Podcast appearances and mentions of sarah absolutely

In this powerful episode, we hear the story of Alice, who shares her brave journey through two contrasting pregnancies and the impact of intimate partner violence on her mental health. Co-host Sarah joins as one of our VBAC Link certified doulas to discuss the importance of mental health awareness, especially during pregnancy and postpartum. This episode dives into the significance of having a strong support system and the need for open conversations about postpartum mood disorders and trauma-informed care. Alice is a beautiful example of resilience, healing, and the strength that women possess.National Domestic Violence HotlineNeeded WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode Details Meagan: Women of Strength. Hello. How are you doing? I hope you are having an amazing week. We have another story coming your way today, and we actually have a co-host today, my friend Sarah. Hello, Sarah.Sarah: Hi.Meagan: Thank you so much for being here today.Sarah: Yeah, I'm super excited to be here.Meagan: I love having our VBAC Link doulas on the podcast here and there. It's fun to not only share you with the world and let people know who you are and where you are, but really just to hear from you guys and hear your educational pieces and just have you guys in the story and giving your input, and I just love it. So thank you so much for being here.Sarah: Absolutely.Meagan: Guys, today, like I said, we have an HBAC coming your way. But I did want to let you know that today's episode may have mention of partner abuse and suicide. I really, really, really think it is so important to really not mask stories and share the rawness of people's stories because I think the rawness and the real story is what makes us who we are today and really creates the story to be true. I just wanted to give you guys a heads-up. But I'm going to turn the time over to Sarah. She is in replace of our review today doing an educational piece and actually talking about mental health.Sarah: Yeah. Hi. So again, I'm super excited to be here. I'm Sarah Marie Bilder. I'm located in the upstate South Carolina area and I do birth and postpartum doula work. I really just wanted to cover the topic of mental health because in the story that we're gonna hear today, it's pretty relevant and it's one of those things that aren't often talked about. I don't wanna say that that's not talked about because when we say that it kind of, I feel, diminishes the people that are talking about it. It's important to really highlight when we are talking about it. But a lot of the times when we're preparing for pregnancy, we're focused on the physical aspects or maybe mindfulness or something along those lines, but we don't really dig deep into postpartum mood disorders or when there are mood disorders that are still occurring in pregnancy or even that might exist before we're pregnant that will still continue throughout pregnancy. So it's really important to make sure that we're having these conversations and that we're being open and honest with the people around us. Maybe if you aren't in therapy or have somebody sort of set up along those lines, you still have a close friend or a support person that you can be sharing this information with or really opening up about the feelings that you're having because they are very real feelings, and even into postpartum, it goes more than just the baby blues. There are a lot of different things that can be occurring and happening that it's really important to continue to have those support people. So as a doula, this is something that I make sure my clients are aware of and open to, and I try to be as much of a support person as possible, but knowing when professionals need to step in and when situations need to be handled I think is really key. So making sure that you have people to talk to, making sure when you listen to these stories that you are considering different situations and different aspects and that we're talking to our mom friends too. If you're not the one currently going through it, if you're hearing somebody else going through different situations, we're continuing to stay open and stay together and stay supportive.Meagan: Yes, I love that. Thank you so much for that message. I also want to add through to it that after we have our babies, we are given a six-week follow-up. You do not have to wait six weeks to talk to your provider. If you are feeling these feelings, you do not have to wait until then. You one, can get in sooner. But two, there are other resources, and we will make sure to have those resources shared at the end of this episode and in our show notes. So if you or anyone that you know and love are experiencing these things, please know that there is more help. Okay, Alice and Sarah, thank you so much again for being here today. I want to turn the time over to you, Ms. Alice.Alice: Hello. Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be here and share my story.Meagan: Me too.Alice: So I have had two pregnancies, two births, and they were both very, very different. My first pregnancy, when I think about when I found out I was pregnant with my first, it was the lowest point of my life. I was nine months into being married to my abuser and had really lost my entire sense of self. I was at this point where I just didn't understand how I had gotten there. I didn't understand how I had married him. I found myself hospitalized from a suicide attempt. I also had no social support. I had no family in the area. I had no job. My husband was an attorney, and I relied on his friends and his family for emotional support. I was hospitalized and felt very lost. About a week into my hospitalization, the staff, who were constantly running tests and blood draws, pulled me out of a group where I was learning how to deeply breathe, and to my shock, told me I was pregnant. I had no idea. It was just a very out-of-body experience being hospitalized for mental illness. Some people can find it really helpful in healing, and it can also be a trauma in itself, and it was that for me. So to be in this setting where I had no freedom, and then these people were telling me what was inside of my body. It was-- I couldn't process it. I was very disconnected to my pregnancy at first. The next five days of being hospitalized, I was presented with a lot of information about pregnancy and intimate partner violence. It's information that I think is really important for providers to know, but it was presented to me as a new pregnant person in an abusive relationship in a way that felt really coercive and fear-mongering. They told me that the leading cause of death in the United States for pregnant women was intimate partner homicide. Meagan: Okay. Alice: Yeah. I remember one provider telling me, "Your options are to terminate the pregnancy or to leave him now. It's our professional opinion that if you stay in this relationship while pregnant, it's very likely that he will kill you before you give birth." Meagan: Gosh. Alice: I remember feeling so shocked and afraid. I knew I wanted to be a mom. I think the decision to continue a pregnancy or not when you're faced with, it's always a difficult decision. It was for me because I was afraid, and I knew I wanted to be a mom. I also knew that I couldn't leave yet. The leaving is really complicated, and it's not a direct line to safety. I remember feeling when they were talking to me about leaving, like, "Well, you could go here or you could call this person," thinking like, don't you think I've already thought of this? Don't you think I've thought of every way to keep myself safe? Now I was pregnant, and I wanted the assumption that I was making decisions that were best for me and my baby. My pregnancy was difficult. I had hyperemesis and I had this pregnancy rash that was really itchy my whole pregnancy. They kept testing my bile levels, and they were all normal and never knew what was going on. I have scars on my body from scratching. I'm pretty sure now that it was just stress and breaking out in hives throughout my pregnancy. I had broken ribs in my third trimester. When I think about that pregnancy, I remember it being a time of suffering and fear. I feel sad for myself when I think of myself during that time experiencing pregnancy like that. At the same time, I had an incredible midwifery team based out of a hospital. I can't say enough about how supportive and trauma-informed they were. They never pressured me to leave. They asked questions like, "What can we do to help? How can we make you safer?" They trusted that I was doing everything I could and that I knew how to keep myself safe and how to keep my baby safe. I was living with my in-laws when I went into labor with my first. I had moved in and out of our home depending on how safe it was. I didn't have anywhere to go other than his parents'. I was living with them and my waters had been leaking for a few days and I knew. I was like, I know I'm not peeing this much all the time. I knew that my waters were leaking, but I didn't want to go to the hospital yet because I hadn't started contracting, and I knew they would induce. I started having contractions at midnight. I went in about 24 hours later. It was really slow. I tried everything I could to get things moving, but it just wouldn't speed up. I ended up being induced. I don't necessarily regret the decision to be induced. It did lead to a C-section, but when I went into the hospital, I didn't know what home I would go to. I wanted to be there. I remember thinking, I want to stay here. If that means I have to get induced, that means I get induced. But I felt much safer being in a hospital at that point. They started the induction process. I had a doula come, and I also had my therapist come. She was with me through my entire labor at the hospital and birth for-- she was there maybe 45 hours. We had made a contract and it's pretty innovative to have my therapist there as a support person at my birth. I think it's an induction story that we all know my body wasn't ready. I was on Pitocin for a very long time. Baby's heart rate started decelerating, not tolerating labor, and made the decision to have a Cesarean. It wasn't the birth that I wanted, but it was the safety that I wanted. I had support there. They made sure to tell me specific things that were in my birth plan that were triggers for me. When I was laid on the table for the C-section, someone got very close to my ear and said, "No one's tying you down. I know your arms are out. It might feel like that, but know you are not restrained." At one point, the anesthesiologist started petting my head because he was sitting by my head. The obstetrician who was just there to do my C-section, wasn't there for very long. She had read my birth plan and said to the male anesthesiologist, "She doesn't like her head to be touched." He stopped. I felt very seen. I did skin-to-skin in the delivery room. My therapist was in the operating room with me. It wasn't a terrible Cesarean experience. So postpartum was pretty hard. When I left the hospital, I was living alone with my baby. My in-laws agreed to encourage my husband to live with them so that we could be safe from him during the postpartum time. But living alone after a C-section with no family or friends and no doula was very, very difficult. My husband had substance-use disorder, and he took my pain medication when I got home. I just remember being in a lot of pain. I also was in this haze of falling in love with my baby. It still shocks me that I did not experience postpartum depression with my first. I was depressed through my pregnancy, and I also think I was in such a survival mode during the first year of my first baby's life that I didn't have any space to process or space to grieve. I was surviving. One year after giving birth to my first, I did file for divorce to get a restraining order and safely flee with my child, but it was a very long, difficult road.Meagan: If you are someone who is experiencing domestic violence during pregnancy, postpartum or just in general, there is help. You can reach out to the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-7233.Alice: So that was my first birth experience. Fast forward to four years later, I've memorialized the day that I found out that I was pregnant with my first because it was such the lowest point of my life. I think of it as this time where I was ready for my life to end. I'm gonna cry, but instead my life doubled and it led to this beautiful little human who I get to be a mom to and really changed the trajectory of my entire life, so I call it my life day. Four years later, on my life day, I was in a loving relationship with the most gentle man. I still am in that relationship. I felt like things were a little wonky with my body. I woke up and took a pregnancy test and saw on the exact same day that the hospital told me that I was pregnant, four years later, I had a positive pregnancy test. I was in a home that I owned, a home that was safe and filled with love and a relationship that was safe and loving. It was just so different. I went and I laid in bed with my then 3-year-old and said, "We're gonna be just fine." And I knew that we were going to be. My second pregnancy was also different. It was very healing. I experienced a lot of sadness again because I think I had space to grieve the first time. It also happened because I got pregnant right around the same time. It was like this weird re-do of my first one now with a loving partner and safety and getting to be pregnant. I think about what I wanted for my body and how to stay healthy. I didn't take a single vitamin during my first pregnancy. I was just focused on, how do I stay safe today? I can't even count all the supplements I was on this time. I knew pretty soon that I wanted a home birth. I feel like I was pretty educated on VBAC. I had been listening to The VBAC Link since I was pregnant with my first. I don't know why because I hadn't had a C-section yet, but I had loved the podcast and I knew the rates of repeat Cesareans. I also work in labor and delivery units and I know that they're very risk-averse. I felt like it was the safest option to birth at home. I also felt the weight of how precious it was to have a safe home that I could birth in. It was very meaningful for me to give birth in a space that was mine and was safe. My partner, who knew nothing about home birth, I broached the subject with him early in pregnancy was like, "I want to let you know. I don't know what you think about this, but I want to have a home birth." And he was just like, "Great." I was pretty surprised that he was so on board, but he trusted me, and he trusted me the whole way through. I did not have hyperemesis the second time. I didn't have the rash problem. I didn't have the broken ribs. I did have a lot of pain from pubic symphysis. Yeah, the second half of my pregnancy was like very difficult to even walk. I broke my pelvis in my teenage years and was a little unsure of how that healed. I broke it in two places. I have had this fear of, what if there's a bunch of scar tissue around a bone and baby's head couldn't get through? So I had that fear as well going into my home birth. My midwife was very skilled and very kind. It was a different experience of prenatal care. I also really loved my hospital prenatal care. I think given that I was in a high-risk situation, I loved my hospital prenatal care. It was exactly what I needed. And in my second birth, my home birth midwife was exactly what I needed. In my second birth, I went over my due date by 11 days which was such a mind game. I was so over it. I was just this crazy person who was doing everything that I could to get this baby out of me, but also was like, "No, I wanna be holistic. I don't to be induced. I'm not gonna--," so there were two parts of myself that were battling each other. But I, finally went into labor. My mother was here as well. My family lives far away, but my mother came to support me this time. It was just my mom and my partner and my three-year-old. I labored at home. I had my music. It was just a lovely experience of laboring and of joining in this experience that so many women have had of pain and beauty and endurance and strength. I felt so connected to the world and to women and to my mom. My midwife came. I started laboring at 7:00 PM. At 2:00 PM the next day, my midwife came. I labored in the tub. I had a blow-up birthing pool. I felt like labor was pretty straightforward until the last five hours that I was fully dilated, but he just wasn't descending. The midwife checked me and said that his head was stuck on my pubic bone. He was stuck there for five hours. It was a lot of pushing, but I wasn't really pushing the right way.It felt like contractions that just weren't producing anything. It wasn't opening anything. It wasn't moving him down. It was just nothing. I started to get really discouraged. We joke a lot about how belligerent I was towards the end. Right before I gave birth, I got very bossy and I decided it wasn't go going to happen. Like, "He's not going to descend. I'm over this. Call 911. Tell them to bring drugs. I need them here now." My midwife was like, "That's not how it works." I was like "No, call the police. Tell them to bring narcotics. I need to stop feeling this." I was being ridiculous. My midwife was encouraging me saying, "He is coming down. I know you're not feeling it, but I feel his head and it's right there. I think you're gonna have a car baby if we get in the car. and I don't want that to happen." I'm not a rude person, but I guess in labor, I am. But I stuck my finger in my vagina, and I was like, "Well, I don't feel him." They were loading up to go to the hospital because I was so insistent that this was not happening. I was standing in the living room and I said, "Wait." My partner was like, "She said wait." I could feel him coming down. It was the first time I really felt his head coming through my birth canal. It was such a different feeling. In 30 minutes, I pushed him out standing in our living room. It was just beautiful and lovely, and he was on my chest. My 3-year-old was there. Baby was on my chest. I was lying on my partner's chest. Nothing else mattered in that moment. Yeah. It was a lovely, beautiful, healing experience to come full-circle. I also gave birth on the four-year anniversary of filing for divorce and getting a restraining order from my abuser. It's like all of these things lined up just to give me this healing experience of new life.Meagan: Yeah. Seriously, these milestones that you're able to overcome from the past and replace with joy and beauty and excitement and healing. Oh, I have chills through the whole episode. How about you, Sarah?Sarah: Yeah. There's just so many parts of your story that are so unique and so fitting. There's so much strength in it, and there's so much emotion in listening and feeling all of the things that obviously you were going through. And some were external, but a lot were very internal. Thank you for sharing your story. The ability to be able to share your story takes so much strength in itself. Yeah.Meagan: We could see that and could see it in your eyes. You had my eyes welling up a few times. I was just feeling all the emotion as you were sharing and all the heartache in the beginning that you were sharing. And I loved how you were like, "I was in this. I was going through this really terrible, scary experience," but you were able to stay in this haze of bonding and you two together, you two thriving and surviving in this really unfortunate circumstance, but I am so glad that you were able to have that and grow and then now have this safe, loving home, and two cute babes.Alice: Yeah, they are cute.Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. And although your story's so unique, it's also in very many of our VBAC stories. We have that traumatic experience and then it leads to that very healing experience. I think it's just one of those things. You had mentioned having that space to process and getting out of that survival mode too. I think that's really amazing to honor that and mention that because sometimes we are just in that survival mode, and we don't allow ourself or we don't have the ability to give ourselves that time to really process what is occurring and what is happening. And a lot of the time we just need to do that, and we need to allow ourselves the time to do some fear-clearing and release a lot of that anxiety and other fears that are happening and going on.Meagan: Also on the end of the story, when you were talking about five hours where baby was just kind of hanging out there and you were stuck there pushing, but not really pushing, but in this weird, funky spot in labor, we have seen this where people are pushing and they're like, "Your baby's not descending." We are actually given a diagnosis of failure to descend as a reason for Cesarean, but then simply standing up and moving-- and I'm sure you were moving and grooving along the way, but it just sometimes is one specific motion. It might have been the quickness of you standing up like, "Okay, I'm going. We're going to do this," that did it. We don't know.I love seeing too that you were saying, "I had a broken pelvis in the past. I don't really know how that healed." In a lot of ways, a lot of providers would be like, "You had a broken pelvis. You don't have a proven pelvis. I don't know. I don't think I'm comfortable with this." But then here you did it, right? But that movement and I don't know, I just feel like there's so much power within our bodies that it's just incredible, and I love seeing that. And then your partner was like, "Wait, hold on. Don't go anywhere. I think we're staying." I love that that is exactly how it unfolded and that your other baby was able to be there with you, and just so many amazing things about your story. Thank you so much for being vulnerable and just being here with us.Alice: Thank you. Thank you for having me.ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan's bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Many property management business owners out there struggle with having a bad brand, bad pricing, cheapo clients, a lack of confidence, and more. In today's episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull sit down in-person with property manager and DoorGrow client, Kelly Rafuse, to talk about her journey with property management. You'll Learn [04:53] How to Be Picky with the Clients You Bring on [10:59] Overcoming the “Hustler” Mindset [15:04] Choosing an Effective Brand [21:07] Cheapos, Normals, and Premium Buyers Tweetables  ”As you live and you grow in this business, you learn what makes money and what doesn't.” “ The more confident you are, the more some of these… difficult personality types will kind of abdicate and allow you to lead them.” “ It's better to be at the top than to be competing with the garbage at the bottom.” “ Need is scarcity, need is starving, and need is survival.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Kelly: You know, as you live and you grow in this business, you learn what makes money and what doesn't. And I learned how to manage property the hard way.  [00:00:07] Jason: But you learned it.  [00:00:08] Kelly: Yes.  [00:00:10] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives. And you're interested in growing in business and life. And you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. [00:00:37] You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. We're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason Hull, founder and CEO of DoorGrow, and Sarah Hull, the co owner and COO of DoorGrow. And now let's get into the show.  [00:01:13] So our guest today, we're hanging out with Kelly. Kelly, introduce yourself.  [00:01:17] Kelly: Hi there, my name is Kelly Rafuse with Crimson Cape Property Management in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania.  [00:01:22] Jason: And you have a really nice logo. Where'd you get that really nice logo?  [00:01:25] Kelly: It's this little mastermind I joined called DoorGrow helped me with that.  [00:01:29] Jason: And it's, I was saying, I think it's cool because it's like you are flying right there. [00:01:33] It's like, it like reminds me of you.  [00:01:37] Kelly: Well, yeah. I had this Marvel Comics stud fetish, so.  [00:01:41] Jason: Yes. Okay. You're the Marvel comic gal. All right. So really excited to be hanging out. We're actually in Pennsylvania because this is kind of the neck of the woods Sarah grew up in and managed properties nearby and you manage properties in a neighboring market and so. [00:01:59] The same market. The same market. She, yeah. Exact same market.  [00:02:02] Sarah: I left and she has the market.  [00:02:05] Kelly: While you were here, I was just managing my own portfolio.  [00:02:08] Jason: Oh, okay.  [00:02:09] Kelly: And people were coming to me to manage theirs, and that's how I got into this mess.  [00:02:15] Jason: Yeah. Well, give us a little more background on you, Kelly. [00:02:18] How'd you get into property management?  [00:02:20] Kelly: Oh, well, I started off as a real estate investor. You know, buying homes out here in Northeast PA. It's a very good place to invest in property. Cash flow is, I mean, I think cap rates were like 12 percent when I got in. So, I mean, it was huge, and honestly, I was trying to replace my income because I'd gotten as far as I could go in my former career, you know, hit a huge glass ceiling, and realized that, you know, real estate was probably my ticket to freedom. [00:02:45] Jason: What was your former career?  [00:02:47] Kelly: I was on the radio.  [00:02:48] Jason: Yeah, okay, you've got a great voice for it, so.  [00:02:51] Thank you very much.  [00:02:53] Yeah, so you were doing the radio.  [00:02:54] Kelly: Yeah, so I actually got into this market, and I liked it here. I actually, I did my two years and then moved to a bigger market. I was in Hartford, Connecticut for a while. [00:03:03] And then an opportunity to come back presented itself. And I came back because I genuinely like the area. And you know, the inexpensive real estate was an attraction. And then My husband and I got into investing in properties. We built up quite a portfolio. We had 25 units of our own at one point. [00:03:20] We're down to 14 now. We sold a few off that, you know, really weren't moneymakers for us. But, you know, as you live and you grow in this business, you learn what makes money and what doesn't. And I learned how to manage property the hard way.  [00:03:33] Jason: But you learned it.  [00:03:34] Kelly: Yes. I made all the mistakes.  [00:03:37] Jason: Yeah. And that's sometimes learning through mistakes and pain. [00:03:41] I sometimes joke that DoorGrow was built on thousands of mistakes.  [00:03:45] Kelly: You're telling me. And I will introduce My biggest pain point in just a second here. So what caused me to join DoorGrow is my husband's a real estate broker. And so people were banging on his door. "Can you manage my property? Can you manage my property?" It's like, "well, I don't do that, but my wife does."  [00:04:03] Jason: Yeah.  [00:04:04] Kelly: And I'm like, well, I can't manage their property. I don't have a real estate license. And so it was a whole year of, "come on! Just get the license. Just do it! Just do it. Come on!" So I got the license. And I took on one of his investor clients, and I joined DoorGrow, like all in the same day. [00:04:23] And what I found out when I joined DoorGrow was I never should have taken on that client.  [00:04:27] Jason: That was the price of tuition. It's one of the key lessons that defines you in business, which is you learn those lessons and not take on bad clients. Well, I mean, for us, it's been really inspiring and exciting to see your journey as an entrepreneur and see you kind of get all this ready and get things developed and start to grow. [00:04:46] And so, we were talking about it, like, what should we talk about on the podcast today with Kelly? And you had mentioned.  [00:04:53] Sarah: Yeah, I had said, I think for me, one of the biggest shifts that I've seen in Kelly again and again and again is shifts in mindset because it was just even a few weeks ago where maybe a month ago or something, was relatively recent, where you were saying like, "oh, I read this book and it changed my life I'm waking up at like 4:30 in the morning and structuring my day different" and it was just again and again. But you've had these little shifts that end up leading to these huge changes for you and how you run things and how you structure your day and like just even your, your energy levels seem to be more protected now. [00:05:32] Kelly: Yeah, I'm not getting up at 4:30 in the morning anymore. Although I just learned yesterday I might have to start again because my daughter wants to join the swim team. Oh. And they practice it. 5 a. m. sometimes, but yeah, I mean, it's, it's been a struggle because I'm not only a real estate entrepreneur. [00:05:48] I am also, you know, a wife of a whirlwind. I mean, my husband is a broker. He's into wholesaling. He's into flipping. And I go to manage him.  [00:05:58] Jason: The whirlwind broker.  [00:06:00] Kelly: Yeah, and,  [00:06:02] Jason: yeah.  [00:06:02] Kelly: No, we'll say no more about that.  [00:06:04] Sarah: There's a lot going on. [00:06:05] Lots of moving pieces.  [00:06:06] Kelly: He's a genius. He's like a Bill Gates level genius. [00:06:09] I'm just waiting for the ship to come in. Yeah, nice. It's been 30 years, but it's coming.  [00:06:13] Jason: So what do you feel like maybe was the first mindset thing that you noticed in Kelly, kind of overcoming? Or what do you feel like was your first?  [00:06:22] Sarah: I don't know if I can think of a first, but I know that there's been several that I'd like to highlight. [00:06:27] Jason: Okay.  [00:06:27] Sarah: So I think one of the things is being much more picky with what clients you take on and what properties you take on and how you kind of screen and vet people.  [00:06:41] Jason: Maybe that first client helped you learn that lesson.  [00:06:44] Sarah: Yes.  [00:06:45] Jason: Yeah. So what, what was the lesson there? Like, what did you figure out?  [00:06:48] Kelly: Oh, wow. You know, the, the first thing is I have to see if our philosophies match. [00:06:53] Jason: You and the client.  [00:06:54] Kelly: Yes. And when I got into real estate investing, I admit I'm a bit of an idealist. I know you're into personality types.  [00:07:01] Jason: Yeah.  [00:07:01] Kelly: And I test as an INFP.  [00:07:03] Jason: Okay.  [00:07:03] Kelly: So I probably have no business being in any business at all, but yet here I am. But I'm a dreamer. I'm a visionary. And so my first company was, and still is called Good People, Good Homes, LLC. [00:07:15] And I own property in that LLC. I'm not really doing business in it. It just holds property for me. But when I started it, it was supposed to be the company and it was: you buy these distressed properties in these neighborhoods and you fix them up and you put great people in them and it brings up the whole neighborhood and then everybody loves you and we hold hands and sing Kumbaya and that didn't really happen. [00:07:36] Jason: Yeah.  [00:07:36] Kelly: But I did improve a lot of properties.  [00:07:39] Jason: Okay.  [00:07:39] Kelly: Right. Yeah.  [00:07:41] Sarah: I think arguably in this market, you are outdoing anything that I've ever seen because the befores and afters are just wild. And the rent rates before and after are wild. And this area, yes, you can absolutely get a great deal, a great bargain on real estate, and that doesn't come without its challenges and its problems. [00:08:06] But one of the things that I think is just so great in this area that you do is you take these distressed properties and you make them beautiful and livable and safe. And you provide a wonderful home now on something before that was dilapidated.  [00:08:25] Kelly: And the market's full of C class properties. You know, I hear a lot of property managers say, "Why are you even bothering with those?" [00:08:31] Well, honestly, there isn't anything else. Yeah, that's what we hear. You work with what you got. And I probably wouldn't be a real estate investor if the market wasn't like this. Because that's how I got in. I didn't make a ton of money in radio. I didn't. But I made enough to get in, you know, with a C class property. [00:08:48] And now those C class properties are paying for my life, and my daughter's life, and it's beautiful. The property management company? That's just icing on the cake, but I think it might even eclipse what I've been able to do with my rentals.  [00:09:00] Jason: Oh, I'm sure.  [00:09:01] Kelly: And there's a need for it.  [00:09:02] Jason: Yeah. Big need.  [00:09:04] Kelly: Yeah. So the biggest thing I learned, back to your question about how to vet clients, does their philosophy match mine? Do they believe their C class property could be turned into a desirable place to live? And yes, you will be charging market rent for that, which is a lot more than maybe you thought you could charge. And you'll get a better class tenant that way. Or are they just happy not doing anything to the property, just letting it be what it is and getting whoever they can get into it and, you know, getting whatever money they can for it. I don't really want to work with those people.  [00:09:38] Jason: Do you find part of this though is just selling? [00:09:41] It's like convincing them to align with your vision? Because it sounds like you have a better vision than a lot of the people that might come to you.  [00:09:48] Kelly: Sometimes when I show them the spreadsheet, of, you know, what I've done for some of my other clients, including the first one that I told you about. I mean, I really turned some of his properties around. [00:09:59] And I've tried to fire him twice. Yeah.  [00:10:01] He won't go and, you know, he's also a third of my income, so I'm going to keep him on. And, but the thing is, he's kind of listening to me now. Kind of.  [00:10:11] Sarah: He's open. Well, I think. It's like a walnut shell. We've just cracked it open. Maybe some of the good ideas are seeping through. [00:10:18] Jason: I've talked about this before, but I think also part of it is, as we've seen, you come into your own in more confidence in what you're doing and the more confident you are, the more some of these A personality types or these difficult personality types will kind of abdicate and allow you to lead them. [00:10:36] And I talk about metaphorically punching people in the face sometimes. So you probably maybe punched them in the face metaphorically a couple of times since then. And so setting those healthier boundaries. Is something we naturally do when we start to believe in ourselves more. And so what other shifts do you feel like you've noticed in Kelly? [00:10:55] Or what are some of the things that DoorGrow's helped you with? Are you making changes too?  [00:10:59] Kelly: Well, like Sarah said, a lot of the mindset stuff, I mean, a big revelation came to me when I was at DoorGrow live.  [00:11:05] Jason: Yeah, what was that?  [00:11:07] Kelly: Well, first of all, getting to DoorGrow Live was a challenge because I was in the midst of my survival mode. [00:11:13] I'm a solopreneur still. I do everything myself. My husband's my broker of record, but, like, he's off doing his thing. Sure. So.  [00:11:21] Jason: You were doing everything, you're really busy, and you're like, how do I take a break to even just go to DoorGrow Live?  [00:11:26] Kelly: Yeah, and, you know, then I've got this mindset that, you know, how can I afford it? [00:11:30] But the thing is, I did have the money to go. That's another thing. I've got a poverty mindset I need to get past. And when I went to DoorGrow Live, that was really thrown in my face. Because I was talking about the challenges of being a solopreneur. And one of the pieces of advice that I was given by one of the speakers is, "What's your time worth?" [00:11:49] You know, you can't be doing all of these things when you pay somebody. Yeah, and I thought, well, what's my time worth? And then this little voice in the back of my head said, well, not a whole heck of a lot.  [00:12:00] Jason: You told everybody that. You said, "not a whole heck of a lot."  [00:12:04] Kelly: Yeah.  [00:12:04] Jason: And we're like, "oh, okay."  [00:12:06] Kelly: Yeah.  [00:12:07] Jason: Yeah. [00:12:07] Kelly: Well, I mean, that comes from, you know, my background. I grew up without a lot.  [00:12:11] Jason: Yeah. You know,  [00:12:12] Kelly: I saw my parents struggle. They're working class people. You know, I got into an industry that was on its, you know, downslide when I, I started on the radio in you know, the early nineties, you know, probably right after it started to slide down and, you know, there've been multiple layoffs and, you know, voice tracking and automation and, you know, I survived, but I think one of the reasons I survived was I was willing to work really hard for not a whole lot of compensation. [00:12:40] Jason: Sure.  [00:12:40] Kelly: You know, as people were let go and reductions in force, I was given more duties, but not more money.  [00:12:47] Jason: Sure.  [00:12:48] Kelly: And, you know, you do that long enough, you start getting the message that, oh, well, your time really isn't worth a whole heck of a lot.  [00:12:54] Jason: Yeah.  [00:12:55] Kelly: Yeah.  [00:12:56] Jason: Who decides what your time's worth?  [00:12:57] Kelly: I do.  [00:12:58] Jason: Yeah. I do. [00:12:59] Yes.  [00:12:59] Kelly: I do.  [00:13:00] Yeah!  [00:13:01] And, you know, that's... [00:13:02] you do now. Yes.  [00:13:03] Jason: How has that shifted for you then? What's your perception of your time and the value of it? of your time now?  [00:13:09] Kelly: My perception of my time is, you know, first of all, I don't need to be tied to the Henry Ford 40 hour work week or even the 50-60-70-80 hour work week that I hear people say you "should" do when you're running a business because, you know, it's impractical. [00:13:24] I have a daughter. She's a teenager. She's just started high school this year. She's a field hockey athlete and now she wants to be on the swim team and she's got needs. Mhm. Right? I've got a husband who does not have a cushy job I can fall back on while I do my entrepreneurial thing.  [00:13:40] Jason: Right. Right. [00:13:41] Kelly: He's also an entrepreneur. [00:13:43] We are living off self employment income. So it is a constant, you know, point of stress. So, you know, I need to find out my key productivity time, and that's when I work. And sometimes I get four or five hours a day, and that's it, of key productivity time. But then I find myself, you know, when I'm walking the dog, having all these great ideas. [00:14:06] You know, I do things like I listen to your podcast you know, some great audio books that have been recommended to me. I devoured The One Thing by Gary Keller, the Profit First book. And I'm starting to implement these ideas. And it's just sort of like they're ladder steps.  [00:14:23] Jason: So basically, little by little, you've been investing in yourself by leveraging reading, getting coaching, doing this stuff. [00:14:31] And that's translated into you valuing yourself a little bit more.  [00:14:35] Yeah.  [00:14:35] Awesome.  [00:14:36] Kelly: Absolutely. And I've learned to turn things over, like maintenance, you know, I hired one of the vendors that you recommended, Vendoroo and they're, you know, the tenants still text me with maintenance issues. [00:14:47] Sure. And I text back, "put it in the portal." Right. "If you can't put it in the portal, call this number and they'll teach you how to put it in the portal."  [00:14:55] Jason: But yeah, probably less willing to take phone calls than you were before.  [00:14:58] Kelly: Yeah, I've never really taken phone calls.  [00:15:00] Jason: That's good, that's good. [00:15:02] Kelly: Thanks me. Get it all in writing.  [00:15:04] Jason: So you went through our whole rapid revamp process as well, like with the branding and like getting everything kind of dialed in, pricing. You've implemented a lot of things. And so, has that impacted your confidence level as well?  [00:15:20] Kelly: Oh, absolutely. I really feel like, you know, I'm marketing a real brand now with Crimson Cape. [00:15:25] Jason: Yeah. What, what was it before that?  [00:15:26] Kelly: GPGH Management Company.  [00:15:29] Jason: Oh, the acronym.  [00:15:30] Kelly: Yep. Good People, Good Homes.  [00:15:32] Jason: Yeah.  [00:15:32] Kelly: You know, just to take off of that and, you know, everything was GPGH. My husband was GPGH Realty.  [00:15:38] Jason: It sounds like some sort of drug or something. What do you take in GPGH? [00:15:42] Kelly: Well, it's the right market. [00:15:44] Jason: Okay. Well, then there's that GLP 1 joke too that you could put in there. GLP 1. Yeah. But my husband actually reprinted his real estate company because of, you know, he was inspired by what I did.  [00:15:54] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. What's his brand?  [00:15:56] Kelly: He's Gorilla Real Estate. That's the little stuffed gorilla you saw on the way in. [00:16:00] Jason: Okay, yeah. Yeah, and they're different, which is nice. They're not like, you know, kind of mixed together.  [00:16:06] Kelly: Right, right. And I don't want, you know, people to really associate us together, even though we do share an office.  [00:16:11] Jason: Yeah.  [00:16:12] For now.  [00:16:13] So you've gone through the branding, your pricing is different than anyone else in the market. [00:16:19] Kelly: Yeah. It's higher than anyone else in the market too. And that keeps a lot of the riffraff away.  [00:16:24] Jason: Yeah. It's better to be at the top than to be competing with the garbage at the bottom. For sure. Yeah. Especially in a difficult or lower end market. Yeah. Yeah. So awesome. What other changes?  [00:16:36] Sarah: I think, well, how many, we've gone through the rapid revamp a couple of times, so she's done the mindset piece a few times, and I think every time you go through it, you kind of get, like, an extra layer out of it, like almost like the next, like we're stacking like, levels and levels and levels of different like mindset tips and tricks, and then the perception piece, which once we're done with the little pieces on the website, we can get that launched for you. [00:17:04] I think that will make a huge difference. And recently. I mean, for the whole entirety of the time that you were in our program, you had always said "there is no way I can add more units. There is no way I can do more work. There is no way I can even focus on growth." And you are now adding new doors. [00:17:24] Kelly: Yep, I added three last week. I added another two Sunday night from a current client. I didn't know she had another double block. You know how I got those doors? She called me from you know, her poor husband is at the Cleveland Clinic. So she called me from Cleveland and she's like "I got a no heat call from this one building that you're not managing And I can't deal with it. Can you please take these units?"  [00:17:47] Jason: Nice.  [00:17:48] Kelly: So I just got two more doors.  [00:17:49] Jason: Okay.  [00:17:50] Kelly: And I'm hopefully closing on another five by the end of the week.  [00:17:53] Yes! [00:17:55] Jason: So doors are just starting to flow and you're able to dedicate time now towards growth which before you're kind of  [00:18:01] Kelly: yeah  [00:18:01] Jason: Chicken with head cut off running around and dealing with stuff. [00:18:04] Kelly: It's going to get a little iffy again now that I've added these doors, you know, okay. Now I have to onboard all these tenants. And there's a couple that come with the vacant units that they want me to rent in January?  [00:18:16] Jason: Yeah.  [00:18:17] Sarah: The best time of year here.  [00:18:21] Jason: Right. Lots of activity.  [00:18:23] Sarah: Speaking of vacant units, You have none now in the portfolio that you're Managing? [00:18:28] My current portfolio, I filled them all.  [00:18:31] Yeah, and how many did you have? Because I feel like all throughout the year I was getting updates and it was like 20 something and down a little bit, down a little bit, and now you're at zero.  [00:18:41] Kelly: Yeah, I filled I think 17 units over the course of the last year. [00:18:45] Amazing.  [00:18:46] 10 of them were filled between September and now.  [00:18:50] Jason: Nice. Wow.  [00:18:50] Kelly: And I've got a few that are coming up. I've got, you know, two of my tenants are moving into senior housing. So, you know, that means I'm probably going to have to redo their apartments because they've been living there since like 1965 or whatever. [00:19:04] I'm sure they're going to need to be some updates.  [00:19:07] Jason: So in getting this business started, if you hadn't heard about DoorGrow, or say, DoorGrow didn't exist. Where would you be you think right now?  [00:19:15] Kelly: Oh my gosh.  [00:19:16] Jason: What'd be going on?  [00:19:17] Kelly: I'm not sure I'd still be doing it.  [00:19:19] Jason: You think you would have quit?  [00:19:20] Kelly: With this client that I took on from the beginning, if I didn't know any better, I would think this is what property management is. [00:19:27] Jason: And you'd be like, yeah, right, so talking with us saying you should probably fire this client was probably enough to go, "okay, this may not be everybody."  [00:19:35] Kelly: Right. [00:19:36] Jason: Okay. [00:19:36] Kelly: Right, right. And you know, and you also helped me work with this client. So he's still my client, and he could be a very good client now that his buildings are cash flowing. But that remains to be seen because I got a little pushback on a repair last night that I wasn't real happy with, but we'll see. [00:19:53] Jason: You're going to set some strong boundaries with this guy.  [00:19:56] Kelly: I might have to punch him in the face a third time.  [00:19:58] Jason: Metaphorically. Right, right. Metaphorically, we're not advocating violence. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. All right. Well anything else that we should chat about or cover? I mean, it's really been, like I said at the beginning, it's been inspiring and exciting to see you grow. [00:20:13] We're really excited to see where you take this and we've seen just it and that's why we do what we do. It's great to see clients just grow like you've come so far. Your whole energy is just different. Just how you are from when we saw you at DoorGrow live and you're like, well, what's your time worth? [00:20:29] And you're, you've spouted off, "well, not very much," you know, or whatever you've come a long way. And I'm really excited to see where you go with this because this could be a really great residual income business. I think absolutely it will overshadow what you're making off your rental properties, but then it also feed you some more real estate deals in the future. [00:20:47] For sure as you, as you work this. And so, yeah, I think it'll be interesting. And how does the, the king of Gorilla Real Estate feel about everything that you're doing?  [00:20:56] Kelly: Oh, he's incredibly supportive. Yeah. I think he misses when I used to just, you know, clean up his bookkeeping for him. We now have to hire someone to do that. [00:21:05] Jason: Mm-hmm. Yes. Those wealthy problems. Yeah.  [00:21:07] Kelly: And yeah, and that's another mindset thing I need to get over. And you cover this in the rapid revamp when you're talking about, you know, the three types of clients you got, your, your normals, which you're, you're aiming for.  [00:21:18] Jason: Yeah.  [00:21:18] Kelly: But then you've got, you know, your cheapos and your premiums. [00:21:21] Sure.  [00:21:21] Jason: Yeah.  [00:21:21] Kelly: And and, and one of the things you talked about, the cheapos is. Are you a cheapo?  [00:21:27] Jason: Oh. Yeah.  [00:21:27] Kelly: And I realize that, yeah, I kind of am a cheapo.  [00:21:30] Jason: You get what you attract. Huh. And so, yeah, we're blind, we have a blind spot towards which category we are showing up as, and so stretching yourself to not be a cheapo. [00:21:41] Kelly: I grew up with nothing. You know, I grew up with nothing, so, yeah, that's why I'm a cheapo.  [00:21:47] Sarah: Yeah. And I get it, because I too was in that mindset, especially when I lived here.  [00:21:52] This area is in that mindset. [00:21:54] Yes, the whole area is very, and when you find someone who kind of breaks through that bubble, It's odd here, right? [00:22:03] And it's different. And it's weird. And it's like, what are they doing? What is this all about? This is just weird. Like, why are you not, you know, normal like us? And when that was something that I had struggled with for a very, very long time, too, because back when I had lived here, I thought, "okay, well, I want to make more money. And like, I need to make more money. And the only way I can do that is I can either work more hours and maybe get some overtime or maybe I can find a job that's going to pay me more and or ask for a raise, or and this is my go to strategy, was let's just work two jobs, three jobs, four jobs." I was working four jobs at a time. [00:22:44] I was working seven days a week and I did that for years and years and years just because, well, this job I maxed out on and I can't get any more money out of here, but I need more money, so, oh, let me just add on another job. Yeah, so I understand that completely and it was just, it was with time that that started to just crack and shift a little bit. [00:23:02] Jason: Kind of the trap of time for dollars. As if that's the only way.  [00:23:07] Sarah: Absolutely. Absolutely.  [00:23:09] Jason: So yeah, so being exposed just to other people that are not of that mindset probably is cracks that glass ceiling you spoke of a little bit before maybe.  [00:23:19] Kelly: Right. Yeah. And what I'm noticing is that I'm attracting people, local people, that have a similar mindset and they exist. [00:23:28] You know, there's a lot of entrepreneurs in this area. Chris Jones started Pepper Jam, and he decided to keep his company here.  [00:23:34] Sarah: Oh, wow.  [00:23:34] Kelly: Yeah, I mean, there's, there's a few. Tech company, you might have heard of them. But yeah, there's, there's a few.  [00:23:39] Jason: So, you are no longer a cheapo.  [00:23:42] Kelly: No. I, well, I'm working on it. [00:23:45] I'm working on it. I catch myself.  [00:23:46] Jason: You say... [00:23:47] Kelly: I am no longer a cheapo.  [00:23:49] Jason: I am more normal.  [00:23:51] Kelly: I am more normal.  [00:23:52] Jason: Graduating towards premium.  [00:23:53] Kelly: And I'm graduating towards premium.  [00:23:55] Jason: It's good to be premium. We get to decide this, right? We get to decide this. [00:24:00] And so as you stretch yourself into more premium experience and recognizing, like, money is not the painful thing to be focused on, there's, and there's better things to be focused on that are more valuable and more important, like your time. And as you put a greater and greater premium on your time, you shift out of that currency of cash being the, you know, the God of your life controlling you and then you can start to be grateful. [00:24:26] And I think one of the key things for everybody listening is when we start to celebrate all of the things that we used to complain about related to money, I think this is how we shift out of that poverty mindset is, oh, we got to pay this bill. Thank you God that I have lights and power that I'm able to afford to do this. [00:24:44] Or thank you that I'm able to do this. And when we start to be grateful instead of projecting pain every time we see or hear money, And we start to project gratitude, then we start to attract more money. Like we start to be open to that. And as we shift into normal, yeah, we attract more normals. As we shift into premium, we attract more premium clients. [00:25:05] And they recognize you. It's like, there's a knowing between you and them, like, yeah, this is how it works. You come to us and we take care of everything and we take care of you and you get a premium service and product and they're like, "yeah, that's what I want." because premium buyers, when they see people that are cheapos. [00:25:20] They can like kind of smell it on you, right? So then they're like, "I don't want to work with this person. They're not going to take care of my property the way that I would want or do things or take care of me the way that I want." And so investing in ourselves. Sometimes for me, one of my coaches said, "go get a massage, you know, go do things to invest or take care of yourself to where you feel like..." you know, anything where we say, I think the poverty mindset is we hear this voice that says, " I don't need that nicer car. You don't need to go get a massage. Why do you need that?" Normal and premium is about shifting beyond need, right? Need is scarcity, need is starving, and need is survival, and so, and then what happens is we have to create drama or problems in our life in order to justify taking time off, so we have to get sick, or we have to justify it. [00:26:09] Doing something and so when we shift out of that then we shift into a healthier state where we can decide I am going to take a vacation or I am going to take time off. I'm going to go to DoorGrow live. You should all go to DoorGrow live, so.  [00:26:20] Sarah: I highly recommend coming up in May!  [00:26:23] Jason: It's coming up in May. Go to doorgrowlive.Com. So, all right anything else we should touch on?  [00:26:28] Sarah: One thing and I don't know if I've ever said this on the coach a call where you've been on but for me, it was actually Roya Mattis. She, at the time, was in Mary Kay like, and I was in cosmetic sales for Mary Kay, and It was very early in my Mary Kay career and I was kind of learning how to be entrepreneur ish, right? [00:26:53] Like, "Oh, I can write these things off and I can do things differently" and, "Oh, this is an expense, but it's a good expense." And it was a lot of new things for me. And one of the things that she had said is and I'll never forget because it just stuck with me and I went, "Oh, okay." Yeah, I need to stop thinking like that right now. [00:27:11] Is " come tax time, there are people who can't wait for tax time because they're waiting. They're depending on that refund and they're like, 'Oh, thank God I get this refund.' Right?" [00:27:21] A lot of rent gets caught up in it. [00:27:23] It sure does. Yeah. Funny. All of a sudden they have money. So. Once you start really making money, though, you don't get refunds anymore. [00:27:33] What ends up happening is you pay money. And not only do you pay money into it, but you now are, like, quarterly paying money. But you don't have to do that if you're, like, barely scraping by, if you're not making money. So, what she said to me is, " when you're, like, rich and you're making money You're excited to pay this money because you're making so much money that now, not only are not going to get a refund, but you don't, you don't worry about the refund, you're making money and now you're paying the taxes and you are going to hit a point where you want to be paying taxes more often than just once a year because that means you've reached a certain level and now you're making a certain amount of money and your goal at that point is then going to be, 'well, how can I increase this?'" [00:28:24] And that for me, it just stuck in my head forever. And I went, "Oh. Oh, geez. I didn't even realize that." And at that time I was, I was. Like, "well, I'm going to get a couple thousand dollars back, like on my tax refund." I haven't gotten a refund in years. And it's true though. It's just a different way of thinking about things. [00:28:40] It's like, well, you know, if you make this tiny little bit of money and then I can get, you know, a couple thousand dollars back at the end of the year, or I can make a whole lot more money. And then, yes, I have to make some quarterly tax payments. Man, I'd rather make a lot more money and I'll just give the government some of it. [00:28:54] And then what you have to do is just figure out how can we reduce that as much as possible.  [00:28:59] Jason: I would love to see taxes just be reduced dramatically. So, we'll see.  [00:29:04] Kelly: But, who knows what they're going to do.  [00:29:05] Jason: I don't get super excited about paying taxes, but I do get excited. I would rather, like, see more income on my tax return. [00:29:13] You know taxes every time so.  [00:29:14] Sarah: Would you rather make the big amount of money so that you have to pay the taxes in or would you make a really small amount of money so that you get a refund?  [00:29:22] Kelly: Yeah, just a really good accountant that can help you zig when the government zags  [00:29:26] Sarah: So that that was something that she said to me and I went oh, okay, that is a very different way of thinking about it. [00:29:33] And it just, just stuck with me.  [00:29:35] Jason: Yeah. Always looking through the lens of 'why is this positive?' it's a healthy mindset for sure. Yeah. Why are taxes positive? All right. Everybody listening is like, "they're not."  [00:29:45] Sarah: I know. Right. Cool. My brother wants a shout out. So shout out to Jason.  [00:29:50] Jason: What's up, Jason? [00:29:51] Sarah: He's like, "you never shout me out!" Here, here you are. The three of us are waving to you now. So, what's up, Jason?  [00:29:58] Jason: No, he's got the same name as me. Everybody's like, what's that all about?  [00:30:01] He's dating a Sarah.  [00:30:03] Kelly: Oh!  [00:30:04] Jason: Which is funny. And you have a stepsister, that's Sarah, so he's got two, three Sarahs in his life right now. [00:30:13] Three Sarahs, two Jasons, and a partridge in a pear tree. All right. Cool. Well, Kelly, it's been great coming to hang out in your office and to meet you in person like here in Pennsylvania. Thanks for hosting the DoorGrow show and having us hang out with you and we're excited to see where you go and how you progress in the program and all the things you're going to do as you add doors. [00:30:36] And I think the future is really bright for Crimson Property Management, Crimson Cape. Hey, I missed the Cape. It's like superhero stuff here. Yes. I am. I love it. All right. And that's it. So if you are tuning in, make sure to check us out at DoorGrow. com. And if you are wanting to grow your property management business, or you are getting burnt out on it, or you are one of the many sucky property management companies that exist, you don't have to be. [00:31:04] It could be good. It could be better. Then reach out to us. We would love to help you scale and grow your business. We help people from startup all the way to breaking the thousand door barrier. Whatever your goal is reach out to us. Check us out at DoorGrow. com. Bye everyone.  [00:31:18] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:31:45] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

Many of our property management business owner clients are focused on hiring or restructuring their teams right now. In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull discuss the most important parts of the hiring process and offer a little bit of “tough love.” You'll Learn [04:39] 1. Finding the right person for the role [11:04] 2. The importance of training your new hire [24:41] 3. Implementing accountability for your team [30:20] Review: what does the initial training period look like? Tweetables “We need to be clear on what results we're expecting.” “Any ambiguity or fuzziness, then you're going to get fuzzy outcomes.” “You cannot ever hire somebody and just say, "now my problems are solved." They're not solved yet.” “If you skip onboarding or if you don't have a very solid onboarding and training process, it's going to cause just so much friction.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Sarah: You cannot ever hire somebody and just say, "now my problems are solved." They're not solved yet.  [00:00:09] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently than you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners, and their businesses. [00:00:53] We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. We're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.  [00:01:11] Sarah: All right. [00:01:11] Let's do it. Before we do anything, we have an announcement for those of you that have not yet heard. Our foster dog Hans has been officially adopted. So we didn't do a podcast since he was adopted. So this is our first podcast that we don't have Hans kind of hanging out in the background. And I miss his little face, but he has an amazing family. [00:01:32] Jason: I miss Hans. I don't- [00:01:35] Sarah: love him so much.  [00:01:37] Jason: I don't miss him chewing my stuff in my office, but I do miss his little face as well. All right. Yes. Yeah, so he's adopted All right So the topic today and if you want to check that out, you can go to doorgrow.Com right at the top. There's dogs click on that see all our stories. Maynard got adopted. [00:01:55] Sarah: Maynard is adopted. Yeah, he now lives in California.  [00:01:59] Jason: This dog was like on death's door multiple times. Well, many times. Now he's living it up with a wealthy dude.  [00:02:06] Sarah: Who just fell in love with him.  [00:02:07] Jason: Guy in California.  [00:02:08] Sarah: Maynard just captured his heart, loved him so much and wanted to provide him an amazing life, so. [00:02:15] Jason: He's got a new name.  [00:02:16] Sarah: He's Bodhi.  [00:02:17] Jason: Bodhi.  [00:02:18] Sarah: Bodhi. So he's now driving around in a convertible in California. That's one of the pictures they put on there. Oh!  [00:02:25] Jason: All right. So  [00:02:25] Sarah: Maynard has a great life now, too.  [00:02:27] Jason: So you can check that out at doorgrow.com/dogs. All right. So our topic today that we're going to be chatting about you said that it came up a few times in You know this week with some of our clients dealing with some new team members We've got we're doing helping a lot of people with hiring right now. [00:02:45] Sarah: Oh my goodness so many. I built so many DoorGrow Hiring accounts in the last week.  [00:02:49] Jason: Yeah, so we're setting up this hiring mechanism and machine and system so that people can have some consistently good hires. But that brings us to kind of the next challenge. So what have you been hearing?  [00:03:00] Sarah: Okay, so one client asked me, he's about to hire. [00:03:05] He's going through the hiring process. So he doesn't have anybody lined up yet, but he's It's about to start this whole process. And he had asked me, "Hey, what about expectations for when they start when they come on?" And specifically this is a BDM. The second instance of this happening this week is a client who has already hired and his BDM is now about 60 days in. [00:03:31] And he sent me a message yesterday and he said, "Hey, listen, I really need to talk with you before the end of the month. I need to make a decision on my team." So I said, okay, let's. Let's figure out what's going on? And he said "yeah, I'm kind of pissed because my BDM is like 60 days in, and last month he didn't do anything at all. And then this month he started like he hasn't closed anything yet," and by he didn't do anything at all, what he means is he didn't close anything.  [00:04:00] Jason: Okay. Not that he wasn't working. No deals yet.  [00:04:01] Sarah: Yeah. Okay. Not that he wasn't working. He was working. And this month now is his 60 day mark and he hasn't closed anything, but he's, you know, making calls and he's starting to, you know, get some things kind of ready and warmed up in the pipeline. [00:04:16] He, he said, "man, should I just let him go? Like, is he just not the right person? I feel like it's 60 days, like, I should see some results at this point."  [00:04:26] Jason: Okay.  [00:04:26] Sarah: So I'd like to, I'd really like to talk about that. And this is going to be, whatever episode this is "Sarah's Tough Love episode." So here it is. [00:04:35] Jason: Got it. Okay, I mean, let's get the basic stuff out of the way, right? First, we need to know that we have the right person. So, we need to know what those expectations are. So, that's where we define that. Usually, we call them R docs, but in this ultimate job description. So, we need to be clear on what we're looking for. [00:04:51] We need to be clear on what results we're expecting. We need to be clear on, you know, what outcomes we're hoping for and they need to be clear on this, right? Like if we're bringing somebody in, they need that clarity. So if there's anyone listening and there's any ambiguity or fuzziness, then you're going to get fuzzy outcomes. [00:05:09] And those aren't good, right? And so there needs to be at least, and you need to be on the same page. Literally, the way we do that is with a page called an RDoc. And so you make sure you're on the same page. And all those young Gen Z people, notice how I used the word literally, correctly like it's an actual page. [00:05:28] Sarah: I was just thinking that.  [00:05:29] Jason: Stop saying the word literally. It drives me fucking nuts. So, all right.  [00:05:33] Sarah: Literally.  [00:05:34] Jason: I literally, like if, yeah, nobody's confused about it being figurative, then don't, you don't need to say the word.  [00:05:41] Sarah: I literally died yesterday when I read that text.  [00:05:43] Jason: No, you would be dead. [00:05:45] You would actually be dead. All right. So, Now the next piece is we need to make sure we've got a person that fits that job description, right? They actually are the right personality. Well, let's talk about the three fits real quick. They have to match all three or they're not going to be a good BDM. [00:06:01] Sarah: Or it's never going to work out. And it doesn't matter if it's a BDM, an operator, a property manager, an assistant, a maintenance coordinator. It doesn't, name the role, doesn't matter.  [00:06:10] Jason: So, first, they have to be the right personality for the job or they'll never be great at it. They'll never be motivated to do it. [00:06:18] You bring in somebody to be a BDM, for example, and they're not the right personality to go out and want to talk to people and connect with people and network and that's not fun for them, they're always going to resist it. They're going to avoid it. They're going to do a bunch of time wasting stupid activities They're going to train everything else other than what really should be done, which is to go connect with people and have conversations. So they're going to be like "well I'm trying some marketing thing and i'm trying this thing and like and-"  [00:06:47] Sarah: "I sent 5,000 emails I don't know why none of them came back." [00:06:51] Jason: "We did direct mail to, like, 7,000 owners." [00:06:56] Sarah: I've heard that and it's because this is a true example. "I sent 5,000 emails." [00:07:00] Jason: Yeah.  [00:07:01] Sarah: So essentially you did nothing. That's great. Right. Good to know.  [00:07:05] Jason: Yeah.  [00:07:05] Sarah: Thank you.  [00:07:06] Jason: Lots of emails, right? So. So,  [00:07:09] Sarah: you know how many junk emails we get in a day? What happens when you get junk email? [00:07:13] Do you open it? Do you read it? Do you respond to it? No. That's what you just did to somebody else.  [00:07:19] Jason: Yeah. It lacks depth. All right. So we can get into tactics later, but they need to match the personality for the role. Which means they would love succeeding at this. They would love doing it. They would enjoy it. [00:07:32] They get some fulfillment out of it. And so that's personality fit. They need to be the right the right culture fit, which means they need to actually believe in your business and in you and in the product. They have to believe in this. You cannot sell effectively if you lack belief. And that goes for everybody on the team. [00:07:53] Like, if your operator isn't a believer in you or the business, they're not going to want or care to make sure that it runs well for you. If your executive assistant isn't, you know, a believer in you or shares your values, they're never going to do things in a way that makes you feel safe or that you trust them. [00:08:09] Cultural fit means they do it the way that you would want it done, that they share your values. The big clue we talked about this at our last jumpstart event where we had clients and somebody had a team member. And I just asked, I said, well, do you feel better when they're around? [00:08:25] Do you feel calmer when they're around? And they were like, no, I'm like, yeah, then they got to go.  [00:08:30] Sarah: He said, oh, well, a lot of our communication we do over the phone because that's better.  [00:08:36] Jason: Because there's such a high degree of conflict.  [00:08:37] Sarah: Jason says, better than what? Awful?  [00:08:40] Jason: Yeah, and then he laughed. [00:08:41] Everybody laughed in the group and he was like, well, yeah.  [00:08:44] Sarah: Well, I can't talk to this person in person. I can't be around them. Because when we're around each other, there's too much conflict. It's just too, it gets, yeah, it gets too feisty. Well, that's not good.  [00:08:55] Jason: Yeah, that means that person's not a good fit for that person for that particular client. [00:09:00] Sarah: And let's be clear. It doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with this particular person. No, it doesn't make them a bad person It doesn't mean, you know, all the they'll never succeed No, it just means that they are better suited in a different environment That's all. It means not everybody like when you're dating, you don't want to date everybody. You want to date people that you like generally and there are certain people that you like and there are certain people that you just don't mesh well. The businesses work the same way.  [00:09:31] Jason: Yeah. They've got to match your values. Because regardless you get somebody that's amazing BDM, for example, or an amazing operator for your business, they don't share your values, you'll never trust them. Like you just can't. And then the third fit is skill fit. So they have to have the skill or the ability or the intellectual capacity to learn and develop this skill quickly. And so if they don't, then you'll invest a bunch of energy into trying to train them and they're just too stupid to get it. [00:10:01] Or they just can't figure it out or maybe you hire somebody and they've got bad habits or they can't adapt. So they need to have that skill fit. They got to be all three or they're not going to be a good fit. So let's assume if we've helped them with DoorGrow Hiring, we focus on these three fits. [00:10:18] We have a whole hiring mechanism. Make sure these generally go well.  [00:10:22] Sarah: Yeah. So I can tell you, I don't think that's any of those are the problem.  [00:10:26] Jason: This person. Yeah. So in these situations, the person is the right fit. Yeah, usually that's the problem is they're not even getting the right person. [00:10:33] Most of y'all doing hiring, you're playing Russian roulette hiring and you don't have good fits.  [00:10:38] Sarah: Or it's, oh, this person had the experience and they came from such and such a Yeah, we hear that all the time.  [00:10:43] Jason: Yeah. Well, they're so experienced, and you feel uncomfortable around them and you don't trust them. [00:10:50] Yeah. So let's assume that, you know, with our clients, we've helped them find people that match the three fits. So now we're past that hurdle, that's very typical for most people, well, now, if it's not them, then who is it?  [00:11:04] Sarah: Okay. So here's where the tough love comes is. This is always my question. [00:11:08] And I'm very, very particular about what happens when you hire someone. You cannot ever hire somebody and just say, "now my problems are solved." They're not solved yet. I know it feels like you've gotten through it and now things are better and you should just be able to rely on that person. You're not there yet. [00:11:33] You will be. But you're just not, you're getting closer. You're just not fully there yet. And this is what happens a lot of times and they go, "Oh, okay, so I know I need to train this person and then I'll probably train them for like a week or two and then they'll just be good." [00:11:48] Absolutely not. So especially with a new person and it doesn't matter. Here's the other thing that I hear all the time, especially when somebody has the experience. Oh, well, you know, they have a sales background. They know how to sell. Great. They don't know how to sell for you. They don't know how to sell what you've got. [00:12:05] They don't know how to sell your values and your mission. They don't know how to sell that yet. They don't quite know. So you can take any salesperson in the universe and plug them into your business. Do they have the skill? Yes. Do they have the experience? Of course, but they still have to be trained. So having the experience does not mean "Oh, I don't have to train them," or, "oh, I don't have to train them as much." [00:12:32] You still have to train them a lot. There is a lot of training. And I hate to break it to you, but your life when you hire gets worse. So your life is bad, you know you need to hire, then you hire somebody, your life is now worse for a short period of time. The reason being is everything that you were doing, you still have to do it, and in addition, you now have to train somebody. So nothing has changed except that you just added another responsibility for yourself for the next 30 to 90 days. And there is no way around that with hiring. So if you hire and you fail the train, it is probably not going to work out. They will not get the results. [00:13:16] They will be frustrated. You will be frustrated. And at some point, you will get back into the cycle of, "Oh, well, now I guess I have to hire again." And then you live in hell forever. And it's not a good place to be.  [00:13:31] Jason: Yeah, so unless you hire somebody that is an amazing 'who,' right? There's a book called Who Not How it's a great book. [00:13:40] Unless you hire an amazing 'who,' like you bring in somebody, they're a sales trainer and an expert closer, and they've had tons of success and they can teach other people's sales, then I think, in any role, you have to assume you need an assumption that they're going to do it wrong. You have to start with that foundational assumption that they're going to do everything wrong. [00:14:01] If I hired an operator cold, they're doing it wrong, that I need them to install my operational system. If they are coming in as a salesperson in the business, I know they've been trained poorly because most sales training out there doesn't work anymore. There's a new model and a new way of selling and all the old stuff. [00:14:20] All the salesy guys that are sales trainers and sales coaches largely out there that push. Doesn't work anymore. It's outdated. And we don't push that stuff at DoorGrow. We've had to shift how we sell and we teach clients differently, even in the last year. And so my assumption is that they're going to do it wrong, but. [00:14:40] What I do assume is if they've done it well before, they have the ability to learn it. They have the ability to be a good operator. They have the ability to be a good BDM. But there needs to, you can't assume because they have done it before, that you're just going to rely on them to do it.  [00:14:56] Sarah: It's not plug and play. [00:14:58] "I hired them now they're just going to go do it and they're going to sell a bunch of stuff for me." No.  [00:15:02] Jason: Right. You're always going to be disappointed with most everybody if you come in with this assumption and they're going to feel unsupported and untrained and frustrated.  [00:15:13] Sarah: And they will inevitably either quit or get fired.  [00:15:16] Jason: Yeah, they'll go find a better situation.  [00:15:18] Sarah: No matter what, it will not work out. So here's a good moment to talk about Vendoroo.  [00:15:25] Jason: We'll talk in just a minute. We're going to talk about the onboarding and then some of the next steps that are really important. But quick word from our sponsor. If you're tired of the constant stress and hassle of maintenance coordination, meet Vendoroo, your AI driven in house maintenance expert that handles work orders from start to finish. Triaging, troubleshooting, vendor selection, and coordination built by property managers for property managers to provide cost effective and accountable maintenance operations, where every dollar is accounted for, and every task is handled with unmatched reliability Vendoroo takes care of the details so you can focus on growth. Schedule a demo today at vendoroo.ai/doorgrow and experience maintenance done right. Okay. So check them out.  [00:16:10] Sarah: Speaking of doing things right, let's talk about what happens after you hire somebody.  [00:16:15] Jason: So the next step after you hire it, it has to be onboarding. There needs to be a good transition of bringing somebody out from the wild, this untrained wild creature, getting them to be something that is going to work inside of your business and fit you and fit what you want. [00:16:33] It's onboarding.  [00:16:34] Sarah: And if you skip onboarding or if you don't have a very solid onboarding and training process, it's going to cause just so much friction because I'm sure that you can think back to a previous job that you've had back when we all had job jobs, right? Have you ever just been hired and then kind of just, it's almost like train yourself or figure it out or, well, "I'm going to train you a little bit and then the rest is up to you. Well, what do you mean? I trained you for a whole day. Now I'm done." [00:17:06] "Oh, okay. So that's it. That's all the support I'm going to get. All right."  [00:17:10] have you ever been hired and then you don't even truly know what you're supposed to do? I don't know. I'm supposed to sell stuff.  [00:17:16] Jason: So here's the challenge. Here's the challenge with this with entrepreneurs, I've been thrown into job situations where there was terrible onboarding, terrible training, but I'm an entrepreneur personality type. [00:17:27] I then innovated, figured it out. And in some situations where at a job I then quickly was put into leadership and sort of managing others. But I had initiative. I had drive, like I had adaptability and I find entrepreneurs are incredibly adaptable and they make the mistake of assuming that everybody else is like them and they're not, they're like, "well, I would just figure it out and I would just ask enough questions. And if I didn't know something, I would just like, and so you can't assume that everybody is like you, if they were like you, they wouldn't work for you. How many of you would go work for somebody now? Like, you're unemployable. Like, let's be real. You would suck as an employee, probably, right? I'm unemployable at this point. [00:18:10] I'm not going to like sit around and let somebody just tell me what to do all the time and whatever. Right. But they're not the same as you. And if they were, then they might just, you know, start a business and leave your business. Right. So they're willing, if they're willing to work for you, you need to assume that they are not the same as you and that they need to be guided. They need support. Now that doesn't mean they can't learn or they're not adaptable. That's the skill fit Don't make the assumption that they'll just wing it and figure it all out unless they're just incredibly driven and incredibly patient And they're really a strong believer in you. [00:18:45] Some of them may do that, but you don't want to lose a good person simply because they feel like you don't care or you're not invested.  [00:18:52] Sarah: So this is There's so much time that goes into hiring and this is why I say don't waste the time that you've spent trying to find the right person and screening applications and interviewing and you put a whole bunch of time and probably effort into this and now you found the person, don't waste that opportunity. [00:19:18] So you need to onboard them properly. And what does that mean? We need to make sure that they have access to all of the systems that they're going to need. And that they know all of the systems that they're going to need. So, oh, what are the tools that I use? And then, do I know how to access it? And, do I know how to use it? [00:19:36] Right? Don't just assume that they'll figure out, Oh, well, this is how I use this phone system. Train them on it. Just show them that. So, there's got to be training for those sorts of things. If they're in sales, then, well, How do I sell? How do I reach people? What am I doing? Am I just doing the fit call, figuring that out? [00:20:00] Am I doing the full pitch? Am I closing? Am I setting them up for you and then you're going to close? What exactly am I doing? So train them on every single thing that they need to know. And I know this sounds so silly, but most people do not do this. So, what do I say? What do I do? Do I have a script? Do I just make it up? [00:20:22] Where do I find people? Am I in the office? Am I driving around? Am I, like, meeting people at events? What am I supposed to be doing all day? Because I'm brand new and I know nothing. So I'm completely reliant upon you to tell me what to do. So if they don't know, don't assume that they're just going to go and figure it out for you. [00:20:44] You have to show them and they have to shadow you. So for the first 90 days, this is all training. So when you hire any person, now some of them will pick it up a little bit quicker and some of them will take the full 90 days and either way it's all right. But just in your head, tell yourself it's going to take the full 90 days, right? [00:21:07] So in that 90 days. With any position, but especially in sales, don't expect them to come in and then just start selling. Oh, wow, they closed a bunch of deals. That was awesome. That's so cool. So there's kind of a ramp up period in every position, but certainly in sales. So shadowing is very important here. [00:21:31] They need to be all over you. All the time. So you need to meet with them every day.  [00:21:40] Jason: Or whoever is the person they're learning from. Sometimes it's not going to be you, eventually. In the beginning, it's always you, right? Which leads us to, like, availability and access is huge in the beginning. Like, if a team member doesn't have access to you, or you are unavailable because you're so busy. [00:21:58] They're going to feel stuck. They're going to feel unsupported. They're going to feel fearful in what they're doing. And so they need to have availability. This morning, I got a phone call. Like a call came in through Telegram. She called me and she's like, "Hey, I'm supposed to do a triage call right now? I have a scheduled appointment, and I'm trying to load Zoom and it's saying, it's waiting for the host. And I'm supposed to be the host." And I said, Then just call them, like pick up the phone, just call them. It's a quick call anyway, but it probably has to do with maybe you're not logged in or you click the link somewhere else and it doesn't realize you're logged in. [00:22:31] It happens to me sometimes. And she said, okay, yeah, I'll just call them. You know, if she were in that situation, this is her first triage call and she's like totally stuck and I'm like unavailable and she's freaking out, then she's going to feel, you know, people go through all sorts of emotions like anger, shame, guilt, fear, like, you know, stuff like this. And so we don't want to put our team members on this emotional rollercoaster of discomfort when everything's uncertain in the beginning. So that's important. Once we get through and the onboarding period, my general rule for onboarding is 90 days, like you said, then the first the first 30, I'm usually meeting with them maybe for an hour a day and I'm highly available.  [00:23:12] Sarah: Every day. [00:23:13] Jason: Yeah. [00:23:14] Sarah: Every day.  [00:23:15] Jason: That's usually the goal. And then after that, I might the next month, maybe it's a shorter time period every day if I'm over like consistently training them like a BDM especially. But otherwise, it might be that we start backing it off to maybe meeting weekly. And then depending on the role of whether or not I'm their supervisor directly, or if they're kind of owning a piece of the business, I then might back it off in the last month or eventually for the future to meet with them monthly to support them or whatnot. Like you kind of gradually step it down and it'll be obvious because you'll be getting on calls with them and like, Hey, what else should we talk about? What else do you need to know? What other questions you have or hey, I want to make sure you know this and you're going to start to run out of ideas. And they're going to start to not need you as much. And so then it's pretty obvious. Well, okay, then I guess we'll end this early. And that's a clue. Well, maybe we don't need to meet as often now. And they'll let you know. You know, do you think we need to keep meeting all the time like this? Like, well, it is helpful, but I don't know that we need an hour, maybe 30 minutes. Okay, cool. If we could just meet 15 minutes each day so I can get unstuck on a few things. Awesome. Right. So I meet with my assistant every day for a short amount of time. [00:24:26] But they're directly responsible to help and support me on things as an operator, like you run our weekly meeting and our daily huddles. Right? And so there's different things like there's sort of a cadence of structure, even regardless. So. I think after we get through onboarding and you've got good access, good availability, they feel supported and they're succeeding, they need to be getting results. [00:24:50] So I think the next step in my mind is there needs to be accountability. So if you're letting somebody just run and it's 60 days in and they are not succeeding or getting results, like cool, how many calls has the BDM made? "I don't know." Okay. How, like, how often have you met with them? "Well, you know, not often." If there's no part of meeting with them is to create accountability. [00:25:13] Like, Hey, what are you working on today? What do you feel like is next? What are you going to be doing? And to make sure that you're guiding them towards what they should be working on. So accountability means, you know, metrics if they're a bDM.  [00:25:26] Sarah: You need to know the metrics.  [00:25:28] Jason: How many networking events have they gone to in the last week? [00:25:31] How many phone calls and outreach have they made to potential referral partners or real estate agents? How many investors have they reached out or called? Are they on top of all of the follow up tasks and deals that are in the CRM? Do you have a CRM, right? Like there needs to be accountability. So there's a record. [00:25:50] Are they keeping notes? Are they, are the calls recorded? Can you listen to their calls to help them improve? Like if there's no transparency or accountability, there's almost no likelihood that they're going to succeed. Like it's because they're not being watched. So, basically, you're sending the signal, it doesn't matter. [00:26:08] You might get somebody that's an amazing self starter.  [00:26:11] Sarah: Go figure it out. Well, shit, I don't know. I guess I'll just make it up. But then when they make a decision and now their decision is different than your decision, now, you didn't tell them what to do. They just made something up and now you're not happy with the results. [00:26:28] Jason: Yeah, and they're lacking leadership and if they're lacking in your jobs to be the leader and they're lacking leadership, then they have no accountability and they have no, there's no transparency or visibility in what they're doing. You won't know. If what they're doing is working or not working. And so they'll just keep doing what's not working. [00:26:48] Because if they still get paid either way, that's a bad situation for most team members. Most team members will continue to get paid whether or not they're really performing at an exceptional level or a decent level. And with a BDM, their compensation should be directly connected to getting results, so they should really want it. [00:27:06] But if there's no accountability or transparency in the beginning, They're probably going to do a lot of stuff that isn't working and they're going to be frustrated and they  [00:27:15] Sarah: know why it's not working  [00:27:17] Jason: Yeah,  [00:27:18] Sarah: they'll come to you and say hey like I'm doing what you told me to do. You told me to make all these calls I mean all these calls. It's not working.  [00:27:26] Jason: And this is one of the ways in which DoorGrow can assist. [00:27:29] We can assist with this, right? Like they can show up to our Wednesday coaching call if they're a BDM focusing on growth. And the BDM can come to the call and say, Hey, I'm trying to do this and I'm getting this result. It's not the outcome I'm looking for. It's not working. Cool. Maybe you need to change this. [00:27:44] Or how are you saying it? Or what are you doing? Or could you send us a call recording? So all of these things that we teach, we know work. They can work. If it's not working, then it's obvious that it must be what they're doing. They're not doing it correct. They're doing it maybe in the wrong way or maybe they're not saying the right things or maybe their tone is off or maybe They are turning people off and they sound like a telemarketer or they're creating the sales ick or the sales resistance in people by how they're approaching people and these are easy changes These are little things that are very easy to tweak or change. [00:28:22] I mean just listening to one sales call from somebody, I can give them a lot of feedback and it's like they grow so much faster and quicker. And that's one way to add some visibility or accountability into the equation. But as a business owner, you need to know their metrics. They need to have metrics and be accountable for that, right? [00:28:40] They need to know what are the leading actions that I need to be taking that are going to get the business development results? What are the daily activities that I need to be doing in order to succeed? So that's my take  [00:28:53] Sarah: for sure. And I love listening to the call recordings because then sometimes when you're in the moment and this happens to all of us, sometimes when you're in the moment, you have a certain perception of how things went and then when you go back and you listen to it later, you'll catch something that you weren't aware of in that moment. [00:29:14] So maybe it's something that they said, maybe it's something that you said, maybe you. Didn't explain something the way that they understood it, but you'll hear things that you may have missed in the moment and Especially with salespeople, this is a training opportunity. So a lot of times people go "what am I supposed to train them on? Like they know how to use the CRM? they know how to use the phone system. They know what to do. They got to just go do it." Okay? Well Are we honing in skills? Are we improving things? Or are we just saying like, "Go do it! Go make a thousand calls this week!: Okay, well, if I make a thousand shitty calls  [00:29:53] Jason: Yeah, you're just wasting energy and you're wasting your leads or your opportunities. [00:29:58] Sarah: So there's always this fine tuning that we have to do. And very rarely are people able to do it for themselves. Sometimes they can go back and listen to a call recording and then go, Oh, you know what? I'm going to improve that. But a lot of times it's really good to have two people listening to the call recording for that reason. [00:30:20] And then the last thing that I do want to talk about is what does the 30, 60, 90 day period look like? So I always tell people in their first 30 days, this is nothing but training. This is deep training, you really do need to be meeting with them every day, not when it's convenient, not when you have time, not, "oh, well, I skipped that day because this happened." [00:30:42] Every single day, every day, they need to have the correct resources, the correct knowledge, the right support, the questions need to be answered, you need to be available to them. They need to have all of this because they're brand new. So a lot of times what happens is people hire somebody and it's like a little baby bird and then they push the baby bird out of the nest. [00:31:08] The bird can't fly yet because you didn't even teach it what its wings are, right? So we can't do that yet. So in the first 30 days, really expect nothing. Really, they just need to be training. If they close something in their first 30 days, that's awesome. Great! I mean, they should be doing the activities. [00:31:27] Jason: I expect work.  [00:31:28] Sarah: Yes,  [00:31:29] Jason: I expect to actually and work like if it's to make calls, I expect them in like a BDM should be making some outbound outreach and calls right away.  [00:31:39] Sarah: Absolutely.  [00:31:40] Jason: Otherwise, how are you going to know that  [00:31:41] Sarah: if it's going to, yeah,  [00:31:43] Jason: they shouldn't just be like, just learning. So it's like, I want to get them on the phone and get them making calls. [00:31:47] Sarah: No, but in sales, let's be really clear here. Training. This is hands on training. This is like trying to say, "Hey, I need to go learn how to drive a car. But I'm never actually going to get in the car. I'm going to meet with you on Zoom or I'm going to sit with you and you're going to tell me about how to drive a car." [00:32:03] No, honey, you gotta go get in the car. So, yes, you have to actually be doing it, doing the activities.  [00:32:09] That is training.  [00:32:10] Jason: There's no amount of manuals or videos you could read or watch that would teach you how to drive a car. You have to drive the car.  [00:32:17] Sarah: Yes. So, if they close something in their first 30 days, that's awesome, that's gravy, that's a bonus. [00:32:23] But sometimes people go, "oh man, it's been 30 days and I haven't closed anything. Like, man, they must suck." They're new. They're learning so much and when you implement a new thing, you're probably not going to be very good at it. Especially a new strategy or a new way of doing sales because the way that we teach our clients to sell is different. [00:32:43] It's different. We're not hardcore closing everybody. We're not doing that. So it's, everything is different. They don't have their bearings yet. They don't even have their footing and their foundations, right? So 30 days, if they close something, that's great. But I still, I want them to be training and I want them to be doing some sort of, you know, whatever it's going to be. [00:33:04] If you have them doing events or presentations or calls or a mixture of all of them, great.  [00:33:10] Jason: There should be progress. You'll see progress. And if that's the thing you don't want to tolerate somebody being in the business for 60 days, 90 days, and you're not seeing progress or action, and you're trying to push them. [00:33:23] If you're having to push somebody to do something. Probably they're not the right personality fit. If you feel unsafe with them doing things, and it makes you uncomfortable, how they're doing things, probably not a culture fit. They're not doing it according to your values. [00:33:36] The "how" they go about doing it is different than you. If they're just not doing the right things, then that's a training issue. Or they're just not intelligent enough to learn the skill. So that's a skill fit. Okay,  [00:33:48] Sarah: so then 60 days I do want to see some progress. They might close something. [00:33:55] They still might not it depends. I can't say yes or no Oh, they should definitely close. I can't you can't say that because everybody has their own time frame, right? And investors sometimes they work on their own time frames. You can't control that but I do want to see I want to feel like things are happening, and I want to feel like, Hey, we've got some stuff in the pipeline, we've got some stuff that I feel like might close. [00:34:20] If you say, Hey, what do you have that's about to close? Do you feel like anybody's close? And they go not really. Oh... [00:34:27] Jason: are they getting appointments? Are there relationships being built? Are there deals now kind of get in the pipeline at some of the earlier stages? Like you should start to see the sales pipeline mature and build. [00:34:37] Sarah: So then 90 days they've been doing that. Now they understand everything. They know what to do. They know how to do it. They've gotten their feet wet. They've now tested things and then also made some improvements. They're like, Oh, well, when I say it like this, it doesn't work. It doesn't resonate. [00:34:53] But if I say it like this, it's better. Oh I have to switch this and this, right? Now you're making those little tweaks, those little improvements. So 90 days, they should be able to close something at this point. And same thing with the pipeline. I need to see the pipeline moving forward. I need to see more being added in the pipeline. [00:35:11] I need to see them further along in different stages in the pipeline. Things need to start kind of really moving forward at this point. And then after the 90 days, Now, you get to push the bird out of the nest, right? Now, you're a baby bird, go push him. You should now have everything that you need to be able to soar, as long as we did our job. [00:35:34] But a lot of times, I get it, it's hard, because you're running a business, and you're an entrepreneur, and you're busy, and it's crazy. And now you want me to train somebody? Yep. Yeah. Because once they are able to do it for you, now you can relax into it. But if we skip the training, what's going to happen is you're going to go, man, they're just not getting me the results. [00:35:55] Or they might get frustrated and go, man, my boss sucks. Like they don't train me on. Anything, and it's just not, it's not a good place here. I know, I'm going to leave because I know that if I don't, then I'll eventually get fired. So regardless, they're going to leave. And then you're going to have to go, God, well now I have to go hire somebody. [00:36:11] And then you're going to hire somebody. And then you're going to be in this whole hiring cycle of hell for the rest of eternity. And that's not a fun place to be. It's not. It's really painful.  [00:36:21] Jason: Yeah, a lot of people wait until they're in pain to hire instead of hiring strategically with a plan or, you know, in advance. [00:36:29] And so once you get to the place where you need a new team member, and then you hire, and now you're going to have to, you're kind of shot in the foot, and you're going to have to like go backwards time wise, like then you're in a worse spot, like that's not the ideal place to be hiring. And then later you'll create more freedom you know, eventually, but yeah, you want to make sure that you are kind of aware of your capacity and starting to like get your hiring systems, get your new hires in place in advance before you need it. [00:37:01] And this is why it's super important to make sure you're making the right decisions in the business. So we have frameworks for how to decide what you need most in the business and frameworks for how to decide what the business needs most. So you're making healthy. financial hiring decisions because making wrong decisions that way can really hurt cash flow and can, you know, especially early in the business can really be dangerous. [00:37:22] So, well, is there anything else you'd say to maybe some of our clients or people that they've gotten a new hire. It's probably a good hire and they need to make sure they're doing their onboarding and taking care of this new hire correctly.  [00:37:36] Sarah: Yeah, get it on your calendar. Don't just say you're going to do it. [00:37:40] It has to be scheduled time where it's dedicated. And also, don't half ass it. Don't be like, oh yeah, I'm going to be on the phone with Joe while I'm like over here. They know. That's not dedicated. That does not feel good. We've all been on the receiving end of something like that. So, don't make people guess. [00:37:59] Don't make them figure it out. It's not going to work out well.  [00:38:03] Jason: Alright. That's our episode for today. So I think that this should be pretty helpful for some of our clients that are getting into new hires And hopefully it was helpful for a lot of you listening if you're struggling with hiring or building your team or systems or profit, all this relates to the people system in your business. You need people, planning, and process and that's our super system. If you're needing some help with this, reach out to DoorGrow and we can take you to a whole nother level by getting helping you get these systems installed and you'll have a business that you actually enjoy being in. So until next time to our mutual growth. [00:38:42] Bye everyone. [00:38:43] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:39:10] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

There was a recent event where the stock market plunged. Some are speculating about an impending recession. We're seeing the real estate market downturn in real time…  In today's episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull talk about the impact the current real estate market and economic downturn will have on property management businesses. You'll Learn [02:10] The current state of the economy [10:00] The real estate market and leasing challenges [21:07] Having empathy in property management [25:03] Real estate investing in a recession Tweetables “In every single recession, new millionaires are made and this is an opportunity for that to happen.” “Those that have built that ark so to speak, like Noah did, are prepared for the storm. They're ready. They're just going to float through it instead of drown.” “We always have to remember that property management is a relationship business.” “One of the most magical, impactful ingredients that you wouldn't think has an impact in getting people to move or do things or to take action is empathy.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Sarah: If you want to be in doom and gloom and "the sky's falling and I'm never going to make any money" then you're absolutely right. But if you want to look at the opportunity that is staring you in the face and say, "what can I do with this and how can I capitalize on this?" that is where millions are made.    [00:00:16] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives. And you are interested in growing in business and life. And you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. We're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGrow. [00:01:22] Now let's get into the show. All right.  [00:01:27] Sarah: That was good multitasking there.  [00:01:29] Jason: You saw that? See.  [00:01:30] Sarah: I saw that. That was one time of you multitasking. So you are capable of it.  [00:01:35] Jason: That was hard, but I had that part of the intro memorized. I was putting my phone on do not disturb as I was reading and she decided to call it out. It's hard, right guys? It's hard for us to multitask. Women have us beat in this area.  [00:01:49] Sarah: Oh, yeah. Yeah, we dominate you here.  [00:01:52] Jason: Yeah, your brains are just wired differently, but we have that singular focus advantage. We can just cut everything else out and focus on one thing at a time. [00:02:01] Sarah: Well, speaking of focusing on one thing at a time, let's get into the show.  [00:02:07] Jason: Yeah.  [00:02:07] Sarah: So we were going to talk about some doom and gloom today.  [00:02:10] Jason: Yeah. So we just saw the stock market tank, like a thousand points, right. Pretty wild. And friend of mine who runs a company, Jeremy Pound, he had mentioned, I saw his post online. [00:02:23] Shout out to Jeremy. He said, "now's the time to reach out to your real estate investor clients and say, 'Hey, look, your property didn't go down by a thousand points and never will,'" you know, something like that. So I thought that was clever. But yeah, real estate, probably a better investment right now than long term but a lot of investors are still in general freaking out. There's a recession that seems to be looming and coming or is already here depending on who you listen to. And so yeah, the sky is falling and chicken little's been shouting which is the news media and like everything bad is coming and so is this going to be how's this going to impact property management? [00:02:59] Might be a good question to start with.  [00:03:01] Sarah: Yeah, I think one of the things that we're already seeing is we have been seeing in many markets at least a decline in prices if you are trying to purchase a property right now. And we are no longer, no matter what market you're in, because some markets have still held pretty steady, no matter what market you're in, we're no longer in the days in which you list the property on a Monday, you get multiple offers and it's accepted for well over the list price the same day. [00:03:40] We're not in that situation any longer. So how does that affect property management? Well, on the real estate side, investors right now should be, if they're not, but they should be looking. Because things are on sale right now.  [00:04:00] Jason: Steals.  [00:04:01] Sarah: So as you think about what is your favorite store of all time? [00:04:06] Let's ask you, what's your favorite store ever?  [00:04:10] Jason: Amazon. Amazon. Okay, cool. I spend a lot of money there.  [00:04:12] Sarah: That's great. That's actually, you know, I wouldn't have thought of that. Because I don't, for my brain doesn't equate it to a store, but I guess it is.  [00:04:18] Jason: Okay.  [00:04:19] Sarah: I love it. I love Amazon. Okay, cool. Amazon. So if Amazon had a sale where everything was 30 percent off, would you probably buy some stuff? [00:04:29] Jason: Oh yeah, I'd buy a ton of stuff.  [00:04:31] Sarah: What if it was 55 percent off? 60. Oh. 70.  [00:04:36] Jason: No brainer. I would stock up on so much stuff.  [00:04:39] Sarah: You'd be like, "I don't even need this, but what if I do?"  [00:04:41] Jason: A million supplements. I would like.  [00:04:43] Sarah: Right.  [00:04:44] Jason: I'd be healthy set for the next year.  [00:04:46] Sarah: You'd be buying everything. So investors, this is your call. [00:04:48] Hello, real estate is on sale right now. So the savvy investors, they already know this. They're super excited right now. The savvy investors are not freaking out. The savvy investors. They know. This is where millions of dollars can be made and in fact in every single recession new millionaires are made and this is an opportunity for that to happen. [00:05:18] So people who are like the accidental investors and they've got that property they've been hanging on to and they're just waiting until the market gets hot enough and then they'll probably sell it. But in the meantime, I guess I'll hang on to it and rent it out. They're going to freak out right now. [00:05:36] They're going, "Oh my God, what if rents dip even more? What if vacancy rates are longer? So I can't fill a property or my property manager can't fill a property in a week like they used to be able to?" It was just churn them out and hurry up, get another one in there, find a warm body, put them in. They're like coming in droves. [00:05:54] That's not the situation anymore. And they will freak out. But the investors that understand the situation that we're in and the market at where it stands. Oh man, they are excited. Yeah, I'm excited right now. I'm like great tank, baby. Let's go . [00:06:12] Jason: So the big news out there like right now is Warren Buffett decided to sell off a ton of stock like half of his stake in Apple like some major things and he doesn't make very many moves, right? [00:06:24] He's like this minimalist in making Purchases or selling he's like he's the he's got the diamond hands, right? And He's now sitting on a cash stock pile 277 billion  [00:06:39] Sarah: billion with a b  [00:06:40] Jason: he's just hanging out with cash He's waiting for the bottom to hit because he knows he must know that things are going to get worse.  [00:06:47] Sarah: Because he's gonna go shopping. [00:06:50] Jason: Yeah, he's gonna he's definitely waiting to go shopping is my guess And so there's going to be some deals to be had And that may mean the real estate market could be getting worse. Could be getting a lot worse, perhaps. So, and if that's the case, then savvy investors right now should be stacking cash, right? [00:07:09] Property managers, you should be stacking cash because you should be a savvy investor. And looking for these deals. Now we've been through a recession before here at DoorGrow. Historically, what I've seen happen whenever there's a recession, the real estate market kind of dries up. Things get tough for real estate agents. [00:07:26] So a lot of real estate agents get squeezed out. So they find other jobs. And there's quite a few of them that think, "well, why don't I do property management?" And a lot of you listening, maybe during the last recession, that's what you did. You started a property management business. Maybe that's why you're now listening to this podcast and you have a property management business that you've probably, hopefully grown by since the last recession to at least 200 units or something, but maybe you haven't put enough focus on it. [00:07:53] Who knows. Those that have built that ark so to speak like Noah did are prepared for the storm. They're ready. They're just gonna float through it instead of drown. And you're going to see a lot of people scrambling to start property management businesses. That being said if you are a real estate agent, you're struggling you're like, "you know what? I don't really like the hunt and the chase of real estate buying and selling I would be really interested in property management," check out our foundations program. It's pretty great And it's super affordable. Hit us up, learn about DoorGrow Foundations. It's going to help you avoid thousands of dollars in costly mistakes and stupidity in getting started.  [00:08:33] Sarah: Since we're talking about avoiding costly mistakes, it would be a great time to talk about our sponsor.  [00:08:39] Jason: Cool. So, let's talk about Vendoroo. All right. Awesome new tech. Are you tired of the constant stress and hassle of maintenance coordination? Meet Vendoroo, your AI driven, in house maintenance expert that handles work orders from start to finish, triaging, troubleshooting, vendor selection and coordination. Built by property managers for property managers to provide cost effective and accountable maintenance operations where every dollar is accounted for and every task is handled with unmatched reliability. Vendoroo takes care of the details. So you can focus on growth schedule demo today at Vendoroo that's a vendor, V E N D O R O O like a kangaroo, get it? Dot AI. vendoroo.ai/doorgrow and experience maintenance done right. We've got some clients getting great results with that. [00:09:33] Yeah. So check that out. We're in an AI revolution right now.  [00:09:37] Sarah: Get in.  [00:09:38] Jason: We're hearing great things from our clients about this so far. I mean, it's been programmed for the last 12 years and has over half a million work orders already in it and never forgets any detail you tell it about the property and is intelligent. [00:09:53] And they put a human layer between that. So it's really cool. All right. Yeah. Back to the topic at hand.  [00:10:00] Sarah: Let's also talk about how things look right now in the property management world because you're like, "yeah, Sarah, things are on sale right now. Cool. But, man, it's just tough being a property manager right now. It's harder than it normally is." And a lot of times what we're seeing is again in certain markets right now is well rents are lower and that means property managers typically make less especially on that percentage part that you're charging so if the rent is 5, 000 versus if the rent is 1, 000, simple math will tell you, yes, you'll make less when the rents dip. [00:10:40] The other part of that is occupancy. So just like we used to be, what, two years ago, three years ago, we used to be able to list a property for sale and we would have multiple offers very quickly and it was no problem getting it sold. And the rental market has shifted a little bit as well. So we used to go, "Oh, we have a vacant property. Well, let's market it. And then we're going to have multiple applications and we'll get it filled really quick. It could be in a day. It could be in a week, but we know it's going to happen and we're not really worried." And now we're seeing that cycle take a little bit longer. So the rents are lower and the renting cycle of getting the applications and finding someone who's qualified, that is taking a little longer, so now it might take a few weeks. And if things are really bad, that might take a few months.  [00:11:38] Jason: So in some markets, vacancies are up right now, rents are lower, the rent cycle's taking longer, so leasing in general can be a bit more of a challenge. [00:11:47] And to be fair, a lot of property managers in the longterm rental management game, I've had it pretty easy, right? When you look at like multifamily stuff like this, 2020,  [00:11:58] Sarah: 2021, like none of y'all were complaining then, right? Super easy then.  [00:12:03] Jason: When you look at the multifamily industry, like getting tenants in place has always been a challenge in a lot of these multi family places And so they focus on this. [00:12:12] They're more aggressive. They put a lot more attention on this and so It may mean that you're going to need to put some greater attention on the leasing side of things to be a bit more competitive and a bit more aggressive to get these properties seen to get these properties like showed, to get these properties rented out. [00:12:33] So what are some things that they can do to kind of deal with this challenge with leasing right now?  [00:12:37] Sarah: Well, number one, I think the most important thing that you can do here is you may need to look at changing your processes depending on what they are in the leasing process, specifically regarding showings, right? [00:12:52] So if you're like, "well, we do two showings a week." This is how I used to do things. "I do two showings a week and one is at this day, this time. The other one is at this day, this time. This is when you can come and look at the property." Well, if we consistently aren't having anyone show up and then now all of a sudden we have someone who's interested and they can't make any of those showings, you may need to change your processes, right? So now we might need to look at "how can I offer more flexibility for someone who is qualified and interested? How can I offer more flexibility?" And that doesn't mean, "oh, I'm just going to be on call 24 hours a day as a leasing agent, and I'm just going to jump when somebody says, 'hey, I want to look at this property.'" [00:13:34] That is not what you're going to do. So, can we do self showings? Can we use electronic lock boxes? Can we have a team member just go to the property, unlock the door, stand and wait, and then lock it up? Because that's what I used to do, right? "Well, they have to be licensed." No one has to be licensed to unlock a door. [00:13:56] Unlock the door, stand there and wait, and lock up when they're gone. That does not require a license, right? So how can we offer more flexibility so that people who are interested are now able to go see the property when it's convenient for them? Because they might work 9 to 5. So 5:30 might be impossible because at 5:30 I'm stuck in traffic. Right. So I might need a 7 o'clock showing or a 7:30 showing, or I might need to do something on the weekend. But on the weekend, you know, I have all my kids stuff and soccer camp and all this stuff. So like finding those little spots that do work for them. "Well, great. What day and time would be good for you because I can see if I can fit you in" and, or if you have the electronic lock boxes that opens a whole host of availability. I think they shut off at a certain time. So you can't go at like midnight. Right? But, then you have a whole bunch of available slots. And they get to choose what's convenient.  [00:14:57] Jason: So, maybe even a step earlier, which I love the idea, like, you can start to be more flexible. [00:15:04] And maybe that could be helpful is just to get more eyeballs on properties maybe optimizing the listings and so there's several ways to optimize listings and a lot of property managers probably been a little bit lazy about this. Some companies put a lot of detail on this but this is a competitive advantage if you have better photos. We've had companies on like box brownie and others where they will improve or edit the photos there's so many ai tools now as well for photos and so if you can get your photos optimized and improved without lying without like, "Hey, look, the carpet and the walls are all perfect." And AI made it that way. And it looks like garbage, right? That is not going to like bode well for you. But yeah, if you are getting better photography, Improving and optimizing the listings, making sure the descriptions are really clear, adding video tours to these. One of the big things I would look at I loved seeing on any listings when we were looking to buy a rental property to rent out or anything. I love seeing the floor plans  [00:16:05] Sarah: That's so easy. [00:16:06] Jason: Just I love seeing the floor plans like then I could go "oh, this is how it all fits together. This is how it works," you know and all these photos that are taken from the corner with a wide angle lens and make everything look giant. That stuff's probably not serving you. It's not showcasing reality And so I think there's going to be a greater push with ai and fake humans and all this stuff, there's going to be a greater desire for humans to get reality. Everything's been fake news, fake everything, fake voting, fake food, right? Everybody's waking up to this So we need to stop trying to make everything look better than it is. We need to start showcasing reality. And so it might mean photos instead of wide angle from the corner, maybe more like we've done with our airbnb taking photos straight on. [00:16:52] Sarah: I think with Airbnb, that works really well. The types of photos I've put on our Airbnb, I would not.  [00:16:58] Jason: You wouldn't do on real estate?  [00:17:00] Sarah: What I would do though is I don't want to use the wide angle lens. That's going to make a little tiny closet look triple its size.  [00:17:08] Jason: Sure.  [00:17:08] Sarah: So that I think is something. [00:17:10] But still maybe from the corners. Yeah. And I would because when you're trying to either sell or rent a home, you are looking like, "Hey, imagine your family in here. Look how big the space is. Look how great it is. It's beautiful. Lots of light." But don't advertise there's lots of light if there's not lots of light, right? [00:17:27] So be realistic in it, but still do things to make it look attractive. That being said, a step even before the listing is really do some research in the market. What's available? "So, okay, this property, I can rent it out. I know what it looks like because I'm familiar with it, but this property is competing against other properties. What do the other properties in my market look like?" If all of the other properties have a swimming pool and you're the one without a swimming pool, you may have a problem, right? So if all of the other properties, they have certain amenities. You may need to look to see, "Hey, is it possible for us to also get these amenities?" [00:18:10] Right? So you might need to look at doing some updates to flooring, kitchens, bathrooms, and it may or may not be something that investors are able to invest in right now. But the important thing is, "Hey, this is in fact, an investment."  [00:18:29] Jason: Sure.  [00:18:29] Sarah: So right now, what we might need to do in order to be more attractive and in order to get those higher rents and in order to find a qualified tenant sooner, we might need to put some work into the property to make it look more attractive. [00:18:42] Now, right now that might seem really painful. However, it is an investment, which will give you an ROI on the property because even though rents are low right now, everything moves in cycles in real estate and the stock market. So we're at a low right now, but we're not going to stay there because if you recall, just two short years ago, it was booming. [00:19:08] So see how quickly things can change? So that means that in even two years from now, this can very easily be something that "Hey, rents have bounced back." And now this calls for a higher rent.  [00:19:24] Jason: So price is also going to be a factor right? And being able to get and convince your owners that "hey, we're going to need to drop the price. It's not just about cashflow in having a rental property." We've talked about our ROI calculator on previous episodes that have been helping clients close deals But being able to showcase the life the investment long term of the property, even if it's not cash flowing right now, it's still a good investment to keep can be effective and just getting the price low enough sometimes is what it takes to get at least out like that's always going to be a significant factor.  [00:20:01] Sarah: Absolutely.  [00:20:01] Jason: Related to that, our next sponsor is True Submeter. So with True Submeter, what's interesting about this is you have multi family properties and you're trying to fold the utilities into the rent and your rent looks higher on listings than other places where they're not including the utilities, then you are putting yourself at a disadvantage. [00:20:21] Here's a way to solve this. Attention, multifamily property owners and managers. Discover True Submeter, the number one water submetering company in the U. S. Say goodbye to water use abuse by your tenants and hello to billing for exact water consumption with no unit minimum. Enjoy smart, cost effective solutions designed to optimize your property's operations and save you money. Plus, get an exclusive 10 percent discount with the code DOORGROW10. That's DoorGrow one zero. Visit truesubmeter.Com today for intelligent utility solutions and substantial savings. That's truesubmeter.com [00:20:57] Another way, maybe to get the rent down, at least on the surface and the utility separate. All right. So, I think another factor in solving the leasing challenge... I've been studying sales a lot lately and one of the most magical, impactful ingredients that you wouldn't think has an impact in getting people to move or do things or to take action is empathy. [00:21:25] And so there are a lot of tenants that they will pick you, or pick getting a property from your business because you showed care, you showed empathy. You weren't an asshole. You weren't rude to them. You didn't make them feel unimportant or like a number and so just showing a little bit of care and showing a little bit of empathy is often the determining factor why somebody picks something over anything else. "Well, I got along better with them," or "they were nicer to me," or "they seemed like they actually cared and I could imagine them as a landlord" or "they answered their phone."  [00:21:58] Sarah: "They answered the phone when I called them, that was helpful." [00:22:01] Jason: And so adding in empathy or making sure that the people that are having, like working on the leasing and you know, showing the property and communicating with the tenants are team members that are feelers and are empathetic and show care would probably be a little bit more effective in getting placement would be my guess. [00:22:22] Sarah: One of our clients, I think he's outside of the Chicago area, Ed Kirch. He was saying in his area, there's like two, 300. New apartment buildings like being built and they're like large multifamily like apartment complex buildings. And then of course, they're not going to work with like a small mom and pop. [00:22:40] They're like, they're corporate owned. It's a big corporation that manages it.  [00:22:45] Jason: Yeah, they'll be brand new.  [00:22:47] Sarah: They're nice. They're pretty. And he said, "and sometimes the rents are either the same or even less than the units that we're managing." And he's like, "man, it's really hard to compete with that." And I said, "well, is it though?" [00:23:04] Because yes, there are always going to be the people who just want the bargain. They're like, "well, if this thing is $100 and this thing is $110, I'm going to go with this cheaper thing. Even if the $110 thing gets me better service, I don't care. I'm just all about the money." So if you're attracting those cheapo tenants, good luck managing those. [00:23:27] Have fun. Have fun with that. But if you're looking to attract great tenants, price is one factor, but it's not the only factor. So again, it's the relationship. And we always have to remember that property management is a relationship business because we have a relationship with the client and we have a relationship with the tenant. [00:23:51] So if one or both of those fails, it's going to be really hard for us then. So just by building that relationship and you do not need to be friends with them. You don't need to take them out for pizza and beer but just by being available to communicate with. Now again, don't go too far with this. [00:24:13] This does not mean you're at someone's beck and call 24 hours a day. "Oh, i'm going to be glued to my phone and as soon as somebody calls i'm going to answer right away." No, but it does mean that you are available. You are responsive. It's not a hundred percent of the time. Sometimes you might need to call someone back, but it's can they get in touch with you? And do they feel like 'I'm talking to a person who actually cares about me and my situation, or do I feel like I'm talking...' we've all had these conversations where you can just tell they're like, "hurry up. Come on, just sign the stupid application so I can be done with you and move on to the next thing that I'm doing. I don't really care at all, but I just want to make the money. So like, would you hurry it up here, sweetheart?" Right? So there's a big difference on how you're communicating with people as well. [00:25:03] Jason: Got it. So is there anything that you think will be shifting related to recession related to the owners? Like maybe money gets tighter for them. Inflation is going up. They're having a more difficult time paying for some of the repairs on the properties. Maybe it would make sense for some of the property managers now to be communicating with the owners, like, "Hey, set aside cash. Things are getting more expensive. Make sure you have the funds in order to take care of things related to this rental property, to weather this, you know. What do you think?  [00:25:31] Sarah: Yeah. I think that's fair for sure. I also think that, I mean, for me, that's always something that I do because I've been in situations where we needed a cash call and we had no cash available, so now we're really in hot water. So I do that anyway, but I think right now, especially just having those conversations like, "Hey, and just so you know, like this too shall pass. So you might not be in the best situation right now. Maybe cash flow is not happening. Maybe we're cash flow negative. But this too shall pass, right?" [00:26:06] So it, again, it comes in waves. It comes in cycles. And I think that's even more important at this point to discuss why investing on cash flow alone is just not a great strategy because if you buy a cash flowing property right now that can change in a year or two years or five years, right? [00:26:31] And vice versa. So right now you might buy it and it's not going to cash flow at all, but in two years or five years or eight years, then all of a sudden, "wow, we have a lot of cash flow happening." So everything comes in cycles, but it's important to understand cashflow is just one piece of the pie. It's not the entire pie. [00:26:48] Jason: Right. Like even great stocks will lose money in the short term.  [00:26:52] Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. And real estate is a long term game. It's not, "I'm going to buy it today and sell it tomorrow and bank a million dollars." [00:27:00] Jason: Yeah.  [00:27:01] Sarah: Can you do that in certain situations? Absolutely. But is that going to be the normal experience that people have? No.  [00:27:09] Jason: Okay.  [00:27:10] Sarah: So I think yes, talking with your owners about the other pieces of the pie or pieces of the equation. "Well, let's look at the tax benefits that you get," right? Because a lot of times people don't even understand really what it means to be able to take your losses, losses on paper, from real estate to apply them to your active W 2 income. [00:27:38] So you can pay less in taxes just by owning a real estate, a piece of real estate. That's amazing, right? You're getting the depreciation. You're getting appreciation because even if it's not appreciating currently, it will over time appreciate. Every property over time appreciates. [00:27:55] It's just a general rule of thumb. So it might take a couple years to get the appreciation, but you will get it. And now you're building up equity in an asset that you can tap into later. And if your tenants are paying some or all of your mortgage for you, that's amazing. Where else can you get something where you're going to take out a loan on something, but somebody else is going to pay that loan for you? [00:28:21] Even if it's not all of it. Even if your mortgage is 2, 400 a month and you're like, well, the 1022, but then I have some other expenses on top of it. That's great. They're still paying a large chunk of your mortgage for you. And again, things change. So right now that might be your situation and you might not cashflow and that can change very quickly in the future. [00:28:43] Because again, back in 2020, 2021, people were cashflow and really great, especially if they had bought. If you buy in a dip and then things spike, you're sitting pretty.  [00:28:55] Jason: So maybe to sum it up with your existing owners, now is the time to help them build their ark right before the storm hits. With the intention for yourself to protect your portfolio, to protect your rent roll and to make sure that you keep that up and as healthy as possible. And You know, and look into, you know, there may be investors you have in your portfolio clients that you have that they're sitting on a bunch of cash. They're waiting for the deals to happen. And then you have investors that they're like kind of struggling. They're already like kind of the straw that breaks the camel's back might like float down and land on their back like any moment now. And so there may be opportunities to keep the properties in your portfolio, but move them over. [00:29:39] I've been hanging out a bit with the the founder of a blanket, which is a cool platform. Maybe we'll have them on the podcast here shortly, but there's different methods to keep your portfolio, even if the owners are changing. So you keep the properties. And so that's some things to be strategically thinking about as well. [00:29:58] So, well, I think we've covered several things. Is there anything else to prepare people listening for the doom and gloom, get them maybe focused on the positive.  [00:30:08] Sarah: Just in the height of the market, one of the strategies I used was tapping into my current investors. Is, "are you looking to pick up more properties?" Can I partner, you know, two or three investors together so that they're able to get more properties? And anyone who's looking to get out, can I shift that to someone else in my portfolio? And to get referrals. Like, "Hey, this is going well for you. Do you know anybody else that might be interested in doing this or might want to purchase a investment property or have already an investment property?" [00:30:42] So, and that, in the height of the market, that worked really well for me. So right now they would work even better. It would work even better. So even if you're like, "well, I only have like 20 clients and that's it." Plenty. That is plenty. You have an untapped gold mine. So if you want to be in doom and gloom and the sky's falling and "I'm never going to make any money and rent rolls are down and vacancies are longer and my investors aren't interested and people are losing money and I'm going to make less and oh, this sucks..." [00:31:18] Then you're absolutely right. That is the situation that you're going to create for yourself. But if you want to look at the opportunity that is staring you in the face and say, "what can I do with this and how can I capitalize on this?" that is where millions are made. So you can choose what you do with this weird time that we're in right now. [00:31:38] I know what I'm going to do.  [00:31:40] Jason: You know, during the Great Depression, some of the greatest companies were made. It was the companies that decided to double down on their marketing efforts doubled down on their growth experts and not put their head in the sand and freak out that the world and the sky is falling and so choose your frame I think sums up what Sarah's saying. [00:31:59] I think it's great mindset. Choose your frame. Either you're going to believe in the opportunity and see all the positives. Why is this positive? Figure that out or you're going to view this as a threat, be scared, kind of tighten up, And you're going to watch some people make a lot of money and pass you by and stack a lot of doors. [00:32:19] There's going to be a lot of opportunity for growing a property management business. I think a lot. So, and if you want to capitalize on that, reach out to us at DoorGrow. And I think that's that's it for today. So until next time to our mutual growth, everyone. And if you are interested in connecting with us, you can reach us at DoorGrow. com or check out our free online facebook group community at DoorGrow club. com. And we'll give you some free gifts for joining. And hopefully you'll get on a call and chat with us and we can figure out if we can help you grow and scale your business significantly. So until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. 

When hiring a new team member in your property management business, one common mistake can cause you to lose out on potentially the best candidates. In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull discuss why having experience in property management is not a necessary qualification for the people you hire. You'll Learn [01:11] The Myth of Needing Experience [04:19] More Important Than Experience: Culture Fit [13:59] You Need a Better Hiring System [19:17] What to do if You Struggle with Hiring Tweetables “If you don't even know what your culture is, how are you going to figure out if they match that?” “If they're not the right culture fit for sure you're overpaying or they're underperforming, either way, you're overpaying.” “Even if you hire based off of experience, you still have to train that person. That does not forego the training.” “If people are only loyal to a dollar, then yeah, you're at risk of losing those people pretty easily.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: If they're not the right culture fit for sure you're overpaying or they're underperforming or either way you're overpaying.  [00:00:06] Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. [00:00:45] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. We're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow, and Sarah Hull, co owner and COO of DoorGrow. [00:01:06] Now let's get Into the show.  [00:01:08] All right. What are we talking about today, Sarah?  [00:01:11] Sarah: I wanted to talk about this thing that keeps coming up and I've seen it two times in the last week is hiring on experience.  [00:01:21] Jason: Oh. [00:01:22] Sarah: Everyone goes, "Oh yeah, I would love somebody who's experienced and they already know the industry and they already know my systems and they know how to do things. And that would be fantastic." [00:01:32] Jason: People listening are going to go, "well, yeah, of course you want people with experience. It would be dumb to have people with zero experience, right?"  [00:01:38] Sarah: Wrong!  [00:01:39] Jason: Okay. Okay. So let's explain this. What are you talking about? [00:01:43] Sarah: All right, so the first thing that I'm going to say, as soon as I say it, it'll click right? If we are lucky to hire someone who's already familiar with the industry, who's working in the industry. Maybe they understand some of your tools, your software, perhaps some of your processes. You're narrowing your candidate pool to such a tiny little minutiae of a candidate pool. How many people do you think there are that have experience in property management that are now in the job market?. Right? Like, "Oh, I'm only going to hire somebody if they have experience in property management, or I'm only going to hire somebody if they understand how to use Appfolio." All right. So we went from here to here, tiny little segment of the market. [00:02:33] The other thing I'll say about this is if you find someone who has experience in the property management industry, and perhaps even in your software and your processes. Why is it that they're looking for a job? If they were so great, would someone not have snatched them up already?  [00:02:49] Jason: What if they get them to come from another company? [00:02:52] Like they convinced them? [00:02:53] Sarah: Let's talk about that. I'm glad you brought that up. I'm so glad. It was like this morning, we were having a conversation and I had mentioned this to one of our clients who's currently trying to hire people based off of experience. So here's the other problem, and we've seen this a couple of times, businesses stealing other businesses' team members and employees. There's one case that I'm thinking of in particular that kind of getting a little nasty. The two competitors are trying to take what they can, clients, team members, whatever they can, market share. They're just trying to take anything that they can from the other one. And one of them snatched the operator, which is really. [00:03:33] Not a good person to lose in your business.  [00:03:36] Jason: Yeah. No.  [00:03:36] Sarah: Why was that able to happen though? She had experience, right? So the new company is like, "Oh, this is perfect. She understands property management. She's got experience. She knows how to do this." [00:03:46] Jason: I mean, most entrepreneurs would think it's just about money because entrepreneurs always look through the lens of money. So they'll think, "well, she probably just got a better offer."  [00:03:54] Sarah: And in this case, I bet she did.  [00:03:56] Jason: Okay.  [00:03:56] Sarah: And the problem that we're overlooking here is we're skipping the most important part, which is looking to see if they're a culture fit. [00:04:06] And then the second most important part is looking to see, are they the right personality fit for the role. And then and only then do we want to look at their skill set and experience and do they have the intelligence level to be able to learn that particular task.  [00:04:18] Jason: Right? This is one of our frameworks, the three fits, culture fit, skill fit, personality fit, and culture fit, most important. [00:04:26] So, yeah, I agree. If people are not the right culture fit, then by default, you're overpaying for your team members, period. Because either they're underperforming because they don't really believe in your business or buy in. So their secret goal really is just to get paid as much as possible and probably do as little work as possible would be their ideal, right? [00:04:48] And so that's if they're not a culture fit. If they're a culture fit, they buy into the vision, they believe in you, they're excited to work for you. They want to have an impact. They have a motive besides just getting paid. And so, yeah, they're not a culture fit, it's guaranteed you're overpaying for that team member. [00:05:03] Because either they're crappy or you're having to like compensate them a bunch of money in order to keep them on board at your business because they really don't enjoy being there. So then you end up overpaying in order to keep them. And if people are only loyal to a dollar, then yeah, you're at risk of losing those people pretty easily. [00:05:22] Sarah: Absolutely. And that is why this particular operator was able to be swayed. So if you've got people who are a culture fit, if you've got people who really believe in the company, in you as the business owner, in the vision and the mission, where you are wanting to go and what you are wanting to build, if people are truly bought in and on board with that, that makes all the difference in everything that they do. [00:05:52] So can you hire somebody with experience who understands how to use Buildium or Propertyware or your phone system, whatever it is, and your ticket system? Yeah. And they can come in and they can do the job and it would be a night and day difference If you had somebody who truly believed in your company and you had to just train them to do those things and then they were able to do that, they're going to outperform the person who only has the experience every day of the week. [00:06:22] Jason: Okay. So can you share an example? Because you, you mentioned some clients were having issues with this. So like, let's tie this in with maybe a story.  [00:06:31] Sarah: Yeah. So it was just last week I was talking with Andrew and he had recently hired a couple of team members. I think he hired a BDM and an admin and there was maybe someone for maintenance. [00:06:43] I don't remember who the third one was. So he had recently hired these people. Already he's looking to replace them because either they're not working out or they're moving on. So his BDM, she is a real estate agent as well. And she's like, "Oh, well, I'm just actually going to go focus on real estate. I don't think I'm going to do all of this." [00:07:02] And it's been under maybe two months, maybe three months. So not a very long time. And he had mentioned to me, "yeah, so I've got this one person in mind and their experience." And as soon as he said experience, I went, "uh oh, okay. He's hiring the wrong way. He's hiring completely the wrong way." [00:07:20] So I had asked him, I said, "all right, so just out of curiosity, when you're talking with people, when you're looking at resumes and your screening candidates, what are the things that you're looking at? Like, what do you look at first?" And he's like, "well, I look to see, do they have experience in the industry? [00:07:35] And specifically, do they already know how to use my tools?"  [00:07:37] Jason: Yeah. So that's first. Yeah. That's a big red flag. And a lot of people listening might not get that, but that's a red flag.  [00:07:43] Sarah: Huge.  [00:07:44] Jason: Okay.  [00:07:44] Sarah: So aside from the fact that, like I said, your Canada pool is so tiny. I mean, if there is a person I would love to meet you, who, when you were in, you know, kindergarten and elementary who said, "Oh! When I grew up, I want to be a property manager. When I grew up, I want to be a leasing agent for a property management company. I would love to do that. That's my dream job."  [00:08:06] Jason: Right?  [00:08:07] Sarah: Who? That doesn't happen. Right? So people kind of work their way into property management, but it's not the dream that you typically have when you're a child trying to choose your career path. [00:08:20] Jason: Yeah. And that's because the industry as a whole has an awareness problem. There's not a lot of people aware of property management and there's plenty of roles in property management that different personality types would enjoy doing or would thrive in. But people are not thinking of the industry. [00:08:36] And so, yeah, looking for people with experience, I think would be really limiting,  [00:08:40] Sarah: yes, very challenging. So you need to find somebody who has experience in the industry that already will be hard. And then, even if they have experience in the industry, then you're going to say, "Oh, and they need to have experience with my specific tools and software that I use." [00:08:57] That becomes harder.  [00:08:58] Jason: Right. [00:08:59] Sarah: So I had said to him, I said, "well, all right, I have experience as a leasing agent. Would you hire me?" Because I might know how to do leasing. I do. I do know how to do leasing, right? But I know how to do leasing my way because when I was running my company, I knew how I did leasing. [00:09:17] But that doesn't mean I know how to do leasing your way. So even if you hire based off of experience, you still have to train that person. That does not forego the training. And a lot of times I think this is what happens is people go, "Oh, I would love to make my life easier and hire somebody, and then maybe I don't have to spend a whole lot of time training them on a tool or a system or how we do things because they already know how to do it." Even if they know the tool, they still don't know your processes. They don't know your way of doing things. So you will still have to train them. Now, it is possible that the training is easier if you don't have to explain how to use the tool, if they already know how to do it. [00:10:04] use it and they're familiar with it. Yes, that part of training becomes easier. It does not mean though that training will not still be a one to three month process, experience or not.  [00:10:17] Jason: Right. So, yeah, so you're saying a lot of people will try and hire somebody based on experience because they're trying to avoid having to take the time to train somebody. [00:10:27] Sarah: You can hire me. I can come into your business. And I can screw it up just as well as somebody who doesn't know what they're doing can. Why? Because even if I know how to use that tool, I know how to do it the way that I did it. I don't know how to do it the way that you do it yet. [00:10:45] I don't know your processes. I only know how I did leasing, and how I did leasing might be very different than how you do leasing. I know how I did sales, but that might be very different from how you do sales. I know how I onboarded clients, but that might be very different. I might do your leasing and you would go, "Sarah, what the hell? Why did this happen?" [00:11:09] "Well, I don't know. That's just how I used to do it." So if you hire someone who has the experience and has the knowledge, you still have to train them.  [00:11:18] Jason: Yeah.  [00:11:18] Sarah: And training is the most important thing that you can do when hiring. If you hire anybody and you completely forget or just choose not to train them. [00:11:30] It is going to be a train wreck.  [00:11:32] Jason: I think a lot of times as entrepreneurs we're in the mode of like doing things quickly and we're impatient. And so we get lazy sometimes when it comes to onboarding team members. We're like, "yeah, just, here you go. We throw them to the wolves." [00:11:45] Sarah: Baptism by fire. Yeah, figure it out. [00:11:47] Jason: Yeah. And lazy onboarding is not, a great strategy, right? It's going to take work regardless of the person that you bring on. And there's advantages when they don't have the skill or the experience in that you can make sure that they're doing it the way that you value and the way that you like. [00:12:05] So there can be a benefit.  [00:12:07] I think for sure if they're not the right culture fit for sure you're overpaying or they're underperforming or either way you're overpaying. If they're not the right personality fit for that particular role you'll just constantly be frustrated and training them and trying to onboard them will just be a demoralizing experience for you because it's impossible. [00:12:26] Like you'll be trying so hard to get them up to speed. And I think this is where people have experienced this and they're like, "well, I just need to go find someone with experience." But the real problem is they're not the right personality to do the job well. If somebody is the right personality, they would naturally be good at it. [00:12:41] They would be inclined towards doing it. You wouldn't have to motivate them or inspire them to do it. They would want to because they love doing it. It's aligned with who they are. And otherwise there's always going to be some serious friction. Culture and personality are off, there's going to be lots of friction. [00:12:57] And then even related to skill fit, if they're not intelligent enough to do the job, because some jobs require a little bit more Intelligence, right? You know, like the best team members are usually the best at problem solving. That's an intelligence challenge. You can give them all the skill, like here's the processes, et cetera. [00:13:15] But if they can't problem solve because they're an idiot, like then it becomes a real problem because you have to then do all the thinking. You need intelligent people. And so that's part of the skill fit. So you need all three. What's interesting about this. And we've talked about the three fits before on the podcast is you can't create culture, personality, or skill and intelligence. [00:13:37] Like you can't really create those. You have to go find it. You have to find somebody that has all three and just finding somebody that has one of the three is not going to be a fit. They have to be all three, or they can't be in your business. Or they're just going to be screwing things up and there's going to be so much friction so much waste. You're going to be spending way too much money. You're going to be spending way too much time trying to onboard them and it's going to be a mess. [00:13:59] Sarah: I agree.  [00:13:59] Jason: Cool So, in seeing these clients and people dealing with hiring, how do we solve that? How do we solve  [00:14:05] Sarah: this?  [00:14:05] You have to take the hiring process and flip it backwards. So the first thing you have to do is you have to determine if they're a culture fit for your business. But in order for that to happen, you have to know what your culture is and it has to be defined, which is why, and this is where people fight me, is when they want to implement DoorGrow hiring, they're like, "I desperately need to hire somebody. I need somebody like, please help me with hiring." Right.  [00:14:29] "Send me your cultural documents." [00:14:32] " Oh, I don't have those." [00:14:33] Sarah: "Then I can't help you find a good hire. I can't do it because it's Russian roulette." So if you don't have your culture defined, meaning I need your company core values. I need a decision making guide. [00:14:47] I need a client centric mission statement. I need your personal why, and I need your business why. Without those things, I cannot help you find someone who's going to be great because I will never know, nor will you, are they a good culture fit? If you don't even know what your culture is, how are you going to figure out if they match that? [00:15:06] Jason: So what you're saying is people need a better system. They need a hiring system. And most don't really have a good system. I guess everybody has a hiring system, it's just usually a pretty crappy one. Building intentionally a really intelligently designed hiring system, which is what we do with DoorGrow hiring is a game changer for a business because hiring is one of the biggest challenges I've seen even in multimillion dollar companies with friends. And this is something we've gotten really well dialed in a DoorGrow, but this is a constant challenge for most businesses. And until they figure it out... I was talking with one of our clients yesterday ,and he added like 114 doors in like the last month or so. And so he's just like, his business is growing crazily. [00:15:49] And he's this amazing client because he does everything we tell him to do. He's got an operator. Now they're using DoorGrow OS, like they're crushing it. And I was talking with him and his big challenge right now is maintenance technicians. He had four, he lost two. So he's now trying to hire and In having a conversation with him, I had to shift his mindset that he's no longer right now, a property management company. [00:16:14] That's the business he thinks he's in. And because he thinks he's a property management company, he doesn't want to focus as much on the hiring piece. That's not the business that he's in, but I had to help him see right now, the business that he's in, is in order to scale, this is his biggest constraint is he's going to consistently need to be bringing in more maintenance techs into his business. [00:16:36] And so I said to him, I said, "your business for right now, until you get this solved, your business is not a property management company. Your business is a maintenance technician talent acquisition company. That's the business you're in." And until he accepts that he can't solve this problem. And so most businesses, this is a big constraint. [00:16:55] And for him right now, it's the constraint. And once he gets this solved, once he gets this dialed in. So that he becomes good at hiring and onboarding and getting up to speed with maintenance technicians. And he was planning on just trying to replace the two. In coaching, and we were talking about, you need to bring on probably four. [00:17:13] You need at least four in order to find one, maybe two that are going to be good and give them a working interview where you have them do some work to see if they can perform. And this means he needs an engine where he's consistently every month bringing in a good amount of maintenance technicians and has a system for doing this. [00:17:31] And so. Businesses need if you're wanting to scale and grow quickly, you have to have systems in place. And one of the key ones is a really solid hiring system that allows you to get culture, personality, and skill. And that's what we've developed with DoorGrow hiring and DoorGrow ATS, our applicant tracking system. [00:17:49] And we talked about optimizing the ATS just for those particular candidates because they don't want to go through a more lengthy application process like we do with some candidates, you know, these maintenance techs and then vetting them through our AI assessments and stuff like this afterwards to assess them for problem solving because that's his biggest challenge. [00:18:06] He says, "my best maintenance techs are the problem solvers." I'm like, "that's an intelligence problem." So we have to figure out a way without doing illegal things, you know, or that you're not supposed to do you have to figure out a way to assess or figure out that they're intelligent. [00:18:21] And one way would be a working interview. Another way would be, you know, the AI assessment tool that can assess cognitive ability, you know, stuff like this. And that would come after he does a culture interview with them first. He was looking for skill and that's the challenge. [00:18:35] So it was good. Super common. Everybody always goes, Oh, I need skill. I need experience.  [00:18:41] Yes, and you do want people that have some experience would be great, but having people that have the intelligence level to absorb information quickly and to learn and the problem solve is way better than having somebody that has a ton of experience, but is terrible at adapting and is dumb. [00:18:59] Any day of the week. And so they will get up to speed and supersede somebody with a decade of experience if they're slow and not able to learn anytime. So, all right. This is a good topic. Anything else we should say about this?  [00:19:14] Sarah: That's what I got.  [00:19:14] Jason: All right, cool. Hopefully this was helpful for those of you listening. [00:19:17] If you're struggling with hiring. A lot of you have made these mistakes, right? You've hired, you've had people churn out. You're like, "it's hard to find good people." These are the excuses we hear from people that have a crappy hiring system. "There's no good people out there. It's tough in my market. We can't find good people. Millennials don't want to work," you know, but whatever, right? "I just pay people, why won't they just do what I f*cking tell them to do?" You know, whatever it might be. So, that's just a sign that you have a bad hiring system or that you just have terrible culture or you have bad onboarding. [00:19:50] Sarah: Or no culture.  [00:19:51] Jason: No culture to find. No culture. Yeah. And so, we need to get these things cleaned up in your business or your business is constantly going to be a prison for you. It's going to be really hard until you get a really good team and you have really good culture in your business defined, business is hard. [00:20:07] And this is where I see a lot of people get stuck between two to 400 units where they have an entire team and they're the most frustrated and usually the least profitable per unit they've ever been because it's the team and they can't see it. They're like, "I have a good team." You have a team that are willing to take your money, but are they a great team? [00:20:25] Super easy way to know... if you have an entire team and you've got two to 400 units or more, and you have been unable to scale it past 600 doors for the last three to five years, you've been kind of stuck there and you are still wearing hats that you do not want to be wearing. [00:20:43] And you're sometimes asking, "why won't my team think for themselves?" You're the problem. This is the problem. You are showing up as the wrong person in the business and you have bad culture and a bad hiring system. And if you want to get that solved, reach out to us at DoorGrow. This is very simple to solve. [00:21:00] It's not too difficult. And we can probably get most of that mess cleaned up in like a single quarter, like 90 days. So reach out to us. We'd love to help you out. You can check us out at DoorGrow.com. And if you're wanting more, if you stumble across this, maybe on YouTube or somewhere else, make sure to like, and subscribe and join our free Facebook community DoorGrowclub.Com. You can get to it by going to DoorGrowclub.Com. And until next time to our mutual growth by everyone. [00:21:26] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:21:52] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

Today I'm speaking to Sarah Sproule (she/them), a sex educator, an occupational therapist, as well as a mother of three teens. Sarah uses their skills to ensure that every parent and caring adult knows how to build a deeper connection with their growing kids, and believes that no child should ever feel alone and unable to reach out for help with their body, their boundaries, or their needs. Or their knowledge about sexuality.In this episode, we are talking about ‘sensitive things' with our kids, plus reclaiming the ‘C word'. We dive into the following topics;* The ‘invisible influence of normal'* Showing kids we're a trusted person to talk to about sensitive things* Why we don't want to wait until sex ed classes to start talking about sex* Teaching kids about body boundaries* Answering your Qs about: * How to explain to kids why you do some things in private?* 4 year olds asking BIG questions you're not sure they're ready for* 3 year olds who are resistant to challenging gender stereotypes* How to support your child when someone is asking invasive questions* Plus Sarah shares the unknown history of the C word!Find out more about Sarah's work here.Follow her work on Instagram here.Follow Laura on Instagram here.Subscribe to my newsletter here.Enrol in the Raising Embodied Eaters course here.Here's the transcript in full:Sarah Sproule: I drew analogies between talking about sensitive things and other parts of parenting. So, I don't know a single other parent who waited for their child to ask them for a stem of broccoli before they gave it to them. Right? And we know that broccoli's really great. I don't know a parent who waited for their child to ask them, Can you please show me how to cross the road? Because I want to stay safe. Like, there are so many things we do, we take initiative for, because we know it's important for the health and safety and joy of our child. INTROLaura Thomas: Welcome to the Can I Have Another Snack? podcast, where we are talking about appetite, bodies, and identity, especially through the lens of parenting. I'm Laura Thomas, I'm an anti-diet registered nutritionist, and I also write the Can I Have Another Snack? newsletter. Today, I'm talking to Sarah Sproule. Sarah, who uses she/them pronouns, is a sex educator, an occupational therapist, as well as a mother of three teens.Sarah uses their skills to ensure that every parent and caring adult knows how to build a deeper connection with their growing kids. She believes that no child should ever feel alone and unable to reach out for help with their body, their boundaries, or their needs. Or their knowledge about sexuality.In this conversation, we talk about what Sarah calls the ‘invisible influence of normal'; all the things, spoken and unspoken, that shape how we think about bodies, sex, pleasure, periods, and more. And we talk about why it's important to approach these conversations with our kids early and in a non-judgmental way that prioritises connection and helps inoculate them against body shame.We talk about supporting kids to trust their body boundaries and how that can help them use their voice when something doesn't feel right. Plus we answer your questions like how to teach kids that maybe it's best not to touch their penis at the dinner table, without inadvertently shrouding them in shame.Obviously this is a conversation about sensitive topics to do with sex, and at one point we do mention rape and other forms of violence. We also use the C word quite liberally towards the end, which Sarah and I are comfortable with, but we understand that it may not be for everyone. So all of that is to say, listen at your discretion and take care of yourself. I will say, though, that Sarah is extremely compassionate and thoughtful in how she approaches these topics. So I hope you'll find this to be a safe and nourishing conversation. Just before we get to Sarah, I wanted to tell you real quick about the benefits of becoming a paid subscriber to the Can I Have Another Snack? newsletter and community and whole wider universe.So until the end of September, I'm running a 15% off sale on the cost of annual memberships. So instead of paying £50 a year, you would pay £42.50 and that gets you access to the monthly Dear Laura columns where I answer your questions. It gets you access to the whole CIHAS archive, it gives you commenting privileges, plus weekly discussion threads tackling the big issues like…how clean is your fridge? And who are you dressing for on the school run? It's a really welcoming space where we learn from each other, share with folks who have a similar world view to us, and we have a lot of fun. And of course it's a completely diet, body shame-free space.  I wanted to quickly share what one CIHAS reader said recently. They shared this review saying: “Laura's Substack is a lifeline in a world where diet culture and fatphobia is pervasive in all aspects of our lives including how we feed our children. Every time I start to worry about my toddlers eating and that internalised diet culture mentality starts bubbling up, it's Laura's voice telling me that it's all going to be okay. Through her invaluable work on CIHAS, she's genuinely keeping me sane and empowering me to navigate feeding my child and making the right decisions for my family. The paid subscription is more than worth it. Thanks, Laura.” Well, thank you for that really sweet review. And like I said, we're running a sale for the rest of September and you can sign up at laurathomas.substack.com and I'll drop the link in the show notes so you can find it really easily. And by becoming a paid subscriber, not only do you get the sweet perks that I mentioned earlier, but more importantly, your contributions help make this work sustainable. All right, team, let's get to today's guest. Here's Sarah.  MAIN EPISODEHey, Sarah, can you start by telling us a little bit about you and the work that you do, please? Sarah: I support parents and other adults who are raising children to speak about sensitive things. So that's a euphemism for puberty, genitals, babies, growing up, sex, relationships, all that sort of stuff that might seem a little bit like…eeeeh!...when you think about having conversations about that with kids.And that work is important to me. I'm an occupational therapist, but I do that work because I was one of the kids that would have really benefited from way more open and sort of practical conversations about all that sort of stuff. My mum and dad were missionaries and we grew up in Nigeria for most of my teens, but yeah, even though mum was a nurse and she would have told me how my brother was born and all the bits and bobs and… Laura: Yeah, the gory details.Sarah: Yeah. I think because I had undiagnosed ADHD particularly, it meant that if things weren't repeated and part of everyday life, I just forgot. So I got to be nine years old and I thought sperm flew through the air to get to the egg. So I didn't want the children that I was raising to have that same experience.And so here we are now, Masters in Sexuality Studies. I've been doing this now for a few years, and it just feels like the more I do it, the more I realised that this is the exact sort of work that…all my experiences growing up and being a neurodiverse person…it's all set me up for this. So that's a great sense of joy to feel so aligned with work and with who I am as a person.Laura: For sure. And thank you for sort of walking us through that transition from OT to sexuality studies to what you're doing now. And I think it's so interesting that your background is in OT because – and that's occupational therapy for anyone who isn't familiar with that acronym – because it really shines through in the work that you do.And I think that's the only other allied health professionals, I think, would see that, but definitely you can see the echoes of that. And I think it's such a great foundation for the more coaching-centered work that you're doing. So you sort of alluded to this in what you were saying there, but you talk a lot about this concept of the ‘invisible influence of normal'. Can you unpack that a bit more for us and tell us what that is? Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. So wherever we live, in whatever sort of country or city or family, there are influences on us from those cultures, whether it's family culture, city culture, farm culture, Irish culture, Australian culture, whatever. Those influences or those…the messages we're given subtly show us what normal is.So normal could be being married with children, for example, and not that anyone might have ever said that to us, what's normal is to get married and have kids, but maybe it's an assumption in the way people ask young children or growing people questions about what they want to do in the future, how many kids they want. Like if someone asked someone how many kids you want, there's an invisible assumption there that they want children. So this invisible influence of normal impacts us, not just when we're growing up, but it impacts adults who are raising children as well, because if we lived in a family that didn't use penis and vulva or clitoris as words for genitals with children, then we're going to grow up into adults who…the invisible influence of normal will have said, sort of shaped, you don't use those words with kids. And that's just normal. That's what sort of we grew up to expect. And that's just one example. There are lots of other ways like what is normal just gets sort of embedded into our consciousness, maybe without even our own awareness. So a lot of the times this “normal idea of normal” – and I'm using my fingers in air quotes – we might not realise that it's impacting how we speak to the small people in our life until we have a particular experience. Like it could be something like having a conversation with another parent at the school gate or in childcare, where they speak about, say, walking around nude in their home and all of a sudden you realise, what? Some people think it's normal or okay to walk around nude in front of their kids at home. What? And all of a sudden everything sort of shakes a bit, you know, in our world view. Laura: What I'm hearing you say is that this invisible influence of normal, it shapes our ideas of what is acceptable, what is taboo.And ultimately, I think it shapes whether we have a shame response to something, or whether we can talk openly and transparently about, you know, like you say, sensitive subjects without them becoming, yeah, something that we have to hide or feel shame about. Is that a fair way of kind of putting it? , Sarah: Yeah, that's a beautiful way of saying it.So this story came into my mind and I wanted to share it. So picture me 13 years ago. And I have like a five year old, a three year old and a one year old and it's Saturday. So if any of the people listening are anything like us…Saturdays, we're like, we're just trying to eke out every single minute of sleep, or at least being horizontal in the bed that we can manage, you know, and so our three kids playing around the room, the doors locked so that they can't get into trouble. And you can hear this sort of splashing in the bathroom and I get out of bed and I go in and have a look. There's a five year old has taken some condoms out of the bedside drawer – because condoms were our contraceptive method of choice at the time. And opened up the packet, given one to her brother, one for herself, and they've got them in the basin, they're trying to fill them up like water balloons. And I'm at the door and I'm looking in the door and, like, my breath catches in my throat….cause, like, your kids are touching something that is related to penises.  Laura: Oh it's so dirty! Sarah: So it's sort of like, this is the first time I ever thought of anything related to this work, right? And I call out to my partner. I go, John, the, the kids are playing with condoms…and this is my really traditional Irish Catholic husband sort of says, Yeah, so what?  I'm like, they're condoms! And he goes, So? And it was in that moment that I was like, Oh, hang on a minute. So for me, that was a moment when that invisible influence became visible. It was like, yeah, if he thinks this and I don't think that, what's going on here, what's…what's happening? And so it was a really clear moment in time for me.I was like. Oh, there are things at play here. There's, there is influences at play here that I didn't even realise. Um, and I think it was particularly clear because in my mind, John was sort of very traditional and I was like the uber progressive Australian parent living in Ireland. So it was quite a shock.And that's where this whole process for me of really looking and seeing what I thought was right that was unexamined and how that was really leading me down the same path to treat my kids the same way that I was treated, which was…yes, we can answer questions, but at the end of the day, sex and things related to adults, like life, children had to be protected against because it is in some way dangerous and sort of wrong. And of course there are lots of things about adult sexuality that, yes, are not appropriate for children, but there are a whole stinking lot of things that families can talk about in a way that is educational and supportive and kind and open and connecting. And when we don't allow ourselves access to those topics of conversation, we're losing the chance, not just to inform our children. That, to me, in my work is a secondary thing. The information exchange, that's a secondary thing. What's more important is that we are creating moments over and over again, where we prove and show ourselves to be someone, an adult, a trusted adult, who can talk about pretty much anything and everything. And we do that with understanding and we do it in a way that is respectful of our children and their ability to understand stuff. When that shift happens in an adult's mind that they realise that talking about sensitive things is a bridge over which they build a connection with their child and which will last a lifetime because it will last a lifetime, then all of a sudden it's like, Oh, okay. So this might be awkward and I might not know how to do it, but God damn it. I really want to try because I understand what is possible if I make this effort.  Laura: Yeah, and again, what I'm hearing you say is that you're prioritising the relationship that you have with your child over and above your own comfort and probably other people's comfort, people around you, maybe grandparents, maybe other parents at the school, teachers even, that your, your child might come into contact with. And that kind of leads me to a question that I, I was thinking about for you, which was around why it is so important for us, as parents, as carers, as guardians, to be the people that are starting these conversations with our children, these, like you say, sensitive conversations, and that could, I think, range from calling genitals by their correct names all the way through to puberty and periods.Why does it feel so important for it to be coming from us rather than, you know, waiting until Sex Ed at school or waiting until they hear something in the playground? Sarah: Again, it's about creating connection. I think about it from the perspective of how many years an adult, either a parent or a caregiver in some other capacity, is with their child or their young person, right?So I will often say that, okay, so If our kids stay with us until they're 23, just pick a number. You've got 23 years of meals and negotiations about bathroom time and conversations about going out with friends and all that, where your child has the opportunity to come to tell you something that's difficult or worrying for them or where they can ask you a question that is going to make the difference between them being able to speak up for themselves in a tricky situation or not. So your child is around you lots and lots and lots. Whereas if they first hear something sensitive, like how babies are made or what sex actually is from a teacher at school, that teacher may only be there for, say, 10 months of their life and then they're gone. And so when your child is thinking about the memories of how they learned particular things, a teacher's face will come up, but your face won't. And what that means is when they have a question or a concern or something tough is happening in their world, there's not that sort of memory that connects you and sensitive, awkward, unpleasant, difficult, concerning, but also exciting life events in the head, right? So it's very much about, again, how can we build that connection? How can we demonstrate to a child or a young person that we talk about this stuff. I drew analogies between talking about sensitive things and other parts of parenting. So I don't know a single other parent who waited for their child to ask them for a stem of broccoli before they gave it to them.  And we know that broccoli is really great. I don't know a parent who waited for their child to ask them, can you please show me how to cross the road, because I want to stay safe. Like, there are so many things we do that we take initiative for because we know it's important for the health and safety and joy of our child.And this area of being human, this developing sexual self is no different when you sort of look at it like that. Most of the time people go, oh yeah, I see what you're saying there, I wouldn't wait for my child to ask me to send them to swimming lessons. I mean, some of us might've done that before our child was even one. So it's far more about realising that our parenting approach, if it's different, only in the sensitive conversation section, then that's showing us that there's something behind that, that needs to be examined so that we can show up for our child in the best way. Laura: If you think about it from the perspective of, you know, like a, I don't know, a seven year old saying to another seven year old in the playground, oh duh duh duh, sex, penis, vulva, and that's complete news to your seven year old. I can imagine that that would be attached to, again, shame, embarrassment, of not knowing that information or that completely, like, coming out of the blue, versus if you've already maybe laid some foundations and some groundwork, then your child might have the language to be like…Or maybe they don't have necessarily, like, they can't explain all the ins and outs of it, but they can be like, oh, yeah, that's something I've heard of, and maybe I can go home to this trusted person and get some more details or ask some more questions. I suppose that's the kind of, I would imagine, you know, the ideal way that that scenario plays out rather than a child who just feels so overcome by shame and embarrassment that they don't have anywhere to go with that information.Sarah: Absolutely. And I mean, that scenario that you've pictured, that's probably actually best case scenario for a child that doesn't know anything. A more problematic scenario might be where a child tells another child something that's just completely and utterly wrong. Like one of my kids came home from school, I think they were probably 10, and he came home and he said, mum, Michael at school told us that rape means having sex with someone and then killing them.And I was like, Oh, that's not right, is it? Because we'd had those conversations. So it's not just about setting your child up to not be surprised by things, but actually if you've got there first with the accurate information, inaccurate stuff tends to like, they don't grab onto it and go, Oh, okay.Because…you know, think about that. It's quite damaging for a child or a young person to think that rape is having sex with someone and then killing them because then they don't understand what rape really is, you know, and so there's all sorts of complexity and difficulty that sort of arise from that.And, and I imagine that any…well, I would hope that any young person would go through the education system and very quickly get the correct definition given to them at some point in the curriculum, but nevertheless. It's not a great introduction if they're getting inaccurate information from a peer.Laura: Yeah, because you're completely missing the whole, you know, really important opportunity to talk about consent.And so speaking of consent, I wanted to – and maybe this will help us take some of these more abstract concepts and put them into more concrete terms, but something that I've noticed since becoming a parent is how entitled people feel to kids' bodies, you know, whether it's hugs or kisses or touching them in some way.Like, I was with my three year old the other day and someone from their pre-school, a teacher, ran up behind them and picked them up and scooped them up, and it scared the shit out of me, never mind my three year old. And of course it was coming from a well intentioned, loving place, because I know that they have a good relationship, but it feels like such a tricky one to navigate as a parent.And I have a lot of thoughts about this. But I'm curious to hear your thoughts on how we begin to teach kids about their body boundaries and what is okay and not okay in terms of people accessing their bodies and, and talking about who they share their bodies with and in what capacity. Sarah: The best way to learn things is through experience.So we could spend, you know, all day, every day saying to our child, you know, your body, your choice, you get to decide what's done to your body. But if we don't create an environment at home where that is lived rather than just spoken, then that makes it difficult. So children who – and I was one of these kids, actually – children who their voices aren't heard, we – I'm going to say, we – we grow up, we lose sense of what our truth is, right? So here's something that I've been thinking about lately. One of the adults in my community asked a question about school refusal. In my world, it's ‘school can't' or ‘school avoidance'. If a child is…said we just have to go to school anyway. You just have to go. That's what we do. We have to go. The message there is it doesn't matter how you feel. There are some things that just have to be done because it's always been done like that, right? You can imagine that if that model is placed on a relationship and our child grows up to be a young adult and is in a relationship with someone who is very clear on the way things should be. So for example, I had a relationship for a time with a person and, in the process of negotiating our physical intimacy, I remember an interaction where I said, we'll need some lube. And this person says, Oh no, we don't need lube. And, now, it was a big deal for me to even say we need lube, but the other person being so clear, like we don't need it. I just completely, like, shut down. That was it. Okay, well then that must be true because what the other person is saying, which is opposite to me must be true because that was something that was demonstrated over and over and over again in my growing up. And I'm bringing up school refusal because it's so…it's really difficult. It presses a lot of buttons in an adult, you know, a child who doesn't want to go to school. That's probably one of the more complicated places where respecting our child's voice and their deep inner knowing of what is right for them is going to be hard, whereas maybe a little bit easier in, if it was, do you want to go to the beach or do you want to, you know, go over to Jimmy's house and jump on his trampoline. Like it won't matter so much what our child says, if they say jump on the trampoline and we would have preferred to go to the beach, we're like, oh, we'll go and jump on the trampoline. But, so there's sort of like a, you know, like a continuum of the places in raising children where it's easier to respect who they are and their interests and what they want, versus the ones that are more difficult. And oftentimes the ones that are more difficult will be the ones where it puts us, as the adult, in a position where we have to go against someone in authority, or someone whose opinion we really value and we're concerned about their response when we're sort of advocating for our child.So it's no easy thing, but it really is about your child's experience of being heard, seen, believed, honoured. Yeah.Laura:  Yeah. You remind me a lot of a conversation I had with the psychologist, Hillary McBride, who is author of the book Wisdom of Your Body, and she talks a lot about embodiment, and we had a conversation about children's embodiment, and it was, you know, there, there are situations, of course, where we can't let our kids stay home because we have to go to work and we don't have any other form of childcare. As much as we would love to stay home with them all day and to let them rest and get all the things that they need, but again, late stage capitalism doesn't allow that. One of the things that she pulled out was just this idea that, even when we have to hold a boundary with our child, that we believe their experience, that we trust them and that we kind of, yeah, validate, I think, their experience because that will enable them to hold on to that seed of being able to trust their own embodied wisdom. You're nodding away there. I don't know if you have anything else that you would like to add to that.  Sarah: Yeah. So in my world, sometimes parents will say, yeah, but like consent is all very well, but what about, I've got a two year old who doesn't want to get into their car seat and we were going to wherever we're going and they have to be in the car seat.I'm like, yeah, yes, they do absolutely have to be in the car seat. And so in my world, I would be talking about informed consent versus like consent. And so a two year old doesn't have enough information and understanding about the implications for what they want to do. They don't understand that that puts them in danger.And so understanding that, while a two year old is very sort of clear on what they need, we have more information. That doesn't mean what they need is wrong. It just means we have more information and we need to facilitate sort of understanding, and that can be really hard when your two year old is doing the banana body and just, there's no way you can get the seatbelt on, you know?And so oftentimes it's about creating a culture when that clash of needs is not happening. So when your two year old is screaming, saying no, about getting in the seat, that's not the time to sit down and explain various things, but maybe there's another time the following day. Where it's possible to say, you know, I love you and my job is to keep you safe.And let's think of all the ways you need to be kept safe, or some of the ways. And you can list off, you know, electricity and fire and other things and then say, and did you know, cars are really dangerous if we don't have seatbelts on, just very like, little drops of knowledge and then I suppose that we can set our two year old up for success.And that could look like…like kids do really well with context, connection and choice, right? So getting to the car, setting context, in half an hour, we're going to need to get in the car. What does your body need to do before we do that? Do you want to run around? What sort of, what busyness? Because you remember, we're going to have to sit in the seat with the belt on.So context, connection, getting down and showing them that you see them. I love you. And I know that your body has a hard time being in the car seat. What can I do to help you out? Like letting them know, we see them, we understand what their experience is like. And then the choice is really offering as much choice as possible.So the seatbelt isn't a non-negotiable thing, but maybe there's other choices. Would you like to take a toy? Or would you like to choose the music? Or would you like to have a special blankie or like try and find all the ways that if your kid, the feeling of at least a little bit of autonomy so that you can keep them safe without too much conflict.And I…like I had three two year olds, I know it's not easy and we're all strapped for time. But if you sort of take a step back and think about it in the broader context, it's not just about that moment where you're trying to put them into the car. Context, connection, and choice are one of those things that's going to help you help your kid. And if you can do that, you feel good. Don't you? As a parent and like, Oh, like, wow. For the first time ever, my two year old got into the car seat without a screaming match. Like that's a win. And that helps me anyway, feel warm and fuzzy.  Laura: Oh, it definitely makes such a difference when you feel like you're maxed out, but then you get that win.And I mean, you're speaking my language, Sarah, and it's the exact same approach that I would take to a child who was struggling to come to the table, or who was really having a hard time eating and getting everything that they needed from food, you know, that connection piece is so important. And I will spare you the TED talk about everything that I see on Instagram that prioritises like these cheap wins over real connection over the feeding relationship. So yeah, I'll rein it back to what we're talking about here. Sarah: You know, when I was thinking about this, that we're going to have this conversation together, I was imagining that you and I at work would probably be that thing where we're holding onto different parts of the elephant. And while my work may look different, it's two parts of exactly the same thing. So I'm pleased to hear that is absolutely the case. Laura: 100%. So I got quite a few questions sent in. I'm not sure if we'll have time to go through them all, but I would really love to get your take on them. So these were sent in on Instagram that, you know, in the Instagram boxes, it's like a really tiny little space. So not all of them have all the context that I think we would need. I'll just shoot anyway. So the first one was “How to explain to kids why some stuff you do in private”. Again, there's no context here, but I'm going to assume that this parent means that their child is touching their vulva or their penis.Maybe…I mean, unless you have any other thoughts as to what might be going on there, but that seemed to be the most obvious thing to my mind. Sarah: Yeah, well, let's assume that. It's like anything else. We can think of other scenarios, that something is right in one context, but not another context. So oftentimes I will say, well, when we're going for a picnic in the park and we're sitting on a blanket. It makes total sense to use our hands, right? Cause we're probably eating a sandwich or a muffin or something, but when we go to granny's house and she served us tomato soup in a bowl, then what makes the most sense is to use a spoon. Or what do we wear when we go to the local swimming pool? Wear our swimmers. What do we do when we go to watch a movie in the cinema? Well, it wouldn't make sense at all to wear our swimmers. We'd get cold in the air conditioning anyway. We need maybe some trousers and a T-shirt. Same thing. With our genitals, depending on where our genitals are or like where our body is, well, there'll be different rules for them.So when we're on our own, when we're in the bathroom, when we're in our room, our genitals are our own. We can touch them and feel them and notice what feels good and what doesn't feel good. And you know, we wash our hands afterwards to make sure we don't spread any germs around the place, but your genitals are yours and you get to touch them and do with them whatever way you want. When we're outside, all the other people, they're allowed to not want to see us playing with our genitals, right? So we don't do it. Because if we didn't have that rule whereby people don't play with their genitals in public, then a lot of people might start playing with their genitals on the bus or in the playground or at school. And then it would be chaos. Not everyone wants to see other people's genitals or their hands down there. So it's just about common courtesy, really. And using analogies for other parts of life, where that same dynamic applies, it tends to ease us adults who are feeling a little bit squeaky about having that conversation in, because it's like, this is the same dynamic that plays out everywhere else in human existence. It just so happens because this is about genitals. Sometimes we're like, eh, I don't know what, help, help. Because maybe we're trying to reduce the likelihood of our child feeling shame, probably because when we were growing up, we were made to feel ashamed by what the adults around us said, and not because they were perhaps doing that on purpose, but because that's what they… Laura: They didn't have it shown to them. Yeah. Sarah: They, they didn't know. And most likely they would've been doing it with good intentions. Yeah. Some of us, you know, the adults that cared for us did not have good intentions. For the most part, though, most adults do, whatever level of ability we have talking about sensitive things is exactly right, depending on what's been in our past.So just because someone in the playground, a parent, is really good at this stuff, and we're not, that doesn't mean they're a better parent. They were just dealt a different hand and that's just the way it is.  Laura: Yeah. I hear you say that it's really important to have some self compassion when you are thinking about these issues.Thinking about having these conversations with your kid, but you kind of get that lump in your throat and you're not really quite sure how exactly to handle them, that just thinking about it, is a really good starting point, isn't it? And then from there, if you notice, Oh, I'm…well, it's checking in with your own bodily experiences, right, and saying, okay, what's coming up for me and where do I need some support or some help or some resources to help me open up these conversations.I really love the analogies that you use because these…yeah, it's a very similar thing, you know, talking about context and what's appropriate – I have some feelings about the word appropriate, but let's not get into that. One question that kind of came to my mind as you were explaining how you might approach that conversation. I'm curious if other parents might have this same thought, is that oftentimes in books around body boundaries and consent, they talk about your genitals as being private. So you know, one of the books that we have talks about how everything that's underneath your bathing suit, you know, it's your body, it's private.Would you use that kind of language, or how might you use that language? Do you find that helpful, or not so much? Sarah: There's a lovely author called Cory Silverberg, and they wrote three books for children of various ages. Laura: They're so good, these books. Sarah: Yeah, they're great. That author coined this idea of middle parts, and so the idea is rather than using private parts, using middle parts to generally describe genitals, because when we talk about private parts, it's just…it makes it complicated to give a child shame-free ownership of those parts of their body, right? One of the shifts in a family culture that can be really useful is this idea that in our family, we talk about everything.So, in a sense, particularly when kids are small, genitals aren't really private in families. Right? Laura: This is the exact thing that I've bumped up against with my three year old who still needs me to wipe his butt. And so there is that confusing thing of like, well, if this is private, but I need help with this or, you know, I still need to bathe him.And even the example that you gave earlier where we walk around our house nude, but we don't go outside nude, right? Like that can be a confusing thing. So I'm sorry to interject, but it just…you're articulating the exact, the exact thing that I have bumped up against. Sarah: Yeah. And so I suppose, again, it's another demonstration of something that manifests in lots of different ways in our parenting, but because it's to do with genitals, it's a bit like, Oh, not quite sure how this works.So the whole dynamic of raising children is that in the beginning, we're having to do a lot of things for them that they will eventually do themselves, feeding, cleaning, dressing, even sort of communicating, like taking the whole burden of communication off them onto us. So we're interpreting sounds and body language and all that sort of thing.So you can explain that dynamic to a child and say that there are certain parts of our body that are more sensitive than others and middle parts or genitals like penis or a vulva or whatever, there's a lot of special skin on those parts. And what that means is that they need special care, right? Now, when you're grown up and when you're, you know, maybe you're 8 or you're 10, you're going to wash those and put your clothes on those parts of your body. And you won't really need an adult's help at all. And you probably definitely won't want an adult's help, but while you're still small and I'm having to help you do a few other things, this is one of the parts of your body that, that you need help with.And my job is to help you eventually do it all on your own. Right. You would need to also say that bit about only trusted people help us with our most sensitive parts of ourselves. Right. And I suppose as a reminder that it's not just genitals we're talking about here. We're also talking about anus and we're talking about mouth because those are parts of the body too that can be used in ways that are really hurtful for people who don't have a child's best interest at heart. So when you're framing it in that way, there's less sense of like…the word private tends to put a shroud over things where, if you're talking about the sensitive special skin and special parts, then it's more like it's an honour and a privilege sort of thing, like to support you in this part of your being human. And to me, it just feels more gentle and collaborative and kind of nurturing. Laura: Yeah, I often thought about, like, the language of private parts as well as being a little bit confusing from the perspective of, like, as in when kids mature into young adults where they might want to start sharing their bodies with other people in a respectful, consensual way.Again, if it's got that sort of private, you know, shroud of shame connotation, then that's going to be a lot harder for them to do that in a way that, that feels safe.Sarah:  I'm laughing because I remember a meme that I saw, it would have been years ago now, but it was like, lies we tell children, number one, we don't lick other people's private parts.And just sort of like this, like head in the hand, like face palm, like, moment where, well, actually, when you get older…And I suppose what it illustrates is, when we're talking to kids, we have all this information and knowledge about where things could go as adults, right? They don't have an understanding of that.And I suppose it's no harm really to allow ourselves as adults to simplify it at a particular point in time, right? Knowing that as our kids get older, that truth that we've told will no longer be true. Right. And so, and that's where resources like Cory Silverberg's book, Sex is a Funny Word or, You Know Sex. Sex is a Funny Word is for around, around seven and eight years, And, You Know Sex is sort of for 10 to 14 year olds where it's really clear, it's a lot about how our bodies are instruments of pleasure, right? Which is often another conversation that adults find hard to have with kids. You know, that classic thing where you have that conversation about how babies are made or well, sperms and eggs get together and a penis goes into a vagina, if those two people want to do that, or you might talk about IVF or artificial insemination, but if it's a penis in a vagina… Laura: It leaves out a whole part of the conversation as to why people have sex. Yeah. Sarah: Exactly. And so oftentimes the kids will come back and say, all right, so I've been thinking about that. So that means you and dad did that twice, right? And parents will go, Oh, which actually just demonstrates that, like you said, a whole section of the conversation that was was left out about pleasure. So I think in these moments, when we're talking to kids about boundaries and safety, it's possible to simplify it a bit, knowing that down the road, one of our important jobs is to bring this whole pleasure and sharing our bodies with other people, and that naturally comes as they grow older and they start cluing in on more things to do with…they see the diversity in relationships around their extended community and family, you know, like if you have a same sex couple in your community, it makes it so much easier. And thank you to all the out gay and bi people, right?Because it makes it so much easier to have the pleasure conversation because it's so clear that if a child has had those conversations that sex really is only a penis and a vagina that all of a sudden you get this beautiful opportunity to talk about, well, actually intimacy is so much more about pleasure and how bodies feel good and how, when we share our body with someone else and we trust them and they trust us, then we get to help another person's body feel really good.There are lots of different ways that that happens. And then remember that in parenting, sometimes you don't have to say everything, like you can…Um, if you have a child who really needs things to be quite concretised, so an autistic child, for example, who really needs very specific communication. I'm autistic, I know what it means when someone's beating around the bush and I have to say, can you just tell me, tell me exactly what you mean by that? What does that mean? And then they're clear. And I'm like, okay, fine. And there are children like that, but some kids, you know, the information layers on over time, so it's far more about just holding your nerve and knowing that over the weeks and the months and the years to come, there'll be lots of opportunity to do and say and read all the things.Laura: And that's exactly what I was going to say is, reminding ourselves that, that this isn't a one and done conversation, that we will be having, if we're lucky and privileged to continue having these conversations with our kids, if they trust us enough to keep coming to us for these conversations, then it will be an iterative, as you say, layering on more information and more nuance as they developmentally can grasp that.So, I'm really curious to hear your answer to this question, because I bet there's a ton that you would love to say, but the person who sent this question in asked, “Four year old is asking questions, I'm not sure she's actually ready to hear the answer about, what do I do?” Sarah: I always say that if a child is asking the question, then they need to know the answer.Oftentimes in parenting advice, you'll hear people say, first of all, you ask them, well, what do you know already? And again, I go back to that old thing about, okay, where else in parenting do we check, well, what do you know already? Like there may be some places where you genuinely want to know, okay, do you know the basics of the solar system, for example? And so then I can just tell you, answer the question based on your knowledge, but oftentimes adults will use that, what do you know already as a way to sort of like create space. Laura: Or deflect. Sarah: Yeah, deflect. That's right. Or create space. And that's not a bad thing if your brain is trying to catch up. But all I would say is, a four year old has huge amounts of capacity for understanding sperms and eggs and uteruses and testicles and lots of things. And as a general rule, if we think a child isn't old enough to get the answer to something, it's probably because there's something in our past or a worry that we have that we don't know is there.So short answer, answer the question and see what happens, and use simple language in a way that you would use for answering any other questions you might ask. Laura: It's interesting, just maybe a point of difference in how we might approach things, because if a, for example, if a child came to me and asked, is this healthy for me? Like this food. Usually, I would be really curious to know, okay, well, I'm interested, what do you think? Do you think this is a healthy food? Just to get a gauge of, like, what information they've picked up or what they've learned so that I'm kind of starting from where they are and then maybe building from there.But I also see, like, how in certain situations it could be, like, Oh, fuck. I'm in too deep here. So let's just get the kid to do the hard work for me. Yeah. Sarah: And I guess, again, it's about how much stigma and shame culturally exists around a topic. There's a lot of stigma and shame that exists around…there is a lot of cultural shit around your topic as well, right? They're both heavily laden. Laura: But I would argue that you probably, uh, win on this, Sarah: Yeah. Yay! My topic's more stigmatised! Laura: You got it, yeah! I think what we're saying is, the point is to have the conversation, right? To think about, and again, what we were saying before, noticing what comes up in us when that question is asked.Sarah: And if you need to buy time, one of the great ways to do it is to say, Oh, I love that question. I'm so glad you asked it. Even if you're lying because you're freaking out, reinforce how great it is that they brought that up. I love that question. I'm so glad you asked it. I want to make sure I give you the best answer I can. So I'll get back to you tomorrow. Now, if you say that. You must get back to them tomorrow, otherwise it's a breach of trust. And remember, we're trying to be askable adults, the people they trust the most to come to them with their worst and best questions and worries. So that's really important. So you, in rugby language, you kick for touch. You tell them you come back tomorrow, you run around and find your most trusted sex educator, or you go to your therapist or ask your best friend who seems to know how to do all these things. And then you go back to your kid the next day.Laura:  Yeah. I did not understand the rugby reference, but everything else you said sounded really good.Sarah: Kicking for touch means, like, you take the ball and you kick it as far down the pitch as you can, hoping that it will bounce in exactly the right way that you can run down and start from that point. Right. Laura: Got it. Okay, I'm with you. Alright, another quick question, just in general: smashing gender stereotypes for a three year old who has turned out like a princess. They love glitter, and dresses, and pink, and does not enjoy wearing pants, despite the parents best efforts to show her a variety of gender roles. And then the same person kind of asked a follow up question, which is, is it okay to just…let her be tacky and think she's a Disney princess, even if I wish it was different.So yeah, questions about gender roles and offering a variety of, not even offering a variety, but challenging gender stereotypes. Sarah: So I'll answer the second part of that question first. It is absolutely okay to allow your three year old to be as tacky and as pink or as glittery as they want. Absolutely.And that goes for a child of any gender. Yeah. Yeah. And I would also say that for some of us, there is a desire, I suppose, to fix everything that's wrong with the world through a small person who's growing up. And really they're one human. Yeah, and they're themselves and they're an individual. And I remember thinking a lot about this when my daughter was, I can't remember what she was, we started to get into YouTube videos about makeup and she loved makeup and I really had to do a lot of soul searching and personal sort of, like, care because I really wanted to fix the whole of the patriarchy when it came to like appearance and that whole makeup culture and everything. But I realized that no, no, that's not my job. And it's definitely not my 11 year old, 10 year old's job. My job is to love her and support her and help her feel like she is the best thing since sliced bread. Even if she is…has interests along sort of gender stereotype lines. And yeah, so remembering that in the moment when we're thinking of, Oh, we want to sort of fix the gender stereotypes and all that stuff. That really our child's body is not the place in which to do that. If you have a desire to create some sort of change, find somewhere else to do it.And look, the person who's asking these questions has already done a really great job of providing diversity and opportunity to see different things in their home. And so, you know, you've done what you can do and you continue to look at yourself and notice, okay, where are some of the ways that I might unthinkingly be following stereotypical lines and maybe then volunteer for some organisation or donate money somewhere else who's doing work related to gender and get on loving your kid and doing all the sparkly, tulle, pink, whatever it is. Unicorns. Yeah. Laura: Yeah. I think that's such a helpful reminder is that, you know, kids are not our like personal projects for righting everything that is wrong in the world and that there are other ways that we can create opportunities for them, show that we will be loving, accepting no matter what they decide they want to be when they grow up or how they want to express themselves or, you know, who they want to be in relationships with or any of that stuff that we can. There…you know, it doesn't have to be this either/or binary because so much of what is problematic about systems in the world is that they're binary, right?And so we…I suppose one thing that we can do is work to not replicate binaries in our, in our own home and in our parenting. And I have a little curveball question for you that I wanted to ask, which is kind of related to, something else we talked about at the very beginning around people feeling entitled to kids' bodies, and I promise I didn't just get you on the podcast to answer my own parenting shit, but I was curious to hear if you had or how you might approach this or if you had any thoughts on this. Something that we come up against quite a lot is people really feeling entitled to explanations from my three year old. You know, that thing, which again can be like very well connected, meaning and people want to connect with him by asking, you know, what's your name? What's your age? But then they always ask, are you a boy or a girl?And It just feels so invasive and I can tell that he feels invaded because he kind of like, you know, curls into me, and it's one of those things where I just want to say. There is no such thing as a girl or a boy. What are you talking about? Like, and just launch into this whole diatribe about gender roles and, and things, but it, you know, the corner shop is not the place to do that.So I'm just curious if you have any thoughts on how you can kind of say to your child, like, it wasn't okay that they asked you that question. And, you know, I could tell that you were uncomfortable with that question while also maybe kind of like deflecting that question, does that make sense what I'm asking?Sarah: In a sense, you've partially answered it already because what you said there about saying to your kid afterwards, that question was, I could see it made you uncomfortable. What you're doing is you're, you're reflecting back their experience of it and reinforcing that that was a valid response, right?And so you're really sort of saying that made sense to me that you felt like that, that felt a bit weird. And you could even be more sort of broad and say, you know, some people ask questions that don't feel comfortable or feel a bit unkind or feel a bit rough. Whatever is the natural language that your, your kid would resonate with.But the other thing would be to – and you may already do this – is in the moment when it's happening and the person in the shop has asked that question, you can see your kid's body language doing what it's doing. You could simply say, Oh, I noticed that that question, it feels, it feels uncomfortable. So how about we talk about what we're buying in the shop, or did you know that apples is our favorite fruit? This is a personal choice. Actually. Some people would choose to deflect in a way that's very sort of gentle and easy going, because in the presence of a child, they're not interested in raising the conflict, elevating the energy. So do that way. Some people are more comfortable saying simply, you know, we don't really talk about gender in our house. We're much more interested in… whatever it is. So like it's finding the balance that feels right to you in being able to redirect…or I had one person just simply ignored questions they thought was stupid, they just like blanked them and went, okay, good to see you and off they went or, okay, we're going off to get the milk now. And just like, just pretended that it hadn't even happened, you know. It's different for everyone. There will be, and I'll speak to this too, there will be some people that don't have the personal capacity to manage any of the options that we've just mentioned here. You know, and there's someone in my community who something similar happened, they were in the park and a dear family friend, I think was about 50, saw them after, it might've been after COVID. So it'd been a few years and, her daughter was probably about 10 and he sort of, he moved in or something and she could see her daughter's whole body. So like, like shrink like this, but in the moment, yeah. Did not have the capacity. Like didn't see it coming. Hadn't thought about any of this stuff before. And so the interaction happened, he left and she hadn't been able to do anything about it, which makes complete sense because there are many of us, we go into a trauma response that reflects what's happened to us in our past, where we also were mute or I didn't have power to, to sort of do anything about that.So also, I suppose, a recognition of that. We all have different capacity when it comes to a situation like this and to reiterate and go back to that thing again about self compassion, whatever you have capacity to do in that moment is exactly right. It is not possible to achieve something if you don't have the underlying ability or experience or knowledge to do that.And so there's no shame, there's no blaming about that. It purely gives you an opportunity to notice. And then maybe at some point you'll have the ability to reach out for help. And for some of us, we don't have the ability to reach out for help for 5 years, 10 years. Some of us never in our life because we don't have the economic advantage or the educational support to do so.So it's just a small reminder that we all start in this area at completely different places on this spectrum of ability. And it doesn't mean you're bad or wrong. It simply means you are who you are with the life that you had. Laura: Sarah, I just want to – before we do our snacks – I just wanted to say, I felt myself get emotional at what you were saying there because it's just…the work that you're doing is so important and I know makes such a difference to the families that you help and I know you put a ton of like free resources and content out there.So I'm just really grateful to all the work that you're doing and yeah, just shining a light on these really difficult, challenging conversations in a way that is so compassionate and so just nuanced and thoughtful and yeah, I just know that you're making a big difference for a ton of people, so I wanted to say thank you.And I want to know what your snack is! At the end of every episode, my guest and I share something they've been snacking on. It can be a show, a podcast, a book, you know, like a literal snack, whatever it is that you've been really into lately. So what have you got for us? Sarah:  Yeah, well, this is actually something quite personal because, you know, I mentioned about being autistic.And that diagnosis came very late in life for me, only last year. So the thing I'm snacking on is noticing when it's possible to truly be myself, as opposed to do something that I've learned to do to make everyone else feel comfortable, you know, and that can be something as simple as, well, this isn't simple. Actually, this is quite challenging for me. I was at a, like a week long training for…a therapy training that I'm doing the other week. And instead of sitting on the chair, I sat on the floor because that's where my body felt the most comfortable. So, and it felt so damn good, you know, like it didn't feel just good to sit on the floor. It felt good to honour who I was. And so in an ideal world, I guess, honouring who I am wouldn't be a snack, but because this is a work in progress. It absolutely is a snack right now, and I'm grateful for it. Laura: Oh, I love that. And a lot of people who are part of the Can I Have Another Snack? community are neurodivergent, and I'm sure will really resonate with that experience of, yeah, unmasking and feeling like really comfortable doing that and how, yeah, just affirming that feels. So yeah, thank you for, for sharing that. Oh, my thing is just going to sound really trite compared to that, but my thing is a show, it's called Deadloch. Have you seen it?Sarah: Is that the Australian show? Oh, it's so good. Laura: Yeah. So, okay. So I'm excited to be able to talk to someone about it because I feel like not a lot of people have come across it.Uh, so it's set in Tasmania. It's all I can describe it as…is like a lesbian detective show. Sarah: That's about it. And like, it's so quirky, isn't it? Like it's just so random and weird and sometimes dark and sometimes hilarious. And it's sort of like, it's, it's wild. I'm so glad you love that. Laura: It is wild. And so there's, there's only one season, which is really disappointing, but it…each episode is an hour, so I feel like it's enough that you can, like, get stuck in. And I am someone who, like, my nervous system cannot handle a lot of stress, anxiety in the shows that I watch, I need to, like, be able to decompress. I do want to say that...it is a murder mystery, like it does ramp up in terms of the suspense across the season I want to say, but there's enough dark humour and comedy and, like, a lot of swearing and ridiculousness that it kind of like tempers it out and yeah, so it's really good. I highly recommend it. Sarah: It's amazing. Can I just say, from the perspective of sensitive conversations to the writers of that show, they had to write a rationale for why the word cunt should be in the script because it's used prolifically. For anyone who doesn't know, in Australian colloquial swearing language, cunt is used for lots of different things and it's important it was in there, culturally. It was super important. So I just loved that. And the other thing I loved was that – this isn't a spoiler – the victims of the crimes are not the gender you think, like you naturally assume them to be based on a lot of other like TV crime you would see.So there's some things that comes out and it just sort of skews your expectation based on what the culture has given you, that invisible influence of normal in crime shows, you know? Laura: There is a lot of cultural stuff that is a kind of cultural critique, I suppose, that around gender, around racism, there's a lot of stuff that it touches on, but there is prolific use of the C word.But it, it's just like the way that it is thrown in, it's just very well done. The whole thing is very well done. So highly recommend. Sarah: And can I just say one thing, because you said “the C word” and I think it's important. Because when I was about 28, I was able to reclaim the word cunt because I was in a relationship with an artist at that point and a poet.And he said to me, because I was like, Ooh, that's a yuck word, he said, did you know like, it comes from the old…Old English or Old Norse or something, something of like, when you're ploughing that there's like, the plough leaves a cunt behind in the soil. And I was sort of like, oh, that actually sort of made me feel like, well, that's sort of nice. Like it's a similar sort of look. And for some reason, it just made me feel like I think I could reclaim that word. Not that other people can't, but from that time on, I was like, yeah, okay, that word and I, we can coexist with relative equanimity. Laura: Do you know what? I don't even know why I censored myself because I say cunt all the time.You're a cunt, you're a cunt, they're a cunt. But I understand that maybe not everybody is as comfortable with that word.Sarah, before I let you go, can you let everybody know where they can find you and learn more about your work? Sarah: Sure. Well, my Instagram is @IAmSarahSproule. And at the moment in the season that I'm in, which is really about unmasking and making sure I rest as much as I can. There's not a lot of new things out there, but there is about three years worth of very detailed content there about how to talk to kids about all sorts of things that all different ages, and it's well worth trawling back through there and, getting your fill of support. So that's where the main place you can find me. Laura: Yeah, I will link to all of that in the show notes and there's some great farting content on there as well, which I really appreciate and enjoy. Sarah, it's been such a delight to talk to you. Thank you so much for sharing everything with us. I know we could have gone on for like another 90 minutes, but I will wrap up there and let you go. Thanks so much, Sarah.OUTROThanks so much for listening to the Can I Have Another Snack? podcast. You can support the show by subscribing in your podcast player and leaving a rating and review. And if you want to support the show further and get full access to the Can I Have Another Snack? universe, you can become a paid subscriber.It's just £5 a month or £50 for the year. As well as getting tons of cool perks you help make this work sustainable and we couldn't do it without the support of paying subscribers. Head to laurathomas.substack.com to learn more and sign up today.  Can I Have Another Snack? is hosted by me, Laura Thomas. Our sound engineer is Lucy Dearlove. Fiona Bray formats and schedules all of our posts and makes sure that they're out on time every week. Our funky artwork is by Caitlin Preyser, and the music is by Jason Barkhouse. Thanks so much for listening. ICYMI this week: Let's Talk All Things Neurodiversity and Food* How are you flipping gender scripts for your kids?* Nourishing Full Bodied Awareness with Hillary McBride* Let's Talk About Snacks, Baby This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit laurathomas.substack.com/subscribe

Even though a vacancy can be painful for an investor, leasing doesn't have to be the biggest hat a property manager has to wear. Join property management growth expert Jason Hull to talk about the topic of the property management Summer busy season with Tim and Larry from Tenant Turner.  You'll Learn [02:55] When is the right time to automate? [07:52] Why being cheap leads to bad clients [14:34] Staying competitive in the slow season [18:04] The multifamily market oversupply [22:13] Lockboxes and self-showings Tweetables “The most important currency related to growth is not cash, it's focus.” “It's really stupid, in contrast, to hold onto the moldy peanuts in the monkey trap because you don't want to let go and not get your hand out because you just want to be cheap.” “I find that cheap business owners attract cheap clients and they don't grow and scale their businesses.” “Even if you only have, you know, one door, eight doors, 10 doors, any vacancy is painful.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: I find that cheap business owners attract cheap clients and they don't grow and scale their businesses. And so if you're listening to this and you're like, "well, I'm being cheap and I'm being frugal, and that's smart." It's not smart when it comes to business, and it's not smart when it comes to growth.  [00:00:17] Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you're interested in growing in business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate, think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow, along with Sarah Hull, the COO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show, and our guests today are Tim Wallace and Larry Hancock of Tenant Turner. Welcome you two.  [00:01:27] Tim: Thanks for having us.  [00:01:28] Larry: Yeah, thanks for having us.  [00:01:29] Jason: So does everybody there have red hair now? Is this the thing? [00:01:32] Tim: We're slowly taking over the world.  [00:01:34] Larry: Like it's just-- gingers unite-- job application requirement. [00:01:37] Jason: That sounds like a really good t-shirt.  [00:01:40] Sarah: I like it. Yeah. "Are you willing to dye your hair?" [00:01:43] Jason: That'd be the strangest thing. Yeah. "It's part of the, it's part of the uniform." All right. Awesome. Well, it's good to have you both and you know, we really appreciate you being a sponsor for our DoorGrow events and doing some cool stuff with us. And Tim, you actually sold Sarah Tenant Turner previously. Oh, Larry did. Larry sold Sarah Tenant Turner. Yeah. You can't have the credit, Tim. Sorry. It's Larry. Larry did this. He closed the deal in Sarah's property management business that she's since sold, but they're still using Tenant Turner.  [00:02:17] Sarah: They do use tenant turner. [00:02:19] Jason: There you go. So awesome. So our topic today is scaling up your leasing process during the busy season, which is right now, right? It's summer, things heat up. And what's interesting, if you do go onto Google Trends, trends.google.com and look at the keyword "property management" and you backdate it for like a decade and you'll see these, it just spikes. It doesn't go up like it's not growing in search volume, but property management spikes every summer and goes down in the winter. And that's probably how leasing works as well in property management. So what, where should we start with scaling up your leasing process during the busy season? [00:02:59] Larry: So what's interesting is it's almost like a catch 22 for our customers. So for folks that aren't using any kind of automation, they're like, "I really need your services, but I'm just too darn busy to even consider it." I'm like, "ah! Why didn't you talk to us just a few months earlier?" And then you got the opposite side where some customers are like, "I'm not busy enough to consider your services." so we're always trying to, you know, have these conversation with these people why automation's beneficial for them. Whether they're in a stage where they're just, you know, drinking from a fire hydrant and they're just trying to just figure things out while they're in the busy leasing season. Or maybe you are using automation and it's just a matter of creating efficiencies. So that way you can continually grow your business. So, typically that's how we'll start our conversation is kind of where are you at right now? Are you kind of just struggling to stay afloat and you need to add some automation into your life, or do you have the automation and it's just creating those efficiencies in your business? [00:03:53] Jason: So how do you help people that say they're not busy enough justify leveraging and getting tenure turner?  [00:04:02] Larry: Yeah. So from there it's really. Trying to get them more in the head space of like, "I understand that for now. But let's figure out how we can create value here." So maybe I'm getting them in a place of, you know, let's build the building blocks. "We're not going to create your account just yet, but in a perfect world, when you are busy and need our services, let's kind of back out what the steps are to get there." Sometimes maybe their portfolio isn't large enough. So then that would be a time when I would recommend to someone like you, Jason, where it's like, "Hey, you need to be a part of a program where you can, you know, grow your portfolio because he's going to help you grow your portfolio and then you're going to need us because you're only one person." so I'll try to get them in that kind of head space. But it's really almost building their tech stack. So while we're an important piece to that whole thing there's other moving parts to the entire system. So that's usually how I start. It's really more playing a consolidative role. [00:04:55] So I'm trying to consult them, figure out where they're at in the process. And if they're not a good fit for us that day, that's okay. Maybe they will be. And then I'm going to set a reminder to reach out before they're busy losing season basically.  [00:05:07] Jason: So where is that kind of cutoff point to where they've achieved, you know, Tenant Turner readiness status? [00:05:17] Larry: So sometimes people will view it from like a portfolio size. I think it's really more about the entrepreneurial mindset. I met some people where they have just one door and they're like, "Hey Larry, I'm going to be a hundred units by the end of the year." I'm like, "that's awesome man. You know, it's great you're kind of trying to build this plane before you're trying to take off," where sometimes I talk to customers, they're like, "Hey, We're flying this plane. The wings are about to fall off. And I just don't know what to do." I'm like, "okay--" [00:05:42] Jason: I'm going to build it in the air. I'm working on it.  [00:05:45] Larry: I know. It's like, "all right, well I appreciate you, you know, diving ahead first, but you're probably really stressed out right now." So, typically in our world, our pricing model, month to month, no contracts. So one to 50 units you're fine. We're going to talk to you. We're not going to be like, "oh you're too small for us, man. Like, I just can't talk to you." We have a great culture in that way. We try to be that partner with them. But typically our general rule of thumb is if you expect to have any vacancy, whether it's one throughout the entire year, you should at least consider us. Even if it's only one month out of the entire year we'll still talk to you.  [00:06:16] Jason: Yeah.  [00:06:17] Sarah: Yeah. And I think something that people don't always realize is even if you're like, I don't need it right now, I'm not ready, I don't have enough. It's going to make it so much easier if you have systems in place already, so that you can scale so that when you scale, you're not now in massive amounts of pain. And even if you only have, you know, one door, eight doors, 10 doors, any vacancy is painful. Yeah, any vacancy is painful and it's going to help you massively, not only just in your time and your effort, but it will make your clients happier. Like when I implemented Tenant Turner, my vacancy rate like took a nosedive. Now, not that I had a high vacancy rate. But like just trying to like market and figure out where to put these things and answering all the messages and doing a gazillion showings for people that might not even qualify. You know, it was taking sometimes like weeks to fill a vacancy. And when I implemented that, it went down dramatically. So clients are much, much happier and you and your staff are going to be much, much happier because now it's a lot less work for you.  [00:07:28] Larry: Yeah and kind of building on that, Sarah, we kind of find our solution is almost like a an aspirin approach. So people are kind of taking that aspirin when they have a headache in the form of vacancy. And there is a time and place to pop the aspirin, but usually what's a lot better is kind of plan ahead of, "oh, I know I could have headaches during this time of the year, so I'm going to be a little bit more you know, I'm going to prepare, I'm going to be more proactive." where I see people have the right mindset in regards to software is usually what they'll do is they'll annualize the cost and then figure out how to generate enough ROI. So if I'm able to save. Five hours per week, you know, and I annual analyze the software in such a way I don't need to worry about it because I've looked at the 12 month period and I know I'm going to get my value that way. It's a little bit harder when you're trying to convince people when they're kind of penny pitching and it's like you're wasting all this time on that part and that time worrying about it, you just wasted where you could be attracting new owners. So the mindset really is kind of analyzing the software, but trying to build the ROI into that. [00:08:31] Sarah: I have to say like I was hesitant for a while because I was like, "well, this is easy and like I have this streamlined process" and really, I said this to you. I was like, "I just don't spend that much time." I had 200 and like some odd units, like 260 I think at my highest. And when I was talking with you, I was like, "you know, I just don't spend that much time doing it. So is there a benefit to it? Yes, but how much time am I really going to save? Because I feel like it's already something that is simple for me." And even though I had this streamlined and I had processes to find and I maybe was spending a couple hours a week doing, you know, messaging and email and confirmations and stuff like that. [00:09:14] I was still spending time doing it. When I implemented Tenant Turner, then I was like, "oh, I don't have anything to do." Like every once in a while I have to just pop in and you have to like manually approve somebody. And then once, like I updated my showing schedule once a week. So once a week I had to go in and update the showing schedule for the upcoming week, which took all of maybe four minutes. And other than that, I was just popping in and kind of like manually approving people. And I was spending, I went from maybe a few hours a week, which I still didn't think was a lot to minutes per week. And I was like, "oh wow. Okay. I see it now. I see it." But sometimes they think you have to experience it to see it. Because I was like, "I just don't know!" And I was really glad that I did it because it really like, it took so much. And sometimes when you make a change like that, then you realize how much work you are actually doing. Because we rationalize, we're like, "it's not that hard. It doesn't take me that long. Like I just send a couple emails," and then when you realize, "oh, I don't have to do any of that anymore." it was like mind blowing to me. I was like, "oh, like this literally takes me like 10 minutes a week and that's it." So all my leasing was done in 10 minutes.  [00:10:33] Jason: I think that's one of my favorite ways to justify an expense is you have to look at the opportunity cost because if you're just looking, you're like, "okay, well it costs me this much money and if I do it myself, then it's free. But your time is the most valuable resource you have in a business-- not free-- and the most important currency related to growth is not cash. It's focus. And if your focus is diluted as a business owner away from what can generate more revenue, then the opportunity cost is huge in two to three hours you could be closing deals that are worth tens of thousands of dollars over that year. So it's really stupid in contrast to like hold onto the moldy peanuts in the monkey trap because you don't want to let go and not get your hand out because you just want to be cheap. [00:11:22] And so I find that cheap business owners attract cheap clients and they don't grow and scale their businesses. And so if you're listening to this and you're like, "well, I'm being cheap and I'm being frugal, and that's smart." It's not smart when it comes to business, and it's not smart when it comes to growth. You need to let go of those moldy peanuts. There's bananas in reach and the farmer's going to come along and chop off your head. And this is why most businesses fail. Most businesses fail in the-- or they get stuck-- first year or the first five years. A lot fail and property management is tough. And I see, I see a lot.  [00:11:55] Sarah: They get, they just get stuck and they're trapped. "I don't have more time. I can't do anything else. Like, I don't know what else I can do in making these little changes." Like I'm going to be honest with you, I like, I bought into the product and I still wasn't like, "ah, I think that's going to be amazing." I was like, "it'll help me." And it helped way more than I thought it was going to help me. I would say this is like 1. Was implementing a property management software and 2. Was implementing tenant Turner. Those are the two things that like made a massive shift in my business for me. [00:12:28] Jason: Nice.  [00:12:29] Sarah: And I almost wish I could have told myself like, "Hey, remember when you had 260 units and you were doing it all yourself? You should have been talking to Tenant Turner.  [00:12:37] Jason: There was some guy that had mentioned these things to you. [00:12:40] Sarah: I know! [00:12:40] Jason: He's pretty smart.  [00:12:41] Tim: I think even if you are in that cheap mindset, like at the end of the day, like vacancy is what's going to cost your owners the most money down the road too. Like one day on the market can cost them anywhere from what, 50 to $200 depending on what they're paying for their mortgage and everything. Like those costs add up and it's as property managers, it's your fiduciary duty to help them recoup that money. And if you're spending too much time on those types of things, even if you're focused on your business and spending time on that, you could still be losing that money by having those extra days on market without this type of system. [00:13:11] Sarah: Absolutely, and I think the conversation that I have with people over and over again is you need to figure out what this particular task is worth in dollars. So if this is like a $10 an hour task, a $20 an hour task, Is it something that you, as a business owner need to be doing? Is your time worth more than 10 or $20 an hour? And if the answer to that question is yes, then you need to not be the one who's doing this.  [00:13:35] Jason: Yeah. If a business owner, and a lot of business owners are the BDM, they are the business development manager. They are the person that's doing sales and generating revenue and growing the business. And if you do not as a business owner, have a full-time BDM. [00:13:49] You have somebody focused on this and it's on your shoulders, then you're a shitty part-time salesperson. You're maybe investing, I find one, maybe two hours a day. That's like 10 hours a week focusing on growing the business. And so everything else other than that should be offloaded that you can everything else. Give up the leasing stuff as much as you can, give up the maintenance stuff as much as you can, like you need to be focused on generating revenue until you can offload that piece and focus. Otherwise, you're not going to grow. And if any business owner is listening to this in property management, if you haven't grown significantly over the last year or two or three, it's because you are doing the wrong things as a business owner in the business. Plain and simple, there's no way around that. So we chatted about justifying it for those that are already, they have lots of doors and they're, you know, how do we deal with making things scalable during the busy season? And then things really for leasing tend to really cool down in the winter months. And so what are you typically seeing with clients that come to you that are maybe at a 200 plus doors or it's obvious that you can serve them. [00:15:02] Tim: I mean, even if you do have 200 doors sure, summertime's going to be the busiest, where generally speaking, you could have anywhere from what, five to 12% vacancy rates and whatnot with turnovers and whatnot. During the wintertime, there still might be one or two that hit every month. And what we're noticing with customers that size is that throughout the year we kind of keep things with that month to month rate really low for everyone. [00:15:24] It's based on portfolio size for us. And so most people are keeping that active because even one listing, like you're saying, if you're working on one listing, spending two or three hours on that one listing, even getting to go back and forth with the messages, the emails and everything like that could still be costing you more than what your monthly rate for subscription might be. So a lot of people do keep us going year round and have the lock boxes and things like that in service for vendors and stuff that might need to come and go for properties as well. So, there's lots of different little solutions that we provide there too that kind of help keep the business flowing smoothly, but generally speaking, we're there when they need us and any spot in the road where if it's crazy or if it's just a little bit, we try to keep the system smooth all year for them.  [00:16:10] Larry: I guess to add to that so typically when things are slow, usually people are saying, "I'm not getting enough leads." really what they mean is they're not getting enough leads from, you know, Zillow, Trulia, the big networks. And when they come to us and say, "Hey, what do I do? What can Tenant Turner provide?" That's usually when I tell them like, "you're really going to hunker down and how are you going to be different than your competition?" and that's also times when like, you know, "let's look at your website. You know, are you being an industry leader in your market?" So maybe they're not going to the Zillows, but when they search, or, you know, what is your web, your presence in your market? Automation's great and you definitely should automate, but then there's also times to be that personalized touch. So when things are slow, what aren't your competitors doing? If they're leaning really heavy where they can't talk to a person at all maybe you should go to what we call the 'take request model,' where we're automating things, we're pre-qualifying, and then we're setting, you know, a couple days and times. But before an appointment's approved, you get to talk to that lead. And really what you're doing, you're leveraging yourself. You introduce yourself, you say why you're great and you're market maybe some key differentiators. And then you schedule an appointment. And you do a couple things. What I like to say is you're doing what's called a vibes test just to make sure both of you are, you know, a good fit, rather to rent the property and that type of stuff. And also you're making sure they have a heartbeat. Making sure, you know, if you're using self-guided tours, it's another security layer to everything. Because at the end of the day, I'm a big fan of it's the, a book called Rework by the guys who created Basecamp. And the whole philosophy is that it's not that in a world where people saying, "I need more of this," whether it's "I need more leads" or "I need more tools," it's more utilizing the tools that you already have more efficiently. So when we look at things like lead flow, maybe it's not necessarily a top of the funnel problem, it's more of a bottom of the funnel conversion problem. And then when you use personalization to a lot of interesting ways, like I mentioned. [00:18:04] Jason: So one of the things that I think is happening a bit throughout the US and I've had some podcast guests touch on this, is that in some markets-- and I've heard some some property managers anecdotally share this with me as well-- they're having a difficulty getting tenants because the inventory as a result of the pandemic just went up, skyrocketed. A lot of people are like, "Hey, let's build, let's create a bunch of investments." Now there's a surplus of inventory and that creates a scarcity of tenants, and so they're having to get a little bit more aggressive. What strategies Have you guys seen, or you know, because you're connected to a lot of people that are doing leasing, how are they becoming more attractive to tenants than their competition? [00:18:48] Tim: You want to start or? So there's a lot of different things out there, like different solutions, whether it's providing something like a benefits package to your residents, things like that really making your listings stand out. If it's better photography, if it's better marketing in general for stuff. But generally speaking, we are kind of seeing that trend as well, where days on market are expanding a little bit. It's kind of a trend that's-- we were kind of in a goldlock zone for the last couple of years with rentals. Like it's been amazing and pre covid it wasn't ever really like that either. Like that we're kind of seeing the ebbs and flows of the market, and that's just natural in real estate. So, we're coming back to the time where people are like, kind of hunkering down and making sure that their properties are as good as they can be to really attract the best tenants for them. So while there might be a few extra days on market, there's a couple things you can do around there. Like Larry's saying, adding those personal touches in there. Setting up notifications so that as soon as someone gets to the property, you can still have that personal touch by making a phone call as soon as you can see they got into the property. Or if maybe some people are doing a few more in-person showings, if that's the case. Generally speaking, that's putting more time on the property as well, which, like we talked about, costs opportunity costs.  [00:20:00] If you got the team to do that, and that's kind of their role as a leasing agent or whatnot, great. They can have that personal touch and then go a little bit further with them. But if you're also focused on self showings having that additional personal touch, some additional marketing on the property or whatnot, I can kind of help draw that process out a little bit sooner. And really with our system, it. We really try to provide as much immediacy as possible. So when someone sees a listing on a site like Zillow, for instance they're clicking request information. We're sending them an email right away that they have the opportunity to come into Tenant Turner and click a link and schedule a tour right away. If they're calling into us, they're not going to a voicemail. They're going to be sitting there waiting three days for someone to respond to. I know that's a trend of the industry. A lot of people have massively filled inbox inboxes that they just can't handle. So tenant leads never hear back from anyone because they kind of pick and choose. We're responding to every single one of those leads as they come in and making sure that immediacy is really driving that engagement.  [00:20:59] So if we keep that engagement up for everyone the goal is that, generally speaking, that alone will really help drive. What's, I think there's a statistic out there? If you respond within five minutes, generally speaking, you're going to get 80% more acceptance in terms of a conversation. Yeah. There's that click or an actual phone call, things like that, like providing that immediacy is a massive, and it goes a long way for impressing tenant leads on the consumer side, but also in, in business. We all know B two B sales and even BDMs like calling their owners. As soon as you see a click on a website, you want to call them. So we want to keep that trend going on our side as well.  [00:21:33] Jason: Yeah, this is the TikTok generation man. They have attention spans of like two minutes, you know, it's like really short. So I love these ideas. So pushing owners to improve the property I think is a great strategy. Increasing your availability and your responsiveness and that immediacy, quick, beat, slow for sure in business. Increasing the ease Tenent Turner helps with. And then making sure that you are able to be super responsive within the first five minutes. So yeah. Love it. All right, cool. What else should we chat about related to scaling up your process during the busy season? Did we miss anything?  [00:22:12] Larry: We got it. I know typically the elephant in the room, so a lot of times, you know, self-guided tours is the golden child of, you know, why you should consider it and how it's helpful, whether it's busy or slow and this, that, and the other. But one of the things that we had is for people that aren't using it and it's like, "I would never consider that or I'm scared to use this or I can never get owner buy-in." And that's kind of always the elephant in the room. I know Tim, you have some very interesting data of, you know, while, you know, like anything in business there are inherent risks, but as business owners every day we are willing to kind of, you know, improve or, you know, try to tackle these risks. And there's usually a pot-- not all the time, but you know, a pot of gold can be waiting for you. So was there any data that you wanted to share, Tim?  [00:22:56] Jason: Before we get into that, let's kill that objection real quick. because I hear this all the time too. So I say, "Hey, maybe you should be using Tenant Turner or something like this," and they say, "well, I don't want to do lock boxes." And my response is, "you don't have to." like, there's a lot of benefits besides that piece. In fact, there's plenty of benefits besides that piece. And so maybe you can address that real quick and then we can talk about is that even really a valid concern or not? And are there markets that are better for lockbox versus others? Some are like, "I can never do that in my market. I'll have squatters all over the place." you know, they're concerned. So let's address that, that elephant in the room.  [00:23:34] Tim: Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, you guys know your properties best. You're going to know which areas might have a high potential for negativity happening. Whether it's someone coming in and stealing wires, the horror stories of people stealing appliances and stuff like that. At the end of the day, if someone wants to do something bad, A lockbox or a keyless lock isn't necessarily going to stop someone in that scenario, right? We all know areas where people aren't afraid to break a window and get in, steal a refrigerator. Like the fact that a property isn't known to be vacant is a big enough red flag alone that most people that want to do something nefarious will go ahead and do it. But at the same time on our side of things, if we can block as many of those instances as possible with our abilities to kind of keep track of known scammers and squatters and things like that. We've got some stuff built into our system, but really at the end of the day, if someone wants to do something bad, it's going to happen. But generally speaking, most people that are doing showings, that type of scenario, if you're, you know, your area, if you're doing your own kind of awareness inspections periodically and you're on top of the property yourself, we barely hear of any instances of negativity happening with those scenarios. Like self showings, we can come up with the horror stories, but at the end of the day, in our experience, they are really few and far between and we're not having major issues, at least more than what you would on average. See, with any property that's being marketed, it's vacant. Like that's, it's going to happen.  [00:24:56] Jason: And there's some serious advantages because, I would imagine the best defense, period, against all of those type of problems is just getting it leased out as quick as possible. Yep. It's decreasing vacancy, and so if a lockbox can help them get into it right away, get a showing right away, whatever, decreasing the vacancy time is probably your best, you know, defense.  [00:25:18] Sarah: Yeah. The other thing I'll add to this too, is if there are people who are kind of scoping out the property and they notice, hey, like every Tuesday at six o'clock people come and then that's it. They're not going to come at Tuesday at six o'clock. They're going to come at other times. Yeah. So if we do have a lockbox on it, and now we don't really know, like when people are going to come because they're coming whenever is like convenient for them. So it might be earlier in the morning or in the afternoon or late at night. We don't know for sure. There's not so much predictability in the schedule. So I think that's something that would help as well is if there's someone who's " Hey, that house over there is vacant. Let's like check that out." But they consistently see people in and out of it, that is a little bit of a deterrent as well, because you never know, like, "Hey, if I go over there because I want to steal that refrigerator, am I walking into someone who's already there? [00:26:14] Jason: Now you can not have a big old sign on the property out front that says, "Hey, this is vacant right now. Do you want to see this?" You know, but you can still market it online without like giving out the address until they're ready to do a showing probably.  [00:26:29] Larry: Yeah, so there's some kind of tips and tricks that we've found. So one thing is not advertising it as a self-guided tour. If you're going to use verbiage in the marketing description, use contactless showing. Because that could mean virtual tours, it could mean other things. But really for us, I like to describe ourselves as a closed loop system. because usually leads are only interacting with our platform if they find out through your website or through a syndication site. So it makes it much more harder to shop for homes because they really don't know, you know, but if they inquire, then that's when the automation will engage. Some interesting things, you know, kind of like Sarah said, one thing deterrent is they see activity, but you know, we find that a lead isn't going to put a government Id answer some questions and go through this process. Why would they do that when they could just go to the front door? You could go to YouTube and learn how to pick a lock and under five minutes, and then no one's going to know I'm on the radar. It's so much easier to do that. Especially in the age of TikTok. I'm sure there's a TikTok, within two minutes or less you'll learn how to pick a lock or pop open a lockbox or something like that too. [00:27:34] Sarah: Or break a window.  [00:27:35] Larry: Or break a window.  [00:27:37] Jason: Yeah, it's a little bit quicker probably. All right, cool. So, how can people get in touch with Tenant Turner and reach out to you guys?  [00:27:48] Larry: Yeah, so obviously if they want to learn a little bit about our services, tenantturner.com. My name's Larry, larry@tenantturner.com. Feel free to email me directly. I kind of deem myself as a software nerd so you know, any questions about whether you use this or not, that's fine. You know, I'm always happy to share tips and tricks of how to automate your process, so that's kind of how you learn some more.  [00:28:12] Tim: So Larry's on the sales side of things for tenant Turner. I'm on the marketing side too, so if you ever need any additional materials or data and statistics around the self showings, if you want to help market to your owners and whatnot, if you've already signed up with Tenant Turner, happy to kind of jump on that side of things. You can email me at tim@tenantturner.com. [00:28:26] Jason: Awesome. I'm sure that's a big part of it is really if they understand how to sell it to their clients, then that's probably the biggest hurdle. Is just being able to confidently say, here's why this is a good idea and how it's going to benefit you and to sell them on it. So, awesome. Well it's been great having you both here on the show. We appreciate Tenant Turner. We get great feedback on tenant Turner from our clients, so we've always felt very confident pushing our clients towards you as one part of their growth strategy and and I hope you guys have an awesome week.  [00:28:59] Larry: Thanks. You as well. We appreciate you guys and thanks for including us. [00:29:02] Jason: All right. So if you are a property management entrepreneur that is wanting to grow your business, reach out to Tenant Turner and make sure you reach out to DoorGrow. We are really good at helping our clients scale if you feel like you need more doors to be able to afford Tenant Turner or to be able to justify tenant Turner. We're really good at helping people do that. Anything else we should add? I don't think so. Let's tell them to join our Facebook group. Join our Facebook group.  [00:29:28] There you go. DoorGrow club.com. Join our Facebook group community. We have some free stuff in there. Until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.  [00:29:37] Jason Hull: You just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:30:04] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

“Labor is an event of the mind, the body, and the soul. We have to make sure that we are preparing in each of those elements so that we can then know at the end of the day that we are true to ourselves.”Sarah, one of the founders of Birth Made Mindful, joins Meagan on the podcast today to talk about how to mindfully approach motherhood in the way that is best for you, your body, your baby, and your family. She also shares her Cesarean and two VBAC stories!Sarah and her sisters created the Made Mindful platform to help women find their own innate power from within. All VBAC Link listeners will receive 30% off any of their courses by using the code “vbaclink” at checkout on www.birthmademindful.com.Additional LinksBirth Made Mindful WebsiteSarah's YouTubeSarah's TikTokHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsReceive 20% off on Needed Products The VBAC Link Facebook CommunityFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Hey mommas have you ever looked at the back of your prenatal vitamin and wondered if you are truly getting everything you need? I know I didn't when I was pregnant. Well today I wanted to share with you the #1 prenatal I suggest to all my doula clients, friends, family, and YOU women of strength. It's by a company called Needed. I honestly don't think I was the only one that didn't really understand just how important certain nutrients were for myself or or my growing baby. And that is why i love needed. They have gone above and beyond to create solid products not only that have the key nutrients but also have the optimal amount. Don't be overwhelmed picking a prenatal. Check out all Needes products, including their prenatals, pre/pro biotics, immune support and more at thisisneeded.com enjoy 20% off by using code VBAC20Meagan: Hello, hello Women of Strength. It is Wednesday and we have another great episode for you. Normally we have VBAC stories, but today we are going to be chatting about a lot of topics actually. We have our friend, Sarah. She is actually a VBAC mom and she has been on the podcast before so welcome, Sarah. Sarah: Thank you so much for having me today. Meagan: Thank you. Thank you. I'm so excited to have this discussion and this episode because it's something that truly we need to remember. I love sharing all of the VBAC stories of course. That's what this podcast is about, but it's also really good to get education and empowerment through other episodes. Review of the WeekWe are going to get into this episode after I share the Review of the Week. I'm going to tell you a little bit more about our friend, Sarah. This review is by spicyhotcurrie. I love that name. That's fun. It says, “The best education for all pregnant mamas.” I just love that so much because really, I mean, Sarah would you agree? At this podcast, we obviously talk about VBAC stories and how to empower people to make the best choices after Cesareans, but this really could be a podcast for all pregnant moms. Wouldn't you agree?Sarah: Absolutely. Meagan: Yes. We share so many tips. It's something that I wish I had when I was pregnant and preparing for my VBAC. Even if I didn't know if I wanted a VBAC, this would be a great podcast to listen to and see what options were out there and then even what led to Cesareans so I could learn how to avoid them. I love that topic. She says, “After one unmedicated hospital birth and one medicated hospital birth, my third birth ended in a physically and emotionally traumatic emergency Cesarean. The VBAC Link Podcast started soon after. I listened to them for over a year before getting pregnant. This podcast has made me laugh and cry and given me so much knowledge I didn't have even after three births and working in the postpartum unit at the hospital. This podcast has made me so excited for my VBAC in November. Thank you, Julie and Meagan.”This was back in 2020 so spicyhotcurrie, if you have your story to share, I would love to know. Contact us at info@thevbaclink.com. If you haven't left a review yet, we would love your review always anywhere you want to leave a review– Apple Podcasts, Google, or you can email us. Wherever it may be, we would love your review. Sarah From Made MindfulMeagan: Okay, Sarah. Welcome. Sarah: I'm just giddy to talk to you about birth today. Meagan: I am giddy to have you here to talk about birth. I don't want to share your story. I want to let you share your story, but I do want to tell everybody who you are. You are an amazing person, an amazing individual, and you're a mom of course. Of course, you're a mama of three now. Sarah: Three boys. Meagan: Yes, a boy mama. You're a birth coach, an educational coach, a doula as well which you guys, I'm just going to point out that Utah is amazing. I'm just saying that if you're in Utah and you're listening, you're spoiled. We've got some good doulas here. Let's see what else. You're the founder of Made Mindful, right?Sarah: That's right. Meagan: Made Mindful. Okay. Tell us more. Tell us more about that. Sarah: Made Mindful came out of all of our experiences, me and my two sisters, with the different births that we have experienced together. Meagan: It's Carly–Sarah: Carly and Christina. Meagan: Christina, yes. Carly and Christina. Sarah: That's right. Meagan: I love that you're all sisters. That's so cool.Sarah: We have our website, Birth Made Mindful. We want to encourage women and families to empower themselves with education, positivity, and most importantly, just believe that they have the strength within themselves to create the birth of their dreams. Meagan: Absolutely. I love that. It's so hard sometimes because it's so overwhelming. There's so much going on and we're getting so many opinions coming from all of the other places to know and you hear things like, “I wanted to do that but my body couldn't and this but I couldn't, and this but I couldn't,” so then we start doubting ourselves like, “Can I? Can I do that? Is that possible?” Don't you feel like that is happening all over the place? Sarah: It is. It's just an overwhelming amount of information that we have to sort through. I think that also adds confusion. When we can look inside ourselves, we can find out really what matters most important to our families and to us as mothers and blossoming mothers if we are first-timers. Knowing what our options are, knowing some of the medical events that could take place with birth, and then being able to be in tune with ourselves and our bodies to know how to proceed. Meagan: Absolutely. You have experienced very different experiences. Do you want to share just a little bit more about your experiences and what truly led you here?Sarah: I would love to. My first son was five years ago, his birth. My water broke prematurely. I wasn't in labor. After about 40 hours at the hospital, we had a Cesarean section. It wasn't an emergency at that time, but he was sunny-side up so I just wasn't having meaningful dilation. His Cesarean was necessary, but after that experience, I started looking back and just thinking, “I want to have a vaginal birth for my next birth.” I just didn't want to be in pain and have the recovery and some of the problems that stem from abdominal surgery right after birth. So I prepared a lot. I listened to your podcast. I just researched as much as I could when I was pregnant with my second son. It was right around COVID. His due date was March 20th, 2020 so about three days before his due date, my obstetrician let me know that she could no longer support me in a vaginal delivery. Meagan: Did she tell you why?Sarah: I share that entire story in Episode 132 so if you haven't had a chance to listen, it was just a remarkable story. I think it was mainly because of COVID. The hospital had updated their policies that all of the women in the queue for delivery that week and that month would either need to have an early induction or a repeat C-section and that they weren't going to be able to support VBACs. But because I armed myself with knowledge, I had gotten myself a doula, I just felt like that wasn't the route I wanted to go. I wanted to allow my body at least the chance for my first VBAC. I know that a lot of women even after having multiple Cesareans will attempt a VBAC but your chances of getting support in the medical system are a lot stronger the first time. So I knew that this was my window. I was actually able to find a midwife who took me on. This is just a couple of days before he is born. I ended up having a beautiful, redemptive VBAC at a birthing center. It wasn't short labor. He was actually also in a sunny-side-up position so it was about 30 hours. My wonderful, supportive midwife confirmed, “If you would have been in a hospital, they would have done another C-section in the amount of time it took you to dilate again with being sunny-side up and all of those twists and turns of our labor.” But we did have a VBAC and it was amazing. The feelings, the emotions, all of the energy that I felt, I literally wasn't tired for three days after his birth because all of those chemicals were appropriately working within my body. I was able to breastfeed and latch in a much easier way with that child so I knew that I wanted to start sharing my story and offer encouragement to other women. So in between his birth and then the birth of my next son which was about two years later is when my sisters and I put our knowledge together and created digital courses. We created affirmation cards and just decided that we were going to try to start sharing our message with all of our sisters and our community so that they could have great experiences in their birth. Meagan: Yeah. Sarah: For my third son, we actually delivered with that same midwife but I opted for a home birth. The reason why I wanted to have him at home was mainly because of tracking contractions. There's always that question, “When do I go to the hospital? Am I too early? Am I too late?” If you show up and you're only 3 or 4 centimeters dilated, are you then a burden on your medical staff? And they're starting the clock if you're in the hospital. So I thought, “I wonder if I was just at home if my body would relax enough that there wouldn't be any halting from my body.” I just said, “It doesn't matter how long it takes. I'm prepared to labor as long as this baby needs.” I also had made peace with the fact that if we needed to transfer to a hospital, I would not feel like a failure. I would approach that with the understanding that I was going to the hospital and utilizing the tools and the help that I might need if we did need a transfer because a lot of people are afraid of what a home birth means if there's a transfer. Most of the time, it's not an emergency if there's a transfer that's needed. Meagan: Yeah. Really, most of the time it's due to a hangup and there are resources at a hospital that aren't at home anymore. We've exhausted our resources. Maybe there is a little bit of Pitocin that is needed. I say needed, but it is something that could help and they've exhausted breast stimulation with the breast pump or maybe it's been a really, really long labor and we're just tired, and that epidural is something that really can help to actually have that final outcome that we were looking for. It's just going to be in a different place. But it's rarely an emergency and it's okay. It is okay to transfer. It's okay to make that choice. No failing or giving up. They don't go together. There's no failing. Sarah: Exactly. Meagan: Just because there's a change of plans doesn't mean there is failure involved. Sarah: Yeah. That terminology is so tricky when people consider a transfer from your home as a failure but most women just choose to transfer to the hospital before they plan to push their baby out. So his birth was remarkable. It was a few days after his due date again. I had started feeling a little bit anxious about when he would come. I decided that I needed to release all of that. I went swimming and I just told him, “I know that you're safe, but I also want you to come as soon as you're ready.” My labor started that night. I could sense that the contractions were ramping up, but I wanted to rest as much as possible. I didn't want to have the mindset that I needed to walk around or be upright because with my prior births, it had taken me a full day and I didn't want to feel exhausted myself. So at about 1:00 in the morning, I went into the guest room so I wasn't waking up my husband and I just tried to sleep in between my contractions and it was successful. I was able to listen to some meditations and to find that quiet comfort within my bed. With sunrise, the contractions started ramping up and after about one hour of steady contractions, I thought, “It's time to wake up my husband. It's time to let him know that things might be started.” So after observing me for a few minutes, he decided that we should call the midwife right there. I definitely didn't think that I was ready because I had really only been in what I would consider active labor for an hour, but when our midwife came to my home, I was 8 centimeters dilated and they were ready to fill up the birth pool and have me hope right in. It was just peaceful and quiet. My midwife and her team almost seemed like they were just working in synchrony in the background. There wasn't any coaching. There wasn't any interruption to what I was experiencing and having my husband and I there. We did send our toddlers off to Grandma's house so that we could just have the house to ourselves. But it was amazing. I got in the birth tub and my water broke probably 20 minutes after that. And then after about 20 minutes of pushing, I was able to deliver him and just have that same concoction of hormones that just make you feel so elated, so happy, so grateful for your baby being born that immediately, any of those feelings of pain that come with pushing have gone and just being able to snuggle him there in my own home and be tucked in our own bed just minutes after. I felt like a home birth really was the birth of my dreams. I felt like a queen and it is what made me want to help encourage women to create the environment that they want so that they know that they are the leader of their birth. Yes. Oh, I love it. I love it. I love it.Meagan: I want to take a quick moment to hear about our partner Needed. The leading women's health supplement brand recommend by nutritionally trained practitioners. Needed was founded by two incredible mommas who were navigating their fertility journey. They were shocked to realize that 97% of women take prenatal vitamins, yet 95% of us are nutrient deficient. Is that not eye opening or what? Getting the right prenatal vitamin is super important. So how do we know what one is best. While most perinatal supplements include the bare minimum of the nutrients women and babies need, Needed has all of your needs covered from your prenatal vitamin, to pregnancy specific pre/pro biotic, immune lactation and nausea support, as well as supplements that help us with our protein needs, balancing our blood sugar, and helps with postpartum healing. Needed's Complete Plan delivers unparallel nourishment for every phase. Weather you are thinking of conceiving, pregnant, postpartum, or deeper into your mommy years like me, these supplements are amazing. I take the prenatal collagen protein every single day, and absolutely love it. Learn more about Neededs complete line of perinatal and women's health suppliants at thisisneeded.com use code VBAC20 for 20% off that is V-B-A-C-20 at thisisneeded.comMeagan: I really do love it. I really, really do. It's just so amazing. And it connects with me so well because of the same thing. After my second Cesarean, I learned more about doulas. The doula work just called to me. I was like, “This is what I want to do. I want to help people know that they can have different experiences.” One of the hardest things during our pregnancy journey is the preparation and knowing what preparation to do. There are so many things out there. You've prepared differently each time especially because you are preparing for different scenarios with different locations and stuff but are there any tips that you would have for birth prep in general and self-empowerment? How do you truly believe in your ability to do what you want to do and then create the environment to do that?Sarah: With my first son, I prepared with HypnoBirthing. I wanted to be able to find that meditative state so that I could move forward with an unmedicated birth but one of the disservices that the course instructor did for me was she said, “We're not going to study Cesareans because you're not going to have a C-section. We don't need to start focusing on that because it won't be an option.” So looking back, I would advise women to actually get as educated as they can with the medical system and know about inductions and know about options for inducing labor both natural and medical options regarding induction. But I also think one element that is most missing in the system is for our doctors or our providers to help us know that we have the power within us. We're not taught about the physiological process of birth so we don't understand that there are hormones within us and messages that our baby will signal to our body that it's time to start the process. Right? Knowing that our bodies are made to go through this and that everything is intended to stretch, I think that we can eliminate a lot of the fear that we have if we only believe that we will be successful with an epidural or with vacuum assistance. Just knowing that our bodies are made to birth our babies whatever size they come, whatever date they choose to arrive, that our bodies have the answers within them. I also think it's important to realize that the perception of pain is also internal. One thing that I have been learning a lot about is that our body only feels pain because of the messages that our brain then starts to comprehend. So if we begin to feel a contraction and our brain's message is, “This is wrong. This is bad. This has to stop immediately,” all of a sudden, we create an environment of tension and stress within us. This is the opposite feeling that we need in order for our baby to continue to dilate and for the baby to be born. So what I try to instruct women and families to focus on is that the contraction is the method by which the baby is going to continue to descend and it's the correct feeling that we should be having at the time. Now, I'm not saying it's easy. I'm not saying it's absolutely pain-free, but understanding that the waves are the only way for our uterus to contract and expel the baby then will give us power inside. We also have different pain-blocking receptors within our body. So as our contractions rise with each stage of labor as they start to get more intense through transition and then as we start to feel that natural urge to push, we have also been experiencing the counteracting force within ourselves of being able to block that pain. Then when our baby is born, having the skin-to-skin time completely erases all of those feelings that we had. So knowing that our bodies are perfectly designed to accommodate everything that we will experience gives us so much confidence that we can then proceed and we are able to labor as long as it takes. We are able to continue to breathe. One thing I like to think about as I'm experiencing a contraction, and one of the reasons I think that my labor was so much faster, was because every time I had a contraction, I would try to breathe as if I was allowing his head to push into my toes. I wasn't pushing, right? You're not supposed to push until you feel the urge to push, but I was allowing myself to think open thoughts so that my body could open and be in that state for cervical change but I was also trying to focus on the down and out of the baby being born.  When we have a contraction and we're not grounded or we're not prepared for those feelings or those really strong sensations, it's a lot harder for our bodies to then continue to progress in a way that is unhindered and allows us to feel safe and secure and that everything is a correct sensation. In both of my vaginal deliveries, I actually did not feel like transition was a stage of torment or suffering for myself. I know a lot of women say that they can start to feel when they are in transition. For me, that always came in the pushing element. When I felt that pressure, that's when I decided, “I really need to get grounded here because this is happening.” So for my third birth, I knew that the more that I can focus and feel what was happening inside of me and utilize those feelings to help push the baby, the sooner I can come through this situation. Right? Sometimes people talk about a hard scenario and they say, “The only way out is through.” That's another thing for labor where you have to go through all of those feelings. Meagan: Yeah and those feelings can be really intimidating, right? Really intimidating so through our prep, prepare for those feelings. Prepare for the way to change up your breath because there are those moments sometimes where it's like, “I don't know if I can do this,” and our shoulders raise and our faces tense. If we can breathe through that, breath is so incredibly powerful. It's so powerful. But if we can breathe through that, it can really, truly help. Just our breath alone and then like you were saying, how our mind relates to pain if we can change our mindset– this is totally not birth related but I am really big into cold water therapy like Wim Hof and all of the things. My husband and I converted our deep freezer into a cold plunge in our backyard and I will tell you, when I am in that, it's freezing. At 40 degrees, it's really cold, but when my mind connects to, “It is cold. It is cold. It is cold,” my whole body just trembles and I'm freezing. I'm telling myself, “It's so freezing.” I'm trying to work through it, but I can't. I'm just shaking. Then when I breathe and I'm like, “Okay. Calm down. You're okay. You're right here. You're strong,” and I start coming out of that space of fear and exactly what's happening if that makes sense– I'm telling myself that I am freezing. I am cold. I mean, I am cold but I'm also okay and I'm also going to get through this. It's crazy. I just did it with some friends and they witnessed it. They were like, “Wow. That's crazy.” I audibly have to say it out loud. I can't even just do it internally. They are like, “Wow. That is really cool.” It's the same with labor and with birth and all of these things. Sarah: Knowing that you are exactly where you need to be is what then will give your body confidence to do what it needs to do. I think that's why birth affirmations can be so positive because as we speak out loud, our brain believes what we say. So if you are in labor and you are saying, “I can't. I'm in pain. Make it stop,” all of a sudden your entire body starts to feel that tension and starts to feel that panic. But if we can use affirmations to say, “I am safe. I am secure. I am strong,” saying these things will then solidify to our bodies that that is how we feel. Meagan: Absolutely. Absolutely. I want to talk about changing plans and things like that. If we have a birth that is going another way which is maybe undesired, maybe a Cesarean or a repeat Cesarean. Maybe we're at home and we are transferring to the hospital or you wanted to go unmedicated and you're getting an epidural, I wanted to talk about the word failure and how impactful that word can be and how we have to offer ourselves grace. Do you have anything to say about that? Sarah: Absolutely. I think the first thing to do is to understand that when you share a birth story that didn't have the outcome of your desire, a lot of people will say, “At least there's a healthy baby. At least there's a healthy mom.” While those things are most important and unfortunately, the opposite can happen at birth. It's devastating. We also have to know that our mindset can control how we feel about an experience. So just as I shared that I had made peace knowing that a transfer to the hospital would not equal that I'm a failure, knowing that you have done everything that is within your power to achieve your main goal will help you then to feel like you've had the most beautiful birth. Sometimes I think that it's more about just knowing that you're respected and knowing that your wishes were granted during birth, that you had a birth partner or a support team that listened to you, and that made you feel like the goddess that you are in birth. Meagan: And heard. Sarah: And heard. Sometimes what we want is we want that epidural or we want that induction and we have reasons within ourselves knowing why we want the birth that we want. When we can create an environment within ourselves that then fosters that, that's when our birth feels like it's unstoppable. That's when we know that we have achieved everything that we set out to do. I think one important way to prepare in that regard is to do what I call a fear release. When we're thinking about all of the options that can go wrong, we tend to stop that thought immediately because we don't want to think about a worst-case scenario. We don't want to fill our minds or our bodies with that negativity but if we can approach it before it happens and we can actually say, “What is my plan? If my water breaks before my labor has started, what is my plan? If dilation isn't happening at a good rate, what are my options? Can I get a Foley bulb? Is Cervadil an option while I am laboring?” we can actually walk down the path of each of our fears and we will start to see that we have the same amount of knowledge essentially that our providers have in what paths would be available. For me, I was writing everything down and every single thing that I would feel prior to birth. If I was feeling frustrated, if I was feeling scared, if I was feeling nervous about adding another child, “How am I going to take care of all of their needs?” all of those things are real and can feel overwhelming. If we don't have the support externally, then we have to find where we stand within ourselves. Labor is an event of the mind, the body, and the soul. We have to make sure that we are preparing in each of those elements so that we can then know at the end of the day that we are true to ourselves and that we have listened to the promptings that come and that we follow what makes us feel like we are driving the car that will get us to the destination of our baby's birth. Meagan: Yes. So in saying that, we have to act on the promptings that we feel and sometimes it may be something different than what's being suggested. For a long time in birth, I didn't realize that I could say no or could say, “I would like to do this,” or “Talk to me about this,” and have that discussion and that active conversation about what I was feeling. With my second C-section, I didn't want to go down to the OR. I didn't want to have a repeat Cesarean and I didn't feel like I could say much more than, “Okay, let's go.” So I want to talk about that. We have these feelings and then how do we act on them? Obviously finding that supportive provider and having that supportive team, but then how do we find the courage within ourselves to say, “Hold on. I hear you. I hear what you're saying, but I would like to talk about this,” or “My heart is telling me this. Can we talk about that?”Sarah: I think the first step that we take is knowing our rights. Just like you said, if we have a provider that is suggesting an intervention. Maybe it's a position that doesn't feel comfortable to our bodies. We have to know that we are allowed to say no and that when informed consent is a part of our birth plan, we can always ask them what the options are. So if someone comes in and says, “Your labor hasn't progressed for 4 hours. You don't have anymore dilation. It's time for Pitocin,” we can say, “What are my options? What might happen if I do not choose to have Pitocin at this time? Is it something that we can look into 2 hours from now?” Because I have had a hospital birth that ended in a C-section and then my other two births outside of a hospital, I recognize that it's not always as easy as we might think if our providers are–Meagan: Pushing back. Sarah: If they're pushing back and if they have a protocol that they have to follow based upon their hospital. Those are put in place to protect them as providers with liability and also to protect mothers and babies, right? No doctor would want to take a risk for a mother and a baby but when we feel like the request that we have should be honored and that we can ask those questions to then receive a response that we are able to then come together and work as a team. Knowing that everybody who is there really does want the best for you and your baby, knowing that you might offend someone by letting them know that, “Hey, I don't want this to happen at this time,” but that you have the right to do that and that if needed, you can actually switch providers. For me, that was very scary. Meagan: A couple of days before. Sarah: It was a stressful event to have to be finding someone. I went to a few other obstetricians and they said, “You're far too late. You're too far along in this pregnancy to be coming to me.” That's when I decided that even if having a VBAC outside of the hospital presented an added element of risk because I might have to transfer to a hospital if something went awry, I knew that was the route that I needed to take in order to achieve what I felt like was my right to attempt a VBAC. I love the work that you're doing because so many women, as they are deciding if they should have a C-section or if they can try for a VBAC, find that there are roadblocks that are in our way. I don't want to say all of the time, but a lot of the time, our providers want the very best for us, but some of their suggestions might not be what helps us achieve a VBAC. One example I can think of is an early induction. Right? We know that the highest chance for a VBAC is for spontaneous, vaginal delivery to occur and yet we are also under pressure for our babies to be delivered by 40 weeks. Meagan: Or 39 even sometimes. Sarah: Or 39. And just as a woman's menstrual cycle is not always a 5-day event or our cycles aren't always the same amount of days– Meagan: 14 days apart, yeah. Sarah: Exactly, that maybe you knew exactly the date you conceived or you had IVF so you knew exactly when your egg was implanted, it's very hard to know if that 40-week date is accurate. Both of my VBAC babies were born at 40 weeks and 3 days. To me, that's interesting because I think, “Maybe my body is regulated enough that that is just when my babies are developed.” You know? So knowing that if a provider is telling us, “You have to have your baby by 40 weeks,” we can say, “What are my options if I choose? Can I take a non-stress test after the 40-week mark to find out how my amniotic fluid is doing and to make sure my baby is healthy and strong?” Meagan: Yeah. Sarah: And if you do find that there are complications, then there is no regret when you have the induction at that time. Meagan: Right. Yep. Sarah: Or when you seek medical assistance or when you elect to have that repeat Cesarean because you knew that your wishes were honored and that you were able to be number one. Meagan: An active participant of your birth. Being an active participant in your birth is so important. Like she said, if you choose an elective Cesarean, that's okay because you were a part of that decision making or if you choose to be induced or if you choose to keep going or whatever it may be, being an active participant in your birth can truly impact the way you reflect in your postpartum experience.Last but not least, I would love to talk about the postpartum too. I think we would both agree that a lot of the times– I don't want to say this with everybody preparing to give birth, but I feel like it's very much so in the VBAC world, we are so focused on how to get a VBAC, a vaginal birth after a Cesarean, and how to have this end result that we forget about what comes after the birth whether it's a vaginal birth or Cesarean. We are so focused on how to get this birth and this outcome that we forget what happens in that last period. Sarah: Exactly because our bodies know how to birth a baby without the knowledge that we possess. Even after we gain all of this knowledge, it really is our body's job and our baby's job to be born. But the postpartum period then falls all the way back on the families. So if you're not prepared, if you don't understand what will be happening physically within your body and how long it takes to heal, you could find yourself underwater at that time. Your baby requires food every few hours so if you're attempting breastfeeding and you're having struggles with breastfeeding, all of a sudden it feels like the postpartum period is harder than the birth for a lot of women. We have a separate course for the postpartum period. We call it “The Fourth Trimester”. In it, we dive deep into sleep both for parents and for infants. We talk about breastfeeding or feeding your baby if you elect formula. We go into postpartum depression and anxiety and really just try to help women understand that the time to prepare for the postpartum period is during pregnancy. It's not just the 38th week of pregnancy because your baby might come at that time. I remember with my first son, my hospital bag wasn't even packed when my water broke because it was in that 38th week and I thought I still had a few more to go. Everybody said that first-time moms always go overdue. So even knowing that the La Leche League offers free consults over the phone at any time of the night or day, knowing that alone is just a resource that we can use. I have to tell you for my third birth, I thought, “Okay. We will just have this set. Everything is going to go swimmingly,” and my little baby boy just was not latching correctly which causes so much pain as you're trying to nurse but it also caused one of my breasts to be engorged in a way that he wasn't extracting the milk but I was still experiencing those letdowns. So after a few days of just struggling– and I had met with the hospital lactation consultant– and feeling like, “I don't have the resources I need,” I met with women from the La Leche League multiple times and finally, one of the pieces of advice that she gave us was the turning for my son. She mentioned, “When you sit down to feed your baby, you're not going to think of it as a feeding session. You are going to try latching.” She actually gave me a number. She said, “I want you to try 20 times to latch.” I thought, “That is way more than I have been trying.” I usually start to feel defeated after the 5th or 6th time of trying to get this all to work. Then she said, “Your baby might be angry. Your baby might be hungry, so feed them an ounce of milk from the bottle or spoon feed however you want to feed them, and then try again 20 times on the other side.” I cannot tell you what a difference this made knowing that I was going to sit down and try 40 times to latch my baby. After the 8th attempt, he latched and we never had problems again. All that it took was for me to change my mindset as far as what I expected. Right? So even though I was an experienced mom, I had breastfed before, my little baby is just learning this for the first time. He's awfully small. He has the reflexes to suck, but he needs to be trained just as much as I do. We had to come together and work through that. I don't think that I could have made it happen without the support of the La Leche League. A lot of the time I think, “There are always excuses,” when we're in the postpartum period when we're tired or we don't have a store open when we need something and Walmart is closed at 11:00 and all of a sudden, you're having a fight with your partner in the middle of the night because you're not prepared so knowing just the amount of supplies that you're going to need and how long you're going to bleed after birth, all of these little details can be really overwhelming. Thank heavens that we have more people talking about it. We have companies that are responding to these needs. I think that we have more individuals offering support at this time where they say, “Oh, I”m just going to buy you that gift basket that has all of the support that you'll need.” Having a friend that can bring over their old nursing bras that they're not using anymore so that you're just ready to go with the supplies that you need, can make your postpartum period feel like you are off to a great start. Meagan: Absolutely. There was something you had mentioned too, and this goes for birth, where you were like, “I never had problems before. I nursed my other babies just fine and this baby's brand new and a new experience.” That goes with all things in life and with birth and postpartum. Just because we birthed this way or this is how our birth went or this is how or breastfeeding journey or this is how my postpartum went, doesn't always mean that we shouldn't prepare for the next baby and the next birth and the next postpartum. It doesn't always go exactly the same. Then also, remember these babies. Yes. Is it instinctual? Yes. They know where to get milk but again, their mouths are different. Everything is different so it can change so having patience and getting to that spot where you get to your nursing station, you take a deep breath in, you are taking a deep breath out, and you try 40 times. You are trying and not letting number three get so infuriating because your baby is going to feel that too. Your baby is going to feel that stress. It's the same thing in birth where if we have someone bring in some stressful feelings, we're going to all react to that. Our bodies react so remember to find your breath, find what you need to do, and have the patience to walk through that.Sarah: The reason we named our company Birth Made Mindful was because the word mindful in and of itself just means that you are taking in everything around you and you are allowing yourself to feel without judgment what is happening. It's the hardest thing whether you are in birth or whether you are having a challenging experience as a mother, just know that you have enough time to pause, you have enough time to think, and to really find out what answer feels right to you. What is your heart telling you? What is your mind telling you? Can those two things come together in a way that then you can make a decision that will empower you? I've been writing the book for our company, “Birth Made Mindful”, and it has just been an amazing process of going even a level deeper than just a digital course to explain to women that they have the strength within and that each of us is powerful. We are champions. I love the phrase “birth warrior” but I don't want anybody to feel like they have to have their sword and their shield as they go into birth. We want it to be more of a collective feeling where all of us are working together so that we can have an experience that will then launch us into motherhood or maybe it's our second child so launching us into having multiple children in a way that will really give us vibrancy. It gives us energy. It gives us meaning in motherhood and the support that we know that we can do it. It really does come from having an understanding of where we are at inside and allowing anything that doesn't feel congruent, that we can work through those things and we can then find out where our true passions lie and make sure that we honor ourselves and honor our desires. Meagan: Our intuition. Oh, well tell everybody where they can find more about your courses and your blogs and hopefully soon, your book. Sarah: Yes! We are at birthmademindful.com and most of our social media handles are at Made Mindful. That way we can cover Motherhood Made Mindful as well as we continue to grow our course offerings and continue to try to help our community find joy in birth and motherhood. That is our mission to have every family feel like they are armed with knowledge and that they have all of the support that they need to take on the most important event of their lives. Meagan: Absolutely. Thank you so much for sharing a little bit more about your other birth story and sharing these tips with the listeners. It really is so important to prepare our mind, our body, and our soul for all of the experiences. Obviously, we know that things happen sometimes and there are going to be unexpected things that come but even through preparing and being in that space and taking that time to say, “Wait, what is happening?” just processing it in the moment and having the question be asked can help you as well for after. I love that you talked about doing the fear release. We talk about doing the fear release too. Sometimes we don't realize that we have traumas because we don't look at it as a super traumatic experience but then as we walk through our birth and things, we realize, “Oh, that might be a traumatic thing I need to process. That's a fear,” or “Maybe it's not traumatic but it's a fear of mine. It's enough to hang me up.” So it's important to walk through these situations as well. I think it's awesome that you offer the two courses. Postpartum. Obviously, I love VBAC and I love the prep but there's so much to postpartum that is just forgotten about so I think it's really important that we talk more about that so thank you so much. Sarah: Absolutely. We want your listeners to get a discount when they come and buy your courses. So they enter VBACLINK into any of our courses, then they'll get 30% off of both of those courses if they want to come to check it out. Meagan: Wow. That is amazing. Sarah: We just hope to continue to provide education, knowledge, and support to families. Like I said, birth is a transformative event. It's the day that your baby is born but it's also the day that a mother is born. In this day and age, we need all of the help that we can get. Meagan: Absolutely. Thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today. Sarah: Thank you so much for having me. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan's bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Welcome to this Aphasia Access Aphasia Conversations Podcast. My name is Janet Patterson. I am a Research Speech-Language Pathologist at the VA Northern California Healthcare System in Martinez, California, and a member of the Aphasia Access Podcast Working Group. Aphasia Access strives to provide members with information, inspiration, and ideas that support their efforts in engaging with persons with aphasia and their families through a variety of educational materials and resources. I am the host for today's episode that will feature Dr. Sarah J. Wallace from Queensland, Australia. These Show Notes accompany the conversation with Dr. Wallace but are not a verbatim transcript. In today's episode you will hear about: clinical meaningfulness and research wastage: defining and addressing, minimal important change: defining and measuring, four “Monday Morning Practices” to create clinically meaningful outcomes.     Dr. Janet Patterson: Welcome to our listeners. Today I am delighted to be speaking with Dr. Sarah J. Wallace from the University of Queensland. In this episode we will be discussing the topic of operationalizing treatment success: what it means, the research efforts supporting this idea, why it is important to think about as we plan and deliver aphasia treatment, and suggestions for implementation in daily clinical practice. Dr. Wallace is an NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow, NHMRC Senior Research Fellow in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of Queensland in Australia. She is also a Certified and practicing Speech Pathologist. Her research interests include communication disability in ageing and enabling and measuring meaningful change in language and communication impairment in individuals with post-stroke aphasia. She uses qualitative and mixed methods to explore the lived experience of communication disability and works in partnership with consumers and clinicians to co-produce clinical interventions and methodological approaches that support the production of meaningful outcomes.   Among her interests in aphasia assessment and rehabilitation is a focus on measurement of aphasia and rehabilitation outcomes, in particular, outcomes that are real and are meaningful to persons with aphasia. Sarah led the ROMA group, Research Outcome Measurement in Aphasia, a group that has published three papers reporting efforts to identify standard outcome measures used in aphasia research. In addition, with colleagues across the world, she published a paper examining methods of operationalizing success in aphasia treatment in research and daily clinical practice. Foremost in this body of work is what I perceive to be Sarah's desire to bring together ideas from persons with aphasia and their family members, assist clinicians and researchers to identify effective and efficient rehabilitation techniques, and to measure treatment outcome in a relevant and scholarly rigorous manner.   Welcome to Aphasia Access Conversations, Sarah, and thank you for joining me today.   Dr. Sarah Wallace: Thanks, Janet, for this invitation.   I would like to start today by acknowledging the traditional owners of the lands from which I'm joining today, the Turrbal and Yuggera people, and pay my respects to their ancestors and their descendants who continue cultural and spiritual connections to country.   Janet: Thank you very much. I appreciate that acknowledgement.   Sarah, throughout your career, you have published papers focusing on aspects of aphasia rehabilitation, many of which explore the topic of measuring and standardizing outcomes in aphasia rehabilitation. How did you become interested in exploring this aspect of aphasia?   Sarah:  Before I completed my PhD, I worked first clinically, as a speech pathologist, and later in a government policy role in the area of aged care quality and safety. I really loved both of these roles for different reasons. As a clinician, I could make a difference at an individual level. But with the government role, I realized the huge impact you can have when you're influencing practice from a systems level. So, when I went on to complete my Ph.D., I really knew that I wanted to do something big picture. At the time, there had been a few big studies coming out with no results. There was a lot of talk about how important it is to get research design right. Then as part of my work at the time, I was reading the World Health Organization, World Report on Disability, and that's where I really started learning about this concept of research wastage and the importance of having a really considered approach to the way we measure outcomes when you want to use data efficiently beyond an individual study. That really appealed to me, particularly given that, within aphasia, we tend to have small sample sizes and really need to make the most of the data that we collect.   Janet: Sarah, we often hear the term clinically meaningful in relation to aphasia outcomes. How would you define that term from the perspective of a person with aphasia? And also, from the perspective of aphasia clinicians and researchers?   Sarah:  This is an excellent question. This is something that I was really interested in during my Ph.D. It's this idea of what is a meaningful outcome. And who actually gets to decide that? And are we measuring what matters to the people who live with aphasia, and the clinicians who work with them? I remember reading at the time, and one of my favorite quotes is from a paper by a researcher called Andrew Long. He says, in practice what actually gets measured depends on who wants the data, and for what purpose. I really think that the idea of clinically meaningful depends on who you're asking, and why you're asking. As an example, in the studies that we conducted with people with aphasia and their family members, they thought improved communication was really important. But they also identified a range of outcomes that related to participation, to attitudes, to psychosocial well-being. But then things change when you look at a different stakeholder group. We also spoke to clinicians and managers around the world, and they identified a range of outcomes. But the really interesting part was that improved language itself wasn't actually considered essential. The top outcome that they came up with actually related to family members, that they understand how to communicate with the person with aphasia. I think what it comes down to is the message that I've really tried to share from my research is that different outcomes matter to different people. And we can measure them in so many different ways. And that this is something that we really have to think carefully about.   Janet: Listening to your responses to these first two questions, I can feel the energy! I can feel this passion looking at aphasia rehabilitation from a larger perspective, outside the actual treatment that gets delivered, and thinking about how we make sure that our treatment is the right thing, and is measuring the right thing, whatever, as you say, the right thing is. It depends on who's looking for the data. You've maintained that focus of how can we become a better entity, better clinicians, if you will, at the broader scope? Does that make sense to you?   Sarah: Yeah, it does, and that idea really resonates with me. I think that's definitely been a feature of the work I've done and the work that I continue to do. It's very focused on collaborative efforts and how we can make the most of what we have, so that we can ultimately improve outcomes for people with aphasia.   Janet: I do think we need to pay attention to this. We cannot just assume that if we give a test pre and post treatment, it is a meaningful outcome to a person with aphasia or to their care partners or to a third-party payer.   Sarah, you have led the ROMA group, that is Research Outcome Measurement in Aphasia. As I mentioned earlier that group published three papers describing standardized assessment measures suggested for use in aphasia rehabilitation outcome studies. Would you briefly describe the genesis of the idea for this work and the studies the group has published?   Sarah: Following on from what I mentioned earlier, this was during my Ph.D. Once I had this idea that I wanted to do something to help reduce research wastage in aphasia, I started reading more about approaches to standardizing outcome measurement and came across the work of the Comet Initiative, which is a group that brings together people who are interested in the development of standardized sets of outcomes, which they refer to as Core Outcome Sets. There's this idea that a Core Outcome Set is essentially the minimum outcomes that should be measured in treatment studies of a particular condition. And that really appealed to me. So, we went from there, we conducted a series of studies looking at different stakeholders, gathering thoughts and perspectives about what an important outcome actually is. We conducted a scoping review of outcome measurement instruments so that we could try and match those outcomes to available tools. And then we've had a number of consensus meetings, where we've tried to pair those two things together.   Janet: I think the work of the ROMA group is important, and being part of that group, it's exciting to watch the minds of people all over the world, contribute their various perspectives, and have discussions about the different measures and the value of the measures. While I think it's wonderful to work at this level, this broad level of perspective, at some point, it has to inform our daily clinical practice. How do you see that happening?   Sarah: Yeah, that's a really good question. Essentially, we conduct treatment research so that we can help clinicians and people with aphasia and their families to make informed decisions about treatments. What's going to help? What's the best treatment for a particular issue and for a particular person? To answer these questions, researchers need to measure the effects that a treatment has on a person, what we refer to as outcomes. When we're measuring different outcomes in different ways it makes it harder to compare data, to combine it across studies, and to draw strong conclusions about which treatments work best.   Core outcomes also need to be relevant, and this is the other part that has been really exciting to me. They should capture results that are important to people who live with that condition. Ultimately, I think that the clinical relevance of the ROMA Core Outcome Set lies in what it is hopefully doing - helping to produce the best evidence that we can get for aphasia treatments, so that those treatments can then be implemented into practice in order to improve the lives of people with aphasia and their families.   Janet: I think that those papers should be required reading for every speech-language pathologist dealing with people with aphasia, and also other rehabilitation professionals, because it helps if we can all be thinking in the same way, as you said, to think about treatment candidacy and does one treatment work better, or for a specific person. or someone with a particular aphasia profile, than another kind of treatment? How do we make good clinical decisions for our patients? That's exactly, I think, what you're saying.   I mentioned also earlier that with several colleagues, you recently published a paper titled Operationalizing Treatment Success in Aphasia Rehabilitation. That paper was published in the journal, Aphasiology. I am a great fan of that paper and would like to begin by asking you why it would be important, in your mind, to operationalize treatment outcomes, given the variability that we see among aphasia patients.   Sarah: Thanks, Janet. And yeah, and this is a great paper. It was led by Caterina Breitenstein and other researchers from the Collaboration of Aphasia Trialists. This paper is really trying to answer the question, “What is a successful outcome from treatment?” What are the ways in which we can actually measure that treatment success? This is such an important question because research will end in clinical practice and so much hinges on this decision? Whether a treatment is successful is going to depend on how we define success and whether we can measure that success in a way that can actually be captured.   Janet: Sarah, in light of your thinking about the different stakeholders, how might operationalizing treatment success differ for the various stakeholder groups that you've identified? That is, people with aphasia, family members, clinical and other medical professionals, medical administrators, and aphasia researchers?   Sarah: This is really that idea that different outcomes are important to different people. If we think about this from a societal perspective, or from a healthcare funders perspective, any treatment that's provided as part of clinical care needs to be cost effective. So that might be something that from a funders point of view is a really important outcome. For clinicians, the ability for someone to take part in conversations and to communicate in different settings and roles is something that, through my research, was identified as an important treatment outcome. Then from the perspective of people with aphasia, not surprisingly, it's improved communication. But it's all these other things as well. It's being able to participate in a conversation. It's having a sense of recovered normality and a feeling of autonomy and independence. So again, I really think it's the idea that it really depends on who you're asking, and the perspective that they're coming from.   Janet: Your comments make me think about work done by Jackie Hinckley and others about stakeholders being part of deciding research questions or research directions. It also makes me think about work done by Michael Biel and others about motivation and engagement. All of these, I think, have a bearing on the research or the clinical enterprise. Are people engaged? Are they willing to commit time and resources to a rehabilitation enterprise because they see value in it, and because they see that there's a likelihood of a good outcome. I believe that what you're doing in terms of thinking about operationalizing helps move us along in that direction.   Sarah: Absolutely. I think that's a really important point, that if someone can't see the relevance of what they're working on in therapy, for example, then they're not going to engage in that process. It really starts with goal setting, and really identifying, working with a person to identify, goals which are really going to be functionally relevant to them and to their day-to-day life. I think if you can get that part right, then everything else follows on from that.   Janet: In your paper, you and your colleagues describe the concept of minimal important change, as a way of determining clinically relevant improvement on an outcome measure, considering the average statistically significant change across groups, as well as statistical significance at the individual level. Can you unpack that concept for us and describe how it relates to daily clinical practice?   Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. This is a really exciting idea, I think. Basically, minimal important change, and it is called different things, but this is the term that we've chosen to use, is the smallest change score above which an outcome is experienced by someone as being relevant or meaningful. I really love this idea, because what we're essentially doing is applying qualitative meaning to quantitative change on an outcome measure. To put this in an example, what this might actually look like, what we're asking is, for example, if I do a Western Aphasia Battery, and then do it again, how many points would actually tell me that that person had experienced a level of meaningful change. So that's what we're trying to work out to determine these benchmarks for meaningful change. We've actually recently received funding for this work, which is really, really exciting. We're going to be undertaking a project, where we use an anchor-based method to establish minimal important change scores for the measures that are in the ROMA Core Outcome Set.   Janet: That makes a lot of sense, because I know in the paper, there are some formulas and statistical representations and discussions that might not be easily familiar to some of our listeners. It was a tough read in some parts of your paper, for sure.   Sarah: Yeah, it is. It's probably not the sort of paper that you sit down and read from start to finish, I think. Some of these concepts are complicated, and they are a bit dense, but I sort of see that paper almost as a reference guide. I think it's the sort of thing that you can come back to, and it does, you know, tend to make more sense over time.   Janet: You did give us one example about operationalizing outcomes with the Western Aphasia Battery and minimal important change. Are there a couple of other examples drawn from this paper that you might share, bringing it to the level of our daily clinical practice?   Janet: Sure. Well, I think, overall, one of the really nice things this paper does, is it actually explains that you can determine treatment success in a number of different ways. We go through concepts around, what approach would we take if we're trying to work out does this treatment work for this particular population, and how well does it work? Then we have different approaches where we're looking at who does it work for, looking at individual change on outcome measures. It really walks you through approaches for group level analysis, looking at mean differences between groups in research trials, versus approaches for determining individual therapy response and outcomes, like minimal important change, and like smallest detectable change.   Janet: Is there an idea or a thought, from this paper and from your work in thinking about operationalizing outcomes that you might give to our listeners that they can put into practice on Monday morning in their clinical practice?   Sarah: Absolutely. This is something I've given a lot of thought about recently, because I think it's one thing to have a very theoretical sort of paper, and to think about the minutiae of all of these issues, but I think for clinical practice it comes down to probably about four different things. (One) I mentioned earlier, I really believe that meaningful outcome measurement starts with shared goal setting. You need to work with your clients to really set meaningful goals that are relevant to them, that they are invested in, and that are going to help them to achieve the outcomes that are important to them.   (Two) The next thing I think, is thinking about, “I have these goals.” We have Clinical Practice Guidelines, we have research evidence, and I would encourage clinicians to use those resources to then really think, “Well, which treatments do we know are effective? Which treatment is most likely to work for the person that I have sitting in my clinic?”   (Three) The next part is when we really get to the measurement part of it, which is really thinking about what you want to measure. Thinking about those goals, thinking about your treatment, where would you expect change to happen following that treatment? Are you looking for a change in function? Or in a behavior? Or is it a feeling, is it confidence that you're trying to change or, someone's emotional wellbeing or an attitude? What is it that you're actually looking to change? (Four) Once you've determined what you want to measure, it's then thinking about what's the most appropriate way of measuring that? For something like confidence, the best way to measure that is that it really has to come from the person themselves. It's a PROM (Patient Reported Outcome Measure), it's patient reported, it's self-report. But there are many other ways that we can measure things: performance on a task; a report from a caregiver or significant other; it could be a clinician rating or report. It's really then thinking about what's the best way of measuring this? There are all these resources out there like the Shirley Ryan Ability Lab, or Stroke Engine. There are websites where they break these measures down and can give you some information about their psychometric properties. Do they measure what they say they measure? Is this tool reliable? Is it sensitive enough to actually pick up change? I think if you can consider all those things, then you're well on the way to successful measurement.   Janet: That's a tall order! But I think it's a good order. Perhaps if we started Monday morning with just one of those things, and felt comfortable implementing shared goal setting for example, and that became an easy-to-do, relevant part of our clinical work, then we might move on to the other points that you're making and gradually incorporate them.   Sarah: Absolutely. I think at a basic level make sure your goals match your outcome measures. Make sure you're measuring what you're actually trying to change, I think is the basic message.   Janet: Sarah, that sounds like a pearl of wisdom to me. What I would like to ask you as we draw this interview to a close, reflecting on your career beyond the ROMA papers and this paper that we've been talking about, operationalizing outcome measures, and reflecting on your research and clinical career, you've just dropped one pearl of wisdom. Are there any others or lessons learned that you would like to share with our listeners?   Sarah: Yeah, sure. Thinking about my career sort of in total, one of the real highlights of it has been collaboration. I think working together is my other pearl of wisdom, so to speak. I think when we work together and we collaborate, we use our efforts to the best, and in the most efficient way possible, we can reduce research wastage, and we can really put our combined efforts towards improving the lives of people with aphasia. Me personally, I'm involved in a group called the Collaboration of Aphasia Trialists and they have a brilliant website. They're a global network of aphasia researchers, with a lot of resources on their website, which are intended for clinicians to use. They have a particular emphasis on multilingual assessment and outcomes and treatment, which is relevant to all of us in the world that we live in. We're often seeing really diverse populations in the clinic. So, I think yeah, that's my other pearl.   Janet: Sarah, I am an ardent recycler and believe in reduce, reuse, recycle. You've mentioned twice now in our chat, about reducing research and clinical wastage. I think that's a great phrase I want to remember, so that we're not continuing to reinvent the wheel, or spending time and money and resources doing things over again, and wasting, I thank you for that term and that idea.   Sarah, thank you also for being my guest, and the guest of Aphasia Access, for this episode of Aphasia Conversations. I enjoyed our conversation, and I will also say, I think we could probably continue to talk for hours about several other topics, especially related to motivation and engagement and measurement, but we'll stop for now. I learned a lot of new things in reading to prepare for our discussion and also listening and talking with you. I think that your work in aphasia rehabilitation and change measurement is important, very important, not just from an academic point of view, or a third-party payer or funding point of view, but most importantly from the patient's point of view, so that we are delivering the best, most effective treatment we can in the most efficient manner. So, thank you for being my guest today.   Sarah: Thank you for having me, it's been a pleasure.   Janet: I also would like to take a moment to thank all of you, our listeners, for your continuing interest in Aphasia Access conversations. As a reminder, check the Show Notes for today's episode for any references or resources mentioned in today's podcast. For more information on Aphasia Access, and to access our growing library of materials, go to www.aphasia.access.org. If you have an idea for a future podcast topic, please email us at info at aphasia access.org. Thank you again for your ongoing support of Aphasia Access                               References, Links, and Podcasts References Biel, M., Enclade, H, Richardson, A., Guerrero, A. & Patterson, J.P. (2022). Motivation in aphasia rehabilitation: A scoping review. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 31,2421-2443. https://doi.org/10.1044/2022_AJSLP-22-00064 Breitenstein, C., Hilari, K., Menahemi-Falkov, M., L. Rose, M., Wallace, S. J., Brady, M. C., Hillis, A. E., Kiran, S., Szaflarski, J. P., Tippett, D. C., Visch-Brink, E., & Willmes, K. (2022). Operationalising treatment success in aphasia rehabilitation. Aphasiology. https://doi.org/10.1080/02687038.2021.2016594 Hinckley, J., Boyle, E., Lombard, D. & Bartels-Tobin, L. (2014) Towards a consumer-informed research agenda for aphasia: preliminary work, Disability and Rehabilitation, 36:12, 1042-1050, https://doi.org/10.3109/09638288.2013.829528  Long, A. F., Dixon, P., Hall, R., Carr-Hill, R. A., & Sheldon, T. A. (1993). The outcomes agenda: Contribution of the UK clearing house on health outcomes. Quality in Health Care, 2 49–52. https://doi.org/10.1136/qshc.2.1.49 Wallace, S. J., Worrall, L., Rose, T., Le Dorze, G., Breitenstein, C., Hilari, K., Babbitt, E.… Webster, J. (2019). A core outcome set for aphasia treatment research: The ROMA consensus statement. International journal of stroke : official journal of the International Stroke Society, 14(2), 180–185. https://doi.org/10.1177/1747493018806200 Wallace, S.J., Worrall, L. Rose, T.A., Alyahya, R.S.W., Babbitt. E., Beeke. S., de Beer, C….Le Dorze, G. (under review). Measuring communication as a core outcome in aphasia trials: Results of the ROMA-2 international core outcome set development meeting. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders.   Links Collaboration of Aphasia Trialists.  https://www.aphasiatrials.org/ Comet Initiative. http://www.comet-initiative.org/ ROMA COS. Core outcome set for aphasia research – The Collaboration of Aphasia Trialists Shirley Ryan Ability Lab. https://www.sralab.org/ Stroke Engine. https://strokengine.ca/en/   Aphasia Access Podcasts Episode #69: Motivation and engagement in aphasia rehabilitation: In conversation with Michael Biel Episode #88: Everyone's an expert: Person-centeredness in the clinic and research - A conversation with Jackie Hinckley

Voice Memo: Jill loves that she knows her own mind Carrie and Sarah discuss hair, crocodiles, survivalists, and wine. Sarah tells stories about her family. Carrie riffs while Sarah gets her groceries and Sarah ABSOLUTELY listens to the podcast. Carrie butt-shames Sarah. Carrie is a handyman. Carrie loves the cozy show “Grantchester”. Carrie went to a Smashing Pumpkins concert with Jay and Jay does not listen to women…in music. Carrie also loves the book “The Family Plot.” Sarah hasn't finished it yet. Sarah went to a wiener dog race and is loving wiener dog races. Sarah wonders if we are boring and Carrie says we aren't. Sarah is loving that she made it home after making questionable transportation choices. Sarah avoided body violence. Carrie tells Sarah to ride a bike and to get more confident. Carrie loves that they made a good category in trivia and makes a great before and after game. Carrie trolls Sarah about googling. Carrie trolls themself about being in love with their therapist. Sarah loves that she's been publicly gay at work. Carrie loves Sarah's open butt policy and her open heart. Sarah loves that Carrie has a garden and a farm and that it creates great hair for them. Carrie and Sarah explain how weeding has 3 meanings: I've been weeding (me baby), I've been weeding (the garden), I've been weeding (tokin). Carrie and Sarah tell everyone to go vote. New sign-off: Witts and tits up; hearts and butts open

Fellow thoughtboter Sarah Lima joins Joël to discuss an issue Sarah had when she was doing a code review recently: making HTTP requests in an ActiveRecord model. Her concern with that approach was that a class was having too many responsibilities that would break the single-responsibility principle, and that it would make the class hard to maintain. Because the ActiveRecord layer is a layer that's meant to encapsulate business roles and data, her issue was that adding another responsibility on top of it would be too much. Her solution was to extract a class that would handle the whole HTTP request process. This episode is brought to you by Airbrake (https://airbrake.io/?utm_campaign=Q3_2022%3A%20Bike%20Shed%20Podcast%20Ad&utm_source=Bike%20Shed&utm_medium=website). Visit Frictionless error monitoring and performance insight for your app stack. SQL TRIM() (https://popsql.com/learn-sql/postgresql/how-to-trim-strings-in-postgresql) Iteration as an anti-pattern (https://thoughtbot.com/blog/iteration-as-an-anti-pattern) WET tests (https://thoughtbot.com/blog/the-case-for-wet-tests) thoughtbot code review guidelines (https://github.com/thoughtbot/guides/tree/main/code-review) Side effects in tests (https://thoughtbot.com/blog/simplify-tests-by-extracting-side-effects) Active Resource (https://github.com/rails/activeresource) Different strategies for 3rd party requests (https://thoughtbot.com/blog/testing-third-party-interactions) Transcript: JOËL: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot about developing great software. I'm Joël Quenneville. And today, I'm joined by fellow thoughtboter Sarah Lima. SARAH: Happy to be here. JOËL: And together, we're here to share a little bit of what we've learned along the way. So, Sarah, what's new in your world? SARAH: Well, after a year and a half working on the same thoughtbot client, I have rolled off, and I have joined a new team. And I am learning a lot about not only a new codebase but learning to work with a new team. So that's always challenging, and this time it's not different. JOËL: What is something that you like to do when joining a new team to help smooth the onboarding process? SARAH: Well, I think especially getting to know people with one on ones. This time, I didn't do that right away because I had a bunch of time off scheduled right at the beginning of the project. But I did it right after I came back. And I'm learning a lot about my new colleagues, how they like to work, how they learn best. So, for instance, there are some people that like to learn and grow by reading blog posts, reading books, and there are other people that don't like that as much. JOËL: So when you joined the new project, you just reached out to all of these people and set up a few meetings just to get to know them. SARAH: Yeah, exactly. JOËL: That's really good. I've never done that on a project. And now that you've said it, it kind of seems obvious. Maybe I should do that moving forward to get to know new teammates. SARAH: Yeah. And I think it's easier on my project because it's a very small team. There are four of us thoughtboters, and there are just two client developers. So it was easier. JOËL: What about on the code side of things? Are there any tricks you like to do when you're first getting started in a new codebase? SARAH: Well, I think I really enjoy diving in right away, working on something small, and asking questions. I have also found it helpful in the past, especially on larger codebases, that someone that's experienced on a project gives me an overview showing me the quirks. And, of course, a good README is always a good thing to have, and during the process, always be updating the README. In this recent project, it was not different. I opened a lot of PRs to update the README. So that was good to have a PR right on your first day. JOËL: I love that. I think that's usually my goal when I start on a new project is to have a PR the first day that fixes anything in the setup script that has been broken since the last person onboarded or documentation that was wrong. SARAH: Yeah, absolutely. JOËL: It's always a strong first contribution. SARAH: Yeah. What about you, Joël? What's going on? What's new in your world? JOËL: I've been investigating flaky tests, and I ran across a wild bug this week. I had a test that would fail every now and then. And it was pulling some data from Postgres and then doing some transformations on it. And I couldn't figure out why it was failing. It was a complex query. So it was just pulling out not ActiveRecord objects but a raw array of values. At some point, I was putting a PUT statement in the code with the array of values I expected to get and the array I would actually get. And I was surprised to see that there is a field in there that is a float that was rounded to a different number of decimal places. I was like, that doesn't seem right. And so I was digging into it more, and I found out that this decimal value is from a timestamp that is in a file name for an mp4 video file name. And what is happening is that when we're querying the database, we're trying to extract the timestamp out of the file name by dropping the .mp4 file extension. And we're using the SQL TRIM function. Unfortunately, TRIM does not do whatever the original authors thought it does. It doesn't just remove that substring from the end, but instead, it will remove any of those characters, so in my case, any of dot, M, P, or 4 in any combination from the end of the string. So anytime that my timestamp ended in a four, any fours were just getting chopped off. So if it ended in 44.mp4, the 44 would also get removed, not just the .mp4, which meant that randomly whenever a timestamp happened to end in 4, my test would flake. SARAH: Wow. Do you have any idea how much time you spent debugging that? JOËL: Oh, probably took, I'd say, a day, two days. This is spread over a couple of debugging sessions. But eventually, finding that particular location for the bug probably took us a couple of days. In the end, the bug fix for this is just a couple of lines, a couple of days work, and the diff is only a few lines. But I'm sure that the discussion on the PR is going to be really interesting. There's probably going to be a description that is a lot longer than the actual diff. SARAH: Yeah, 100%. [laughs] JOËL: Have you run across any interesting PRs on your new project? SARAH: Yeah, I did. In fact, I recently reviewed a PR that had three interesting main issues that I wanted to address. And I wanted to lead the person that was working on it to a slightly better solution. So the three issues I saw were that the tests that were added were very DRY, so that was making everything a bit difficult to understand. The second one was that I saw one of the ActiveRecord classes was making HTTP requests, and that didn't sound like a good idea to me. JOËL: That is unusual. SARAH: Yes. The third one was that there were a lot of collections being built iteratively where another innumerable method would be a better fit, such as map instead of an each call. JOËL: Oh, this is a classic situation where you're just using each to go through and transform something, and you've got some sort of external array that you're mutating as part of the each. SARAH: Yes. JOËL: There's a great thought article, I believe, by Joe Ferris on Iteration as an Anti-pattern. SARAH: I think it's by Mike Burns. And I have referred to that article. In fact, I had very good articles for two of these three problems. I referred to a bunch of articles about WET tests as opposed to DRY tests, like how striving for tests that are DRY is not a good idea as opposed to telling a whole story in your tests. And I referred to that other article how iteratively building a collection can be an anti-pattern by Mike Burns. But the second issue about HTTP requests I didn't have anything to refer to. Maybe we should write one. JOËL: This reminds me that in the thoughtbot Slack, we have a custom emoji for you should write a blog post about that. And this would probably be a good time to use it. SARAH: Yes. So, Joël, how do you typically handle a PR that is maybe too long, and you have a lot of concerns about it? And how do you handle delivering that feedback? JOËL: Oh, that is a challenge. I've definitely done it poorly in the past. And I think the wrong way to go about that situation is to go thoroughly through the PR and leave 50, 60 comments. That is overwhelming for the other person. And they're going to have a really bad day when they see 50 comments come through. And there's so much that they can't really address the main things you were talking about anyway. So what I generally try to do, and it's kind of nice now that GitHub doesn't immediately publish your comments, is if I realize...like I start putting some more detailed comments, and then I realize, oh, there's going to be a lot, zoom out a little bit, and try to find are there some higher level trends that I can talk about? And maybe even just summarize in a larger comment at the bottom and say, "Hey, I see some larger structural issues," or "This PR is leaning very heavily on a technique that I think is maybe not the best use here. Maybe we should discuss that," instead of digging into maybe the actual implementation details of the code. SARAH: Yeah, funny, you should mention that. I have recently also started doing that, using the summary version of GitHub reviews. And I used to just go file by file and leaving comments right away. And I'm thinking that this is not a good idea, especially when the PR is long. So I think another thing I would do is also call the person to pair and ask questions and understand where the person is coming from and also explain what are your concerns and how you both can get to a better place with that PR. JOËL: That's really important. You have to remember there's another person on the other end of this. I love the idea of reaching out to them directly. Especially if there's a larger conversation to be had around approach or implementation, it's often easier to resolve those directly rather than back and forth in GitHub comments. So you mentioned situations where the PR is really long. Have you ever had to push back on that in some way? SARAH: Yes. Especially when I saw, whoa, that's going to be difficult to understand, that's going to be difficult to review. And I have reached out to the person to say, "Hey, what about we split that PR in two?" Of course thinking about splitting the PR in a way that makes sense, in a way that still delivers our users' value as soon as possible. JOËL: I've been in situations like that where it's a really long PR, and the person has already invested a lot of work into it. And maybe it's even gone through a round of reviews. It feels almost too late to ask them to split up the work. But then I've actually regretted not doing that because there's so much complexity going on that then it doesn't work, or there are some bugs in it. We struggle to ship this, or it might just have to go through so many rounds of review and re-review and re-review. And because the PR is so long, it's a huge commitment for me to re-review it every time. So there are situations I've been in where I wish that before even looking at the code at all, I was like, this is too long. We need to either slim down the story of what's being done. Because sometimes that's what happens is that the ticket is not well-defined, and someone goes in and just sort of keeps adding more code. And it becomes a bit of a big ball of mud. So, either helping to refine the ticket first or splitting the PR rather than actually looking at the code. SARAH: Yeah, and pairing often can also help with that. So especially as consultants, our clients may ask us to work on different projects, and you work alone. And you may have tight deadlines, but I think it's always helpful to find time anyway to help your colleagues as well. JOËL: I like that. I think there's a lot of value in the work that we do, where we collaborate with others in addition to whatever we do solo. So, oftentimes, it's great to pair with people at a client where possible to become involved in the code review process to even get involved in maybe some of the more broader system design conversations, sprint planning. All of those things are really good to jump into more than just getting siloed into working on just a solo feature. SARAH: Yes, 100%. MID-ROLL AD: Debugging errors can be a developer's worst nightmare...but it doesn't have to be. Airbrake is an award-winning error monitoring, performance, and deployment tracking tool created by developers for developers that can actually help cut your debugging time in half. So why do developers love Airbrake? It has all of the information that web developers need to monitor their application - including error management, performance insights, and deploy tracking! Airbrake's debugging tool catches all of your project errors, intelligently groups them, and points you to the issue in the code so you can quickly fix the bug before customers are impacted. In addition to stellar error monitoring, Airbrake's lightweight APM helps developers to track the performance and availability of their application through metrics like HTTP requests, response times, error occurrences, and user satisfaction. Finally, Airbrake Deploy Tracking helps developers track trends, fix bad deploys, and improve code quality. Since 2008, Airbrake has been a staple in the Ruby community and has grown to cover all major programming languages. Airbrake seamlessly integrates with your favorite apps to include modern features like single sign-on and SDK-based installation. From testing to production, Airbrake notifiers have your back. Your time is valuable, so why waste it combing through logs, waiting for user reports, or retrofitting other tools to monitor your application? You literally have nothing to lose. Head on over to airbrake.io/try/bikeshed to create your FREE developer account today! JOËL: So one of the things you mentioned that stood out for you when you were doing some code review recently was making HTTP requests in an ActiveRecord model. Why is that something that sort of caught your eyes, maybe an area to push back on in a particular design? SARAH: That's a good question. My concern with that approach was that our class was having too many responsibilities that would break the SRP principle, the single-responsibility principle, and that would make our class hard to maintain. So the ActiveRecord layer is a layer that's meant to encapsulate business roles and data. So I was worried that adding another responsibility on top of it would be too much. So my idea was that we would extract a class that would handle the whole HTTP request process. JOËL: Yeah, I feel like my instincts typically when I've done third-party integrations is that the ActiveRecord class should not know about the external internet world. It knows about the database. It knows about some of its core model functionality but that knowing about the internet world is somebody else's responsibility and that, ideally, the direction of dependency should flow the other way. So maybe the class that makes an external request knows about the ActiveRecord object if it needs to let's say, instantiate an instance of that model using data from an external request. Or maybe it's even some third-party thing; maybe it's their controller that knows how to make or that will ask another object to make a request to some API and might also make a request to the model and ask it for some database data and then combine those two together. But that the ActiveRecord object only knows about that database area of responsibility and doesn't know that other things are also happening in the system. SARAH: Absolutely. And I was also thinking that that class would have a difficult test to write. So a good idea is to separate our code that is side-effectful into their own classes, and that makes our tests so much easier. JOËL: I actually wrote an article on the topic where one of my realizations at some point was that a lot of the pain points in code are what functional programmers would call side effects, so things like HTTP requests. And these are often things where we need to stub or do other things. And so isolating them as much as possible often simplifies our tests. SARAH: Yeah, certainly. And I refer to that article every time I have the chance. JOËL: Have you encountered the general concept of layered architectures, or hexagonal architectures, or things like that in the world of Rails or maybe elsewhere? SARAH: Not hexagonal architecture. I have heard about it, but I haven't dived into it yet. Can you give us an overview? JOËL: So I've also not worked with an actual hexagonal architecture. But the general idea, I guess, of layered architectures is that you build your code in a variety of layers, and different layers don't have access to or don't know about the ones...and I forget in this model if it's above or below, let's say it's below. So the inner layers don't know about the outer layers, but the outer layers can know about anything below them. And so if the core of your app is the database, your database is most definitely not knowing about anything outside of just its data. And your ActiveRecord models that sit on top of that know about the database, but they don't know if they're being fronted by a web application, or a command line, or anything else. And then, above that, you might have more of a business process layer that knows about the database. It might know about how to make some external requests, but it doesn't know about anything above that. And then, maybe at the final layer, you've got an application layer that handles things like controllers and interactions with users of the site. The core idea is that you split it into layers, and the higher-up layers know about everything below them, but no layer knows about what's above it. I feel like we're loosely applying that to the situation here with ActiveRecord in that it feels like the ActiveRecord layer if you will, shouldn't really know about third-party API requests. SARAH: So, one exception to that is the ActiveResource approach that connects our business objects to REST services. So if you have an external website and you want to connect it via HTTP, you can do it using Rails ActiveResource. JOËL: That is interesting because it functions like an ActiveRecord object, but instead of being backed by the database, it's backed by some kind of API. I almost wonder if...let's refactor our mental model here. And instead of saying that HTTP belongs in a separate layer that's higher up, maybe, in this case, it's almost like a sibling layer. So your ActiveRecord models know about the database, and they make database requests in ActiveResource, or I think there are some gems that provide similar behavior. It might be backed by a particular API, but neither of them should know about the other. So maybe an ActiveResource model should not be making database requests. SARAH: Yes, I like that line of thought. JOËL: I guess the question then becomes, what about interactions between the two where you want to, I don't know, have some kind of association? You know, I don't think I've ever used ActiveResource on a project. SARAH: I did once when trying to work with something close to microservice architecture. So we had a monolith, and we built a small service that was also in Rails, and we needed to consume the data that was stored in the monolith. JOËL: And did you like that approach? SARAH: Yeah. I think in that specific scenario, it was very productive. And I enjoyed a lot the API that Rails provided me via ActiveResources. JOËL: Did you ever have to mix ActiveResource models and ActiveRecord models? SARAH: No, I didn't; thankfully, not. I have never thought about that. JOËL: So maybe in most applications, those two will just sort of naturally fall into maybe separate parts of the app, and they don't need to interact that much. SARAH: Yeah, I think that will be the case. So mixing two of those subjects we're talking about here, that's testing and HTTP requests; we've been having a discussion in our project about the usage of VCR. That's a gem that records your HTTP requests interactions and replays them during tests. We've been discussing if using it is a good idea or not because we've been having issues with cassettes, that's one of VCR's concepts when these cassettes are not valid anymore. So do you have any thoughts on the subject? Maybe that will make a whole episode. JOËL: We could definitely do a whole episode, I think, on testing third-party APIs. VCR is one of multiple different strategies that can be used to not make actual real network requests in your tests which brings some stability. There are also some downsides to it. I have found, in general, that over time, cassettes become brittle. So the idea of VCR is really cool. In practice, I think I've found that a few hand-rolled Webmock stubs usually do the job better for my needs. SARAH: Yeah, I'll be interested in hearing that episode because, at least in my project, we have a lot of HTTP requests to external services, and they return a lot of information. I'm wondering if just dealing with that with Webmock would be too much work. JOËL: One of the really useful things about VCR is that you can just make your request from anywhere, and it will just completely handle it. In some ways, though, I think it maybe hides some of that test pain that we were talking about earlier and allows you to sort of put HTTP in a lot of places that maybe you don't want it to. And by allowing yourself to feel a little bit of that test pain, you can more easily notice the places where maybe an object should not be making a request. Or the actual HTTP logic can be moved to a concentrated place where all the HTTP is done together. And then only that object will need unit tests that actually need to mock the network, and most of your objects are fine. Where it gets interesting is more for things like integration tests, where now you're doing a lot of interactions, and you might have quite a few background requests that need to be made. SARAH: I'm looking forward to the whole episode on this subject because I feel there's so much to talk about. JOËL: There really is. I have a blog post that sort of summarizes a few different common categories of approaches to testing third-party requests, which might be different depending on whether you're doing a unit test or an integration test. But I grouped common solutions into four different categories. We'll make sure to link that in the show notes. So we've been talking a lot about testing. I'm curious when you review PR, do you start with the tests, maybe read through the tests first, and then the implementation? SARAH: That's a good question. I have never thought about starting with tests. I think I'm going to give that a try anytime. But I just start reviewing them like by the first file that comes up. [laughs] JOËL: I'm the same. I normally just do them in order. I have occasionally tried to do a test first, and that is sometimes interesting. Sometimes you read the test and, especially when you don't know what the implementation is going to be, you're like, why is this in the test? And then you jump to the implementation like, oh, that's what's going on. Well, thank you so much, Sarah, for joining us on this whirlwind tour of code review, design of objects, and interacting with HTTP and testing. SARAH: My pleasure. JOËL: Where can people find you online if they would like to follow your work? SARAH: I'm on Twitter @sarahlima_rb. JOËL: We'll make sure to link that in the show notes. And with that, let's wrap up. The show notes for this episode can be found at bikeshed.fm. This show is produced and edited by Mandy Moore. If you enjoyed listening, one really easy way to support the show is to leave us a quick rating or even a review in iTunes. It really helps other folks find the show. If you have any feedback, you can reach us at @_bikeshed, or reach me at @joelquen on Twitter, or at hosts@bikeshed.fm via email. Thank you so much for listening to The Bike Shed, and we'll see you next week. Byeeeeeee!!!!!! ANNOUNCER: This podcast was brought to you by thoughtbot. thoughtbot is your expert design and development partner. Let's make your product and team a success.

It was such a pleasure to talk to Sarah Harkness. Sarah is a former partner at Arthur Andersen who had a career in corporate finance and then as a non-executive director. She is now a literary late bloomer. She has self-published a book about the Victorian artist Nelly Erichsen. She has an MA in Biography from the University of Buckingham, where she studied with with Jane Ridley. She won the Tony Lothian Prize, 2022. And she is now writing a biography of the Victorian publisher Alexander Macmillan and his brother which will be published next year. We talked about Sarah's career, her long-held ambitions, what she learned from corporate finance, her views on talent spotting, Alexander Macmillan, how Sarah would try to discover other late bloomers lurking in the wrong jobs, and why a business career helps you to understand Victorian literature.Being a Late Bloomer and Alexander MacMillanHenry: Are you a late bloomer?Sarah: My husband says I should be very annoyed at that question because he says I've been marvellous all along. I think I'm a late bloomer if in the blooming bit, which is that I'm now doing something that makes me really unconditionally happy, whereas before I did a lot of stuff that was sometimes important and sometimes well paid, but I never enjoyed it half as much as what I'm doing now.Henry: So, let's start with just briefly, what are you doing that makes you really happy now?Sarah: I have a contract to write a book that a proper-publishing house says they're going to publish. So I'm writing a biography, a double biography called The Brothers of Daniel and Alexander Macmillan, who founded MacMillan publishing 180 years ago. And it's taken me a while, but I've got an agent and I've got a publishing contract, and I need to submit a manuscript in the next eight months, and it will come out in 2024 all being well. And that's making me very happy.Henry: Good, and that's the grandfather or great-grandfather of the prime minister?Sarah: Daniel is the grandfather of the prime minister, and Alexander, who's the one who really built the business after Daniel died, is his great uncle.Henry: So an interesting family for more than just their business interests.Sarah: Yeah. And I mean, fantastic achievers themselves because Daniel and Alexander were born into absolute poverty on the West Coast of Scotland. Their father was a carter, who died when they were young boys. Daniel left school at 10, Alexander when he was 15. And by the mid-1860s, Alexander is one of the literary hosts of London, and within two generations, they have an offspring who will be prime minister and married into the Duke of Devonshire's family, it's quite a climb.Henry: So, what we're talking about, this is really the Victorian self-made man?Sarah: Absolutely. Samuel Smiles and all his glory, absolutely.Henry: Yeah, yeah, we love Samuel Smiles.Sarah: Yeah, same.Henry: So, where does your interest in that type of subject or person come from?Sarah: Well, there's a basic love of all my period, of all the periods of history and all the periods of literature, Victorian times would be absolutely bang on is what I know most about. I'm very comfortable working in that time, and I love the books and the poetry from that time. The way I found it was very serendipitous, which was that my husband collects art and had found a lot of art by a big, very unknown Victorian woman painter. And I researched her life, and the more I researched it, the more I thought I need to write this down, and it turned into a book that no one would publish, but people said to me, "Write about someone we've heard of and come back to us," and that's a really hard question because almost everyone you've heard of has got a book. That's why you've heard of them, but I had a stroke of luck, which was literally in the research on the book about... The artist is called Nelly Erichsen, and in my research on her, she was a neighbour of the MacMillan family in South London in the 1870s, and related by marriage, sort of in a hop and a skip to the MacMillan family, so she knew the MacMillans, she stayed with the MacMillans. And I did research the MacMillan family to write about Nelly, and there wasn't a book, there haven't been a book since the 19... Since 1940. So there was an opening to do a book because most people have heard of MacMillan Publishing, most people would think it was interesting to understand how that had been started and no one has written about it for 80 years. So that was the stroke of luck, I think.Henry: So it comes from a kind of a long-term immersion in the period and a very indirect discovery of the subject matter?Sarah: It does, it does. I mean, I have been talking about Nelly Erichsen and her bit of Tooting where she lived and the people that she knew for, gosh, nearly 20 years now, so I mean it is a long immersion, but it took me a very long time to have confidence to show anyone what I was writing about it.Early interest in VictoriansHenry: Yeah. And that if we go back 20 years, is that where you start sort of reading and working on this?Sarah: Yes.Henry: Or had you been reading about the Victorians from earlier?Sarah: I think that... I mean, I did PPE at Oxford, but my favourite paper and finals was Victorian social political history, so the 1860s is bang on the period. I think all the time I was working and having a career, I was reading my way through Trollope and Dickens and George Eliot, so... And Tennyson. So that in that way, and it's the sort of art I like, so it is definitely my spot, but I had never thought about researching online, finding out about anyone and writing it down until, yeah, 15 years ago when I started doing that.Henry: But when you started doing that, you'd actually had years of reading the novels, being immersed in the period, it goes back, you were ready, you weren't just coming to this out of nowhere?Sarah: Yes, I wasn't, I wasn't. And it does remind me that about... Well, it was at the time when my children were babies, I wanted to give up work and study Victorian literature. I mean, I felt then that it was something I wanted to do, and I had an idea of writing... The book that inspired me was some Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now.Henry: Fantastic book.Sarah: And I was fascinated, yeah, fascinated by the Melmotte character and I wanted to do an MA or something that would allow me to write, to use the knowledge I had at the city today against what was Trollope writing about, I thought that would be interesting. So I have thought about it 25 years ago, and that had to absolutely no encouragement from anyone to do anything about it. So I didn't, I kept working, but it's funny that that's almost where I've ended back up, which is looking at Victorian literature.Henry: Yeah, it's like a... It's a deep vein that runs through your life and now it's come to the surface.Sarah: It is, it is, absolutely.Sarah in the City: business expertise as a literary advantageHenry: So, you've hinted it that you did PPE, you were in the city, tell us, because you were already blooming before, you are not a late bloomer, you're a repeat bloomer, tell us what was happening when you weren't being a Victorian writer.Sarah: So, I went from Oxford into the city into a corporate finance house that was part of NatWest Bank, so we call that NatWest markets, and I did corporate finance, so flotations, mergers, takeovers, raising money from 1983 right the way through to 1990s. In the 1990s, I left London and moved up to Yorkshire, but I kept working. And at that point, I had small children, so I was working three or four days a week, working in Leeds doing corporate finance. And then there was a big excitement in 1998 because I left NatWest and took my team into Arthur Andersen, which at the time caused a bit of a fuss and a bit of a stir. And I had three or four... Four years at Arthur Andersen. And then Arthur Andersen went into liquidation. And at that point, I'd been doing corporate finance for nearly 20 years and I'd had enough of it, and there were a lot of young and unpleasant young men coming up who didn't think that women in their 40s with children should be stopping them doing what they wanted to do. So I did head-hunting for a little while, and then I started becoming a non-executive director, so I became plural. And I'm still plural, I still do trustee jobs, and audit jobs, non-executive director jobs.Henry: So you, in three different ways, at Arthur Andersen, and then as a head-hunter, and then as a non-exec, you've actually been a senior person. You've been running an area of a business, you've had that kind of oversight?Sarah: Yeah.Henry: Does this help you... You've got the background reading Trollope and understanding the character of Melmotte, but you've also got the background as actually a business person. So when you look at someone like MacMillan, if you hadn't done that career, you would have had less insight. Do you sort of...Sarah: I think that's right, I think that's right. I've spent some time in the archives just the other week looking at the partnership deeds from when he set the business up. I've looked at... There had to be a court case in Chancery when Daniel's widow died because she died in testate and there was a risk that the partnership would have to be dissolved and split around his children. So to me, that makes sense. The big risks that he takes, like moving from Cambridge to London, and then at the moment, I'm really interested in him opening an office in New York, which he did in 1869. I mean to me, that is about a business risk. And then, this little small bit. So at the time when I was running an office in Leeds, I was very conscious of how vulnerable you feel when you are not in the head-office, when you are running a satellite. And I've been reading this week, the letters coming back from New York to London, from the poor chap that Alexander sent out to New York. And I can... I mean, I could have written those letters, you know, "Just tell me what's going on?" "What are your plans?" "What do you mean your son's coming to work here?" "Is that alright? Is that a good sign?" And so that to me is business as well, so I do recognise a lot of it.Henry: Yeah, that's a timeless problem, especially in big-business today, right, global businesses?Sarah: It is, it is. "How do you make everyone feel equally important?" and, "How do you manage something that's the other side of the ocean?"Henry: So your book will be interesting, not just from a sort of literary and social-history perspective, but for people in business or people trying to understand how to be a manager.Sarah: I hope so, I hope so. Alexander did an enormous amount all on his own, but as I move on, he's going to start running a more complex business. And I haven't really gotten into that yet. He's got one partner and he's just set up, sent someone to New York. But it will become more interesting. And then, how he's gonna bring the sons and nephews into the business, is gonna be fascinating. Because they didn't all want to come in at the same time and he's got to manage that as well. So it is a business book.Henry: So he's a sort of... He's a great publisher with an eye for a book, he's a great businessman who can cut deals and manage money, and he's also important as a people manager.Sarah: He is, he is, and seems to manage that well. Other firms are not nearly as successful as MacMillan, avoid the wrong people. He never really gets anything... The big calls, he doesn't get them wrong. He never has a big failure. If he launches a magazine, he goes on supporting it, it survives. If he launches an office in New York, it becomes... MacMillan, New York, becomes bigger than MacMillan, England. He doesn't make bad calls, he is a good manager.Henry: And where does that come from? Because he grew up... He did not grow up around business people. Where does that come from?Sarah: He certainly didn't, he certainly didn't. I don't know, that's really interesting. I mean, I think he was much more entrepreneurial than his brother was. The business really takes off when Daniel dies. Daniel was driven by a Christian missionary spirit. He was driven by Christian socialism, he wanted to bring good-quality and religious literature to the masses and the working man. And he saw it as... He wasn't well enough to go to India, so this was his mission. Alexander goes along with that and is fascinated by the Christian socialist side, but he also wants to make money. And I think some of it might just be, you know... He wakes up one day in 1857, and suddenly he's responsible for eight children, his wife, and a widow, people who work for him. He really has to grip it or he'll sink. And he grips it. But how and why? Apart from sheer bravery, I don't know how he got to do that. He didn't have any models, he wasn't being mentored by anyone else in the industry, they all saw him as a Scottish upstart. So there's one guy he talks to who's a publisher in Edinburgh called MacLehose, but he becomes much more successful than MacLehose.Henry: Was he a late-bloomer?Sarah: Alexander? So when Daniel dies, he... How old is he? He's nearly 40, he's nearly 40. And up until then, yes, he's been the second fiddle in the business. He's had a ton of energy. I mean, if you research him, he's living in Cambridge, running a shop in Cambridge, but he's also... He's on the board of the Working Men's College that they establish. He's doing stuff with the YMCA in Cambridge. He's a parish overseer. He has a ton of energy, and he talks about... You know, he was up reading throughs till 2:00 in the morning, and he was up again at 6:00 to get a train to London. His wife must have been pulling her hair out, I would think. [laughter] So he was a man of phenomenal energy, and not good health, he suffered badly from sciatica and various other problems. He was sometimes frustrated with pain, but he never gave up. He's quite a hero.Henry: Yeah, he is. He sounds really interesting. I'm really looking forward to this book. So, I want to go back over your... We've had the summary of your life. I want to get into some details because it's really, really interesting how you kept to yourself those interests and ambitions for so long, and obviously lots of people do that. Lots of people leave university and they've got a thing that they really, they're passionate about, but they end up as an accountant or whatever, and it just sort of slowly dies, or they realise they're not quite as interested as all that, or life gets in the way, or they have kids. Why didn't it go away for you? Because when you were a senior at Arthur Andersen, you were pretty busy, right?Sarah: Yeah, and I don't think, if you'd said to me... If you had said to me when I was a senior at Arthur Andersen, "Would you still like to write a book?" I just said, "Don't be daft, of course not." [laughter] But my huge frustration with Andersen, and I had some mentoring at the time from a coach who said to me, "The problem you have is that you have a person who needs choice and the more involved in one particular job you get, the more you push, get pushed down a tunnel, the less happy you will be, Sarah, because you like to wake up every morning and you think, I'm gonna do something different today. What am I going to do today? What am I going to do today?" And that's the life I now have. And it's the life I've had since the day I walked out of Arthur Andersen in 2002, which is every day I've done something a bit different. And the lucky break that happened to me was the collapse of Andersen could have been a disaster, but actually it gave me a lump sum and it gave me freedom to explore, bend my career to suit my children and my circumstances, and it gave me time to discover the things I liked doing.Henry: Do you think... So one thing that separates a lot of late bloomers from early bloomers, although as discussed you were an early bloomer, but it's that early bloomers often have a mentor or they belong to a small group of their peers. So they have people that they can experiment with and have ideas with, or they have someone saying, "Don't be an idiot, you need to do this, why haven't you written to that person or whatever." And late bloomers often just don't have this.Sarah: No.Henry: But I've got a little theory that it probably wouldn't have made any difference. And that in a way, you're... Tell me if this is right, you're quite a divergent person.Sarah: Yeah.Henry: But you were in a very narrow life.Sarah: I was.Henry: And the only mentorship that you required was for someone to say, as they said to you, you're in the wrong game here.Sarah: Yes.Henry: And you needed to take your own time, you needed to take your own path. There's something innate about, or just in your personality, that means you were never going to write a book when you were 25.Sarah: No.Henry: And the other experiences you gathered along the way were part of that divergence. What do you think of that as a sort of model of you and of other late bloomers?Sarah: I certainly think that there was no way when I was in my 20s and 30s, anyone that I knew, socialised with or worked with would have had any interest at all in what interested me. I mean, none of them read. None of them went to the theatre like I went to the theatre. None of them had the interest in film that I had. And at the time, I was married into the medical profession, and they absolutely weren't. So I mean at business they weren't interested, medics aren't interested, or don't have time to be fair to them. So it had to be just in my head and what I read and what I started listening to once you started getting audio books and I had time. So definitely there was no one around in my 20s who would have given me any encouragement to do anything different, and I was sucked into a job that was very high, very exciting, very high pressure and very rewarding, and then I had children, which we know, really upped the confusion of life. And I was just lucky that at the age of 40 I was relaxed and comfortable enough to be able to start spending my time with people who were encouraging.Henry: How unusual do you think it is to have... You do PPE, you work in corporate finance, but you've also got a strong interest in literature and the arts, and as you say, you don't do...Sarah: Really unusual. I can think... Of all the people I worked with right through for NatWest under Andersen, I can remember the one guy who, if you went on a business trip with him would open his briefcase to get out a book. He was a wonderful man, he was called Simon Metgrove, and he carried poetry around his briefcase. I remember him. He is the only one. I mean, no one else did, they read the... They read the FT, they talked about business. There was a lot of heavy drinking. It just, it wasn't part of the culture at all, and I didn't live with anyone who read like I read either. So it was completely me on my own blowing my own little furrow.Henry: Where does this joint interest come from? Is that parents, school, Oxford? Is it something you just always remember?Sarah: I think from my parents. I think particularly from my mother who had, came from a very, very poor background, left school as fast as she could when war broke out and got a job at the age of 16. And then after she married, my dad became a more senior civil servant. My mum discovered she needed and wanted to educate herself, so when I was growing up, my mother was doing WEA classes, and talking to me because I was by far the youngest child, so I was more or less at home on my own with her. She would talk to me about an essay she had to write on Jane Austin or she was reading T.S. Eliot, and she would talk to me about it all the time. So that was very encouraging. And she knew poetry, and that's... I've passed on to my children who are all interested in literature in their way. That background, if you need to... You know the stories, you know every Jane Austin, you know your Dickens, you know your poems. That comes from my mum and my dad as well. Yeah.Henry: Sounds like your mum was a bit of a late bloomer.Sarah: I think she was a frustrated, never bloomed because she was that generation of just they stated at home, and it didn't do her any good at all. She was quite an unhappy woman.Henry: Do you have her in mind as a sort of model of she went back and started doing that education and was that something that was just with you?Sarah: I think it probably was, I think it made sense to me that I could do an MA when I was 55, because my mother would have thought that was a sensible thing to do. If I had the time and the money, and then why wouldn't I do it? So yeah, it seems perfectly sensible to me, I didn't think it was odd. My husband had done one as well, and he was... I've never had any education at all, and did an MA ten years ago, so.Henry: Oh great.Sarah: Yeah, University of Buckingham.Henry: Oh very good.[laughter]Henry: And how did you end up at Oxford?Sarah: Oh, I came from a tiny Grammar School in Dorset that sent one girl to Oxford or Cambridge about every three or four years, so it felt like quite a lonely process. And I had massive imposter syndrome. I didn't get into the college I applied to, but there's a college in Oxford, Mansfield, that used to just collect all the best people that didn't get into any of the other colleges. We were all there with chips on our shoulders because we haven't got into some St. John's or Balliol and the others. And it was an incredibly good atmosphere, but it's still, there were two issues, one was Oxford was still dominated by the public schools, and I was a Grammar School girl.And Oxford was dominated by the big confident academic colleges, and I was at the college no one had heard of, so spinning out of that and into the city, just felt like that was a bit of a weird stroke of luck, because even though I was at Oxford doing PPE, I didn't feel like I was... I didn't feel like I had... It would never have occurred to me to become academic when I left university. I wasn't going to get a first, I wasn't going to do that.Henry: But did this thing about imposter syndrome and sort of being in a marginal position, is that quite good because it does encourage you to sort of keep seeing yourself as divergent and keep seeing yourself as not quite in the right place. It preserves that energy of well, I'm here, but I'm not going to stay here, whereas if you'd got into the right college and being more accepted, maybe you would have just a bit more easily slipped into a, staying on the track, if you like.Sarah: Maybe, maybe. But I don't feel that I was a very assertive person when I started work. To me, working my way up through the city, I would contrast myself with mostly men who were working around me, all of whom had a time table, I've got to be an assistant director by this age and I'm going to be director by this age, then I'm going to go out and join a real company and I'm going to make money. And I was just wanted to keep my job and keep doing it.And not get in any trouble. But then what used to happen is I would get to know someone at my level, and I think, well, other clever people in the next room because he's not very bright, and then why is he gonna get promoted and not me? Because I think I'm better. So I think there's a bit of that chippiness or edginess which makes you... Which can make you push on a bit harder, but it certainly didn't drive me. I was always a bit surprised, to be honest, I was always a bit surprised when I got promoted, I was a bit surprised when Andersen hired me and I was very surprised when that got in the papers. It was always a bit of a surprise to me. So I didn't have much confidence.Henry: As you talk about your background, it sounds a bit like there are parallels between you and McMillan. You don't come from an Arthur Andersen background, but there you are and you become very successful, just like he didn't come from that. Is that part of what interests him to you, like, are you writing about yourself?Sarah: Well, I haven't thought of that, but I think I absolutely am sensitive. So I feel for him when I know how much he did for certain Victorian writers, and I go to their memoirs and diaries and letters, and he hardly gets a mention. And I know because I can see all the letters he wrote to them where he said, "You've got to change the title, you've got to take out half that book, why don't you write about this instead." I can see what he was giving to them, and then you go to the index of some of their books, and he gets a one line or it mentions that this is something I wrote in Macmillan magazine. I am very sensitive to Alexander 's, feeling that people took him for granted, didn't give him any due reward, and I suspect he... Yeah, I suspect, I do imagine that he felt some of the stuff that I felt, which is, have I got any right to be in this room and actually now I've met them, they're not a bright as I thought they were gonna be. And you could see his confidence grows in the '60s, he definitely becomes a lot more assertive with his authors during the '60s.Henry: Oh, really?Sarah: Yeah, the more he spends time with them, the firmer he gets about I'm not publishing that, this isn't good enough, he takes on Lady Caroline Norton and that's quite a brave thing to do.And I think he wins, so that's very hard to tell.Henry: I always have a slightly, not very well-informed view, but a view that there was less editing of novels in the 19th century, and that Thomas Hardy dropped off his manuscript and they printed it, and that was that. You seem to have found a lot of material that suggests that the authors wouldn't talk about it, but that their work more edited quite heavily.Sarah: I think their work was edited quite heavily. And particularly, so the complication is the ones who are submitting for something for serialisation in a magazine, I think they were just so relieved to get at each month and another month that turned up. 'Cause you know that they were writing up to the deadline. So that didn't get edited, but then sometimes you can see at Macmillan saying, "When we turn this into a book, we're gonna do something different with it." That definitely happens. He does it to Charles Kingsley, Water Babies when it comes out as a book, has been edited from what appeared in the magazine. And what the other author, Mrs. Oliphant published a serial in the magazine, and he definitely got her to change it before it went into the book. So he did have an influence on these people, you wouldn't get from either their biographies or autobiographies.Life LessonsHenry: No. So this sort of feeling that you've described as almost a chip on the shoulder feeling, I think this is potentially an advantage because when I look at some of the scientific research on late bloomers, one thing you notice is, take scientists, for example. A lot of scientists make their breakthrough when they are young, but when people have researched this and said why is that, it's because a lot of scientists stop working once they get tenure or once they win a prize or whatever. The scientists who do carry on working, keep making breakthroughs. [chuckle] So it's actually not because there's anything special about being young, it's because that's when people are really trying. If you don't ever settle into, the people you have met who are on a time table, "I'm going to be a director at this age," they get there and they settle in and, great. They can cruise through for a bit. But if you never settle into that or you retain the chip or you retain the sort of feeling of oh, God. Oh, God. Should I really be here? That's actually quite good because it keeps you energetic and it keeps you looking and it keeps you thinking "What am I going to do? What am I going to do?" Do you think there's a kind of... I don't know. Was that part of your success and Alexander's success that it... You never settled for what you had.Sarah: Yeah. I think that's right and there's something else I would see a parallel, which is I was not the greatest corporate financier in terms of my grasp of numbers and I'm hopeless at negotiation. But what I was doing, which most of my colleagues weren't, is I can market and sell. I'm interested in people and I used to go and win business. I used to bring it back and then other people would transact it, but that's certainly what I did in Yorkshire. I was out all the time meeting people because I was interested and I wanted to know what they did and what they did and how does that business work.So I was always out looking and I never wanted to just sit at my desk and shout at people and run the numbers again. I wasn't very good at any of that, but I think I can see that in Alexander too. I mean, Alexander recruits a partner in the mid-1860s to take the back end off him because he just wants to be out meeting new authors and that's what he's gonna be good at and George Lillie Craik is going run the numbers and have the fights with the printers and talk to America. So I can see that and I think that is... You're not that interested in the day job, you're interested in the next idea and the next interesting thing that's gonna grab your attention. And because you're interested, other people bond with you and, hey, you've made a sale. I used to talk to potential clients who would say, "It's really good that you've come out because you sound like you're genuinely interested in this business whereas the other three guys were just wondering what fee they could get out of me."That's why I would win business 'cause I was interested in them as people and I made friends and I asked interesting questions. And I wasn't just there kicking the tires and then hoping I can sign someone up, you know?Henry: Yeah, yeah. That's the novel reader in you.Sarah: Yes.Henry: There will be lots of women in their 30s in City jobs or office jobs or accountancy jobs or whatever who feel the way you felt. Either they've got imposter syndrome or they secretly would rather just be reading Trollope or whatever. What's your advice to them? Difficult to give advice in general terms, but, you know.Sarah: Yeah. My advice is you will... The thing you will do best is the thing that makes you happiest. So if you go on trying to push yourself into being something that you see other people being and it's not really making you happy, you won't be very successful at it anyway. So it is worth taking a risk and thinking is there something out there I could do, which I'm... Owning a flower shop or whatever, that would make me happier. If I had stayed on in corporate finance, if I had gone into private equity, I could have made millions and millions, but I don't think I'd have been any happier. In fact, I think I'd have been a lot less happy than I am sitting here on a tiny, little book advance doing exactly what I wanted to do. I don't regret any of that because I wouldn't have enjoyed it. I wouldn't have liked doing it.I mean, the other thing is... The other thing I would say to all women who are in my position is don't beat yourself up all the time that you're not being the perfect mother or the perfect executive because you're gonna live with that guilt forever and you're never gonna know what you could have done better. If you had given up, maybe you'd have been a terrible mother at home. If you'd found the children out or never had them, maybe your career wouldn't have taken off. You're never going to know. So don't beat yourself up with that, just do the best you can and cut corners wherever you can and get help. And don't be afraid to say, "I need help with this" and "I can't come tonight 'cause I've got to go to a parents evening." Just... The more women say that we need help with this and don't try and pretend that it's easy. It's not easy. It's never gonna be easy to do both. I found it very hard.Henry: So you are now navigating the publishing world. Doing book research, being a writer. What things did you learn from your earlier career in all its guises whether it's like small techniques and skills or sort of big life lessons or whatever, but what things did you learn from that earlier career that you're sort of using now?Sarah: I certainly learned... I mean, I certainly picked up a lot of small skills along the way. I am a very fast reader, I'm a summariser and a lot of my job in corporate finance was writing good, crisp, prose because you wrote prospectus because you wrote... So I think all of that has helped. I think I'm a better writer and a better researcher because I did it professionally for 20 years, but we called it corporate finance. I mean, there was a lot of cross over. In terms of the bigger stuff, what have I learned? I've learned to cope with worry and stress. I mean, if you wake up in the middle of the night and stuff's going around in your head, get up, have a cup of tea and write it all down. Don't lie in bed worrying that you're not going back to sleep. You just have to learn to cope with stress.And I think the other thing I've learned and I try and get into my children's head all the time is to be more assertive just not to run away and hide. If you think something's wrong or you're not being treated properly, don't lose your temper, don't sulk and don't spend your whole life taking it out on your friends and your family. You have to address it at work. Nothing is more boring than the person who really ought to have handed in their notice and just spends their whole life moaning to their wife, their husband, their best friends about what their bloody job is. Don't do it. If you don't like what you're doing, you will become very boring and to everybody else. Change your job. Change your job.Henry: Yes. Yes. Having recently been that person, I can endorse that sentiment. Sarah: So we've all done that. We've all spent time listening to someone who's thinking, why don't they just stop doing this job if it's making them so unhappy? And I know that's a... I know particularly the current climate that's easier said than done, but don't, life's very short really.Henry: Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's right. And what would the Alexander McMillan advice be? Could we have a little book of the wisdom of Alexander McMillan?Sarah: I think he's going... I mean, I am absolutely immersed in his life in the 1860s. And it is that the decade of the 1860s is the absolute pivotal decade for the business. It completely transforms. It looks utterly different in 1870 than it did in 1860. In 1871, his first wife dies and he rapidly remarries a much younger woman. And I think he starts going abroad on holidays. And I think his life changes. I think the 1870s Alexander is gonna... Had a younger woman saying to him, you're killing yourself. It's not worth it. You've got sons coming into the business, let George take the strain. We're going to France for a month Alexander and you are coming too. I mean, I think his life is gonna change in the 1870s.Ask me again when I know what he's writing to people in the '70s. Because in the '60s, he's saying, get your head down. Really got to work. Put start another book. Don't let the grass grow on your feet. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. He's at it all the time. I think he's gonna have a very different attitude in 10 years' time.Henry: A lot of writers seem to have a decade or a 15 year period where they kind of really do most of their great work. If that seems to be like that for him, but in a business sense, then you're saying the '60s that was his time and then it cooled off.Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. And well after... But with a publishing house in particular, I think once you built up a critical mass, it's not so difficult to run because good authors are going come to you and you can be selective and you can take a Thomas Hardy manuscript and you can take a Kipling manuscript and a Henrig. They're going to come to you. Whereas in the 1860s, he's really scrabbling around. What's going to be good? And he creates things like the Golden Treasury Series or the Clarendon Press textbooks with Oxford University. He's creating things because he hasn't got Thomas Hardy or Henry James. He's got Charles Kingsley, who's becoming increasingly racist and unpleasant. By the 1870s, the business is... There's a magazine that comes out every month. It has regular subscriptions.And now Nature is going to come out every month and be written for by her Huxley. And he's got, he can choose who he publishes. So I think by the 1870s, the business runs much better even when he is on holiday. Whereas in the 1860s, he just needs to be there every day and he needs to read every manuscript and he needs to look at every proof and he's changing the colour of the bindings. He's in all over it and I think it would've killed him and it killed his wife possibly. And I think in the 1870s, it's easier for him to step back. And then he starts having a son and a nephew in the business. And then he has three nephews in the business, I mean, it just moves on. And he's lucky that the next generation of the one, two, three, five boys, three of them stay in the business and are still in the business in their 70s and 80s. And they all die within a couple of months of each other in 1936, bang, bang, bang. But they were all there, three brothers. So he's lucky in that there is at least two generations of McMillan that know how to run a publishing company. Not everyone gets that. Do they? Some people can't even get to some...Talent SpottingHenry: What did you learn about talent spotting when you were at Arthur Andersen?Sarah: That one of the best things you can have in a business career is instinct about people, that I could always tell within five minutes of an interview starting whether I ought to hire this person or not. It's a bit like house hunting, it all looks lovely on paper and then sometimes you get to the gate and you think I'm not even going to look at this house. [laughter] I can't imagine living in this house, why have I come? And I think I had really good instinct for people spotting and I was good at bringing people on particularly women. I mean, there were a couple of women around who say nice things to me about I learned a lot from you, Sarah.Henry: What were the signals? The good and the bad signals? What set your instincts off?Sarah: Genuine intelligence, not just... A spark in the eye literally and a bit of a sense of humour. So not just they've learned it all by wrote. I wasn't ever interested in the people who told me they'd been reading the Financial Times since they were 12. I was interested in someone who'd tell me something interesting they'd seen it on the back of a lorry coming into the interview. That was a better sign for me of genuine interest. And I always used to say when I was teaching other people to interview and hire as well, if you don't think...If this new person is going start on Monday morning, am I going to really look forward to seeing them? Or am I thinking that, I hope this is gonna be alright? Then you've already made your decision, you want that person to be someone you wanna work with on a Monday morning when it's pouring with rain and you've got to hangover you. So pick people who you are gonna get on with and who are as bright as you are or brighter if you can find them.Henry: Let's say I was going to plant you into the offices of some big consultancy, PwC or EY or someone, and your job is to talent spot some potential late bloomers. They don't have to want to write a book or be victorious, they just have to be some other Sarahs, who have this in them, but they're not talking about it, and we don't know what it is, how are you going to go about looking for these people, and when will your instinct sort of prick up and say, "Yeah, I'm gonna get to know her, she seems like there's something in the background there."Sarah: I think it's the... You're gonna see that person thinking outside the box. So in a room of people where everyone said something around the table, they've said the most interesting thing that wasn't what anyone else said. And it might have been a small point that they've made, but it was just different their brains weren't working, they weren't doing groups speak. Because they may not have been listening to the group speak and they might though it was very dull, but this was the thing that had been interesting them about this problem. And I know that's the thing. I also think I would be looking for the person who had done something interesting at the weekend, or was going to theatre that night or just the show that the brain was not completely sucked into the job, that in fact, they were probably more looking like hoping they were gonna get to the national theatre that night, than worrying about anything else that was going on. It's that feeling that you have a life outside work. And for lots of people, there is no life outside work.And I feel so sorry for them when they give up because, what are they gonna do with their lives? Whereas I always knew that there were 50 things. If I'd have to stop working tomorrow, I wouldn't have been bored for a second, there are 50 things I wanted to do, and I always feel sorry for people to say, "Oh, I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have this job." Really? You know.But I think, how do you spot them when that's not coming out? I think you are gonna spot them because they are gonna say something that's a different take from everyone else.Henry: Yeah, no, that's interesting, if you're not going to sort of have the chance to see them pull a book of poetry out of the briefcase or whatever, you can... You're saying there are signals in the meeting. Comes back to divergence almost, they're not...Sarah: It does.Henry: How many people do you think you met like that in your career? I tell you why I'm asking, I feel like we have no idea how many late bloomers there could be out there. But my suspicion is there a lot of people who could be in the right circumstances, given the right conditions or whatever, but we just don't know.Sarah: No, I don't know. I don't think many. I can't think of people. There were people who did surprisingly well after I'd worked with them, went off and did other business things and have done very well, and I think... Well, I wonder what they might do next.Henry: Were they the ones saying the out of the box stuff in the meeting or are there other indicators of those?Sarah: There's a girl in particular, I'm thinking about, who worked for me and Leeds who could have gone down a very boring banking corporate route. Actually, she's now running a really interesting small business, and she always... She used to get teased and laughed at because she would sometimes say such off the wall things, used to make a look a bit stupid sometimes, but I always used to be interested in what she'd said, 'cause there was something going on there. So I would think about her. I'm trying to think. So later life, when I've been around NHS boards, there are people there who I think could easily spring off and do something completely different, 'cause working for the NHS is so completely absorbing of your life, your energy and your compassion, but some of them are very interesting people, they wouldn't be doing that job otherwise.Best Victorian Novel?Henry: Finally give us a recommendation for one really good Victorian novel that we might not have read.Sarah: Okay, I'm going to say a part from I've already told you that I love The Way We Live Now, and I love Middlemarch, which I think are the two absolute classic novels. But the one that I read last year, which I'd never heard of and loved, it's by Mrs. Oliphant, and it's called Hester, and it was written, I think in the 1880s, and it's set in a small town, but it's about a woman who saves the Family Bank from going bankrupt. Her father has over extended the bank and run off, and a bit like, It's a Wonderful Life, there's going to be a run on the bank, but Hester goes into the office, it's a small town, and the fact that she's there, she saves the bank and effectively runs it, and then the book starts as the next generation are coming through what's gonna happen. And will she have to do it again? It's a really good book.Henry: Yeah, that sounds a great.Sarah: Hester by Mrs. Oliphant.Henry: I'm going to read that. Well, Sarah, thank you very much.Sarah: Thank you, Henry. It's been very enjoyable.Thanks for reading. If you're enjoying The Common Reader, let your interesting friends know what you think. Or leave a comment at the bottom.If you don't subscribe to The Common Reader, but you enjoy reading whatever's interesting, whenever it was written, sign up now. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk

You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture, about their lives, careers and how it all fits together and where food comes in.Today, I'm talking to Sarah Lohman, a food historian, and the author of Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine. We discussed how she went from art school to historic cooking, making a career as a blogger, and how she defines American for the purposes of her work. Alicia: Hi, Sarah. Thank you so much for being here. Sarah: Well, hello, Alicia. Good morning. [Laughter.] I feel we’re both still a little just rolled out of bed. Yeah, I did put a face on for you.Alicia: Thank you, I put a face on as well. I was completely ready to have this conversation and was sitting at my laptop at like 10:50. Like, ‘All right.’ And then at 11:01, I looked up and was like, ‘No!’ [Laughter.]Sarah: It's fine. I'm just here with my tea. Just getting a start on the day. We're just gonna have a lovely chat, as per usual.Alicia: Well, can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?Sarah: Sure. So I grew up in Hinckley, Ohio, which is a rural town about, oh, like 30 miles south of Cleveland. So Northeast Ohio. So I actually grew up in the house that my dad lived in from a teenager onwards. My grandmother gave it to my mom and dad the year that I was born. And so, that was how my family was able to have a little bit of property. And when I was growing up there, it was really pretty rural. I didn't have any really close neighbors, and we had a couple acres of our own. As far as what I ate, some of it was regional and some of it was at—the crap that we got fed in the ’80s and 90s that I look back on, and it's just totally remarkable. Do you remember things like Squeeze-its and Gushers? And I'm like, ‘I guess we just didn't know better back then.’ But those were real foods that we ate. And my mom was an exceptional cook. But it was very Midwestern. We did do some lasagna. We did do some chili, nothing particularly spicy. And then, kind of the regional cuisine in Northeast Ohio is very Eastern European. So there was also a lot of pierogi action. There would be some chicken paprikash, some beef stroganoff, those kinds of things. I think the most sort of resonant experience I had with food growing up is that my mom was an award-winning baker. So basically, as soon as I could stand, I was baking with her. Iit's funny, I didn't realize that baking was hard until food reality TV started coming out. All the chefs were like, ‘Oh, no, I don't bake, I don't bake.’ So it was really valuable to me to get that experience first and do the ‘harder side of cooking things.’And then as I got a little bit older, my parents both went to work when my brother went to college. And so, it was sort of my job to come home from school and start dinner. And so, that was the moment that I started to learn how to cook.Alicia: Wow. And so yeah, that's a really interesting mix of things. Because people associate, I think, the Gushers side of ’90s youths with other new processed foods, I guess. But it seems you had a real mix of home cooking and eating the—Sarah: Oh, definitely.I also feel many—at least in my world growing up, many families households are—I think a lot of families’ households are a blend. I think that we do a lot of culture and class shaming by saying, ‘Oh, you only go to McDonald's, blah, blah, blah.’ I mean, we can go into all of that, too. Yeah, of course, my family went to McDonald's, because how else you get a 6-year-old to shut up? McDonald's. And they wanted you there. And we’d go play on the playground afterwards, too. But yeah, my mom also cooked meals from scratch for me, because this was still the era where some people had the luxury of having a parent at home full time, which I feel is really hard for someone who would even, who would choose to want that and choose to want to spend time with that child. I feel economically, that's becoming less and less available. So my mom got to raise us up until I was in eighth grade, when she went back to work. And so, that allowed her the access and the ability and the time to be able to make meals from scratch as well. And kind of interestingly, her mom didn't really cook very much. Her mom did a lot with sort of processed food. But then, I don't know, my mom moved out to the country and just started baking pies and making stew from scratch. Something came alive inside her. And to this day, she's still an incredible cook and incredible baker. There's no stopping her from doing an all-out Thanksgiving or Christmas meal, even if it's just going to be the three of us eating it. And she’ll the table too. I think that’s her favorite part.Alicia: Aww. That's really great. And I talk so much, I think, about—in writing and in interviews and stuff—it's like, how do people eat differently? And it's always that answer is, you give them the time and you give them the access. And that's such an important thing to talk about, I think, in terms of our food upbringings.Sarah: Absolutely. And I feel that the time issue is one that I especially get very irritated with. I remember seeing a video a couple years ago with two very famous male food writers that are making a roast chicken with roasted vegetables. And they're like, ‘This only cost $14.’ And ‘Oh, isn't this so hard to do? People think this is so hard.’ And I'm like, ‘A*****e, you have no idea. You have no idea what it's like to be raising two jobs. You have no idea what it's like to be a single parent, and you have no idea the real choices that people are making. And you're just like, ‘Oh, just people hate making chicken. They're so stupid.’ It just pisses me off.And then of course, the caloric content when you're like, ‘Man, I'm hungry. I've got all these kids to feed.’ Of course, you’re going to pick fast food as opposed to making a roast chicken with roast vegetables, which I had for lunch. I'm starving two hours later. It's just such a lack of connection to everyday people. But also, I think in my case, it was just the ’90s and you bought your kids Gushers and Fruit by the Foot. And that's just kind of what you did.Alicia: Right? You fell in love with historical food while working at a living history museum as a teenager and went to art school. I wanted to ask, why did you go to art school?Sarah: Well, I didn't really think history was my career. I ended up at that job because my mom worked there. And so when I turned 16, she was like, ‘You're too old to stay at home all summer. You’ve got to get a job.’ And I was like, ‘Ok, well, I'll apply at Hardee's and work with my friends.’ And she was like, ‘No, you're coming to work for me.’ She was a manager there. So I got the job. And I was, didn't want to. I wanted to go be with my friends and not do this super-nerdy thing of working in a museum in costume. And it ended up obviously changing my life. Mom was right. Because the people that I worked with were such just exceptional, passionate individuals. And for me, I just wasn't in history in high school because you're not really learning about the lives of people. You're memorizing dates, and it's always very war-focused as opposed to any of the life that people led in between, right? You're learning about sort of governments and dates that this happened, duh-duh-duh. There's nothing there that makes you think that history is populated with human beings. Yeah, but museums, like the one I worked at, or probably more famously people know Plymouth Plantation or Colonial Williamsburg, they are focusing on social history. So day-to-day life. And then in the house there that I worked in with my ‘family,’ there was a wood-burning cast-iron stove. And so, that's when I just loved working with the fire and with the stove, with this really kind of simple piece of equipment. And we were also working from historical books, too. I started to get the sense of what that era in history tasted like, and being able to read old recipes like that. But I went to art school because I liked art. And that's what I sort of excelled out when I was in high school. And I was lucky that there was a really, really excellent art school near, far enough away from home that I could move but close enough that I wasn't too scary. So the Cleveland Institute of Art. I didn't know exactly what I was going to do. But that was my plan. And then interestingly, it sort of led me back to food history. I majored in a digital arts major with a fine arts minor in food and—not food, in photo and video, which obviously I do a lot of food photography now. And it was a five year program. So I had to do a thesis project. And so I ended up doing an installation of what today would call a pop up restaurant that served colonial-era food for a contemporary audience. So although after that I sort of dropped it for a couple years ‘cause I was sick of it, it clearly was this combination that I had. I realized I had this sort of unique perspective, because of my—already for a couple years, had worked in this very strange work environment. And that I'd had this background in food and cooking at home, and it just kind of came together as part of this really great program that I was in.Alicia: How has that art education influenced your career and food?Sarah: Hugely.It's funny because when people ask me ‘what I did in college,’ and I say that, ‘I went to art school,’ go like, ‘Oh, you’re really using the degree,’ which is just what people love to say to people who went to art students anyway, which I think is b******t. But I mean, in a very practical way, it has helped me immensely in that as part of my degree I received training in terms of working with freelancers. Working with clients, I should say. So being able to run my own business in a certain—just learning things, invoicing. That was all part of what I was learning. So when I wanted to quit my full-time job and start working for myself, that was much less intimidating. And I designed and launched my own website, because I knew both graphic design and some basic HTML when I first started blogging. Obviously, photography is a huge part of being in the foodie world. Whether you're blogging, or now, of course, a lot more on Instagram, or writing for a commission, you're often required to provide your own photographs. So my photography skills have been hugely helpful. And when I'm sort of working with people who want to get into food writing more, that is often one of the hard, most difficult hurdles, that food writing and food photography are often sort of intertjoined. You're building that Instagram audience. So I'm feel very, very, very lucky to have that background too. But I think in a bigger way, that sort of community and my professors that I work with, it, they encouraged you to think big. To think conceptually, to think of projects. And so, even formulating this idea of back when I got started: what if I did start a food blog and I looked at food history, and used to connect to the present, instead of doing all even the concept of doing this thing that I didn't really have any other—I didn't have a mentor at that point. I didn't have a concept of what my career could look like. Even just thinking about it and getting started on it, I think came from the education that I got in college, too.Alicia: Right.And you moved to New York, where that was—where you kind of got started doing this sort of work. Why was New York the place for that, at that time?Sarah: I mean, I think a couple things came together. I mean, I mentioned to you earlier, too, that really professor—I was in my fifth year, and I'm doing this restaurant. And it’s all very crazy. And he was the one that was kind of like, ‘You need to go to New York. There just isn't space for what you're doing here right now.’I went to school in Cleveland as well. And especially in 2005, when I was graduating, Cleveland wasn't doing great. People were already talking a lot about brain drain and college graduates leaving the Midwest and going to the coasts. It sounds harsh to say there wasn't the opportunity there. Because in a way, I did move back to Cleveland for a couple years, from 2018 to 2021. And it was because there were really exciting things happening here. And actually, because a lot of people had moved, went to the coast, got new ideas, and then brought them back to the Midwest. There's hugely positive things happening in Cleveland now. But I think to me, the tipping point was I'd never lived anywhere else in my life. I’d been on one trip out of the country at that point, which I felt very fortunate for. But my family just didn’t have the money to do a semester abroad or anything. I was working. I was paying for a lot of things myself. And I just thought it was really important to live somewhere else and get a different perspective on the world. And sort of a soft landing, I'd had a couple friends that moved out there the year before. And then really fortunately, I had a professor that said, ‘I'm from New York. I keep an apartment out there. If you ever need a place to stay for a month, just let me know,’ I was like, ‘Actually, thinking of moving there.’ So I had a place to stay when I first moved out there. And then I also then had roommates, and it just sort of happened. And then I ended up spending 13 years there. Alicia: Wow.And now that you've left after being in New York for so long. How has that influenced your work?Sarah: Yeah.Yeah, I was thinking about this the other day, because I really became an adult in New York City. And I do feel kind of douchey now being like, ‘Oh, but I live—I've lived here for a long time.’ [Laughter.] I moved when I was 23. And I left when I was 36. So that to me. I mean, obviously that's a time, a lot of growth. And a really incredible place to do that, as you know, being from New York yourself. But honestly, I decided to leave at the moment when I was really happy. I felt I had done it. I was a success in the city and my life was happy there. And it was the moment that I was happy as opposed to some great disappointment of disaster that I was like, ‘Ok, I'm ready. I'm ready to go. I've done this. I'm ready to go.’So the first move, I decided to come back to Cleveland. My parents were still here. And it was in a way a test to see if my business could exist outside of New York. This was pre-pandemic, moved in 2018. But I moved somewhere that was both close enough that I was still planning on coming back to work every week or two months and seeing if—I mean, God, when I moved to New York City, if you had an out of state or out of city telephone number, you couldn't get a job. There was so much of this very insular—you have to be in New York, have to be a New Yorker. That was the most intimidating part. You'd have seen like, ‘Can I still do events in New York? Will people have any respect for me?’ Obviously, a lot of that has changed since the pandemic. And if there's any positives to come out of it, the fact that you don't have to be located in a certain place, whether you want to be or not to do your job. So it was my first kind of experiment with it. And it did end up being a lot more traveling back and forth to New York, which could be really exhausting. But also part of the reason I moved at that moment to is I knew I was about to start a new book project. And I wanted to try living somewhere with a lower cost of living, and just a different pace of life. And I just knew that I didn't want to live in New York anymore. So I knew there wasn't going to be any sort of big regrets. Just wasn't quite sure what the next step was. So I was in Cleveland for three years. Well, a little more than. I’d said two to three years when I moved out there. But then there was this pandemic thing. I don't know if you heard. And I was really relieved to be there, too, because I could be there and support my parents, which would have been so scary. And I'm sure has been so scary for a lot of people. And like I mentioned to you, I just moved to Las Vegas at the end of August. A great new opportunity came up. I really love the city. I love its natural wonder. And so now, it's a little bit more of seeing like, ‘Ok, a lot of my money comes from doing live events,’ which obviously weren't happening during the pandemic. But it's also become sort of a weird time for doing online classes. People are sick of being online. But I did just come back from New York to try to do first in-person talks and events since the pandemic started. And people are also still a little hesitant to show up in person. All of it's understandable. I'm sick of the loss of connectivity that we get through Zoom too. But it makes total sense. If someone feels under the weather, they're not going to show up for class. Things have sort of hit a weird moment, but I'm just trying to ride it out. Hopefully, one day be able to expand the branded events a little bit more to the West Coast, too. And I don’t know, Alicia. I'm all about learning and experiences. And part of that is just I want to live in a different part of the country so I can understand that better, and maybe sort of understand our country as a whole better, too.Alicia: For sure. And so, I know you started out writing about food as a blogger, you—Four Pounds Flour. How has your relationship to being a food person online changed since you started in the industry? Because it is, like you said now, probably a lot more visually focused than it was. When people were bloggers. You could take a real shitty picture and use it. [Laughter.] Sarah: You're not gonna get those Instagram likes!And that's the coming from art school, too. I wasn't just like, ‘My content has to be good.’ So I didn't really think of myself as a writer. I still don't, in a way. The writing, to me, is a means to an end, a way to have a conversation about food and to express ideas. So coming from art school, it was like, ‘No, my photos are absolutely not going to look shitty.’ I'll tell you this. And bless him. My friend Jay, who I haven't talked to many years—Part of the article process is going through the critique process, which, I think, is honestly one of the most valuable skills I learned there. And so in my fifth year, and I'm in my major, and we're this really tight group of people. And I'm working on opening up this pop up restaurant, I’m and doing a website. And so, I did food photography for the first time. And so I had this critique of my food photographs, and my friend Jay went, ‘That's looking like some Chinese food. China, frankly—’ How do you say it? Some, he said, ‘That's looking like some Chinese fast food menu photographs.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, nooooo.’So it was this real kick in the pants. I mean, I think maybe the closer equivalent is it looks—it looked a little bit more like the collages that you see on the sides of bodegas. That kind of photography I was doing. Because it is a really specific skill to be able to get in there and understand. Just portrait photography, or landscape photography, or animal photography, are all very separate skill sets. Food photography, there are certain tricks that you had to learn. And so I really had to push myself to get better very, very quickly so that I didn't have Chinese takeout slash side of the bodega. Which, by the way, I'm obsessed with bodega collages. And also noticed the aesthetic is changing recently, the last time I was in New York. Maybe that's a different definition. So to me, the visual elements were extremely important. And I knew the food had to look delicious, or at least interesting. Is every photo on that blog that I wrote from—what 2008 to 2018? Is every photo a banger? Absolutely not. But I do feel proud of that. It is super visual. But interestingly, a lot of my work has now shifted away from individual dishes to more broader storytime about food as culture. So my photography has become much more documentarian of the travels I’ll do and the people that I'm meeting, and then the foods that we're eating together.So the transition to Instagram was super natural for me. See, this is the thing. I'm not in Writer Twitter. You're so in Writer Twitter and Food Twitter; I just kind of lurk and retweet. So in some ways, again, even though I have a book out. I’m working on my second book that started as a blogger. I'd never think of myself as a writer. That’s what I try to say when I’m—when somebody asks me what I do for a living. And I don't really want to have a conversation, but it still doesn't work. And they're like, ‘What do you want to write about?’ It's fine. [Laughs.]Alicia: Can you tell me what your next book is about?Sarah: Yeah, I can. So I'm looking at foods that are on the verge of extinction in America. And I traveled all over the country to talk to different people who were the shepherds and the harvesters and the farmers of these different foods. And the reason the foods are becoming endangered are for a variety of reasons. But I think most importantly, that all these foods are tied very deeply to, often, a people and a place. And the peoples that they belong to are peoples that within America have been historically and systematically oppressed. And so, that's one of the ways that America colonizes, is by taking away culture, which means taking away food. And it's looking at what happened, and honestly a lot about the history of American colonialism. But also, the stories of survival. Survival and thriving, too, and how these different peoples throughout America had been able to hold on to these foods, too. And then a little bit of call to action. My hope for this book is that the people and the products that I'm featuring will get the attention, the money, the support that they need and want. Maybe even the legislature. I'm hoping that this book serves these people and serves as a platform for their voices, too. I don't want to get into too much detail because I'm still writing it. Once it’s in the publication process, you can talk and talk and talk about it. But yeah, at this point, someone could probably write it faster than me. I don't think I'm a slow writer. It just takes time, Alicia. You know the work. Alicia: I know. It sucks. It's the worst thing I've ever done. And I am a writer and I hate writing a book. I mean, I hate writing a book because for myriad reasons that I probably shouldn't talk about publicly, but—Sarah: It’s exhausting. I mean, I'll talk about them for you. It's mentally exhausting. It's physically exhausting. I mean, it gives me anxiety. I'm thinking about it all the time for multiple years of one's life. The financial support isn't there. You said something on Twitter that I was like, ‘Same’ so hard that you—Paraphrase. You said, ‘Writing a book takes a lot of thinking. But how do you have time for thinking when you need to pay the bills?’ And that actually, with both of these books, is the hardest part. The money runs out. People are gonna get in advance. Yeah, well, lasts me about eight months of living and doing the research. It all got invested back into the book. I'm not living the high life here. And then you have to work, because you still have bills to pay. So where do you find the time to get the space, not just to write but to think about these ideas of making a great piece of work when you're also doing whatever you need to do to get those bills paid? You're working two full-time jobs when you're writing a book. It’s absolutely exhausting. It’s exhausting.Alicia: Yeah. The third of my advance that I've gotten so far, it wouldn't have paid my rent for two months. Yeah, it sucks. I don't know. I shouldn't have agreed to it.Sarah: It absolutely sucks. And then yeah, I kind of did a second one. ’Cause I was like, ‘Wow, I don't know how to make money.’ And after this, I really have to give it a think. In some ways, I feel guilty, because obviously, this is—What we're talking about is aspirational for probably a lot of people who are listening to this podcast. I mean, I've spent 10 years of my life on two books. And yeah, I'm really proud of my first book. And I think that the second book is going to be something that I'm proud of, too. I've gotten to work with great editors, and we've made something great together. And I think that the book has done something—I think that the big benefit of it, and probably the way you're motivated to do it, is that we can put something good and thoughtful into the world that will—I hope with my first book, too, bettered somebody's life in an indirect way. Just created more understanding around food and culture in America. But man, am I poor. I'm single. I should say to everybody. And happily so. This is where I want to be. Now I live with a housemate, but I was living by myself for a while. And I just read some big article about how society isn't designed for people to stay single who want to stay single. And so, it's really hard. It does feel like, really, an accomplishment every month that I do it where I'm like, ‘Yeah, rent, paid you.’ And it's hard to sort of juggle that between people's perceptions of me. And you probably feel the same way, too, where it's like, ‘I'm successful. I've got a book out. I've got some name recognition.’ I'm not a major food celeb. That's totally fine. But I think people need to look at what I'm doing. They're like, ‘Yes, that's what I want to be doing.’ But everybody—Phew. It's tough some days. It's a real haul. And I don't want to say that love makes up for money. To get through those times of real stressful uncertainty, you really have to be—love and be invested in what you're doing. So definitely after this book, I have to really think about what I want the next step of my career to be because it's just incredibly exhausting. This will be another five-year process from proposal to publication. The financial stress is real. The artistic physicality of writing a book is really draining and uncertain and difficult on your sort of mental health. But I got to meet amazing people and do amazing things that I wouldn't have had the excuse to do otherwise. And I think that that's the addiction and the appeal that keeps bringing me back. If I pitch this book, that means I get to go to this place and meet these people and meet them on their level and in their space and in their life. And to me, that is really—it's the access that being a writer gives you, both that people might be open to speak to you but also the allowance it gives myself to be like—I went to the Navajo Nation and volunteered at a festival that celebrates the Navajo-Churro sheep, and assisted this cook and butcher in butchering a whole animal. I'm sorry. Course you're vegan. [Laughter.] I forgot about that. I’m so sorry.Alicia: I’m a vegetarian, it's ok. [Laughs.]Sarah: Oh, I actually am too. But for me, learning about, meeting people where they're at is also about learning about their food in every single aspect. I had never butchered an animal before. And especially someone who has eaten meat and does still occasionally eat meat, I feel—I've always felt that experience is really important to be with that animal. But I never, I'm not just gonna pick up and volunteer fly to Arizona and then drive for hours to volunteer at a sheep festival. And I do want to do that. If someone asked me if you want to do that, it’d be like, ‘Absolutely.’ But writing it in this book allowed me to do that. And now, I've met people that I feel so connected to. And I'm just rambling now. But, yeah.This book is really special. I feel connected to the people that I interviewed and spent time with in a way that I didn't get to do in the first book. And in this really meaningful way. So that's amazing. That's a moving life, right?Alicia: [Laughs.] It is great. I am too bitter about the book process. But I also like to talk about it because I do feel as writers, we feel a little bit like we owe it to the fact that we make a living being writers to be nice about it. And I think that that's not fair necessarily to people who are coming up and get a, an idea of it as something—I grew up looking at magazines and looking at the contributor page and being like, ‘These people are living the great life.’ And now, I know that that's not true. [Laughs.]Sarah: It’s f*****g hard.And you really have to fight to get paid. I mean, especially now, both the amount of money paid for both articles and books has just dropped in the past 10 to 20 years. And a lot of it comes from online. For some reason, when your words live online as opposed to on the page their value’s less. Which doesn't make any sense. I'm gonna write just as good, no matter where that's appearing. And I don't think that the publishing industry as a whole actually supports great art right now. I mean I appreciate that every publisher has got a couple authors that's making bank, and that they're essentially taking the gamble. It's literally gambling on us, where they're investing money. And they're gonna see if they get their investment back. But I have been with two publishers now. I have never felt financially supported. My third publisher, I feel supported in many other ways. But money is one of the most important ways to be supported. And I also don't like this culture of you’re an artist, you can't talk about money. I got bills to pay. I got food to buy. How do you have space to create good work when you don't feel secure in those things?I teach a nonfiction book proposal and publishing process class with a friend of mine who published an amazing book about bedbugs. She's a science writer. And one of the things we talk about is we're also very brutally honest about what this process is like, what your financial situation is going to be like, especially as a new author. Unless you were already a super famous name, you're not going to be pulling in the big bucks on your first book. The fact that you might never see royalties. My first book, Eight Flavors, has done really, really, really well. I have not seen a dollar. That being said—and this will, I think, happen for you Alicia—is the best part about it, maybe even more so than the getting to go out and connect with people, not writing the book, is that then for at least a year after the book comes out, you get to talk about it. You get to engage in this conversation that you don't have to give any introduction to, because people have read the book. And you can engage with people about these concepts. After the first book, I got to travel for almost two years. There's no official book tour. People are surprised about that nowadays too. But now, they'll do a media tour. But for certain authors, public speaking becomes a part of your job. And I got to speak in a huge diversity of places. And that was really amazing, getting to talk to people about this work that I had done and have these conversations that I've wanted the book to prompt feels so good. And then that, for that one year, you're also just in the money. There's just money coming everywhere. And then you’re like, ‘You know what? I could do this again. I could do this again.’ And the cycle just repeats. And now, I'm 40. So this is why we have to figure things out going forward. But when your book comes out. It's going to be amazing. You're going to have great conversations and—about something that I know you're really passionate about, too. And then that will make you start to think you can do it again. And then you might.Alicia: Ha! [Laughs.] The next one will be very, very different. But in your book that actually is out there that people could buy and read, and hopefully get you royalties, Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine—Sarah: But in the end, I don't care enough. Now that the work is out there, it's like, ‘Get it from your library. Buy it secondhand. Borrow it from your friend.’ To me, in the end, now that the work exists, the money part, in my mind, should not be on the reader. It should be the publisher, right? And the full system that doesn't support artists. Now the book exists. Don't steal it. Don't steal this book. Buy it from a small, independent bookstore, if you want to. Yeah, get it from your friend’s shelf. I don't care if you enjoy it.Alicia: I actually did buy yours second hand at Unnameable Books in Brooklyn. Or was it Book Revue in, on Long Island? I don't know. But it has the price in pencil, so I know I bought it second hand. [Laughs.]Sarah: I'm totally fine with that. I think that’s lovely.Alicia: [Laughs.] But I wanted to ask how you came up with parameters for your definition of American cuisine.Sarah: Yeah, I mean, I think that that's the idea that I wanted to play within this book, because I think American cuisine is famously difficult to define, right? And if people do define it, it's in this really negative way. ‘Oh, it's all McDonald's, all hot dogs and hamburgers, or whatever.’ And I think that internationally, that's often what people think of American food. And I think that Americans often do that to themselves. When, in my experience, I find quite the opposite, that there's a lot of worry about American food becoming homogenized. But it's so often that I'm doing an event and people will come up and be like, ‘Oh, have you tried this local dish? And do you know about this thing? And if you go to this restaurant–’ People are so immensely proud of their local culture and cuisine. So I think a lot of American food is based on physically, graphically, where you grew up. And then of course, I think that saying American food is hot dogs and hamburgers presents a very narrow and, dare I say, racist view of who an American is. Because I'm an American. You're an American. Someone whose family immigrated from China in the 1840s is now fourth, fifth, sixth generation American. Someone who came from India in the 1960s is American if they want to define themselves that way. So it's both a, you mentioned the word sort of erasure when we were talking about this. Using that narrow definition of American is erasure of all of the facets and complications of who Americans are, right? That being said, the fact that—acknowledging the fact that we were a really diverse country, I then got curious about how individual ingredients. What cook doesn't have black pepper and  vanilla in their kitchen? So how can someone come from this huge variety of backgrounds—And I mean, when you travel around this country, it often felt like I wasn't going to different states. It feels like I'm going to different countries that both have their own idea of like, ‘This is what America is,’ but one state over, it's completely different. And they’re speaking a different language one state over, too. So why, then, are there these handful of ingredients that both define us and that Americans consume in massive levels compared to the rest of the world? Why do we have a particular love for these? I think American cuisine can be delightfully undefinable. I think that the idea of cuisine, of a certain way of eating and doing things has a more specific definition. And I think then there can be lots of arguments about what is or isn't American food. And I think that that's all a fun, interesting conversation to have. But so, then I got curious about what does unite us? And apparently it's a few pantry items. And why.Alicia: Right, right. Which is so interesting. And I loved when you wrote about Food Network. Again, as a person who, born in the mid ’80s, watching Food Network, reading Food & Wine, reading Travel + Leisure as a kid was how I understood food other than what my mom was cooking. And you point to how they kind of led to this increase in sales for whole black peppercorns versus powdered. And I think that that's such an interesting thing, because we don't think in the U.S.—Or even I, as a food writer, it's difficult to talk about what ingredient people use that is actually, I don't know how to sit—But people don't use things in their whole forms necessarily in an American kitchen. It is a rare thing to grind your own coffee or grind your own peppers. But for whatever reason, whole black peppercorns really became a thing. It was a joke on SNL that, the huge waiter with, the waiter with the huge pepper mill. ‘Tell me when.’ [Laughs.]But people take for granted the whole peppercorns now. But I wanted to ask, I don't think it's Food Network anymore that's influencing how people eat. What do you think is influencing how people eat now?Sarah: That's a great question. I mean, the Food Network stepped in to fill such a gap that wasn't, that was there. A lot of food magazines, at that point, even in mid ’80s were super high end, let's say. Or very, very low end, Budget recipes. And the Food Network just sort of normalized cooking, and normalized olive oil. And just these whole and fresh ingredients that weren’t out of reach in any way, that you could get at your grocery store, that it didn't cost that much more money that we weren't using. It sort of leveled up home cooking in a lot of ways too. Even for people who mostly were just watching it, as opposed to try and replicate every recipe. I mean, I think that the major food influence right now is Instagram. And I think that there is some negative aspects to that, in that ugly food is delicious. And Instagram really only elevates beautiful food and incredible colors. I try not to be a crabby, elder millennial. Just hates things ’cause they're new. But something really bothers me about venues that are clearly just setups for Instagram pictures. You know what? I just like honesty and logic in any viewing. And so, I don't want food to be set up so that it looks good on Instagram. And I see that in retail and restaurants. They're like, ‘Well, this is going to be our Instagrammable dish.’ But then on the flip side,then I’ll get that. I'm like, ‘Oh, it's gonna be such a tight Instagram photo. I’m sure I’m gonna love it.’ So in some ways, it can be a really negative influence, I think, ‘cause if we're just thinking about—Obviously, we do eat with our eyes. But if we're just thinking about the visuals, we're missing the whole ugly, delicious panoply of amazing foods out there. That being said, it has sort of a positive things, too, because a lot of those really vibrant colors are coming from East Asian ingredients. And so, now things like ube and matcha—Matcha, I did predict being an up-and-comer in Eight Flavors, but I never would have called ube being a thing now, which is not only beautiful, but really delicious. And so, even though I think there can be some negative aspects to just judging food visually, I think that it has allowed us to not ‘ew’ when something is an unexpected color, which I think is a very Midwest, white Midwest, to do, to be like, ‘Eww, why is it that color?’ I think that embracing the beautiful, the beauty in food that often comes from around the world. And I would say particularly East Asian countries do these incredible exclamations of color with their ingredients and flavor and appearance and trompe l’oeil, and all these amazing presentation things that I love seeing embraced in American food, because that also means that those people are being embraced as Americans.Alicia: Right.Well, that leads me to my question of so many of the ingredients in the book are so many ingredients that we have come to kind of consume in the U.S., aren't indigenous to the U.S. And so, you write that in the conclusion that it's our lack of tradition that is allowed for this diversity. And of course, diversity is good in every aspect, but at the same time, I'm always wondering now, what is the difference between assimilation and erasure of origins of food. And what is lost when something becomes American versus retaining its identity at origin? One thing I've been talking about with my husband because he's applying for PhD programs right now in history, and he's going to focus his research on rum and Puerto Rico. And we were talking about people calling coquito ‘Puerto Rican eggnog.’ And then talking about how is that erasing the idea that it probably has roots that are deeper than U.S. colonization and industrial canned products coming. But it's so hard to find that. But then the story ends up just being like, ‘It's eggnog with coconut.’And especially now that you're writing about Indigenous foods, but what is that difference between assimilation and honoring origin? Sarah: Yeah, couple things to comment on. And I'll see if I can start on a larger thought here. I do think that assimilation and erasure are the same thing. I think that when, we are for a large part, especially the last 100 years being an immigrant nation. And so when someone comes here and you say, ‘You have to speak English, you have to cook this way, you have to dress that way.’ That is both assimilation and erasure. And I think that's a horrid concept. And I think that it's a way that, luckily, immigrants have been able to resist in different ways, too. But I spent many years working at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum teaching immigration history about the Lower East Side, but in this broader way. And we did these tours in a way that we could also learn from the people's experiences on the tour. And maybe one of the most heartbreaking things that got sent to me said to me pretty frequently is that someone whose parents were, for example, whose grandparents are from Italy would talk about how they were so sad that they didn't know how to speak Italian because their grandparents would not speak it in the house. They’d refuse to and they're really upset they didn’t get that cultural connection, but then will turn around and talk about how immigrants from Central America don't want to be American and don't want to speak English. And luckily, I had a job where I could call people out. That was part of the process of like, ‘Oh, didn't you tell me earlier that you duh-duh this?’ So I hate that turning around and shitting on the next person, because it just means that we all sort of lose. And luckily, because of the stubbornness of Italian immigrants, we have this really incredible Italian American food way here to go get, to experience and enjoy. But one of the downsides, though, of having a culture that is made up of people all, from all over the world coming to this country, is that we also have erased Indigenous foods and Indigenous ingredients. And that was done purposefully, again, because the American colonial government wanted to come in and take that land, and just push Indigenous peoples into the least desirable sections, or in some case, people—It's an incredible story where people were able to stand their ground and stay, remain on their sacred land. In the face of the deception, manipulation and violence of the American government, that was a very, very difficult thing to do. So we have an incredible number of native ingredients and spices, plants. And in some ways, it has spread all over the world, like tomatoes, and peppers. But I'm seeing a resurgence of American spicebush, which is a native spice from the Midwest and the East that has notes of clove and nutmeg and allspice in it, that's just a plant I could probably go into the woods and find right now. But we’re totally unaware of it, because it wasn't cinnamon. It wasn't these spices that were revered in Europe.That being said, too, Indigenous people have also adapted and brought in new ingredients and new animals and new ways of living. Indigenous people in the Americas are incredibly adaptive. And so, they took the best parts of the colonist’s culture and the parts that suited them, and then made that a part of their culture too. So of course, all of modern Mexican cuisine, a lot of that has to do—I guess the biggest thing I can say is that the Americans didn't have many domesticated animals. And so, that was one of the biggest ways that Indigenous people's lives changed. And Indigenous food changed here, too. But of course, also, there's no way we can also say, ‘Well, that's not real Indigenous food.’ For example, coming back to the Navajo. They've been shepherding the Navajo-Churro sheep for 400 years. So we also tend to have different ideas of tradition. If a white person does something for 100 years, it’s traditional, but if a native person does something for 400 years, it's like, ‘Oh, we just took that from the colonists.’So all that aside. I think that there's also a really positive ways to think about it. Because we are such a jumble of people, both in our country and our cities, we get to look in each other's cooking pots and go to someone's house to experience a new recipe, or Google a restaurant in our neighborhood. So there is also this mutual sharing of food, and I think in particular flavor. It's always like, ‘What is that spice? What is that ingredient?’ And I think that's why I was drawn to looking at individual flavors, individual ingredients, because often it's not necessarily the whole dish that comes into our broader culture at once. It's the sriracha sauce or it's the cardamom. It's this introduction of something that's new that we begin to play with. And when I say American, too, its broad American culture. You see that same kind of playing with a new ingredient for someone who is white Midwestern, or Mexican descent in the southwest. It is this broader idea of a grilled cheese sandwich is delicious, probably no matter where you're from, so that everyone gets to play as opposed to the dominant culture, I think. And maybe think about it as more mainstream than dominant. Alicia: No, no, that's super fascinating. And I think that that's a really great way of thinking about it. Because I do think that the conversation has been really skewed, especially online and food conversations around, what is cultural appropriation? And a lot of people will say, ‘Oh, does this mean I can't cook tacos in my house if I'm not Mexican?’ And it's like, ‘No, of course. That's great. Everyone should eat tacos.’Sarah: Just don’t claim you invented the taco!It seems very simple in some ways, right? I mean, one class I taught, I wish I'd gotten this woman's name. But we were talking about the importance of attribution. And we're talking about it specifically in just recipe writing. I was like, ‘Even if you were just inspired by somebody else, why wouldn't you attribute that person and create a community? Why is there this pressure that we have to—No item of food is new. It's all inspired. No item of art right is new. It's all inspiring to be something else.’And this writer in my class turned to me and said, ‘When in doubt, shout it out.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, when in doubt, shout it out.’ If you're worried that you’re appropriating someone's culture, shout it out. Credit somebody. But also, if you're worried that you're appropriating someone's culture, maybe don't do whatever it is that you're about to do. Is this appropriation? It probably is. I think that cooking within someone's culture is an incredible way to learn about someone else's life and mode of living, especially at a time when we can't travel very much right now, right? Because it's not just the food and the flavor. It's the process of making it that teaches you about how other people live. And that's an incredible bond. And interestingly, speaking of American erasure and assimilation, food is often the thing that people are the most prejudiced against. 100 years ago, we stopped eating garlic, because Italian and Jewish immigrants smelled like garlic. And that was seen as a negative. The ’80s or the ’90s, kids coming from India or South Korea, or opening up their lunchboxes and getting the ‘ew’ and all they want is Lunchable. So there's definitely that side of it. But at the same time, those same kids grow—Italian food exists because of stubbornness. We have an incredible amount of Korean food, Korean American food now. There's also a stubbornness in giving up our food culture that then ultimately benefits everyone. It's one of the things that almost a dominant culture allows people to maintain. But also, thankfully, it's one of the ways that we can make incredible connections with people, even if we don't speak their language or believe in the same faith. Sitting around the dinner table, experiencing those foods, we all taste, we all eat, we can all talk about food. And it's really an amazing thing. Alicia: Right.And I wanted to ask, because working on my book, a lot of narratives around vegan and vegetarian food for the last 50 years, has—it's been historicized as a white thing, which is just so wildly inaccurate. Even within the United States, this is—there is diversity in people who eat ‘alternative natural foods’ or eat a vegetarian diet. And I wanted to ask, how do you—what are your techniques? What are your methods for helping you see beyond the narratives of the dominant culture, or the dominant historical narrative? Because also, a thing that is perpetuated because we're creating so much content online. I've perpetuated this myself, is that we're just writing stories. And we're grabbing a random source, and we're just repeating it. So as someone who's actually digging into history, what is, what are some good resources? What are some good techniques for not just perpetuating stories that are incorrect?Sarah: Yeah.I think that the biggest way I want to frame this is just because they're the easiest source to find, doesn't mean that they're the best source. Going into the book that I'm currently writing, someone is going to perceive this as racist. But here I go. I wanted to make an effort to include as few white men as possible, because when you do a Google search for anything, the first hits that people with the most media attention, that people with maybe the most sort of money and power and businesses, are going to be white men in this country, because they are the dominant people and have been for a very long time. Does that mean that that white man is the best resource for you? It absolutely doesn't. So the easiest, the most powerful, even the most written about person may not—and in fact, probably is not the best person to talk. Does that mean never talk to any white guy ever? No. Absolutely not. There are white guys in this book. But just making that promise to myself made me keep pushing and not be satisfied with the first answers that I got. Because even in maybe that first phone call with that white guy, they start talking about other people who have inspired them or who they support or who they're linked to. If I just stop at that one phone call, I wouldn't get to all those other people that actually that guy thinks is really important to talk about. There was an Amazon review for my first book, which you should never read. But of course I did. And someone said, ‘It seems like she went out of her way to be inclusive in this book.’ And the answer is, yeah. [Laughter.] Yeah, I did. But also, I also wanted to tell the real history, which is an inclusive history. That's why I study food history, because looking at what we eat finally allows us to access the stories of women and people of color in a way that traditional histories do not. And traditional histories are several generations of both saying that white male history is the only important history, and also because only white men were allowed to do things for so f*****g long in this country means that we never get to acknowledge that everybody else was there too. That we were all there at the same time. So my advice is to keep pushing. Don't go with the first Google search. Don't go with the first phone call. Keep pushing till you find the person you're like, ‘Whoa, this is it. This is where the story is. This is how I can understand this deeper.’That being said, I think part of the issue is that the money doesn't support that kind of writing, whether things get repeated again and again online because maybe you're getting 100 bucks or $150 to write your 250, 500 or 800 word. Or maybe you’re not not getting any money, because you're trying to break into the industry. So when you are making negative dollars per hour to write an article, of course, you're going to take that first Google search. And of course, you're on deadline. And of course, your editor just pressure you to copy something else if they're not a very good editor. So that's how those stories get supported. So it also takes a certain denial of like, ‘Oh, man, if I didn't do this much work, I would be more financially stable.’ But that's also just not the right thing to do. So it really is a battle and it's not easy, and the system is not supporting good journalism right now. That I think is the biggest issue.Alicia: No, absolutely. Well, for you is cooking a political act?Sarah: I've been thinking about this a lot as I know this is your question. I think for me, it is a cultural act, which is a political act in its own way. When we cook, when we cook from home, when we cook within our own cultures, it is an act of preservation. It can be an act of defiance. I mean, sort of speaking about veganism, a friend of mine who is a devoted vegan, which I really do respect, said, though, that he thought that everyone was gonna eat this way in the future and this is definitely the way that we should be going. And at that point, I had just come back from the Navajo Nation. And I'm like, ‘You're gonna go to these Indigenous people and tell them that they can't eat meat anymore, because it's bad for the planet, despite the fact that this particular animal has been a part of their culture and their religion for 400 years? So that's not like a colonizer attitude at all.’ So I realized at that moment that food is religion in a lot of ways. It can be directly tied to religion, but it is such a big part of culture to march in and tell someone you can't eat that way, is—it's really destructive. That can be erasure, too.So just, I think sometimes living your life and eating the foods you want to is this political act, but I think that most people would see it as a cultural act. An act of preservation. And especially around the holidays, that is the time when even people who are maybe many generations removed from an immigrant or enslaved or colonist ancestor, that's when they're cooking the foods to reconnect to that story and to their own history.Alicia: Thank you so much, Sarah.Sarah: My pleasure! Yeah, I got really riled up about some things. [Laughter.] I may have offended some people. It's probably fine. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.aliciakennedy.news/subscribe

Join Marc & Sarah in the first of a series inspired by War on Women's song lyrics “Let's raise some wonderful, beautiful hell.”The episodes in this series will be about an hour long, with informal, candid conversation between Marc & Sarah about topics we don't hear many people talking about but that really need to be said. This first episode discusses what so many people in the environmental movement get wrong — calling for us to “save the planet.” Tune in to find out why we think this narrative is actually harmful, and what we need to be thinking about instead.You can watch the full video conversation above, or listen to the edited version below (or in your favorite podcast player.) [00:00:00] Marc: Anyway, thanks for hanging out. Y'all this is our first ever Twitch stream. Did I get that phrase right? Sarah? Is this a Twitch? [00:00:09] Sarah: Yes, we are streaming on Twitch, which makes it a Twitch stream. [00:00:14] Marc: Sarah. Sarah's had to educate me on Twitch over the last couple of weeks. We're learning. He's a great teacher. So yeah, it's a little awkward. Because I can only see you. I don't know who's in the audience. So maybe that's a good thing. I won't get stagefright as I still do. When I know there's dozens of hungry predators wanting to attack me, primal instincts. [00:00:35] Sarah: Yeah. Still out there ready to attack [00:00:38] Marc: you. Yeah. And they're in the audience. Yeah. And now you [00:00:42] Sarah: can't see them, so you're not afraid of them. Is that what it is? Exactly. [00:00:45] Marc: That's why fear of speaking in public is our biggest fear because it, it triggers that primal instinct. Yeah. Public speaking, [00:00:55] Sarah: man. I believe you, but I don't know that it's because we think that there's predators. I think that because we are social animals and the fear of making a fool of ourselves and being socially exiled. Is a greater threat then, or I guess the same threat, because once you're socially exiled, you are, then I'm at risk of being eaten by predators. [00:01:17] Marc: Yeah it's not that it's not that it's that we are. No. So let me explain. So it's a bit more we are out in the open, we're not in our habitat, we're exposed, right? So we're out of our comfort zone and then we just see, another thing, whether it looks like us or not, and then we're like, whoa, I don't know where to hide. I'm not in my safe space. And when you're on stage at mimics, that mimics, that environment mimics those feelings. Yeah, look it up. We can talk about this later. People who don't want to know about this stuff. They came here for climate, not fear of speaking in public [00:01:52] Sarah: I'm exposed. Something like that. Okay. Should we just get [00:01:56] Marc: started? Let's do it before we lose people. [00:02:01] Sarah: Yes. Okay. So welcome to our new episode of this podcast. We're trying out a new format. So bear with us. We are simultaneously recording this and also live streaming to Twitch. So if you want to see what we're talking about live and in real time, our new Twitch address is twitch.tv/climate designers, all one word. And this is our first ever experiment in live streaming. So we're just like getting the hang of it. And we. Don't know yet how often we'll do this. So this is as our first experiment. We've invited a few people, we haven't promoted it widely. Nobody knows what we're doing this, but we've invited a few of our friends to come and give us feedback and give us support and let us know what you think of this format. Let us know what you think of doing this on live stream. I'm seeing Rachel's here from Los Angeles and Kelly from Boston. Thanks for coming. Cat's here and sunglasses emoji. Awesome. Thank you guys for being here. It's it makes me feel so much better that we're not just shouting into the void. We've got our friends and supporters out there telling us if we look okay if the lighting's all right, which it's not really, but that's fine. So thank you. Yeah, this is open to the public. Anybody who just happens to happen upon us could come in here. And I'm really curious to see if we get climate trolls, climate deniers coming in here and saying, you guys are stupid or something and that'll be fun. How will we deal with that? We just ignore them and kick them out. Or we'll we have a conversation, see if we can change their mind. I don't know to be seen, but yeah, if you want to come and join us in the next time we do this, whenever that will be, it will be at Twitch TV dot climate or slash climate centers. And you can follow us to get a notification of when we go live. And that will enable you to give us feedback while we're while we're recording it. And you will have to log in to Twitch in order to be able to chat and interact with us. And that would be great if you did that. Otherwise, if you go, just watching, listening. No problem. No need to log in. Mark since this kind of came from you tell us a little bit about why you wanted to change up our format and try something new, [00:04:25] Marc: right? Yeah, over the last few months or so I think really after the party program with the excitement after that ended and, meeting more people, new people, and some of those people are actually now on our core team, it gave me a second burst of excitement and energy. But at the same time, I was like what are we. What are we not doing yet? We're starting to build this foundation with climate designers, with the help of, amazing people. And then I was like, what's the next? So I guess what I'm trying to do is carve out what's going on currently, but then thinking about the next step while others support that. And I started to think about some of the bigger topics that I've been talking to with with friends and Rachel and my girlfriend who's in the audience about these bigger headier topics that I feel designers need to know. And some of that was in the party program. We talked about indigenous wisdom. We talked about environmental justice systems thinking, things like that, but even leveling up more, talking about things like capitalism, talking about things like the human narrative that we've been unfortunately sold over the last a hundred plus years. Advertising and, other factors and systems in place. And what does how do we actually do transition to a different economy? This renewable stuff is great and all, but just because we switched to a hundred percent renewables tomorrow, we're still working with this gross in damaging economic system. And so like, all we're going to be doing is renewing the shit that is putting us in this mess. So I want us to really start to think bigger about the topics that I feel we need to start talking about, especially at the intersection of design and climate. And some of you out there know me pretty well and know that I have been listening to punk rock music since I was in middle school. And it really. Shaped me. I've written a number of times about this on my blog, about how it, and instilled in me the idea of questioning and authority. This idea of fighting for causes that you believe in this whole DIY ethos. And so I still listen to that music today. It really does motivate me and there was this really amazing, great band called war on women, out of Baltimore, Maryland, an amazing band. I've seen them live, I think twice. And I'll see them later this year with bed, religion, and be a fucking amazing show. And they released a new album just a few months ago called wonderful hell. And they're a title track. Wonderful hell has some really beautiful lyrics in them. And it's a really great kind of sing along song with your fist in the air and flicking everyone off. And there's a a phrase in there that I go back to. So I'm going quote it now. There's gotta be a better way than giving up and in wallowing let's raise some wonderful, beautiful hell. And don't know, I've just been having that spirit in me the last couple of months now. And so bringing all this up to Sarah and and Rachel, and just, I felt like I wanted to speak up a little bit more and talk bigger and that phrase talk bigger is something that Sarah and I have been using internally to talk about this next. Hello, elevation. Evolution. Is that too much of a strong word, Sarah, with this podcast, like just leveling up the podcast. So anyway that's the backstory of why we're wanting to do this to prototype in a new way and to think about some of the topics that we feel designers need to start thinking of. [00:07:45] Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. So for me, it really made me think about, I guess what's been on my mind. And when you brought this up to me I merged it with what I've been thinking about, which is the last 50 years of environmental activism in which there has been accomplished major changes and major efficiencies and a lot of really good things, but we're still seeing the rate of change compared with the transformation still needed. It's just not enough. And we're running out of time to make big changes. And so for me, it's been let's not keep saying the same thing that's been being said for 50 years. How can we change the narrative? What do we need to question to initiate deeper changes. And I came across this phrase. Initiate deeper changes by asking deeper questions. And one of the books that I'm reading right now. And so I think this is an opportunity for us to ask deeper questions and have bigger conversations and also to put it out there transparently not polished. We don't have everything all figured out. It's just to have start having those conversations. I think one of our favorite climate scientists, who's also an educator often tells people when they ask what's the most important thing that I can do about climate change right now. And she always says, just start talking about it. So that's what we're doing. And even that is an interesting topic, like why people don't talk about it and what holds us back and why it's scary. And I think we can go for miles on that too, but We did put together a little presentation. We can go into, we got a question already from wait Lindsey. Hi Lindsey. Thanks for joining. She says, Sarah. Now I want to know what book you're reading right now. I am reading designing regenerative cultures by I'm the worst at names and I just had it in front of me designing regenerative cultures by Daniel Wall. [00:09:57] Marc: Daniel and your wall. He's great. He's awesome. So good. Highly recommend whole Danny boy. He's great. Speaking of books, I'm I just started reading lessons more by Jason Hickle who has ties to, I feel really bad. I haven't done my homework on the author. I've just heard that the book is really great from multiple people who is connected in some form or another to extinction rebellion. So less is more from Jason heckles talking about de-growth and capitalism and all that fun stuff that I've been peeking out on lately. [00:10:33] Sarah: Yeah, it's a really good book. You're reading it too, right? I am. I have a whole lot of books in progress. [00:10:42] Marc: I do one at a time. Sarah does [00:10:43] Sarah: 20, I don't, I pick up one book and whatever I happen to be thinking about at the time, I often find a phrase in that book. That's exactly the thing to help me, keep moving forward and then I'll pick up some other books. Can anyone relate? I don't know. I'm a non-linear reader. Another check-in with the chat. The, we got our first spammer. I wonder how common that is. [00:11:09] Marc: 18. Oh, you know what? I think it was one of my high school friends. I invited, what is he selling? Oh, he want, he wants us. Oh, big followers.com. Cheryl buy it. [00:11:21] Sarah: Awesome. Yeah, like we said, this is open to the public it's happening live and in real time we're going to say some things just to try to be a bit provocative or instigating or rebellious. So I fully expect that some people might come in here and be like, I'm anti what we're saying, I guess might be the way to say it. I think if you put climate in your name, you're going to invite some of that. And I don't know. I'm okay with that. I need that full workout [00:11:50] Marc: as long as they're nice and civil and respect. And if they want to jump into zoom and come on screen and have a chat, [00:11:57] Sarah: let's do it. So I invite criticism, I invite feedback and I invite you all to do the same. Let's have open dialogues and conversations. Let's have real raw conversations. Let's say the things that haven't been said or are not being said enough. And also one of the nice things about this new format is we're going to invite more of our senses into the conversation that we may have previously with the podcast. So if you are a visual person, and if you're a designer, I'm going to guess that you probably are a visual person. You might want to watch on Twitch. And then I think afterwards, if we do our technology correctly, we'll have a recording that we can put on the YouTube so that we'll have some visuals to share. Not only just our audio senses, but our visual senses as well. Yeah, of course you can still listen to this on the podcast the regular way, but now you can also. Watch us live and engage in real time or watch us after the fact on the recording. How often will we do this? We don't know yet. I think some of that is up to you is every Twitch session recorded? Yes, I have set it up so that everything will be recorded and we can totally hang out here casually more often. I think one of the nice things about this format is we don't have to do as much prep work in advance. So we might be able to do some of this more often. If it's helpful for you all, for the people in our community for designers who want to make change on this planet. So that we can keep living on it. [00:13:38] Marc: I like how you said that. So nonchalantly all you designers out there who just, want to solve our economic and, ecological breakdown, just hang out. We just [00:13:48] Sarah: hang out with us. Maybe we'll even play video games. [00:13:52] Marc: All right. Now let's move on. Now that you brought up the V word, we should move on. Nope, no video game. Talk on this thing. I won't be able to keep up with you. Yes. [00:14:06] Sarah: Okay. Okay. So let's dive into the topic that we wanted to cover. The thing that we picked for our first topic is along the lines of flipping the narrative and not saying the same thing that we've been saying for the last 50 years. So one of the things that has always graded on mark and me is when we hear the phrase, save the planet. And so let's just dive in on like why that's not the motivation or the message that we think we want to send. And of course, we're putting this out there to be a little bit provocative. Of course, we love this planet and want to keep living on it. But here's the thing. This planet has been through hell and back. It has been in the Haiti on eon when it was first I was going to say invented, but created the earth was 446 degrees Fahrenheit. And that sounds really exact by the way. I say this because there's no roof to how hot it can get, and when it was that hot, the surface was completely molten, melted and toxic, and there was no life on it. And the atmosphere was full of carbon dioxide. There was no oxygen, it was just a completely different. Place. And for those of you who are listening and don't have the visuals, we will describe the visuals to you. So for this one, we have found artist's interpretation of what the Haiti eon might have looked like. And you see a lot of lava big fireball explosions, lightning flashing all over the place. And volcanic eruptions, it looks like some comments and meteors hitting it. Cause we probably didn't have a magnetic shield at that point yet. Not an awesome place to be [00:15:47] Marc: this image reminds me of Lord of the rings and this would be a good time for me to insert a Lord of the rings joke, but I don't know Lord of the rings, [00:15:54] Sarah: so yeah, totally expecting you to have one. [00:15:57] Marc: I've seen like the first movie or two, I don't know. Cool. I know. Thanks. All [00:16:04] Sarah: right. So then the next slide after this planet has been through hell, it's also frozen over many times for millions of years. So we've had many ice ages. In the past 2.4 billion years, we've had I think five and the temperatures of the entire planet I dunno like snowball earth is one of the phrases that they've used really super cold. We're already seeing a comment from cat. She says you changed my own perspective on this terminology, Sarah. I don't use saving the planet anymore as a result. Thank you. Lindsay says my cynical partner loves to fatalistically point out that the planet will be fine. There just won't anymore. Exactly. And it will be fine. Maybe it's yeah, just the point is that this planet, like as a planet, it's been through a hell of a lot more than what we're putting it through right now. It's a little bit hubristic to think that we need to save it, but this comes with a, but so let's go to the next slide. Oh, wait, I forgot to describe it for our audio listeners. It's a picture of the earth as a frozen snowball. And then there's also a chart of the ice ages during the past 2.4 billion years. So you can see how the temperature has oscillated up and down a little bit or a lot of it. So in the next slide we have. Another chart. And it's a chart that shows the evolution of humans over the last 1 million years and below that it shows the temperature of the earth. And what's really interesting about this to me is that you can see that temperature is going up and down over the last 1 million years, because we've been oscillating between what scientists called the glacial periods of the ice age, and then the interglacial where everything thaws and gets warm. And that's because of the orbit, of the earth and things that are way too complicated for me to understand. But what's really striking to me about this graph is over the last million years, there's several different variations on the human species. Put out there by evolution to see which one will And at the top of the graph is a zoomed in factor of that 1 million timescale. And so we can see in each of those short little interglacials, it's highlighted in green in those short spans of time where the earth was not completely frozen. It just so happens that in the last one is when all of human civilization has occurred. So the zoomed in slice at the very right side of the graph of the last 1 million years of earth history is it contains the invention of agriculture, organized agriculture and animal husbandry. It contains building cities. It contains the building of the pyramids, which actually only happened, but what like four or five, four or 5,000 years ago when you start looking at it on the scale, Earth. We're just a little blip or just teeny tiny little blip. So the thing that I want us to think about is human civilization has only ever experienced a tiny range of Earth's changes in climate. So for that entire 10,000 years, the climate has been so stable. And in fact, because the climate has been so stable, it has enabled human society to create agricultural and city-based civilization before that, when it was too in cold or when it was in the process of warming or cooling crazily, like humans lived like everybody else on this planet and traveling around to the pockets of the planet that were habitable habitable to try and survive and find food when the rest of the planets frozen, all that stuff. So it was just, I don't know, like just happened to warm up enough and then stay that way for long enough for us to do all the things that are part of our entire written history and everything that we know. Let's see. We're on the next slide. Go to the one that's not super high Rez or. Yes. So this one is a slide. It's a chart again, but it's only the last 20,000 years. And again, it shows the global temperature. So it shows it rising to that point from the last ice age, from the last glacial period to that stable temperature that we have enjoyed for the last 10,000 years. And you can see that stable temperature staying about the same for 10,000 years including to the point where the great pyramids were built. It's actually starting to trend towards a little cooler and from what I've read that most scientists agree that we would be on the track towards another ice age actually. And then the industrial revolution happens and the temperature goes way up, completely breaking the pattern that we've seen. We earth has experienced for billions of years with our carbon dioxide emissions. So now, and the other thing that it says on this chart is we're at this point where we can choose, all bets are off, the pattern is disrupted and we're at this point where we can choose to bring the temperature back down, or if we do nothing and we just keep doing what we're doing, the temperature has the potential to go way above anything that this planet has seen for, I think a three or 4 billion years. And that means that all of the life that has evolved on this planet, along with us over the last three or 4 billion years, we're all more adapted to. This cold to relatively mild, somewhat warm, that range of temperatures. And so that baseline of stability is what scientists use to measure the rate of change or the amount of change. When you hear things like 1.5 degrees Celsius, or two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial averages. That baseline is what they're talking about. So I just say on the text here on the slide, since the industrial revolution, we've built cities and technology based on an assumed stable climate, while releasing enough carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere to force a rapidly heating climate. It just doesn't make a lot of sense. [00:23:11] Marc: Yeah. Preaching to the choir. [00:23:16] Sarah: So next slide. What that means is our civilization has not been designed for the climate or creating it. That's another way of saying that the problem stating the problem. So this is a picture of one of the streetcar power cables in Portland. It melted, which shut down train service during the heat wave that they had a few days ago, a week ago or whatever. That's just an example of one of the many failures and infrastructure that we're starting to see as temperatures rise way above that range that we've enjoyed for the last 10,000 years. [00:24:07] Marc: Yeah. And to just add this quick little comment about the latest news here in the U S about this, infrastructure bill and, trying to, to. To squeeze some climate change stuff in there, as opposed to calling it out specifically. But you know my question about that, and of course I need to do more research. I've been a little busy lately, but with that infrastructure bill, where's that money going? Are we rebuilding from the ground up? Are we putting band-aids on existing infrastructure because we're not taking this as serious as we need to. What's the money being used for how's it been allocated who says, who has a say in where that money goes? Yeah, I just want to, the last couple of slides we could have easily have made a whole podcast episode on, that previous chart, the chart before that. So this is really exciting to see how things are starting to connect with one another. [00:24:58] Sarah: Yeah. And Rachel in the. Shattered out green new deal. And absolutely I think the green new deal has come under a lot of criticism because it's very wide, widespread and expensive. And the reason it is so widespread and expensive is because climate touches everything and it's this infrastructure that we've been built on and it's trying to put new infrastructure in place that supports life. So yeah, it's, it has to be wide, wide sweeping broad, and yes, it's going to be expensive and very, to comment it again, the civilian climate Corp will be an incredible step forward. Yes. I have not read the news in like weeks because I've had my nose in these five different books. So like, how's that going? Where is it? What's the story? What's the status? Is everything moving forward, the way that it should be probably slower than we want, but still good. Or what's going on. [00:25:57] Marc: Yeah. I've been a little busy myself, but what I've gathered from snippets it's not as fast as we want. It's not as much as we want. Is it even exactly what we need? These are big questions that people are asking that I've been catching here and there. So [00:26:14] Sarah: Rachel says yes, more representatives are getting on board. I'm just overjoyed that finally we have a government in place that's taking climate seriously, absolutely refreshing step in the right direction. But yeah it's frustrating when we understand the scope of what needs to change and how quickly we need to change it. So that's definitely one of the things that we hope to talk about. During this new format of our podcast. Yeah. Cause it's slow moving. Yes. Some great comments in the chat. So next slide, I think, is more I'm preaching to the choir, but you all know this. We have to redesign our way of life to cooperate and evolve with the natural world we live in, or we join the 99.9% of species that have gone extinct on this planet. And for those of you just listening along there is a photo here of some really nice, interesting looking renderings of some of the species that have come and gone before. Oh gosh, it's too small for me to read, but some really cool looking no longer with us animals. And I should note that when we join, if we joined the 99.9% of species that have gone extinct on this planet, we will take everything else on this planet with us, because we are at the top of the food chain. And that's just pretty shitty. [00:27:55] Marc: Yeah. It's not as if the humans will just disappear and everything else will stay it's that we're taking everything down. It's like we're falling and we're just grabbing it. So it's catch her fall and it's all coming down. I do want to focus on that first half of this I really was thinking about this reading it earlier, I think, how do we get to that point? How do we reconnect with nature and all the living species, that make up our world, right? It wasn't too long ago that we're connected. To nature. We were connected. We were working on the lands. We were, using it in more productive regenerative ways, it was just really the last two, 300 years with the rise of okay, and industrial revolution and all that, that we started to really, step back and see nature in a very different way where we saw it for us as opposed to a part of us. And although with our current global economic system in place, it makes it very easy to separate ourselves because, we are now living in these buildings. We are now driving three ton vehicles. We're now doing all these different things that for many millennia with our ancestors never had to do. And so it's crazy to me how we're just, we're not so far into this. And like the previous charts, there were not so far in the grand scheme of things and our existence as a species, but wow. Like how quick did we frickin forget everything? Yes, we have our prevalent primal instincts, those who's who jumped on at the start. Sarah and I were talking about, public speaking. And then why would we have that fear of the number one fear in humans? Anyway, yes. We still have those criminal instincts, but beyond that It's convenience. It's comfort. I get it. I much prefer to sleep on a soft bed as opposed to, the hard ground or whatever in the elements and, trying to run away from a Mastodon, who's trying to eat me, like I like my life as is, I think there's been a lot of great innovations and and advancements as the species, but holy shit, man, we're S we're too smart for our own good, God damn we can not to say I'm a I'm into the space, travel stuff. That's another podcast. But like the fact that we can build machines to put people up there and bring them down safely, the fact that we can cure diseases, the fact that we can connect billions of people using these, glass and plastic and metal that we have in our hands every day. Like we can do some cool fucking shit. But hello, how do we get back to how we used to live and be in harmony with one another and everything on it, on the planet. So anyway another topic, [00:30:23] Sarah: this is so smart and yet really dumb at the same time. That's exactly right. So that's what we hope to untangle in this new format, I think. And I'm really happy that Kelly picked up on the cooperate and evolve phrase in that. So what I'm, I guess what we're getting at here is instead of, like I said earlier, that phrase save the planet that really just graded on me and then Mark's like yummy too. And so we're like, okay, how do we rephrase that? Or what is it that we actually are trying to do? Because I think looking at this as humans saving the planet it just continues to reinforce that idea that we are separate from all of it [00:31:11] Marc: and superior, just, you said a few minutes ago that, the reason why everything's going to go down when we go down is because we're on the top of the food chain. Why should we be at the top of the food chain? So how do we realign our place in this living ecosystem so that we don't act as if it's all for us, but that we are contributing to this whole system and keeping that balance from ever from never tilting off balance. [00:31:36] Sarah: Correct. Not separate. And in fact, I think we need to maybe rethink the idea of a food chain. It's not really a chain and we're not on the top of it, even though I didn't say that. It's a system and we're part of it and we need to figure out. How to make our part of it matter to the system and add value to the system and help the system thrive. Or that's still is going to reset. It's going to collapse and it's going to start over with that. [00:32:02] Marc: Sarah, if you haven't been paying attention, we've been living in this global pandemic for the last year and a half, I think we jolted nature. I think it, it took it, we pushed it enough to where it gave us a big, not even an earthquake, but a fucking planet quake. This was like a, and Hey, y'all this isn't cool. Here's what you get for fucking shit up. [00:32:21] Sarah: What's the beginning of that collapse looks like we are living it. [00:32:25] Marc: So can this be what we're currently experiencing this global pandemic and I'm not trying to belittle this whole thing. It's really shitty. And I can't, I every so often man, I can't believe I'm living through a pandemic. Isn't it crazy? We all are obviously, but yeah. I I really hope that this is a shock in the system and this is if we don't, real things in this is nothing. Exactly. This is this is the appetizer, the [00:32:49] Sarah: beginning. So yeah, let's go ahead and go to the next slide because I don't want to dwell too much on how shitty everything is. You've been with a global pandemic and all of the heat waves and the wildfires and the floods and everything that is going on right now, all over the globe. I still want to be able to say that this moment in time presents a unique opportunity, especially for people like us designers, strategists, planners, people who can look at systems for what they are and plan something new. I believe it was Washington state, governor Jay Inslee, who said we are the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it. And that's just a brilliant ly worded way to say it because this decade right now, the next 10 years, We are at that absolute last, there's a sign on the road. There's a fork in the road and there's a sign that says last exit we're right there. And I guess all the previous exit signs, if we're going to keep with that analogy when we saw those, we being the grand, we of humanity I love the analogies that come to my brain as I'm coming up with them. As we saw each of those, you could take this exit and, you could implement this policy and have a slow, gradual transition. We were like, I'm gonna wait. I'm gonna wait it out. I don't really have to pee that bad. I'm going to see if there's another rest, stop coming up. And now we're finally in the thick of it where we're feeling the effects [00:34:37] Marc: got to [00:34:37] Sarah: piss. Now we really have to pee. Like we can not hold it any longer. So in a way, feeling the effects and having the horrific tragedies that are happening with the fires and the pandemic and the disease and the floods and the heat waves. Must I go on the feeling of those, the jolt that is giving us is also a catalyst for change. So I have no doubt that this next decade is not going to be business as usual. There's no option to just keep going the way that we have, like we're either going to piss our pants or we're going to get off at this exit. Find a clean bathroom and have a more graceful exit. How's that? Did I bring that analogy [00:35:31] Marc: home, a clean bathroom only you have to go into a whole foods or something. [00:35:40] Sarah: So yeah, let's get into the not doom and gloom, but the doom and bloom portion of our segment this evening. So according to the experts in many of the books that mark and I have been reading and articles and PDFs and everything out there, there is still a chance. And every time I talk about this, I imagine Jim Carrey in dumb and dumber talking to his crush. And she's like the chances of me ever dating you are like a million to one. And he's so you're saying I have a chance classic kinda where we're at right now, but we still have a chance. We can still transform our civilization ending our reliance on fossil fuels, transitioning to renewable energy, but we have to make it a massive, fast, fair, just equitable transition. All of the things in a very short amount of time. How do we do that? How the heck do we do that? So some of the things that I have on the slide here for those of the people listening at home one of them is the rewiring America field manual. It's a short, readable, straightforward, little PDF that you can download for free from the rewiring America website written by Saul Griffith. He went through and he crunched all the numbers for the us. And he details exactly what needs to be done to transition off of fossil fuels in the next, I think 10 or 15 years, he puts it up and he ha he knows how much it's going to cost. And he knows what policies need to be put in place. And it's awesome. And I highly recommend reading it. The other one that we have on there is less, is more like mark mentioned early or one that we are reading. How's that. Long section on things that we need to rethink about our world and things that we need to implement as solutions or new ways of working. I included the upcycle in here from the authors of cradle to cradle. This is, embracing circular design and regenerative design and how to redesign our products and our processes so that they are, like we said, cooperating and evolving with nature. And I have yet to read this, but it's on my list climate, the new story by Charles Eisenstein. Mark says, it's good. That's what I got. There's so many books and experts out there talking about the solutions. This is just a short sampling of some of the things that have been top of mind lately. [00:38:28] Marc: Yeah. I'm wanting to acknowledge too, that, a lot of the books here, actually, all the books here are written by CIS white men. And who are we not listening to, are we not reading? Who are we not paying attention to? And so we're, one of the many things that we're trying to do with climate designers is to create, resources that really do help our members. And having a book list and other resources out there for you all is something that we want to do. But yeah, please share with us others as well. I know there's definitely, women and indigenous authors out there Dr. Anita Sanchez joined us during the party program and, she has some great writing talking about indigenous wisdom and in the 21st century. And yeah. Let us know, what are you reading? What are you watching? We're all ears and we'll add it to our resources. [00:39:14] Sarah: Yes. Kat mentioned all, we can save another one on my list. That is mostly women it's short essays by women. All we can save truth, courage and solutions for the climate crisis by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katherine K. Wilkinson. [00:39:32] Marc: Yeah. On my list too, we just need to have reading days, [00:39:36] Sarah: It's another topic. Okay. Back to the charts and graphs for a second, this is what we're looking at. For those of you at home, I'll describe it in a second. If we succeed over the next 10 years and doing what we need to do, we can bring global temperatures back down in the next 20 to 30 years and avoid complete catastrophic climate breakdown. So there's a sort of a little small snippet of a graph from the on roads simulator. I know cat in the audience is taking their online training, which I'm super excited to hear more about in the simulator. You can go in and tweak a bunch of levers, so you can see can I basically, can I bring temperatures back down by simply. Adding a carbon tax. Can I bring temperatures back down by simply planting more trees? Can I bring temperatures back down, through a bunch of other things, they have a bunch of other levers and what you can see from all of that is if we do absolutely nothing, what we're looking at is a rise in temperature. And I'm not that interested in the year 2100. I do plan to be alive through 2050, but I doubt I will make it to 2100. I would be over 120 years old at that point. So I doubt I'm going to make it that far. So I don't care about 2100. I knew I do care, but it's just harder for me to wrap my brain around that. And so I look at this as like the next 20 to 30 years, what can we expect? So if we do nothing right now, we're at 1.2 degrees above that baseline of stability that we've enjoyed for the last 10,000 years. One degree Celsius. It doesn't sound like very much, but that's global average. And so it takes a lot to heat up the earth. We're at 1.2 right now in the way that I had it described to me that really made it hit home to me is every 10th of a degree. Is enormous weather changes and disruptions and climate patterns. So all the things that we were talking about earlier with, the heat waves and the pandemic and the floods and the wildfires, that's at 1.2 degrees of warming. And so 1.3 is going to be even more of that. More of the same 1.4 is going to be even more of that, more of the same. And so in this graph, you can see that if we do absolutely everything we can, we're still going to go up a little over the next 10 to 20 years. I think if I'm reading it but we are working really hard to cap it at 1.5 and not go any higher because the entire planet really hasn't seen temperatures of over two degrees in more than three or 4 billion years. Like I said, We don't exactly know what will happen, but what we do know is all the things that are currently happening today will keep happening and will happen even more. So every 10th of a degree that we go up. So I don't want to see it go higher than 1.2, 1.2 is not acceptable. 1.2 is where we are now and where we are now is not. Okay. So I don't want to hear about two degrees. I don't want to tell about 2100. I want to talk about what we can do to bring the temperatures down right now. And the fact of the matter is the climate system moves slowly. It's a big freaking planet, and we're going to have to put in a whole lot of hard work and a whole lot of effort over the next decade to get real change in our systems by 2030, and check back with me in 2030, because if policies and stuff haven't changed and things haven't been put in place, I'm going to be talking about. Adaptation and resilience and how to move forward in a very chaotic world. But I don't want to have that conversation right now because we still have a chance, [00:43:53] Marc: right? Yeah. There's a chart that I saved. I took a screenshot, it was on Twitter. It was from last summer, 2020 summer of 2020. And, Every summer is the hottest summer had a chart, tenure chart, a line graph. And it had at the average temperature per summer was getting higher and higher. And the headline was of course, 20, 20 hottest year on record in the last decade. And then the woman who posted it was like, or if you look at it this way, 20, 20, the coldest summer in the, in the next decade. It's like what you were saying one 10th of a degree can totally it's just, this is not going away anytime soon. [00:44:30] Sarah: I left San Francisco in October, November of 2019, and I remember walking outside on nice sunny days. I think I said this to you a few times when we would go have lunch. I'd be like, oh, it's so nice out. This is the last of the nice days, [00:44:53] Marc: little [00:44:53] Sarah: cynical. I know, but this is the new normal exactly. Cat this like when we hear about temperature breaking records or the hottest temperature ever recorded, blah, blah, blah. This is the new normal, this is the new baseline for at least the next 10 years. And like I said, then I hope to see the temperatures coming back down. If we do a lot of work and we do it well. So let's talk about what needs to get done. Oh, for the viewers who are not viewers, the listeners at home, I forgot to say that slide also had a road. Is Rosie the Riveter. We can do it from world war two because visual propaganda and imagery. Can go a long way and that's where we come in as designers sometimes. Okay. So the next slide is about what stands in our way. Why aren't we moving forward? And I think the biggest thing that stands in our way right now is we need the political and societal will to make the necessary changes. So there's a picture here of a few different things in unearthed, which is a publication online by green peace, I believe is that right? My brain is full of holes like Swiss cheats, but unearthed, just unearthed very fiery accusatory report where some of their journalists dressed up as. Lobbyists or fuel investors or something and have meetings with the fossil fuel executives or lobbyists. I'm sorry, I don't have the detailed right in front of me, but anyway, they went under cover and they had some conversations and got these Exxon executives, fossil fuel executives to blatantly say that they covered up and denied valid climate science and delayed climate action and they knew it. [00:46:54] Marc: And that they're currently as always have been working against. Any big change. Yeah. Look into it folks. I just type in I think the guardian was the one that broke it. If I'm not mistaken and then it got picked up by all these other blogs of course, but yeah, just type in Exxon head hunters. Yeah. Kat I think Lindsey. Yeah, you're right. They were head hunters. I watched the video and it was so fucking infuriating, just hearing this guy talk as if this was just part of the good part of the job, and BD, [00:47:22] Sarah: so yeah, they have been, clearly actively working in our government as a lobbyist to prevent change and they have a lot of money and they fund a lot of our politicians. So there's, political will to do what they want. And when there's, 50 something percent of the voting population does not agree with the other 50 something percent. It is really hard to get the politicians to do anything. It's a standstill. So we need to build the political and societal. We'll tell our politicians and representatives that what we're currently experiencing is not okay. One of the other images that I have on the side is someone leaked marketing materials from BP. One of them says in the headline obtaining a social license to operate a challenge for the industry. This idea of a social license to operate is something that they are clearly aware of. So like they know that it needs to be socially acceptable to burn fossil fuels for them to have a viable. That's what that means. The one on the top bottom lower right. Is another lead marketing material from, I believe also BP, although it looks like the colors of Exxon Rochelle. Anyway, it says, how do we regenerate this generation's view of oil and gas? So many things about that headline make me laugh. They did a poll of us consumers and young people about to join the workforce. And they are basically presenting this as a huge recruiting challenge, which I think is awesome. Oil and gas companies are going to, they know this and they've made nice looking, marketing materials, talking about it. They are going to run into a challenge recruiting workers from. This generation, the young generation. And I'm like, hell yeah. Because they're gross, but that who wants to work there, they're gross. And because our younger generation has principles and has their eyes open and knows what's going on. [00:49:36] Marc: And we've been talking about this for years, Sarah, I remember us having more conversations walking in between lunch and stuff at a coworking space about, how hard it is for these companies that are damaging the planet, not just fossil fuel, but any other companies and within any other industry, how hard it is for them to find young talent, because younger people are becoming more and more aware of this issue. And so what happens to these large companies, are they going to offer more money, more perks, benefits, all that stuff, or. And if not, they can't find anyone they're just going to crumble or do they shift into something more productive? Do they reinvent themselves? I don't know. Like it's going to be interesting to watch, a lot of these companies that are destroying this planet and many different ways are, the majority of them are, behemoths they've been around for many decades. And so are they just going to completely shift everything? I don't know. [00:50:32] Sarah: Rachel picked up on the fact that they used the word regenerate. That's another one of the things that makes me laugh so much about this headline. They're already starting to try to shift their image by co-opting the language of the young people and the things that they care [00:50:50] Marc: about. I just don't think the copywriter looked up the definition of regenerate. [00:50:56] Sarah: Absolutely. 100% positive that they use. [00:50:59] Marc: Oh, I'm joking. I'm joking. I'm joking. Of course they did. Of course they did. They're probably trolling sunrise movement and [00:51:08] Sarah: that's why they use black and yellow. You're right. [00:51:10] Marc: Seriously. They're making the shit look cool to attract these young people, yeah. Yeah, man, they're stuck in these organizations. They want to, I don't, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a handful of influencers that are being paid by these folks. Yeah, no, [00:51:25] Sarah: totally is the a little bit off topic, not on the topic of recruiting, but the PR and ad campaigns by the fossil fuel industry. Recently, they have been using social media. They have been paying social media influencers. They're all over that stuff. They are very good at obtaining that social license to operate through our media channels. They've been doing it for decades. They're experts. Yeah. And so that, like seeing them shift thing that you talked about, they are absolutely promoting that they're shifting and they talk about it like they're shifting and they might spend. 80 to 90% of their PR and marketing on talking about how much they're shifting to renewables and research and development into stuff. But when you look at how much of their actual operating money they're spending, it does not correlate with how much of the PR they're talking about it. Totally. [00:52:19] Marc: Yeah. And there's definitely proof out there that supports that. Yeah. Jeez. So I want to bring up this, and we're just about wrapping up with the presentation you all. Just to let you know, one quick thing, and I think we'll get more into this in feature podcasts, for me, it's when I read stuff like this and when Sarah and I have these types of conversations, my mind always goes to, why does it have. Be where all the onus is on us as individuals just living our normal lives in a system that have had, that has been designed by these people to get what they want and leave us with crumbles, right? Like why are we not fucking going upstream, pounding on these companies, doors, raising fucking hell to get them to actually change or to take them down. Like it's in front of us, everyone hello, like where's the outrage. Where's the I'm just, so this is so I won't get more into it. Cause I know we have other things we want to wrap up the presentation, but this is the thing that really gets me out of this whole climate conversation is that one thing, and how do we address that as designers? I don't know. [00:53:31] Sarah: It's a interesting being, where is the, [00:53:35] Marc: why are we not. Realizing the bigger picture and the real enemy here. Why are we not taking on these larger companies and questioning our economic systems? Why are we not domaining that much change? Like I know to bring the tote bag, I know to walk more and drive less, whatever don't talk to me about, not using another fucking straw. Like I want to go after the, these guys, like that's the stuff, why where's the pissed off Innes in everyone about this? Like it's all in front of us. So that's what I'm talking about. But again, we'll get more into it a bit later. I know we're about wrapping up here. [00:54:11] Sarah: Yep. No, absolutely. I think that is what we're trying to do here is figure out I guess we can go to the next slide because it's getting to that call to action. Like how do we remove the societal license to operate from these people and get them. What is causing the most harm. So the next slide is talking about what are the necessary changes, and this is not a complete list. There's a list on here that describe some of the most immediate, practical policy driven things. Most of it, not all of it, but a lot of it is from the rewiring America handbook. Some of it is from less is more, but I'll read it really quickly for those that are just listening, a managed and fair and just transition from fossil fuels to renewables. The end of fossil fuel subsidies. It's ridiculous to me that our tax dollars are still subsidizing fossil fuels. Like what? No new permits for fossil fuels. We're still starting new. Fossil fuel drilling and exploration projects in 2021 year of our Lord, whatever [00:55:21] Marc: and Biden as our president, [00:55:25] Sarah: you were seeing a lot of pledges for net zero by 2050. We need to be talking about real zero by 20 30, 20 31. Part of that is government loans to improve housing. So in rewiring America, Saul Griffith talks a lot about how the government has in the past. There's a precedent for this giving low interest loans to homeowners to rebuild the infrastructure of the home, to get off the grid, whether it's solar panels or replacing the furnace or getting a new stove or whatever you need to do that can be government assisted. The end of planned obsolescence. So in the design of our devices, they're not designed to be repaired. They're designed to be replaced, and that is very intensive of our resources and it doesn't make much sense giving land back to indigenous people. The rapid buildup of renewable energy infrastructure, that is something that we are going to need government policy and funding to, you know, Biden's whole campaign for election was on this, the creation of millions of new clean jobs. We need to stop cutting down our trees in the Amazon and other places we need to end deforestation. It is just compounding the problem. It doesn't make any sense. We need solar panels on every roof. We need to electrify. All of our industries, so that then that electricity can be run by renewable energy. So anything that runs on liquid fuel or coal or even wood pellets, natural gas is still gas. And we need to subsidize regenerative agriculture. That's already happening at least in California. It needs to be happening a whole lot more where the government is funding farmers to adopt climate friendly agriculture policies that reduce carbon dioxide emissions and take it out of the air instead of the opposite. So that's just a short list of things off the top of my head. [00:57:30] Marc: Yeah. And I want to make a note that all of these are very practical and we need to do these things right. And this is where designers can come in, where we can support those companies, those initiatives, those projects, solutions to make sure. They are so successful that they are doing their part too, bring our temperature down, like going back to some of those charts. Like we need all designers within all these different industries to really step up and make sure that they, give everything they got. So that these companies and these new industries can be the most successful. But again, though, building all of this on a capitalistic system just doesn't make sense. And so what's missing from this list is the idea of de-growth the idea of coming up with a new economic system. Again, as human beings, I've listed a few things minutes ago about us being so creative, we can put people in space, we can cure diseases. We can come up with a new economic system. Like I think the thing that we always forget is that capitalism is only 500 years old. It hasn't always been around. There's been other economic system some better, a lot better actually. And why not revisit it, some of those or come up with new ones. I have a lot of friends in the bay area that are in, in the, new economic space, like they're coming up with what we could be living under. And I think what's missing from this list in this larger conversation that I'm excited to talk more about is this idea of de-growth right. I'm not going to, maybe I should get a bit more, anarchists. I've been holding my breath always back for many years, sometimes shit needs to be said. And as Sarah mentioned at the start of the, some things might, rub wrong way, but I don't know, not to say that we know the answers, not to say that what comes out of our mouth. It is right, but it's something right. And one other thing that's also missing from this list as well is, the idea of who are we as a species, I feel like we need to take this time, maybe even during COVID I would hope to rewrite our human narrative, like, how are we showing up? On this planet, how are we showing up as a species that is much more advanced than a lot of other species? That's a gift, what a gift that we have that we are from all of these millions and billions of combinations that just so happened to happen over fucking millions of years has developed us in our lives right now and all the amazing things that we have in front of us, what a beautiful gift. And so I think what we need to really start to do also is really rewrite our human narrative to get away from this idea of individualistic mindsets and my mind, and, the American dream and climbing the corporate ladder or whatever and start to think about where we should really put our values, valuing purpose, a sense of community, valuing ourselves. And I want to bring up a few comments from iHeart, Rachel. She's been as always dropping math knowledge. She mentioned a few minutes ago, this is why we need to destroy capitalism, consumerism and be more collective and community focused in our ways. Definitely. You said something else just below that maybe that was it. Oh, actually exactly. [01:00:35] Sarah: It was too much to be outraged. [01:00:38] Marc: So going back to my comment about why are we not fucking, pounding on these doors? Yeah. I heard Rachel like people by design, right? Yeah. People are being worked to death. So that they can't do anything, but work a second job, a third job just to put food on the table. And so it's a distraction and I feel like this also goes into what I always get them confused either BP or shell. I think it's BP that created the carbon footprint shit, right? Yeah. That is a distraction people. I don't, Hey, if you're in the carbon footprint app, industry, go for it. I support you. I'm not interested in that. Honestly, as a person. I, yes, I care about the impact I have on the planet, my carbon footprint. Totally. I try to be mindful of how I live and all that stuff. Check check, all the boxes checked off. But again, that was put out by an organization by company purposely to distract you from the shit that they're doing, putting the onus on us. And for me, that's fucking bullshit. [01:01:38] Sarah: That is, [01:01:40] Marc: and these are signs. They know exactly what re what they're doing, but again, though, I'm going to go back to my thought and we can finish up. But, I really do feel like, outside of the practical stuff, outside of capitalism, all that stuff, I feel there's also just as much work, if not more work on how we need to view ourselves, not only within ourselves with each other and within this planet. And I feel like we can do all this stuff, we can just switch to renewables. We can do all the things that would keep us in a bit more of a, in an, somewhat thriving world. Even though things are gonna look bad for a while, but what's the next fuck up that we're going to create as human beings, if we don't focus on ourselves, so I don't know. So again, another topic for later, but just something that I've also been thinking about lately. [01:02:24] Sarah: Yeah. Kelly from Boston said most, can't see the big picture. P S that's also by design. We are educated to not be able to see the big picture and that's on purpose. [01:02:40] Marc: Oh. And don't get me started on why do you think alcohol is legal? Why do you think, some of these drugs and foods that suppress are abundant, big pharma, they are, they're profiting off of our sickness and they're profiting. Dumbing down us so that we don't see that big picture. So again, a whole nother topic that I think about often we'll talk about it later, but it's all been by design. [01:03:07] Sarah: I'm seeing a lot of people saying again, the chat. Clearly we have a lot to talk about as we keep [01:03:13] Marc: going and, as we're wrapping up, we're just over an hour. So thank you all for sticking around. Didn't really know how long we were going to go. And maybe this is a good time to wrap up because we plan on talking about this stuff often, we're not trying to. Most of us and, we're all about, optimism and positivity and all that, lovey-dovey stuff. So we're not trying to make this into the opposite of that. The doom and gloom stuff. At times, we do need to talk about this stuff though. Like we need to have that real talk. And so we're gonna weave both of, both the optimistic stuff and the real shit. That is the stuff that we need to be addressing, because that's the stuff that's making the doom and gloom. So we can't just, think about sunshine and rainbows all fucking day. Like we need to also talk about our current and previous actions and things like that, so that we can acknowledge that stuff and recognize it and learn from those mistakes and then apply it, or maybe not apply it in the present moment and into the future. [01:04:07] Sarah: Yeah. So I think just to wrap it all up in one shiny bow for this talk today we'll end it on the next slide. Which is instead of talking about how we humans need to come into the rescue and save the planet, let's focus our energy as creatives, as designers, when we're putting messages out into the world about this, the task right in front of us is to remove the biggest block, to make the biggest change that we need to make in the time that we want to make it. And so that is let's focus on directing all our creativity towards uniting societies will. So however that looks to you as creatives, we might make campaigns, we might make slogans, we might make posters. We might make t-shirts. We might make products with brands, with messages that are promoting an image of an ideal world, that we're all building. Let's try and do everything that we do for the purpose of getting everybody on the same page and that. Building up to a rapid and fair and just full-scale transition to a zero carbon clean, renewable energy. And there's a lot more that needs to be done. But if we can get everybody going, if we can figure out what it is, it's not save the planet. I don't think it's, there is no planet B, although that one's really cute. I like it. All the things that have been said already I don't know that they're working. I don't see it. So we keep, we need to keep experimenting. We need to keep trying and we need to figure out what's the thing. That's going to get everybody on the same page because we are definitely not United. We are bickering. Within each other's groups and against each other. And we need to be sending a United message and get us all on the same page for the work that needs to be done in the amount of time that needs to get done. It's very urgent and it's very important that we all start doing this in this decade. [01:06:22] Marc: Yes. [01:06:23] Sarah: Like mark said I'm surprised that we have been talking for over an hour. We clearly have a lot to say I think it might be worth us doing this if we can maybe weekly. We were talking a little bit beforehand if we should be doing this monthly or more often, I think we have a lot of things to say, so we should probably be doing it more often. It's a much more casual format. I'm actually curious to hear from you all in the chat is this amount of interaction. Okay. We have mark and me on screen and then you through text chat, is that, should we bring you into the zoom? Like I think the thing that I worry about is the more people who are speaking the longer, this thing will go and we don't have time to just sit in front of our computers all the time, but we definitely have a lot to talk about. I can tell. I'm seeing a lot of yeses in the chat. Cat loves this format. Carly. Hi, Textless. Fine. I think. Okay, cool. Cool. [01:07:35] Marc: We can always just follow up too. Most of these are our core team members and chapter leaders who are all freaking amazing. So thank you all for joining and hanging out. And for those that we don't know, thank you for joining and hanging out and for not text bombing us. [01:07:54] Sarah: Yeah. Keep it small. Maybe join, maybe have two other people join in. Yeah. I've I have a dream of bringing in somebody who's an expert in science or evolution or something. And letting me just ask them eight year old questions okay. But why. But [01:08:16] Marc: we are actually and search for. I don't know, I just made up this phrase before this podcast. I was talking to Sarah about this. Maybe we have a an internal climate or resident climate science resident with climate designers, they're our go-to person for all this stuff. And it'd be great to have, people with a personality who can like, have fun with this and explain it in fun ways and interesting ways and simple ways. So if any of, I really love the work from a man I'm blanking on his name. It'll come to me in a minute, but the climate town guy on YouTube, if you don't know him, go to YouTube and search climate town we've been chatting on IgG. So hopefully he'll maybe come and do one of these with us, but I would love to have someone who can just roll with us and bring that. Stuff to the conversation in ways that would benefit our members. [01:09:04] Sarah: Yeah. And Rachel's calling out variety and diversity is nice too. So we're always very conscious of that. Maybe not another ASIS hat, white dude, even though he's a climate scientist, maybe. Sure. [01:09:16] Marc: Of course. So that's why I'm asking if any other people let us know. [01:09:20] Sarah: And also Kelly suggests someone who knows a lot about the green new deal. I was thinking someone who knows a lot about life sciences and evolution or DNA and viruses or something. I dunno, whatever we are, we're going to talk about economies. I don't necessarily think that we know what is the right economy. I think we're going to need to invent something new. So we probably should bring in some people who know things about different kinds of economy. [01:09:47] Marc: I know a few people. Yeah. Cool, cool. [01:09:52] Sarah: I'm seeing lots of yeses in the chat, so that'd be cool. Great. [01:09:56] Marc: All right. Should we wrap up, sir? I don't want to keep folks. Yeah. [01:10:00] Sarah: Yeah. So an hour and 22 minutes, thank you so much for hanging out with us and we will edit this down and release it on our podcast at some point TBD, if the YouTube will just be straight up recording or if that will be edited as well. I'm not sure. But yeah, if you have any feedback that you want to send us an email, please do that too. Like the length the content, the format, something that we should cover. Do you have any questions that you want us to talk about for an hour? We could pr

Sarah Barrett is a principal IA Manager at Microsoft. She's been writing compellingly about information architecture in Medium, and in this conversation, we focus on her most recent posts, which deal with how architectural scale affects our perception of information environments. Download episode 64 Show notes Sarah R. Barrett @documentalope (Sarah Barrett) on Twitter Known Item (Medium publication) Microsoft Learn MSDN docs.microsoft.com World IA Day Breadcrumb navigation Rachel Price Websites are not living rooms and other lessons for information architecture by Sarah Barrett Understanding Architectural Scale: Tabletops and landscapes by Sarah Barrett Microsoft Bob The Informed Life episode 17: Rachel Price on Improvisation Some show notes may include Amazon affiliate links. I get a small commission for purchases made through these links. Read the transcript Jorge: Sarah, welcome to the show. Sarah: Thank you for having me. This is so exciting. Jorge: Well, I'm excited to have you here. For folks who might not know you, would you mind please introducing yourself? About Sarah Sarah: Sure. My name is Sarah Barrett and I lead the information architecture team for Microsoft's Developer Relations organization. So, in addition to the kind of stuff that you might think of as standard developer relations, like advocates going out and doing talks about Microsoft technologies and that kind of thing, we also have a huge web presence. So, we publish Microsoft Docs, developer.microsoft.com Learn, which is a training and kind of like micro-learning platform. All of the information about Microsoft certifications, a Q & A site, a whole bunch of other stuff. So, it's really everywhere where we're not trying to sell you stuff; we're just trying to teach you how to use all of Microsoft technical products. It's a really fun, huge problem. And we've got a good-sized information architecture team for information architecture teams, which tend to be small. So that's really exciting. Before that, I was a consultant and I worked with a lot of different companies looking into how they solve their information architecture problems. But I wanted to go in-house somewhere, so I could actually sit with a problem and work with people in order to make it happen rather than just creating some shelfware, which everybody does, no matter how good your work is because organizations just aren't ready for it. So, I've been in house there for about three and a half years. It's been a really fun challenge. Jorge: That's great. I think I'm going to be revealing my age here by saying that at one point, I had an MSDN subscription where I would get these big boxes full of CDs, basically. And I'm guessing that with the advent of the internet, those things are no longer distributed on CDs and your team looks after the organization of all that content. Is that right? Sarah: Yeah. So, I mean, the funny thing about information is that it did not arise with the internet, as you know. This stuff has been around for a really long time. And even you know, a tech company like Microsoft is newer than many others, but like all of that information about MSDN did not go away. And MSDN TechNet, which was kind of IT pro side... originally, they would mail you physical CDs, and that was kind of the gold standard. Then all that stuff got put on websites. There was msdn.com. And we just finished migrating all of msdn.com over onto Docs - docs.microsoft.com. A lot of that information is still stuff that we're half-heartedly organizing and trying to find a place for because that history is so long. Jorge: From my brief experience with it, I get the sense that it is a massive amount of content. And it's also content that is undergoing constant revisions, because it deals with the documentation that developers need in order to use Microsoft's products and platforms, correct? Sarah: Yeah. So, it's a funny thing, because I sort of feel like if you were to go to docs.microsoft.com, which is the main thing we publish, you'd look at it and go, "somebody does the IA for this?" Like, it doesn't look like there's a lot of IA there — which, I promise you, we do! And we're even good at it. It's just a huge... it's a huge problem. It's a huge space. It's an enormous ecosystem of things. And a lot of the work we do is really around strategy and policy and winning hearts and minds and that kind of thing. It's been a long process. And yeah, because it is so big, so many different teams at the company publish to it, it's really more of a platform than a product. The way you talk about websites as places and emergent places rather than products or services or something like that, is extremely true for us, because it is something that lots of people are creating in an ongoing way all together, in perpetuity. And it changes constantly. So, a lot of what we do is try to adjust rules, try to incentivize different behaviors, create standards and structures around what people do rather than just architecting a site and saying, "cool, it's architected. There's your IA! It's done." There's no room for that in our work. Jorge: What I'm hearing there is that you are more the stewards of the place than the people who are structuring the nitty gritty content. Is that fair? Sarah: Absolutely. You know, we create guidelines for how you structure a table of contents or the kinds of things you put in navigation. We don't actually do any of it for you if you're a publisher on our platform. How websites are not living rooms Jorge: Well, that sounds super interesting, exciting, and necessary, I would imagine, especially in such a large distributed system. I've been wanting to have you on the show for a while, but what prompted me to reach out to you was a post you published to Medium called, "Websites are Not Living Rooms and Other Lessons for Information Architecture." I was hoping that you would tell us a bit about this. What do you mean by "websites are not living rooms?" Sarah: This article that you're talking about came out of a workshop I put together for World IA Day, when you and I last met in Switzerland. And the idea of the workshop really arose out of this work I was doing at Microsoft, which is so different from the consulting I was doing before. I often found, as a consultant, people are very ready to treat you as an expert. And oftentimes when you come in as part of a consultancy or an agency, some project sponsor or kind of some champion for there even being an information architecture problem that needs to be solved by a consultant, has done so much legwork for you in convincing everybody that this is a problem, in convincing everybody that information architecture is a thing. You know, somebody has done so much of that work. And so, everybody's very primed to treat you like an expert and accept the basics of what you're telling them when you come in in that context. When I started at Microsoft, I was the only information architect. There are more of us now, but at the time it was only me. And in retrospect, like I still can't figure out why they hired me, because I spent the first, probably 18 months I was there going to meetings with extraordinarily nice and talented people who I adore... but going to meetings with them and then being like, "I don't see why you have to have breadcrumbs. I don't see why things in the navigation all have to go to the same website. Why?" And it was... it wasn't hostile, but it was a challenge to explain the first principles of everything that tend to be true about information architecture. Like, "yes, you ought to have breadcrumbs on every page." Like, "yes, the steps in the breadcrumbs should go to pages where you can get to the subsequent breadcrumbs!" Very nitty gritty details like that, where I had never had to explain how breadcrumbs worked before because usually we all just have such a shared mental model about them. And one of the things that comes out of this so frequently, and the example I use in the article actually comes from my colleague Rachel Price, from her consulting days where people often come with a very simple idea of how they feel like it should just work. And those ways, like, "why can't we just..." so frequently comes from an experience in the real world, where I think the example that Rachel has is she was working on a product that was for college students. And the product manager was like, "why can't it just be a dorm room? And my backpack is on the floor and my wallet is in my backpack. And if I need to change something about my payment, I go in the backpack and I get my wallet. Why can't it just work that way?" And as an information architect, like I know in my bones that the answer is, "it can't. That will not work!" But it's really actually very hard to explain why, other than like, "that's weird and we tried it in the nineties! But it won't work." And so, a lot of this article is about like, okay, why does that idea of structuring something like physical space — why does it feel so appealing? Why does it seem so easy? And then why is won't it work? Why is it a red herring? Jorge: And what you're talking about here, I want to unpack it for the folks who are listening, is the idea that you can structure a digital system in ways that mimic the ways that we structure our physical environments, where we do things because, hey, we're used to operating in a living room or an office or what have you, why can't we just have the same affordances and signifiers, but presented in a two dimensional screen somehow. Is that right? Sarah: Yeah. And it seems like it ought to work, but it really doesn't. And it's because... and the point I'm making in the article is that there are implicit rules to how physical spaces work and I'm actually working on the next article in this series to unpack some of those more. I'm trying to get it published this week as we record it. But I have a two-year-old, so we'll see how that works. There are implicit rules to how these spaces work in the real world. And it's easy to mimic the look and feel of a physical space without actually following those implicit rules. So, we need to unpack what the implicit rules are. Jorge: The example that you bring up in the article is one that... again, I'm going to reveal my age by saying this, I remember being on the market, which is Microsoft Bob. And there might be a lot of folks in the audience who are not familiar with Microsoft Bob. How will you describe It for someone who hasn't seen it? Sarah: It wasn't the only one of these kinds of products. I think there were a lot of them in the early days of software and the internet. We didn't have this one, but I remember the very first computer I used that accessed the internet... it had other things that were like this. But it was basically that Microsoft was trying to sell the idea of an operating system and a personal computer to a home market. And in order to make it more accessible and appealing, they tried to structure the desktop, or like the operating system, as if it were a house. And so, the idea was that your accounting would be in a checkbook that was on a little drawing of a desk, which was in a study. And if you wanted to look at your contacts, that was in a Rolodex on the desk. If you wanted to do something that wasn't in a study or an office context, you would go to a different room, and that would be there instead. And it has some weird rooms. I've never actually used it, so I've only been able to kind of piece it together from stuff on the internet. But there's like a barn or something — it gets very strange! There are obviously parts of it that are just silly, where, you know... why do you need that room? But there are also parts of it that just, again, they don't follow the rules of how architectures are going to work, so it's not going to work. And it provides a kind of fun counterpoint to realistic requests and objections that you do get doing this kind of work. Metaphors Jorge: We use the desktop and file folder metaphor in interacting with our… let's call them personal computers as opposed to mobile devices. And that is a metaphor; it's not inherent to the underlying technology. Why would you say that the desktop and file folder metaphor works whereas the architectural metaphor doesn't work as well? Sarah: Yeah. I think there are a couple of things going on. This is very much like the subject of the next article that I'm working on. Which is that I would argue that our brains understand space at different scales. And we understand what I call tabletops, but you could also call a desktop or something like that in a very different way than we understand larger scale physical space, like a room, a house, a city, and then you even get into a nation and understanding that scale of space, which is huge. We understand those things in very different ways, and a lot of the ways that the personal computer and like the notion of the desktop have evolved to work mirror the ways our brains expect tabletop-like spaces to function. Tabletop-like spaces, I think in general... you can see them all at once or at least see how you would get to all of their pieces at once. And they consist of small moving parts. In a very similar way to how, if you're working at an analog desk, you can just have your stuff around you and you see it in your peripheral vision and you can affect most of the things around you. This is very different to how larger scale spaces work, where you can't see them all at one time and you have to construct a mental model of that space by moving around it and stitching those pieces together over time. There's a whole neuro-biological component to this where we have certain kinds of cells called place cells that fire in certain kinds of circumstances that tell you, “Ah, this is a new place." And that doesn't happen when a small object moves around you on a tabletop. It does happen when you move from room to room. And so when we're in more operating system-like experiences or more app-like experiences, you know? You and I are talking to each other on Zoom right now. That really functions like a tabletop. Everything's right there. I could open stuff up, but it works more like drawers or something like that. It's not at all like something like Microsoft Docs or the BBC's website or any other kind of like large, content-based website, which is really much more like a landscape where you have to kind of move around from place to place and reconstruct a picture of it. And so, the big argument there — and this is something that I work with my designers on a lot — the big argument there is you have to be really clear about what you're building so you know what kinds of rules to use, because those things are actually really different. And most of the time we just kind of go, "eh, it's sort of like an app, right?" Like, "what is this app like?" And it's like, "Oh, its website-like." We know that Zoom and the Wall Street Journal don't and shouldn't work the same way, but we have a hard time articulating why. And for me, it's that difference in architectural scale and how our brains understand it. Agency Jorge: I find that idea super intriguing. I'm wondering if you could elaborate or give us examples of how something like the Wall Street Journal would differ from something that is more... I don't know, a communication tool like Zoom. Sarah: Yeah. So gosh, I wish I'd opened the article up, because I haven't thought about this a couple of days, but they vary in some kind of predictable ways. One is the scale of the things around you. Something like Zoom tends to have a lot of little pieces or I use Keynote as an example too. The reference, in the real world that you're using as metaphors, tend to be smaller and the actual elements in the interface tend to consist of a lot of little things. Whereas in a more landscape-like environment, you're dealing with a few big things. In a real-world landscape, those are buildings. Those are landmarks. They are mountains that are far away, as opposed to like objects that you have on a table around you. And we have a similar scale with the tabletop kind of apps versus landscape-y websites. You also get different degrees of agency. I have a lot of say over exactly what Zoom does. Perhaps not as much as one might like, but I can customize something about it, and I would expect that customization to persist. I can rearrange things. There's not a lot of expectation that I can do anything to gov.uk, other than maybe put my information in a form. I'm not going to do a lot of customization. It's not going to remember a lot of details from time to time. We also talk about kind of how you interact with the thing. The best way to learn something like Zoom, even if they put an overlay on it, is just to kind of poke at stuff. You know, turn that on and off and see what it does. You move things around you, open up settings. It really rewards interaction. Whereas with a large content-based landscape-like website, you have to move around. You're walking around and looking at stuff. You're moving from page to page and forming that mental model rather than poking at stuff to see what it does. There are a few different things like that. And then they come with different expectations too. There's a real expectation of intimacy with tabletops or with app-like experiences, even if they are a web apps. You kind of expect that it's yours in some way, and you don't expect that kind of of more websites that seem more like public goods. And we run into funny situations with that, like with things like Twitter, which I would argue functions like a tabletop, even though it's kind of a web app. You can experience it as an actual app too, but it's mine. I don't go anywhere. I just push buttons and do things on it and my stuff is there. And there all kinds of stories about people getting wildly upset about a new line showing up or a design change happening. I remember how much everybody freaked out when they went from 140 to 280 characters. You tend not to get such a feeling of ownership and people being so concerned about changes in websites that feel like public accommodations. You know, people have lived their lives in docs. They spend tons of time there. They don't tend to care very much about the exact details of the design or something like that. Because it doesn't feel like theirs. Jorge: If I might reflect that back to you, this principle of understanding the scale at which we're working seems to have something to do with the degree of agency that you have over the thing that you're interacting with. And the more granular the level of control that you have with the thing that you're interacting with, the more... I'll use the word intimate, maybe the more like personalized... it's something that you use as opposed to something you inhabit, in some ways. Is that right? Sarah: Very much so, yeah. And I think it's really like, "does your brain think that this is a place or not?" We don't expect places for the most part to be only for us that no one else could ever get into. It's an easy jump to be like, "ah, yes. Other people are here too. This is not just only for me." Whereas something at a much smaller scale... like, I don't expect other people to be messing around with my nightstand. Or my desk at work. Even though theoretically they could, but it's my stuff and I left it there. And there's that greater expectation of control and of intimacy. Naive geography Jorge: Great. So, I don't know if to call these principles or just things to be mindful of when doing this kind of work. You've mentioned scale as one of them, and you've already said that there's another post coming out specifically on that. In the post that is currently published, you mentioned three other principles, if we might call them that. And I was wondering if you could, recap them for our listeners. So, scale is one. A second here you say, "leverage the principles of naive geography." What does that mean? Sarah: I came across a really interesting article a few years ago that is by geographers for geographers, which is like not a field I'd thought about at all. And I was looking into the idea of cognitive maps and cognitive mapping with the idea of like, "oh, do people have like complex maps in their heads that they navigate and are those things the same in the real world and the digital world?" And the answer is, for the most part, no, we don't have maps that have any integrity to them. There are a couple of exceptions, but this was the theory for a while, and it's been pretty disproven. It's not a thing we have. We do, however, have representations of ways to get places in our head. I distinguished between the kind of tabletop more small-scale and the landscape more large-scale because we don't need these representations and we don't form them for small scale experiences. If you can rely on everything you need being in your peripheral vision, your brain doesn't bother remembering where everything is. Because it can get that kind of continuous sensory input. But for these larger-scale experiences where you have to construct a representation over time, and you have to reason against that to figure out where you're going. We construct those representations. And the interesting thing about it is that we're very good at it. I talk about that a little bit in this article with all kinds of cultural traditions that rely on remembering things by relying on how good humans are at remembering places and how to get between places. We're very good at it. But like more interestingly to me, we also make a lot of mistakes while we do it and we make those mistakes in predictable ways. So, one of the principles of naive geography that I think is just fascinating is that for the most part, when we remember things, we remember the earth as flat and square. We're very bad at remembering or estimating depths and heights in comparison to lengths and widths and distances and that kind of thing. Our brains really smoosh everything down. We also, for instance, think about distance in terms of time, not absolute distance. And so, they have eight of these or something like that. And the idea was that naive geography is how everybody understands geography and makes geographic calculations, even if they are not geographers. And they compare it to the idea of naive physics, which is that you can tell what's going to happen when you throw a ball without being a physicist. Like we can figure that out. The same way as we can give directions, we can make judgments and we can reason based on distances without being a geographer. And we're good at it, but we're also bad at it in these kinds of known ways. And I found that almost all of those ways are relevant for digital spaces as well as physical spaces. So, we go into exactly how those work and how you can apply them to your designer information architecture work. Wayfinding Jorge: Another principle here says, "check your wayfinding." That sounds like it's related to this concept of naive geography. What's the distinction here between wayfinding and what we've been talking about so far? Sarah: Yeah. I think of it as, naive geography is what humans do. And developing wayfinding principles or instantiating those way-finding principles in our designs, is what we as information architects do. Basically, it's great to know that people's brains mislead them in this standard way that we can predict, but you have to turn that into something that we can use because nobody I work with cares as much about neuroscience as I do, you know! Or geography, or cognitive mapping, or any of these things. We have to change it into guidelines and principles that I can give to product designers and developers and that kind of thing. And so, for wayfinding, it's really bringing it out of the more esoteric and theoretical space of like landscapes and tabletops and whatever is happening with cognitive geography and this kind of thing into like, "okay, what does that mean?" It's very simple stuff that I largely adapted from museum exhibit design, where it's like, "hey, you need to make sure people have landmarks. You need to pave paths so they know where to go." And we tie that back to the principles of naive geography to figure out why. I tend to illustrate this with grocery stores because I find that they have great wayfinding and it is way more accessible than a lot of the other examples people use like airports, especially with none of us have been in an airport for a year. And grocery stores make a lot of complex things very findable. I often have conversations with stakeholders where they're like, "well, no wonder nobody can find anything. We have 200 products!" And like the average grocery store has something like 800,000 SKUs, and you never are surprised that you can find your brand of maple syrup or be sure it's not there. Which is like the gold standard of wayfinding as far as I'm concerned. So, you can use the structure well enough to be sure that something doesn't exist. "Oh, that's so findable, it's great!" So, we talk about the specific things that you need to check that you're doing in your experience to make sure people can use those naive geographic skills they have. Jorge: And that's a learned skill, right? Knowing to expect something to be there and realizing that it isn't because of its absence is something that you have to pick up. This weekend, I took my kids to Barnes and Noble. They were wanting to buy some books and as convenient as it is to do it online, it's still quite pleasurable to browse through the shelves. And I was explaining to them how the books are organized alphabetically by the author's last name on the shelves. And that came up in the context of looking for a specific book and realizing that it wasn't there because the author's name wasn't on there. That's kind of what we're talking about here. Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. Jorge: This example of the grocery stores is also useful in that perhaps we understand these organization schemes at different levels of granularity. Once we understand how a grocery store is organized, we can find our way from the very highest level of the organization scheme all the way down to a specific product. And, at the highest level, the distinction that sticks in my mind is this phrase that I've heard used for people looking to eat healthier. They say, "shop the perimeter." Shop the edges of the grocery store, because that's where the fresh foods are kept. Whereas all of this stuff in the middle is processed foods. And that's a very high-level distinction that once you understand it, you can navigate that environment differently. Sarah: Yeah, that's also a great example of being able to reason based on a structure, rather than on content. Which is another gold standard of doing information architecture, I think. If somebody can understand the structure and your wayfinding and experience well enough that they can go, "hmm, I'm going to go around the edges!" Rather than saying, "I'm going to go to the lettuce and then I will go to the chard!" You know, that's what we dream of creating for our users. Standard elements Jorge: I want to move on to the last of the principles that you present in the article. It says, "use standard elements intentionally." What do you mean by 'standard elements'? Sarah: Occasionally, I get comments or people worrying that our information architecture isn't innovative enough that we're not doing anything surprising or introducing anything brand new. And I feel very strongly that your architecture is not the place to surprise people. Like, there are actual architects out there building very innovative homes that no one wants to live in. And I have no interest in doing that. I really want us to use the oldest, most standard, most expected way of doing things. I think the example of the grocery store is another great way here. There's a lot of benefit to not innovating in the layout of a grocery store. There probably is some benefit in innovating a little bit around the edges or in some details, but you gain a lot from making it legible and making it expected for people. And so, that one is really about... okay, given these things that we expect to have: we expect to have global navigation, we expect to have metadata on content, we expect to have titles and breadcrumbs... how do we unpack what each of those things is doing for us and make sure that between the suite of those elements we are using? Because you never use just one, you use lots of them together. Between all of those elements, we are presenting a coherent, complete view of the wayfinding people need. And this comes up a lot for us in things like design reviews, where the group will decide that we really don't need a content-type label on that card. And I'll say, "okay, the thing that that is doing for us is this thing!" Like, it is fulfilling this wayfinding need. How else are we going to do that? Because if you want to take this label off, I have to pick up the slack somewhere else. Whereas if somebody says, "oh, hey, I think we don't actually need..." I don't know, "we don't use breadcrumbs on this page or something." I can say, "okay, cool." Because actually that same need for being able to zoom out or being able to orient yourself relative to a landmark is actually being taken care of in these three other ways on the page already. So, if we lose that one, it's okay. It can help you make decisions about those trade-offs with design elements. It can also help you check the things that you absolutely need to be coherent with each other, that you need to be consistent because they're trying to do the same thing. And if they give people two different sets of information, that's worse than not having it at all. Jorge: It's an exhortation to be mindful about not just the elements you're using, but why they're there, right? Sarah: Yes, and all of this is really because, again, I had ideas about what I was doing as an information architect and I didn't have great answers for the little granular-wise. And so this is a result of my exploration of, okay, well, why? Why do we need them to work that way? And so, I'm sharing it with everybody else. Jorge: I'm wondering how thinking this way has affected your own work? Sarah: So much of information architecture is in the people and not the models. And so, my work has been about gaining allies and building relationships and getting people on board, and a good explanation that you can be confident about that doesn't rely on, "just trust me!" goes a really long way. Being able to break it down and decide where I make trade-offs and where I can accept more dissent, where I can encourage that and really learn from it versus where I really need to double down and say, " no, we need this." That's made a huge difference in my ability to get things done and to just build better experiences. Closing Jorge: Well, that's great. I'm very excited to see the upcoming posts in the series. It sounds like you're well ahead with the one about scale. Where can folks follow up with you to keep up to date with what you're writing and sharing. Sarah: Yeah, you can find me on Twitter @documentalope, or you can find everything I and my colleague Rachel Price write at a Medium publication called "Known Item." Jorge: Fantastic. And I have to call out that Rachel is a previous guest in the show as well. And I'll link to the conversation we had in the show notes. It's been so great having you on the show, Sarah. Sarah: Thank you so much. It's been fun. Jorge: Thank you.

What you'll learn in this episode: How lawyers, law firms and managing partners respond when they hear Firm Focus can help them develop a firm focus. How you can overcome disorganization and develop systems that can keep you focused. The top three stumbling blocks for lawyers that impede business development. About Sarah Tetlow: Sarah Tetlow is an experienced productivity consultant, trainer and speaker for attorneys and other legal professionals. She uses her past experiences, organizational and strategic thought process, education and training to help law firms increase their bottom line and operate more efficiently. Through one-on-one consulting, strategic planning, workshops and group trainings, Sarah works with attorneys and law firms to find personalized ways to manage one's day with a proactive and focused approach.  Sarah has experienced first-hand the stress that attorneys endure in trying to manage multiple projects. Sarah's mission, and the reason for starting Firm Focus, is the desire to see a change in the industry and to help attorneys experience control over their day.​ Additional resources: Firm Focus Website Sarah's LinkedIn Firm Focus Facebook Firm Focus LinkedIn Transcript: Episode 91: Finding the Focus to Increase the Bottom Line with Sarah Tetlow, Founder & CEO of Firm Focus   Sharon: Welcome to the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst podcast. Today, we're talking with Sarah Tetlow, Founder & CEO of Firm Focus which works with law firms to increase productivity with the ultimate goal of increasing firm revenue. She has worn many hats within the law firm environment, so she knows the ins and outs of how they work and where they encounter stumbling blocks when it comes to productivity. Today we'll hear all about her journey, her perspective on law firm productivity and how it can be enhanced. Sarah, welcome to the program.    Sarah: Thank you so much, Sharon, it's wonderful to be here.   Sharon: So glad to be talking with you. When I was reading stumbling blocks on law firm productivity, I thought, “Oh my gosh, there are a lot of them. So, tell us about your career path and how you started working with lawyers.   Sarah: Yeah, I went to UC Santa Barbara and studied law and society and always thought that I wanted to be a lawyer. My whole life, I wanted to be a lawyer and long story short, I ended up going a different path, but always within the legal industry and I was a litigation paralegal for many years in my career and then I moved into a marketing and business development manager role and, ultimately, during that time in my career, I started to really explore what I was passionate about and where there was a need in the industry which landed on creating Firm Focus and now I'm truly happy that my career took this path because I love helping lawyers work more productively, be more organized and basically fall in love with their career again.   Sharon: Was it helping lawyers that made you passionate or was it  that you could enhance their ability to work more efficiently? What did you become passionate about?   Sarah: When I was a litigation paralegal and kind of the day to day and preparing the lawyers for trial or even depositions or hearings and helping manage a lot of the big, voluminous projects, it was always something that I really just enjoyed doing. I remained calm in the storm. I always had a really good sense of time and project size and the resources that we needed to use to be able to meet deadlines and effectuate the projects without burning out and it was just something I was good at, but also I really enjoyed that part of my career and helping manage the lawyers, helping manage the cases. So when I started to explore—when I was a business development manager and I was spending a lot of commuting time thinking about what was I loving about being a marketing and BD manager, what was missing about not being a litigation paralegal anymore, where are my skills, what am I good at and where can I fill a gap in the industry by marrying all of those skills and my passion to help the industry. So, it came from both. It came from just sort of my own selfish view of myself and what fulfilled me, but then matching that to what the industry could benefit from and gain value from and so that's what landed me on their productivity experts, their business development coaches and I'm now bringing to the industry a productivity expert for the legal industry.   Sharon: So, tell us what made you decide to go out on your own, start your firm, and tell us a little bit about Firm Focus.   Sarah: That was scary of course. I had a career; I had a job; I had two babies; I was secure and comfortable, but I started on the side. I started doing some home organizing. So, on weekends or at night, I would go and do home organizing, just something that I found out twas a career and it's something I do even in my own house to reduce stress, and I enjoy it. Yes, I'm crazy; I like organizing; it's something that I love to do and so I would do it on the side on top of my career at a law firm in San Francisco and then I started to get the idea of, “Wow, I can make a business out of this.” But whenever I would kind of look at longevity in that industry, I just didn't see it. I didn't see my body doing this for the next 35 years or however long—not even 35 years. I'm a little too old to work for 35 more years, but I didn't see myself doing it long-term and so it took about a year to evolve to the right idea, but I came to the idea of marrying again the idea of organizing, but also the skills I had in the law office and came up with Firm Focus and then the name came up because I landed on the concept; I landed on the idea; I started to strategize about what that business would be like and then of course I wrote down lawyers, law firms, productivity and came up with Firm Focus which I'm actually very proud of the name because I think it has a double meaning on both ends and I stand by what I do with my clients in really helping them develop a firm focus in their business and in their day to day.   Sharon: What's the response when you tell lawyers or law firms or management partners that you can help them develop a firm focus? Do they always say, “I have that” or what? What's their response?   Sarah: Almost 100% of the time, I get a laugh and says, “You're saying lawyers need that?” Usually there's some curiosity behind that as well because many lawyers—there are some lawyers that have their workday designed perfectly. They have systems in place. They have boundaries established. They are able to stay focused, mitigate distractions and interruptions, have effective communication skills within their law firm and this is not really an issue for them, but there are others, many others whereby the very nature of how the industry has manifest, productivity skills and organizational skills are essential and it's not that lawyers are lacking these skills necessarily. They're incredibly intelligent individuals. Usually it's a result of just the fast-pace day and the slow-paced judicial system, the skills to be able to design the [unintelligible] of day, but then be able to react to significant changes that occur in their caseloads, things settling, trial dates being vacated, deals, the date being moved and all of these things elicit and need to be very organized and have a good sense of time, attention and project management skills.   Sharon: Do you find that most—and I guess there are some people who just can't get organized. Can you help them overcome that or do you come in and set up systems or what do you do?   Sarah: All of the above. So, I work with a lot of lawyers that have ADHD; it's actually quite common and the reality is—I'm a naturally very, very organized person and I don't expect my clients to be 100% organized and they don't expect that of themselves, but I have a lot of strategies, ideas and tips and of course it's customized to the person. Are they a litigator or are they are transactional attorney? Are they remote or are they in the office or a hybrid? Are they a digital person or are they a paper person? And so, all of these I am able to help my clients diagnose where their weaknesses are or their challenges are, leverage the strengths that they have, but also work with the other variables like what I mentioned: in-person, remote, digital/paper and help them just make changes to their habits, make changes to their systems so that they can work more productivity and more effectively.   Sharon: And so, do you help them? Because a lot of times I think it's not that people—they realize that they need this system. Lawyers need—everybody needs systems, but especially lawyers because they're working so quickly most of the time. They need systems, but it's like, “I don't have time to stop and put that together.” So, is that what you do?   Sarah: Yeah, so when I meet with clients initially—I work with clients three ways. One is via coaching, so that's usually one-on-one or very small groups and I have three-month, six-month packages where I meet with clients and what I do there in the beginning is I have a self-assessment I send them that I've created and I have them rate themselves on different statements that are in this assessment and then I take and I rearrange it into a scorecard by various categories that are some of the variables we think of for productivity. So, we have some goals established because—why are we being more productive? Why do we want to be more productive? What are we not accomplishing or what are we missing out on or what's the feeling we have that this is something that we feel we want to improve upon. So I'm measuring goals; I'm measuring their organization; I'm measuring their well-being, their emails and then things like perfectionism, analysis/paralysis, procrastination, what kind of distractions they experience, what kinds of interruptions they experience and I'm measuring all of that, turning it into a scorecard and we meet in the beginning for an hour and a half to really dive into who they are, again what their strengths are and what their challenges are and then I kind of create a road map, so if it is a six-month coaching client, I have a general idea of where we're going for six months. I meet weekly with my clients and what I say to them is, “This is not my journey. This is your journey. I'm here to support you and help you” and so each week we make micro-changes, really, really micro-changes which is why I prescribe usually a six-month engagement weekly for 45 minutes because we're going to work usually the organization first—let's get you a little bit more organized mentally and physically. So, are you getting things out of your head? Do you have a system to put those thoughts, ideas, assets, projects, tasks, to-do's because without having a system set up, you're too afraid to let them out of your head.” So, I'm helping them first to set that up and then from there we move into some of those issues that I talked about and that's what can take the six months or longer to build these healthier habits. I'm not coming in and saying, “Day one, oh my gosh, you need to set up all these systems and you need to turn off your email and you need to do this and that and that. No, no, no, we're going to do it in a slower paced but we'll effectuate long-term changing growth.” And the last piece I was going to say on that was—I forgot. I had one more piece to say on that, but--   Sharon: When it comes back to you, you'll bring it up. So, you mentioned a couple of issues. What are the top three issues you see that are stumbling blockings for lawyers and also impede their business development? I know that you've worn the marketing hat, so you see how the productivity—you could at least be more productive so that you would have more time for business development I presume.   Sarah: Yeah, yeah, well, from a higher level what I see a lot that affects productivity in a firm—I'll talk about the firm first—I would say communication issues. That is email—and I just remembered my other train of thought by the way too--   Sharon: Please.   Sarah: I'll derail, and you can fit it in as you see fit, but I started to say there are three ways I service my clients and then I went way off on the coaching way. So, the other two ways in which I service clients is I do a lot of speaking and a lot of training. That might look like a small team, or it might look like a firm one. I've done firm-wide trainings where they bring lawyers, legal assistants, operations team, finance team, everyone to the table and I've done firm-wide trainings and then the third way I service my clients is email and digital management. I train a lot on email and not just how to use email, but our habits around emails. I connect people's habits to the technology so that busy professionals can be in control of their email because that is a huge, huge distraction piece through the day. So, the top three kind of high-level things that I see that inhibit productivity within a law firm are communication and that's giving projects over Slack, email, constant firing of email, ineffective emails or inefficient emails, volume of emails and then when we are in the office, a lot of just random projects being shouted out while walking by people's desks and so we are getting tasks and to-do's from too many mediums. That's one challenge I see on a firm level.     A second challenge that I see on a firm level is disorganization and so sometimes, whether electronically or digitally or the paper file can be disorganized, there are things that need to be in the file that should be in the file that are missing that can lead to a lot of lost time, especially when it's crunch time and we need original signatures or we're trying to locate a document or a version and we're unable to do so. That leads to a lot of challenges at a firm-wide level in productivity.   And the third one at a firm-wide level that can lead to inefficient use of time is a lack of policies or procedures and I find that a lot in firms that just don't really have a lot of procedures implemented where lawyers are doing a lot of admin, non-billable, non-captured time because there's just either no one else to go to ask or they're unclear or there's no—for lack of a better word—ramifications for some of the support staff saying, “I'm too busy. I'm not going to do it” instead, “Let me support you as the billable lawyer and find the answer or get someone who can help me help you” and I'm finding more and more in firms that that level of service internally has dissipated a little bit which is leading to a lack of productivity on a firm-wide level.   Sharon: Who calls you in? Is it managing partners, the marketing director? Who calls you in?   Sarah: All of the above. So sometimes it's the individual. They see in themselves that they can benefit working with me and oftentimes they want to do it confidentially which of course is fine with me if they're the ones reaching out. I try to encourage them if they can get firm support. If they increase their billable hours, maybe the firm will help pay for some of my services, but sometimes it's a very vulnerable place and they're just not quite ready to admit to the firm that they might need help in that area, although I will share it's very, very common for many lawyers to benefit from working with someone like me and just helping them in the day to day. I also get brought in by either managing partner level or executive director level, somewhere around there. Usually that's for either the firm-wide training or someone is being challenged at this level and we'd like you to work with them and marketing people also bring me in. I mentioned that I was in-house marketing and business development manager. I have been very involved with the Legal Marketing Association in the Bay Area for about six years now. So sometimes the marketing professional is the one bringing me in partially because of my involvement in LMA and partially because, as you even brought up yourself, Sharon, marketers are challenged with lawyers who need to find time to do the business development and marketing and oftentimes what they hear is, “I didn't have time for that,” but in reality what we know that wasn't a priority right now and so sometimes the marketers will come to me mostly for training, not so much saying, “We want you to work with this person, can you come in.” Me being the voice to let the attorneys knows the importance of finding time to develop business and sometimes the lawyers just need to hear it from someone other than their internal marketer to then go, “Oh my gosh, that's just such a great idea” or “I see where I have gaps in my daily practice and the need to grow my book of business.”   Sharon: So where do you encounter the most resistance? I can see a lot of places, but if you're brought in, who might feel the most threatened or--   Sarah: Sometimes if I'm being brought on by a stakeholder to work with a junior person on their team, sometimes I'm met with resistance by the person in the beginning. Almost always within a few sessions, they have opened up and find it incredibly beneficial to their practice, but it's a tricky situation because as that person, I can appreciate that you're being exposed to say, “Hey, we think you need to work with a productivity coach” and that can be a really confusing and scary situation and also the first thought is, “Am I going to get fired? Am I not developing enough here at the firm? Am I going to advance at this firm?” And ironically if the firm is reaching out to me, almost always what they're telling me confidentially, but before I meet with the individual, they see a ton of value in that person. They see a potential in that person. They want to invest in that person and that's usually where in the beginning, there's a little bit of insecurity that gets developed by the individual because they think, “I'm being asked to work with Firm Focus” because they don't see potential in me” and in fact it's usually the reverse. They see a lot of potential and they want to invest in the one area that they see as a challenge for that person so that then they can grow in the firm.   Sharon: No, I can see how that would be unsettling to the person at first, but the message for the firm really is—they're not going to invest in somebody they think they want out the door in a few months.   Sarah: Exactly.   Sharon: So that would be quite in a sense almost—I'm sure I'd feel if somebody came to me and said, “Oh my god, we want you to work this,” I'd feel like, “Oh my god, what am I doing wrong,” but at the same time, it's such a compliment in so many ways to have them bring you in to work with somebody. When we were talking before, tell us about some of your successes. I know you mentioned something about tremendously reducing the amount of emails they have. Tell us a little bit about that.   Sarah: Yeah, I get very excited on this topic because I developed a system; it's called the Art Email Productivity System, ARTT. So just to step back for a moment, Sharon, in life, in anything we do—and if you think I need to cook dinner; I need to go grocery shopping; I need to draft a brief—anything we do, there are five D's. We can do it right now; it's going to take me two to five minutes and I'm going to do it. We can delay it. I'm going to do it in the future. We can delegate it. I'm going to ask somebody else to do it. We can diminish it, take a big, big project and break it down or we can delete it, not do it. Those are our choices. So, in developing ARTT, as I mentioned before, I train a person's habits to match the technology because when the engineers developed email that we all use every single day, they created the tools within the software to support our habits, but no one ever really teaches us what our habits are and so that's where I find a lot of my clients use things like flags. Flags are, “This is really important, and I must do it and I can't lose it and I shouldn't forget about it” or “I need to do this in the future, so I'm going to flag it and tell Outlook or GSuite to remind me of it in three days, five days, seven days.” We use things like, “Unread, I have an action to do. I still need to do something on this email” or “Read, I don't have an action or it's a lower-priority action,” but like I said, we're never really taught how to efficiently use the software, use the tools and use the technology and so that's where I come in with ARTT.     ARTT is action, reference, tracking, trash and that's because I force my clients—I teach them what their habits are as they relate to those five Ds in the ARTT system and then I teach them the habit of touch once or mostly touch once. So, you get an email. You instantly decide is this something I need to do? Is this something I need to do in the future? Is it something I'm waiting for something back to unlock some bottlenecks? Is it something I don't need to do anything on, but I want to save it? Is it something I don't need do anything on and I don't want to save it?     And so, then what do you do with that email? And what it has done for—I teach a workshop; I do a public workshop, a two-hour workshop and that comes with a one-hour private session because I'm not coming and saying, “O.K., Sharon, here is how you need to set up your inbox.” What I do is I go in, and I ask the right questions so that your inbox is set up to support your line of business, your way of thinking and it's going to look different than John's. It's going to look different than Susan's. It's going to look different than mine and so the one-hour private session is where my clients share their inbox with me after they've gone through the workshop, and we set up the system fully and I have had many people come out of this system with a volume of email just sitting in their inbox and in the lower side maybe 12,000 emails or some-where between 5,000 and 12,000 emails. The highest was someone who had a million emails in her inbox and after implementing this system, the new habit, the new way of thinking, they finished most days with zero to maybe 20 emails in their inbox because it's making you do something with the email, not just letting it sit there and overwhelm you and not only that, the volume of email coming in reduces by implementing this system as well because you start to become very aware of what's coming into your inbox. I teach them to batch think by project or by what your behavior is with that type of email so that you can see how many future obligations you've maybe thought that you would do like, “I'm going to read all of these digests. I'm going to watch all of these replays. I'm going to listen to all of these podcasts” and now I'm forcing you to reduce decision fatigue and be intentional on what is important to you to design your proactive day and to mitigate the overwhelm. Sorry, that was a bit of a tangent on that, but I love it.   Sharon: No, no. Well, I guess what I was thinking is it sounds fabulous. I think everybody would benefit from something like this, especially lawyers with that volume of email. Let me ask you this: When you talk about inefficient email—this just came back to me. I remember when I used to work in a different lifetime at Arthur Anderson and I remember a partner who he got so annoyed about people saying, “Thanks for your message. Received your message” and he felt like, “Why are people sending me these emails?” What are your thoughts about something like that? I'm just really curious.   Sarah: Yeah, so we see that all the time and on the one hand, in the ideal world, when we're communicating back and forth, a great thing to always try to add is, “Thanks in advance for your response” because you don't feel the need to send a thank you on the back end. That being said, we can't always train—we can train some people, “please don't send these types of responses;” others we can't and so that's another way that my system is effective because now it's a click of that delete button. You got it; you received it; it took you a second to read it, but you don't really need that piece of the thread anymore. So yes, sometimes it's trainable. If it's internally or maybe if you have a really great relationship with the client, you might be say, “I appreciate your thanks. You don't need to send those. I know you appreciate my response.” If I could elaborate on this for just a second though, another one we see all of the time, “Hi, Sharon, we should really talk about this report. Let me know when you're available.”  No, no, no, “Hi, Sharon, we should really talk about this report. I've got time tomorrow between 12:00 and 2:00 or Friday any time before noon. What works with your schedule?” I see this a lot where we punt the next action to the next person. It's a way of avoiding making the decision or bothering to look at your own calendar for a minute, but you'll see a response, “Yes, that sounds good. Let me know when you want to meet” and then that goes back and forth. So, if you are proposing to connect with somebody about something, give them some options of when it works for you to connect.   Sharon: No, I think that's so important. It makes such a difference in the response you get if you say to somebody here are some times or some days as opposed to—no, that can just take forever.     Sarah: Sharon, can I say on more thing on that topic too?   Sharon: Please.   Sarah: From a client development standpoint as well, I'll let you in on a little secret. What I have found is when I'm reaching out to a potential client, I have my systems in place to follow up with them maybe in six weeks and the six-week day comes up and I know that that feeling many of us get where we go, “Oh, that's right. Here's this reminder. I need to reach back out to Susan today” and we go, “I don't know what necessarily to write at the moment,” but when you reach back out to them, if it's via email—certainly if it's via call, that's great—but it's by an email, what I have found is that if you say, “Hi, Susan,” all of the salutations that you're going to give and then you say, “Here are some times this week or next week that we can connect. Let me know if those work for you” instead of just, “Let me know if you'd like to connect if I can be of further help.” If you give specific times when you reach out, the likelihood of that person to respond increases and if they don't respond and you're waiting a day or two and you to follow up again, then you say, “Hi Susan, I know you're extremely busy. I wanted to update my availability for you. Here are some times.” Then I actually find that they respond quicker to get some time on your calendar. So, it also leaves an open gate for you to be able to respond again to update that availability if you haven't heard back from the person that you've reached out to.   Sharon: I like that a lot about updating availability because a lot of times it's like you give them and they'd say, “Don't respond. It's past” and you say, “Well, when do you want to talk?” One thing just before we end I wanted to ask you because you talk a lot about these habits and I think most people who are in a law firm at some point have taken a productivity class or time management class or whatever and what you're talking about, they're great ideas, but I can't say that they're like nobody's ever heard them before. I think it's the habits. Over six months, are you circling back with the client to just check on the habit or what's going on?   Sarah: Yeah, so I meet weekly, and they say it takes anywhere from 50 days to 365 days—don't quote me on the exact number—to build a habit. The 21-day habit, that's based on a response to plastic surgery that was blown out of the water and not accurate. It takes time to develop habits, good habits. Bad habits, they just develop right away. You start eating chocolate cake at 5:00 every day, you're going to eat chocolate cake at 5:00 every day. So good habits take time to develop which is why I'm meeting weekly for 45 minutes and then many of my clients, whatever that new habit is that we're introducing—again, they're micro; they're really small. So, I might for example introduce, “This week, let's start your shutdown routine. Now, instead of looking at what you need to in the morning or just reacting to everything that's coming at one, the night before, having a clear understanding of what you will get done the next day is a crucial part of being productive and staying focused.” And so that might be a habit that we're starting to develop as we meet this week and we're building upon it for a few weeks and talking about other things as well, but that might be the one thing that we're doing, “How did it go last week? Do we need to refine? Do we need to change the time that you're doing shutdown routine? Are you giving yourself enough time to do the shutdown routine” and then maybe that's developed and we're three months later into coaching and we're working on another issue and they go, “Oh my gosh, I've not been doing the shutdown routine” or “I'm not doing it every day like I was when we first started doing it,” then we are going to lay the foundation for that again and build it again.     Most of the time though, as we're working together, these habits are sticking, and I encourage—some of my clients are good. We meet once a week and then the next week and the micro-homework, they've done the homework; they are learning so much; they're being more organized; they're getting more done; they're billing more hours. Others send me a text every day of the top three things that they're going to focus on that day and it's just that extra layer of accountability and I'll usually respond with, “Looks good” or I might check in with them later or if I notice the next day that something that was written the day before is written again, I'll usually ask them, “Did you not have time to do it yesterday or are you just continuing to work on that one thing?” So, I'll usually communicate with them even outside of our weekly meeting and find out why am I seeing the same project day after day or I will talk about it at our next session if it's a bigger, deeper issue than just over a quick check in.   Sharon: I'll give you a final, final question because I can hear a lot of listeners going, “Sarah, that's really great and what you're saying is really great, but you don't understand. Any partner can walk in at any minute and partners walk into my office all day and throw another project at me that I didn't have in the morning, and you just don't understand how it works exactly.” What do you say?   Sarah: Absolutely, I wish I had my hour-long From Frazzle to Focus presentation because I really lay it out in that presentation, but the short answer is it absolutely happens all of the time and it's still crucial to know what the top things are that you need to focus on each day. So you go, “I need to work on this summary judgment brief. I need to get this letter out.  I need to get three subpoenas out” and as long as you know what the top three things are you need to do—and I'm kind of giving two different paths to this answer; there are two different paths. On the one hand, you know what the top priorities are that you need to work on and so when the partner does not and say, “I need you to do and work on this and it needs to be today,” you can then know what things on your own list can be bumped or needs to be bumped because you're going to have to bump something. So, can the letter get out the next day or can you delegate it? Can you break it down? You were going to spend four hours on a summary judgment brief, but now you can only spend two hours on the summary judgment brief because you need to do this other project. So, the one pathway answer is knowing your priorities so that you know how to shift them when other needs arise.     The second pathway answer is here's that procrastination. So, you get in in the morning and what I see too often is we don't know what those priorities are; we haven't written them down or identified them. We know we need to work in the summary judgment brief. We know we need to get a letter out. Oh, we got the subpoenas we need to get it, but we spend time doing the small, piddly tasks. We get caught up in email, slap chit-chatting. We get point one and point three done and then when it's time to get down to business and start working on the summary judgment brief, that's when the partner has interrupted you and needs you to do something more important and so you get that anxious feeling. You don't feel accomplished. You feel frazzled and the reality is had you know your priorities and immediately in the morning mitigated all other distractions and interruptions and started to work on that summary judgment brief, when you were interrupted, you would still feel like you accomplished that you needed to do that and not blame the partner for interrupting you and then of course let me talk to that partner about how they can manage their projects a little bit better so that they're not coming to you with urgent needs.     Sharon: No, that's really great. I'm sure everybody's going, “O.K.” I'm sure you've given people some ideas to think about. There's also the reality of, “Oh yeah, how is that partner going to react when I tell him, ‘Listen, I have other things I have to do,' but I'm sure you have tips for that. Thank you so much for being here today and talking with us. You gave us some great ideas, Sarah. I really, really appreciate it.   Sarah: It was such a pleasure, Sharon. Thank you for having me and I would love to come talk with you again anytime.   Sharon: Sounds wonderful, thank you.   END OF AUDIO

Jerry Hoepner, a faculty member in the department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire. I am privileged to introduce today’s guest, Dr. Sarah Northcott. We are fortunate to have a conversation about her work and the application of solutions focused brief therapy and psychological supports to individuals with aphasia.  Dr. Sarah Northcott is a Senior Lecturer in Speech and Language Therapy at both the University of East Anglia, UK, and City, University of London, UK. Her research interests lie in exploring ways to support the emotional and social wellbeing of people living with stroke and aphasia. In 2016 she received the UK Stroke Association Jack and Averil (Mansfield) Bradley Fellowship Award for Stroke Research, which enabled her to lead the SOFIA Trial (Solution Focused brief therapy In post-stroke Aphasia), a feasibility wait-list controlled trial. She also led the qualitative evaluation on the SUPERB Trial, investigating peer befriending for people with aphasia, also funded by the UK Stroke Association.   Take aways: Social networks are wonderful for people with aphasia after their stroke, and these social networks often predict outcomes more than the severity of the stroke. (9:30) It is crucial that speech language therapists receive training on this topic so they feel comfortable stepping into those moments when there is a need for psychosocial support, or at least recognize when they need extra support in doing so. Solution focused brief therapy is designed to help people build change. With training, it is important that speech therapists transition out of the “fixer mindset” and the thought that they need to fix everything, in order to successfully provide this psychosocial support.  Paper and pen, or objects from the individual’s environment that they are comfortable using, are the most effective visual communication methods when going into these unpredictable conversations. Always make the most of people’s strengths and talents and focus on what is already going well. The client is the expert in their own life!     Jerry: Greetings from across the pond, Sarah. I'd say good morning, but perhaps good afternoon for you. Really nice talk with you today.    Sarah: It's lovely, thank you very much to be inviting me as part of your podcast series. That was really lovely to be here.    Jerry: Absolutely, our privilege. I'm really excited to dive into this important conversation again, a topic near and dear to my heart as well. And before we get started, can you share just a little bit about your mentors and collaborators and kind of how you found your path, so to speak.   Sarah: So, I first trained as a speech therapist about 20 years ago now, and it was when I was starting to work with adults who had a stroke for the first time, I guess, I started to realize how difficult it was to, how your life can be turned upside down by having the aphasia and how isolated some of the people I was working with were as well. And it was around that time that Katerina Hilari from City University contacted me and asked me if I'd like to do an MSC looking at social support for people with chronic aphasia. And that kind of tied in well with what I was noticing in my clinical work. And I think I was really struck by that project, I found it really exciting to be working on that project. And it also felt important because I could sort of see the clinical relevance from the work I was doing. I guess I'm very grateful to Katerina, because she sort of opened that whole door for me. And it was really Katerina, who encouraged me to do the PhD. the PhD was looking, taking that work forward, looking more generally at social support after a stroke. So, for people with and without aphasia, and what social support really mattered to them, what value it had, what tends to happen to their friendships. And yeah, I feel very lucky that she was had a lot of belief in me and really encouraged me to do that. And after my PhD, she was still there for me. So, I have quite a difficult season, because when you finish your PhD to know quite what to do next. And yeah, she's always been incredibly supportive and has been really there for me sort of had a belief that the work we were doing was important and valuable, and that I had something to contribute. So that was, yes, she's like, I really respect her academic judgments. And she's been a really big part of my life, I guess, the 15 years that we've done some lovely work together. And that's been really rewarding. And I guess more recently with the SOFIA fellowship project I've had, as well as Katerina, three other supervisors, so a mental health nurse, and two psychologists and I think, I there was real value for me and being supervised by people who weren't speech therapists. So, I really learned from those with different perspectives and what they were bringing to it. So, one of them Shirley Thomas, who sort of is leading the column base trial campaign for activation therapy for people with aphasia. So of course, she brought a huge wealth of knowledge about running trials with people with aphasia, which is not the easiest thing to do, assessing him for his knowledge about mental health nursing. And I found that really helpful to get those perspectives and put that into the research. And so, many lovely people to work with. I don't think I've ever felt alone with it. And if anyone out there is a speech therapist or speech therapy student and wondering about research, I would say, it's really important to have a team around you because it's not always the easiest thing. There are not backs when you get rejections and then things don't go to plan. So, have people around you who believe in you, and will support you through that and support you not just for the academic side, but sort of quite holistically as well. So, I think I've been, I've been very lucky with the support I've had around. And I've certainly I've not done any of this work alone, it's always been a very much a team thing. And I'm very grateful for the team I've had around me. So, if anyone of my supervisors have happened to listen to this, a big thank you to all of them.   Jerry: That's really well said in terms of the importance of just having that team that work around you, for sure. And really a powerful story about Katerina reaching out to you, that must have just been really a great moment and ongoing moments to encourage you with your PhD and beyond. So, I agree some definitely lovely work that two of you and others have done together regarding psychosocial effects following aphasia. So, I just love that whole body of work.    Sarah: Yeah, and I feel very grateful to the school that everyone has given me with that. And I would say that again, I guess that's another thing to pull out of that if someone's thinking about whether to go into research, it is so important to do research in an area that you're quite passionate about, and you really believe in because it's tough doing research. So, I think you have to have a real motivation. And I think that's kind of going as well as that as a support team to have a kind of belief in the projects.   Jerry: Absolutely. And it's really evident in the work that you do and the connections that you have to real individuals with aphasia. So, it definitely shows through, and again, those interdisciplinary connections you mentioned, Shirley Thomas, and she's done so much work in this area. And that's been powerful.   Sarah: You know and I think I think it's been really interesting to work with a psychologist coming from a different background and a different perspective on research. And I've definitely learned loads from them, it's been really helpful.   Jerry: But an excellent place to start. Just to kind of roll back the clocks a little bit, I think many of our listeners are familiar with your work on the stroke social network scale, and the social networks and supports for people with chronic aphasia that you've done with Katerina Hilari. So, I think that is a really nice place to start in terms of just thinking of where you've come from. In the 2018 article in the International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, you identified several barriers to accessing appropriate psychological support for individuals with aphasia. And likewise, in your 2017 article, in that same journal, you found that most speech language pathologists or in the UK, speech language therapists, lack the confidence to implement the appropriate psychological supports for people with aphasia. Of course, that's really been shown by --- and colleagues all around the world, but it's just such a prominent issue. Can you talk a little bit about how all of this kind of led into your current research regarding solution focus brief therapy?   Sarah: Of course, and thank you for reading these papers.   Jerry: Absolutely.   Sarah: So yeah, do you want me to take it back from the beginning for the sort of social support stroke social network scale and then work from there?    Jerry: Sure, that'd be fine. That'd be great.    Sarah: Yes, in my PhD I was looking at social support, and one of the outputs of that was the stroke social network scale. And it is something that Katerina's done recently is set up a repository of different resources from City University, so just if people are interested in some of the work we've done at City to go to the current website. And you'll find it there, you'll find that scale there, you'll find her cycle 39 scale, and we're trying to build up that repository. So, that's just a nice resource for anyone in the world to tap into. And I think, yes, in my PhD reverb, we're looking at what happens over time. And it was one of the themes that came through was that social networks are quite wonderful after a stroke. And they seem to be particularly vulnerable for people with aphasia. And that seems to be a really predictive factor of who's going to maintain a strong social network, a stronger factor, even then stroke severity or disabilities. So, that was a quite striking finding. And I think I felt very privileged in my PhD because part of it was doing questionnaires of people over time, but then also doing qualitative interviews of people around about a year post stroke, so I had a year of my life walking around London doing these interviews of people and listening to people's stories. People are very generous with their times to share how they found the stroke, what was important to them? And yeah, and exploring with them all the value of connection and what that meant to them after the stroke. And also, we could see from the quantitative data that people were losing friends. We didn't mean, there was a chance to explore with people what's happening, what does this mean to you? And it was, you know, so many reasons that people gave of why they were seeing their friends less, you know, they weren't going to same activities that they used to. So, they didn't see those friends in those contexts anymore. They were exhausted, and they didn't have the energy to initiate contact. With a disability, they were housebound, and how you host and your lack of reciprocity there. And of course, the phase, you're in a phase of disrupting the dynamics of friendships, and a big theme that came through as well, there was the close link between this sense of feeling a little bit withdrawn and cutting us off a little bit. So, the link between mood and friendship loss, and it's like a vicious cycle, I guess, of becoming withdrawn, not going out, and then getting low in mood and then becoming even more withdrawn. And I think some of those stories affected me quite a lot. And at the end of my PhD, I was wanting to say, well, what intervention could we have that could break that vicious cycle and make it more of a virtuous cycle? To encourage people to, or what do people need to be able to feel they can start to reengage again and start to live the life they want to live with the stroke and aphasia? So, I think that was the motivation for me at the end of the PhD to think it's quite a big thing to go from observation research into intervention research. I don't think I've quite realized actually how big a thing it was and how much I was undertaking it as a way of learning. But I think that was my motivation to start thinking about interventions. And so, this was five years ago. And at that point, there was very little in terms of the research evidence base for effective psychological therapy for people with aphasia. And Shirley's lovely studies, comm study, I wasn't the basis to her lovely systematic review quite recently. And yes, its basis is still pretty thin and has some really nice research coming through. So, there's all the lovely stuff in Australia and in the world, but it's still, I would say, I was surprised how many psychological stroke research studies were excluding people with aphasia on the grounds of their language disability. So that was quite motivating for me to think, as a speech language therapist, what can be our role? What therapies might work well, so that was nice to start playing. And then as you say, before I went into doing the solution focused brief therapy trial, I did some work, listening to speech therapists. So, we did an online survey, and then we did some focus group analysis and had an experience trusting the psychological well-being of people with aphasia. And, yeah, that was, so it was really striking that speech therapists, they really want to do their best. And they were doing some lovely listening, and they're setting up groups, and they were telling us all the things that they were doing. But there was a sense of, actually, this is not an area where you feel confident. And this is not an area that we feel particularly more trained or supported in. And we have this sort of unease that if we spend a session listening to someone’s distress, should we spend that session, doing language goals, you know, was that the right use of our time. And that particularly felt uneasy when they felt that it was all on their shoulders. And if they got out of that debt, they had nowhere to turn to for extra support, when they felt that the management and their team have to be valuing that work, supporting them in that work, where they didn't feel they had the training. They were time pressured, and conversely, in teams where they felt that there was that sense of holistic team culture, and it was valid, it was easier if they had some training. And particularly they had such a support. So, I think what might work particularly nicely was whether there was a mental health professional psychologist within the team, with a kind of opened door policy who they felt they could knock on the door of and ask them for advice as they went along. And if they started to go down to their desk, they could do joint work together or handover. And where they felt they could get informed advice and support with it. That seems quite enabling to speech therapists to feel that this is something that they could address and feel comfortable addressing.    Jerry: Wow, that's terrific. I want to go back to just a couple of things that you said. That idea that social networks predict outcomes more than stroke severity, and then that cycle between changes in mood and withdrawal and how that kind of feeds itself. And I think that last point, when you were talking about Speech Language therapists, that training, right, just not feeling comfortable, but when they get that training, they feel more comfortable and are able to step into those moments when there's a need for that psychosocial support, or at least recognize when they need outside help as well. So.   Sarah: Yes, I think it was quite interesting for people was just saying one of the things that they got from training and experience was, when they complete it, when they were newly qualified, they had the sense that they needed to fix everything, there needed to be solution and quite anxious with situations where they couldn't fix it. And with training they kind of reversed this around to thinking sometimes it's really very good just to be there with someone or just to listen and that's valuable in itself. And they thought they had some skills to sit back on enabling them to do that. So, listening and being there with someone when they’re distracted, they felt more comfortable out on their own.    Jerry: Yeah, I agree. And making that shift out of that fixer mindset I think is a really important part of providing that type of support, for sure. Absolutely. So terrific introduction to this. Can you talk a little bit about why speech language therapists should consider the psychosocial impact of living with aphasia and kind of what their roles are in terms of addressing psychological well-being, psychosocial well- being?   Sarah: Sure. So, what came through in the focus group project was the sense that often people with aphasia, that speech therapists are meeting, have sort of been trapped in this world of aphasia, and they got a real value from having a speech therapist facilitate them, explaining what it was like to be them, what it was like to live with the aphasia. And the speech therapists have skills of listening and facilitation, and that's really valuable. So, I would say that for someone with aphasia who has more severe distress, more severe mental health issues, I think speech therapists have a role in facilitating and accessing mental health professionals as well. And what we found in the focus group project was speech therapists we spoke to were concerned that people with more severe aphasia, it was very hard for them to access psychological health and mental health professionals who understandably found it very challenging to adjust their psychological therapies for someone with more severe aphasia. And I think also what we found in the UK, and I don't know if this translates to the US, but in UK near the stroke, so in your acute stage, just post discharge from hospital, psychologists working in those teams more like, sometimes like it was just like in ASD so there was quite spectrum where the speech therapist was very disappointed that those people with aphasia aren't suitable candidates for therapy because of their language disability. But there are also psychologists in this stroke special services who are skilled working with aphasia, we're happy to be joint working with the speech therapists, we're happy to work with the family members around the person with aphasia. But when the people with aphasia went into the mainstream mental health services, then there were more issues around mental health professionals struggling with the aphasia. So, I think in that situation, the speech therapists have a real role in supporting someone with aphasia and accessing those services. So, I can completely see that as a speech therapist listening here thinking like not really wanting to go and get lots of specialist training and delivering pre psychological therapies is not that I see my world what I want to do, but I would say that it is important for speech therapists to not undervalue their own skills of listening and what that can be for someone with aphasia, or underestimate that we can have a sort of bridging role and helping people access psychological services. And another thing I'd add to that is that, you know, really listening to someone who is having a hard time, it's not easy, and I have some sympathy with speech therapists who are starting to learn to project, and starting to feel anxious. And I would say that it's important to feel supported in that work and so there's someone that you can go to, and people talk about peer support a lot and how valuable that was. But to find some way of feeling reassured that you're doing the right thing, sometimes as well, that it is the right thing to sit there with someone who are distressed. I would say, I'm a really big believer on making sure you've got support systems for the therapists as well.   Jerry: Absolutely. Just to touch on a couple of those points. I completely agree that speech language pathologists, speech language therapists, have a real unique skill set that allows us to facilitate, to support that communication and hopefully support expression of, you know, those psychosocial kind of needs and concerns. And I also think that we're really positioned well, to facilitate and support those interactions, as you said, with psychologists, and perhaps, you know, training, collaboration, kind of mutual bidirectional training in terms of giving them the skills to support communication and expression. And certainly vice versa, them kind of sharing their knowledge, those psychosocial and psychological supports as well. So…   Sarah: I think that joint working is a really lovely model and way of thinking about structures, isn't it? I mean, if you haven't got the psychologist to sit next to them, it's much easier. And there were definitely people who spoke about psychologist is in a different team, it's much harder to get a hold of them. And there just work pushes. I mean, not all stroke services in the UK at all have access to a psychologist and some of them are very thinly spread. And speech therapists are very thinly spread as well. So then, yeah, there's logistical difficulties there too.   Jerry: Yeah, absolutely. And we definitely have the same kind of issues in the states as well. In terms of access to those services, just so many means at this point across the entire population, so…   Sarah: Yes, this current situation is particularly extreme as well. Yes.   Jerry: Definitely. Yeah, definitely. Can you talk a little bit about the challenges of making those psychological, psychosocial therapies accessible, when someone has aphasia? Kind of the adaptations and types of communication supports you need to kind of weave in?   Sarah: Yeah, that's a really good question. The psychological therapy is traditionally they're language based on the kind of skills that you will be taught in a counseling training, of open questions and don't always work so well, when someone has aphasia. So, speaking, psychologists have to say, well, you need a little bit more skill, that some of the tools that you have don't work so well. So, I think there's a little bit of thinking there. And, yes, I think it's helpful to talk about my fellowship project. So that's the SOFIA Trial. And that's looking at adapting the solution focused brief therapy, so that it is successful for people with aphasia. With that trial, we had an aphasia advisory groups, and it was a lovely group of people with aphasia to advise us on it, and they were very, they advised us very strongly that we should see if we could make it accessible for people with severe aphasia. And I remember the time being a little anxious about this, but I couldn't really argue them, they had a point and was saying people with severe aphasic probably need psychological support more than anybody else, and so often excluded, even in the face of your trials. So, see what you can do, you're a speech therapist, you've got training in psychological therapies, we'll see what you can do. So, we ran a little pilot with people with very severe aphasia. And it was challenging, it was really challenging. Adapting solution focused brief therapy for people with severe aphasia. So, they had receptive and comprehension difficulties. And at the end of this pilot, we got a big thumbs up, though, they said, "this therapy does work, you shouldn't leave people with severe aphasia." So, we did. So, we did include people with severe disabilities. And in fact, I think it's 43% of our participants at securities union. So, we thought about this a lot, for three years now. I'm very happy to share my thinking with you on how we adapt solution focused brief therapy for people with severe aphasia if you'd like me to keep talking.   Jerry: I would love that. That would be terrific. And before you go on, I just wanted to make a couple of notes. You have a 2016 paper about that trial, excuse me, the pilot of that approach.   Sarah: Yes, I mean, this came as quite a surprise to me as a clinician, all the different stages of intervention. So, we've initially did a very tiny proof of concept study with five people who had mild to moderate aphasia. And I think the aim of that trial was just "does it work at all?" And perhaps a more personal level, "Do I like this therapy approach?" And then the little pilot has talked about the severe things yet that's not been published. That's internal pilot within the SOFIA project. I should really write that up at some point, but that's not been published. So yes, that was current work with people with severe aphasia before we do the trial. So yeah, there's been quite a lot of stages before we went into a feasibility trial. And as something that I'm particularly proud of is that we did include people with severe aphasia. And I can add that one of the things we're looking at is do the other different patterns in results in people with severe aphasia or mild aphasia, and we don't think that there particularly are. We think people with severe aphasia also benefited from the therapy. So we're really pleased. It is a different sort of therapy though I would say. So solution focused brief therapy is as traditionally, really linguistically quite complex. So there's cognitively complex as well, there's a lot of question forms, which are sort of hypothetical, conditional features and the other person's perspective. And if you go on a training course, I think most of the questions will seem like they're not really going to work that well with someone with aphasia. And a lot of the tools seem very based in language and very inaccessible, to be honest. So it was, I think what we did with SOFIA was we stretched back to think what are the core assumptions underpinning this approach? And then can we build up in a way that's more linguistically accessible? So, there was quite a lot of taking out solution focused questions and thinking, how can we make this simpler, and then sort of the other way of building up from assumptions? So that sounds really abstract. So, if I sort of give some examples. So, an assumption might be, a solution focused assumption might be that everybody has strengths and talents and skills, even though they're not yet quite aware of them. There are lots of solution focused tools to help elicit people really start to notice those strengths and skills and talents. And one of the things you might do to start a follow up session is say, you know well what have you been pleased to notice about yourself in the last week, so it starts to help people notice what's going well, what can they be pleased about, and I think what I would quite often do with someone with severe aphasia, as a follow up session I might, is have some way, visual way of representing the time. So, they knew the timeframes or looking at their calendar together. And I'll just say, "What are you proud of?" And we'd write down proud, maybe the gesture, and then we would just list five things they were proud of. And that was conceptually, quite straightforward. And then it was easy in speech therapy skills to facilitate them coming back with them, what they've been proud of. So, and it might take a whole, it was super exciting that, you know, if someone was linguistic, didn't have aphasia, that kind of little bit of conversation might take three minutes, five minutes, but for someone with aphasia, it might take an entire session to think of well what are five things that they've been proud of since I last saw you? And I remember one gentleman, he had very severe aphasia, not very much language at all. And he, he went off and he came back with this little wooden stool that he bought. And he, through gesture, he explained that he used this tool to help with his, and he was gardening with his tomato plants on his tiny little balcony. And it was explained with no language that it was just right, because he stopped getting backache, he didn't have to bend over. And then he explained through gesturing and looking at the stool that it was it was a peaceful story. I mean, it was it was a tiny stool. And he explained that he bought it from the local market. And he explained with his purse that he bartered it down, and it was actually only cost him 10 pounds, which is not very much money. And it was functional, it was light, it was the perfect height to stop getting backaches when he gardened his tomato plants. And it was beautiful. It was a really beautiful item. And if you got anyone else to just come down to the local pawn shop, and bought a little plastic stool, he had the kind of, it was just this lovely story that he did something about him that he'd been able to share with me, this little tiny incident in his life of buying this stool that he'd done over the last week, his gardening. And I think it was giving him that space to expand on these little details of his life that he felt proud of, and it was making a space. So, there wasn't very much language involved in that conversation at all. He didn't, there wasn't very much language in terms of my questions, there wasn't very much language in terms of how he answered them. And it probably took him, I don't know, 15 minutes to explain to me about this stool and what it meant to him. Maybe he didn't have very many chances, the rest of his life to expand on those little details of who he was and why this was important to him. So, sometimes I used to think, gosh, it's quite a watered down version of solution focused brief therapy, I'm doing, but there's some quite sophisticated questions and tools that I'm not able to use. And we would tear it back down to sort of this quite essential things. But somehow, it seemed to be quite empowering to have people feel that someone had noticed them, and that these conversations help people feel that someone had noticed what was special about them. And that helped them perhaps notice for themselves what was special about them. Sorry, that was a quite long winded answer.   Jerry: No, absolutely. I just think that's a fabulous illustration of, you know, the support that speech language therapists can provide in that context to facilitate all of that communication. So, you said this is a guy with very little verbal communication. And yet, that's a really complex story that you were able to elicit and really speaks to why, you know, we're well positioned, so to speak, to provide these kinds of supports as well, I just want to make a couple of notes. Referring back to that 2016 pilot, you have some examples of the language that typical solutions, focused therapy would use, you know, the best analogy I could give was, you know, some of those questions are a paragraph long, so to speak, and you've kind of pared that down to a single, you know, less syntactically complex sentence that allows those types of responses and that certainly all of the communication supports to get there in terms of expression.   Sarah: Yes, so at City University, there's a clinical linguist called Lucy Dipper. I do remember having a lovely session with her. And I said, look, I've got these questions, they don't work at all, and then that was quite nice to tap into kind of a linguist's attitude and she was sort of talking through how we could simplify. So that was, and that's kind of what I like about research, sometimes there's all these different angles. So, there's the kind of interpersonal sort of meeting with participants, but then there's the kind of more intellectual thing of how do we simplify this language when you first meet someone. And you might typically say in the first session, you know, this is really quite posing, I'm with your best friend, what would they say, which would tell you that these sessions have been a useful concept they see and know these questions go on, as you say, for a very long time. And we went through question by question thinking how to make them a bit simpler. So, in that case, the very first session, very sort of an opening out trying to explore what's into someone, what do they want to focus on in the sessions? I might write down, you know, we're having six sessions and write down six, six visits. Say, what, what are you hoping for? And then write down hopes as a gesture. And that's a much simpler way of asking someone than some of the typical solution focused. And then what we did when if that was, that's still a very open question, and quite hard for someone with very severe aphasia to answer so, we then we borrowed, like, highlights from everything we could find. So, we borrowed from talking maps. So, I don't know how much talking maps are used in the US, but this is where you, okay? So, he literally goes like here's a doormat, and you have all these cuts. So, we took the doormat idea, and we borrowed from all the research across the world about what it means to live well with aphasia, we got about 12 constructs, things like family, friends, competence, going out. And we thought we would do a scaling that was the sort of not to 10 at the top. Then we would ask people to place these different constructs on the scaling map so how they felt things were going and mostly people even with very severe aphasia were able to do this relatively okay. And then we were to say, what's important to move up from that? And that was relatively, it was very visual, you know, it was literally taking a card and saying, well, the card that I really want to move is this card. I want this card to move up. And it was a surprise, sometimes you'd expect to be sometimes in terms of a card that was already quite high, that was the thing they wanted. And that was I mean, that was just a real start point for the conversation. And I spent hours creating pictures to support these conversations. And what I actually found was most useful when I went along was just paper and pen, because it's so fluid and flexible. And if you don't know where the conversation is going to go, which you don't really with solution focused brief therapy, so very much following on from what I still recommend what they say. So, you can't really know in advance what the session is going to look like. Paper and pens and objects in the environment and just sort of being creative. So, making sure they have their own paper and pen, so there was a sort of an equality there. I did a lot of drawing and terrible drawing, I did a lot of drawing and sessions, and then making use of whatever they had that they were comfortable using. So especially these days, with smartphones just being amazing, and there was this gentleman who prior to his stroke, he used to go to art galleries, but it was only after a stroke that he learned to paint. And we had some lovely sessions with him putting up various paintings on his phone and showing me. Although there was a lady with severe aphasia, where during the week, she would take photos and things that she wanted to share with me because she was pleased about. So, she would take photos of the various meals she'd cook during the week, and she would show me on her smartphone. So, we kind of, again, that's free speech therapy isn't it, that's what speech therapists do all over the world, you make the most of the skills that the person with aphasia has. And it just goes, I just love it when you get to a stage where you don't actually notice that someone has aphasia anymore, you are just having a conversation, and it just happens to look slightly different from the conversation if they didn't have aphasia. But yeah, and that's a part of solution focusing as well, to make the most of it, to capitalize on people's strengths and what's going on.   Jerry: Absolutely, what a great description. I just want to highlight some of those things that you talked about just a, you know, a toolbox for facilitating or supporting that communication within that solutions focused intervention. So, you talked about the talking maps, just a fabulous tool, and you even mentioned personal modifications in photos that you added, the rating scales, obviously really powerful written choice. You mentioned earlier, writing down those key words, doing some great drawings of your own. Yeah, and then phones are just so powerful, you know, so easy to pull out and just shoot. So that really speaks to how you get at all of that language exchange when you are talking with someone with severe aphasia or with, you know, difficulty expressing.   Sarah: And I guess we kind of, we pulled on the bits of solution focused brief therapy, which are more visual. So, scales are often used in traditional therapy. So, as solution focused therapy would have, say, if someone really established that what they really were hoping to focus on was confidence, then for a scale you might have, ten would be they're feeling really confident, and zero is the opposite. So, solution focused, you would tend to invite someone to place themself on that scale. So, if someone doesn't have aphasia, you tend to do all this scaling work verbally. But I would reach for my scale and I would do all you know, write one to 10 on the scale, and then I would tend to write confidence as a key word at the top of the scale and then they would, after they place themselves on whatever is true. What I quite like about solution focused therapy with rating scales is that use that then as a tool to help elicit what's already working well. So, you would spend quite a lot of time then, "well how come you're a three and not a two?" So what score, and then listing is lovely, because it's quite conceptually easy. And it's a quite a natural way of writing down key words. So, I tend to spend quite a lot of time looking at what's already going well. And then it's very nice and visual to just then have a little area again, one step up to four. So, what does four look like? Again, these are very open questions. And sometimes, you know, you have to really scaffold much more than you would do if someone didn't have aphasia, might try different options with a partner as well. You know you get to know what people want, and what works for them, and some people found these very open questions hard to see how to scaffold it. But I still think that there's something quite nice about these visual scales, what does this look like when you start to scale?   Jerry: Absolutely, really powerful tool. And like you said, those comparisons of, "why weren't you a three? Why are you a four? What would it take to get to a five?" Open ended, but gives them the direction to say what they want to say, rather than us constraining that. So just to kind of follow that track of kind of delivering focused brief therapy, and then maybe some of the challenges that you encountered? Can you share a little about that, your experience?   Sarah: Would it help if I talked a little bit about what is solution focused brief therapy?    Jerry: Yeah, why don't we start there? Yeah.    Sarah: It's just one of many psychological therapies. And I have to say, I think my start point for the project was, was probably just, I want to show that it's possible to adapt psychological therapy, and I want to look at the role of speech and language therapists, and I've happened to do it through solution focused brief therapy. I think solution focused brief therapy aligns quite well with my speech therapists’ sort of values of what they want from their work. And it's, in the UK is already quite used by speech therapists. And I think they find it's an approach that they can integrate with other language therapy work, they quite like it. So that was one of my reasons. And also, I had a little bit of training in it before I started my PhD. So, it was sort of on my mind, a therapy approach that I liked. So, to tell you a little bit about it, it originated in America, a family psychological therapies, and it started with Steve De Shazer observing, was one of the originators of the approach, observing family therapy sessions. And he noticed that most of the time these sessions were spent looking at the problem. And just occasionally a bit of therapy time is spent looking at exceptions to the problem. And his observation was that when session time was looking at these exceptions, it seemed to be associated with more progress. And that was kind of the seed of the therapy approach. So, there's a strong part of the therapy approach that says, well, whatever the problem is, there are usually times when the problem is less bad or not even there, and if we look at those times, what's happening then, perhaps that can be the building blocks to help people move forward. So, I would say as an approach, it's less interested in diagnosing problems and looking at problems, and it's more interested in noticing where people want to move towards, where they're wanting to get to. And it's less interested in problem solving and looking at what's going well, what's already going in the right direction that we can capitalize on. And I think, for me, a quite an important part of the approach is this idea that the client is the expert in their own life, not us as therapists, but it's for the client to know what's important to them, what matters to them, where they want to get to. And it's our role to help them work at how they want to move forward. So, that sounds quite straightforward. But actually, it's really quite hard to sort of sit on your hands and not give people advice and not stop to give people advice and tell people what to do. We'll not give people suggestions, but just to, to trust that they will have the resources within them to find their own way forward, so it's our role perhaps to facilitate that happening. And I think there's quite, there's a slight misconception, I think about solution focused brief therapy, that it's a very half glass full approach, and it's not really noticing, not giving space to the problems. And to be fair, sometimes that is how it's applied. And I think I felt really strongly in SOFIA that wasn't what I wanted. From my experience of delivering the approach, I think when someone's had a stroke, and you're a speech therapist, often, sometimes you're the first person ever really had the chance to really talk through what that's like. And I think that type of acknowledgement was always an important part of the approach for me. So, there's a sense of, some people have described those particular solution focused writer who does talks about one particular acknowledgement and one certain possibility, but I've always really liked that as the kind of metaphor for a sense of spending session time really listening to the person and being there with the person and then sort of shifting away when you feel it's right to think about possibility, and helping them to work out how they can live with it. And having belief and hope that it is possible to live with it too. So, there's sort of oscillating between the acknowledgement and possibility and I think that's been, well for me that's an important part of the therapy that we delivered in the trial. This sense of giving people space to talk about what's hard. And I think unless someone's feeling that you're really listening to that, it's quite hard for them, perhaps to want to trust you to make, to talk about how they're going to move forwards. Jerry: Yeah, terrific. Just to highlight some of those key points, that idea that client is the expert in their life and how they live their life. And we really need to inhibit giving our own solutions because they have the capability of coming up with their own. And I just love those two frames, acknowledgement and possibility. So, yeah, terrific. What kind of challenges have you run into in terms of delivering that? Sarah: So, there were three therapists delivering the therapy in the project and I was actually just reading through the interviews quite recently with the other two therapists. So yeah, I had lots of different hats on in this project, which is quite interesting. I think what was positive was that they found a very enjoyable therapy approach, delivering a rewarding and I thought it was feasible for speech therapist to deliver it. I think that where it was more challenging was, I think I found couples work more challenging when I was working with the couples. And I think for me myself, because I have had high quality training in solution focused brief therapy and psychological therapy. And I think for me, I really benefited from that additional training. I think it is you know, we're not couples’ therapists. I think you can feel uneasy going into a session working with a couple where there is a sort of disharmony. So, I think maybe I sort of extra support for therapists in that situation. I think the therapy approach can work quite well, while I think it is challenging. I think the other thing that's challenging is when there's more severe distress. So, in the fellowship project, people could take part whether or not, whatever their skills and developing skills. So, there was a lot of people actually in the project who had a very high developing skills when we started the project, which is quite interesting because the therapy approach is really designed for people with high, you know it was designed helping to make change in other people who didn't really want to make the change happen to everyone which had its own challenges. But the people who were very distressed, I think there was a sense that they needed some real time support to help them to handle that and feel reassured that if someone was really that concerned about their mental health, that they have somebody to turn to. And I think that's really important that we're speech therapists, were not mental health professionals. And if you're working with someone, you think that, yeah, he's got mental health issues that you're concerned about to know that you've got back up somehow and you've got someone that you, it's just not all on your shoulders. So, I think that was a challenge. As I said, this is a challenge that we hadn't anticipated, that there would be people in the project who were really content in themselves, that they found a way to live with their life and they're taking part in the project because they were curious and wanted to contribute to research. And so, they did the therapy with us. And the therapy is designed to help people build change. And these are people who felt a way to live. They didn't really want to be making change. But there was one lady I worked with, a lovely, lovely, lovely lady and by the end of therapy, her first therapy session said, you know what, you seem to be, you know, you found this lovely way of living. Do you want me to come back to do the other five sessions? And she was very keen that I did. And she'd taken part in the project, it was her right to have these sessions. So, she had all six sessions. And then I guess, well, they were very special sessions. We very much sort of more future focus, looking at how you want to be shifting your life going forward wasn't really that much of a thing for her because she didn't. She was very frail and elderly, but she found a way to live with her things in her life. And so, we did a lot of time noticing everything that she was later a very special person. And I remember those were quite profound sessions really, I felt there was a real connection that she wasn't looking to make change. And whether it's quite hard in terms of the project, talking to people in the project who don't want to make change. This clinical trial is all about making change. But I think sometimes there is a value in conversations which don't necessarily lead to change, but there is something about the connection there that's important. Jerry: Absolutely. Just kind of affirming the path that you're on. And like you said yourself, that human connection definitely may not measure the same way, but definitely important. When you were talking about that idea of people that have clinician’s kind of having that back up, it just kind of reminded me of Ian Kneebone's stepped care model and how that is to know, you know, when you're kind of, when you need to hand it off or at least collaborate with someone else for those higher level needs for sure. Can we talk a little bit about the SOFIA trial and kind of where that played in? Sarah: Yes, of course. So, the SOFIA trial was the feasibility randomized control trial and so is underpowered to definitively answer, is this therapy approach effective? So, the questions instead that we're asking from is, is this going to be feasible to scale up into a definitive full scale trial. So, we look at can the approach do this okay? Can we retain people within the project, if we do the assessments right, if we've got the training and support for the clinicians right? Is the therapy approach acceptable? Is it acceptable to deliver this as speech therapists? So, these are the sort of questions. And we recruited 32 people, half of them were randomized into the immediate intervention group. And we had to weight this design so half of them receive the intervention at six months. So, this is a group of 32 people. And in the end, two people withdrew. So, we have 30 people stay to the end of the trial and received therapy. And it was mixed methods. So, we interviewed all 30 of them. So it was, it was very interesting. And it's not so much about you know, have do people with aphasia experience receiving a psychological intervention. So that was a really interesting interview to read and it's quite an exciting stage. We've finished the trial and we were very lucky in the sense that we did our final assessment visits before COVID. And it's a bit poignant reading the interviews because it makes you wonder how people are over the last few months. But yes, so we're at the stage where we've pretty much finished all the analysis now. So, we're just about to start submitting. I don't know if you'd like me to share some of the... Jerry: I was going to say, can we get a little sneak peek maybe before those papers come out? Sarah: Yeah, that would be my pleasure. So, in terms of feasibility outcomes, since it's a feasibility trial, we were really pleased that the primary comparison point, the six months randomization and at that point we collected outcome measures from 30 to 32 people. So, 97 percent, which has really exceeded our expectations. And in terms of people adhering to therapy, so two people withdrew, and so out of 30 people who received the therapy, 29 of them received all six sessions, and one person received five. And to adhere, researchers said they needed to receive at least two, so all good. We recruited on time and on target. And I think there was, we were lucky, and we had a nice buy in from our sights, and I'm so grateful to our sights. And I think they kind of, the speech therapists I they were just really pleased to have a project that they could refer in people with severe aphasia. So, they were very supportive. And, yes, in terms of sort of any outcome measures, primary outcome measures, it seems to work fine. We have minimal missing data. So, thumbs up in terms of the feasibility outcomes, which is so lovely. In terms of the qualitative data, yeah, overwhelmingly the participants liked it. So, I think we can say it was a highly acceptable therapy. There were some kind of things that came through in terms of what they valued about the therapy; they valued having someone notice their achievements and what was their successes, they valued being able to have someone listen to them talk about their hopes and what they were hoping for, for in the future, they valued being able to share their experiences and their distress and have someone listen to them, and they valued connection and companionship. Some of them said one of the best things in it was having fun, having a laugh with a therapist. And that's something I really liked and that's what I really valued. And it came through as this really big thing, their relationship with the therapist, and how that was important when you're going to be a part of therapy for them. In terms of changes, not everyone was wanting to make change. But people talked about you know we have some nice things in terms of feeling better in themselves, in terms of sort of being more able to talk to family and friends, going out a little more. And then we sort of sectored people into four groups in terms of how they respond to therapy. So, they were one group we said was the changed group. So, these are the group of people who the therapy came at a really good time for them. Just constantly it had come at a time when they were in need of some kind of, not a need, but it really benefited them having this therapy approach. It led to sort of meaningful impact for them in their lives. And that was about a third of the group. And then there were two small groups of about five people in each group. There was one group where they called the complementary group, where they were on an upward trajectory, they were making a lot of progress, And the therapy, the research project therapy, was one small part that and I knew that they probably would make an upward projection anyway, but it was a positive thing and it helped them on their way. But we called it complemental. And then there was another little group of about five people that we called discordance. So, they were people who the therapy was misaligned, they liked the therapy and they like their therapist generally, but the therapy was misaligned of what they were looking for. So, they wanted language therapy. They wanted empowerment work. They wanted someone. We weren't at the end of the day psychologists, we were speech therapists, we could have done many therapies with them and that's what they wanted. We did solution focused brief therapy. So, there was a sort of mismatch and they were a bit you know, they wanted exercise. And it's frustrating to kind of think in clinical services, you could have given them that and done solution focused brief therapy around the edges perhaps, would have perhaps part of it for some of them is coming to terms with what they could and couldn't do with the aphasia and that. And then there was another group. It was about a third of the group who we called the connected group, and they weren't looking to make changes from the therapy. They weren't coming into the project trying to, with the idea, and our whole concept of change to come from us as researchers really. They came out of curiosity of contribution and what they really valued was this connection with the therapist, and we called them the connected group. They really liked therapy, the highly valued it, but it was about the connection of the therapist rather than wanting to shift or make changes. And to be fair, I think we found the ending of therapy the hardest. And it made me feel that there's the duty of some kind of ongoing support, which wasn't part of the trial protocol. But I think for them it was, yeah, if I had to run this trial again and if we had people in that sort of connected group, I would think, what kind of, is this important that a part of this is looking at? So that's qualitative. And in terms of the clinical outcomes, as my statistician keeps telling me, he is very much on feasibility trial and the power, but the primary outcome measure, the primary comparison point, which is six months post randomization, it seems to be going in the right direction. But, as my statistician keeps telling me it is the small groups and we can't ever extrapolate from the statistics, but it does seem to be promising. Jerry: Well, that sounds great. I was going to ask you a little bit about the implications of these findings to everyday practice. I think you kind of touched on that. Any kind of takeaways or thoughts on that piece? Sarah: Like I said, it is really encouraging that the speech therapists on the trial found it a positive therapy to deliver. So, it does suggest that speech therapists, who have an interest in this area, if they get training in a kind of brief psychological therapy, it is a possibility. And I would say that sort of the therapists in this trial did have monthly clinical supervision as well as quite a lot of initial training, and they had real time support when they needed it too. So, they had that sense that they felt quite nurtured, I think, within the project. And that was important. I would say the theme of feeling connected just speaks to value that the participants placed in being able to share how they were experiences to suggest that that kind of active listening and being there with someone and sort of listening to how someone is, that's of real value. And if a speech therapist has done that in a session, they should probably come away from that session feeling really proud that they have done something important. And I suppose my other thing is I'm a believer in this joint work between mental health professionals and speech language therapists. And I think going forwards, I know I've personally really valued from it, having mental health professionals in my supervisory team of EBSCO, I urge them for advice and having a kind of clinical support as well. And when you're feeling someone is very, very distressed in recognizing that as a speech therapist, that's fine. And that much of our role is working with mental health professionals. Jerry: That's terrific. I'm looking forward to reading those papers when they come out. Sarah: Thank you. Jerry: I'm on the edge of my seat for sure, it is really important work. In the meantime, is it okay if we share, you have a severe trial resource page, is it okay if we share that link with our listeners? Sarah: Absolutely. Yeah, thank you. Jerry: Excellent. Well, I could continue this conversation all day long, so probably better wind it up. I'm wondering, I just want to give a nod to this as a little bonus. Would you be able to share kind of a nutshell little version of your work on befriending in the SUPERB trial? Sarah: Yes, of course. So, the SUPERB trial has also just come to an end and they're also just writing up papers and yeah. So, that's where people with aphasia, where Mastrov befriended people who have recently come out of hospital with aphasia and the feasibility outcomes, again very, very good and strong in terms of the clinical outcomes. Really encouraging again, the statistician saying we can't over play these. But it is looking very encouraging in terms of the primary outcome measure, which is marriage, and preventing people becoming depressed. So, within SUPERB it was only people who scored as not depressed who were eligible to take part. And in terms of follow up, a 10 month follow up, it does seem that there's a difference between groups in terms of how many people results, in terms of the clinical outcomes and in terms of the qualitative side which is the side I've been most involved in. Encouraging. Yeah, there seems to be something special about an intervention delivered by people with aphasia. And at the end of the day, they can offer something that me as a health professional I can't offer. And yeah, a unique understanding and ability to empathize from having lived with the aphasia, some sort of sense of role modeling as well. This is, it's possible to live with this particular guilt, with the part of the data of experience of the defenders. And I would say that I found it a very challenging intervention to deliver, all of the logistics of organizing appointments and organizing the travel, and it can be quite challenging in terms of if the friend, the person receiving the befriending is upset or changes their mind about wanting intervention. I think that's quite hard, but they found it a very rewarding intervention to deliver and I found it very satisfying that something that was really painful in their life, but being able to use to help other people. And I think that was quite powerful. And I think they felt very pleased to be involved with the trial. And I think what they would highlight is that they were very it was very satisfying experience for them. And they thought it was making a difference, that the supervision and training was really important. And I think the real time support, as well as if they were feeling a bit stuck, that they knew they had someone and they got peer support so they supervision in the group, and I think that was really valuable. I sat in with the person doing the supervision, and I think she was wonderful. So, I think it was a lovely intervention. Jerry: Wow, that's terrific. Again, waiting for that one, too. Well, this has been a fabulous conversation. So, on behalf of Aphasia Access, we thank you for listening to this episode of the Aphasia Access Conversations Podcast. For more information on Aphasia Access and to access our growing library of materials, go to www.aphasiaaccess.org. If you have an idea for a future podcast series or topic, email us at info@aphasiaaccess.org. Thanks again for your ongoing support of Aphasia Access.     Resources:  SOFIA trial resource page: https://city.figshare.com/collections/SOlution_Focused_brief_therapy_In_post-stroke_Aphasia_SOFIA_feasibility_trial/4491122    On behalf of Aphasia Access, we thank you for listening to this episode of the Aphasia Access Conversations Podcast. For more information on Aphasia Access and to access our growing library of materials go to www.aphasiaaccess.org If you have an idea for a future podcast series or topic email us at info@aphasiaaccess.org Thanks again for your ongoing support of Aphasia Access.

》》》》》》一键领取入口《《《《《《更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Peter: So thinking about your future, would you have your kids home-schooled, would you home-school themselves or do you think that it's better for them to go to a normal school, what would you do?Sarah: I used to say that I didn't know. But then I got my undergrad degree and elementary education and I had a chance to teach in public school. And that's when I decided, yes, absolutely, I would home-school my own children.Peter: What was the main reason coming to that decision?Sarah: The main reason was the wasted time that I saw. And also there were so many children in one classroom. It was really hard to get them all to focus and pay attention at the same time, it's nearly impossible. So if I could provide my child with one-on-one attention, I feel like they would learn more, there'd be less wasted time.Peter: Right. So home-schooling helps with using time productively I guess?Sarah: I would say so, yes.Peter: Right.Sarah: And now that I have the degree as well and elementary education I feel like I'm equipped to be able to do it if I needed to.Peter: Right. Do you think there are any disadvantages to home-schooling?Sarah: Probably the number one disadvantage that most people see with home-schooling is the social aspect. And this can be a big deal. It can be very hard, especially with sports, if your child wants to play on a sports team often it's hard to get them in on a team at a regular school. Sometimes there's community groups, but definitely the social aspect is the hardest need to meet with home-schooling.Peter: For home-schooling, what kind of exams or tests are there to make sure that children pass the grade that they're in?Sarah: I'm not sure what it's like in all countries, but I know in the US there's ... you take the end-of-year state testing that everyone does, so it's mailed to your house and your parents give you the test and the results are sent back to you.Peter: Okay. So it's all standardized and everybody goes through the same test?Sarah: Yes.Peter: Right.Sarah: And then when it comes time to take the SAT or the end of high school test then you can actually go and take them at a public school with everyone else, they'll allow you to do that.Peter: Okay. When you arrived in college did you notice any differences between the education you had and like the education other kids had not having gone through home-schooling?Sarah: The main difference I saw the social aspect. There are many things sort of culturally almost that I didn't know, that I was sheltered from, just things and sayings and popular things that happen in school that I had no clue about. It's almost a completely different culture than what I was raised in. So that was very different. And also I saw a difference then, it was really hard for me to learn with someone lecturing because I was so used to learning everything out of a book, reading it for myself, and so I'd have to listen and take notes, was a big struggle for me.Peter: Really?Sarah: Yes.Peter: But it sounds like you ended up being quite a self-driven and self-disciplined learner if you'd gone through the textbooks yourself.Sarah: Yes; I think you really can't help but be if you are home-schooled, so yeah.Peter: Right. Thank you very much, it was really interesting.Sarah: Absolutely.

》》》》》》一键领取入口《《《《《《更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Peter: So thinking about your future, would you have your kids home-schooled, would you home-school themselves or do you think that it's better for them to go to a normal school, what would you do?Sarah: I used to say that I didn't know. But then I got my undergrad degree and elementary education and I had a chance to teach in public school. And that's when I decided, yes, absolutely, I would home-school my own children.Peter: What was the main reason coming to that decision?Sarah: The main reason was the wasted time that I saw. And also there were so many children in one classroom. It was really hard to get them all to focus and pay attention at the same time, it's nearly impossible. So if I could provide my child with one-on-one attention, I feel like they would learn more, there'd be less wasted time.Peter: Right. So home-schooling helps with using time productively I guess?Sarah: I would say so, yes.Peter: Right.Sarah: And now that I have the degree as well and elementary education I feel like I'm equipped to be able to do it if I needed to.Peter: Right. Do you think there are any disadvantages to home-schooling?Sarah: Probably the number one disadvantage that most people see with home-schooling is the social aspect. And this can be a big deal. It can be very hard, especially with sports, if your child wants to play on a sports team often it's hard to get them in on a team at a regular school. Sometimes there's community groups, but definitely the social aspect is the hardest need to meet with home-schooling.Peter: For home-schooling, what kind of exams or tests are there to make sure that children pass the grade that they're in?Sarah: I'm not sure what it's like in all countries, but I know in the US there's ... you take the end-of-year state testing that everyone does, so it's mailed to your house and your parents give you the test and the results are sent back to you.Peter: Okay. So it's all standardized and everybody goes through the same test?Sarah: Yes.Peter: Right.Sarah: And then when it comes time to take the SAT or the end of high school test then you can actually go and take them at a public school with everyone else, they'll allow you to do that.Peter: Okay. When you arrived in college did you notice any differences between the education you had and like the education other kids had not having gone through home-schooling?Sarah: The main difference I saw the social aspect. There are many things sort of culturally almost that I didn't know, that I was sheltered from, just things and sayings and popular things that happen in school that I had no clue about. It's almost a completely different culture than what I was raised in. So that was very different. And also I saw a difference then, it was really hard for me to learn with someone lecturing because I was so used to learning everything out of a book, reading it for myself, and so I'd have to listen and take notes, was a big struggle for me.Peter: Really?Sarah: Yes.Peter: But it sounds like you ended up being quite a self-driven and self-disciplined learner if you'd gone through the textbooks yourself.Sarah: Yes; I think you really can't help but be if you are home-schooled, so yeah.Peter: Right. Thank you very much, it was really interesting.Sarah: Absolutely.

Peter: So Sarah, what's so unique about people in the south? You often hear about that.Sarah: Yes. We're often known for being very laidback and easygoing. And we're also known for a certain accent which usually has a lot to do with the vowels in our speech as well as talking slower. We seem to be not as fast-paced as society in the north and just more friendly and laidback.Peter: Okay. Why do you think that is? I'm just curious about it now that you say it.Sarah: I really have no idea, it just seems to be the way it is. So it's kind of a slower lifestyle, it's not very urban, there's not so much traffic or things going on, it's more rural, very family-oriented. You spend a lot of time with your family and food is also very important. And those are the things that we value the most in life, is probably family and food and time, and so we don't rush through things.Peter: Sounds like a really easy lifestyle in many ways.Sarah: Yeah.Peter: Comfortable living there. So you spoke about the lifestyle - some of the lifestyles that you can see in the south. What kind of things, what social activities do people get involved in? Why is family life so important?Sarah: Well, something that's also very important in the south is Christianity. So there's a lot of people who are very involved in their churches. And churches usually have a lot of social gatherings, so besides going to church on Sunday and Bible study on Wednesday night, there's usually picnics and get togethers and fundraisers and all sorts of things, so very involved with not only our family but our communities as well as church communities.Peter: I've heard the term Bible belt being used before, would South Carolina and North Carolina be part of the Bible belt in America?Sarah: Yes, absolutely. Most southern states are a part of this, and that's how it got its name.Peter: Aside from those social family events and activities, what other things do people like doing? If the weather's really mild, do they get out and do a lot of outdoor activities?Sarah: Absolutely, people love to fish, people love to hunt, so a lot of outdoor activities like that, and depending on where you live, if you live in the mountains, of course, a lot of hiking. And if you live on the coast then a lot of spending time on the beach, laying in the sun, drinking beer, that's what a lot of people do.Peter: So you mentioned that you traveled a lot across America, do you notice whether people in other parts of the country are very different to people from the south?Sarah: Oh, definitely.Peter: In what ways?Sarah: People in the north are very time-oriented, they seem to be very scheduled, and very planned out because they have very, maybe strict jobs with times and very little free time because they work a lot and lots of ... if they live in a big city then lots of traffic and lots of ... I don't know, I think of schedules and meetings and time when I think of the north.

Peter: So Sarah, what's so unique about people in the south? You often hear about that.Sarah: Yes. We're often known for being very laidback and easygoing. And we're also known for a certain accent which usually has a lot to do with the vowels in our speech as well as talking slower. We seem to be not as fast-paced as society in the north and just more friendly and laidback.Peter: Okay. Why do you think that is? I'm just curious about it now that you say it.Sarah: I really have no idea, it just seems to be the way it is. So it's kind of a slower lifestyle, it's not very urban, there's not so much traffic or things going on, it's more rural, very family-oriented. You spend a lot of time with your family and food is also very important. And those are the things that we value the most in life, is probably family and food and time, and so we don't rush through things.Peter: Sounds like a really easy lifestyle in many ways.Sarah: Yeah.Peter: Comfortable living there. So you spoke about the lifestyle - some of the lifestyles that you can see in the south. What kind of things, what social activities do people get involved in? Why is family life so important?Sarah: Well, something that's also very important in the south is Christianity. So there's a lot of people who are very involved in their churches. And churches usually have a lot of social gatherings, so besides going to church on Sunday and Bible study on Wednesday night, there's usually picnics and get togethers and fundraisers and all sorts of things, so very involved with not only our family but our communities as well as church communities.Peter: I've heard the term Bible belt being used before, would South Carolina and North Carolina be part of the Bible belt in America?Sarah: Yes, absolutely. Most southern states are a part of this, and that's how it got its name.Peter: Aside from those social family events and activities, what other things do people like doing? If the weather's really mild, do they get out and do a lot of outdoor activities?Sarah: Absolutely, people love to fish, people love to hunt, so a lot of outdoor activities like that, and depending on where you live, if you live in the mountains, of course, a lot of hiking. And if you live on the coast then a lot of spending time on the beach, laying in the sun, drinking beer, that's what a lot of people do.Peter: So you mentioned that you traveled a lot across America, do you notice whether people in other parts of the country are very different to people from the south?Sarah: Oh, definitely.Peter: In what ways?Sarah: People in the north are very time-oriented, they seem to be very scheduled, and very planned out because they have very, maybe strict jobs with times and very little free time because they work a lot and lots of ... if they live in a big city then lots of traffic and lots of ... I don't know, I think of schedules and meetings and time when I think of the north.

Kathy: Welcome to Kathy Santo’s Dog Sense, I'm your host Kathy Santo and I'm here to teach you everything I've learned in my over three decades of training dogs, their families, competing in dog sports, writing about dogs, and being a guest on radio and TV shows. And I am with one of my trainers, Sarah out in Colorado and we are doing an episode on traveling, because I don't know about you Sarah, but I've traveled a ton with my dogs.  Sarah: Yeah. So specifically, we'll be talking about if you were to go on a long road trip with your dog. We'll touch on a little bit of if you are traveling on an airplane with your dog, but mainly we'll go over our tried and true tips. I mean I've traveled halfway across the country with my three dogs multiple times, and I'm sure you've done a ton of traveling with your dogs as well. Kathy: I have. And back in the day when I was competing a lot, there were a lot of airline flights as well. So yeah, a lot to say about that. And I think that this topic came up because we hear it really two times of the year. One is over the holidays. Everybody wants to travel with their dog on the holidays, but another popular time is during the summer. You guys get that vacation. And the first thing I always say to people is, “How much traveling has your dog done?”  Sarah: Exactly! Kathy: So you get the dog who maybe comes to class once a week or he goes to the vet once a year and now they want to go on a road trip. And I'm like, “No, you have to teach your dog to get used to traveling!” Because it's a lot. And I'm like, “Are there some dogs that'll roll with it?” Yeah, absolutely. But it's an experience they have to get used to.” People have dogs who are fearful of cars, they get that. But people who haven't had that experience don't understand that a dog who loves a trip down the block or to the dog school may not be comfortable with something that is that long in one space. So you’ve got to get them used to it. Sarah: Yeah, and they don't think about all of the safety, kind of, like, the preparations that you need to take. Not only just safety, but also, if it's a really long road trip, all the prep that goes into, like, their food, the water, making sure you have proper identification, emergency vet contact information. We're going to go over all of that. But there is so much prep for safety as well when traveling with your dog that's really, really important. People just think they can throw their dog in the car and go. And some dogs might be okay with that, but most of them need a little bit more prep than that. Kathy: Yeah. And if you think you’re going to do that and you do, you find out pretty quickly that you made a big error in judgment. Alright! So the first thing I think we would both agree on is that if you're going to take a road trip of any great length, and for me, I think anything over two hours is going to be something that a lot of dogs need to get used to. So I'm not saying go on two hour trips, but I am saying go beyond the comfort zone. If your dog only goes to pick up your kids at school, you know, you got to get some longer trips going. So that would be my first thing. Prepare your dog with the length of travel and, also, prepare them for the different environments. You know, if you're going to a hotel and they have slippery floors, or your dog's going to be in an elevator. Like these are the things that you need to get the dog comfortable with before you decide to take them out and about. Sarah: And also just being in the car, too. So of course, we're going to touch on this as well, but safety, whether they're in a crate or in a crash proof harness. Also, so I don’t know if you've noticed this, but my dogs, when they're in their crates in the car, they go into kind of like a trance. Like, they just go to sleep. Even if in the rare case they are in the backseat of the car and not in their crates, they lay right down and they go right to sleep because that's kind of what I've taught them to do in the car. So, if you have a dog who is not used these longer road trips, a lot of times what you'll see is a lot of heavy panting, there'll be a lot of drooling. Like, they'll have those anxiety responses to it because they're not used to it. Kathy: When I was a kid, we had a great Pyrenees, Teddy, and we used to go down the shore, and this is before seat belts. Sort of before any car safety. She's in the back of the station wagon, panting the entire two and a half hours down the shore, panting and drooling. And did I mention it was the summer? And it was, she's a great Pyrenees and the hair and her breath, windows were down, she gets carsick, she vomited at least three times before we were out of our town. Sarah: Having the supplies to clean up the vomit too. Because sometimes, like what my senior dog Jakey does, when we're on a winding roads, is he will vomit right where the seat belt attachment is and he'll vomit just right in that hole. So it goes to the bottom of the car and we got to pull to the side of the road, rip the car seats out to get all that vomit out. Lots of fun. Better to be prepared for those kinds of things than be surprised by them. Kathy: Yeah, and I was always the vomit cleaner upper.  It'd be like, “You wanted the dog. It's your dog.” Sarah: Yeah. So I'm always the one cleaning up the vomit or the diarrhea. Kathy: Our dogs like their crates, because at home they like their crates. It's a safe spot. It's a cozy spot. And they're used to traveling in a crate in the car.  And some dogs like their crates at home, but you put in the car they're like, “What the hell?” So there's that acclimation period where you start putting a crate in the car and feed them and going for trips. It's like, I'm a crate proponent, and if you don’t do a crate, you do a seat belt. But I feel like, you have to keep your dog safe and you safe in the event of a crash so that they don't catapult into you or your passengers. Sarah: Yeah, and the way that you can prep for that is, you know you have the road trip coming up even, and I understand, you know, it's a pain in the butt to have the crates in the car all the time and in the trunk or in the backseat, whatever it is. But the week before, maybe two weeks before, put the crate in the car and every time you need to go somewhere with your dog, whether it's class at the school, the vet, the whatever, you're going out for a hike. For that week or two beforehand, practice being in the crate when traveling so that the crate doesn't have to be in there all the time. I understand it can be a pain, but at least set your dog up for success and have him practice it a week or two before you need to go on that long road trip. Kathy: Especially if your dog is used to getting in a car and going to the vet or someplace they don’t like to go. So do some road trips where it winds up being a field, or going for a swim in the lake, or just getting out and having steak or a hamburger. Like, go to the drive-through, because I want the dog to say, “There is a very good chance that this is going to end in something awesome!” Versus what they think now, which is, “This is going to end something terrible.” Also, when I’m using a crate, I cover it with a sheet. Obviously there's airflow and it's not summer and there's still getting AC. But I just like to take away their sight of things because I had a border collie he made himself carsick because he'd watch the cars go by and he’d whip his head around, and he’d be, like, “Waah!” All right, so there's so many things to talk about. Let's talk about what's in your wallet. Remember that commercial, “What's in your wallet?” What's in my wallet is a recent photo of my dog, a copy of his health certificate. I don't get them in sooner than 10 days, so I have that. I also have the emergency 24/7 vet that's going to be in the area that I'm visiting. Sarah: Yep. Super important. Kathy: Prep that ahead. And I, well it's not in my wallet. It's in the glove box in an envelope or it's zip tied to the crate in a clear plastic, sheet. You know those binder sheets for kids at school? And that's the emergency contact info. And that is something that everybody should get in the lesson sheet library. Sarah: Yup. We have it in there. If you guys can't find it, let us know. We'll send you it. But that has all that information on both the front on my crates. It has a dog's name, four different emergency contact people, any medications, any behavioral issues that if a first responder needs to know if your dog is really fearful, you know, if they should be left in the crate if possible. And it also goes into saying, “Please don't bring my dog to a shelter or a pound, please bring them to the nearest boarding facility. I will pay all fees...whatever,” has their normal vet's information. So that, if there is an injury, they can call your vet and get all the information they need. I think that’s all. Kathy: And about a zillion people that he can call. Sarah: Yeah! There's like four or five, I think there's four different spots for contact people on there. I would make sure that you have people in your home area and then people where you're going as well, depending on where you are in the road trip, where you might need help for your dog. Kathy: And I do crates too. I mean, I do seat belts as well, so it's on the front of the crate. If your dog is gonna seat belt, it goes in the glove box, it goes in there and it's in an envelope marked Dog Emergency Info, because first responders will look in your purse and your wallet and your glove box for information on you. I also crate my dogs with their leash on. They’re in a crate with a leash on, they're in the seat belt with leash on,  because, again, in the event of an emergency, I know that the first responders are not going to be able to find the leash and put it on my dog’s collar. I want the dog ready to go and get out of there as fast as possible. This all came really clear to me when I was down in Florida. I would say it was 1990 I had a student and she had two cattle dogs. They were amazing, and her favorite was Wanda. And Wanda sat in the front seat with her and then her other dog, it was a puppy, the naughty puppy, he was in a crate. And she was in a very bad car accident. So bad, as a matter of fact, that they had to airlift her to a trauma center, but they couldn't, because her dog was guarding her. And the dog that was in the front seat, not in a seat belt, not in a crate. And so what they had to do was they had to noose the dog. They had to wait for animal control, it was about a half an hour, it’s on I95, it's crazy traffic, and they can't help her because this dog is trying to get to them. So they have to wait for animal control to noose the dog and take the dog out, and then get her. Sarah: Not only to delay her getting medical care. But think of how terrifying that experience was for the dog who was stuck in the front seat. All these strangers in, like, fire suits are trying to like touch her owner. The dog was guarding the owner. I mean that could have been resolved with the crate. The puppy in the crate in the back was fine. If that dog had been a crate, yeah, it would've still been really scary experience, but it would not have been THAT traumatizing. Kathy: Yeah. It was terrible. And having gone to a lot of dog shows, because when I competed, it was in obedience, and I've seen the rollovers, I've seen that crap. I mean, basically you're in the car, there's some degree of risk. I wear a seat belt, my kids wear a seat belt and so my dog is going to wear something to keep them safe as well. And I'm just, I'm really strong about it. And I have a lot of students who are in law enforcement and they always say, “I wish every single person who traveled with a dog understood this and followed this protocol because it would make our jobs so much easier.” Because, honestly, if the police officer or the EMT wants to go in the car and your dog is growling, like, they're going to have to choose themselves. Because what are they going to do? Get bitten? Sarah: Yup. And with that goes the ID tags and if your dog is micro-chipped, making sure that information is up to date before you start traveling. Because a lot of times, you can do, like, the yearly update on the microchips each year. But call them and double check, because if for some reason the dog's collar breaks, the leash comes off, whatever, in an accident and they don't have the tags on them, the only way a local vet or shelter is going to be able to ID them is with that microchip. Kathy: Exactly. And make sure the collar says “Reward” and has the cell number on it. And I was talking about that in another podcast. I don't want somebody to know my dog's name, because my dogs are really well trained, and they're super cool. I think. Yeah, like, if somebody was like, “Hey, I think I want a dog and look, this is so convenient!”  Sarah: No one would want my dogs. Kathy: Well then, you just put their real names Sarah: I’ll put their real names. Kathy: One number off. Sarah: Sure. If you can pick up the leash, you can have them. Good luck! Kathy: It's the Jack challenge. I love that! Hashtag (#jackchallenge)! So we put “Reward” because I feel like it motivates people to call you and give the dog back. And, again, a microchip, if you have one in...the guy who gets your dog doesn't have a microchip wand, so I want somebody to call me in real time and not wait until a vet office opens the next morning, or on Monday if it's a weekend. And the reason I have a picture in my wallet is because you think you're going to have it on your phone, but if you lost your phone, or the phone is dead, right? You’ve got to have something physical or I'm sure you could get somebody's computer and go on Facebook and get a picture of your dog, but how much time are you losing? And that's I think another show that we should do, Sarah, on how to recover a lost dog. It's a good topic. Write that down as one of the next ones we do. I think that's going to be great. Sarah: Absolutely. All right, so the next one is something that you can maybe talk from experience on if you've ever done this, but, so the bag etiquette. So traveling with your dog, if they are, I know you did a lot of work with, if the dog was in like a small carry on bag, like a traveling bag. What is the etiquette for that? Kathy: My dogs have traveled both ways. The majority of my competition dogs we're flying under the plane. And travel back in the 80s, a little bit different. I mean it wasn't, there was no TSA. It was, like, you could bring a chicken or two or five. Nobody really cared, you could do whatever you want. But there were rules that I followed for myself about my dogs, and so the first thing was I made sure that they didn’t have breakfast on a morning flight. I also chose a flight because I was in Florida that was the coolest part of the day. So, making sure it was a cool part of the day where I arrived. So a lot of times I was going out to the West Coast or there was a national in Vegas, I picked a night flight out of West Palm, so I would get into that area at night. It wasn't so much your destination temperature as where you were going to take them. The dog would be on the tarmac, and you didn't want them to overheat. Plus, there are regulations about how hot or how cool it can be in order to fly dog. On top of the crate I would put a FedEx clear pouch and I put a note in it that said, “My name is Cookie,” and I taped cookies on top. And the reason I did it, because none of my dogs were ever named Cookie, but the word cookie to them was really interesting. And I didn't want to have their name because it would be like, “Rover, Rover, Rover, Rover,” and it might be negative, right? So my dogs got treats, everybody's saying cookie, and that they loved it. I didn't put water in a bowl, it was like water, liquid water. I would freeze these little plastic things that they had in the crates if I had a dog who wouldn't eat it and I pop that in right before they took the dog. I would not board the plane until I saw the crate loaded. And a lot of times I would get into it with the desk agents, or at the gate agents, they'd be like, “You need to get on the plane.” And I'm like, “Not until I see my dog.” And they're like, “Oh, it’s going to leave without you.” I'm like,”Well then you'd be leaving without my dog.” And then I show him a picture of my dog and they're like, “Oh!” Then my next stop, once I got on the plane was a hard left and go to see the captain because again, back then, you could basically try to fly the plane. They were, like, “Yeah, go for it. Sit in the cockpit, take a picture!” It was crazy. And I'd say, “Hey, my dog is on board and here's a picture.” And they would be, like, “Oh, my God! I have a dog, too!” And they’d make sure that the dog was down there and the temperature was right. So your dog is the last thing to get loaded and the first thing to come off. So I’d make sure my seat was an aisle, so I could, you know, whip up some tears and get them to let me out first “That’s my dog! I’m so worried!” So that's how you fly when your dog is going underneath. It's completely stressful and it never gets better. And if you have a dog who's bomb proof, they can go. Oh! Also I would put cotton in their ears because you see the guys up on the tarmac, they have those heads cause it's really loud for your dog. So you pop those in and get them a little bit of relief. I also did a really big blanket, so they can hide their head under it. And my dogs flew like pros. They loved it. They were, they came out with like “Eh, it was a great flight, didn't get any in-service stuff. I'm okay.” Some dogs are not suited for that. So then, if I'm going to fly a dog, like on book tour, I took a dog named Danny with me, and I had a Sherpa bag for him, and that is a brand name, and I really like that brand, very sturdy. And a week before a book tour, which meant that I had to fly to a different city for two weeks and I took him, he was seven months old. It was crazy. He was just perfect, but I was crazy for taking someone’s dog.  Sarah: Barely potty trained! Kathy: And then I just had him at his house with his owners. He would jump in and out of that bag and great things would happen. So he's acclimated to it. I had them carry him around the house and then he gets used to it. Being carried in it. Sarah: That sensation of being carried in it, yeah. Kathy: If they just go in a stationary, that's one thing. But when it's over your shoulder and they're jostling around, that's a whole different thing. So you've got to make sure that you get them to that as well.  Sarah: Yep. Kathy: Alright. So that is what you have for ID. That is how you get them in a Sherpa bag. Let’s talk about barking. Because I’ve been on a flight where dogs were in bags barking. We're not even going to cover the service dogs.  Sarah: Yeah, let's not go there. They're not on this episode. Kathy: Not on this episode, but we will. If your dog is going to be on a plane and in a bag, and I know it's not a service dog, it's just traveling in the cabin, your responsibility is to make sure your dog is a good traveler. Barking the whole four hour flight ,or six hour flight is not okay! Sarah: It’s awful  Kathy: And if it's barking that long, it's not happy. So do your homework and get better at doing homework and maybe make the decision that your dog doesn't have to travel with you. I'm like, unless you're moving. Maybe they stay home and you have your vacation and then they're much happier that way. So that's how I feel about that. I just got a Gunner Kennel. Sarah: You did?! Oh, we didn't talk about that,  Kathy: I know you’re someone who appreciates that. Sarah: Oh God, it's okay. One day, one day. Right now what I've got is all right. So basically what I have for my two dogs are Ruff Tuff Kennels or Ruff Land Kennels. Another really great brand for if you're looking for a crash proof crate is a Gunner Kennel, like Kathy just mentioned. There's also Impact Cates. There are a bunch of options. Kathy: Vario Cages Sarah: Vario Cages. Yep, that's another one.  Kathy: Orion.  Sarah: Orion's are good. Do your research. Don't just get a plain wire or a plain plastic crate. They'll just crush with your dog in it. So make sure that if you are looking for a crash proof crate, you do your research and you make sure that you find a kennel that can withstand a crash, basically. Kathy: Now let's talk about sticker shock. Yeah. You're probably in your mind saying, “Well, the Midwest Wire crate was like a hundred bucks,” and the plastic Vari kennel, not Verio, Vari Kennel. That two piece looks like a clam and you put together little screws that was like $89, like, “Oh, maybe we can invest in this.” And then you go and you find out that your a medium G1 Gunner Crate is going to be $579. Now, once you pick yourself up off the floor, I want you to be realistic and understand that if you're in a crash and your dog is injured, you are walking in the door to an emergency vet clinic with $1,000 on the table. And it just goes from there. Like, I am telling you, we're not making this shit up. Like, it’s expensive to have a dog with an injury! Plus, forget the finances. This is the beloved pet for you and your family, and your responsibility is to keep it safe. So, no pressure. But yeah, when you get something it should be... like, I see people all the time with wire crates in the back of their car and those, those fabric tent crates, they...don’t even pretend! Sarah: It's not the safest thing. Insider tip! So if you are going to get the Ruff Land Kennels, they're probably the most cost effective version of all the crash proof ones. L.L. Bean puts them on sale for like 20% off every once in a while. So if you scroll about their website, get an email notification for when they go on sale, you can get them for 20% off. Another great place is Facebook marketplace. Or, you know, eBay, Craigslist, you can find used ones as well if you are looking for them. But it is like Kathy said, it is so worth the investment not only because, like, I love my dogs so much and I don't ever want them to get hurt in an accident, but also, like she said, like when you walk into the vet's office, if you did have them in a wire crate or a plastic Vari Kennel that just crushed them inside of it in the accident, your expenses are going to be beyond what it costs to get the crash proof kennel. Kathy: Easily. Sarah: Easily. If you’re smart and have pet insurance. Even with that. Kathy: There is a Facebook group that you should all join. It's called Dog Sport Vehicle Ideas and Setups. Dog Sport Vehicle Ideas and Setups. It's amazing. And they talk about this stuff they talk about how to set it up. They even have, by car model, files where you could see what people did in their cars to put in the crates and still have room for people in the car. Sarah: Yeah. Facebook is a huge resource for that kind of thing. So we've gone over, alright, so you'll say you got the crash proof. Great. Or you've got the same thing with the seat belts. Just do your research, make sure that they're safe. So let’s go into it when we go into car trips now, what to do on the road? Kathy: Yeah, let's go into car trips. Hopefully you've taught your dog to potty on leash. The bane of my existence is people with yards who've never taught their dogs to potty on leash. And then they go on a trip and the dog won’t go to the bathroom and they're at the, you know, the side of the road, pull over and use the bathrooms. And then there's a field for your dog to go and their holding the leash and the dog won't go. And the dog, he's like, “You need to move over there for me to go.” And we talked about this in the puppy potty training podcast, too. Boy, that's hard to say. Where we talk about the first nine months of your puppy's life, most of his potty experiences should be on a leash. So he gets used to going six feet away from you. Sarah: Water intake. Kathy: Yes. Let's talk about what type of water. Like, if I'm traveling, every dog show I went to, I got bottled water, distilled water, because I know that some dogs are sensitive to what water they drink and you don't want to go, especially if you're on holiday. Right? So your going to your aunt’s or your cousin's house, and they're all so happy to see the dog. And then your dog has diarrhea for four days. And it's because of the water change. So I always get distilled water. Sarah: Yeah. It's not something a pet owner would necessarily think of. Oh, you know, the water's making their stomach hurt, not something you necessarily think of. Definitely bring some bottles of water, like you said. Don't rely on, like, using your mother's dog's food for your dog. An abrupt switch in the dog's food like that. You will have stomach or GI issues without it. It's a very rare that a dog can switch food like that quickly like that. So absolutely bring your dogs food with you. So depending on what you feed them, whether it's kibble or raw, kibble, obviously, is an easy way, is an easy thing to bring. If you do bring raw, what I like to do is I bring a specific cooler just for their raw food. A lot of times I'll shove it all into Kongs or any kind of food toy where you can freeze the food in there so that when we are traveling, if we're doing multi-day trips, it gives them something to do in a crate and kind of earn their food and makes them work for it. So having those frozen in just a cooler in the car is a really easy way to keep your dog busy. What other food tips do you have? Kathy: You know, if you wanted to bring enough food for the trip on the first day and you had previously scouted out where you can get this food. Or maybe you have somebody you're going to get the food for you. You could also ship food. So if it's dry, so you can have a bag of it. I feel like the raw thing, it's so mainstream now, or almost mainstream that you could look at the brand that you use online and find out where there's a dealer near the person you're going to be with. I'd also get your vet recommendation on things you should bring in case of that emergency. Like, diarrhea or vomiting or whatever, because there's gotta be a first aid emergency kit with you in the car and you should also move that into when you're at somebody's house. Sarah: Yup. Okay. So let's say if you were staying in a hotel room, what are some things that you had to, I think that you've, you've told me a pretty good story about making sure to check under the beds when you go into hotel rooms. Kathy: Yes. This I learned from my dog show time, because it was every weekend we were at a different sleazy hotel. My favorite one, remember there was a chain called Ramada?  Sarah: Yeah.  Kathy: Is there still a chain called Ramada?  Sarah: Might be. I don’t know. Kathy: Ramada Inn. Anyway, apparently this, this particular one went under and the owner just unplugged a few of the letters of the sign. And so it was the “Rama” Inn.  Sarah: Oh, my God. Kathy: That's what I pulled up to at night. I like the, “Oh, this is gonna be bad.” So one of the things I would do is, before I take my dogs into the room, I would have them in the car with whoever it was traveling with me and I would go up in the room and I had a flashlight because we didn't have cell phones with lights on them...or cell phones at all. And I would get on my hands and knees and I would flashlight the entire room. Not just the ceiling lights but the flashlight. Because you would be surprised how many pieces of medication I would find in hotel rooms. I'd find them at the nightstand next to the bed. I’d find them in the bathroom, under the bed. I'd find rat poisoning. I'd find insect traps. Like, so much crap you cannot believe, because housekeeping, I mean unless you're at the four seasons, is probably not up to the standards of keeping your dog safe.  Sarah: Yep.  Kathy: Also, when I was in the room, if I had to take a shower, my dog would be crated. I'm just not going to risk it. And that goes for somebody's house, too, because, you know, you go to visit your sister and maybe she had a friend over. Maybe they take Xanax or Prozac or whatever the heck they take to get through these kinds of visits. And so they're going to drop stuff, too. Blood pressure medication. I have a friend who's an emergency room nurse and she's hard to talk to because she's seen everything kill something. Like, “Oh, see that paper clip? Somebody choked on that!” I'm like, “Stop talking to me!” But I am that... I'm the equivalent of that in dog world, because I've seen it all. And even though it's a fluke, one is too many. So do your due diligence, whether it's a hotel room, whether it's your family's house, you've got to be alert for this stuff because it happens. And I've seen it happen. I told you we're going to start a show. There's a show called Adam Ruins Everything and he blows up myths. I'm going to make one, Kathy Ruins Everything. Sarah: Everything About Dog Ownership That Could Go Wrong, Kathy's Seen It. Kathy: Yeah. Yeah. Kathy Ruins Trips With Your Dog. Sarah: Here are all of the things that could go wrong when on a trip with your dog. But I mean, I'd rather, I'd rather know from like, you've been in this for 30 years. Like, I'd rather know from someone, all the things that could go wrong so that when I go to travel with my dog, I'm doing everything I can to keep them safe. Yes, there could still be like some crazy unicorn thing that happens, but at least I know that I checked under the bed for that, you know, leftover medication or whatever, and my dog didn't find it and get sick. Kathy: Okay. Wait, how about this? Bring multiple leashes. Sarah: Yeah. What if they chew their leash? Or what if it breaks or you know, there could be 10 million things that could happen. Alight, you and I, we're about to go down a rabbit hole. You and I could go over all the things that could go wrong. You know, you've seen my training bag. I have extras of everything. Kathy: Yeah. I've seen people take belts off their body and put it through a dog’s collar. I saw a guy with a shoelace! Sarah: Yeah. We're not even, yeah. We're not even going over like how you should be training your dog while traveling with them. We're just going over basic, basic, like, safety stuff just to make sure you and your dog make it through the trip successfully. Kathy: Everything to keep your dog safe. We have so many topics out. We're just going to sit there one day and do a 12 hour recording session. Sarah: Yeah. I'm coming up again first week of December. So maybe we'll bang out like six or seven of them. Kathy: Yeah. And it’ll be great because it'll be in the same room. Yeah. And then our audio, will only be one file.  Sarah: Yeah, exactly. Kathy: You get ideas, I get ideas from this and you're writing them down, I know. But we want to hear ideas from people who are listening to, so we want to know if you'd like this format. What your suggestions are, what your topics are, what do you want to hear about? And we'll talk about it. Because, I always like to say my brain, as far as dog stuff, it's like this giant library and I don't always go down all the aisles, but the books are still there. And if you remind me, I'll remember and I'll go down there and all this stuff will pop up more than you thought was possible.  Sarah: Exactly.  Kathy: Alright, so we're good? Sarah: Yeah.  Kathy: As always, if you like what you hear, jump over to whatever subscription service you downloaded from and like, rate, subscribe, tell a friend, and share this episode somewhere to help spread the word so we can continue to create an awesome community of dog lovers and learners. Happy training, everyone!

Transcript Kathy: Welcome to Kathy Santo’s Dog Sense. I'm your host Kathy Santo, and I'm here to teach you everything I've learned in my over three decades of training dogs, their families, competing in dog sports, writing about dogs and being a guest on radio and TV shows. And I'm here with one of my trainers staff in Colorado. And wait, did you guys get snow?  Sarah: Oh my God, we got like two feet of snow right now. It's awesome. Kathy: Oh my gosh, I'm glad you said “Aw”, I was thinking “ful”, she said awesome. I'm like, that's why she should be in Colorado and I should be here in Jersey where it was like 52 today. Sarah: I know you guys have some nice weather. I got some of the pictures from the teams today. It looked really nice there. Kathy: Yeah, it's, it's really great. And the dogs are loving it because if it feels like spring and, you know how we have a few dogs who definitely don't like the cold weather, so we're planning some extra indoor activities at daycare for them. Fun, warm activity. What else did we do today? Oh, we did our last day of Thanksgiving photo shoots. Sarah: Yeah, those have been coming out amazing. Kathy: Aren’t they great? Wait ‘til see the holiday winter one. Oh my gosh. I'll send you pictures. Sarah: I can't wait for that.  Kathy: It's a big surprise. All right. So anyway, today we are tasked with talking about potty training. Sarah: Not only is potty training but realistic expectations for potty training. So of course, like, we go over what the kind of general process is, but real life training your puppy potty training is a little bit different. Kathy: It is. And I think I really feel like people have unrealistic expectations. My personal feeling is that it takes until the puppy is six months old to be, like, done with it. Now that said, I've had puppies much younger, be perfect. As I a matter of fact, I've never had a puppy take that long. But I'm a trainer, you know, and that's our, it's my jam. Like, I'm watching the, I know what to do. So, but I think a realistic expectation for someone who's not a trainer would be by six months you are done, and there's a lot of things that you could do to make that work easier and there is a lot of things that you could do to make it take much, much longer.. Sarah: Exactly. Kathy: All right, so let's start back at the breeder. All right. So my breeder, one of my breeders, she has a litter of golden puppies and, I think, they are now seven, eight days old and she's, maybe there are two weeks old...Anyway, I think they're two weeks old, and she's introducing the concept of potty-ing in a certain area right now. So they had wee pads down and they're learning to look for that to go. And then from there there'll be moved to, in a couple of weeks, they’ll be moved to a different surface and then learn to go there. And that's one thing she really values is sending a puppy home from the litter box who already has the idea started.  Sarah: That is incredible. I didn't realize that they were doing it that young.  Kathy: Yeah, it's amazing. And that's where I got Indy from and he, I didn't have to do any housebreaking he gave into my life an 8 week old puppy, he's like, “Hey, I go outside, this is the door?” I'm like, “Oh yeah, sure dude, like, let's go outside.” When I also did was I took the same materials she used to housebreak them and I got a bag of it. So I had an area in my yard and that's where he went. So that’s, you know, your best shot is you're having a breeder who is working on that for you. Now the worst case scenario is you have a dog who's already learned, whether it's a puppy or a shelter dog, rescue dog, learn to go anywhere.  Sarah: Yup.  Kathy: Pet store dogs. It's terrible because they're in a cage, they have to go and that's where they go. And then we want you to housebreak your dog and use crate training, and the dog is like, “Oh cool. The indoor potty”. So that tends to be a challenge too. So those are the best case and the worst case scenario, but we can get it done no matter what's going on. Let me tell you an interesting story before we get into what you would do for it, a more typical dog. So I had a client come to me and the dog was peeing and pooping in the crate, it was complete reverse housebreaking they take it out, they'd monitor it, it wouldn't go. The minute that dog went into crate, and they did all the things correctly. They tried a plastic crate, they tried a wire crate, they tried a smaller crate, like, they did everything right, and this dog, this dog could be against a wall in a crate and go to the bathroom. So we use the hay trick. Now I learned about the hay trick back in the eighties, I didn't invent it. I can't remember who did. We'll give credit when I remember. Do you remember who it was I told you about the other day? No? Anyway, so basically I got some straw, it was around Halloween so it was great. Broke down a hay bale, put it in the crate up to like hip level of this dog and I put him in there. And because the hay was around him, sort of like hugging him like a nest, he stopped going to the bathroom in the crate. And I made it a bigger space so I get more hay in it and the dog didn't go. So it's hard to get people to get on board with that because, obviously, when you take the puppy out, hay is going to come out the front. But I prepped it. I put down like a big trash bag and a sheet and then I put the crate over that, and then after four or five, six days of perfect, no potty-ing in the crate, then I started taking the hay out by the handfuls. Morning I take some out, at night I take some out, until we were just down to a crate with a few pieces of hay in the bottom and it was done. That was it.  Sarah: That's incredible.  Kathy: You can also use it for anxiety, for dogs who freak out in the crate.  Sarah: Yeah. Kathy: Alright! So now you have a good example and a bad example and what to do in an extreme example. Let's start more with your typical puppy.  Sarah: Yep.  Kathy: So I believe in crate training and I know you do too. So when I'm not home, when I'm sleeping, when I can have my eye on my puppy, it is in a crate.  Sarah: Yep.  Kathy: It's appropriately sized. I am monitoring to make sure that I have met all my puppy's needs. Like he is potty before I put him in, and  know how long I can keep them in. Sarah: Do you want to touch on the size of the crate really quick? Kathy: Yes. So I would like something that the dog can stand up and turn it around in comfortably, but I don't want them to be able to use one end as the bathroom and the other end as the TV room.  Sarah: Got it. Kathy: That'd be just one area. And again, I'm counting on the fact that your dog is uncomfortable being next to his waste. Some puppies come from what we call a dirty litter. And the mom wasn't cleaning them because you know, the mom has to clean them for the first two weeks. She licks them to stimulate them to go to the bathroom. They don't have the reflexes to do it on their own. And so some moms weren't great at that and when the puppies actually went, she wasn't cleaning up after them either and they would just got used to laying in it. So if you have a puppy like that, it's a little more challenging. And then I would try the hay trick. Of course, making sure your dog doesn't want to eat the hay.  Sarah: Yeah, exactly. Kathy: So it's a nice small area. And I also feed my dogs in their crates. So if they're going to have a meal in a crate, it's going to be there and traditionally dogs won’t defecate or urinate where they eat. So you kind of have that on your side as well. So yeah, it's a nice tight space.  Sarah: And then I think a really important thing too is when you are going into potty training your puppy is just think proactively. So think about how much food he’s getting. Think about what time of day he's getting it, how much water and then you want to take the puppy out before they need to go as well. So that's why the schedule is really important. So what do you do for a puppy potty training schedule? Kathy: So I, you know, my life is the way it is. It's semi erratic.  Sarah: A little busy. Kathy: A little busy. Yeah. And so I'm going all the time and I really value a puppy who's not locked into a routine, like, not having to eat at this time a day and not at me to potty at this time of day, but yet I will tell my students to give some sort of loose routine to their dogs or their puppies for housebreaking. So I kind of look at the day that's ahead of me and I say, “Alright, well I'm up at five and I'm going to let the puppy to potty right away. I'm going to carry it, I’m not going to walk it, and carry it to the potty area, which we’ll talk about later, and then I'll bring the puppy in, a little playing, a little training with food, probably another visit outside and then back in the crate. Now my rule of thumb is, one hour for every month of age plus one as the amount of time my puppy can spend in a crate. I don't take that through month six so that's silly, right? Your six month old puppy probably shouldn't be in there for seven hours. Could be, but it shouldn't be, and that's during the day. At night your dog goes into nocturnal mode so they can sleep a little bit longer without having to go out. But I'm guaranteeing you with a puppy that is really young, like eight to 12 weeks, you're probably still getting up at least once a night. I put my puppies to bed at like 11 that's their last walk. I don't want to stay up till 11 but I do, cause I don't want to really be up at two and if I get up at 11 I'm probably stretching that to like four, but I'm also not tanking my puppy very frequently. I will take their dinner meal, take a little bit of it and put it into lunch and breakfast because those are times where I'm awake and then I'm putting less in the belly at night. I do cut off food and water for young puppies at five. That's pretty much my only, schedule that I always hold to that 5, 5:30 mark, because I feel that's enough time for the dog to get it out of their system and give him and me a very nice night's sleep. Sarah: Yeah, exactly. So, stopping the food and water at about five o'clock and then, so, and then you have about the hours in between. And you said by about six months, they should be pretty well potty trained. Kathy: Yeah, absolutely. One of the things, too, I talked to people about is measure your food. Have you ever asked one of your clients how much they feed their dog and they can't give you an accurate answer. They're like, “You know, like this much.” Sarah: Yeah, like a handful. Kathy: They show you their hand! You’re like, “What is that?” They’re like, “Like, a cup.” And then you say the magic question, “What kind of a cup?” They rarely say measuring cup. They're like, “Oh you know, the cup you get, someone gave me.” Sarah: The scoop. Kathy: Oh the scoop. The scoop is deadly. Cause that's like, yeah. So you have to measure your food. You have to know what you're putting into that dog so you know what to expect to come out of the dog. And if you're training, hopefully you're using the food. If you have people in your house giving the dog treats or you have company over and it changes how much is going in, you've got to adjust your schedule for all of those possibilities. Sarah: And another thing for realistic expectations is also to understand that your puppy, like as they're growing and changing, they're going, it's not going to be like a linear path to potty training. They may have some accidents here or there. So what, what would you say is the best way? Like, let's say you just missed it and the puppy peed on the couch or something like that. What would be your steps to kind of helping make sure that that doesn't derail the rest of their potty training? Kathy: Well, the first thing you do is you pick up the puppy and you walk to the bathroom and you look in the mirror and you say, “Why did I let my puppy dog out? I suck because I didn't listen to anything Kathy and Sarah said.” I would pick the puppy up. I would snap a leash on it, take it outside of the potty area, put it down and say, “Hurry up.” I firmly believe that if a puppy is mid pee and you scoop it up, it will stop peeing, probably not pooping, but peeing. I know that if people were on the potty and somebody lifted them up midstream, they would probably stop. I want to try and have the puppy finish outside. And so I can accomplish that, awesome. Then I put the puppy in the crate and I cleaned it up. And some people say, “Oh, don't let the dog see you clean up their accident ‘cause they'll think that they're in charge.” I'm like, “Hello?”  Sarah: The most important part of cleaning up an accident is making sure that you actually cleaned it all up and got the smell out.  Kathy: It's not about letting the puppy see you. The puppy doesn't think, “Oh, you’re my housekeeper.” Like, that’s just ridiculous. Sarah: Well again, that's adding human emotions to training another species. Like, this is a dog, this is not a child.  Kathy: We should do a podcast on weird things that people have told you. Like I heard somebody said, “Oh, you know how you teach your dog that you're in charge, you spit in their food before you give it to them again.” What?! Sarah: Again, that's like a weird human thing. No. Kathy: Yeah, no. There's others we can’t talk about them now. I’m thinking of all of them now. Okay, anyway...So yeah, and you clean it up completely. Now this doesn't mean with water. Please don’t use ammonia, because a component in urine is ammonia. So all your Pine Saul, pine scented ammonia things are just going to draw the dog back. I would use something that gets rid of the odor and breaks it down completely. And we use Fizzion. And I always tell people, “If the dog school uses a product, you better get on it.” Sarah:  Yeah, we use it for a reason. Kathy: Yeah! We see all these dogs, we know what works. Fizzion works. There's others that really don't work. We don't want to say a name, but they're not really the miracles that they say they are. Sarah: That they claim to be.  Kathy: There you go.  Sarah: No, tried and true. We use Fizzion. Kathy: And then some of them are like, “Oh my dog keeps going back to this rug to pee on.” Okay, supervise better and keep him away from the rug, or get rid of the rug.  Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. The biggest thing is don't let them go back to there and potty again.  Kathy: Right, right. And again, it comes down to supervision. Like, I think the biggest thing to tell people is, “You've got to supervise your puppy.” Supervise it like it's a nine month old baby walking around pulling crap down off the counter on their head with the chords, and sticking their fingers in sockets. Like, you understand that. That you have to supervise that. And yet people after like a day or two of no accents they're like, “Oh, my puppy is trained.” And the hardest puppies to train are the small grade ones, because the big breeds in real time, like, your shepherd takes a crap behind the couch. Like, you know it. You walk around, you’re like, “What is that?” Your Pomeranian does it, you don't find it in real time. You find it like when you go to put up the tree, six months later, you pull the couch out, you're like, “Oh my God, what's that?” And see that's why the dog isn't housebroken because he's pottied in so many places that you don't even know it. And that's rewarding, because relief is really rewarding. And you can't come back and show them the fossilized poop and fuss at them. As a matter of fact, you can never fuss at them for accidents cause it's all your fault.  Sarah: Exactly. Kathy: I had a student, and I know I've told you this story, who I went to her house and she had a 10 week old puppy and I walked in and the housekeeper was there and I had to wait for the owner to come. And while I'm there, the housekeeper’s bragging that the 10 week old puppies perfectly housebroken and I totally don't believe it. And then the owner comes. I'm like, “So tell me about the housebreaking.” She's like, “Oh, we don't need to worry about it. He's perfectly housebroken. He just doesn't come when I call him.” I'm like, “Oh, really?”  Sarah: 10 weeks old? Kathy: 10 weeks old. It was a little multi-poo.  Sarah: Yeah. Kathy: So the housekeeper opens the gate to leave the kitchen. And what the owner said was, “The only thing he doesn't do is he doesn't come when he's called. And if he runs out of this room, he'll never come back.” I'm like, “Okay.” So, of course, the housekeeper opens the gate to leave. And what happens? Dog runs out and they're like, “Oh, my God! He’s loose!” And they're running through this, you know like 32 room house and I'm just by the front door and thinking, “This is going awesomely.” So while I'm there, I turned to the right and I see the dining room, which is right off the kitchen and what I'm struck by is the fact that the dining room has snow white carpet. And I look a little harder and I'm like, ‘Wait a minute.” And I squat down and I see like 500 silver dollar size pee stains. The dog had been peeing in the dining room, and I'm sure he pushed out that gate, got out, and got back in without anybody knowing. And I'm like, “I am going to have to tell this woman and she's...her head is going to blow off her body.” I'm like,  Sarah: How’d the housekeeper not find it though? Kathy: Apparently she wasn't doing her job either! It was the formal dining room. So they come back down, they had them, they're like, “Oh my gosh! He didn't do anything.” And I'm like, “You know what? I kind of have bad news about the house. Frankly, he’s peeing in your dining room.” And she was really, like, “He key is not!” And I'm like, “No, he is.” And she's like, “Oh, I don't believe it.” I'm like, “Well..” I had to help her to the ground to crawl into the dining room. Now we're both on our hands and knees and she's so mad. She smacking the ground, “I can't believe it.” Yeah, the housekeeper magically disappeared. And so then we had to talk about better gates and better management and yeah, it was...but then it took twice as long, right? Because the dog said, “Why can't I get to my indoor potty area?” Everything had to change. Supervision had to go through the roof.  Sarah: Yeah! Inadvertently you had house-trained your puppy, just on your white rug in the formal dining room.  Kathy: Had she had a Great Dane puppy. He would've had one accident and they would have seen it. There's a river coming from the dining room. Because he weighed three pounds, he got away with it. Oh my gosh. It was awful. It was terrible. Sarah: Yeah. Supervision is, and management is a huge piece of the potty training. Kathy: It is. It is. And, and realistic expectations. Like you should know and if you don't, now you do, that a 10 week old puppy is probably not really housebroken.  Sarah: Nope.  Kathy: Something is amiss. Sarah: Any other, like from working with clients with potty training and like that, that time period before six months, like any other things that have happened that where you fixed it or where it was like as like a kind of specific issue? Kathy: Yeah, I, when I have people who we lovingly call “noncompliance,” and they're non-compliant for a lot of reasons, their life is crazy. I mean they shouldn't go, the dog may didn't want a dog. Maybe they've decided the kids are going to be in charge and it goes badly. So if they're non-compliant or non able to be compliant, we find that we give them these guidelines. If your eyeballs can't be on the puppy, they're crated. If you can 100% supervise, they're gated in a small room with a leash on and if you can supervise pretty much but not 100% they can be X-penned or tethered in a room with you. In addition, if you want really high level security you can tether them. I told a student today at the home. So it was a perfect example at the lesson I was at today. The puppy moved away from us and peed and it was right about the time he should have, and he had just drank water. But if he had been tethered to her body she would have felt him pulling away like a fish on a line trying to get away. Sarah: Yeah. That's a really, that brings up a good one. So what are some of your like tried and true cues that a puppy will give you that they have to potty? Cause a lot of times new owners, they don't know what to look for. They don't know that if the puppy tries to, like, leave you and create distance from you, they probably need to go to the bathroom. So what are some other kind of physical cues that a puppy will give you that they have to go potty? Kathy: They're sniffing and circling is the big one. Definitely becoming disinterested in your play or training or snack or belly rub session. You feel like you're playing and you’re playing and dog's into it and then suddenly they walk away. Like, “What do I smell?” And then they go, right?  Sarah: Yep, yep.  Kathy: If they're really engaged in something and suddenly disconnect that, that's your cue. And they all have different ways of telling you. Right? So, my Border Collie, both of them actually, would run to me, run to the door, run to me, run to the door. And I'm like, “I guess you have to go.” My golden barks, you've heard, “Oh, gotta go.” My doberman would just stare at me. Like, I'd be on the computer and I feel this. I'd be like, “What is going on?” Sarah: Yeah. They’re tethered to you, you'll learn it that much more quickly because like you'll, you'll be a pattern. You'll notice after maybe one or two times you'll see one of those indicators and take them out and then you'll know their cue. If they weren't tethered to you and they were just loose in the house, you missed it. Kathy: Exactly. And you know, it's interesting when they hit a certain age, they don't give you cues anymore because they're housebroken, and you're taking them out a sufficient amount of time. I can't remember the last time one of my dogs asked me to go out because I think I just take them out. Sarah: Yeah. You get into a routine with your dogs and once they get older, they know when they're going to be able to go. Kathy: Yeah. And you just manage what goes in, what comes out.  Sarah: Yeah. Kathy: I think we should talk about the DPA: Designated Potty Area, and this is a huge thing and this is, we did a Facebook live on it, on chicken rock. Sarah: We have the video for chicken rock. Kathy: Chicken rock is...it was very popular. So, basically I want my dogs to be able to go out the back sliding door, obviously if you're an apartment, this is not valid, and run to the back of the property and pee and poop in the area that I want them to so they're not on the grass. And the way I accomplices is I put out an X pen and I leave it unattached, so there's an opening in it. That X pen, I choose to put wood stove pellets because I want the difference in the texture between grass, mulch, and where I want them to go. Although, side-note, I teach my dogs once the potty training is going well, I make the multi-surface pottiers. They go on pavement, they go on grass, they go on stone, they go everywhere because I don't want them to say, “Wait, where's my wood pellets?” What do wood pellets do for you? They're stove pellets. They’re made out of wood. You could use anything you want. If I went somewhere with a potty that was different than my yard, like a friend's house, I could take a baggie of those, maybe even a baggie of used ones and then dump them in a place in her yard. So anyway, in addition to the wood stove pellets, I put a bowl in the back of the crate, so in the pen. So you would have to walk all the way into it and continue going to that to the side of it and that bowl  is upside down ,and on that bowl I put a piece of chicken, you can use anything you want that the dog never gets. Hence the name chicken rock and when I was doing it with values to rock. So it looks like this. I know that puppy has to potty. I get up in the morning, I go into the refrigerator, get a piece of chicken, put it on that rock. Yes, I have to make two trips, go back in the house, get the puppy out of the crate, clip on a leash, walk outside all the way to the potty area. I put the puppy down in the potty area. They go to the back, they eat the chicken and they say, “While I'm here, might as well go.” Sarah: Big key to that is you carry that  is, in the beginning you carry the puppy out to the rock so that they're not able to go on the way out. That's a big part of it. Kathy: Huge. Huge. Because they’re puppies, their bladder is the size of a moment, so they're going to go at some point on the way to that. Then as they get older and the months go by, and I hopefully can still carry them for a little bit, I put them down farther and farther away, and I'm adding from day one, “Hurry up,” and down they get the chicken and then I say, “Hurry up, hurry up,” and then what happens next depends on the puppy. A lot of owners make the mistake of bringing the dog right back in the house. Now it's important to note that when I'm holding that, when I'm in that X pen, I'm holding the leash. My puppy is not loose, because the first nine months that I have a puppy, they are potty-ing on a leash. People that are lazy, and let the dog out, and then when they have to take the puppy somewhere and they can't let them loose and they're on the lease, the puppy looks at them like, “Can you give me some privacy and space?” Because you taught them to go 50 feet away from you. Now, people who live in the city don't have that issue, but it's a suburban. Once my puppy has gone, I can either take them in the house or I can put on a long leash and then we can play in the yard because I'm so boring in that X pen. I don't give them any fun. And a lot of times people make the mistake of taking the dogs on a walk and then when the dog goes, take them inside. And what the dog knows is that, “If I poop or pee, I'm going back in the house and I love being outside so I'm going to hold it.” But some puppies are outside they’re like, “I gotta go in the house,” and then those are the puppies that you do take in right away. But the puppies are more outward bound, adventurous, energetic, pop on a light line and let them run in the yard for awhile. Give them that as a reward.  Sarah: Yup.  Kathy: Speaking of the reward, I do reward at night for emptying themselves, Like, they get chicken from being there, but I will start adding the food reward. Not every time, but when they are squatting and pooping, I will give them food in that moment. I don't give it to them when they run out of the pen because they’re, like, “Oh I should run out of the pen to get them food.” And we have great housebreaking sheets. I think we have a couple. We have one with the challenging housebreaking. Sarah: Yeah, we have those. So those are all in the lesson sheet library for you guys. If you need them, just drop a comment when we post this. We can direct you right to them.  Kathy: Let's talk about the puppy who suddenly is peeing all the time. I'm thinking about the girl puppies.  Sarah: Yeah.  Kathy: Normally it's a UTI and they just show up. They don't catch them. They just get them. No. And so then what your vet wants is a urine sample. So let's talk about how to get a urine sample. YAY! You get a short, not high sided, Rubbermaid... I want to say Rubbermaid, it's like saying Jello. You don't say “gelatin,” you say Jello, right? A container, a plastic container. Boiling water goes in, up and out or dry all day. Then I go outside and I hide it. Not going to be flashing it in front of my dog's face and think it's food or get interested in it. So it's behind my back. As soon as the dog squads, I sled that sucker in, get a sample and then take it out. Go in the house, pour it in my sterilized pill bottle or vitamin jar as my sample. Masking tape. Pre-do this right? Put masking tape around the bottle with your last name on it and the dog's first name, then you don’t have to do it when you are full. Now my daughter, who's pre-vet, and has worked at a vet for years, confirms what I always knew when they want a urine sample, they don't want a cup of urine. Okay? When they ask for a stool sample, they don't want a bag, a poop. They just need a little, little bit. So don't go crazy with that. And then you either refrigerate it until you get it to the vet that day or you take it right over to the vet. And I would call ahead and say, “Hey, I'm bringing a urine sample. Can you test it?” Some vets will test it and then give you Clavamox, or whatever they're going to give you for that, or some bets that, you know, “Bring the dog in. I need to see.“ So it just depends on the relationship and the type of vet that you have. But that's how you get a urine sample with very little dramatics. I mean, and people are like, “Should I use gloves?” Yeah. You know what? Knock yourself out, wear gloves. I don't, but you can. Yeah. Sarah: Yeah. Then the indications for that, so usually it is the female dog, like you said. If they're peeing, like, excessively. You know, like,  way more than what's normal, then that would be when you could take them to the vet to get that checked out. Kathy: Although sometimes there are other factors. Aww! Hey, Jack and Nev! Sarah: That was Jake. Kathy: There are other factor-that was Jakey? ​Sarah: Yeah. He was just saying, “Hello.” Kathy: Hey, Jakey! One of Sarah's dogs. So I had a student and it was, like, July and she's like, “My puppy is not a puppy, she's 10 months old. She was housebroken and now she's peeing throughout the house”. And of course the first thing you think is a UTI.  Sarah: Right. Kathy: And like, all right, it sounds like UTI. However, let me ask you, are there any new sources of water that she's getting into? Is she drinking out of the toilet? Like is there a water cooler that's liking? She's like, “No, no, there's nothing. There's nothing”. I'm like, “Are you sure?” She's like, “Yeah, no.” She said, “I, you know, we opened our pool last week.” I was like, “ Wonderful! Hello! Big dog water bowl right out in your yard.” And she's like, “Oh, you're right.” The dog is drinking from the pool when she’s swimming!” I'm like, “Yeah, I know I’m right” Sarah: Jesus. Kathy: Yup. And some people have decorative fountains. Like that's what I mean by other sources of water outside the box. Sarah: Yeah. I always ask too, like, you know, “Is the husband or the kids sneaking the dog water when you're not looking?” Something like that. Or, “Are they giving the dog water when you don't know about it? So you don't know that they need to go again?” Looking for those saboteurs. Kathy: I had a student, Oh my gosh, she had this refrigerator brand new and it was gigantic ones and it was leaking and so she called the repair people and they came out and they said it was leaking. And, like, three or four times! And she finally called the company, got the head of the company’s phone number wrote this nasty email, like, RIP customer service. She wanted the company to take it back. She was going ham on them and she was so mad, and this is actually why she wound up calling me. She said one morning she went downstairs, it was off, her schedule was early, and she's in a robe and she hears (whirring noise)  Sarah: Oh, God. Kathy: And she’s like, “Now I'm going to see what's wrong with this thing?” Oh no. It was her lab, who learn to jump up and push the button, and drink from the stinking refrigerator.  Sarah: Oh, my God Kathy: She said, “Should I call and apologize to the people I ripped?”  I’m like, “You just do what you need to do.”  Sarah: Send a holiday gift basket. Kathy: God, yeah. And that's what we had to work on and you know, we did unplugged the water. Unrewarded behavior extinguishes itself.  Sarah: Yep.  Kathy: We plugged it back in, and start on the ice cubes.  Sarah: The refrigerator's going batty. Kathy: Yeah, that's great. When again, dogs are invested they discover themselves and people get all twisted that the dog isn't learning Down or Place. I'm like, “If you did it the right way, they'd learn it really fast because they are problem solvers and they are brilliant.”  Sarah: Yep. All right. Kathy: Let's see. We covered crate. Oh, I know puppies who pee in their crate! Sometimes, you know this, clients want to leave a blanket or a towel in there and the puppy just bunches it up and pees on it and pushes it back. So I like them, if you have that issue, I like them to have a naked crate. That way. If they pee in it, there's a consequence in a lot of times I had to do that and they also will pee on stuff. Toys, don’t do that. Sarah: Yeah, anything that can absorb the urine, they'll use it. Kathy: I had a student whose dog, see, this is like story time with Kathy and Sarah, but we never, we never say names. So we like the idea that you cover a crate because we feel like it takes the visual interest away from the dog or the puppy, and they settle down better. And I had a student who has, she's struggling with housebreaking. As soon as we took the towels out, the dog was perfect. Until one night, it pulled the blanket through the crate bars that was covering the crate and then peed on them. So like, yup.  Sarah: Yeah. We always try to get the caveat like make sure that the sheet or the blanket is thick enough that they can't pull it into the crate.    Kathy: And my doberman, when they used to pull it in, it didn't matter. It could be like a mattress and they’d pull that sucker in. The thing was, I put boxes on top of his crate, and then I put the sheet on it and I pulled it out like a tent, and I secured it. Ask Eric, he remembers this. I had books and an end table, and he's like, “Catherine, what is happening?” I'm like, “NO!” Sarah: He can't pull the sheet in! Kathy: Oh man, poor Eric. That should be our hashtag, “poor Eric”. Yup. Sarah: Well it worked didn’t it? He wasn't able to pull the sheet in. Kathy: Damn right it worked. It was great. I felt victorious. I may have even snuck out at two in the morning to see if it worked. I'm not going to lose another blanket. So let's see. Got diet, got the time of the night out, we have the schedule, you have the signals, crate size, potty area outside has to be on leash, when you go somewhere new, you can take, if they’re using that method of having a different surface, you can take it with you, and at some point, you want to teach the dog to be variable. Become a variable surface peer. Sarah: Yeah, it's not linear, right? It's going to be a roller coaster when potty training your puppy. He has an accident, deal with it. Like you said, go in the bathroom, ask yourself what you did wrong and then go back out there and just next day start over Kathy: And realistically say, “At six months it'll be perfect if I do everything right. And so I'm not going to delude myself into thinking of typical puppy with an acorn bladder is able to hold that at all.” Sarah: Yeah, exactly.  Kathy: Oh! Can we talk about one thing. When you say, “I told my wife when I was going out to watch the puppy,” “I told my husband to watch the puppy,” “I told my kids to watch the puppy,” nobody's going to watch the puppy like you are going to watch the puppy. So if you can't trust the people that you need, you’re better off crating the dog so you don't set yourself back. Cause that's the worst part. And holidays, cause we're recording this the day before Thanksgiving, holidays are the worst because you get distracted and you get busy and you have company over and somebody's like, “Oh my God, there's poo in the living room!”  Sarah: Or someone steps on it on your carpet. Kathy: And they don’t know it and then they track it.  Sarah: Or barefoot! In the middle of the night, you get up on Christmas morning and you step in dog poop on your barefoot. That's happened to me way too many times. Kathy: Yes. Yes. So that's why you should have people over for the holidays. No, just kidding.  Sarah: Puppy goes in the crate. Kathy: We have really good examples of managing and monitoring your dog on the holidays and that would be in the Thanksgiving podcast as well. Sarah: Yeah. Alright, so we think that we've covered pretty much everything. Any other questions let us know and we'll be happy to answer them. Kathy: Yeah, we'll put our answers to your questions in the comments. Is there a comments? There should be. If not, we’ll just record another one Sarah: Yeah. I'll post the link of this in all the groups and then they can comment underneath any questions they have. Kathy: All right, awesome. Great. Thanks for hanging out with me.  Sarah: Absolutely.  Kathy: Always fun. All right, I'll talk to you later. Bye, guys!  Sarah: Happy potty training everyone.  Kathy: As always, if you like what you hear, jump over to whatever subscription service you downloaded from and like, rate, subscribe, tell a friend, and share this episode somewhere to help spread the word so we can continue to create an awesome community of dog lovers and learners. Happy training everyone!

  Sarah Barrie's rural mysteries feature strong women who don't need rescuing – women very much after Sarah's own heart. Hi there!  I'm your host Jenny Wheeler and today Sarah talks about why city women love reading romantic suspense set in rural Australia, and running a farm while also writing best sellers. Six things you'll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode: Why 'finding your man' isn't the whole answer How 'writing what you know' worked for her The place that most closely resembles "Hunter's Ridge" of her stories Knowledge is power - what she'd do differently The writers she admires most Fitting writing into her schedule as farmer and mother Where to find Sarah Barrie:  Website: http://www.sarahbarrieauthor.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sarah.barrie.969 What follows is a "near as" transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions. Jenny: But now, here's Sarah. .  Hello there Sarah and welcome to the show, it's great to have you with us. Sarah Barrie - popular romantic suspense  Sarah: Thanks Jenny, it's great to be here. Jenny:   Beginning at the beginning - was there a “Once Upon A Time” moment when you decided you wanted to write fiction?  And if there was a catalyst, what was it? Sarah: Well I used to devour my grandmother's Mills & Boon  books as a kid, I really enjoyed them a lot. I loved the romance, and the exotic places, and all the wonderful stories. But I guess what was considered romantic  at the time was the women; they all needed rescuing. That was something I wasn't really a huge fan of. So I just didn't come to that. It didn't meet my ideals of strong women, and I 'd get frustrated, and come up with alternatives in my mind and start rewriting the story. So right back when I was a teenager, I started playing around with writing. Later as a journalist, I decided I wanted to give it a proper go, and wrote my first novel when I was in my early thirties. Jenny: Great! What happened to that particular manuscript? Sarah: The first one I wrote is never to be seen again. The second one, I actually wrote it as an entry for one of the Romance Writers of Australia competitions. I didn't expect it really to do much. It did pretty well points wise, and so I subbed it to Escape Publishing, and Kate Cuthbert who is absolutely lovely was very supportive, and managed to get it published for me. Jenny: Was that The Secrets of Whitewater Creek? Sarah: No, that was just a short, romantic, contemporary romance called Getting Wild. It's short, it's a little bit of a comedy, and it was published through Escape. Secrets of Whitewater Creek I actually played with writing before that. Jenny: And you chose romantic suspense as your genre?  Have you always been drawn to include suspense? Sarah: Absolutely. Like I said, I really like to write about strong heroines. There's a danger element in it, getting a chance to build on that ideal. Also, it's a more complex story arc for me. I find it very hard to write full length romance, and to see the hero and heroine'complement each other in times of danger, and working things out together rather than one being rescued. I just found that the suspense genre gave me the scope to do that. Jenny: Yes, I think one of the things I like about romantic suspense is that you do get a story in addition to a relationship, and the feeling that a relationship is the be all and end all of everything in life is something that I find a bit hard to swallow. It's the idea that if you find the right man, and everything going to be hunky dory from there on in. If you've got the romantic suspense, you've got the reminder that it may not always turn out well, even if you have the great guy at your side! Sarah: That's true; you can't spend your life thinking as soon as you find this right man, life is going to be happily ever after.

Today, I am so excited to be interviewing the amazing Sarah Balmer of Sarah Belle. We're talking all about her journey with crystals, how they've helped her enhance her yoga practice, and how they could do the same for you. Sarah, thank you so much for being here with me today.   Ashley: I am super pumped because we just finished recording your video interview for the Crystal Mastery Conference, where you're teaching all about crystals and Yoga. Can you tell everyone a little bit about your journey with Yoga and crystals? How did you get started on this path? Sarah: Sure. I started Yoga a long time ago back when I was in college. However, I then disconnected from it for a while, but came back to it later in life. I came back to it when I was in a place where I was super busy and fast-paced as a way to balance. I was in need of more tools for stress management and good self-care. That's what I really think started opening me up to holistic health, holistic healing and all of these different modalities and tools. I got my Yoga teacher training certification in addition to already being a holistic coach, a personal trainer, and then now of course with the crystal healing. Now I just kind of have this tool bag of all these ways of helping folks. I would say that Yoga has really become much more enriched with the addition of crystals. Ashley: I think this is a story a lot of us can relate to. We're seeking more balance, we're looking for ways to take more time for self-care or to get grounded, to just be well in general. I think for many of us that's what has led us to crystals, or Reiki, or yoga, or however that unfolds on your own path. Let me ask you this, I am just curious... we talked a little bit about ways to incorporate crystals into your yoga practice, and some of your favorite ways and methods for doing this. We also talked about some of your favorite crystals to use in your practice. I'm just wondering, could you share a few of your favorite crystals to use in your yoga practice with everyone who's listening? Sarah: Absolutely. I think it partially depends on why you're coming to your yoga mat. What are you doing your yoga practice for? There are definitely a couple of key crystals that I think are wonderful for Yoga. For any practitioner, any student, any level, any reason that you're coming to Yoga. The first of these is Shiva Lingam, which comes from the rivers of India. This is a wonderful stone. It's very steepen in Indian tradition and is associated with the Lord Shiva, who represents totality and union. The stone itself is really a wonderful balance of masculine and feminine energies. So many people come to Yoga to find balance in their energetic anatomy. The stone is wonderful for supporting that. It carries with it all that wonderful energy from India, which is the home and the heart of Yoga. Watch the video interview with Sarah here: The other stone that I really love is Orgonite, because it's wonderfully energizing and sends energy in all directions. This is really good for aligning the chakras and infusing light into the body. Again, it's wonderful for balancing and kind of discovering the whole aspects of being. There are also a few others that I love. I think Smoky Quartz and Black Tourmaline are wonderful for placing at your mat for discharging negative energy, and just kind of releasing and letting go, and grounding down. So many people come to Yoga for grounding and relaxation. I think that a big reason that people come is to help clear their minds and to walk away from their mat feeling lighter and more relaxed. For me, Amazonite is a stone that I'm super attracted to for this. Ocean Jasper is also a wonderful relaxation stone for me. It really helps me to connect with all things and all beings. It reminds me that I'm part of this greater collective. Lastly, your obvious stones like Amethyst and Rose Quartz always have a wonderful place in pure practice. 

Sarah: Hi Everybody, Welcome to the SCT podcast, this is episode 29 and in today’s show what we are going to talk about is “Selling Puts”, it’s kind of a strategy that everybody seems to know about or have an understanding of how to do it but it is interesting that when you actually get into trading it, is to especially why you want to trade it, everybody has all sorts of different reasons. So, we are going to explore this strategy in today’s podcast and I have TJ here with me TJ: Hello Sarah: we are each going to talk a little bit about how and why did you, you will get both of our perspectives on it, so I think that should be quite helpful for everybody. So TJ can you start us off by just explaining a little bit about what is “selling a put”? TJ: Selling a put is, your assumption is that the market is going where the stock is currently trading and hope that the stock stays at the same price or moves up by the expiration date of the option, what happens is when you sell the put, you collect the premium and if the stock price expires above the strike price of the Put, you get to keep the entire amount of the premium. Obviously if the stock price pushes down below the strike price of the put then the position begins to lose and you actually have to close out the position by buying back the Put for more than you sold it for, which creates a loss. You can also take assignment of the shares as well, if you take assignment on the short Put, you are actually long shares in your account, so there’s a few strategies there that we can use. Sarah, what market conditions do you like to sell Puts in. Sarah: Okay, Yeah, you have actually got into strategy and just for people to summarize about what it actually is, is essentially what you are doing is trying to collect some premiums or trying to make some money by trading at a level where you don’t think that underlying is actually going to go and that’s essentially what a strategy is. Now, people use it for all sorts of different reasons and there is some, certain times that I think is a good time to trade it and other times that I actually think is a really bad time to trade it. But I think it is really important to mention that sometimes if a strategy sounds too good to be true then you can get load into expecting a strategy like this to work a 100% of the time and it is really important that we get into this discussion about selling puts is that you, I think everyone needs to understand that this should be part of a diversified strategy in the market and if all you are ever doing is looking to just sell puts, I think that you are going to run into trades that aren’t going to work and a problem with the strategy is when it doesn’t work, it really doesn’t work and if you don’t really know how to deal with it at that point, that can really end up hurting an account. So the first thing I guess, I want to mention is, it’s a great strategy, but it can’t be the only strategy because if all you have to do is go out and sell out puts on everything, everything will be fine until it doesn’t work out and I just want to make sure we are making that pretty clear. I think it is a nice way to collect a little bit of premium, I think what’s important though to mention because you're selling puts is it’s a small amount of money that you are taking in and you are basically taking in that amount and you really won’t make it anymore if you are just talking about purely selling a naked put. So that strategy alone when you go and look at the stock, let’s use stocks as an example, you can do it on a bunch of stuff but if you go and think ok, that underlying is going to move higher, so I just want to be able to take advantage of some premium that is sitting below the strike where it is trading and I don't really think it is going to go down there again so I am just going to trade there, then fine and certainly a stock that is trending would be a better stock to trade than naked put on rather than something that is consolidating and moving all over the place, so that will be a good time to trade it, I am assuming you follow the same kind of rule that you are going to be trading in a naked put in a trending stock. TJ: Typically yes, yeah absolutely trading it. I also trade them in a sideways stock too, I think if you can sell naked pots outside of a consolidation range, a lot of the stocks will consolidate for a week or two or even longer and you are able to rip weekly’s, the advantage of Weekly options go in and sell that put a few times, while the stocks consolidating Sarah: Ok yeah, that's true but why would you do a naked put on something that is consolidating instead of doing something that is a little more like an  where at least at that point you are margin requirement is quite less and your risk is less. What would be the advantage of doing a naked put on something that’s moving sideways? TJ: Well typically if a stock is moving sideways, the volatility at that point has decreased, you are not getting as much credit, so the naked put allows you to move a little bit further away from the prices currently trading, giving you and little bit of an extra buffer on one side of the trade so you can go out and you can go, maybe two or three strikes further away than if you were to do iron Condor at that then you need to get closer. Sarah: Yeah that is true and I guess it also has to do with the account size you are trading with too because the reality is some of these naked puts are going to have pretty high margin requirement, Are they not? TJ: That is true, but there is also, if you sort stocks by price as well, for example your radar screen and you watch list, you notice that there is an awful lot of stocks that trade below $100 and if you are trading a stock that’s $18 or $20 or $30, to sell naked puts on it the margin requirement is not that high. Absolutely, I don't sell naked puts on PCL on a $2,000 stock or on Google or on Amazon having to trading up around $1,000 right no. So yeah absolutely the margin requirement is higher. It also has to do with the volatility, so a lot of times we have to keep in perspective to that a lot of these strategies that involve selling put you sell them so and you are literally collecting pennies and for a lot of traders they are barely covering their commissions every time they sell these puts. In short enough 98% of the time, they work out what is that 2 times out of 10 or 2 times out of 20 even were it doesn't work, that ends up eating up all of your profits on those trade, so on the service I think there is a lure of easy money. But we have to look at the price of the stock and the credit you are collecting and lot of the times it’s pennies, it's pennies that you are collecting during that but trade for 3, 4 weeks maybe 5 or 6 weeks with a lot of these strategies. Sarah: Yeah and that is exactly why I don't love selling puts and I would sometimes pick different strategies, you have actually identified it right there, is because once you get in that trade there is no possibility of making more and to me why would you sit in a trade when you are open to risk and you can’t make any more money and all you really have to do is sit there and it is almost like a pile on in the market and say "here I am I really hope you don't notice me, I can't really do anything about it but I am just going to sit here", so to me that kind of bothers me about the strategy, so certainly that’s why, I guess I will stick to trading it when there is something that has a trend because at least then I have that direction to hopefully keep price away from me because I am worried about being that pile on that's huge and everybody is going to see it and I don't really want anyone to see the trade I am in. TJ: Absolutely, everybody thinks that, oh, the put that I have sold is far enough away, price might go through 50 Cent or $1, I will be OK but a lot of times people are trading the strategy around the wrong times. For example, earnings, so they will trade thinking that the stock might move $8, it moves 16,  $8 against you and now you are way outside on this put and I think the other thing as well is that the people that sell it successfully or selling way out of the money and are adjusting there, they are adjusting a 15 Cent credit where it goes down the 12 cents they were adjusting, a very finite adjustments and I think that a lot of traders don't see that there is like the grey area that makes them work and the other thing towards the lure of profits and I think that what happens is that a lot of traders start selling them and the first bunch work out great, and then you say, well, you know what, if I am getting 15 sent successfully well here is 30 or 40 cents and now we are trying to collect 30 or 40 cents or 50 or 60 Cents on trades and it just drops the probability of success and that is going to be on one those trades where you end up getting hurt on the trade and at that point you are kind of bruised and you don't want to trade them again where it is not necessarily the strategy that didn't work but just kind of the greediness or the application of it. Sarah: Yeah and so true to mention that when you are trading, learning textbook of what a strategy is and then actually going out and putting it on in the market can be two very different things because the theory of the strategies sounds fantastic and I think that's why a lot of people say they trade it because it’s kind of easy to get and in terms of options with all of these multi like strategies, it is pretty simple you go and look for an area where you don't think it is going and you just sell the put and hope it doesn't go down there. I mean it is a pretty simple concept in a book, but applying this and making it actually work over a long term in the market isn't as easy and I can't tell you how many times we both have had them. We had emails and discussions with people say that this is the strategy they use, this is the only one they use, this is all they do it and then you just say OK great and then what happens a couple of weeks a couple of months later is we get a horrible email from them later on, it says, Oh Man, probably I should've listened to you because the strategy isn't working for me anymore and I have taken the strategy that worked really well say 10 times, but these last couple of really wiped out all those profits in all those other ones because I was taking such small profit, I don’t know, just a word of caution. I do want to come back to something you said earlier as well which was about trading cheaper stocks, so was curious about what your opinion was. So with cheaper stock, is really selling a naked put kind of the only thing you can really do in cheaper stocks if you want to sell something. TJ: I think it is a good strategy if you want credit. I think it is one of the few credit strategies that you could use on an inexpensive stock and I guess when I am speaking about in expensive stocks, really anything kind of under $50 I think is pretty inexpensive. Obviously other strategies that work are the tried and true but long  puts, long calls debit spreads as well where you are buying but on the credit side I agree with you that it is the selling of the puts that really allows you to a little bit more flexibility. Sarah: Yeah, as I said like it is a good strategy and there's lots of reasons and ways to place it, but it doesn't have to be the only one, so let's talk about getting out of them. So another popular way, obviously everybody just wants to sell the naked put and the trade works that you don’t have to do anything, that’s fantastic. So let's talk a little bit about when you are in the trade and you either made some profit what you do, or you are losing because it has come down to the strike you sold, what do you do, do you want to talk about some of the things you do first or do you want me to go first? TJ: Yeah if I am trading naked puts, really the expiration is either same week, so 2 or 3 days later, trading on a Tuesday or Wednesday for Friday expiration or maybe a Thursday or Friday for the following week, I am typically not adjusting or rolling the trades there is typically not a lot a time to do that, they either work or they don't. I will just end up exiting the trade if it comes down into or close to the strike, obviously depending on, each trade is different when it comes back down into the support, support levels that I previously identified, I am most likely looking to potentially exit trade at that time and just taking a loss and moving on. I think a lot of time if you start adding and changing things, it really changes the dynamic and doesn't necessarily always work out better at the end. And like you said in the previous podcast, most people wish they had the stock option adjustment, the redo button for adjustments that gone down this path. By the time they get to the end of this windy road, half of the time forgotten why they trade in the first place and are losing more money than they realize that they are losing. The other thing that I do frequently do, I mostly trade in selling puts because I want to own the stock, so for me if it pushes through this strike and it still again hasn’t gone through major levels of support, it still looks like a great trade something that I want to own, I will just take an assignment on this stock because it is intended into a covered call strategy or just own the stock if I want to, so for me it is really why do I get into it, most of the time I am showing that because I want to own a stock, I want to take assignment, so I am either getting it for a loss that really breaks below but if it breaks below a little bit I just pick up the stock. Sarah: Yeah, I think that’s a good way to do it and it is a nice backup. It is always nice to have a plan B without having to adjust our role and that’s really what it is, so the same thing, when I am looking to do that, I want to take the trade and a stock that I don't mind owning the stock, sorry, does that make sense, I want to trade the option by selling and then if it doesn't work for me so if we end up having an option that has some value at that point then, I just take the stock instead and then of course you can roll out into all sorts of different trades there and you can keep making money on that. So I think that's something that’s really important and that’s absolutely kind of a great way especially when you are talking about the stock there are 50 dollars and under with that plan in mind to be able to pick up the stock, there is more room for you to deal with in terms of what account size you are trading with. So that is also something really good. So I also just wanted to talk about, I just got out of HD today and I know that by the time you guys hear this, it will have moved on from that trade but I did just sell naked put in HD and I originally have sold it for 60 Cents and then today I got out of it and I made about half, so I think it was about $30 profit that I got out of the trade and that was only really after a couple of days and I want to mention that as well in terms of the positive side of that, so by taking it in something like 60 Cents and I can sell that back at 30 cents that is a really great return and I think it is important that we look at the percentage of return on a trade in order to decide when to get out, when it is working for me. So just because I took 60 cents, it doesn't mean I am going to hold this trade to the very end to make 60 cents. If there is a nice golden opportunity for me to get out of the trade and make $30 in a couple of days to me that makes way more sense to take the trade off and cash out and put the money in my pocket than it is to sit in it for another 2 weeks until the trade expires even if the stock are fine and I didn't really need to get out of it but to me that was just easy money to take off. So do you always hold your naked puts way till the end or do you get out of them quickly for profit I mean? TJ: Typically I am selling them in stocks that I want to own, so the premium I am collecting, it may not at the time be enough to really make sense of selling it so I will hold them till the end. I am collecting 30 cents of premium or 40 cents right after that and I am making 7 or 8 or 12 cents on it that’s probably not enough, that is not going to be enough for me, so I will wait into expiration but absolutely if you are selling if you are able to sell that put for a 80 cents or a dollar and you can make 30 or 40 cents on it in a week or 10 days, yeah I absolutely agree and that is the thing we were talking, we did a course on Cover calls and actually a lot of it is the misconception of  and I think it is the same thing with selling options is that paper profit, so for example your HD, you had 30 cents or 40 cents of potential profit in it, that's what you have today as you mentioned in 10 days who knows, that paper profit may have turned into a loss, so the only way to profit is to absolutely realize the cash out of the trade to turn that paper into paper money, like you said, I completely agree the only real profit is when you sell, so taking that 30 or 40 cents absolutely, like you said 50% profit on the trade is absolutely fantastic and it is much better to take 30 cents on the trade then in 8 days oh well you know at one time I had this paper profit, it is nice to talk about but until it's in your account it is not real. Sarah: Absolutely, unrealized PNL is not the real thing, you want the hard cash you want that profit in your account that's really what we are all after here and that's really what we do I think really well and I think we both can give ourselves a nod here in the trading, I think we do a really great job of cashing it on the trades and profiting really nicely on the trades that we have got. So, I don't know I do think in summary that it is a good strategy I think anyone that's doing it kind of has to have the reason why and again you want to be able to build that case about why that strategy is good to trade v/s another one I think we have outlined a few of them specially in terms of determining the price of the underlying whether or not that's a strategy for you, picking whether or not you like to do it when it is trending market or consolidating. Everyone is going to have a different flavor and a different spin on it but it is the strategy that you and I both use and it can be really great. Of course I do just wanted to throw out that the margin requirement on those are going to be different and some people depending on what kind of accounts they are trading, you might not be able to sell to do that strategy too. So, just to make sure for everybody who is listening today that you go and do that research on it as well. I don't want people getting into something without them really understanding the whole bit. So I hope you guys found this really helpful, I think it was a good discussion, it is actually quite interesting to hear us each explain. I found it very helpful to hear TJ's perspective and how to trade the strategy. And hey, if you want to actually see us trade live in the training room, because we go through everything all the time and was another good week of trades, so I look forward to see you guys next week, please review the podcast and email podcast at shecantrade.com if you have any future ideas that you want to hear us to discuss. Happy trading, everybody.

SHOW NOTES:  Summary: Sarah Stremming is a dog trainer, a dog agility and obedience competitor, and a dog behavior consultant. Her specialty is working with behavior problems in competition dogs. During her interview we talk about her approach to training -- including allowing dogs their dog-ness -- and the 4 things she looks at before making behavior recommendations: exercise, enrichment, diet and communication. Links mentioned: Cognitive Canine Blog Cog Dog Radio (also available for Android and iPhone) Next Episode:  To be released 1/20/2017, featuring Hannah Branigan.   TRANSCRIPTION: Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau, and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports Podcast brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high-quality instruction for competitive dog sports using only the most current and progressive training methods. Today we'll be talking to Sarah Stremming. Sarah's voice may be familiar to some of you since she owns the excellent Cog-Dog Radio. Sarah is owner and operator of the Cognitive Canine. She has been working with dogs in the realms of performance training and behavior solutions for over a decade. Her special area of interest has long been helping dog owners address behavioral concerns in their competition dogs. Reactivity, anxiety, aggression, and problems with arousal are all major concerns for many competitors, and Sarah works to help her clients overcome these issues and succeed in their chosen arena. Hi, Sarah, welcome to the podcast. Sarah Stremming: Hi, Melissa, and thanks for having me. Melissa: Absolutely. Sarah, to start out, can you just tell us a little bit about the dogs you have now and what you're working on with them? Sarah: Sure. I have Idgie, who is an 8-year-old border collie, and she's competing in agility and her agility training is really just kind of in maintenance phase, but I'm getting her ready to go into the open level of obedience next year; and I have Felix who is also a border collie and he's a year and a half, so he's learning everything. He's learning agility, obedience, and mostly how to just kind of keep his head on his shoulders in the agility environment is our number one project… and those are my two dogs. Melissa: Excellent. How did you originally get into dog sports? Sarah: I saw agility on TV when I was probably nine or ten and immediately knew that that was for me, and it was like five years later that I actually got to do agility, but as soon as I saw it I wanted to do it and I've been doing it ever since. Melissa: That's awesome. So did you start out R+ then, since you started in agility or kind of what got you started on that positive training journey? Sarah: I definitely did not start with all positive reinforcement. I am definitely what I would call a crossover trainer. I started in not just agility but competitive obedience. Agility really got me started, but the kind of local dog training school required an obedience class before you started agility training, and I actually really liked the obedience side as well, so I competed in obedience and agility with my first dog Kelso. He had some really severe behavioral problems, primarily aggression towards other dogs, and so I learned to do all kinds of nasty things from people who…everybody I worked with was really trying to help me, and so I did all kinds of corrections as far as obedience is concerned and as well as his aggression was concerned. Because he had these behavior problems I reached outside of the realm of performance training into the animal training world and found out that all of these corrections that I had been taught from really the competitive obedience sector were not only not necessary but probably causing some of my problems. So when I started to realize that and started to change the way that I did things, he started to get better and that was really all that I needed to see. Melissa: I know that for most trainers it's definitely an evolving journey, so how would you describe where you are now in terms of what your training philosophy is and kind of how you approach training? Sarah: My training approach I actually have a philosophy that I really sat down and figured out and wrote out a while ago so that I could reference it and come back to it in my work with my own dogs as well as with other people and so it's kind of four different mantras, and the first one is ‘Do not deny dogs their dogness.' So meaning dogs are dogs, they're going to act like dogs. Dogs like to bark and pee on stuff and dig holes and do things like that, and we really have no right to deny them those things because we chose to bring dogs into our lives, but that segues into the next mantra, which is to teach dogs what we need from them in a kind way, so we need them to not do those things all the time and it's important for us to teach them what they need to know to live in our world in a way that is kind. Then the next one is ‘Provide dogs what they need,' which is a big deal to me to just make sure that their needs are being met. I find that a lot of dogs living with people don't have all of their basic dog needs met, and then the last one is just ‘Above all honor the dog,' which means always honor their experience of what you are doing, that this isn't just about you. They're here. They have autonomy. They have ownership over their own lives and we really have no right to not take their opinions and experiences into account.  Melissa: I know you kind of mentioned Kelso at the beginning, and your specialty now, at least as far as I understand it, is over-arousal in competition dogs. Does that kind of tie back to that or can you tell me kind of how you got started in that and kind of just a little bit about your work now? Sarah: That being my special interest area was really shaped by the competitors and the current climate of agility. Kelso actually wouldn't be described by anybody who knew him as over-aroused. They would describe him more as one of those shut-down type of dogs, so he was overwhelmed by the environment, but it translated into a dog that was slow and didn't do agility very fast versus most of the dogs that I work with now are kind of the opposite. They are also overwhelmed by the environment, but it comes out in big displays, big behaviors of biting the handler, excessive barking, not being able to stay on the start line, that kind of thing. I do work with the dogs that shut down too. Most of the dogs that I work with are over-aroused, and I think that that has been largely cultivated by just the culture in agility right now, which is we're breeding dogs with hair-trigger arousal on purpose and we are fostering really, really high levels of arousal in training and the reason is everybody wants faster. Everybody wants speed, and they really think that this is how they're going to get there. When you put all of this arousal into the picture and you're not actually sure how to deal with it once you've got it, you run into problems and it's everywhere. Every single time I go to an agility trial, which is frequently, I see dogs that are really struggling with the environment and really just if they were people would be screaming and banging their fists against the wall and instead they're a dog on a leash being asked to stand next to a handler quietly. So we see a lot of problems come out because that arousal has got to come out somewhere. Melissa: So I'm actually going to shift gears slightly and then come back to this topic. Before starting this podcast, I asked around for other good dog training podcasts. Cog-Dog came very highly recommended, which is how I first learned a little about you and a little about what you're doing. For anyone listening who may not be familiar with it, can you just briefly tell us a little bit what Cog-Dog Radio is and kind of how you have it set up? Sarah: Yeah. So I really started getting out there through my blog, which is at the cognitivecanine.com and I wanted to cover specific cases that I have worked on. I thought that was a good idea for material basically, and I tried to write them as blogs and they really weren't working out, and a friend of mine suggested that I try a podcast and so that's how Cog-Dog Radio was born and so it's my podcast. You can find it on SoundCloud or iTunes just by searching for Cog-Dog Radio. You can also get it through my website. The format is that I do a series of three episodes at a time, and the three episodes cover a case that I worked on. So I start out talking about kind of the basics of the case and then in the next episode I talk about specific behavior modification that happened in the case and then the third episode, which is turning out to be everybody's favorite episode is that I interview the owner of the dogs that we're talking about. Melissa: Now I know, kind of to tie this back to the previous question, which is why I wanted to make sure we talked about this first. In one of your early podcasts, you talked about like the four things that you consider before creating a program or a behavior modification process for a dog. Exercise, enrichment, diet, and communication. Did I get all of them that time? Sarah: You got them. So this is what I call the four steps to behavioral wellness and this is something that I came up with a long time ago when I was working primarily actually with the general public with their dogs so general public versus the dog sport public, which is more who I work with now, and it's basically just these four areas. If you come back to my philosophy in dog training, one of them was to provide dogs what they need, and since we examined these four areas, we find out where we maybe aren't giving them what they need and that way we can adjust it. So exercise is the first one that you mentioned and I really advocate a specific type of exercise for dogs. I find that them being allowed to just mill around and sniff around and be a dog in an open space type area is best so off-leash or on a long line and a harness if off-leash is not safe where you are. I find it really best for them as far as reducing overall anxiety and stress in their life versus the exercise that most dogs get, if they get any, it's fetching a ball or a Frisbee. Going to agility class, a lot of people tell me that they see that as a form of exercise for their dogs, and I would totally disagree, or just walking on a short leash around the neighborhood. A lot of times that even does the opposite of what we would like it to do. It creates more stress for the dog so exercise is a big one for me. I find that most dogs aren't getting enough and I would include my own dogs in that statement. I mean, it is very difficult to get them what I would call enough, right? And so the next one is enrichment, which is basically just that we've got a hunter/scavenger species on our hands here, and we put kibble in a bowl and hand it to them twice a day and we could be using those calories in a way smarter way. We could be having them work to find their food essentially, so giving them projects that they can do that help them meet their own needs somehow as opposed to a lot of people recommend giving all the food through training and there've definitely been situations where I've recommended that, but usually I think if they also are allowed to search and find food as their way of getting food as well as not all dogs are super-hot on food and we'll use toys and hide toys and have them find it. Just any kind of mental enrichment that we can give them that helps them meet a need of theirs on their own without human interaction tends to be really helpful and the people that I work with learn a lot about their dogs through these things. If you hide food and give your dog a puzzle to figure out, the way that they figure out how to get to the food or if they figure it out at all tells us a lot about them. So if you, for instance, wrap a bully stick up in a paper bag and then stick the paper bag in a box and then put the box underneath a blanket, there are going to be dogs that are not even going to try to figure it out. There are going to be dogs that are going to plough through it really, really quickly and really frantically. There are going to be dogs that think really hard but wind up getting there and basically learn a lot about what kind of problem solver your dog is and what kind of thinker they are just by giving them problems to solve. And then over time if you don't give them things that are too hard, but you give them things that are kind of just hard enough, they start to be this dog that says I can solve problems and their confidence in training gets better and their confidence in other situations, maybe competition, gets better because, and this is purely anecdotal, I don't think there's any research on this, but what I witnessed is that over time they start to have more self-confidence because we've provided them with puzzles to solve. Then diet is something that I am not specifically trained in and technically cannot advise specifically on. I get a lot of emails asking for specific diet recommendations and formulas and I always tell people that I can't give them that. What I can tell you is that what I observe anecdotally is that a fresh food diet is best when we're talking about behavior and I think all of us know that already when we think about ourselves, whether it's a better idea to have a meal made of fresh whole food or a pre-processed powder, I think we all know which is better for us. We just forget what's better for dogs because there are so many processed options for dogs that are supposedly healthy and good for them, and I've just seen too many of my cases where the behavior change that we really, really needed happened after the diet change. I have to mention it, and I really do think that even if you switched from one processed food to maybe a better one that works better for your dogs, diet should always be considered, especially when anxiety or over-arousal are involved. Then the final one, communication, I just want people to better tell their dogs when they're right and to have a better system for telling their dogs when they're “wrong.” But basically we need to be telling them when they're right more often. And I really like Kathy Sdao has a system for this that she calls SMART x50, and SMART stands for See, Mark, and Reward Training and then x50 is just that your goal is to do it 50 times a day. And all that means is you see the dog doing something right, you tell them, hey, that was right, I liked that and then you give them a piece of food or a game or something. So that's how you can reinforce behavior throughout the day that's working for you and then I have people do something so instead of corrections I want them to instruct, so we are going to replace correction with instruction and then always follow up that instruction with reinforcement. So if my dog is let's say barking at the front window and I ask her to go lie on the mat instead and then I give her a cookie for doing that, that's a more effective way for me to alter her behavior than to spray her with water or throw something at her or yell at her for barking. So those are my four areas.      Melissa: And I'm assuming those didn't sort of immediately pop into your brain all together fully formed. How did you come to that? Sarah: That's a good question, and to be honest I came to them through my own kind of journey with mental health. So I have an anxiety disorder and that really, even though it's not fun for me, it helps me to really help dogs better. There's some really great research in the human world as far as anxiety disorders go and other mood disorders go as far as what we can do in our daily lives to help lessen our needs for medications. One of them is exercise. You're not going to find a single resource on any mood disorder, whether it's depression, anxiety, or anything else that won't tell you exercise will help. For me personally I know that getting out and walking up a dirt path with a forest and trees and animals and everything is better for my brain than getting on a treadmill, and I see the treadmill as like us walking our dog around on concrete in the neighborhood. So that's the exercise piece. The enrichment piece is just you have to feel that's being satisfied in your daily life so that's liking your job, finding your job interesting, not being bored, that's the enrichment piece for people. Being involved in hobbies so not just sitting and watching a television but reading a book or writing or something like that. These adult coloring books. There's a craze right now, adult coloring books and it's because of enrichment. It's because we all need a little bit more of it in our lives. We need to unplug and do something with our brains and our hands and that's exactly what we're doing with dogs when we give them a puzzle to figure out. And then diet's a huge component. It's a huge component for me, and I know it's a huge component for everybody that I've talked to that has any kind of mental health concern but if they really examine what they're eating and really adjust what they're eating towards a whole food-type of diet, they get better and then communication for me that is mostly about dogs. That stems from my belief that I've kind of formulated over all this time working with dogs, that there is nothing that a dog finds more aversive than confusion and there is nothing that they will work harder to avoid than confusion, meaning that's why you have so many trainers who are still using x, y, z aversive tool, prong collar, choke collar, or shock collar, whatever, who say but look at my dog and look how happy they are working, and a lot of those people are right. The dogs do it great. The dogs look fine, and the reason is they're skilled using that tool and the dog is not confused. The dog fully understands how to avoid the correction and they're not confused. To be clear, I'm not advocating for that, but I believe that their priority one is to better understand what's going on in their own lives and that we throw them into kind of an alien existence and expect them to just figure it out and I do believe that it causes a lot of stress for them so that's where that one comes from.    Melissa: Well, I mean that's true with people too. If you have a boss and you just don't understand what he or she wants from you and you just don't understand how to succeed at your job, you get frustrated and upset and unhappy. Sarah: Absolutely. Any kind of human-to-human relationship that does not have communication will not work for very long. Melissa: Right. Right. So to round things out, I have three more short questions that I'm trying to ask kind of towards the end of each of the interviews. So the first one, what's the dog-related accomplishment that you're proudest of? Sarah: I have to think pretty hard about this one because I feel like every time my dogs do have some minor breakthrough, I'm really proud of it, but this last year at AKC Nationals Idgie and I made the Challengers round and if you're familiar with AKC Nationals, the Challengers round is not easy to get into. Just making the Challengers round that's not what I consider the proudest moment for me, but the fact that Idgie who's a dog that used to really struggle with arousal issues in agility was able to not only have a clean round and run really nicely but really fully be the dog that I have been training in the most intense pressure-cooker type of arena that she's ever been in. Just standing in the dirt in the Challengers round in the main arena with the crowd cheering and a lot of really intense competitors around us and to be able to just stand there ringside with her and know that she was okay and know that I was okay and we could both walk into that ring and we could both do what we know how to do, I would say that's my proudest moment in dogs so far. Melissa: I mean that's a pretty good proudest moment. My next question is what is the best piece of training advice that you have ever heard? Sarah: I'm not even sure if this is advice but just kind of, I guess it is advice, and it's not from a specific person but it's kind of a collective idea that is a common thread amongst some of my biggest influences in training, which is that if something that you're doing is species-specific, meaning it would only work for the species in front of you, there's probably a smarter way to do it. Melissa: I like that. So my final question to wrap everything up is who else is someone in the dog world that you look up to? Sarah: I look up to so many people in the dog world and a lot of people really in the training world, but a person who's a competitor in dog agility who I really look up to is my friend Tori Self, and she lives in Wales now, but she has been on the FCI Agility World Team multiple times with a lot of success and she's a person that to me is able to achieve the highest level types of achievement in my favorite sport and still maintain this really deep, loving connection for her dog that she would do anything for. For her it's always been about the dog first and the sport second and yet she's still able to achieve these really high-level things, and for me that's the ultimate because I know a lot of competitors really it is about the sport first and the dog second whether they would admit that in words or not, that's what I observe in their behavior, and that's never been the case with Tori and I really respect her for that. Melissa: That's awesome. Well, thank you so much. I really, really appreciate you taking some time out to chat through this with me. Hopefully it was fun for you. It was definitely fun for me. Sarah: Definitely. Thanks, Melissa. Melissa: Thanks for tuning in. We'll be back in two weeks with Hannah Branigan to talk about the relationship of foundation skills and problem solving. If you haven't already, subscribe now on iTunes or the podcast app of your choice and our next episode will automatically download to your phone as soon as it becomes available. CREDITS: Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called “Buddy.” Audio editing provided by Chris Lang and transcription written by CLK Transcription Services. Thanks again for tuning in -- and happy training!  

In this episode, Sarah Mei, founder of RailsBridge, Director of Ruby Central, and Chief Consultant of DevMynd Software, talks about the way we write software: What's right? What's wrong? How can we do better? The conversation examines changing code and reassessing needs. i.e.: "Does it bring me joy? Should I get rid of this thing? Do I understand this code?" She also talks about what these needs mean for others on a team. Sarah Mei: @sarahmei Links: Sarah Mei: How We Make Software: A New Theory of Teams @ Brighton Ruby 2016 The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo Transcript: CHARLES: Welcome to the Frontside Podcast. I am Charles Lowell and with me is Robert DeLuca. We have a very special guest this week. One that I'm really excited about because the things she says and the ideas that she has - open eyes and minds all over the place, in all different types of areas that are so pertinent to the way we do our jobs. So, we'll get to it. Our guest today is Sarah Mei. SARAH: Hi. Thanks for having me. CHARLES: Like I said, we are super excited to have you here. Before we get started talking about some of the things that you've been thinking about recently, why don't you just give like a very brief introduction of how you got started with development, where you've been, and how has that brought you to where you're going right now? SARAH: You know, I actually was not one of these people that got started with it real early. I came to programming in college. I was an Engineering major. I wanted to build bridges. I wanted to be a Structural Engineer. I want to build things. I had a weird schedule the first couple of quarters of college, so I ended up taking an elective earlier than most people take it. It was a programming class in Fortran that was required for the structural engineering program. I took my class and I was like, "This is really cool." CHARLES: Wait, Fortran is what set the hook? SARAH: Yeah, and the professor of the class was like, "Well, if you think Fortran is cool. I've got some other stuff that you might like." I mean, the language and whatever doesn't really matter. What I liked about it was the fact that I could build something. I can get that same feeling of building something that you get if you build a bridge but you can do more than like one or two in your career, like you do if you're a structural engineer. I like the constant feeling of building. That's what I liked about it. So I ended up switching my major and graduating with the CS degree and coming out and doing a bunch of different things, mostly like starting in a large company and sort of doing smaller and smaller companies over time. CHARLES: Yeah, there's a lot of people in the industry who are career switchers, where they started out in something else and moved into Computer Science but I actually feel that a lot of people, like myself included, I have the degree in CS too, but that was not what I set out to do at all. It totally derailed, like the course of my life in a good way. But in that way, it's like a career switch within a career switch. ROBERT: I'm a little odd in that aspect. I came out of high school like ready to go in software. It worries me a little bit for the later half of my life. I'm like, "Oh, am I going to do software for the entire time?" CHARLES: Probably not. SARAH: That might be a good thing. You'll never know. ROBERT: Yeah. CHARLES: Yeah, seriously, what lies ahead? ROBERT: Who knows? SARAH: I feel like in a lot of places that are like, for example, in public policy and in other places where we need more people that understand tech so if we can send you out into other parts of the world knowing a whole lot about programming, that can only be good. CHARLES: Yeah. ROBERT: Yeah, this is actually kind of funny. I was telling CHARLES about this the other days, like I'm starting to view programming more as a tool to do the things that I really want to do and less as like the thing that I'm going to be doing forever. I wanted to augment and make things that I have a passion about easier. SARAH: Yeah, absolutely. CHARLES: Yeah, it's like software is eating the world so what you're doing now is just learning how to chew. ROBERT: That's a great way to put it. SARAH: You should tweet that. [Laughter] CHARLES: All right. Please continue. I'll ignore the typing sounds. SARAH: [Laughs] Switching careers is a really interesting thing because you end up with a bunch of experience that you wouldn't have had otherwise. I'm really excited actually about the next five years as we have all these folks that switched into programming from something else who are all becoming mid to senior level because they're bringing just such amazing experience from other parts of the world. CHARLES: Yeah, I know, right? It's like, "Where've you guys been my whole career?" SARAH: Right. CHARLES: It's like you understand these things, just almost like it's second nature of these things that are opaque and completely inaccessible to me. So anyhow... SARAH: That's how I got here. CHARLES: So then, after you kind of switched in college, you went out and did you just start working in programming immediately thereafter? SARAH: Yeah, I worked in a bunch of different product companies. I built products for a while. My first job actually out of college was at Microsoft up in Redmond and then I have worked at smaller and smaller and smaller companies. Then I spent about 10 years doing product stuff and then about 10 years ago, I switched into doing consulting mostly because I realized that I have a fairly short attention span for projects. And that working on a product, there wasn't anything wrong with me exactly but what would happen is when I was working with a product, I would get six months to a year into it and I'm starting to get antsy. I started to get bored and decided that I should just embrace that. And I switch to something where I am going to be on a new project every three to six months. I've been a lot happier since then. ROBERT: That's interesting. I wonder if that comes with seniority in software development and knowing your way around because consulting for me is I've gotten the experience of, "Oh, wow, I'm just finally getting a hang of this person's product or this client's product or app or whatever we're building," and it's, "All right. It's time to rotate off." It's like you just get in there and understanding everything. SARAH: There is that aspect of it for sure but even when I was much less experienced, even with my first couple of jobs, I noticed this tendency in myself to just get bored after six months on the same code base. For a long time, I thought it was because I'm not cut out for software or maybe I'm not very good at it or something. Eventually, I just realized now actually, it's just that I just need to switch projects. I'm just one of those people. That's how my brain works. I get a lot out of switching projects because the one that I switch on to, I see an entirely different way of doing things like code bases are so different. Even if you look at a hundred different Rails apps or a hundred different Ember apps, they're all so different. So switching on to somebody else's app, I learned a ton just out of that switching process. CHARLES: It sounds like the actual kind of studying the meta-level of the software is what really engages you and kind of understanding how the software came to be the way it is and not some other way. One of the factors that gave rise to that and kind of 'that's the problem' that really sunk its teeth in you, as opposed to individual business problem. Is that fair to say? SARAH: It has certainly been interesting to see different business problems and to understand different parts of industries and so on. That's definitely part of it for me but what really gets me interested is the different ways that people organize their code and by how they make the decisions that they make. ROBERT: Yeah, you get to see different problems that they've maybe put themselves into because of the way they structured something, which you wouldn't see if you wrote yourself but somebody else did and get to see, "Oh, I understand this pattern now." That's kind of been my experience out of it. I don't want to speak for you, but yeah, that's kind of how I've seen other client projects like, "Oh, this is really cool. I didn't think of a way to do this," and you get to experience many different things in many different ways. SARAH: You get to see a lot of the tradeoffs. Like a lot of times in a single code base, what would happen is I'd make a decision or we'd make a design decision of some kind. Then I'd see how it turned out. But there's no way for me to see how it would have turned out if I did it the other way. The nice thing about switching projects for me is just being able to see all of those tradeoffs, like the tradeoffs that you make tend to be pretty similar. You can see very similar situations where people do different things and how does it turn out for them. ROBERT: Right, and like one of my favorite things is where you go into a project that is totally against something, like for me it was object-oriented CSS and then you go in and you actually see it in practice, and you're like, "Oh, wow. This is turning a whole new light on it. I like this in this case." SARAH: Microservices are like that for me, where it's generally I am anti the microservice bandwagon. But then I went on one project where I was like, "Wow, they actually figured it out. This works really well. I can see why people like it," because I've seen so many work that was horribly executed. When you go on to the one where it's good and you're like, "Oh, this is why people do that. Okay." ROBERT: Yeah, it's like that light-bulb click, "Oh, yep. There's another side of this." CHARLES: Once you actually see it done right, it helps you avoid every other situation where it was done wrong and you can say, "Oh, this this was the one differentiator that made it all go right." I mean, sometimes it doesn't always boil down to that. But there's these one, two, three things that we could have done. But they were just completely and totally hidden from you because you didn't have that context. I would love to talk to you about microservices because I've certainly never seen it done right. I've heard it talked about and I've seen this beautiful world, picture-painted that looks so fantastic on the whiteboard. But I see -- SARAH: Oh, it's so beautiful, isn't it? It's like an object-oriented design diagram. I'm like, "Look at all the boxes and lines. They all line up." CHARLES: "They're beautiful." SARAH: "I can do this in Visio," and they're all like, the line, they are on the same shape. It was great. CHARLES: "And when I move this one over there, it just tells me that these two are exactly the same distance apart from that other one." Ah, so satisfying. SARAH: Yeah, and then you try and do it, is the problem. ROBERT: Then you build it and you cross your errors and everything. CHARLES: Which actually I think that brings us, recently -- we're talking on Twitter. I think that's actually very recently about kind of the difference between when we talk about software and the meta conversations we have around it. When we do talk about these abstract and perfect worlds of boxes and lines versus the actual code bases, which is the things that you've kind of been observing many, many, many since you've started consulting, and kind of the vibe between those and you know what that means. I think a lot of people aren't even aware like I certainly, before kind of reading that, wasn't really aware that that is a very, very distinct difference, like these are two very different modes for software. One that exists and one that is kind of perfect world. ROBERT: Kind of academia versus the real world, I guess. SARAH: In some ways, yeah. I remember when I was in college, we had a software design class as part of our degree program. We studied how you define objects and you write a little bit of [inaudible], like we did all this stuff. When I got out and I got into the real world and I had a job, I found it very difficult to actually apply that stuff successfully, to be able to draw a diagram and then turn it into code and have it work out the way that the diagram said it was supposed to work out. I initially thought that was because I was just not experienced enough to figure it out. But eventually, what I realized is that it doesn't work because it doesn't work. It really doesn't work to design things ahead of time and then just do them. I think there might be a certain type of person that can do that. I am not that type of person and most people aren't. I think that it takes a very unusual type of brain to be able to just draw a diagram that has already taken into account all of the things you're going to encounter once you start making it. CHARLES: Yeah, I would even go so far as to say there's probably a brain that solved that problem many, many times, that just could skip a bunch of steps. SARAH: Right, and they're not aware they're skipping them necessarily. Unless you have an entire team full of that type of brain, it's probably not a good idea in general, for the software that you're building as a group. I feel like I've been trying to talk about that concept between the difference of how we talked about software in books, in blogs, and in conference talks and then how we build the software we actually build. I feel like I've been trying to articulate that for 20 years, like since I have my [inaudible] and I was like, "This doesn't work. Why can't I make a diagram and then make it into code?" Like two days ago, I feel like I finally found a way to articulate it that captures everything that I've been trying to communicate and it was a really strange feeling. I'm like, "Wow, I finally kind of got it." One of the reasons that I came up with that, I think, is because I haven't really been thinking about it for a couple of months. I've been off and not really thinking about software stuff for a while. Oddly enough, I've been thinking about organizing my house for the last three months. All of my free time outside of my job has been thinking about like, "I've been learning how to cook, so how can I organize my kitchen so that the things I actually use every day, I don't have to dig through a drawer every single time to find them?" There's actually some interesting problems there like, "How do I make sure that all of the stuff that I need is at hand that I use all the time? All stuff that I need occasionally is still around and accessible, and then things that I don't use, I should probably just get rid of." I have this problem that I think probably a lot of people have which is that I have trouble getting rid of stuff once I have it. I live in a small apartment in San Francisco and that's not a good thing to be able to unable to get rid of things because in an apartment this size, I can let it go for a week or two maybe, but like I got to be very vigilant about it because otherwise, it just overwhelms the space. CHARLES: Yeah, there's a bunch of research that the people estimate vastly different the cost of acquisition versus the cost of loss, and they've [inaudible] way too much, like irrationally unbalanced like not wanting to lose something that they already have. SARAH: Even if I bought it for a need that I don't have any more or the need has changed or shifted. I don't buy things I don't need. There are some people that have that problem, that they buy a bunch of stuff that they don't have any particular plans for it. I don't have that problem, thankfully. I've had people in my family that have that problem which I think is why I have avoided that. But the problem I have is that once something is here, I find it very difficult to get rid of it. I look at it and I'm like, "I can think of all these reasons why I shouldn't get rid of it." Oh, that was expensive so the sunk cost fallacy of like, "Oh, I paid a lot of money for that even if it's not useful and I don't like it, I shouldn't get rid of it." Or, there'll be like a dress in my closet that I haven't worn for two years and I'm like, "Ah, maybe I should get rid of it," and I take it out and I'm like, "Oh, my God. But it looks really good on me. I like it. I should wear this. I should really wear this." So I'm going to keep it even though I haven't worn in for two years for some reason, but I should keep it anyway because it looks good. I have all these stories. I tell myself about why I can't get rid of things. A couple of weeks ago, I read a part of a book, to be totally honest with you, called The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. It's written by this woman from Japan who's a professional organizer. Her name is Marie Kondo and her method is called KonMari. Basically, what it does is when you're trying to figure out whether you should get rid of something, you don't ask yourself, "Should I keep it?" What you ask yourself is, "Does this thing bring me joy? And if it brings me joy, then I keep it. If it doesn't, then I'm going to get rid of it." So that made it really easy, going back to the dress example. I'm like, "Does this dress give me joy?" And I thought about it, I was like, "No, the reason I don't wear it is because I went out to dinner and I had a bad experience at dinner so every time I look at that dress, it reminds me of that experience." And so it looks good and everything but I'm not going to wear it because it doesn't make me happy. So that was just like, "Okay, fine. I'm just going to give it away." And changing that question that I ask away from 'should I keep it' towards 'how does that make me feel' was a huge change for me because it's like, that's really easy to answer, where 'should I keep it' is a much harder question. There's these bunch of sort of ifs and maybes or what-ifs and what happens. I feel like that applying this KonMari question to stuff has changed the way that I calculate what stays and what goes in a very positive way. CHARLES: Yeah, boy, I need to get this book for several family members who will go [inaudible]. SARAH: Well, you know, I've got two kids and so there's a constant flow of stuff coming into the house. Because of the amount of space I have, there has to be a constant stuff going out. So this is something I just need to be very vigilant about and this has made it so that it takes up a lot less of my time and a lot less of my brain space, which is really awesome. It feels like it's moving my house in the right direction. I've been thinking about that sort of in various ways, on and off, for a couple of months and I haven't been thinking about software. I have this fear that like, maybe that means I'm never going to think about software again. I go through these phases where I've got like, "Oh, I'm going to come up with a bunch of new ideas," where I'm coming up with new ideas for some whatever reason. Maybe I'm making new conference talks, I'm doing stuff, and I'm thinking about software a lot. Then I go through these phases where I don't do that, like I sort of retrench and maybe... I don't know. I think about other stuff for a while. So it's been home organization for several months now. I was like this, "I'm never going to think about software again," because it's just that -- [Laughter] CHARLES: Career change. ROBERT: Oh, man. This sounds so much like my life since I moved down to Austin. SARAH: You know, I live in San Francisco and I'm not 25, I'm 40. A lot of it is like maybe I'm just too old for software now. I should just give up and live out the rest of my career doing quiet, maintenance work -- [Laughter] SARAH: Somewhere. I don't know. Then suddenly, this thing happened on Monday, where I was just like, "Oh, code, an organization." And boom! There it was. I realized, I was like, "I basically just had to give my brain some time off," like my conscious brain needs some time off from software and it wasn't that it had disappeared because what I came up with on Monday was really just how home organization applies to code because I realized that the feelings that I get when I'm trying to figure out what I should do with code are very similar to the feelings that I get what I'm trying to figure out whether I should get rid of a thing. I look at this piece of code and I'm like, "Should I change this? Should I get rid of this? Should I refactor it?" You know, why I can't get rid of that? We just spent two weeks refactoring it so I can't change it again. [Laughter] SARAH: We just put in a story for refactoring this and we spent three days and I can't go back to the [inaudible] people and tell them, "I need to change it more." Or, "I really like this code because I wrote it with someone that I really liked." CHARLES: So I don't want to get rid of it. SARAH: I don't want to get rid of it because then I would lose the memory of working with, you know. CHARLES: I actually can say that I have experienced that. SARAH: Yeah, there's a lot of reasons why you don't want to change code. What I was thinking about, like maybe I was asking the wrong question, in the same way that 'should I keep this' is the wrong question when you're talking about stuff. Maybe 'should I change this' is the wrong question when you're talking about code. Maybe it's sort of leading you in the same way with stuff that leads you down this conversation of reasons that don't really have anything to do with the essential quality of why the code is there or why the thing is there. We need something that helps us reassess our needs. So if our needs have changed, maybe you don't need that thing anymore because your needs have changed. Same way with code. If your needs have changed, maybe you don't need that code anymore, at least not in the form that it's at now. I think that question for code that, "Does it bring me joy," because joy is not something that I think is concrete enough when we're talking about code. I think the question for code is do I understand this? Do I understand what it's doing? Not just understand it like a very surface level of like, "Can I figure out what this syntax means?" But understand it more like the grok level of like, I understand this at a very deep level. I understand why it's here. I understand what problem it's solving. I understand why this abstraction is necessary. I understand how it got here. CHARLES: Yeah, how it fits into the bigger picture. SARAH: How it fits into the bigger picture, exactly, like the application. CHARLES: How it fits in with like our conventions that are just purely stylistic. SARAH: How does it fit in with the other stuff that we've been doing? How does it fit in with the product needs and the features we're trying to build and the business goals and all of that stuff, all of these different levels of understanding of why this code is here and what it does? CHARLES: Do other team members' understanding factor into that? Like, "Do I understand the way that other people understand it," so to speak? SARAH: I think that it can. But I think the important thing is whether you personally understand it. CHARLES: Okay, like it's a very personal decision. SARAH: I think it is. Hopefully, what you do is you want different people looking at the same code. You don't want just one person on a piece of code that no one else ever sees, whether it's pairing or code review or whether it's something else. It need to be really clear to someone is coming in and looking at that code what it does, what it means, and why it's there? CHARLES: Right. I guess the reason I asked the question is because a lot of times when I look at a piece of code, I try and really step outside of myself and say, "What will someone else think who has never been on this project before?" Or, "Who is on this project and they see this code, will they understand it?" SARAH: Absolutely. It's definitely a part of it when you're on a team. CHARLES: Yeah, so I'm just trying to figure out how that question factors into this framework. SARAH: I think that it depends a lot on how you distribute tasks. For example, if you work in a shop where you're pair programming most of the time, so there's always two people looking at a piece of code, 'do I understand this' is a reasonable question just for the two of you to consider, both from the fact that you can pool your knowledge but also from the fact that 'are there pieces of this that you understand that I don't understand' and vice versa. On the other hand, if you work in a shop where it's more like, "Here's the piece of code that you work on like you own this section of code." Then I think it's more important for you to be able to step outside and be like, "Okay, do I understand this? Would other people on my team understand this?" That can be a very difficult thing to assess and that's where I think it's very helpful to do things like code reviews, call people in and be like, "Hey, can I run some stuff by you. I'm trying to figure out if this is good or not," because what you want is you want a code base that is comfortable and understandable for you and for your team. Just like the thing that makes the KonMari Method powerful for stuff is that it doesn't tell you what you're going to end up with. It doesn't tell you what level of clutter versus cleanliness is good for you. It doesn't tell you. You either end up like something in one of these simple living magazines or end up something like Quarters, the TV show. There's a bunch of places in the middle, they're all fine. Everyone's going to fall somewhere differently along that line. So I've managed now that I've thought about this a lot to set up my kitchen in a way that is very comfortable for me, like I know where things are, I can find them really easily, things that I use are at hand. But other people come in, they're just like, "I have no idea where everything is," like it's very personal. The organizational system you end up with [inaudible] that you have is a very personal thing and that's why, if you look at something like staged houses, so you're selling your house, you hire someone to put in rugs and furniture and stuff and make it look like somebody lives there so that people can walk in and sort of imagine themselves in this space, they don't put any of that clutter into the stage. They don't put any books on the coffee table except the big picture books. They don't leave the remote controls on the couch. There's no plunger by the toilet. There's no like -- CHARLES: There's no Legos on the floor. ROBERT: Everything that looks good. SARAH: Everything that makes it more personal, they leave out because it looks like somebody else's mess. You go into something like that and you're like, "This is not my mess. This is somebody else's mess. It can't possibly be my house and I'm not going to buy it. ROBERT: Oh, do we do this for software in conference talks and posts? SARAH: Absolutely, we do. That's sounds very similar when you get someone new onto a project, especially if they're more senior and they'll walk in and be like this, I can't live like this. [Laughter] SARAH: This is somebody else's mess and clearly we need to make some changes. But that's the reason why they leave it out of the staged houses is because you want people to be able to imagine their own level of clutter and disorganization that superimposed on the skeleton. But real life is not that. Real life is somewhere between that and hoarders. There's a very interesting parallel there with code, which is like when we look at code, if we look at the object-oriented design textbooks, you look at conference talks, you look at blog post, sample code, it's all very staged house. It's very uncomplicated. It has no clutter in it and that's because you're supposed to be able to look at that. CHARLES: I mean, that clutter can distract the sales process so to speak. SARAH: Exactly, like they have an idea they're trying to get across and the clutter would distract people from the idea. But the problem there is the same with the staged house which it's very difficult to tell what it will be like once you move in. It's very difficult to take some of these ideas that you see demonstrated in these staged environments and take them and apply them to your code base which is probably closer to a hoarded house than to a staged house especially if it's a code base that existed for a while over time, that has been worked on by lots of different people. This is the problem that I've noticed with a lot like there's some really amazing books about software design that have come out in the last couple of years. Of course, Sandi Metz's book is at the top of my list. But the thing that people have trouble with, like they love the book. They love the book. I love the book. But then they find it very difficult to apply those principles when they sit down in front of a code base that has already been worked on for six or seven years, in some cases by maybe 50 different people, who knows, over time. How do you take those principles and start applying them in a way that moves you in the right direction? That's where people are just like, "I can't do this. I can't do this and I'm not going to do this." And it's very similar to a problem where you've got a very dirty house and you don't know where to start in order to move it towards something from the Simple Living magazines or are more like a staged house, you don't know how to start to get it in that direction and so you just kind of give up. The powerful thing about KonMari is that it doesn't give you like, "Here's what you're going to end up with it," but it gives you a way to get started on something that gives you a very easy question to answer. It moves you in the right direction. It moves your house in the right direction without being overly prescriptive about what you'll end up with. CHARLES: Yeah, what that direction even is. SARAH: What you'll end up with is personal for you, anyway. I think the question about 'do I understand this code' is similarly helpful and that it moves you and your code base in the right direction without necessarily giving you a lot of prescription about how you do it or where it goes or even where it's going to end up. It just gives you a question to ask that it tells you whether or not this code needs to change and a question is, "Do I understand it?" If I don't, it should probably change, and if I do, okay, we can just kind of leave it for now. CHARLES: So now, if you're working on a team where you have two different people, maybe different skill levels, maybe just a different temperament or different set of preferences, what do you do when the answer to that question is two different things for two different people? SARAH: Well, sort of like when you move in with someone. This is the hard part about living with somebody else, is that you have to mutually agree upon a method of keeping your house that is agreeable to both of you. Sometimes, when they say that working through a startup is like being married to someone, there's some elements of that because you basically have to figure out like, "Okay, we're going to live in this code together. If we're going to live in this code together, we better both be happy with it. How can we both be happy with it?" It involves usually, some compromise, like I really hate doing the dishes but I don't mind cooking and vice versa. You have to figure out. It really bothers me when there's socks on the floor but I don't care if you leave dirty dishes in the sink or whatever it is. You just have to have these conversations about, "What is going to make the code livable for you?" You basically want to end up with a code base that's understandable where all parts of it are understandable to everyone on the team. Now that's like an ideal. You're not going to get there. But that's kind of what you're going for. If you have two people in the code and you have disagreements about what is the right way to go, sometimes it can help to just be like, "Hey, I don't really understand this," versus, "I don't think this is the right decision and here's why I don't understand this." Sometimes, reframing the question in that way can prompt them to communicate reasons that they have for doing this that they maybe weren't able to articulate before, for example. Just like when you move in with someone, you need to have sort of this commitment to finding a level of housekeeping that you're both happy with. When you're working on the team, you do have to have sort of a mutual commitment to having a code base that everyone can live in. CHARLES: Right. I like that because having like, "I just don't understand this and here's the reason why," that being a completely totally valid answer because sometimes in a code base, where someone's brand new or maybe they're at a more junior level, they don't quite have the tools to understand it or there's a lot of steps that haven't yet taken. It's like understanding is not going to be accessible to them immediately. SARAH: And maybe that means that's the wrong decision for that code base, is that right? CHARLES: Right. SARAH: Because if something is abstracting to the point that a lot of people on the team don't get it, then it's probably not the right abstraction for that code base. That abstraction might be totally appropriate in a code base in which you've got folks that are more experienced who understand why it's there, who have the scars from previous times when they didn't do it, et cetera, et cetera, and they understand why it's there. There is sort of like intellectual understanding of like, "Yes, object-oriented design is a good thing," and then there's, I would call it almost emotional understanding of like, "Oh, yeah, there's this time that we didn't do that and that worked out badly for us." I think that folks that don't have the sort of experiential understanding, sometimes they just need to have that. They need to get that. Sometimes, what that means is you want to let them see what happens to a certain extent. Let them see what happens when you don't do that. CHARLES: Right. This reminds me actually, I've got three kids and the way our house is now versus the way it was seven years ago is wildly different -- the way that we live. You know, with our first child, I'm ashamed to admit it, like our strategy was just to kind of put safety locks all over everything: every cabinet, on the oven, not on the refrigerator, but just kind of 'childproof' the house so that we wouldn't have to change the way that we lived but it made the house really uncomfortable for our children. And kind of having observed that over the course of having the second and the third, there's not anything that we childproof really. We put the dangerous chemicals way up high, where only we can get them. It's a little bit more inconvenient if we need to access the bleach but that level of discomfort is something that we live with. We've always got cups that are set out on a cabinet that sits below the counter so we've got water cups set out so that the children can get water and stuff anytime that we want, and we try, for things that they're going to need, make sure that it's accessible if you happen to be four feet shorter. That's just a condition of who you are. So it means that the actual configuration of our house, even though it's the same house, is just radically different and it is more optimized or it's optimized as a compromise for the fact that there are people living in this house now that haven't learned how to operate everything but they just need to learn that the oven is hot and you don't go there rather than slapping a lock on it. SARAH: Your house is probably more comfortable for you as a group, right? CHARLES: Yes. SARAH: And what that means is that as the 'senior' in the house, it's slightly less comfortable for you in some ways but it's worth it. It's worth being less comfortable for you in order to increase comfort across the board for everyone in the household. CHARLES: Right, because it means that if the child needs water, I don't have to stop what I'm doing to get a cup out of the cabinet and fill it for them. SARAH: And they feel [inaudible] over the stuff in their house. They feel like they live there, like the house is for them. CHARLES: Yes. ROBERT: That builds comfort and confidence. SARAH: Yeah, I think that's a very good analogy. Anytime you have a group of people living together, everyone makes compromises in order for the house to be set up in the way that's optimized for the group. CHARLES: Yeah. "So man, how are we going to apply this to software? What's the next step? What are the concrete steps?" I guess it's just asking those questions, like asking, "Did I understand it?" SARAH: It is asking those questions and it's also, if you are one of the more experienced folks on the team, it's your job to elicit the answers to that from other people that are less experienced. They're not going to tell you. A lot of times, sometimes, they may or may not feel comfortable saying that they don't understand something. So it's your job to really try and figure out like, "Do they get this at a level that is acceptable? Do they understand why this abstraction is here at an intellectual level or at an experiential level, at an emotional level? Do they get it?" Which is not something you can really just ask. In many cases, it's your job to -- CHARLES: To just observe it. SARAH: To observe and to see how it works. If people are having a hard time understanding where things are in the code base, it could be because everything is so cluttered that you can't see anything or it could be that everything is so hidden that you can't see anything. It's sort of the staged house equivalent where everything is too abstracted, or is it the hoarded house equivalent where everything is just obscure and under piles of junk. Either way, no matter which direction you need to move towards the middle, the question is always, "Do I understand this?" ROBERT: I like this a lot. I keep on coming to the analogy of if you put a chef in a different kitchen where everything is just totally rearranged and they don't know where their knives are, where their measuring cups are and stuff, I think that plays perfectly in a software of like you put somebody into a code base that they don't know, "All right, I'll figure it out." It's not their home. It's not what they're comfortable with or used to. Yeah, I think this is making my brain work on how I can apply this. SARAH: Or if they're moving in like when you hire somebody and they 'move into your house', you need to be ready for things to change. And this is one of the reasons why I've been saying for many years in ways that I think maybe didn't quite connect as well as they could have, that really the team is the code and vice versa. Every time you add someone to the team or someone leaves the team, teams are not mutable. You get a completely new team. So, it's not like you can just sort of carry on like you did before. Every time you get someone new onto the team, everything gets reimagined, every breakdown of responsibility, every decision. You look at it in a new way when you have someone new come on to the team. If they're going to stay, like in your chef example, if this person is moving in and this is going to be their kitchen and they're sharing it with other people, then what you're going to end up with is probably something in between what it is when they get there and what they had before. They're going to bring in some ideas, you're going to keep some of your ideas and you're going to end up with something in the middle. The same thing has to happen with your code when you bring someone new onto the team. CHARLES: I really like the way that this just focuses the discussion and I know that you've talked about this a lot before, whether it's a kitchen or a house, this idea of the code not being so much the shrink-wrapped product. It's a structure, yes. It is definitely that but it's a structure that you, as people, inhabit. It protects you from certain things and it provides you certain things that you need to live. When people ask us why is a continuous delivery pipeline so important in automating all these things for deploying your software it's because the idea is this is going to be a living thing that your team will actually be living in. And every member of that team will be living in from the time they start with the company or start with the project until the time that they exit and the time that they leave. It's the actual living process that you want to make comfortable and pleasant. SARAH: And what comfortable and pleasant means will be different depending on who's on that team? It's not something that you can have like a -- CHARLES: It's not. SARAH: Right. This is why all of these things are like, "Here's how you design things." It always seemed to fall flat. I think it would be better titled like, "Here's how I did one thing once." [Laughter] SARAH: Or, "Here's what works for me." I feel like every conference talk that is about design could be, "Here's what works for me. I did this one thing once." CHARLES: You might want to try it. SARAH: You could try it. It might work for you, it might not, right? CHARLES: Right. SARAH: A lot of times where conference talks fall flat and blog post and everything else was why they're more like, "This is how you do it. This is the right way to do it." You're like, "Well, it certainly works for you." [Laughter] ROBERT: The one time I gave a conference talk, the night before I went through every slide and scrutinized it as much as I thought somebody out in the public would do it. And I think that might be where we go through in a 'stage our code'. It's like we're trying to make it perfect for somebody that might come through and scrutinize it or criticize. Because I know when I was going up to put those slides up, I wanted to make sure it was the best foot I could possibly put forward. CHARLES: Right, we don't want to be wrong but I think that's where it actually, thinking of it as 'this is what worked for me' and this is an example from my house that worked. This is a way that I organize my code and my space. That'll not take a lot of pressure off of not having like, "I am right and I'm an authority at saying that this is the right way." That's a lot of pressure. SARAH: I don't even like that. I try and frame a lot of the things that I talk about as like, "Here's the thing that works for me really well. Maybe it'll work for you too. Let me know." CHARLES: Yeah. ROBERT: Yeah, that's how I give it. CHARLES: Up until really about two years ago, I felt like that was the expectation that was put on people is to say the right thing. SARAH: That's true. And I think that there's a lot of teams where that is an unspoken requirement and that's something that we should examine. Because even within a team like 'here's a thing that works for me or here's a thing that worked on my last project' isn't very different from saying something like, "Well, industry best practice --" [Laughter] SARAH: And I think that like you get to a certain level of experience and people expect you to say things like that. In my experience, the best way to do it is 'blah'. I mean, it's not actually a super useful statement because your past experience may or may not be directly applicable to the thing you're looking at right now, no matter how experienced you are. I think that it's much more friendly to have a range of experience levels to say things like, "Well, this worked for me on this project. Let's talk about whether it could work here." CHARLES: Right, yeah. ROBERT: I really like that. CHARLES: I do. It's so hard because your human nature is to try and boil things down into a simple binary. SARAH: People would love to have a list of rules, I'll tell you that. This is a problem. This is one of the reasons why I think it's important for us to come up with these questions that you can ask that will move you in the right direction without giving you rules, that will move you in the direction of finding the rules that work for you. Because rules themselves, people really, really, really want them. But they're always misused. They're always misunderstood and what you really need are the questions that led you to those rules in the first place. That's what people really want, although maybe that's not what they are asked. ROBERT: Ah, the Steve Jobs approach. SARAH: [Inaudible] to start wearing black turtlenecks. I hate turtlenecks. ROBERT: And New Balance shoes and the jeans. [Laughter] SARAH: But yeah. I think it's one of those things where people are very hungry for guidance. But we've been giving them the wrong kind of guidance. We've been trying to give them rules. When what we really need to do is give them questions to help them develop their own judgment. ROBERT: Right. Like when I was coming up, I thought, in everything, there was a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. I've been slowly, sadly figuring out that it's not all black and white and it's not all just logic. I've always treated programming as like, "Well, they wrote this and it's just logic so I should be able to understand this." It's been a long road to come to this conclusion that kind of like what you're talking about and this has been enlightening for me. Like you are going to solve your problems your own way, your own person, and you'll think about things differently. I really like the analogy of 'this is your house and this is how you work and live in your house'. SARAH: Right, and no one would tell you in order to be a proper human being, you have to set up your house this way. ROBERT: Exactly. SARAH: We feel comfortable telling people, in order to be a professional developer, you need to set up your code this way. I think that those are very similar statements and we should really examine a lot of these 'should' statements that are all over the place when you're talking about software. Think about whether or not they're actually serving us in our mission of doing more things with tech. Like overall, my mission here is for people to be more effective with code so that we can do more interesting things with it. I live in the TV show, Silicon Valley, essentially so I'm surrounded by these companies that are solving these little tiny problems and I'm tired of it. I want us to solve bigger ones. In order to do that, we need to get better at coding. We need to get better at managing code over time and that's what I'm trying to do. CHARLES: Because it's not going to scale, otherwise. We're out of time. We're going to have to have you on the podcast again because I don't think we've got to... what? About 15% of the things that we want to talk about? SARAH: Oh, we are overtime, aren't we? CHARLES: Yeah. But thank you so much, Sarah, for coming on and talking with everybody. You drop real quick your Twitter handle so that if people want to have follow on discussion, they can reach out to you that way, or your other preferred means of contact. SARAH: Yeah, Twitter is probably the best. My Twitter is @sarahmei, and that's mostly where I am. CHARLES: All right. Well, fantastic. As always, feel free to reach out to us too. I'm @cowboyd on Twitter. And what are you, Rob? ROBERT: @robdel12. CHARLES: All right. It's a wrap. Thank you so much, Sarah, and we'll see you in Ether and hopefully we'll have you on the podcast again sometime.

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Sarah Allen CTO, Mightyverse Date: January 14, 2011 Interview with Sarah Allen [intro music] Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders. I'm the CEO of NCWIT, the National Center for Women in Information Technology. This is the next in a series of just great interviews with entrepreneurs who have started some really interesting companies and our interviewee today is no exception. With me is Larry Nelson from W3W3. Hi Larry. Larry Nelson: Hi, I'm happy to be here. This is an exciting series. Lucy: What's going on with W3W3? Larry: Well, we're interviewing all kinds of interesting people. Now, we don't interview only women, just so you know. Lucy: Oh, OK. Larry: Our interview not too long ago with Leonard Nimoy was fantastic. Lee Kennedy: You're such a bragger. [laughs] Larry: Yes. I couldn't help it. Lucy: Also with me is Lee Kennedy, who is a director of NCWIT and also a serial entrepreneur. Her latest company is Boulder Search. Welcome Lee. Lee: Thanks Lucy, always great to be here. Lucy: Today we're interesting a really busy, interesting person, Sarah Allen. She's currently the CTO and co-founder of Mightyverse. I went and played around at Mightyverse and you just must go. All the listeners must go to Mightyverse and play with it. I don't know, Sarah, if that's the right thing to say, play with it, or not, but I had great fun looking for languages and thinking about phrases. Basically what you've created at Mightyverse what you're calling a language marketplace. And you just don't see a pronunciation or hear a pronunciation, but you see people's faces actually saying it. It looks good on your mobile device. You can be anywhere and go figure out how the heck to say something. Sarah is primarily self-funding this company through some independent consulting work. And one other thing before we get to the interview, I wanted to say especially to our listeners who follow NCWIT and what we do, Sarah has started RailsBridge which is providing free workshops teaching Ruby on Rails aimed at women. Thank you for doing that Sarah and welcome. Sarah Allen: I'm very happy to be here. Lucy: Before we start, why don't you tell us a little bit about Mightyverse, over and above what I said, as a way of introduction? Sarah: Well, I think that it's fine to say that you played with it. I feel like playing is the best way to learn. We definitely want to create an engaging way to learn how to speak languages. And I'm really excited that we just released a collection of Hebrew phrases on the iPhone. So if you have an iPhone or an iPad you can go to the store and for 99 cents get a collection of Hebrew phrases. And we're really in a phase where we're market testing the mobile angle of Mightyverse. So you can see the full collection on the web but we're releasing a series of collections to get feedback from people about the mobile experience. Lucy: Well, people in the Bay area, I think you can show up and record your phrases and maybe even get a free lunch from Sarah? [laughter] Sarah: Absolutely. If anybody wants to come and record a phrase in their native language we'd be delighted to have you as our guest. Lucy: Sarah, you are quite a technologist, obviously you're a chief technology officer. But prior to your work at Mightyverse, you've worked in Shockwave and Flash and you were named one of the top 25 women on the web in 1998. So a very amazing technology career. How did you first get into technology? Sarah: Well, I started programming in Basic on an Apple II, back in the day when your computer would arrive with a manual that taught you Basic. I really taught myself from a book that shipped with the Apple at that day. And I got into it because my mom went into selling computers after being laid off from teaching in the public schools in the Boston area. And so, she brought an Apple II home and I taught myself. Larry: Wow. Lucy: Basic, I learned Basic in my high school math class. Lee: That's amazing. Had you done other kind of techie things before you jumped into that? Sarah: I think that that was the first really technical thing that I had done. I didn't see a big division between technical things and non- technical things. My dad had a philosophy where he would always teach both my brother and me everything that he did. He did handy stuff around the house and fixed cars. He taught us both math and different things. So I didn't really see that the computer was a really technical thing. I thought that building physical circuits was really technical and I thought that fixing cars was really technical. But I thought that it was just a toy. Lee: Yeah. Sarah: I knew it was a serious thing for my mom and for other people. I approached it as like this adventure, like "Oh, let's play with this thing." Lucy: Certainly from your position as a CTO, you're always assessing technologies and listeners are always curious to know which ones you see as being the most exciting. Sarah: Well, I think right now mobile is super exciting. But what's most exciting about mobile is the fact that we now have these huge data storage that we can access. We have cloud computing so that it's really easy to deploy services and to access data stores. We're starting to see a lot of easily interconnected web services. I think we're finally approaching what Tim Berners-Lee meant by the semantic web, this notion of having these services on the web that you can connect to and machines can connect to and make sense of. So, we're starting to be able to assemble fairly complex systems without building every piece ourselves. I think that's really exciting. Lucy: So it's clear how you got into technology. How did you get into being an entrepreneur? Sarah: Well I feel like I kind of stumbled into entrepreneurship because all through college I was a teaching assistant at this one class. And these two guys who TA'd with me and then we were head TAs. And we did a number of projects together, coding together. And they both hooked up with another friend of theirs and they decided to start a company. So this happened about six months before I graduated because I graduated in the middle of the year. So I did as like "Well, my friends are starting this company. I'll work there for the summer." And kind of fell into it because I got wrapped up in what we were doing and ended up really being a co-founder of that company. And that was CoSA, which was a company that created After Effects, which is now sold by Adobe. That really gave me the feel for what it meant to be involved in a startup company which otherwise I don't think I really would have understood how exciting that is and why I would have wanted to do it. Lucy: Tell us what it is about being an entrepreneur that you love so much. Sarah: Well, I really love creating things that don't exist and solving problems that either people don't see or they don't realize can be solved by today's technology. I think that's really exciting. The thing that convinced me to actually be a software developer, because I graduated from college... I graduated with a CS degree. But I didn't think I was going to be a software developer because I thought it was straightforward. I thought it was like doing crossword puzzles or Rubik's cubes. It's entertaining. But I didn't really take it seriously. I didn't see when I was in college the power of computing and how it can be applied to real world problems because everything seemed really obvious to me. So I figured anybody could do it. And then when I was working at CoSA, CoSA actually was a very small company. We also kept up tech support. And I remember somebody who was calling to ask me about a question who had bought our software said "I didn't think computers could do this." And I realized that I had a unique perspective that I never recognized before. Because of my experience, because of my skills, because of my unique world view, I can see things that I'm not the only person who sees. But the majority of the world doesn't and that's a real opportunity for me. That's kind of exciting. Larry: Boy, I'll say. Well you mentioned your parents. It was really neat how they had a way of helping steer you somewhat. But I want to talk about your career. Who are some of the people along the way that have supported your career, whether they be mentors or role models or whatever? Sarah: Early in my career I really struggled with not seeing women role models. That was really important to me. I felt a little isolated. I was often the only woman on my team. I did find men who were great role models. Harry Chesley, who created the Shockwave team and hired me at Macromedia, was the person I learned about the Internet from. He was the first person who I ever heard say that he wanted to work on open source. I asked him what he would want to do if he made it rich and could retire early and he said he would want to write software for free. And I thought that was really bizarre and now I understand what that means. Lucy: Yeah. Sarah: And my friend David Simons who I started CoSA with who still works on After Effects at Adobe. He's really always inspired me because he stays true to himself. He always respected me. And he always saw, I think even before I saw things in myself he saw them in me, in terms of what I could do. Our collaboration showed me how we could work together. And those kinds of relationships were really inspiring. It may sound clich�, but my husband has been incredibly supportive, I think another person who will see in me things before I recognize them myself. Having his support in picking through these career choices is super, super important. But after a while I started to get frustrated that I didn't have women ahead of me. I started to feel that maybe I didn't belong. Maybe this wasn't the career for me. Were some of the things happening that I didn't like because of my gender? I didn't know and I felt uncertain about that. I actually read this book about the 50 Nobel prize winners in math and science who are women. And I read an essay about Emmy Noether, who is a German mathematician who was actually the first woman to be paid to be a professor in Germany. But before that she did math because she loved doing math and she lectured under somebody else's name because she was so thrilled with the opportunity to talk to people about her ideas about math. She helped Einstein lay the mathematical foundation for his theories of relativity. Lucy: Wow. Sarah: She was just very excited to work with people who had respect for her so it didn't matter that she didn't get paid for it, that the rest of the world didn't acknowledge it because in her small circle, they all knew that Emmy was the person to go to when you had a math question. Then I looked around me and I saw that, OK, I have this group of guys who all respect me and we build great software. I was working on Flash video at the time, working with an amazing team. And I just felt like "Well, this is what I love to do. Forget all of that nonsense. I'm just going to follow what I love and the rest will take care of itself." Lucy: Well, that's a great story. I think, too, some of the work you're doing with Ruby on Rails giving women the confidence and skill set to get out there and to start contributing in a space is really going to also add role models. Sarah: It is my hope. Lucy: And thank you for doing that. So, we are going to turn now, away from technology and mentoring into sort of the dark side of the career. [laughs] And asking about the toughest thing you ever had to do so far in your career. Sarah: This is actually the hardest question. I am thinking about this interview. There isn't one thing. The hardest thing is really making decisions like the hardest thing for me, it may sound a little tried, is just making priorities, making decisions. I used to feel that they were right answers, and that if there were some negative consequence to a decision I made that then I have made the wrong answer. And what I come to realize is that every decision comes with risks and if am deciding am I going to do A or B or C, each thing has potentially negative consequences. And to make a decision with your eyes open and to say "OK I am going to do this and there might be some fallout and I might do it anyhow." I feel like I make those decisions 20 times a day running a company. I make new significant technical decisions for my neighbors who make strategic decisions, who make those life decisions. Should I be spending this much time on my career instead of my family? It's not really that kind of either/or but all the little decisions add up and they have consequences both good and bad. So, I think that's the hardest thing. Lucy : Well and sometimes, too, I think. You think if you don't do anything. There is no risk with doing nothing and not making decision, whereas in fact, right? Larry: Yeah. Sarah: That's the biggest risk. Lucy: That's the biggest risk of all. Sarah: I mean I think that, I probably instead of the most wide spread computer software that I've ever developed was Shockwaves where I wrote... Even though there were only four engineers in the project. I wrote a significant amount of code. I was involved with many, many releases of it. I don't think I got any real risk in developing that. I never did anything that I wasn't sure what's going to work. I really like the civilization in the late 90s. I have never really taken real risks in my career, and so later I started to try to take risks. I was able to do much more impressive things because they didn't know it worked the first time. But if you make a decision, you try to do something knowing that it might not work and litigate that. You can lay a path. You can set expectations that you are experimenting and then you are able to do things that are much more clear. Lucy: And that brings us to the next question when you think back about all the things you have done in your career, whether it's working with technologies, making decisions or what to do. If you are kind of sum it all that and give advice to somebody that's looking to get in to being an entrepreneur, what advice would you give them? Sarah: I have couple of pieces of advices. The number one piece of advice is to pick the people you work with first, it's more important than the project, the technology anything else. It's that you are working with great people that you respect for, that you can learn from, that they have respect for you and that you are going to have a great working environment. When I went to college, I would say pick your college class by the professor not by the subject. I feel that's completely true for your working environment. So if you think it's an amazing job but you are not sure about the people or an "OK" job with amazing people, take the OK job with amazing people because the amazing people will turn it into an amazing job. It's more likely your project is going to change than the people change. So, that's the first thing which I think is really important Lucy: And that's great advice. Larry: Yeah, you got it. Lucy: Very true. Sarah: The second thing is to really find your passion. Find the things that makes you tick, find the things that you love. What is the thing that you can do just forever and never get bored of? And that's what you should be doing. It can be very, as a young person, I didn't know what that was. But when I found it and I didn't recognize that when I found it that I kept following it. What's this thing that I am into? I would pick things. It felt like I was making career choices on a lark. But I would just follow my gut instinct about this. This feel is exciting to me and then in retrospect, I could see a pattern, but it was seven or eight years before I saw a pattern. But I was following what is it that drives me? What is that excites me and that lead me to where I am today. Larry: Very good, great advice. What are your personal characteristics that have given you the advantage of being the entrepreneur? Sarah: It's kind of a hard question because I feel like I'm such a different person than I was when I started being an entrepreneur and I feel that the things that made me successful now, they feel like there are very different things that made me successful then. But I think the common thread that runs through it is that it's creative work. At least this is my angle at it. In college, I got two degrees. One in computer science and the other in visual arts. I am at studio art. There are two things that I learned. One was in being creative, sometimes that blank canvass if you want enemy. You need edit the paper. You need to pour your creativity into and creativity is work, like creating that structure for yourself. Creating the path, getting yourself into the creative mindset is working at a discipline. The other thing is being able to receive and give in an affective critique. One of the things that you learned in Art 101 or whatever they called it is we did lots of drawings. Everybody would put their art in the wall and you were supposed to critique it. I would come and I would look at a drawing. It would be like Oh, my God. I can't believe that person just turn that in. [laughter] Sarah: And if you would say, the composition of the little jumbo but this quality of line really speaks to me. I like the gracefulness of that line and I learned to pick out the parts of a drawing that were really wonderful and disregard the thing that didn't turn out OK. And that made me not only be able to communicate more effectively but more importantly, see things that I otherwise wouldn't see. I think those skills lead me to be able to interact with people and hone my own skills in a way that to give me an advantage of an entrepreneur. Lucy: I think that's great. Was that your picture that she said about Larry? Larry: Maybe. Lucy: Maybe just a little? Sarah: I would never say. Lucy: No, never say. Larry: Thank you. Thank you. Lucy: No, never say but I just thought that was wonderful. Just to say it. Now, Sarah, you mentioned in your earlier question around decision making about is it the right time for me to be spending this time away from my family and working so much in my career? And so, get us to our next question about bringing balance to your personal and professional lives. Any advice you would like to give the listeners about that? Sarah: First off, I'm probably the worst person to give advice about work right now. Lucy: Go ahead. Yeah? Sarah: I do have a family. I love my family. I wish I could spend more time with them which is ironic because it obviously not a big enough wish to overcome my drive to do other things in my life. And so, in that way you have to have some kind of balance. You have to figure out how you are going to make peace with all of these things that you want in your life. I was very influenced by a woman. I don't know her name who gave a talk at Grace Hopper Celebration of Women Computing. I think it is 1997. Right around that time, I was either pregnant or about to be and it was that talk about having children and having a technical career in. For the first time I heard somebody who actually said that she thought that having a career in technology was an advantage for being a mother. I was expecting to hear all about compromise. But she said it was an advantage and she went through a lot of ways that it really helped her relation with her son. And, what she said was, "You can have it all, just not all at once." Lucy: That's a good way to put it. Sarah: That's what I try to do at my best. That when I am home with my family, I am there with them. Like I'm most successful when I can make time to do what I am doing and really do it fully and then decide that "OK, this is time I am not going to spend with my family. I'm going to spend it on other thing and really spend it at that. If you can do that successfully then I think you can have really great balance. But it is really challenging. But it is incredibly rewarding when it does work. Lucy: Sarah, we've really enjoyed talking to you. Just feels like you've got this Zen about you. So, tell us what's next for you? Sarah: Well, a lot of things. I am really excited about RailsBridge becoming self sustaining. I read a great book "The Starfish and The Spider." Its subtitle is the "Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations" I'm taking a bunch of lesson on that book in trying to create, help create or empower this group of volunteers and create structure around it so that it can just... The workshops can be self sustaining and don't need me as a leader. Or don't need any leader and they can just work by themselves. It's really exciting that's starting to happen. Also, I'm working to have my consulting company with this grown up around me. It started with just a way to fund my product development ideas but that also started to become a self sustaining company. And then, that will really liberate me to focus on my neighbors. I am really excited to spend more time writing code, spend time figuring out the hard problems around language or even better yet, figuring out the easy problems that are going to be most rewarding first. It's such a vast problem space but there are also so many things that don't require a lot of technology. I am excited about a problem which is as much a human problem as it is a problem for technology. Larry: Excellent. Lucy: Well, we are going to stay tuned, that's for sure. Larry: Yeah. Lucy: Well, thanks very much Sarah. It was great talking to you. I want to remind listeners where they can find these interviews at w3w3w3.com and ncwit.org. Larry: We are really looking forward to it. We are going to follow you, Sarah. Sarah: Great, you can follow me on Twitter at my hacker identity. It's all sorts.com. Like the dinosaur. Lee: OK. Cool. We will be there. Lucy: Thank you so much. Sarah: All right. Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Sarah AllenInterview Summary: Sarah Allen is a serial innovator with a history of developing leading-edge products, such as After Effects, Shockwave, Flash video, and OpenLaszlo. She has a habit of recognizing great and timely ideas, finding talented teams, and creating compelling software. Release Date: January 14, 2011Interview Subject: Sarah AllenInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 23:55