Tiffany: Well, one of the things I do is something that I've done actually the last few years is that I write alongside them. Every assignment that they write, I also write a version of that assignment and I do a true rough draft and a true final draft. I make sure that they know completely transparent that, "Hey, this is a real rough draft and this is something that real writers struggle with." It's not just this kind of like product endgame type of situation and emphasizing the fact that it is process over product. And that's something that has really helped them a lot over the last few years. I think I started doing it, I want to say in maybe 2018 is when I started first doing it with the more research heavy 1120 courses. And I did like a proposal with them. I did an annotated bibliography all like following the same type of advice that I give them, like saying, "Yeah, I could write on something fancy or I could write on something that I actually have a great deal of ethos connected to it." Tiffany: Cause that's something that I always see, they come up with these topics that sound really good, but because they don't have any first person perspective or an actual true investment in the topic, they get stuck at like the worst possible spot. Cause yeah, they can find the research, but then when they go to sit down to write it, if they don't understand the kind of complex scenarios that are being discussed in the heavy research that they're finding, they struggle. So I try to do that with them and so I've done that the last few years in the classroom and they have really taken to it. I've even been doing it this semester where I do the rough draft. I post it the week before they do so like, I'm even like, "Yeah, I'm one of those annoying students who always has to have it done early, guys." Tiffany: And I even had a student in class the other day, like outright say, "I can tell that this is a real rough draft." Tiffany: I'm like, "What are you talking about?" Tiffany: "Well, you have needles up there instead of needless." Tiffany: I'm like, "Yes, I know. And that's a good lesson to always read through your work and not rely on spellcheck, cause that's not spelled incorrectly, but that is obviously the wrong word." Tiffany: And you know I use those types of like "ahas" that they bring into it as these like true teachable moments. And it is very frightening actually to have them read it, but letting them know that like, "Hey guys, this is actually scary." And like letting them know that it is something that really does not get any easier over time, even being on the other side of the classroom and they truly value it. Tiffany: And we have that happened the other day and I was so excited when they said that. I was like, "Yeah, but see this is a good thing, cause yeah, you can use Grammarly and you can use spellcheck, but it's still a thing that you have to actually read through your content." So that's something that I truly value and they do too. And it allows them also to be more open with the struggles that they're having with their own work. So they were very grateful for that. So that kind of the evolution and arc of kind of some of the things I've done in the classroom to kind of create that sense of camaraderie. Jolie: One of the other features of the pandemic is that it has really made visible long-standing inequities in the US, right. We see this in every aspect of the pandemic, the economic fallout of the pandemic, which communities are disproportionately impacted, the health disparities, as well as access issues. Right? Sort of poor students, Black and brown students, rural students, not having the same kind of access even to Internet. And we've talked about bandwidth issues and we're seeing food insecurity, housing insecurity, as well as police brutality, things like that. So I'm curious for both of you, how do you see structural inequalities in some of the conventional policies and practices of higher education and how are you trying to challenge some of those or rethink them to reduce some of those inequities? Rachel: That's a really good question. I think the very first thing that came to my mind as you were speaking, which is not... Might at first appear a little bit more tangential, but something that I've been thinking about a lot really recently that I've noticed with my students, especially first-generation college students and lower income students, are really trying to get the most bang for their buck from the college experience. Understandably so, but then that has manifested them taking 18 credit hours every semester in a way that the oddness of this semester of having this mix of a lot of them are taking a mix of hybrid classes like asynchronous classes, synchronous classes, and trying to balance taking six classes, all meeting in different modalities, all with different deadlines. It's terrible. I cannot imagine that, like I think back to my own undergrad experience and it just seems like such an impossible thing. Rachel: And it's very frustrating to me that this is something that they have to do because they don't want to have to take an extra semester. They need to finish as soon as possible. And I totally understand why they're doing it, but it is an inequity that students who have more luxury to potentially take another semester to not try to finish as fast that they are able to take four classes and be a little bit more comfortable. So something that I have really tried to impress upon my students is I instituted a policy this semester of a two week window for deadlines. No questions asked. I think they think that I'm not serious about it. Like that I don't mean what I say. Every time that I get an email that's like, "I'm really overwhelmed. I forgot about this. I'm so sorry. I'll get it to you. Like in a couple of hours." Rachel: Like, take your time. You have two weeks, no questions asked. And the policy initially I put it in place thinking primarily about health reasons and giving that two week window would just allow just a blanket. You know if they're quarantining and then very worried about not sure if they were exposed, that that would give them space. But what it has really turned into is a space for all of the messiness that this semester has brought. And specifically I'm thinking about students who are just very overwhelmed, having that extra space allows them to do the work and the time that they have versus trying to make everything fit when they have a paper for all six of their classes due on the same day, which has happened. Jolie: What about for you, Tiffany? Are you thinking about particular ways that the university may not have been set up towards equity and things that you may be doing to try and shift that balance a bit? Tiffany: I mean, I think all things considered the university has done as much as it was able to do in such a short timeframe, trying to get the needs of certain students in as well as they could, like with that MyDesign BGSU thing that they had. I know that even though I'm primarily teaching hybrid sections, I have students that are fully remote students in my hybrid sections and making the reasonable accommodations for them to still be able to participate in the class content over the course of the semester, because there's various reasons for why they're unable to physically be in the classroom. I have had everything from they're just concerned about their health to they have only my class as the hybrid class. So they're not going to spend the money on the dorms and the apartment and stuff like that to just be in there for just my class. Tiffany: Over the last few weeks I've had students who are commuting from home because maybe they only have two hybrid classes, unable to show up on time or late and stuff like that. I've always liked to think that I've been relatively flexible with that type of thing even more so this semester with the fact that there's so many things operating against us. Like how Rachel said, with students that don't have the luxury of being able to just kind of take the regular standard full load of classes. One thing that I've always valued about higher ed is the degree of autonomy that we have with some of those things. Obviously we always abide by university and department policies and stuff like that, but there is that like we're allowed to do that. And I think it's something that is important because we don't know always the backgrounds of where our students are coming from and it applies to obviously race and ethnicity and gender, but it also applies to learning abilities. Tiffany: I think that this whole pandemic has brought to light a lot of the issues regarding transparency too. I mean, one thing that I really hope comes out of all of this is that instead of just preaching the term "transparency," we actually enact transparency in like a real way, cause it's such a higher-ed buzzword and we all know this. We've all been in those meetings where they say the word and like everybody kind of gets like the silent, "Ooh," going on. But I really hope that that's one of the more positive things that comes out of it for both students who are the more, racial groups, gender, all that stuff. But also for those kids that maybe are not part of one of those more protected groups, but still need just as much attention because they have an IEP, some kind of learning disability that they need compensation for. Jolie: I think part of what you're talking about is whether it was formalized or just kind of normative in higher ed was really like students and faculty members were expected to sort of check their lives at the classroom door, right? You walk into that space and now it's an intellectual space, our bodies, our spirituality, our families, our material circumstances, those are meant to be left outside and we are just meant to connect like mind to mind. And I think what the pandemic has revealed is that's impossible. Jolie: That is such an expectation of students having enough to eat, having a safe place to live, of having access to the tools and resources of having kind of learning styles that match the instructors perfectly. It's sort of, there's a whole list that is unspoken with those expectations. And I think one of the things that both of you are talking about is finding in this moment, a kind of radical transparency, a shared vulnerability that when everyone is out of sorts, when everyone feels vulnerable, it actually creates a space to bring our whole selves into the classroom. It's actually essential for learning, right? Because it gets back to things that both of you were talking about, which is you need to meet students where they are so then you can tell them where you're going to go together. Right? And I think for too often that has been a one directional conversation. And I think that's one of the things the summer camp was really interested in breaking down. Rachel: I was just going to say that, I think that is something that when both of y'all were speaking, I was just really thinking about how rigor above all has kind of seemed to be the way that we operated. That we needed to have these rigorous classes where you were, it was assuming that as long as you worked hard, that you would, that nothing else mattered. As long as you were able, that you were willing to put in the intellectual work that you would do well in the class. And that's just not, that's not how any of this works. Like we have so many other things going on in our lives. And I do think that that transparency and I think radical compassion too for students, I kind of, as you were just saying, Jolie, to allow for that vulnerability, Jolie: We're going to take a quick break. Thanks for listening to the BG Ideas podcast. Announcer: If you are passionate about BG Ideas, consider sponsoring this program, to have your name or organization mentioned here, please contact us at ics@bgsuedu. Jolie: Hello, and welcome back to the BG Ideas podcast today. I'm talking to Dr. Rachel Rickard Rebellino and Tiffany Scarola about their work and experience on the NEH sponsored project "Toward a Pedagogy From Crisis." One of the other areas, I think that has been a part of the discussion about curricular change and about rethinking higher education has often related to the syllabus and the reading list. Listeners may be familiar with the phrase of decolonize the classroom or challenging the syllabus. So, Rachel, how do you think about these practices and what resources or approaches would you encourage listeners to take on when thinking about ways of re-imagining some of those conventional pieces of a college experience to be more equitable, inclusive, transparent, compassionate, things like that. Rachel: So something that I think about a lot with when I'm thinking about how I'm designing my syllabus and thinking about class readings in particular, is the way that syllabi can really reveal the way that whiteness is assumed to be the norm. And that reading scholarship by white researchers, reading books by white authors is very much the assumption and that then other books or scholarship by authors of color that gets kind of like relegated to these like African-American literature classes or multicultural literature classes versus having syllabi that are truly inclusive. And so something that I am very attentive to in how I designed my courses is really looking carefully at whose voices am I privileging in not only the primary readings that I am teaching, but also the secondary readings that I'm teaching. So for example, I'm thinking about the ways that I... Something that I have been critiquing myself about is the way that I talk about the history of children's literature and that historically I would talk about the history of children's literature from this very kind of like white, British, American perspective. Rachel: And then later in the semester, I would have a class period where I talked about the history of African-American children's literature and the history of like more inclusive children's literature. And I still, I'm not a hundred percent sure why that was how I divided that up. Perhaps it was because it was how I was taught, and putting my classes together over the past couple of years, I've really tried to like it's a small thing, but merge those two. Those are not separate histories. Those are one history. And if I'm only teaching history by if I'm framing the general history as reading authors, as reading white scholars talking about the history of children's literature who are primarily focusing on white children's literature, that's a huge gap. Rachel: So in terms of how that applies to just thinking about our syllabus in general, I think it's important to go back to those really primary foundational things. How are we introducing our concepts? What is at the core of what are our first... What are our readings our first two or three weeks of class? Who are we introducing? What are the frameworks we're introducing for reading? And because that's the knowledge that like our students might know nothing about our subject and likely do know very little about our subject coming in. So if what we're giving them as the foundation is this very colonized foundation, what is that doing to our class as a whole? Jolie: Tiffany, do you have anything you want to add about kind of when you're thinking about the syllabus and the readings, things you're doing to create a more inclusive experience? Tiffany: What I try to do when building my syllabus? I mean, clearly I don't get the opportunity to incorporate literature and stuff like that as traditionally thought with most types of writings slash English type classes. However, especially in the 1110 class, which is more about kind of the buildings of foundations of writing, I try to, because I mean the scholarship is largely kind of from white contributors to largely white audiences. And that is a huge problem. The assignments that they just recently finished was the literacy narrative examination. I had an excerpt from Malcolm X. I also had an excerpt from other narrative life of Frederick Douglas, which is more traditionally used and maybe like an antebellum lit type course. But I use that as an example of a literacy narrative in that along with some of the more commonly known authors reflected in that type of genre of writing. Tiffany: With the assignment that my students are working on right now with regards to discourse communities, one of the readings I have is Mother Tongue by Amy Tan. So I try to find a bevy of authors from those different backgrounds to kind of further reinforce the diversity of this particular topic because we're not just teaching to one particular ethnic group of students. And I feel like that is a big problem that they feel devalued when they don't, there's a big... There's something to be said about while this author doesn't have a similar name to me and doesn't look like me on the dust jacket or on the little picture and like the bio, and as much as we don't want to admit it, it kind of does to a point and that affects them and that affects their participation in it. So that's what I try to do when I incorporate stuff into my syllabus and how I design my syllabus. Tiffany: But I also try to think about the various backgrounds that my students come from with regards to their learning. Usually one of the first assignments I have them do in either of the first year writing courses is I ask them to let me know about their previous experiences in their writing English classes and what have they experienced. And, I mean, it's largely, yeah, they've had to read books and take quizzes and maybe write one big five paragraph research paper. But every once in a while, there are those students that don't really have the same type of experience with it. And they come from a variety of different ethnicities and backgrounds and stuff like that. So, trying to pace it so that it's enough space for both the students who have the strong background and don't need as much foundation building and allowing me also to be able to build the foundation for those who need it. Tiffany: So I try to incorporate both with diversity in terms of actual ethnicity, but also again with diversity and learning styles. And because there are students who constantly come, when they come in in the first few weeks of class, they come in with their IEPs and it's like, these are the accommodations that I need for this class and making sure that, "Okay, well, good. How I broke it up this should allow you enough time," or having a more flexible due date for stuff. I always say the students who maybe have Asperger's or ADHD or something like that, if you are struggling, know that you can come to me and just say, "Hey, I'm having a really hard time. Is there any way I can have even a few extra hours or even an extra day," as long as they're doing that and I write that into the syllabus. Tiffany: To say that, "Yeah, obviously late work is not great, but if you come to me and let me know, I can make the accommodation for you so that you don't feel as bogged down with the assignments." Cause it's a lot. So that's what I try to do whenever I build a class. And I try to, with a reasonable amount of expectations and that's also where having the prerecorded lectures has been helpful, especially this semester. And in a lot of those, I break down the required readings that I have for the course. Tiffany: And I've even told my students that if you guys have to choose between reading one of the articles I've posted, or just listening to the audio lecture, and you have a whole ton of other stuff for one of your other classes, just listen to the audio lecture because it breaks it down for you in a more manageable way so that you are not perhaps as bogged down and maybe you can listen to it while you're working on something for another class. So that's kind of what I try to do, but there's still a lot of scholarship with regards to the specific subjects that I teach that is obviously kind of one way. And that makes it difficult. So I'm constantly looking for that and when I find it, I do my best to incorporate it, Jolie: The name of the NEH camp and project use the term "crisis." And it's not hard to see why, right? We are living in a time of unbelievable challenge. And the pandemic certainly is a crisis, but the camp also tried to emphasize the idea of play and playfulness to a great degree. Rachel, can you talk about why that was and what it meant for you to emphasize play particularly around the idea of creating community? Rachel: I think it's really easy for classroom spaces to become these, especially like higher ed spaces, to become these very rigid spaces where we do things a certain way. This is what our lectures look like. This is how our discussions look like. We have to use these big words and speak in a certain way and write in a certain way. The shift in spring to the very sudden shift to online, things change rapidly. And all of a sudden people's dogs and cats and kids are in the screen and our video is cutting out or I'm talking for... I start babbling on and I'm on mute. And just this kind of like, everything becomes very silly. And I felt like for me personally, just having, you have to embrace the silliness. If you're not going to embrace the silliness, it's just going to get like weirder and worse. Rachel: You have to kind of embrace how strange everything is in addition to how awful everything is. So when it came to designing the camp, I was leading our week on building community and I created this bingo board that kind of incorporated choice and choosing your own adventure through these different assignments or activities related to community. And I think that doing that really... I'm a firm believer in choice and kind of calling back to our previous discussion about readings and decolonizing the syllabus. I think that's another way that you can do that is to bring in student choice with readings as much as possible so that they can find things that fit with them and their interests and experiences and gaps that they might have that they can then fill if you allow for choice. So choice has always been a huge part of my own pedagogy. Rachel: And I think that that alliance... the intersections of choice and play and kind of just breaking out of structure, I think are important in teaching in general, but then maybe become especially important to call back to our very first discussion about kind of like thinking about the digital space. If we're in this kind of amorphous digital space where you can do all sorts of interesting things, I think the best way to experiment with that is through play. And they're trying things out and being willing to say, "Okay, this didn't work. This was not effective. And it failed massively. And that's fine. We're going to try this other thing," and just kind of playing as opposed to being stuck in, like, "This is what we're doing. Here are the hard and fast rules and we can't break from that." Jolie: So, Tiffany, as a camper and now back in the classroom, how did that spirit of playfulness and experimentation affect you? Tiffany: I mean, I feel like Rachel and I are aligned in kind of our approach to teaching and hearing Rachel say these things and in my head going, "Yeah, I do that too. Okay, good. I'm not the only one that kind of has this really weird kind of already kind of playful approach to things." Recognizing that "Okay, A is not working. So let's try B" is so very important and it's something that I've always strived to do. And I will even do it in the classroom because I very much believe that teaching is wonderful and all this stuff, but it's also a performance art to an extent. You are in front of the room and, yeah, you can take classes on classroom management, stuff like that. But if you don't have the charisma to get the students excited, even to the point where maybe they're just listening there quietly and, you know now you can only see about like their eyes up, but still as long as their eyes are on you and not on their phone, you're good. Tiffany: But that kind of reaffirmed some of the things for me that I already do as an instructor because I've always tried to take it very much in that vein. Like one of the ways that I would often start the class would be with this kind of Pepsi challenge thing. Where I'd have two lists and it was like, cause I don't know if you guys remember, but like I was a kid of the nineties. So like the whole, "Which is better Coke or Pepsi," and do that sort of thing as a way to kind of build the community and seeing who likes A over B and things like that. And even in the middle of a lecture, if something is clearly not working or if I can clearly tell that they're like, "Oh, my gosh. Please stop." Tiffany: I'll be like, "Okay, y'all are obviously falling asleep," and all of a sudden be like, "What? No, I'm not." It's like, "Ah, I see the faces." And engaging and acknowledging it in a way that doesn't make them feel bad about it being like, "Dude, it's okay too." Just like, for instance, a few weeks ago I had to take over a course from someone who was unable to finish out the rest of the semester. And it's an 8:00 AM Monday course and... Yeah, I saw your eyes grow and Jolie. Yeah, I saw both of y'all... Anyway, bear with me for a second. So my eyes did the same thing, but the morning of the first Monday 8:00 AM, I'm walking, I walk in and I set stuff up and I'm sitting there and I'm waiting, the students come in, and I waited about two minutes to start class. Tiffany: And I said to them, I was like, "Yeah, so 8:00 AM classes, those are awful." And they all kind of nod their heads and laugh and it's like, "Yeah, don't worry. The teachers hate it too, guys. It's not just you. Like sometimes it's just really awful." And like playing it off like, "Okay, well now you have me. And like, ha ha," like look at this whole kind of really playful thing. Or it also makes me think about, I don't remember if I put this in any of this stuff for the camp, Rachel, but this is something that my first year teaching, I was adjuncting and they had me in a bio lab to teach a writing class. And in this bio lab, it had all these taxidermied, freaky animals all over the room and it scared the bejesus out of me. So I thought it would be funny to walk in five minutes late and pretend to be a bio 1110 instructor instead. Tiffany: And so I walked in and I didn't say anything. And I turned on the computer and I waited and I like checked my watch. And I'm like "Okay. So I'm Dr." I can't remember the name. It was some weird name. Like I made up a name and everything. Tiffany: And I went on for about three minutes before anybody like stopped me and said, "I think you're in the wrong room." Tiffany: I'm like, "Oh wait, is this supposed to be composition?" And all of the students kind of like shaking their heads real nervously as they're shuffling through their schedule, like trying to figure out if they're in the wrong room. It's like, "Oh wait, is this comp?" Tiffany: And they're like, "Yeah." Tiffany: I'm like, "I'm sorry, I'm just kidding. Like I'm your teacher, it's all good." And just like this communal sigh of relief that came over the room, and that was one of the best classes that I ever taught because of doing that and having the willingness to show the vulnerability of it, cause you're putting yourself out there every time you're in front of a room and letting them know that, yeah, this is me. And that class, most of those students ended up taking the next class with me the next year. Tiffany: And a lot of them were like, that's a result of you doing that and like showing this different relationship than kind of this automaton they believe us to be. So I liked seeing with that and especially with some of the stuff Rachel presented during that week of, like this is how you build community and like reaffirming that, okay, I'm not just weird. This is actually something that works. It's just my approach is just kind of this niche approach and embracing that for what it is and further creating. Cause it's why this kind of cult of vulnerability is this thing that I... this kind of quasi phrase that I created is why I do that because it builds community without the students feeling pressure to become part of the community. It's a welcoming sense that they get that I'm open and receptive to their ideas, which in turn also helps with equitability and diversity and stuff like that because they're coming to me. So that's how I kind of further facilitate that throughout. Jolie: I have one final question for you both, which is to ask you to reflect on our current moment and to ask, what is the lesson, the most important lesson you hope we take away from this situation? What is the sort of best case version that going forward we change our pedagogical practices? So you want to start, Tiffany? What for you is something you hope we take away from this moment? Tiffany: Are you speaking in terms of like the pandemic and how we've had to adjust our approaches? Okay. Jolie: Yeah. Tiffany: Okay. I have to go back to my favorite word of, probably the millennium, is "transparency." I really hope that instead of just preaching it, we actually practice it because that's what the students need right now. They are craving knowing that they're not the only ones struggling. Granted our struggles are never going to be the same and we're never going to be exactly in the same point, but at least we can meet... at least if we try to meet them midway because transitioning to college is so frightening for so many students, especially for those from more vulnerable populations. It's something so far removed from everything that they know. And right now on having the pandemic on top of that, just further compounds the issues that we so infrequently just kind of glance over because we've all been through it. Tiffany: So it's like it's a rite of passage. Yes. But they still need to know that, they need that reassurance from us. And one of the only ways to do that is to recognize the fact that we struggle too. The struggles might not be the same and they might not affect us in the same way, but we all still struggle. And it's okay because it's in times of great crisis that people really become themselves and figure out the people that they want to be. But they still need to know that they have scaffolded support, especially from educators. Tiffany: Educators, and as you both know, sometimes we're surrogate parents. Sometimes we act as therapists. Sometimes students are so inspired by us and we have this like superhero quality that they attach to us, and I think in recent years in education that's kind of become removed. And it's shifted to this alternate universe and I really think that with the pandemic and acknowledging all our vulnerabilities... Obviously you still need to maintain a separation of church and state as it were, for lack of a better phrase, between the professional, you, and then the you, but there's a way to do it. Tiffany: And people should be more encouraged to do that to facilitate community because right now we really need it. And it's something that we've always needed, but we need it more so now than ever so that we don't collapse so that we come out of it and are able to be strong at the end. Jolie: What about for you, Rachel? What do you hope we take away from this moment? Rachel: I think the thing that I keep coming back to is just a radical care and empathy and that the being in a global pandemic, having these important and awful and difficult conversations around race and really trying to... really navigating the multiple intersecting ways that Black and brown bodies have been attacked this summer. Like these are all crises that are happening kind of collectively and communally, but our students may or may not be in crisis at any point. Like there are crises that are happening every day to our students, whether they are small or large. And the fact that we are all collectively in crisis, I think has made a lot of people willing to be more caring and to offer more flexibility. I know for my own teaching personally, like I have been more flexible with students through this and I've been thinking a lot about like, why don't I... If and when things are quote/unquote "back to normal," which is a huge question mark that, who knows. Rachel: But if and when things are back to normal, whatever normal means, why not maintain some of these same policies? Why not maintain radical policies around accepting late work and allowing students to make up classes when they are in crisis? Why not have more no questions asked policies for certain, rather than trying to like police every activity that students are doing? Rachel: And of course, will there be people who take advantage of that? Yes, there will be. But are there people that take advantage of the current system and that are coasting through because of other advantages they have? Yes. So why not maintain some of these policies and some of these procedures that we've put in place now, once we're all back together? So yeah. Radical care and empathy, and to echo what Tiffany said, vulnerability. I think that this being in the pandemic has certainly broken down some barriers that I had built for myself around how I present myself to my students. And that's, I mean, I don't think there's... I don't think you can go back after you're like, "I'm a real human, not just your performing song and dance teacher." Jolie: Hmm. Thank you both so much for joining me, Rachel and Tiffany. Listeners can keep up with ICS by following us on Twitter and Instagram @icsbgsu. You can listen to BG Ideas wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Please subscribe and rate us on your preferred platform. Our producers are Chris Cavera and Marco Mendoza with sound editing by Marco Mendoza. Research assistance for this episode was provided by Stevie Scheurich with editing by Kari Hanlin.

My guest today is Rachel Porges, former CMO of Levain Bakery, the maker of the most famous 6-ounce chocolate chip walnut cookie. This is Part 2 of the interview where we explore how she grew the Levain business.This is the free edition of Marketing BS. Premium subscribers got access to part 1 of Rachel's interview yesterday and twice the content every week.You can also listen to these interviews in your podcast player of choice: Apple, Sticher, TuneIn, Overcast , Spotify. Private Feed (for premium episodes).This Essay is Sponsored by PulsarStop doing generic social listening: tap into Audience IntelligenceDifferent communities talk about the same topic differently. Carry out instant conversation analysis + audience segmentation in just one tool with audience intelligence platform Pulsar: understand the public conversation, identify the top communities in your audience, and glean actionable creative & media insights to power your marketing.  TranscriptEdward: This is part two of my interview with Rachel Porges. Today, we're going to dive into her experience as Chief Marketing Officer for Levain Bakery. Rachel, can you start by explaining what Levain Bakery is, and how I'm mispronouncing it? Rachel: You're actually getting it exactly right, which is a first for me because nobody pronounces it right. Levain Bakery was founded about 25 years ago by two amazing women, Pam Leekes and Connie McDonald, as a little bakery shop in the Upper West Side in New York. They were actually training for marathons and were making cookies at home for themselves to keep up their energy. They're training for triathlons and were keeping up their energy with these giant cookies. They started selling them. The New York Times picked it up and the world changed. To this day, 25 years later, even in COVID, there are lines down the block at the bakeries for these cookies. They're an icon. If you've ever seen one of those pictures of a giant cookie being broken on Instagram, the genesis is Levain Bakery. Levain brought them private equity money a couple of years ago and hired a new executive chief, of which I was one, to take the brand forward and figure out how to scale it out of four bakeries in New York—three in the city, one in the Hamptons—and do three things. One was to increase the footprint of the bakeries and add stores, two was to grow ecommerce, and three was to launch into CVJ. I was involved in all three of those things over the course of my couple of years there. The store, it fits incredibly. Even in the middle of this pandemic, the performance of the stores and of all the other pieces of the business has been truly remarkable. I was super honored to be a huge part of it, and I continue to advise them today.Edward: How are they different than all the other bakeries out there? Is it just a better product? What makes them different?Rachel: It's a really interesting question. One is that this cookie, it's the first of its kind in this giant cookie. The cookies are six ounces. Picture a softball squished down and break it up with a ton of chocolate chips in it, it's a little insane, so just the size and scale. I think what Levain does better than anyone is in experience. When you walk in, you're greeted by people that love what they're doing. When you walk up to one of the bakeries—whether it's on the Upper West Side, or in the Hamptons, or the store we opened a couple of weeks ago in Washington, DC—outside, you see people snapping pictures of that cookie break. You see people with these joyous faces. That's what it does better than anyone.Sure, we have really great bread, some sticky buns, and all of those things, but what Levain does best is it creates a moment of joy for people. At any time, it's a big piece of it. Pam and Connie often talk about the fact that 9/11 people came up to the bakery as a place just to get a moment of normal [...] to hell that was that day. The same thing has happened. We got customers coming in during the pandemic handing our employees notes (with gloved hands) saying thank you for being here at this time. It's not just the cookie, that's the moment. What we see is that translates across ecommerce, certainly where people want to send their friend a moment of joy. They send our cookies via our DTC website. As I helped to create the CPG product, it was incumbent upon us to make sure that we did that there as well. It's really easy to throw something in a bag and put it on a shelf and have to be a different experience, but what makes those special is that breaking open that moment of joy, the dewy chocolate chips. We had to find a way to bring that to life at a grocery store when you don't control the environment around you.Edward: That cookie is obviously very important, especially for the brand. Is it important sales? What percentage of your sales would come from that cookie versus everything else?Rachel: I can't disclose numbers, but a whole hell of a lot. Edward: It's more than just a brand, though. It's like people come in and buy the cookie, and everything else is there almost just like an add-on. It's like, I'll have fries with that.Rachel: Yeah, which is ironic because the name is actually a type of bread. Levain is a leaven sourdough bread out of France. It's an actual name for a sourdough starter or a fermented starter. The brand is the cookie to some extent. Even our logo that we launched last year is a cookie. It has nothing to do with the original name of it. No one lines up down the street. I'd love to say they do. Certainly, our products are amazing across the board, but they line up down the street for the cookie. As we extended that brand, it became really important that the cookie stays at the center of it. That's where a lot of marketers sometimes get confused is they forget that the consumer has a voice in what you're trying to do. For us, it became really obvious as we were watching social media, as we were talking to people online, as we watched sales. They're telling us what to maximize growing this business. That became a big common arc of what we did as we extended the channels.Edward: Why expand the product at all? Do you get incremental sales by having bread? How do you decide what else to add in?Rachel: We've actually had much the same menu for the better part of 25 years. We haven't done a ton of add-in. Pam and Connie—prior to the growth equity coming in—made some changes along the way. In my time there, we actually didn't add anything. As we had to narrow the menu during the pandemic just to make it easier to operate, we didn't take out any of the cookies. We took out other things that were either complicated, took up space, or caused a little bit of operational hurdle. Bread actually—interestingly enough during the pandemic—became a bigger piece of it because people needed the staples at home in a way that they didn't before, or they had other venues to get it before. But the cookies remained true. In the time that I was there, there are three big innovations that I helped with. One was the ice cream sandwich on the Upper East Side last summer using our cookies, which is kind of a media darling at the time. It drove a lot of excitement because suddenly, we are using our cookies for a different purpose. By the way, ridiculously decadent and very much in keeping with the brand, we launched the first-ever chocolate chip cookie without nuts, which was unheard of before at Levain. Levain had only had a chocolate chip cookie with walnuts. We launched a chocolate chip cookie, it's called Two Chip Chocolate Chip. It has two different types of chocolate chips in it. We launched that when we opened our no-host store in February of 2020. We'll do that to the other bakeries as well. Just a couple of weeks ago, we co-created a cookie in Washington, DC with a local James Beard recognized chef. Again, made sure we savored the cookie and brought something to life, but did it in a way that localized the brand as we are going to new markets. Edward: I want to talk a little bit about moving Levain into CPG from retail. You've already mentioned a little bit of the challenges doing it. What are the other challenges of moving a retail brand into CPG?Rachel: Product experience is number one on that list, so maintaining the experience. It doesn't have to be the same experience as what we found, but it had to be something that was relevant. We actually didn't launch our six-ounce cookies into CPG. We did an everyday indulgent size two-ounce cookie. The reason we did that is because who needs the six-ounce cookie every day? You're not going to get the eating occasions you need for the velocity at the shelf at retail. We did that. We also did it in a way that wasn't very main to a lot of brands. You see it even recently with Milk Bar. They go and they launch into the same set that has Tate's, Oreo, and all of these other brands in it. For us, we decided to go to frozen desserts because it is a dead category in a place that we could really stand out and deliver real value to the retailer and to the customer. That was a lot of fun. The other thing is cannibalization. You have to be really clear of what you're trying to achieve, and make sure you do nothing to either bastardize or cannibalize the cash cow, the thing that's giving you life. Moving forward, assuming that the CPG product continues to be as successful as the early launch numbers would show, the vast majority of the consumers in the world are going to experience us first as a CPG brand. We had to create a really nice usage circle that encouraged them to also consider coming to New York and coming to the bakery or purchasing the crazy giant cookies as a gift for friends. It all has to be really harmonious. If you try to segment it out and make it one versus the other, you're losing the value that the future buyers at one bakery might actually want.Edward: Where is the future value of CPG? Is it almost as a loss leader driving to the bakeries, or is it a profit center in itself? In fact, to your point, a much more scalable product than your bakeries. Are your bakeries the marquee that helps you sell CPG or the CPG like a marketing channel that gets you to the bakeries?Rachel: Both. It's certainly the latter. It's certainly not a loss leader. It's certainly a valid profit center into itself as it grows. I couldn't say that you would put one over the other. Obviously, the scale you can get at a CPG, you can take [...] and go to 40,000 stores, as opposed to the cost of building out 40,000 bakeries. It would be alarmingly high, not to mention highly cannibalistic at some point. I'm not speaking to Levain strategy, but I don't think it would ever make sense for Levain to be on every street corner everywhere. We said that time and time again. There's still a beauty in the scarcity of that bakery experience and in making it a moment of joy. It's the same thing as my time at Kriser's and other brands. You have to maintain an experience to bother having a brick and mortar facility. It has to be something that you walk in. It's not just about the transaction. Nothing in brick and mortar is strictly transactional anymore. We've seen the failure of so many bricks and mortars that were strictly transactional. CPG creates a moment that appeals to a consumer who has a craving at home and needs something in their pantry or in their freezer to heat up at night. Retail creates an experience when you want to have that, when you an Epicurious traveler who walks into New York, DC, or wherever we had next, and wants a real moment of experience. There are different [...] but they are fed together if the brand stays harmonious. Edward: Let's say 40 years from now, the pandemic is over, people go to the restaurants again and both businesses are super successful. You've expanded to CPG, you've expanded the footprint for the retail. At that point, looking that far into the future, are they both comparably sized businesses? Maybe the retail business is smaller but more profitable, but the received CPG business is larger but smaller margins?Rachel: I don't want to speculate too far into the future. There's only so much I can share, but they both have a place. I think DTC does this well for what it's worth. Whether it's me or whoever comes in next as CMO and obviously our CEO—Andy—they have to make sure that they're always building around the consumer insight. That's the key for it. The consumers will dictate ultimately the size of the prize. They'll tell you how big it is. You could see a world in which the bakery product set is mimicked in retail at some point. Here's the core bet. Cookies are a red herring to some extent. What you're creating is a decadent moment of joy. It's ooey, gooey, delicious, warm, fresh-baked, and it has all this connotation around it. You could take your product line into different places. You could take your bakery experience to different places as long as you maintain that experience across the channels. I don't know whether it's size, product varieties, or how that comes to life, but the consumers will dictate the size of the prize for sure.Edward: What are the prerequisites for a retailer moving in the CPG? You've had obviously a lot of success, Starbucks has a lot of success, but I don't go into my Safeway and see Subway sandwiches prepackaged. Maybe those exist, but they surely aren't successful. What do retailers need to have done in order to be successful when they move into the CPG?Rachel: Building a brand that has something unique about it is the core. Not to crap on Subway, but I'm not sure that Subway has a unique factor in the way that if you look at Jersey Mike's, they do Mike's way and they have a sauce that goes on. There are unique things that make that special. You could take some of that [...] in it. They launched their sauces at Whole Foods and have a CPG business. Milk Bar has done it recently with their product. There's a real distinct point of view for some of these brands that have gone from bakery, restaurant, or a retail brick and mortar experience into CPG. Hale and Hearty did with soups here in the city for a while. That's what really matters. Years ago, when I was at Unilever, I launched P.F. Chang's frozen. It was the biggest launch in North America that year. It was because, at that time, P.F. Chang's was incredibly loved by consumers. It had a really distinct point of view. It was this very bold flavor profile to most of America at the time—this is 2010—which doesn't sound like it was that long ago, but P.F. Chang's is bold. When we were creating the products, we did our damndest to make sure that we kept that flavor profile, that mouth deal, to the extent that we were worrying one morning at 8:30 AM. We were talking about the cut of carrots. Bolthouse Farms had run out of the carrot cut that we usually use for orange chicken. We were tasting different cuts of carrots in the orange chicken to make sure we didn't do anything to lose that mouthfeel and taste profile for P.F. Chang's. That's what it is. You have to have a point of view that can be carried into a new format, irrespective of the chairman. I actually helped advise a small brand called tenoverten which is a nail salon company here in the city. They're [...] different times. They launched their nail products into Target. When they opened their nail salons in the city, it was with the idea of creating an environment that was better for the employees and better for the customers in terms of the chemicals used in the products, the odors, and the space, the nail polish remover, they were using non-acetone. They were creating a whole new environment. When they launched their products into Target, it was with that same mindset. It was with that mindset of being very conscious of everything that went into that product experience. It's been really great. They've had some great success in CPG. That's what it comes down to. Same thing if you look at a brand like Drybar. They were able to create products that live outside of their retail environment. It was taking that point of view and that experience into something that you could bring and port with you. Edward: That was super insightful. I want to dive back a little bit and go into the retail space and growing the retail space. It feels like a big, important part of growing retail is having a really good product and having a really good location. Given that you have those things, as a marketer, how do you help accelerate the business beyond that?Rachel: There are two things in my past that come to life. One is making sure that you're never resting on your laurels. Kriser's was one of my past experiences. I remember my second week on the job at Kriser's. The brand was called Kriser's For Your Pet's All Natural Life when I started. If you look across the parking lot in Irvine, California, or in Englewood, Colorado, you see Kriser's For Your Pet's All Natural Life. I walked back in my second week of the job and I said to the CEO, we have to change the name of the store. He said, would you like to wait until week three to have that opinion? I said, no. I know you've been doing this for nine years, when you're standing across the parking lot, you can't read it. People don't know what it is. You can't see that icon that you created. You can't see that it is a pet retail environment. We did and sales popped up. It was a matter of continuously questioning everything you are doing and making sure that it really rang true to what the customer needed. Along with that is the idea of using customer experience to help drive your communication. As marketers, we strive for advocacy. It's the top of the pyramid or the bottom of the funnel or the top of the funnel depending on which area your funnel's headed this week. You want those handfuls of customers to be really crazy advocates for your brand. Social media and digital platforms have given us a method to repurpose that at scale. At Levain, we took our social following from 100,000 to 250,000 people in less than 18 months. The way we did that was by using what consumers were telling us time and time. We didn't pay a single one of those followers. It was because we were using what consumers were showing their friends in our communication. There was this great virtuous cycle of user-generated content, sharing experiences, bringing people back, and wanting that same experience. We started creating our entire photoshoots around the idea of capturing that same piece of experiences. We did our influencer work, it became the same thing. As we built our new website last year in 2019, we did the same thing. We used images that were representative of what the consumer was telling us mattered to them. With retail as a marketer, it goes back to always being the voice of the consumer and championing that to executives who are more focused on operational efficiency, product assortment, or labor cost because nothing matters if the consumer doesn't carry it forward. Edward: Yeah. It's almost not even appealing to the consumer. It's using your consumers for market research, like figuring out this is what they value because this is what they're sharing and this is what's getting traction among consumers. Let's use that and just scale it.Rachel: For sure. It's the cheapest form of market research. Who needs to run a study when people are telling you every single day? You have social listening. There are a million platforms for social listening. Just search the hashtags on Instagram or on Tiktok, and you will see what consumers are telling you. You joked at the beginning of the last podcast or the beginning of this one, about not saying Levain correctly. There's a whole world in which we needed to understand that people don't understand how to say our name.On the back of our CPG process, our product, and on our website, there's a comment that says ləˈvan in phonetics. It's the idea of, oh, we can actually work and have this dialogue in this interaction with consumers. One of the tech platforms I love is a company called Pixlee. They're from the Andreessen Horowitz Portfolio. They do a beautiful job with helping friends commercialize their user-generated content, either by just embedding it on the website or by enabling you to make that shoppable by scaling the idea of a permissioning UGC. I use it on almost every website I put together, because isn't it better to show not tell? Marc Mathieu—who was the former CEO of Unilever and Samsung at one point—he had a quote. I'm trying to remember exactly what it was, but it's something along the lines of, marketing used to be about creating a story and telling it. Now, it's about finding the truth and sharing it. Insofar as we as marketers listen to our truth—not just our truth but what consumers are telling us is true about us—we're just going to be so much more successful. That gives us the content by which the van Gogh do your AB testing, site optimization, social media buying, and all of these things that are the technical side of marketing. They're BS—to use your term—if you don't have the right assets and the right communication embedded within it.Edward: This has been awesome, Rachel. Before you go, tell me about your quake book. Rachel: I probably have two, actually. One, I just finished reading Pride and Prejudice when I was a teenager. Edward: How did that change your world view?Rachel: I became a romantic. My parents weren't lovey-dovey. I wasn't into all the romance stuff when I was a kid, but that changed my view of where romance novels started. To me, it's the basis for almost every great romance novel that ever existed. Poor guys in my life have probably set up a really bad bar to be measured against. Most recently, I just finished reading Where the Crawdads Sing. I don't want to give away the book if people haven't read it, but it tells you about, again, prejudice about seeing the truth, and how much you can fall prey to people's ideas of what things are. To me, it was a truly beautiful book, but also that meant that I'm going to be thinking about it for quite a while.Edward: Thank you, Rachel. This has been great. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marketingbs.substack.com

1. move in with sb 与某人同居 Gary觉得和菲比的感情发展很顺利于是说I am gonna ask Phoebe to move in with me. Move in with sb 与某人同居, big step for a relationship. Monica: So it looks like it's going really well for you two, huh?Gary: I know, really well. In fact, I'm gonna ask Phoebe to move in with me.Monica: (shocked) Oh my God!Gary: What do you, what do you think?Monica: I think that is so great! When are you gonna ask her?Gary: Tonight, but don't say anything. Okay?Monica: I swear, I promise. I promise. Oh my God, I'm so excited! {And I just can't hide it! I'm about to lose control and I think I like it! Sorry, just couldn't resist it.} All right, listen let me tell you, do not get her flowers. Okay? Because y'know, she cries when they die, and there's the whole funeral…Gary: (To Phoebe) I'll see you after work sweetie. (Kisses her.)Phoebe: Okay. Bye!2. jinx 乌鸦嘴 几个人在玩投球的时候，谈到投球的时间，Joey说I don't want to jinx it. Jinx当名词指的是不祥的人或物。当动词讲是给某人或事带来厄运，倒霉。这样的人也可以说是乌鸦嘴。Joey: Hey, what time is it?Ross: (looks at his watch) 2:17.Joey: Wow! You realize that we've been throwing this ball, without dropping it, for like an hour?Ross: Are you serious?!Joey: Yeah. I realized it about a half-hour ago but I didn't want to say anything 'cause I didn't want to jinx it.Ross: Wow! We are pretty good at this! Hey! We totally forgot about lunch!Joey: Oh, I-I, I think that's the first time I ever missed a meal! (Checks his pants.) Yeah, my pants are a little loose!3. 美国红星 Shaun Cassidy Rachel说带来了一个从小就喜欢的东西。Ross问是不是Shaun Cassidy. 此君是美国影视歌加上写作四栖明星，年轻时红透美国，青少年偶像。现在已是大叔，专心从事剧本创作。Rachel: (entering) Hey, you guys…Joey: Hey!Rachel: Is Monica here?Joey and Ross: No.Rachel: All right listen umm, I just bought something I'm not sure she's gonna like it, and it's gonna seem a little crazy, but this is something that I wanted since I was a little girl.Ross: You bought Shawn Cassidy!Rachel: Noo! I wish! Okay, you ready?Joey and Ross: Yeah!4. Sphinx Cat 斯芬克斯猫 Rachel拿来一只猫叫做Sphinx Cat 斯芬克斯猫，俗称加拿大无毛猫，专门为对猫毛过敏的爱猫人士特地养殖的，比较罕见，被称为世界上最丑的动物之一，所以Ross和Joey不认为这是只猫。Ross: What-what is it?!Joey: What the hell is that?!!Rachel: It's a, it's a cat!Joey: That, is not a cat! {I have to agree with Joey on this one.}Rachel: Yes it is!Ross: Why is it inside out?!Rachel: Excuse me! But this is a purebred, show-quality Sphinx cat!5. good for nothing 一无是处 Chandler没能完成菲比交给他的任务，菲比说他是Good for nothing. good for nothing = useless，一无是处的。也可以当做名词来用,无用之人，没用的东西。Chandler: Hi!Phoebe: Hmm, did you talk to Gary about the moving in thing?Chandler: Yes I did, and I think you should do it.Phoebe: What?!Chandler: He's a great guy, y'know? And he loves you a lot, you are a very lucky lady.Phoebe: You are useless! Freaking out about commitment is the one thing you can do! The one thing! And you can't even do that right! God!Chandler: I'm sorry. (Pause) If you ask me, I'd move in with him.Phoebe: Ohh!! God! Ooh! (To Chandler) Get out of here, good for nothing.6. show cat 纯种猫 Rachel在卖猫的时候叫卖Show cat. Show cat指的是经过认证的纯种猫，是可以参加名猫博览会的猫。这种猫经过认证后体内会植入microchip芯片，不是想山寨就可以山寨的。Rachel:Show cat! Quality show cat! Show cat! (A woman approaches.)Woman No. 1: (looks into the box) Oh my God! What's wrong with your baby?!Rachel: It's not a baby! It's a cat!Woman No. 1: Eew! It's creepy looking!Rachel: Oh no! No! It's actually—it's very sweet. It's very sweet. Look! (Goes to pet it and it hisses at her.) Yeah, do you want it?Woman No. 1: (laughs) No, I hate cats.Rachel: Well, so then what are you doing to me? Okay? Just get out of here! All right? Move on!7. haggle 讨价还价 Rachel卖猫的时候对潜在的买猫客户说You know how to haggle. Haggle在这里等于bargain. 砍价，讨价还价。Woman No. 2: Wow! What an unusual cat!Rachel: Yes! Thank you! Exactly! You want it?Woman No. 2: Maybe. I was thinking about getting a cat, I was just going to go to the shelter (Good for her) but… Okay, why not?Rachel: Oh, terrific! That'll be $2,000.Woman No. 2: What?!Rachel: Okay, a thousand.Woman No. 2: I thought you wanted to adopt your cat.Rachel: Well, I do, but you're just gonna have to actually look at this as more of an investment than a cat.Woman No. 2: Okay, yeah, I just wanted a cat. Rachel: Obviously you know how to haggle, so I'm not gonna try and take you on. Okay? So $800 and I don't call the cops because you're robbing me blind! Blind! Just take cat, leave the money, and run away! Run away! Damnit!

Tired of your job? Feel like there is no room for growth or expansion? Today, Erin and Rachel take a look at Rachel's journey to entrepreneurship, finding the right fit for her life, and how you can do the same! The girls talk about: What different careers Rachel had before she entered entrepreneurship The stagnation in your career that could be holding you back Why asking for help can be key even when it's difficult to do The period of time that really allowed Rachel to grow into entrepreneurship Who you need to seek validation from Tapping into your skills and talents to find a career you're passionate about The one thing that you will always encounter along the way And so much more! Let's take a listen! Resources: Rachel's Instagram: @iamrachelbrooks Erin's Instagram: @erin_travelsforlife The Confident Woman Podcast Instagram: @theconfidentwomanpodcast Quotes: “I knew I had to quit because it was really toxic for me. “ - Rachel “It was the greatest decision I ever made.” - Rachel “You can't wear 37 hats in a day” - Rachel “I value freedom and flexibility more than I do money.” - Rachel --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/theconfidentwoman/message

Happy New Year and welcome to Season 5 of the podcast! In thinking of how she wanted to begin Season 5, it was a no brainer for Jill Devine. She invited Meg Tortorello and Holly Murer, AKA “The Messy Mommies in the City”, to kick off the latest season.  Holly and Meg started supporting Jill during Season 2 when they heard Episode 20: Cat & Nat, The Hilarious Ladies Behind #MOMTRUTHS.  The Messy Mommies in the City are a group of longtime friends and family that love bringing girlfriends together to laugh, share, and find the joy in the messiness of life. Meg Tortorello, Holly Murer, Brooke Kelley, Kim Bertino, and Sandhya Nair love to share about cooking in the kitchen, adventures with their children, and juggling their careers.  The Messy Mommies love how Jill supports small businesses and amazing entrepreneurs! The Messy Mommies love Candyality in Chicago. Terese McDonald, the founder of Candyality created a sweet candy shop that was voted best candy shop in IL by the Food Network Magazine! This delicious shop ships amazing treats!  The Messy Mommies also love the amazing community builder Sadie Smith-West and small business owner of Posh West Boutique! Sadie has an autistic son and created Posh West as a place she could bring her son. She has wonderful clothes and gifts.  The Messy Mommies love to cook and love that Jill is also sharing recipes on her blog! Check out Holly's amazing cookbook, Together: Recipes to Bring Family and Friends to the Table. The Messy Mommies love toasting with girlfriends on making it through the crazy 2020 and to celebrate each other. Check out some of the Messy Mommies favorite cocktails and drinks: https://ontherockscocktails.com https://hallmarkchannelwines.com https://www.rumchata.com https://kingstvodka.com The Messy Mommies are hosting virtual "Girls Night In" get togethers via Zoom on the third Thursday of each month from 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm CT. Connect with girlfriends from across the country as we chat with special guests, toast each other, and laugh a lot. Details each month are on our social media channels. We can't wait until we can all be together again in person for Girls Night Outs. Follow the Messy Mommies on Instagram @messymommiesinthecity https://www.instagram.com/messymommiesinthecity/ Follow the Messy Mommies on Twitter @MessyMommies https://twitter.com/MessyMommies Follow the Messy Mommies on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/messymommies Jill would like to acknowledge and recognize the hard work moms put in on the daily. It can be a thankless job at times, and Jill wants these moms to know their worth, so she created the Supermom Shoutout. This week’s Supermom Shoutout goes to Rachel of O’Fallon, MO! Wendi nominated her and said: Rachel is my daughter’s teacher and she’s amazing! She’s been a teacher for almost 20 years. She’s married and has 3 daughters and 2 dogs. In addition, she’s a coach for the Varsity dance team. Rachel is a true Supermom! She’s the best teacher we’ve had. She created a 2-week plan for our daughter because there was a positive exposure to COVID on the bus. She really is one of the best! Rachel – YOU are seen and YOU are supported! To nominate a Supermom (or you can nominate yourself) email hello@jilldevine.com. Submit the name of the Supermom, where they're from, and a brief description as to why Jill should shout out this particular Supermom. Two Kids and A Career Website: https://www.jilldevine.com/ Two Kids and A Career Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jilldevine/?hl=en Two Kids and A Career Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JillDevineMedia/ Thank you to our sponsor: Blondin Professional Real Estate

1. on the lam 潜逃 Ross终于发现了Chandler和Monica的地下恋情，于是发疯似的冲到对面，Chandler吓坏了，准备逃跑说I am going on the lam. lam 潜逃，逃亡be on the lam 或 go on the lam 潜逃中Chandler: (To Monica) Wow! Listen, we had a good run. What was it? Four? Five months? I mean, that's more than most people have in a lifetime! So, good-bye, take care, bye-bye then! Monica: What are you doing?!Chandler: Oh, I'm going on the lam..2. mess around 瞎混，胡闹 看到Ross发火，Chandler赶紧说自己和Monica不是mess around 而是真爱。 mess around 胡闹，瞎混，浪费时间例句：That Romeo tried to mess around with every lady in the office.那个自以为是罗密欧的家伙勾搭办公室里每一位女士。Ross: (To Chandler) I thought you were my best friend, this is my sister! My best friend and my sister! I-I cannot believe this!Chandler: Look, we're not just messing around! I love her. Okay, I'm in love with her.Monica: I'm so sorry that you had to find out this way. I'm sorry, but it's true, I love him too.(There's a brief pause.)Ross: (happily) My best friend and my sister! I cannot believe this. (He hugs them both.) (To Joey and Rachel) You guys probably wanna get some hugs in too, huh? Big news!Rachel: Awww, no, it's okay, we've actually known for a while.3. kick in 凑一份钱 修理工要退休，住户每人kick in 100块开party. 在口语里kick in 意思是为某项活动出钱，等于以前提到过的chip inSteve: I came to talk to you about Howard.Ross: Howard?Steve: Yeah, he's the handy man. He's gonna be retiring next week and everyone who lives here is kicking in a 100 bucks as a thank you for all the hard work type of thing.Ross: Oh that's nice.Steve: Yeah. So, do you want to give a check? Or…Ross: Oh. Uhh…Steve: Oh look, you don't have to give it too me right now! You can slip it under my door. (Points to his apartment across the hall.)Ross: No-no, it's not that, it's just… I-I just moved in.Steve: Well, the guy's worked here for 25 years.Ross: Yes, but I've lived here for 25 minutes.Steve: Oh, okay, I get it. (Starts to leave.)Ross: No wait, look. Look! I'm sorry, it's just I've never even met Howard. I-I mean I don't know Howard.Steve: Howard's the handy man!Ross: Yes but too me he's just, man.Steve: Okay, fine, whatever. Welcome to the building.4. cheapstake 小气鬼 Ross不肯出钱被人称作cheapskate cheapstake 小气鬼 类似的说法还有miser, penny pincher.Ross: …so then President Steve told everyone that I was a cheapskate, and now the whole building hates me! A little kid spit on my knee! Y'know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna throw a party. That's right. For everyone in the building, and I'm gonna sit them down and explain to them, I am not a bad guy. I am not a cheap guy! I'm just a guy who-who stands up for what he believes in. A man with principles.Chandler: (To Rachel) Sounds like a fun party.5. hit 热门的（人，影片，歌曲，书籍...) Phoebe为party出了钱所以大家很欢迎她。Phoebe说I am a hit. 我很红，我很受欢迎。类似的说法The movie is a hit. The song is a big hit.Guest #1: See ya Phoebe! Oh and hey, thanks for chipping in!Ross: You chipped in?!Phoebe: Yeah, uh-huh, a 100 dollars.Ross: Phoebe! I can't believe you gave them money! I thought you agreed it was totally unreasonable that they asked me for that money!Phoebe: Yeah, but they didn't ask me! Y'know? This way I'm just y'know, the exotic, generous stranger. That's always fun to be.Ross: Yeah, but you're making me look bad!Phoebe: No I'm not. No! If anything I'm making you look better! They'll see you talking to me and that's--I'm a hit!6. talk up 大声说，赞扬 Phoebe为Ross 说好话。I am talking you up to people. talk up 大声说，赞扬Talk sb up 为某人说好话He'll be talking up his plans for the economy. 他将夸大他的经济计划。Ross: (tapping her on the shoulder) Phoebe? Phoebe?Phoebe: Ooh. (Turns to him.)Ross: Look, this is a disaster! Can't I please just go?Phoebe: No! No! I'm talking you up to people. Just give it a little time, all right? Relax, get something to eat! Okay?

1. beat sb to the punch 捷足先登 Phoebe建议Ross赶紧去租对面ugly naked guy的房子，Ross还不以为然，Phoebe就吓唬他说 I will beat you to it. Beat sb to sth = beat sb to it = beat sb to the punch 抢先一步，捷足先登Ross: Oh my God! I love this apartment! Isn't it perfect?! I can't believe I never realized how great it is!Rachel: Well that is because your eye immediately goes to the big naked man.Phoebe: It's amazing! You better hurry up and fill out an application or I'm gonna beat you to it.Ross: (laughing) Ohh.2. Hugsy Joey说到自己的秘密-抱着Hugsy企鹅玩偶睡觉。Hugsy源自于作家兼画家Debbie Mumm的一本儿童书《Mummford's Adventures: Home for the Holidays 》这本可爱的小书讲述了企鹅兄弟Mummford和McFinn的历险记。他们从企鹅村出发，沿途发现了许多新朋友，和不同的庆祝节日的习俗。Joey: No-no-no! No-no wait Rach, you know what would even be more fun? Telling them.Rachel: Ehhh, no, I wanna do Phoebe's thing.Joey: I can't take any…Phoebe: No! You don't have to do anything! Just don't tell them that we know!Joey: Noo! I can't take any more secrets! (To Rachel) I've got your secrets. I've got their secrets. I got secrets of my own y'know!Rachel: You don't have any secrets!Joey: Oh yeah? Well, you don't know about Hugsy, my bedtime penguin pal. (Joey shies away.)3. foxy 有魅力的 Chandler说Phoebe认为自己Foxy. Foxy 有魅力的，男女通用。但fox只是形容女性，美女，可不是狐狸精的意思。Chandler: The weirdest thing happened at the coffee house, I think, I think Phoebe was hitting on me.Monica: What are you talking about?Chandler: I'm telling you I think Phoebe thinks I'm foxy.Monica: That's not possible!Chandler: Ow!4. get the edge 有优势 在争夺对面丑裸男公寓大战中，Ross说I got the edge. get the edge 有优势 等于说I have the advantageRachel: Hey Ross! Any word on the apartment yet?Ross: Well, I called over there and it turns out Ugly Naked Guy is subletting it himself and he's already had like a hundred applicants.Rachel: Oh.Ross: No-no, I got the edge. I know it's not exactly ethical but I sent him a little bribe totip the scales in my direction. Check it out, you can probably see it from the window.5. be slick doing sth 做事很圆滑，高明 在得知Phoebe和Rachel知道了他们的恋情而捉弄他们的时候，Chandler和Monica对此忿忿不平决定反击。Monica说 they think they are so slick messing with us。slick 美式俚语，精明的，机灵的，聪明伶俐的也有狡猾的，滑头的意思be slick doing sth 某事做的很圆滑，很高明Chandler: (entering) Joey!Joey: Yeah?Chandler: Phoebe knows about us!Joey: Well I didn't tell them!Monica: Them?! Who's them?Joey: Uhhh, Phoebe and Joey.Monica: Joey!Joey: And Rachel. I would've told you but they made me promise not to tell!Chandler: Oh man!Joey: I'm sorry! But hey, it's over now, right? Because you can tell them that you know they know and I can go back to knowing absolutely nothing!Monica: Unless…Joey: No! Not unless! Look this must end now!Monica: Oh man, they think they are so slick messing with us! But see they don't know that we know that they know! So…Chandler: Ahh yes, the messers become the messies!6. bond with sb 跟某人培养感情 Rachel劝Ross要投其所好的去bond with 对面租房的。Bond with sb 跟某人套近乎，搞好关系，培养感情Rachel: Y'know what you should do?Ross: Huh?Rachel: You should find out what his hobbies are and then use that to bond with him. Yeah! Like if I would strike up a conversation about say umm, sandwiches. Or uh, or my underwear.Joey: I'm listening.Rachel: (To Ross) See?7. back down 退缩，让步 在这场和Phoebe以及Rachel互相捉弄的局中，Monica和Chandler料定Phoebe会back down. Back down 退缩, 让步，放弃It's too late to back down now. 现在打退堂鼓为时已晚。Monica: (in the kitchen with Chandler) Look at them, they're-they're panicked!Chandler: Oh yeah, they're totally gonna back down!Monica: Oh yeah!8. hats off to sb 向某人致敬 Chandler向朋友们坦白之后, 大家皆大欢喜，Chandler对Phoebe说 Hats off to Phoebe, quite a competitor. hats off to sb 向某人致敬Hats off to them for supporting the homeless.向他们帮扶无家可归者的善举致敬！Chandler: Okay! Okay! Okay! You win! You win!! I can't have sex with ya!Phoebe: And why not?!Chandler: Because I'm in love with Monica!!Phoebe: You're-you're what?!Chandler: Love her! That's right, I…LOVE…HER!!! I love her!! I love you, Monica.Monica: I love you too Chandler. (They kiss.)Phoebe: I just—I thought you guys were doing it, I didn't know you were in love!Joey: Dude!Chandler: And hats off to Phoebe. Quite a competitor. (Pause) And might I say your breasts are still showing.Phoebe: God!

Rachel Wilson Thibodeaux is Founder, Brand Strategist, and Professional Speaker at SWAG Strategy Solutions a boutique consultancy that helps clients design unique brands to “better position their offers” and market them at least twice as effectively as they were in the past. Clients include women entrepreneurs, as well as service providers and experts, people Rachel says want to make a big impact and income. Building blocks of what Rachel connotes as “brand curation” include:  Asking clients, “What do you most want to be known for?” Identifying the audience, even down to the one person who will most resonate with the client's offering Establishing the most effective way to connect with that individual. Rachel majored in finance and marketing at the University of Houston and spent the first 16 years of her career in financial services. In 2013, she left her “good-paying, good-benefits” six-figure job to chase her entrepreneurial marketing dream.  How does someone make that kind of transition? Rachel believes that it important to communicate to your community, the groups to which you belong, what you are doing businesswise, “even if you don't yet have a product or a service out there.” She provides a number of questions that can help build the kind of engagement which can turn into future buy-in. She says that success requires disciplined consistency in doing the hum-drum activities; e.g., making a certain number of phone calls to connect with customers. In this interview, Rachel talks about when and how to reengage humor and the importance of sensitivity to what is going on in terms of the pandemic, social unrest, the fact that it is an election year, and concerns about the economy. When posting to social media, Rachel often posts questions she thinks will “bring a smile to someone's face,” help them escape for a moment what they are going through, and increase “connection.” The most important thing? Know and respect your audience. Rachel had an Ask Me Anything Live session at virtual HubSpot Inbound 2020 where she fielded audience questions about Brand Development, Positioning, and (especially) Social Media Marketing, as well as offering guidance on posting and engagement in  the “new normal,” connecting with people, managing COVID impacts, and online responses to the pandemic and the changes it has brought.  She also addressed social listening, paying attention to the data available online, your audience feedback (comments, likes), and engagement to identify what works and what doesn't, create better campaigns, and communicate better. Rachel can be reached on LinkedIn at Rachel W. Thibodeaux, Instagram at @rachel.vswagstrategist, and on her company website at swagstrategy.com. She has a Facebook group – Brand, Sell profit – for entrepreneurs/brand-builders/experts. She offers a virtual program for strategic pivoting called “Pivot to Profit,” with a free “sample portion” (one of the five parts) available at: bit.ly/pivot2profitnow. Check it out. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Rachel Wilson Thibodeaux, Founder, Brand Strategist and Professional Speaker at SWAG Strategy Solutions. She's based in Houston, Texas. Welcome to the podcast, Rachel. RACHEL: Thank you so much, Rob. ROB: Why don't you start off by telling us about yourself and about SWAG Strategy Solutions and what gets you going and keeps you going? RACHEL: Oh boy. That can be a dangerous question when you ask a speaker to talk about themselves. But I am in the Houston area. I'm originally from North Texas, from the Dallas/Fort Worth area. College brought me to Houston. I've been here almost ever since. Not quite. I did return home for a few years after college and then came back to Houston around 2008. Even saying that is a little scary because time has really flown by. But I spent about 16 years in corporate America, working mostly in financial services. I was a double finance and marketing major at the University of Houston, so I went in the finance route. Marketing, though, was always a passion of mine. I know “passion” sometimes is an overused word, but that word comes to mind. Throughout my corporate career, I was always still focusing on and doing things on the side that were entrepreneurial and also that allowed me to feed that hunger, if you will, in terms of the whole marketing and brand aspect. I kept getting this pull, this entrepreneur pull, when I was still working in corporate America, and more so the last 2 to 3 years. So in 2013, I left my good-paying, good-benefits-having job, as I've referred to it before, because that's how my mother referred to it as she was asking me, “Are you sure you're leaving that good-paying job?” “Yeah.” [laughs] Since then it has been quite an adventure. My business, SWAG Strategy Solutions, which is a boutique consultancy, has certainly evolved over the last 7 years or so. Now we focus primarily on brand development, and as I like to say, helping clients curate a brand. I use that word more than “build” because I think with curating something, more of a design comes into place. We want to help you design a brand. We want it to be very unique. Sometimes when you build something, it's based on instructions. It's based on a model, almost like a model home. Other homes in the neighborhood tend to be modeled after that home. So; I'd like to think that I'm helping clients curate a brand as well as better position their offers and market better – at least twice as better. We work a lot with women entrepreneurs along with service providers, experts – folks really looking to make big impact and income. ROB: Doubling your effectiveness is certainly a big difference. When we are breaking down brands from the big picture into some of the pieces and parts, what are the components or building blocks of a brand you think about when you're starting to work with a client?  RACHEL: First and foremost, I usually ask prospective clients as well as clients – and this is something I've shared when speaking, in blog posts; I think it's such an important question – “What do you most want to be known for?” I emphasize the word “most” because many of us are good at more than one thing. Many of us are multifaceted, multi-passionate, multi-something. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it can make things more difficult in terms of really creating a brand and niching down and honing in on what you can most be effective at. That is a key question. I think it's important to really get foundational, if you will, and look at how you're most wanting to effect or impact your audience. You also want to get clear on who that audience is because it really should not be “everyone” – although I know, especially with newer entrepreneurs, and sometimes not just new, we tend to think we can help the world. We want to change the world, and we sometimes think of that literally. “I want to help everyone.” But it's important to really zero in on who is that audience, who is that group. It helps to even get it down to thinking of one person who's going to most resonate with what I have to offer, and how do I connect with that person? ROB: That focus, I'm sure having that external perspective from you is helpful in even getting to that understanding because sometimes we don't fully know ourselves. You mentioned a little bit into your origin story, and your last 2 or 3 years in corporate America, you had this longing on the entrepreneurial side. What pushed you over the edge? It sounds like you were thinking about it, but that means you were also thinking about not doing it, and at some point you overcome that tension and you make the leap. What was that process like for you? RACHEL: I had been doing entrepreneurial things almost throughout my career. Not quite throughout, but from different ventures I was involved in. For example, I did some consulting. I helped form a real estate investment group with three of my buddies. That happened when we were in our mid-twenties. We were kind of crazy kids, or somewhat kids, exploring real estate development. The last 2 or 3 years or so, things had started to change at the company where I was and even in my role as well. At the time, I was a relationship manager – which I enjoyed. Even at the time when I left, I still enjoyed it, although I didn't feel quite the same about it. The writing was just on the wall, as it often is in these situations. There had been changes in leadership; the direction of the company and our division in particular was really going in a different direction that I didn't really like. I often tell people, I was not fired, but it was one of those situations where I felt I didn't really have a choice because of some things that happened, what transpired to make me take that leap. Frankly, I had considered leaving a few months before that. I actually left my last job in August of 2013. I seriously considered leaving in May because of another situation. It wasn't the right time. I didn't feel it was the right time. I wasn't totally sure it was the right time when I left, and I tell you, Rob, my eyes were glazed over for about two weeks. I was in a state of “Huh . . . I really did that. I left.” [laughs] I left my six-figure corporate job that at one time, certainly when I started and probably even during the first year or two, I figured I would be there long term. I wasn't convinced necessarily I'd retire there, but I figured I'd be there longer than I was. It just goes to show you how things can happen. There was certainly some fear. I say all the time, everything was certainly not perfect. It wasn't close to being perfect when I actually left. My husband has been in law enforcement most of his career. He had just gotten back into law enforcement at that time, had started a new job. His benefits had not even kicked in. We had savings, but it still wasn't an ideal time. But again, I felt it was time for me. ROB: Congratulations on that. Now if there's anything concerning in the business, you've just got one person to look at, and they're in the mirror, so that's a little bit different. We were originally looking at connecting around HubSpot's Inbound conference, which is a great conference. Happens every year. Normally, past couple of years, we record it live with speakers like yourself, so we always love connecting with HubSpot speakers. You had an Ask Me Anything Live session on brand development, positioning, and social media marketing. What kind of questions did you expect coming into that, and what were some of the themes of what you did hear from the audience? RACHEL: Going in, I figured I would get questions about brands, about branding, certainly about social media. I got more questions, though, about social media, which is kind of interesting since that was the last thing mentioned. But I think it just goes to show you social media continues to be a hot topic, especially among marketers, whether online or traditional marketers. There were several questions about social media. There were a couple of questions as well about how to navigate this “new normal” we're in, how to manage what's going on with COVID, things to do online in light of the pandemic and the changes that has brought about. So yeah, there were some questions along those lines too. ROB: How do you suggest people think about marketing in – I don't even know if there's a new normal. It seems like things just continue to change, and we keep adapting, and you wonder what you can say, what you should say, what you shouldn't say, and what to start doing and what to stop doing. How are you thinking about all this, and what do you have to tell the audience here? RACHEL: One thing certainly is I don't think it's a good idea to ignore everything happening. I've seen that with some brands and marketers. Not many. Frankly, I think most are addressing what's going on – and when I say what's going on, I mean it's more than one thing because we're dealing with a number of things in this very interesting year of 2020. You've got the pandemic, obviously. You have this social unrest going on. It's an election year. There's challenges and certainly concerns about the economy. So, there's a lot going on. I think any really great marketer – and this is part of being connected with and knowing your audience – you have to speak to that. It doesn't mean that you dwell on it all the time, but in your marketing, in your messaging, I think it makes sense to address these things. I have a big sense of humor, sometimes a quirky, sarcastic sense of humor, and I'm big on incorporating humor. I think sometimes it helps, certainly. If you can put a smile on someone's face or help them escape what they may be going through, even if it's for a few minutes, a day or so, that certainly helps. So, I think in terms of posting on social media, for example – and I'm also big on questions. I love posting questions. It could be, of course, related to business and related to brands, or it could be something, again, to put a smile on people's faces. I've asked the question before to parents, “Have you had any brown liquor before noon today? I'm just curious,” because a number of parents I know are really going through it. I think that is really important, and connecting even more. Obviously, connection has become a big thing, or bigger, I would say, over the last few years. I think consumers are wanting to connect more. They're expecting more, or have been, even before this year, expecting more from brands. I think it's really important to engage. Social media is social. I think sometimes people forget about that. They think it's a one-way conversation when it's definitely not.  ROB: Hmm, so you're saying that clear liquor before noon is okay? RACHEL: [laughs] Maybe. You might be able to get away with it, Rob. The brown, you've got to be careful. You've got to be careful about that brown liquor. ROB: Yeah. Even on a podcast. It's interesting – even where you went with that, the humor you used there, it's relatable and it acknowledges the moment without engaging in humor at someone's expense. It's kind of humor at our own expense. I was speaking a while back with someone who's involved in marketing at Buffalo Wild Wing, and they said with the pandemic, they basically cut – they engage in humor a lot, but they cut it all. They went transactional and they're killing it in ecommerce now. Their best day used to be the Super Bowl. Now every day is the Super Bowl for them for online ordering, which is fascinating. They really had to overdo and redo their ecommerce systems. But how do we figure out when it's okay to reengage humor, how to reengage humor, how to not do so in a tone-deaf way? RACHEL: I think what you said is key. You don't want to offend people – at least, I try not to offend people. Now, it's possible that could still happen, I suppose, but I don't try to offend people. Again, this is your audience, or typically you're speaking to your audience, so you want to respect your audience. You don't want to be offensive. Now, having said that, I think being bold is different from being offensive. What you believe in, what you stand on, I think there's nothing wrong with communicating that and standing your ground on what you believe. I think you let that be your guide. ROB: Definitely makes sense there. The Inbound crowd in particular can be a little bit more of a business-to-business marketing audience. Quite often, although you get a mix because it's a big, big conference. When it came to social media, what sorts of questions – where do people fall on the spectrum? Was this B2B marketing, “How do you even do this?” Were there questions about emerging channels or channel selection? What were people wondering along the lines of social media? RACHEL: I don't recall there being anything specifically about B2B. The questions had more to do with, to some degree, posting, engagement. That came up. I answered that question in terms of engagement because it was related to – I think that was all the same question, how to engage now, given the environment. I spoke to that in terms of engaging now, giving everything, going on, and connecting with people, and the humor and that kind of thing. There was also a question – and it threw me off a little because I have heard this term, but there's different versions of this term. A question came up about social listening. I have heard more so of social media listening, and then there's another version I'm not remembering right now that's similar to that, although there's a slight difference. So that question came up. Social listening is really about taking data, using the data available to you online. It's using feedback that you get from your audience, whether that's through comments, likes, you paying attention to the comments, the likes that you're getting, different parts of engagement, and using that. There's one thing, collecting that data, and then the other part is what you do with it. You certainly use that data certainly to your benefit. You can use that in helping you create better campaigns, communicate better, paying attention to when you are posting, what works and what doesn't. ROB: That all makes sense, especially within the context of the conference. I do hope that you will be back to share in person next year. I hope we can do that by September of next year, but I guess we will see. RACHEL: Yeah, that would be cool. ROB: Maybe we can meet after noon so that we can choose whichever color of liquor we prefer. [laughs] It's about creativity here. Rachel, when you reflect on your journey, it sounds like you have honed in on some focus areas for SWAG Strategy Solutions. What are some lessons you've learned since jumping off on your own and building and growing the business – lessons you might do differently if you were starting afresh today? RACHEL: Ooh. How much more time do we have, Rob? [laughs] ROB: [laughs] We have as much as you need. RACHEL: You absolutely learn a number of lessons. Or you should, I think, especially in 7 years or so. One lesson certainly that I've learned is how important it is to build or create an audience, a community if you will. I didn't realize how important that was when I first started. When I left my job, I was on social media, I was on a few platforms. At the time I was using LinkedIn somewhat a lot, Facebook – but Facebook completely socially – and Twitter. I am also somewhat – I like to think I'm recovering – somewhat of both an information and a political junkie. So, as you can imagine, I spend a lot of time on Twitter. But again, not as much for business purposes. When I started my business, I figured the skills I had before and that I had utilized in corporate America were transferable. And to a degree, they are. But it really makes a difference when you have a community. That can show up in different ways, whether it's an email list, whether it's a Facebook group, some other group. When you have people who really understand what you're doing in terms of business – and even if you don't yet have a product or a service out there, you're talking about it, you're getting them to buy in even before you put it out there – that turns into, often, your customers, your clients, and folks who can sing your praises and help you get more customers and clients. That is certainly one lesson. Also, consistency. Again, some things you think that you get. “Yeah, I know I need to be consistent.” But I really didn't. Not the way running a business really requires, being really committed to doing certain things – and certain things that are not necessarily sexy, certain things that are not what you jump out of bed in the morning wanting to do, whether it's blogging, whether it's making phone calls and making a certain number of phone calls, whether it's an actual phone call or a text. However, you're reaching out to people, connecting with people, pitching, these are things that really make a difference in a business and help you move it forward. Those, as some people refer to them, revenue-generating activities – that is what you most need to be consistent about. That's something else that I have learned more since starting my business. ROB: That's very consistent. I can see why HubSpot brought you in. Last year they mentioned this flywheel concept. It was a little bit forced, but basically it's a similar thing. They talked about talking to people and building a community and serving them well, and then it turns into business. But then business turns into service. You still have to service those customers well. It turns into word of mouth, it turns into marketing. They had this flywheel effect. I think a challenge many people have here is with consistency. Some people are very, very natural community builders. You watch them, and the moment they decide they're going to have a new business, they're building the community before you even know what the business is, and maybe before they do. For someone who it's not as natural for, how do you think about getting to consistency, getting to the right audience, if maybe you don't know who that audience even needs to be? RACHEL: I am really big on feedback. If that's something that doesn't come quite naturally to you, and certainly if you're not quite sure of what audience or what group you should be connecting to, look around at your own network, even if that's very small. That may be coworkers. That may be subordinates. That may be even friends and family. It could be someone in a Facebook group that you're in. Start asking them questions along the lines of what you want to do, what you're thinking of doing, or if you do have something that you're working on or maybe even you've completed, ask them questions about that product or that idea. And really pay attention to what they say. Also ask them and the people closest to you, like friends and family, how they see you. What is it that they feel comfortable and they feel pretty confident coming to you for? I think those basic questions, that can also be profound, can be underrated. Sometimes I think we also underrate or discount our friends and family, but those are the people closest to us. It's not to say that that's necessarily your target audience, but it's a starting point just to get that feedback. For folks who are not natural, I would say, or it doesn't come as natural to them for building a community, you have to find the way that works for you. It may not work as well for one person to do a podcast or to create a blog. It may work a lot better for them to build an email list, to put something out there of value that they can offer free and folks jump on it because they do find a lot of value in it, and they just communicate through email. It all depends on you. It's not just about what you're comfortable doing. I do think you should enjoy what you're doing, and specifically in terms of building community. But realize it absolutely may require you – probably no “may” – it will require at some point for you to step out of your comfort zone. So, make sure that you're balancing comfort rather than hate. You don't want to do anything you hate, but at the same time, don't rule out certain things because you're not comfortable with it, you're a little fearful or it doesn't come naturally, as you say. That doesn't mean necessarily that you should not be doing that. ROB: That's such a great distinction between the things that you hate versus doing the things you're uncomfortable with. That's a great point. The people that know you well are going to be able to give you good feedback because people you don't know, so often, will tell you that your idea sounds nice because they don't have the relationship to tell you the truth. RACHEL: Yeah. ROB: This is really, really good stuff, Rachel. Tell us, when we want to go out and find and connect with Rachel Wilson Thibodeaux and when we want to see more about SWAG Strategy Solutions, where should we go to connect with you? RACHEL: I hang out a lot on LinkedIn and Instagram. Those are probably my two favorite platforms. I kind of have a love/hate relationship with Facebook, but that's another conversation. You can find me there too. But you can find me on LinkedIn under my name, Rachel W. Thibodeaux. You can find me on Instagram @rachel.vswagstrategist. On Facebook, I do have a group for entrepreneurs, for brand builders, experts if you will – those looking to curate a brand and to do that better and market better. That's called Brand. Sell. Profit. It actually is also the title of my latest book, Brand. Sell. Profit. And then my website, of course. You can find the website at swagstrategy.com. And I'd like to offer your audience a gift, Rob, if I can. ROB: Please do. RACHEL: I've been talking a lot, as many people have, especially people in business, about pivoting and the importance of being able to pivot, especially in this environment. That has probably become a buzzword, so while I think it's really important to pivot, I think there is a way to pivot. I like to think it's better to pivot strategically. So I have a virtual program called Pivot 2 Profit, and I have a portion of that – I'm offering one of the five parts of that that you can check out. There's a video. It's absolutely free, and I talk about a couple of those ways to pivot in a strategic way. You can find that by going to – and this is a shortened link – bit.ly/pivot2profitnow. ROB: Fantastic. We'll work to get that into the show notes. I imagine you have some excellent points there. You pivot, keep one foot planted if you move the other one. If you move both feet at once, it's just dancing. There's some good stuff to find there. We'll get it in the show notes. Rachel, thank you so much for joining us. Congratulations on the talk at Inbound. I heard they had very, very large audiences for that. RACHEL: Yeah. ROB: I hope they have us back in person next year. I'd love to connect up and record live. RACHEL: Absolutely. Thank you. ROB: Have a great one, Rachel. Be well. RACHEL: You too. ROB: Bye. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Brand loyalty is something that every company wants but few actually attain. To build a loyal customer base, you need to provide the best experiences possible, offer unique products or services, and deliver on quality and in a timely fashion. It’s a tough ask, and for those in the grocery industry, it’s even more difficult since differentiation between product selection is not as easy as it might be in other verticals.  But when it comes to customer loyalty, there are ways to separate yourself from the pack.  And that’s where Rachel Stephens comes in. As the Vice President of Marketing, Digital and Loyalty for Stop & Shop, a major grocery chain with more than 400 stores, she thinks about this every day. Thanks to a new online platform and through a loyalty program that customers actually want to engage in, Rachel explains that Stop & Shop is finally gaining access to some of the dark data it couldn’t access in the past.  On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Rachel explains why that kind of data is a true game-changer for any brand. Plus she reveals some of the consumer psychology that she looks at when building loyalty programs, and she peers into the future at how the use of A.I., machine learning and natural language processing will further advance not just Stop & Shop’s ecommerce experience, but the entire ecommerce industry. Main Takeaways: Is it Actually on the Grocery List?: When building or improving loyalty programs, having an understanding of data is critical. Everyone has to take on the role of data scientist and look at the data analytically, especially as it relates to consumer behavior. Just because a customer says they want something or they intend to make a purchase, does not mean the data will always show that. Word for advice: trust the data and build a program around what is actually happening instead of what customers are saying.   Accessing Dark Data: For too long, grocery stores have asked only for customer phone numbers in order for them to have access to loyalty cards. But if that phone number isn’t linked to a real name or address, and is changing hands faster than an email address would, there is a huge amount of data left in the dark, which makes it impossible to build a meaningful database of customer information. To access that critical data, companies need to build programs that are truly enticing that customers want to share their data with that helps not only the brand but also the consumer. The Psychology of a Discount: Tune in to hear what Rachel saw in the data when reviewing their sales and discounts. Hint: higher is not always better. For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length. --- Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce --- Transcript: Stephanie: Welcome back to Up Next in Commerce, I'm your host Stephanie Postals, co-founder of Mission.org. Today we have Rachel Stevens on the show, vice president of marketing, digital and loyalty at Stop & Shop. Rachel, welcome. Rachel: Thank you very much for having me. Stephanie: Yeah, I'm really excited to have you on. I saw a little bit of your background before hopping on here and I got very excited when I saw that you have worked at the TJX companies, which I was hoping we could start there with your background. Rachel: Are you a brand fan? Stephanie: Oh, yes. I mean, I love TJ Maxx and when I saw that I'm like, "Ooh, this is my interview. This is the one." Rachel: Yeah, I was actually the assistant vice president of CRM Loyalty [inaudible] within TJX. And that really matched the TJX rewards program ... was a program that fell under my group and my responsibilities included the day to days and ensuring that our customers really wanted to participate in our program, our loyalty program so that we had clean data at the end of the day. And we were able to provide additional value in savings on top of what customers were already saving with the strong value that TJX stores provide. Stephanie: Very cool. How did you first get interested in the world of loyalty marketing, what lead you there? Rachel: I started actually in loyalty marketing at Pet Smart in their corporate headquarters in Phoenix and I think the thing that really appealed to me was marriage of data and customer communications, so understanding what customers say and what customers actually do is vital, I think, to the success of an organization because customers can say, "Yes, I have intent to purchase X,Y,Z." But when you look at the actual data, the data doesn't lie. Rachel: So, loyalty programs give you a vital tool for success within your organization to take a look at consumer data and then apply your marketing tactics really that are from acquisition, retention or reactivation perspective based on what that consumer is doing in a particular moment. So it's really, to me, such a great marriage of a lot of different areas within marketing and it just was something that I developed an immediate passion for. When I started there on the Pet Perks Program and then went to TJX to work on the loyalty program for TJ Maxx, Marshalls, Home Goods, [inaudible] Trading Post, and HomeSense, I feel like when I was there honed in on my skills within the loyalty space, so the position at Stop & Shop to really develop the role and develop what the new program was going to look like was incredibly appealing just because of my passion for this space and for retail. Stephanie: That's so much good experience to be able to bring to Stop & Shop. How have you seen consumer behaviors or loyalty programs having to change since you started? Rachel: Since I started in loyalty or since I started at Stop & Shop? Stephanie: I'd say in loyalty program, in loyalty overall. Since you started back in the pets days. Rachel: Yeah, I think there was a transactional nature to loyalty programs in the past. I think it was you give and get and that was usually based in points programs whereas today obviously I think more experiential programs have come about and providing more omni-channel experience, which wasn't really the case back when I first started within the loyalty space. I'd say that there's a number of people that really do a great job at this. I think Sephora's loyalty program is top notch. They do an excellent job at marrying the in-store and the online experience, really making it truly omni-channel tied in with their loyalty program. Rachel: I think that a lot of retailers have caught up and are doing a good job and I still think there's a lot of room to grow. And I think grocery retail was stuck in the loyalty stage of two tier pricing and I think we have a to model grocery loyalty programs more after what a lot of other retailers are doing in the loyalty space and even hotels. Airlines, I think that soft benefits and providing experiential benefits are really critical to the success of a program. Stephanie: Yep, yeah completely agree. Now that we're touching on grocery a bit I would love for you to explain what Stop & Shop is for anyone who doesn't know. Rachel: Sure, Stop & Shop is actually a grocery retailer with over 100 years in the industry. It started out as a very small grocery in the east coast and now we have over 400 stores and of course our online experience at Stop&Shop.com and the Stop & Shop app. Stephanie: That's great. And Stop & Shop, you guys just started moving into e-commerce, right? I think I saw that you launched a new platform just in a couple months ago, am I right? Rachel: We did actually, on July 28th in fact. We launched ... we had Peapod with a partner company. Peapod actually was owned by Ahold Delhaize, which is the parent company that owns Stop & Shop and we have integrated Peapod into Stop & Shop now. So, within Stop & Shop's footprint to order grocery delivery or to get pickup you actually now go to the Stop & Shop website or the Stop & Shop app versus Peapod. That integration occurred again at the end of July, and it's been going incredibly well so far. Stephanie: What was that transition ... what did that look like behind the scenes of not only integrating a current path that people are using but also I'm sure adding on additional functionalities that maybe weren't already there. What was the process behind the scenes or any maybe hiccups that you guys experienced when you were going through all this because it sounds like a big project. Rachel: Yes, yes. In fact, huge project. And all of our sister brands went through the same scope of work at the same time. We work with an internal agency who actually is responsible for all of that development work. And the agency actually had to develop the platform for all the brands. There was Giant Martin's out of Carlisle, Pennsylvania and Giant Foods in Maryland, also went through the same transition. Rachel: And there was obviously ... it requires a lot of work to marry the database, really marry those platforms. There was a Stop & Shop website, a Peapod website and H Brands app, so marrying those together was a huge, enormous undertaking that has taken approximately two years. And when I first started two and a half years ago actually that was really when we had worked on all the business requirements for this project. And it just takes a significant amount of time to match up all the data on our customers and combine those platforms and ensure that everything is running smoothly because if you think about the number of transactions that the Peapod site had going through it before and the number of customers that were going to the Stop & Shop site, you can imagine that there's just a tremendous amount of customers that we wanted to ensure were not left behind in this transition. Rachel: So, there's definitely a lot of work that went into this project and in terms of hiccups, of course there was a lot of those. But I think you try and block out all of the things that went wrong during the launch and you just only remember the good, right? Stephanie: Yep, that's great. And I'm also very familiar with Giant. I'm from Maryland. I'm sure everyone else is like, "What's that?" I know very well what that is. Rachel: Oh, great. That's great. Stephanie: Yeah, so when you guys are thinking about launching this new e-commerce platform, what kind of opportunities were you excited that it would open up? I'm sure you get access to new kind of data and you can have new offerings and you can send that data maybe to your other partners and maybe they can give you deals. What things were you most excited about that you didn't have access to before? Rachel: I think that what I'm most excited about is omni-channel data access. We did not, again, have that before because it was Peapod who really had all of the data for delivery and pickup and Stop & Shop who had all the brick & mortar data. The combination and looking at a consumer from an omni-channel, to me, is what's most exciting. Rachel: If I'm going to do a marketing campaign using digital tactics or any sort of in-store tactics I really need to know what you do as a customer. You could channel switch, you could go from pick-up to in-store to delivery all within a very short period of time. And so, I think the efficiency in marketing, by having that data to me is really what's most exciting. And being able to actually accurately talk to our customers is something that really interests me because how many time have you received communications from a company where you're like, "Wait, I was just in there. I just bought X, Y, Z and now they're sending me an offer for something," or the communication just seems out of left field. Rachel: And I think of years past when Starbucks didn't have a fully integrated data solution. If I was a coffee drinker and I always drank coffee once in a while I'd get tea offers and it just didn't make any sense to me. I think it was just bad use of data. Stephanie: Yeah, I still get that right now. I'll get things marketed to me around pregnancy. I'm like, "I am not pregnant and haven't been for a while." Rachel: You're not pregnant. Stephanie: In a while. Come on, about six months ago, stop that. Rachel: Right, exactly. Stephanie: That's smart. So, what are you excited for omni-channel in general outside of Stop & Shop. What do you think that landscape's going to look like in the next couple of years? Rachel: I think that COVID has certainly advanced a lot of, specifically in retail, advanced a lot of retailers. I think their technology and their offerings, I think omni-channel, to me, has to be that seamless experience in-store, online. And it has to be being able to look at you from a customer lens and understanding that you may channel switch and your experience or the offers that you're given or you're customer service shouldn't change. There shouldn't everybody anything remarkably different about whatever channel you're in. Rachel: So, for me I think that the omni-channel landscape is going to continue improving and COVID has definitely advanced that. Stephanie: To dive back into the loyalty program conversation, because I'm very interested in that, we haven't had a ton of people on the show who've talked about that, so I'll probably keep circling around that for a little bit. Rachel: Sure. Stephanie: I want to hear how you think about developing a successful loyalty program now. How do you get people to engage? How do you get them to be excited about it? Rachel: The most important thing is research. You have to understand what customers want first and foremost of course. That's the first step in any real loyalty program whether you're launching a loyalty program or enhancing a loyalty program or just completely transforming a loyalty program. You have to understand what research, what customers want. You have to look at the data and understand what they actually do. Rachel: So, it's the this is what I say I want and then this is what I actually do. And you rally have to be a data scientist and understand what it is that is bubbling to the top. If I know my to customers are coming in and I'm looking at the data that tells me they come in X amount of times per week and they shop for key products, then I can understand and I can translate that back into transactional offers. I can say, "Okay, these are the top products that I need to make sure are relevant to that consumer base on a regular basis." Rachel: But it doesn't get at really what drives them and motivates them to be loyal to the brand. So, I think that that research is such a critical step in really understanding how consumers really feel about your brand. You don't want to be the brand that customers just feel like you're on the corner and you're convenient so they have to shop you. You want to be the brand that they want to shop at. Loyalty isn't just about the program, it has to be about the total solution that retailer provides and your feelings about that retailer. Stephanie: It seems like there would be a lot dark data out there, especially for maybe grocery stores because I'm thinking, would my local grocery store even know that I go in and out because I don't interact with them online right now. I sometimes put my phone number in, sometimes don't. How would you make sure you have a good sample size of people to use for your research when building that out if maybe you still have quite a few of your customers that you don't even know yet. Rachel: No, I think that's a great question. I think you have to ... There are panels that you can go, usually your consumer insights team has access to panels of customers who volunteer to participate in research studies, so that's typically the first place that I go if we don't have enough data within the database. If there's enough data in the database to start with, usually that does require an e-mail address or a physical mailing address and not just phone number. Rachel: So, if your local grocery store only requires phone number and ... I'll say actually that was the case for Stop & Shop prior to the transformation of our new loyalty program where we really just ask for phone number point of sale. And that gave customers access to that two tier pricing. That doesn't do anything for a company, just having phone numbers and actually going to build off your database of course. Then you don't have a way to really round out that customer experience and understand. You got to be able to tap into that customer and ask them what they want. Rachel: It is really important that you're coming up with a program or if you have a program that it's enticing enough that customers want to give their data, they want to give you the right e-mail address or they want to give you the right mailing address so that they do participate in the program but they also are willing to give your opinion when you ask it. Stephanie: Yep. It also seems like making sure you have a seamless experience when asking for that data is really important because I can think of a number of times different stores have been like, "Oh, can you type in your e-mail?" Or just, "Read it off to me and I'll type it in very slowly." I'm like, "Ugh, just don't worry about it," or "I don't want to use your old type pad that's not really working and I'm going to have to delete it 10 times to get it right." Rachel: Right, exactly. Yeah, you're absolutely right it has to be simple, seamless. I think digital cards is a great way to make it simple and seamless. It's easy enough for a POS to scan a digital barcode that ties back to your loyalty card or phone number, provided the fact that the number actually is tied to a valid e-mail address or valid mailing address. Any way that you can provide convenience for consumers to access their program seamlessly, quickly is really important. Stephanie: Yeah, I completely agree. When you're setting this up, even If you don't have access to maybe huge amounts of data, are there any unifying themes that people just generally when it comes to loyalty or rewards programs where you're like, no matter where I've been it seems to always get someone to sign up if we have this or this offering. Rachel: Well, I think a based program, it has to be about savings, right? Every program is at it's core about saving, so hotel, airline, you're earning points to get free something or to save on something. And so, at it's core you have to have a savings in the value proposition. And then I think everything else that goes on top of that whether you have a tiered program where you're providing your top tier customers with more of those experiential benefits or more of those softer benefits is really, it's dependent on the industry and your ability to provide different levels of benefits to customers. Rachel: I think in the supermarket industry you don't see a lot of tiered programs. I think that that's mostly because there's not a lot of experiential benefits that you can provide that consumers really are interested in. I think a lot of customers look at grocery shopping as a chore. There are, there's certainly a core of customers who really enjoy it but for the most part a lot busy consumers today do look at it as a chore and I think that lingering in a store is not something that a lot of people are really interested in. Stephanie: Yep, yeah I completely agree. Is there any research that y'all have done when to what really matters from a savings perspective? What percent actually drives someone to purchase something they maybe wouldn't have purchased prior to seeing that savings? Maybe 5% eh, maybe not, 20% probably so. Anything that you've seen around that? Rachel: It's funny that the higher up you go in savings, a lot of times customers say they don't believe that. When you say save 20% or 25% or whatever, it seems somewhat unbelievable and I think a lot of customers question it. With our go rewards program we actually know that customers saved 15% or more. We did a lot of research because the and more was actually the savings is more like an average of 20% but customers really felt like, "That seems high, that seems really unbelievable." So, 15% we're like okay, let's just actually take that down because that seemed to be more palatable percent for customers for some reason. Stephanie: That's really interesting. Rachel: Isn't it? Stephanie: I know. I mean, when you see these shopping sites when it's like 75% off it actually makes you just one be like, "Well, was it ever worth the price that you listed it at?" And then are you going to get a 90% off. So I do question brands that have huge sales like that more than I do with someone who's consistently like, "You get 15 or 20% off no matter what promo code or coupon or anything that you get, it's never going to be higher than that. Rachel: Right, yeah. You start to question the quality and you say, "Oh, geez." I mean I'm sure the average consumer doesn't think in terms of margin but I start thinking about margin. Stephanie: I do too. Like minds, very like minds. [crosstalk 00:22:05]. "How much were you making before this?" Okay. Rachel: Exactly. Stephanie: That's great. How do you think about metrics when it comes to these loyalty programs. Are they unique and very different than maybe metrics for other e-commerce business or other programs that you might set up? Rachel: Well, I think first and foremost most companies will look at sales as a huge metric within their loyalty program because it's an investment for the organizations, so ROI is going to be important. But the ROI actually comes from retention and in some cases reactivation. You know that a lot of times it's true, the cost of getting a customer is equivalent to retaining eight. Rachel: So, I think if you can look at ... most organizations look at sales from the program and incremental sales from the program. I think that that is the real true metric. Engagement of course is also important. And customer satisfaction is vital. Stephanie: Yep, that makes sense. Are there any memorable campaigns that come to mind. You're like, this one was my favorite marketing or any other kind of campaign hat I've done that you want to share? I'm always interested in stories around that. Rachel: Yeah, no I think that I worked on so many great campaigns but the ones that are truly, fully integrated across every channel is that's what's really exciting. When you see a campaign, for example right now this might sound silly or small but we have this pizza campaign. We've got a commercial on air about the best pizza is your own pizza and we've got that campaign in every other channel, so digital, e-mail, social media, through my go rewards program, we throw in extra points when you buy certain products within the category. That's really what excites me is I think when you see it come to life and you see really the full ecosystem within marketing utilized to support something. That's when you really see the power of marketing come to life and you see how it actually makes sense obviously to have one point of view and to be more customer centric in your campaigns. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And it's like a better way to measure things as well if there's this one initiative going across many channels and you can look at it without having a bunch of other players messing the data up. Rachel: Right, right, exactly, exactly. I see some marketing campaigns right now and [inaudible] there's some big players out there that did all of these back to school campaigns and it drove me nuts because it's like we are not back in and it showed all the kids walking down the hall and of course I know that they had all these commercials shot in the can well before a lot of this happened but I feel like you're talking to a consumer base that is in a very different place right now. I think that obviously understanding what consumers are looking for and really being relevant like that pizza campaign. There's so many people who are at home cooking together right now. I feel like that's really where I get most excited is when I see obviously that relevance and then more of that omni-channel and cross channel campaign. I think that that's really where you see some good results from marketing. Stephanie: Yeah, that's as good point about people still running their commercials that they maybe shot a long time ago. The only one that I think has done really well in my mind that I've seen recently is either Trader Joe's or Target that had grab your back to school supplies and it was at a line rack. I'm like, "That's good, that's relevant and I'm going to get some [inaudible] now." Rachel: That's perfect. Stephanie: Yeah, really good. We had someone on this show who was also mentioning you should have different scenarios, especially at a time right now where you don't really know what's going to happen and you should be ready to pull your campaigns and slot something in really quickly. And it seems like a lot of larger brands or especially older brands just didn't think that way or maybe just thought, "Okay, let's just release this and see how it goes anyways." Why do you think that's the case? Why do they still put this out into the world when many of them probably knew it was not a good fit? Rachel: No, and I think it does more harm to your brand than anything to be honest because obviously if you're not relevant and you're not listening to what's going on in the world then I think that it does more home. At the beginning of COVID we did a lot of work around providing at-home solutions. We had a chef who actually did a cooking show within social media. I worked with this chef to come up with a series of cooking shows within Facebook and we did a number of other just activities to do with the kids at home and there was more relevance to our campaigns and it really resonated. Customers really appreciated the fact that we were giving them content that actually was valuable, interesting and just relevant to what was going on in the world. Rachel: You can't be deaf to what's happening and you have to really just make sure you're always paying attention and listening to what customers are saying. Stephanie: Yeah, completely agree. Earlier you were talking about the pizza campaign and how you put on many, many channels. Which channels are you finding are most successful or are there any new ones that you're experimenting with that you're finding some early success in. Rachel: I think that we do a lot within social media and I think that the channels in social media that we're finding some early success in would be Next Door and TikTok to some degree. I think with TikTok, youth are still clear we haven't done a whole lot there but I think that the brands that have been on TikTok and have done some really good work and have seen some great results. And I think the social media channels are probably the ones that give me the most excitement because I think there's such a great way. Rachel: We're working towards integrating commerce into social media. That's a big project that my team is working on right now and it's such a great way to capture an audience when they're just in their downtime. They're in a different kind of mindset and they're more open to maybe looking at inspirational content, recipes, things like that within Pinterest or within Facebook or Instagram. And they may want to buy it right then and there and they may want to say, "I want this recipe, I want it delivered to my house. This is great." So, I think that any of the campaigns that we've done in social have really been my favorites. Stephanie: You mentioned integrating commerce into social media. Are you all taking that initiative on yourself or are you more relying on the platforms to develop the solutions to tap into? What does that look like? Rachel: Yeah, we are relying on platforms. Obviously we have to, there's a lot of work that needs to be done still in this area. And I think that's a little trickier just for a supermarket because you're not going to buy just a tomato. Stephanie: [crosstalk] tomato from Stop & Shop. Rachel: Right, it's not like when you see a pair of shoes on Instagram and you have to have them. You don't really have to have that tomato on Instagram but you may want that full recipe so making sure that there's enough content that is actually worthwhile to the customer I think is the challenge and that's what my team is trying to figure out right now. Stephanie: Got it. When I'm thinking about commerce or social media, has Stop & Shop explored ... or maybe you guys already have this like your own products where it's like you can only get it from here. It's not a generic brand it's actually like ... I mean, that reminds me a lot of what Trader Joe's does. It's like if I want this one, well they discontinued this prune juice I really loved. [inaudible 00:32:00], yep. I love their prune juice, they discontinued it. Anyways, I knew that they were the only ones that I liked it, that's the only one I wanted to have. And so, have you explored something like that of creating certain things that will be top of mind where it's like Stop & Shop is the only one that actually has this kind of recipe of whatever it may be, prune juice. Rachel: Yes, actually in fact we have our own line, Nature's Promise is a proprietary line across the Ahold Delhaize brand. And we have our private label brand of course and then we have Taste of Inspirations which is a really nice higher end private label brand for us. And we are definitely doing more within that space, integrating with go rewards with our new program. When you buy a recipe that is all Nature's Promise ingredients you earn extra go points. Rachel: We have these recipes called take five that were featured within social media and we've got them in our circular and in other areas. And if it's all our Taste of Inspiration products you earn X amount of go points. We have a lot of those types of promotions that we're doing now and that's definitely what we'll be integration into our social media commerce platforms in the future. Stephanie: Very cool. And I feel like there's a lot of interesting opportunities too as you now explore ... you're going to have this new e-commerce platform to get new data and to see what people are really like and what's maybe swaying them to buy one thing versus the other. It seems like there's a lot of opportunity that'll come up around building new offerings that maybe you wouldn't have thought of otherwise. Rachel: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And I think if you look at solutions that's definitely really important to our customers right now. There's so many families that are just so busy and providing meal solutions, even a night, a couple nights or a week of meal solutions is such a huge time savings for a lot of families. Stephanie: Yes, I feel that with three boys now. I'm like anything to not have to cook from scratch would be appreciated. [inaudible] it's frozen, whatever it is. If it's edible it's cool. Where does personalization come into play or you guys? How do you think about showing offerings throughout your e-commerce experience or your apps that really connects with the person who's looking there? Rachel: Well, personalization [inaudible] success, so I think whether or not we get it right 100% of the time I think is something that remains to be seen. I think we have made some huge advances in personalization with the new platform, with our program. The more data we have about a consumer's shopping behavior, what they like, the better the offerings that we'll be able to give them. Rachel: So, if I purchase Doritos all of the time, hopefully I'm not getting a offer for something else, Lays potato chips, I should be getting offers for Doritos. So, that relevancy is really, really important. And that's something with this new program that we're providing customers whether it's through product coupons, which today now that I look in my coupon gallery on my app, I have six products that are relevant to what I purchase every week which is really great, so I know the algorithm is working correctly. Rachel: Then on top of that we also have more of those category offers. So, if I'm somebody that always buys fresh produce now we're actually doing more of the $5 off your purchase when you add a fresh produce. More of those category offers that are relevant to what I purchase every day. I think it's incredibly important. And then through the e-commerce journey this is really where I'd like to see us make some improvements. It's on recommendation engine type of logic, so if I'm putting a pizza dough in my basket on my e-commerce platform then hopefully somebody's going to be recommending some mozzarella and pizza sauce to me. Rachel: That type of a level of personalization is something that we strive for and want in the future. We have some degree of that today but that's certainly where I expect we will be going in the near future. Stephanie: Radical. When it comes to those recommendations are there any tools that you're relying on to build that out or is it everything you did in custom or how is that working behind the scenes? Rachel: Yeah, the recommendation actually is homegrown, so that's where our internal partner actually has been using all of the data from the loyalty program and understanding what customers buy, and there's propensity models that we have in place. So, somebody who has the same profile, who typically purchase X, Y, Z. "We actually build a model to say here are look alike customers and here's what we should recommend to them because it looks like that customer is similar so they may be interested in these types of products." And that's something that our internal data scientists have been able to build out for us. Stephanie: That's great. Is there anything when it comes to machine learning or the world of data that you guys have access to that you're maybe preparing for or different capabilities that you're building out right now that may be other grocers or other e-commerce stores are maybe a little bit behind on? Rachel: Yes, there definitely at the Ahold Delhaize level. I think that AI and certainly machine learning is something that everybody is going to have to be prepared to work on in the near future and be prepared to have teams working on that in the near future. And Ahold Delhaize does. Stop & Shop as a brand doesn't but at the Ahold Delhaize level we do. Stephanie: Very cool. And do they usually come up with something at the higher level and implement it within all of their stores or do they test it out and say, "Okay Stop & Shop you're going to pilot this and we'll learn from you and then we'll have our other brands try it as well," or how does that work? Rachel: That's exactly what it is, yeah exactly. And I see a big trend in experimentation and learning done with artificial intelligence, natural language processing. The first steps into conversational commerce and customer service. I think individually each of those is interesting but when you string it together it becomes really compelling and AI is now being given enough transactional information. And when combined with data science can match and predict customer behavior at a level not previously possible. So, natural language, processing and conversational tools really make it possible to help customers during the purchase journey and even more importantly in many aspects of customer service. Rachel: So, these previously somewhat academic technologies are being put in the hands of digital commerce managers and we begin to see the results. So, I fully expect that within the next couple of years what we're testing at a Ahold Delhaize level will be brought down to each of the brands. Stephanie: Yeah, it seems like there could be an interesting ... that you would get interesting results from the different brands because I can see very different consumers who are maybe shopping at Good old Giant back in Maryland. Rachel: Yes, you're absolutely right. Stephanie: How do you approach that when you're trying out different things and maybe you're like, "Oh, we see this with our customers at Stop & Shop, let's try this at another brand." And you're like womp womp that actually failed at that [inaudible] are so different. Rachel: Yeah, no it's a great call out and I say that all the time. I say what matters to somebody in the food [inaudible 00:40:18], so what matters to somebody maybe in North Carolina is different what matters to somebody in New York City. So, we have probably the toughest competitive market not only from a grocery retail perspective but even just from a media perspective and trying to ensure that our voice is heard within these difficult tough media markets. Rachel: So, for Stop & Shop really it's a little bit tricky and we do have to take a look at every single opportunity that comes our way and say, "Does this resonate with our consumer base?" Because a lot of times it won't. I think that there were a couple of examples of trying out even just a walk-up pickup service. In a city location you can walk to get your groceries handed to you. There've already been shop for you versus the traditional pickup where we load it to your car. That doesn't work everywhere obviously. [inaudible] work in the suburbs, it really only works at urban locations. That's one thing that comes to mind, there's a number of them that come to mind but each brand does have an option to opt out if it's not something that resonates within their base. Stephanie: Yeah, it makes sense. Try and implement that in New York city and all of a sudden these cars are being towed and then they're mad. Rachel: Right. Stephanie: [inaudible 00:41:48]. So, to go a little higher level I want to talk about general e-commerce themes and trends. I wanted to hear what kind of disruptions do you see coming to commerce that are not just from COVID or not just COVID because I think a lot people on here are like, "Oh, COVID's the big disruption." What else do you see happening in the world of e-commerce that's maybe coming down the pipe right now? Rachel: I mean one that's already here really is one stop shopping like Amazon. So, the retailers who adapt and constantly expand their options, shorten the supply chain, enhance customer service and develop great options for delivery and pick-up have the most success. So, I think that the model that Amazon has and Wayfair, the direct to consumer shipping is not as much as a disruption to e-commerce. That's here to stay and I think we have to learn from that and we have to adapt in order to stay competitive. And I think a lot of retailers are going to have to adapt in this new world. Everybody's going to have to be able to figure out how to provide that one stop shop because it's similar to brick & mortar shopping. You don't want to go to multiple locations on a Saturday afternoon. Rachel: It's the same thing, if you're going to pay for shipping you're going to pay for it once from one retailer or get free shipping, of course with a subscription service or promotion. And I think that's definitely here to stay. I think that convenience and the ease of finding everything in one place is that it's that big box retail mentality from back in the 80s when the big box retailers really exploded. Stephanie: Yep. Figuring out delivery and trying to compete with Amazon, man that seems very, very tough. Rachel: Very tough. Stephanie: Consumers have very high expectations now of what they want and yeah, it seems like they are quick to get upset if it's not one, two day shipping and, "Oh, it can't be here within two hours? Okay, I'm going to have to cancel the order." Rachel: Right, exactly. And "Oh, you don't have all the other things I need to? I need my face lotion and my bread. Wait, you don't have that?" Stephanie: Yeah, "Why would you not have that right next to each other?" Rachel: Right, exactly. Stephanie: Yeah, this has been awesome. Is there anything that I missed that you wanted to highlight before we jump into the lightning round? Rachel: No, I don't think so. Stephanie: Okay, cool. Well, I will pull us into the lightning round brought to you by SalesForce Commerce Cloud. This is where I'm going to ask a question and you have a minute or less to answer. Are you ready Rachel? Rachel: Oh, boy. Stephanie: All right, first one, what does the best day in the office look like for you? Rachel: Best day in the office today is at home. Stephanie: There you go. What does your virtual best day look like? Rachel: My virtual best day is when I actually have time between meetings to go get something to eat [inaudible 00:45:01]. Stephanie: That is actually a big problem I've heard from a lot of my old coworkers and talking about their whole day is now filled with meetings that maybe would've taken just a couple minutes to have a quick catch up and instead it's like, "Okay, 30 minute slots to discuss maybe one question." Rachel: Absolutely and you use your hour to the fullest extent and you're not moving around from meeting room to meeting room anymore. You're literally just sitting at your desk all day, so my best day is when I actually have a break to get up and go get something to eat because food is important to me. Stephanie: That seems like a crucial part of the day, so what's up next on your Netflix Queue. Rachel: That's a great question. I've actually blown through almost everything. Stephanie: And what was your most recent then? Rachel: I just watched the Enola Holmes. Stephanie: I'm watching that now, it's so cute. Rachel: Oh, it was excellent, I loved it, it was really great. I love Millie Bobby Brown, I think she's fantastic. Stephanie: Yeah, she was really good. Highly recommend that one. What's up next on your travel destinations when you can travel again? Rachel: Oh, gosh I want to go to Scotland so bad. Stephanie: Oh, fun. What do you want to go there for? Rachel: I want to golf. I love the countryside, just looks amazing, beautiful. I want to go hiking there. I have a lot of grand plans for Scotland and Ireland too as well. Stephanie: If you were to have a podcast what would it be about and who would your first guest be? Rachel: It would definitely be about true crime because I'm obsessed with true crime, which I know everybody is right now but I really do find it fascinating and I always have. This isn't just a fab for me, I always really liked it. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). You started it, everyone else followed. Rachel: Yeah, exactly. I'm a trendsetter of course. Stephanie: Yes. And who would your guest be then? Will it be a serial killer? Rachel: Yeah, absolutely. I would love to interview a serial killer. I just want to know what goes on. I want to get deep for sure with a serial killer, name any one. Stephanie: All right, I mean I would listen to that. I hope they're behind bars when that happens. Rachel: Yes, yeah. I could do the interview behind bars for sure. Stephanie: There you go. And if you were to pick a virtual event right now for your team or if you already had one that you've done recently, what would it be that you think is engaging in these times? Rachel: I think there's a women's conference coming up in Boston that I would love for my team to attend. I just attended a women's leadership conference that was really amazing. It was very inspirational, even virtually I was really surprised at how well done it was and how just thought provoking the virtual conference could be. It was really fantastic. Stephanie: That sounds awesome. All right, and then the last one, what is a favorite app on your phone right now that you're loving? Rachel: This is bad but I have the CARROT app, which I don't know if you know, CARROT is the weather app. Stephanie: No, I actually don't. Rachel: It's a weather app that actually gives you a really sarcastic, snarky message every day when you open it up, so ... Stephanie: Oh, my gosh. That's great. I like that, that's really good. Well, Rachel this has been such a fun interview. Where can people find out more about you and Stop & Shop? Rachel: So, Stop&Shop.com Stop & Shop app and me, my LinkedIn profile, so Rachel Stephens, S-T-E-P-H-E-N-S. Stephanie: Awesome, well thanks so much for joining the show. Rachel: Thank you very much for having me.

What would you be willing to do or sacrifice in order to see your dreams come true? On this very special episode, Erin lets you in on a little bit of her own entrepreneurial journey. She shares how some of the sacrifices, like sleeping in her car for a couple of months have led her to where she is now! You'll hear more on: Why anything worth achieving involves sacrifices What led Erin to sleeping in her car and showering in Planet Fitness for a couple of months The one thing you can guarantee will happen when you are trying to achieve your dreams Why community and connection are so important How the lows build up to the highs What all those hard situations allowed Erin to realize when the right offer came around The role ego plays And so much more! Let's take a listen! Resources: Erin's Instagram: @erin_travelsforlife Rachel's Instagram: @iamrachelbrooks The Confident Woman Podcast Instagram: @theconfidentwomanpodcast Quotes: “If you don't know the outcome and you don't know why you're doing what you're doing or you don't see the bigger picture, then the little things are going to trip you up upfront.” - Erin “All of your lows have amounted to your highs.” - Rachel “You have to be in motion in order for things to open to you.” - Erin “Sharing those lows makes you feel less alone.” - Rachel --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/theconfidentwoman/message

Work life balance. Does it exist? Can you make it happen in your life? If this is something you've been trying to figure out today's episode is for you! Today, Erin and Rachel are chatting all about work life balance. They share everything from their thoughts on what work life balance means to them to if they've achieved it themselves. The girls talk more about: How Erin incorporates work into her everyday life (and you can too!) Embracing the chunks of time you have throughout your day One issue Rachel runs into when she works from home The struggle to turn off your “work brain” Why we are all figuring it out as we go How life changes can cause disruptions to your normal routine Prioritizing what's important to YOU The importance of being present in the moment Why integrating your business into your life can be a win-win What happens when you tell yourself that you don't have time And so much more! Let's take a listen! Resources: Erin's Instagram: @erin_travelsforlife Rachel's Instagram: @iamrachelbrooks The Confident Woman Podcast Instagram: @theconfidentwomanpodcast Quotes: “I don't want my work to be something I resent doing. I want that to be a part of my life” - Erin “I've had to learn how to do the most I can in 20-minute increments throughout the day.” - Erin “For me, I'm always on.” - Rachel “You shouldn't have to choose.” - Rachel --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/theconfidentwoman/message

Have you felt like you've been drowning in all the things you need to do? Could someone help you with some of these tasks? Today, Erin and Rachel are chatting about knowing when it's the right time to ask for help and how to find the right people for it! The girls discuss: Recognizing what is preventing you from asking for help The smart way to ask for help (small steps) Why asking for help is the gateway to success How to find the right person to help you The resourcefulness that is required to outsource successfully Questions you need to ask yourself to see how you can outsource The one thing that we all have Who is willing to help you (and it might just surprise you!) Vocalizing what you want exactly And so much more! Let's take a listen! Resources: Erin's Instagram: @erin_travelsforlife Rachel's Instagram: @iamrachelbrooks The Confident Woman Podcast Instagram: @theconfidentwomanpodcast Quotes: “Everything starts with you.” - Rachel “You're not too fearful to take another step if it's just something small and minor.” - Erin “I think there's something to be said about the pride that you have in yourself when you are resourceful enough to figure that problem out.” - Erin “We're givers. We want to contribute.” - Rachel --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/theconfidentwoman/message

What's on the other side of fear and rejection? Kelly Chase joins the girls to talk about just that. She shares how you can go from a place of rejection to a place of love and worth. Oh, and she lets Erin and Rachel in on how her experience on the hit Netflix show Love Is Blind! You'll hear more about: The pivotal moment that began Kelly's personal development journey One important thing she makes time for every single day What events led her to mindset and empowerment coaching The power you have in sharing your vulnerability How you can bring awareness to the emotions your feeling Why having support in your life and business is key to success Books that have helped transform her life (and can transform yours too!) How Love Is Blind has affected Kelly's life Why you need to celebrate everything, including the small things And so much more! Let's take a listen! Resources: Kelly's Instagram: @chaselifewithkelly Erin's Instagram: @erin_travelsforlife Rachel's Instagram: @iamrachelbrooks The Confident Woman Podcast Instagram: @theconfidentwomanpodcast Quotes: Every single person who asked me what I was eating, no one asked me how much I was eating.” - Kelly “I find that time. I make that time.” - Kelly “How we do one thing is legit how we do everything.” - Kelly “It's crazy how we tie our value and our self worth to external things.” - Rachel “You have to create space for yourself.” - Rachel --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/theconfidentwoman/message

1. keep feelings to oneself 自己知道就好 大家对Ross对待Rachel的问题上都很不爽，纷纷抱怨，Monica却认为we should keep feelings to ourselves. Keep feelings to oneself 自己知道就行别说出来Phoebe: Oh, I hate this. Everything's changing.Chandler: Yeah I know, we're losing Ross, Joey said hence…Monica: Look, I'm not happy about this either, but y'know if-if Ross says he's happy then we're just gonna have to keep our feelings about Emily to ourselves. Are you cool with that?Joey: No! But y'know, I'm an actor, I'll act cool.2. give sb creeps 令人毛骨悚然 Rachel在地下室很害怕说Storage room gives me creeps. Give sb creeps 令人毛骨悚然Creepy 可怕的以前有一个很经典的恐怖片系列叫Creepshow, 中文翻译成《鬼作秀》Rachel: Ohh, whoa God! Storage rooms give me the creeps! Monica, come on please hurry up honey! Please?Monica: Rachel, if you want the little round waffles, you gotta have to wait until I find the little waffle iron.3. be on board 完全赞成 Ross对Emily的决定totally onboard。 Be on board. 完全赞成Is everyone on board with the new plan? Then let's get to work!Ross: (on the phone) No-no-no, it's just a bit sudden. (Listens) No, it's great. Okay? I'm totally on board. I love you too, all righty. Bye. (Hangs up.)Joey: What's the matter Ross?Ross: Nothing. Oh, actually, great news! I just got off the phone with Emily and it looks like I'm moving to a new apartment. Woo-hoo!Phoebe: Why?Ross: Well, her thought is, and I agree, fresh new furniture, why not a fresh new apartment? Her cousin has this great place to sublet, it's got a view of the river on one side and Columbia on the other.Joey: That's way uptown! That's like three trains away! (Phoebe pinches him.) Which is great! I love to ride that rail!4. Yeti 喜马拉雅雪人 本集的名字提到了Yeti, Rachel把地下室见到的怪人称作Yeti. Yeti喜马拉雅雪人，一种类似人和猿之间的动物，到底有没有一直有争议。Big foot 大脚怪，是生活在美国和加拿大的一种人猿怪兽。Rachel: You guys! You guys!Monica: We were, we were just in the storage area and we saw this really creepy man!Rachel: It was like this crazy-eyed, hairy beast man! He was like a, like a bigfoot or a yeti or something!Monica: And he came at us with an axe, so Rachel had to use a bug bomb on him!Rachel: (proud of herself) Yeah, I-I-I just pulled the tab and I just fogged his yeti ass!5. stick up for sb 支持，维护 得知和Rachel用防狼喷雾喷的误以为是野人的人其实是邻居，Monica对Joey说you always stick up for the people we fog!Stick up for sb 支持，维护，替说好话To some extent, the authors argue, women themselves are to blame for not doing enough to advance their own interests and stick up for their achievements.这几位作者认为，一定程度上，妇女们并未尽全力扩大自身权益并维护已取得的成就，这一点她们难逃其咎。Joey: Yeah, you fogged Danny.Rachel: Please! We did not fog Danny! Who's Danny?Joey: Dan just moved in downstairs. Yeah, he just got back from like this four-month trek in the Andes. Nice fella.Monica: Oh he's nice. He's nice! Y'know, you always stick up for the people we fog!6. Don't get attached 别太亲近了 Monica告诫Rachel对菲比的大衣Don't get too attached. Get attached 产生关系产生联系。Don't get attached 别太亲近，别太喜欢了Rachel: Oh my God! Oh my God, look at these pelts!Monica: Don't get too attached, she's having it cremated.Rachel: What? Uhh, Phoebe, honey, honey, I know you're quirky and I get a big kick out of it, we all do actually, but if you destroy a coat like this that is like a crime against nature! Not nature, fashion!7. get a kick out of sth 很欣赏某事 Rachel说菲比quirky，古里古怪的。然后说I get a big kick out of it. Get a kick out of sth 很享受某事，非常欣赏某事8. snap judgement 不假思索的判断，以貌取人 Rachel在和Danny的争吵中承认自己犯了snap judgement的错误。 Snap judgement 不假思索的判断，以貌取人。Rachel: Hi!Danny: So you like the short hair better.Rachel: What? Yeti—I mean Danny?Danny: I had to cut my hair to get rid of the uh, fogger smell.Rachel: Oh. Listen, I'm so sorry. I would, I would've never fogged you if y'know if you hadn't looked so…. Y'know.Danny: Absolutely. Some people are just into appearances.Rachel: (shocked) What?Danny: That's cool. Cool. (Starts to leave.)Rachel: What? Hey! No-no-no! This not cool! You don't even know me!Danny: Come on, you got the shopping bags and the Sack's catalog.Rachel: So from that you think you've got me all figured out? Well, you don't! Y'know I-I could have toys for underprivileged kids in here!Danny: Do you?Rachel: Well, y'know, if-if kids like to play with Capri pants.Danny: Okay. (Heads for his apartment.)Rachel: And stop saying that! I hate that!Danny: Okay!Rachel: Fine! I judged you. I made a snap judgement. But you did it too! And you are worse because you are sticking to your stupid snap judgement! You can't even open up your mind for a second to see if you're wrong! What does that say about you?Danny: The pizza-place across the street any good?Rachel: What?!Danny: I'm hungry. Wanna get some pizza? You can keep yelling if there's more.Rachel: Okay. Okay.Danny: Stop saying that. I hate that.9. smooth talker 口才好的人 Rachel说Danny是一个smooth talker.Smooth talker 口才很好的人 想到了MJ的经典歌曲 smooth criminal 犯罪高手Rachel: (entering) Hi!Monica: Hey, look at you! Where have you been?Rachel: Oh, I went to have pizza. With Danny.Monica: How did that happen?Rachel: That yeti is one smooth talker.Monica: I hope you're not full, 'cause dinner's almost ready.Rachel: Yeah, y'know I-I think I'm just gonna hang out in my room.All: No! Why?Rachel: Come on you guys! Listen, if Emily knew I was here having dinner you with you she would flip out and you know it. It's okay, I really… I don't mind.Ross: Wait! Wait! Wait! Y'know what? Just stay. Please? It uh… It would really mean a lot to me if you stayed.Rachel: Ross, I…Joey: RACHEL PLEASE!!! JUST HAVE DINNER WITH US!!!Rachel: Okay. Okay. Joey, it's okay. Settle down.Joey: All right, I-I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You see Rach I'm an actor…

How do you define success? Maybe you feel that you must dress or act a certain way in order to feel successful. But what if we told you that isn't true? Today, Erin and Rachel are joined by special guest, Dr. Shellie Hipsky to talk about what success truly means and how you can reach it! You'll hear more about: Shellie's favorite entrepreneurial success secret How you can navigate through all the noise One of the most important things you need to be doing on your entrepreneurial journey The only place you need to look in order to feel successful Why being true to yourself is so powerful Beliefs that may be holding you back The best approach to getting what you want The key to achieving balance in your life And so much more! Dr. Shellie Hipsky is the CEO of Inspiring Lives International an “Inc. Verified'' motivational media company. The American Chronicle called her “A top entrepreneur in the U.S.,” and The Huffington Post categorizes her as a “Fierce Woman.” She is the president of the nonprofit 501 (c)(3) the Global Sisterhood, a charity that guides and supports women and girls toward their dreams and goals. Dr. Shellie has earned the titles of “Entrepreneur of the Year in Inspiration and Empowerment,” the “Women of Achievement Award,” “Best Woman in Business,” and “VIP Woman of the Year.” Three of her 13 published books, based on 100 amazing interviews from her Empowering Women Radio show, the Common Threads trilogy focused on Inspiration, Empowerment, and Balance, earned international bestseller status. The former tenured professor of Ph.D. students and host of Inspiring Lives with Dr. Shellie on NBC has keynoted internationally from Passion to Profits in Hollywood to The University of Oxford in England and now teaches her signature EmpowerU Master Class, making the world her classroom. This powerful entrepreneur and influencer is the founder and editor-in-chief of Inspiring Lives Magazine: THE Magazine for Empowering Women which is available on the app, digital subscription, or at Barnes and Noble nationwide with over 5 million impressions. Dr. Shellie has been featured on over 20 magazine covers and on all the major TV networks, and she is delighted to bring the world BALL GOWNS TO YOGA PANTS: Entrepreneurial Secrets to Create Your Dream Business and Brand through Morgan James Publishing. Resources: Instagram: @dr.shellie NEW BOOK: Ball Gowns to Yoga Pants: Entrepreneurial Secrets for Erin's Instagram: @erin_travelsforlife Rachel's Instagram: @iamrachelbrooks The Confident Woman Podcast Instagram: @theconfidentwomanpodcast Quotes: “When we come together, we rise together.” - Rachel “You can wear whatever you damn well please.” - Dr. Shellie “The most successful people that you see out and about aren't flashy.” - Erin “You can't compare your chapter 4 to someone' else's chapter 13.” - Dr. Shellie “You are not defined by what you're wearing” - Dr. Shellie --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/theconfidentwoman/message

In this episode, Rachel opens the show discussing stage one through three issues and the hero’s journey. When starting a coaching business, we need to focus on our ideal client rather than our niche. We should already have our empathy part nailed. Lead your clients to their next buy. Your 1:1 should mirror your do-it-yourself. Sometimes, our clients are not ready to commit to the thirty-day purchase. Make sure you are not forcing clients to purchase anything. When you sell from the soul, you’ll understand where your client is coming from. Rachel speaks about defining what you want to teach and keeping everything in one place. Do not start adding different systems. If it’s simple and it works for you, then you should keep it that way. Rachel also talks about different email marketing software that you can use and why the things that are in your membership are the things that you are using personally. Then, Rachel explains the importance of niches. We have to start showing up to find out what people want. We need to stop overthinking and start asking questions to our clients. Our brands will trump our niche. Keep your brand vision in mind. Rachel says that she works with people of all different ages. She uses her story to find clients. When you share, people will realize that you can help them. Rachel would get clients because they heard her telling her story. We are all broken because we are so focused on nailing it down. Figure out where you get stuck and how you can get unstuck. Then, figure out how you can teach it. Enjoy the show! I speak about: [02:00] About stage one through three issues [16:00] Define what you want to teach [20:15] Keep the system that works for you [34:30] Staying in your customer’s life cycle  [41:20] The importance of finding our niche through communication     [49:15] Keep your brand vision in mind [57:00] We are broken because we are so focused on nailing it down Quotes: “Solve the problem for your client.” -Rachel “Teach your clients about how they can change their lives.” -Rachel “You want to have everything in one place.” -Rachel “Step back; how would you want to be sold to?” -Rachel Resources: Check out ConvertKit for email marketing. Go to https://rachelafeldman.com and read through my mini-courses. Make sure to go to my Facebook to get notified when I’m going live. Don’t forget to tag me on Instagram at @RachelAFeldman and let me know what your favorite part of the episode was. 

In this episode, Rachel opens the show discussing stage one through three issues and the hero’s journey. When starting a coaching business, we need to focus on our ideal client rather than our niche. We should already have our empathy part nailed. Lead your clients to their next buy. Your 1:1 should mirror your do-it-yourself. Sometimes, our clients are not ready to commit to the thirty-day purchase. Make sure you are not forcing clients to purchase anything. When you sell from the soul, you’ll understand where your client is coming from. Rachel speaks about defining what you want to teach and keeping everything in one place. Do not start adding different systems. If it’s simple and it works for you, then you should keep it that way. Rachel also talks about different email marketing software that you can use and why the things that are in your membership are the things that you are using personally. Then, Rachel explains the importance of niches. We have to start showing up to find out what people want. We need to stop overthinking and start asking questions to our clients. Our brands will trump our niche. Keep your brand vision in mind. Rachel says that she works with people of all different ages. She uses her story to find clients. When you share, people will realize that you can help them. Rachel would get clients because they heard her telling her story. We are all broken because we are so focused on nailing it down. Figure out where you get stuck and how you can get unstuck. Then, figure out how you can teach it. Enjoy the show! I speak about: [02:00] About stage one through three issues [16:00] Define what you want to teach [20:15] Keep the system that works for you [34:30] Staying in your customer’s life cycle  [41:20] The importance of finding our niche through communication     [49:15] Keep your brand vision in mind [57:00] We are broken because we are so focused on nailing it down Quotes: “Solve the problem for your client.” -Rachel “Teach your clients about how they can change their lives.” -Rachel “You want to have everything in one place.” -Rachel “Step back; how would you want to be sold to?” -Rachel Resources: Check out ConvertKit for email marketing. Go to https://rachelafeldman.com and read through my mini-courses. Make sure to go to my Facebook to get notified when I’m going live. Don’t forget to tag me on Instagram at @RachelAFeldman and let me know what your favorite part of the episode was. 

In this new episode Erin and Rachel break down what they believe is the single best investment for your business. They discuss how investing in coaching, education and more are all powerful tools when starting a business, but that they are not the most important thing. The girls believe the most important thing you can invest in is yourself. They share why having the right mindset and changing your blueprint are necessary for a successful business. They also agree that there isn't a secret sauce when it comes to success. And that it's important to model after others, but to put your own unique stamp on your business. Lastly, they share how outsourcing in your business can be the best decision. It can allow you to stay in your zone of genius and will, in turn, make your business even more successful. Here are other takeaways: How one book changed Erin's way of thinking and up-leveled her life and business Rewiring of your blueprint for growth Make sure a potential coach is a good match Finding your skillset and using them to create success Book: The Millionaire Mind, by T. Harv Eker Let's take a listen! Resources: Erin's Instagram: @erin_travelsforlife Rachel's Instagram: @iamrachelbrooks The Confident Woman Podcast Instagram: @theconfidentwomanpodcast Quotes: “Do what you do best and outsource the rest.” -Rachel “You have to outgrow where you're at.” - Rachel “Sometimes as you grow, you outgrow your coach.” -Erin “You are the machine behind your business.” -Rachel “Step one, especially being brand new, is just opening yourself up to the learning.” -Erin --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/theconfidentwoman/message

This episode is a powerful one! Erin starts the episode by sharing her courageous story of being attacked in her apartment complex 5 years ago. She explains what happened, how she fought back and so much more. One of the biggest things Erin goes into how it changed her life afterwards. She realized the outcome could have been very different and that she was ALIVE, stronger than before and resilient! Erin also discusses why she makes a post on the anniversary of the event every year. She does it, not to garner sympathy or pity, but to remember how much of a badass she was and how much she overcame.. She realizes she actually gained so much from it. Erin and Rachel then go on to discuss the power of owning your story. How owning these situations and talking about them can empower you. They can allow you to make a genuine connection with others. Here are some highlights: How a key helped save Erin's life Therapy was a blessing Erin didn't think she needed What she has taken from the incident Reactions and triggers she had to the situation Telling your story can allow for resiliency and strength Let's take a listen! Resources: Erin's Instagram: @erin_travelsforlife Rachel's Instagram: @iamrachelbrooks The Confident Woman Podcast Instagram: @theconfidentwomanpodcast Quotes: “I don't quit.” Erin “It sucked at the time, but looking back I realize how lucky I was.” Erin “You can go through something crazy and still have that happy, optimistic outlook on life.” “The power of vulnerability in owning our story.” Rachel “You can't move past something unless you talk about it.” Rachel --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/theconfidentwoman/message

Today's episode has Erin and Rachel chatting with special guest Jacque Timple. Jacque is a wife, mom, dog mom, co-parent extraordinaire, three-time Ironman competitor, health and wellness coach through Arbonne and Intervention Specialist. Erin and Rachel start it off with wanting to know more about the Ironman competition. Jacque dishes on her decision to train for it to combat the loneliness when her daughter and boyfriend (now husband) weren't around. She also talks about how training and the competition itself changed her life and lifestyle. Jacque then goes into the relationship changes that also occurred when she started training for the Ironman. It led to some relationships ending and the dynamic in others to change drastically. Rachel agrees that when you make a big lifestyle change that dominates your life the relationships around you also change. They all agree that the relationships with other women especially change. Jacque also shares about her passion to help others feel good about themselves. She wants everyone to have a positive outlook in all situations. But she currently does this through coaching others on lifestyle changes and food empowerment. All three of the girls discuss what is optimal fuel is for your body. Knowing what is actually good food and how much is needed to live healthily. Jacque tells of a client success story that involved implementing these strategies. Here are some big takeaways: Jealousy of others can hinder our own success You need to be your own best friend first Slip ups with food happen and to not punish yourself Rachel's Ferris Bueller analogy Jacque's breast explant story Let's take a listen! Jacque's Resources: Website: www.jacquelinetimple.arbonne.com Instagram: @Jacque_Timple Facebook: JTimpleArbonne LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/jacqueline-timple Resources: Erin's Instagram: @erin_travelsforlife Rachel's Instagram: @iamrachelbrooks The Confident Woman Podcast Instagram: @theconfidentwomanpodcast Quotes: “Say what you mean, mean what you say.” -Jacque “Honesty can get people so much further.” -Jacque “Who's the common denominator in these relationships?” -Rachel “ You gotta be your own best friend.” -Rachel “I stunted my own growth and success because I had a negative association with success.” -Erin --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/theconfidentwoman/message

In this episode, Rachel and Erin get to chat with the lovely Kayleigh Hanlin. Kayleigh is the co-creator of two amazing things for young girls, J.O.Y. journals and Empowered Minds. In 2017 she started Empowered Minds with her mom, Cathy. This mother-daughter duo's mission is to assist young girls in building a foundation of self-love, confidence, and self-acceptance. The J.O.Y. Journal is designed for girls, ages 7-14, to discover their unique selves through engaging and guided activities. Kayleigh shares her story of how being born with a congenital heart defect and the obstacles that came with it allowed her to see things from a different perspective. And it was this that led her to creating the J.O.Y. journal. She wanted young girls to feel empowered about who they are and to have self-love. Rachel and Erin also talk with Kayleigh about the prompts within the journal. They realize that these prompts are great and not just for young girls. The prompts are to see the positive in yourself, to shut down the negative and reframe thoughts into ones of empowerment. Finally, Kayleigh tells the girls about the type of speaking engagements her and her mom do to empower young girls. She also talks about how creating a retreat for young girls and their female role models is the next big goal. Here are some highlights: Kayleigh's story Self-awareness and the victim mentality The impact of social media on young girls Kayleigh's love of chicken wings Let's take a listen! Kayleigh Hanlin Resources: Website: www.mindsempowered.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/justownyou Instagram @JustOwnYou Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/justownyouem/ Resources: Erin's Instagram: @erin_travelsforlife Rachel's Instagram: @iamrachelbrooks The Confident Woman Podcast Instagram: @theconfidentwomanpodcast Quotes: “I had very good instincts when it came to people.” -Kayleigh “Speak up for yourself.” -Kayleigh “You're the only person standing in your way.” -Kayleigh “When you own who you are nobody else can tell you otherwise.” -Rachel “You're not just living to live, you're thriving.” -Kayleigh “There's never a perfect approach to anything.” -Rachel --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/theconfidentwoman/message

In this episode, Erin and Rachel discuss how finding friends as an adult is kind of like dating. It is hard to find friends as a woman today. They talk about the ease of making friends as kids, but even when going to college it started to become harder to find friends. Erin went knocking on other dorm rooms to see if anyone wanted to hang out and Rachel actually pledged a sorority at a different school because of a friend. The girls realize that everyone is looking for support and someone they can relate to and connect too. And that a lot of times our friends come from our work, through other friends or by default. They are not genuine, deep connections. Rachel also talks about trying to make friends by looking at how she can serve the other person versus what is in it for her. Erin agrees that adding value to the other person is necessary, but that you may not be the right fit for everyone. They discuss how some friendships can run their course and you don't have to stay friends with that person. If the friendship is no longer serving you or the other person then it's time to let go of it with no hard feelings. And finally, the girls talk about some good places to meet other like-minded women who are also looking for friendship. Here are some highlights: Finding friends is hard as an adult Serving the other person vs. what is in it for me Add value to the other person but not for everyone Finding friends is like dating and actually jiving with the other person You don't have to stay friends Where to find and meet friends Let's take a listen! Resources: Erin's Instagram: @erin_travelsforlife Rachel's Instagram: @iamrachelbrooks The Confident Woman Podcast Instagram: @theconfidentwomanpodcast Quotes: “ We want to find people that we can relate and connect with.” Rachel “Sometimes you're making friends by default, by commonality instead of a deeper connection.” Erin “I'm looking at it from a serving standpoint versus what's in it for me.” Rachel “You're not going to connect with every single person.” Erin --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/theconfidentwoman/message

Is vulnerability is a weakness and something we can exploit? Or is it actually a superpower and shield of honor we can wear? In this week's episode, Erin and Rachel discuss the power of vulnerability. Most people associate vulnerability with being a sign of weakness and something that will make us less than perfect. In reality, vulnerability is actually a strength. It allows us to attract people into our lives and to empower and connect with them on a deeper level. Rachel and Erin also talk about showing up as yourself instead of putting on masks to be something you are not or think you need to be. This is to include social media and how people don't actually want to see highlight reels of others. They want to see the failures and struggles of others because it is what makes them relatable and humanizes them. Let's take a listen! Vulnerability: weakness or strength? Power of going deep and not having superficial connections with others What causes our vulnerabilities? Can they self-inflicted or fear-based? Putting people on pedestals when they are only showing highlight reels Showing up and connecting with others through our vulnerabilities Resources: Erin's Instagram: @erin_travelsforlife Rachel's Instagram: @iamrachelbrooks The Confident Woman Podcast Instagram: @theconfidentwomanpodcast Facebook: The Confident Woman Podcast Quotes: “Own the suck” Rachel “We see the highlight reels of people and we put them on pedestals and they're just not even relatable.” Rachel “You don't have to glamorize everything” Erin “Anything we're self-conscious of or feel vulnerable with anyways isn't going to go away unless you do talk to someone about it.” Erin --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/theconfidentwoman/message

Bryan's guest today is Rachel LaMar of LaMar Real Estate based in Carlsbad, California. We got off to a ranty start about food servers, delivery people and being caught on camera. It progressed to discussions about school safety and the empathy we have for kids today living with fears they should never deal with. We also covered streetlights, lions, late night and early morning calls are rarely good unless a baby is born and so much more! Tune in and catch some of the quotable moments below. On the disgusting things people do to your food! Bryan: This is so foul, so the delivery driver delivered it to the house, they had the ring system on and the dude literally, it shows the guy opening their cup, spitting in it, closing it and then handing the food to the consumer and I was like rawr. Rachel LaMar: What about the girl who just a couple of weeks ago, a young woman who went into the store and ate some of the ice cream. She opened a tub of ice cream and then she ate from it and she videoed herself live on Twitter or Facebook. Yeah, and well people are so stupid because they're on camera, especially the ones who intentionally film themselves doing something illegal. Bryan: I don't care how famous you are, how much money you have, I don't care if you use hand sanitizer on those fingers, I don't know where those fingers have been. Do not put them in my donut. Well, you don't know where she had those fingers prior to putting them in the donut. It was disturbing. Balls deep in salsa. (you'll have to find this story in the replay!!) Think about your parents before you ... God, I know I'm old when I say that. You think about your parents before you pull the stupid card out. I would never do that to anyone in my family. Look, I've made some especially stupid decisions in my life, really, really, really bad ones, but they weren't filmed and they're not recorded, so like yes, the legacy maybe there or some people's memories of it, but like no - it isn't replayed as a highlight reel. On School Shooters and our children's safety: Bryan: Can you imagine being that young, going to school every day and it starts off in that realm like you're going to start off as a kid never feeling safe. Ryan Alvey (the baby of the bunch): I don't remember metal detectors at schools. Rachel LaMar: No, no. Ryan Alvey: I don't remember being scared. I don't remember gun shootings or anything or anyone my age. Bryan Garrity: No, but that's how childhood should be. And I'm not being some 1950's puritan, but that's how childhood should be. You should be able to go to school and start to find yourself and learn about others and not be worried about is somebody going to come and kill all my friends and my teachers and myself or whatever. Rachel LaMar: School should be a safe place. On hunting exotic animals for no reason: There was a reason that lion was put away in a sanctuary. Look, they're there minding their own business in nature. That is not part of the ecosystem, some dumbass dentist from Michigan rolling into Africa and just killing for sport or killing for bounty. It's like I got a bounty for you dude, let's throw you in the clank for about a year and then see how you like it. Bryan Garrity: Everybody's like you're animal rights advocates and you don't like guns and you're a snowflake. It's like sh*t if you think that, you don't know me.  Rachel LaMar: Just last week, there was some children of a famous person, we'll leave it at that, online holding a beautiful, I think it was a cheetah or a leopard and just these huge grins on their faces that they had just killed on safari and yeah. Ryan Alvey: Can you eat a cheetah? I mean, can you eat a cheetah? Is that even a thing? Logic to fix our country:  Bryan: Number one, so the country needs self-care. I really believe that. Am I off base? And look at the people with money and look what happens to them versus the people who have nothing. That's so crazy. Rachel LaMar: So, if you are famous and have money, you can usually get away with a lot of things and get a lot of things that others don't have access to, which shouldn't be. That's not fair, but that's the way this country works, unfortunately. Bryan: ... this comes back around -  it is that disparity about you think about the people that are really struggling, that have nothing, or have families that are going paycheck to paycheck, it's like how do you close that gap and fix it? I don't know the answer. On changing how we educate our children to they actually retain it and enjoy school: Rachel LaMar: ...because most schools, public schools, are still taught with the teacher standing up front and lecturing to the kids and blah, blah, blah like the Charlie Brown, blah, blah, blah, go read chapter two and answer the questions at the end of the chapter. A friend of mine wrote a great book and it's called, New School and it was all about really changing education and really combining self-study with going out into the world and learning that way with all different kinds of learning. Not just sitting in the classroom and reading this book and answering these questions, because kids are inquisitive and I've been to a local private school near me and I went into a classroom and they teach very differently at small round tables with small groups of kids and the teacher throws out a question and you see these light bulbs going off and they start ... and it's more yes, it could be a history class, but they're relating it to today and that's how we need to teach. Bryan:  That's not always an easy thing to do, hold a room for eight hours. But I think that those models of collaborative learning, what you're talking about, endless circle, people being excited. There's something about that interaction and it not just being all about the teacher. I think it promotes a different kind of an environment for learning or growing. On children as they talked about her book, Bennie Bear's Dream for Foster Care system and adoptive parents to help kids transition: Rachel: You don't really think about it and there are so many foster kids, millions of foster kids in the system. Bryan Garrity: They're lost. Rachel LaMar: They just need love, they need a forever family. Rachel LaMar: And so, some people want to adopt a baby and then, other people are worried about the problems they might have to face, because a lot of these kids, some of them have been traumatized, some of them have had ... you just don't know what they've been through and so it really is, it's not just ... it's more than just becoming a parent. You have to be ready to take on things that you might not take on with adopting a baby, so it's a big commitment... From Lawyer to Realtor: I was practicing law and then I got pregnant and then I just wasn't happy where I was and it just turned into this thing where I made the decision, but it was great, because I got to raise my kids when they were a little bit older, I had one in Kindergarten and one in preschool. I thought I need to do something, but I didn't want to go back to law at the time, because I wanted to see the first everything. A lot of people have that story, but it obviously ... real estate's been good to me, so I can't complain. And people think that they can ... any time the market gets great and all these people jump in thinking, "I'm going to work on the weekends and make all this money" and it's especially now like we talked about, everything, there's no easy transaction. Ryan Alvey: I was an HGTV junkie, so I was one of those that were like oh you just show three houses and you make all this money, you work weekends. And then, obviously, you come to realize it's full time and there's a lot of work. There's a lot to it that people don't understand. It's not just throwing your sign in the yard. Rachel LaMar: And just also, because the knowledge that you and I have is we see things from a different perspective, so it really helps our clients. Yeah, but you know, it's always I think until they make the standards to get into this business tougher, it's always going to be one of those things where people are coming in and out and constantly moving. Bryan Garrity: Yeah, the barrier to entry's too low.   And I think somebody was trying to take me on about the barrier to entry to law versus real estate. It's vastly different worlds. You can't just enroll and do an online course and go take your real estate exam and get a license where you're dealing with people's biggest asset or assets, at the end of the day, you can tragically decimate someone's life. That part I don't understand. So you give it to somebody that's only tethered to a check, to me that's very problematic. Be sure to subscribe here to our replays.

In this episode, Rachel and Erin discuss something that can either kill or propel you forward: self-doubt. When we are on a path of self-doubt, it becomes lonely and daunting. Questions will start to fill our head and ultimately stunt our growth. Instead of letting obstacles throw you off your path, keep your eyes on the big prize and move forward! When something takes a long time, more self-doubt creeps in. If you have a driving passion, it will propel you forward to the lofty goal. Have faith in your purpose, calling, and know that it will always work out. Having setbacks is never the end-all-be-all when you hit rock bottom. The only way you can go is up! Enjoy the show! Timestamps: [00:30] Self-doubt will kill your dreams [05:20] Setting long-term goals [07:20] Rachel is in the process of getting her book published [10:15] The fear of starting [12:40] Finding the lesson in the blessing Resources: Erin's Instagram: @erin_travelsforlife Rachel's Instagram: @iamrachelbrooks The Confident Woman Podcast Instagram: @theconfidentwomanpodcast Facebook: The Confident Woman Podcast Quotes: “We have to set small, measurable, actionable steps to reach our goals.” -Rachel “You might need to correct course.” -Erin “Stay on your path, and your why.” -Rachel “I give myself five minutes to be mad at something.” -Erin --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/theconfidentwoman/message

HI! Welcome back! This episode is SO SO good. Instagram's infamous Rachel Spencer aka @MYCOACHRACHEL joins us today with so much wisdom and an amazing perspective on being an instagram influencer. She's been featured on Allure, Teen Vogue, The Today Show, Self magazine, and MORE. She also goes into her story of starting her instagram, her own struggles with childhood bullying and the effect they had on her self image, her juicy past relationship & how she became the strongest version of herself after they broke up, AND MORE. You DON'T want to miss this one! To find out more about Rachel: -You can find her on instagram here (@mycoachrachel) -Her website here (http://mycoachrachel.com/) -Her facebook group for Inspirational Influencers. (https://www.facebook.com/groups/inspirationalinfluencers)    ----more---- && To find out more about Rich Imperfections go to our website here. -Find me on instagram here -Find me on Facebook here.  -Facebook group BODY LOVE & TRUST.  -Find our Blog here. 

  Join us today as Emily talks to Rachel Brenke, mom of 5, USA Triathlete, and lawyer. Now that’s one full plate! In this episode, they’ll explore how Rachel balances a busy family life and demanding career with minding her and her family’s health and fitness. Want to learn more about Rachel? You can find... Read More The post Balancing Fitness and Family Life with Rachel Brenke (Ep. 25) appeared first on Cooking With a Full Plate.

Adele writes an Epidimerick that only works in a Northern English accent and gives Zoe the gift of explaining a joke neither of them had got for almost twenty five years. Chandler’s storyline reminds them of a 90s Oprah Winfrey show, Zoe’s shipping Monica and Chandler years before the writers get there and who IS actually Rachel’s best friend? Does Zoe also spot a plot hole in the girls’ supposed ignorance of Ross’ love for Rachel? You decide!

Jamie Weiss and special guest co-host, comedian, Patrick Cunningham sit down with Rachel Joseph and really get into No Mercy. Do you know the difference between a heel and a face? Fedora and a trilby? Will Savage Pizza in ATL sponsor my podcast in the form of a free calzone every PPV? Patrick Cunningham is a New York native that has made the south his home. Based in Atlanta, Patrick's high energy sets bring a taste of his home city to the deep south. He has performed at the Altercation Comedy Festival, Broken Record Comedy Show, and recently headlined at Atlanta's very own Star Bar. In January 2017, he relased his debut album, "Prehipstoric". You can also catch him on the upcoming season of "Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell" on Adult Swim. Road Rooms on Instagram: ZoomZoomRoadRooms Follow Patrick on Twitter: mrpcunningham “I’m just a mad scientist, just like Rick Sanchez, and you can quote me on that.” -Rachel You can follow Rachel Joseph on Twitter: raayyjaayyy You can follow Jamie: -Twitter: JWMeatballs -Instagram: scatmanjamie -Email: heckinasec@gmail.com Podcast art by Rebecca Price www.rebeccaprice.me Podcast music by Xander Pratt Soundcloud.com/xander_pratt Heck in a Sec is produced by Barack Zitron! He is a freelance audio engineer, buck wild, and you can get ahold of him at https://www.upwork.com/freelancers/~01d772da11fef26c74

Rachel is a reproductive health practitioner out of Guildford UK, who specializes in fertility massage therapy. Rachel teaches Natural Family Planning, and she is a holistic health coach, and she incorporates Reiki, and reflexology into her practice, among other modalities. Rachel works with women suffering from PMS, painful, heavy or irregular periods, and fertility issues and much more! And in today’s show, we talk all about fertility massage therapy and how learning natural family planning has informed her practice! Topics discussed in today's episode The connection between period health and fertility How the position of the uterus impacts menstrual health & fertility The natural movement of the uterus throughout menstruation What causes uterine adhesions and how can these adhesions impair free uterine movement? Using Fertility Awareness/Natural Family Planning as a diagnostic tool How can food sensitivities impact a woman's menstrual cycle? Using Fertility Awareness Charting to understand and address fertility issues Luteal phase defect/short luteal phase Impact of stress on the menstrual cycle Connect with Rachel You can connect with Rachel on her website and on Facebook & Twitter. Resources mentioned The Healthy Womb | Rachel Eyre FFP 030 | Alignment and Movement for Fertility | Merciér Therapy | Marie Wittman FFP 018 | Arvigo Abdominal Therapy | Vaginal Steaming | Traditional Maya healing for Fertility and Menstrual Cycle Irregularities| Dr. Rosita Arvigo FFP 050 | Journeys in Healing | Arvigo® Therapy for Fertility and Pregnancy | Donna Zubrod & Diane MacDonald Hypnobirthing: The breakthrough natural approach to safer, easier, more comfortable birthing (book) | Marie Mongan Join the community! Find us on the Fertility Friday Facebook Fan Page Subscribe to the Fertility Friday Podcast on iTunes! Music Credit: Intro/Outro music Produced by Sirc of (The Nock)

O English Experts faz 7 anos no próximo domingo e aqui quem ganha o presente é você. Preparamos um podcast especial sobre a pronúncia do inglês americano. Adir Ferreira e eu conversamos com Rachel Smith do site Rachel’s English. O assunto: Como falar inglês como um nativo (How to speak English like a native English speaker). Ouvir o English Podcast Links discutidos no podcast Stressed vs. Unstressed syllables: My New Bike! American English Imitation Exercise: What did you do today? Adir: Response Rachel Video: Sound like a Native Speaker Participação dos leitores do EE no face Transcrição Hi, English Experts friends! Welcome to this special edition of English Podcast. Today, in English, of course. I'm Alessandro Brandão from Brazil. I'm Adir Ferreira from Brazil and I'm Rachel Smith from New York City. Alessandro: Today we're going to talk a little bit about "How to speak English like a native English speaker". So, stay tuned. Let me tell you a little bit about our today's guest. Rachel lives in New York City. She was born and raised in Florida, went to college in Indiana where she studied Applied Math, Computer Science, Music and graduate school for Opera Performance in Boston. She loves being connected to people throughout the world through Rachel's English. Hi Rachel, it's a pleasure. Rachel: Hi! Alessandro: Thank you for joining us today. Rachel: Sure... Thanks for having me on. Alessandro: Great! By the way, how's Lucy? Rachel: Lucy is doing well. Yep, she's holding up well, I just rode her around Manhattan this morning, so I'm happy to have her. 02:00 Alessandro: Great! Just to let you know, Lucy is Rachel's new bike, because her old bike had been stolen and she decided to ask readers for suggestions for a new name. Of course, I was rooting for "magrela". Here in Brazil "magrela" is a common name for a bike. Did you know that? Rachel: Uh-huh… ... Well, I figured it out pretty quickly because many many people were suggesting that as a name. Alessandro: We used to say also "Camelo" or just Bike in English. Rachel: Hm-hum , yeah. Alessandro: Rachel, let me introduce you my friend and partner, Adir Ferreira. Adir: Hello, Rachel! It's a pleasure and an honor to have you with us today. Rachel: It's nice to meet you. Adir: Ohh fantastic, nice to meet you too. And as most of our listeners and readers know, I'm a huge aficionado of pronunciation studies and it is always a pleasure to feature your videos on my personal blog and on Transparent Language English blog for Portuguese speakers too, it's always always good to have you there. Rachel: Well, thank you for doing that, thank you for helping to spread the word about my work. Adir: It’s my pleasure. 03:07 Alessandro: I don't know if you remember, but Adir already sent a video response to you. It was a video about the question "What did you do today?" Do you remember? Rachel: I do actually, I just watched it again today to refresh myself and it was a great video, really appreciated it. Adir: Thank you! Rachel: You're welcome! Alessandro: Adir is the king of the pronunciation here in Brazil. Adir: So you say. So you say. Alessandro: That's why I'm so nervous today. Adir: Ahhh, Don't worry. Alessandro: So, Rachel you've been working on Rachel's English for over 4 years now. How did it all start? 03:42 Rachel: Actually I just had my five-year anniversary last… last month, so I guess I need update that information. It started in 2008, when I was living in Germany and I was studying at a language institute there to learn German and so I was hanging out with a lot of people from all over the world who were there to learn German and one person in particular that was in several of my classes ... was from Turkey and was interested in American English and, you know, Hollywood is such a great exporter of the way we speak and he found it very interesting and wanted to know h...