Podcast appearances and mentions of sarah yes

The property management industry is no stranger to conferences and in-person events, but have you ever thought about creating an event yourself? In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull discuss the behind-the-scenes of putting on a live event or conference and all the pros and cons of doing so. You'll Learn [04:39] Learning from Past Mistakes and Failures [15:32] Getting Back in the Saddle: DoorGrow Live [21:07] What Goes Into Creating a Conference? [30:31] The Magic of In-Person Events Quotables “I think being able to just connect with people, making sure that people know who you are and what you do, I mean, it's really valuable.” “When you've got a room full of people who are in the same sector, in the same industry, there's so much knowledge in that room.” “When you're connecting with other people that are like you, that are growth minded and you both share an industry and a share a business model, like it really helps you grow.” “Your business is the sum of the five property management business owners you as a business owner are most connected to.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: When you're connecting with other people that are like you, that are growth minded and you both share an industry and share a business model, like it really helps you grow. [00:00:08] Jason: Your business is the sum of the five property management business owners you as a business owner are most connected to. [00:00:13] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the Property Management Growth 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. [00:00:42] Jason: 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. [00:01:06] Jason: We're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show. All right.  [00:01:14] Sarah: Woo!  [00:01:15] Jason: So first, you'll have to excuse if I sound a little nasally today, because I have a cold, which doesn't happen often. And I might have given it to Sarah. I don't know. [00:01:25] Sarah: My sinuses just feel weird.  [00:01:27] Jason: So.  [00:01:27] Sarah: So thanks.  [00:01:28] Jason: Yeah.  [00:01:29] Sarah: Thanks for that.  [00:01:30] Jason: Okay, so.  [00:01:31] Sarah: Appreciate it.  [00:01:32] Jason: You keep kissing me. I'm not kissing you. Like I'm not trying to get you sick.  [00:01:35] Sarah: He's not kissing me.  [00:01:36] Sarah: She can't resist.  [00:01:37] Sarah: Does anybody believe that? Nobody believes you. Nobody should.  [00:01:40] Jason: I'm sick. You keep coming up to me. [00:01:42] Jason: I'm like, you want this? Obviously she does, guys. Obviously.  [00:01:46] Sarah: Oh brother.  [00:01:47] Sarah: Alright.  [00:01:48] Sarah: What a great episode. What a great kicker offered.  [00:01:51] Jason: So I might be coughing and I apologize. Alright, so what we're talking about today is we thought we'd give you a little bit of behind the scenes into us creating an event and us doing DoorGrow Live, getting prepped and prepared for this. You know, we put an entire year into getting this thing going and getting this prepared and promoting it, finding speakers. [00:02:15] Jason: And so let's chat a little bit about some of the behind the scenes stuff.  [00:02:19] Sarah: Yeah. So one of the things that I wanted to talk about is kind of everything that really goes into it behind the scenes that when you go attend an event, you just don't notice. You just don't like realize a lot of the times, unless you're used to running events. [00:02:35] Sarah: And once you start running an event, go run one event and then you will attend every other event differently. For example, when we go to, you know, Aaron's events, or Funnel Hacking Live, my brain is constantly going, like, operationally, this must be a nightmare. How on earth are they coordinating all of this? [00:02:56] Sarah: It's just insane. Because I know how crazy it is with our conferences, and we don't yet have thousands of people there. We will, at one point. But, man, there's just so much that goes into it. So, If you're ever considering running events, and I think that for property managers and for anyone who's a real estate agent or investor, I really think events are something that you should at least look into. And it doesn't have to be this big crazy event where, you know, you spend 25- 30 thousand dollars like we do and that's kind of like a low budget, you know. That's like you'll blow through that real quick. It doesn't have to be anything like that and it definitely doesn't have to be this, you know, this big crazy promoted thing you can do your own version of events like in a very different way, back when I was in property management, you know, we would do some little networking events and they were nowhere near the size, but also nowhere near the cost, but they can be really beneficial for you to do. So I think if you haven't experimented with that, then maybe get some tips and pointers and check it out. Like try it, experiment and see what happens. Because for me, it was really great to just be connected. So there's that saying, "your net worth is in your network," and I think being able to just connect with people, make sure that people know who you are and what you do, I mean, it's really valuable. So if you're a property manager and you haven't done a little in person event yet, then perhaps you might want to try. And we're going to talk a little bit about, you know, what goes into like a bigger event the way that we run them. So why don't you give them some background? [00:04:41] Sarah: When was your first? Your first DoorGrow Live was pre-Sarah, the pre-Sarah DoorGrow age, I think it was it 2018?  [00:04:49] Jason: Yeah. 2018. 2018. Yeah. Yeah.  [00:04:51] Sarah: Okay. Can you talk about you know, what was the first DoorGrow Live like?  [00:04:57] Jason: Oh man. Yeah. And if you want to get a visual of this, you can go to, I think it's photos.doorgrow.Com and we have photos of all of our different major events. You can go back to 2018 and there's a nice photo of me and Mike Michalowicz there. And so we brought in some big, you know, for me, they were big speakers. Some people that I really looked up to and that I got a lot of value from. [00:05:22] Jason: So, coach, authors, you know, people that I had worked with. And so, it was a big deal. We spent, I think we spent about $115,000. Putting that event together because I wanted to do it, right. I didn't want my first event to be Mickey Mouse or cheap or you know, whatever So I wanted to do a really good job and I thought well, "and we'll sell tickets to make up for it." We did. We sold about a hundred and fifteen tickets at around, I think $1,000 a pop. [00:05:53] Jason: And I have a whole podcast episode I did on this. I call it my $2 million mistake because we were growing at a pace of, we were doing about a million in revenue a year and we were growing at a pace of about 300% percent at the time we were growing really quickly. We had a lot of momentum, and I decided to do this big conference. It was a little bit of an ego thing. Like it was like kind of a dream that I wanted to feel cool and be on stage and it was super stressful. The event went really well. People liked it, but I was massively stressed during it. And then I didn't do another one for how many years? I don't know.  [00:06:29] Sarah: Yeah, that was his first and only and then like canceled it  [00:06:33] Jason: I was like, "I don't think I'll do that again." [00:06:35] Sarah: Yeah.  [00:06:36] Jason: I mean I didn't realize everything that goes into it. I'm sure people were watching me start my first conference from the sidelines who have done events in the space were like, "good luck, bro," because they know how hard it can be. [00:06:47] Jason: It's like starting a whole nother business but you have to recognize there's like the hotel. It's hard to do an event that's not at a hotel. So you kind of have to do it at hotels and so they have this like, sort of, they're like the mafia. [00:07:01] Jason: They have this control over doing events. Like, and you go to them, you're like, "I want to do an event here." And they're like, "cool." And like finances become a thing and they negotiate a group rate with you, which means you have to book certain number of rooms because they want you to book rooms, and if you don't book out the group rate for the rooms in the room block, then you're responsible to pay for that. [00:07:24] Jason: So we were on the hook for like a lot of money for rooms. I'm like, "well, how many rooms does that mean? And like how many nights?" And all this stuff. So just managing finances for an event is like managing finances for a dangerous business startup is really what it is. Because people have gone bankrupt from doing big events really big events where you have two, three thousand, five thousand. These are millions and millions of dollars in and out. [00:07:48] Sarah: Yeah. [00:07:49] Jason: And if they don't navigate this well, it can bankrupt companies  [00:07:53] Sarah: Russell just said that on stage. He didn't say who, but Russell Brunson said that he knew someone that was running a big event, didn't sell enough rooms in the room block, and he went bankrupt from it because it was such a large event and he was on the hook for so much money and ended up bankrupting the company. [00:08:13] Jason: It's dangerous. And then you got to get people to buy the ticket, book the hotel, like, and then there's marketing to do this. You got to spend a lot of money to get people to do this. And then, you know, in order to attract people, sometimes people will do like big speakers. Like I got some speakers and let me tell you speakers, they're expensive. [00:08:33] Jason: Like usually they, they want thousands and thousands of dollars. Like an  [00:08:37] Sarah: inexpensive speaker just to like put it out there, like an inexpensive speaker is still usually around like 5k  [00:08:44] Jason: Anyone you've probably heard of is that minimum 25 grand.  [00:08:47] Sarah: Well more than that. [00:08:49] Jason: And if they're a big name It's 50k, 100k, it can be really expensive to have them come be in an event. [00:08:58] Jason: So, Yeah, so it can be really challenging. Then there's food and beverage minimums. So the hotel, they're like, "you also have to spend a certain amount on food and beverage while you're here." Yeah, so they're like, "you have to book a certain number of rooms. You have to, like, pay for a certain number of food and beverage, and you're not allowed to bring any other food or beverage into our place." [00:09:19] Jason: Nope.  [00:09:19] Jason: "You have to use our stuff. And our stuff is like going to the movie theater. It's overly priced, like, inflated."  [00:09:26] Sarah: Remember, we did the Game Changer event at the JW Marriott in Austin so I looked at everything afterwards and it was not a huge event. It was not a big event. We had under 20 people there. [00:09:40] Sarah: Yeah. And that included like Jason, myself, DoorGrow staff, speakers, like under 20 people. And one lunch and we had, it was a two day event. So we did like two lunches. So one lunch, I think was somewhere around like two or 3,000 dollars. Yeah, it was insane for lunch.  [00:09:57] Jason: And my first event, we spent eight grand to provide coffee for two days. Eight grand for...  [00:10:03] Sarah: coffee. Yeah.  [00:10:05] Jason: For two days like and you know, and they have all these rules. I think the rules are made to inflate the price, but they have these food and beverage and they charge you sometimes by plate. So that hotel that we were at our first event, we didn't realize this, but they have people to go around and pick up plates. [00:10:22] Jason: And you're paying by the number of plates people use. Like how much food they consume and by plate. So they were picking up plates.  [00:10:29] Sarah: Oh my god.  [00:10:30] Jason: It's a racket. Like if you go into this not knowing what you're doing, some hotels can take gross amounts of money. Wow. They negotiate a terrible group rate, they negotiate a horrible food and beverage minimum is really high for you, and then you go way over that minimum if they have anything to do with it. [00:10:45] Jason: And so you're spending all this money and they're like, "well..."  [00:10:47] Sarah: you'll never have to worry about hitting your minimum in food and beverage, like, never. No, really.  [00:10:51] Jason: I mean, if you want food there, period, like,  [00:10:54] Sarah: you're going to hit it. So, I don't care. I don't even care what my minimum is because it doesn't, honestly, it doesn't even matter.  [00:11:00] Jason: Yeah. So then people think, oh, well, then I'll do the event somewhere else. Well, if you do it somewhere else, then how are they going to get from where they're staying to the venue? And so then there's a logistical challenge. So then like people aren't like coming and it's just like it's so much easier if they walk. [00:11:17] Jason: So everything gets like complicated when you don't do it at the hotel.  [00:11:22] Sarah: Where was your first event? Where was it?  [00:11:24] Jason: It was in St. Louis at an old classic hotel. It was really beautiful.  [00:11:28] Sarah: Okay. Interesting.  [00:11:30] Jason: Yeah, we did in St. Louis. We did it at This hotel and we did it because we thought we'll make it easy because NARPM had an event around the same time. [00:11:41] Jason: So we're like, Oh man, we want to do it at the same time. So let's just do it at the same venue. I think we did it the same venue, but we booked a nicer room on the top floor with lots of windows. It was very cool. And it was on different days. So you could attend both. We thought that would give us some cross pollination and really, it didn't. [00:12:00] Jason: Like there were a few people that went to the NARPM one and came to ours, but yeah, it was like so small. So that didn't even really help. "We're like, yeah, it's so easy to stay a little longer and go to ours." [00:12:08] Sarah: Interesting. Okay. Yeah.  [00:12:10] Jason: Yeah.  [00:12:11] Sarah: So after the first DoorGrow Live, he decided, I think when I came on board, he said, "I'm never doing another event again." [00:12:18] Jason: Yeah, I just didn't want to deal with it. It was so stressful. And your whole team, that's the real part of it, is like your whole team is involved in it in different ways, unless you have someone specifically handling sales, event, marketing, planning, advertising, planning, like every role we had in our business that we needed for our business had to go towards the conference because we were now on the hook for, I can't remember, like 50, 80 grand or something with the hotel. We had to figure out how to get rooms booked. We had to figure out how to pay for speakers. It was a whole thing. It was like starting a whole nother business. And our main thing was no longer the main thing. [00:12:58] Jason: So our business stopped growing. It actually didn't grow for several years after that, like a couple of years after that. And that's why I call it my 3 million or 2 million mistake, but it was probably a bigger multi million dollar mistake than that, because there's a lot of money I could have made over those years extra. [00:13:14] Jason: We're not hurting by any means, but that really slowed things down. And I just chalk that up to being the price of tuition in business. I made a mistake. I didn't know. And I learned from it, right? And I didn't listen to my mentor. Alex was like, "make it a really small event. Make it really small. Do your first one, make it small." I'm like, "no way. I've been to so many events. I'm going to make this awesome. I want this. If I'm going to compete with all the other events that are out there, I want this to be the best." And I really think, like, we had the best food there. We had the best, like, everything was the best. [00:13:46] Jason: We had audio visual team. We had a stage set up, like, we put a lot of money into this and it was pretty awesome. Like, it went pretty well. But I was massively stressed during the whole event. And yeah, but people that went, they gave us good feedback. They had a good experience. So, which I'm glad. Then you got to like ticket sales is hard too. [00:14:06] Jason: That's a tough challenge. How do you get people to give up what they're doing to come do something else? And so, you know, we've created some really strong magic. I think at DoorGrow, like our in person events, there's just something magical about our events. There's more heart, there's more connection. [00:14:20] Jason: It changes lives and that's very different than what has happened in the space. And I think that's more just about who we are and what we bring and the type of speakers that we bring in. It's very different than just property management.  [00:14:34] Sarah: And so that's one of the things I wanted to talk about is, so you did your first event. [00:14:39] Sarah: It went well, but it was pretty crazy. We basically broke even. We're not doing another event. I came on to the business a couple years after this and there's still a lot of like trauma and PTSD associated with it and then we started talking. Well, what if we do another event? And he said "no. No I don't want to do another event," and I said, "well, what if we do it differently?" So we did bring DoorGrow Live back after that first conference that they did and we've done several of them since then. We have another one coming up in May. It's May 16th and 17th. It's a Friday and Saturday at the Kalahari Resorts in the North Austin, Texas area. So if you're watching this and you have not yet registered, then definitely go do that. You can go to doorgrowlive.Com. But we've done several of these events since then, and one of the reasons that we wanted to bring these events back, especially even though for Jason it was just so, so traumatic, we just needed to do them a little differently. [00:15:43] Sarah: So, the reason that we wanted to bring them back though is because everything is just so much different when it's in person. And we know that there's so much magic that can just happen if, you know, if we can get people in a room. It's not just going to another conference. So in the industry, there's a lot of conferences, I mean, there's tech conferences and like all the big you know softwares have their own thing and there's NARPM events and there's all kinds of things like this and DoorGrow Live is just different. It's different than all of those things. We're not trying to focus on hey, you know, what are they doing and let's duplicate it. We're focused on how can we provide like such a great experience and such great value and real connection in a like large group environment? Which is hard. [00:16:38] Sarah: Like that's a challenge. If you're like, okay, we're going to get, you know, 50 to a hundred people in a room and we want them to all be connected. That's hard. That's hard. But I think that our events do actually a really great job at that.  [00:16:49] Jason: Yeah, I think so. Yeah, we get great testimonials. It's going to we have a really cool venue We just decided to keep doing it at this Kalahari resort. [00:16:59] Jason: It's near our house. It's in Round Rock They treat us really well there. It's a big it's like we have endless room to grow there We could have thousands and thousands of people someday if we wanted to. There's plenty of room there  [00:17:12] Sarah: But they're great to work with and the rooms are nice. When you guys book a room, the rooms are nice, everything is right on property, it's very family friendly too, so, you know, if you want to kind of bring your family and usually, I've noticed sometimes people, when they go to the conference, and then their family stays at home, there's a little bit of like, "oh, you're leaving me with the kids, like, what is this? Like, you get to go off to a conference and," well, come, like, come with us and you guys can hang out at, like the water park and the Build A Bear and the restaurants and the like arcade and there's still...  [00:17:48] Jason: America's largest indoor water park. Yeah. Yeah.  [00:17:52] Sarah: And I think when you book a room, they include a ticket. [00:17:53] Sarah: Yeah.  [00:17:54] Jason: You get a ticket to all a bunch of cool stuff. So like you get a, like a wristband. So yeah it's a pretty fun place. Like there's a whole Facebook group just for people looking for deals and discounts to stay at this resort. Yeah. They're like always talking about it in that group. I've joined all the local groups, just see what's going on. [00:18:15] Jason: So, yeah, so it's pretty interesting. So yeah, we've got a really cool venue. And oh, the other things places have charged us for other places we've done some of our events they charge us for electricity, they charge us for, like, just having cords put down.  [00:18:31] Sarah: They charge for internet. [00:18:32] Jason: They find a way to charge you for everything at some venues, and so, not all venues are equal. [00:18:38] Jason: So, yeah, so we've really appreciated the Kalahari Resort in Round Rock. It's a cool resort, and they treat us really well there, so.  [00:18:45] Sarah: Yeah, and it's a great experience for people. Because that's really frustrating when you go into any kind of hotel and you're like, "Oh. Why is this where I'm at? I guess I'll be here because the conference is here, but outside of the conference being here, I would never book here." And this is not that at all. Like people like to book here for sure. I think now let's do our little demo and then we'll get back into it.  [00:19:08] Jason: Got a little sponsor for today's episode, KRS SmartBooks. [00:19:13] Jason: Do you have properties to manage and zero time for bookkeeping headaches? KRS SmartBooks is your secret weapon. They specialize in finances for busy property managers like you with 15 plus years of real estate know how and skills in Appfolio, Yardi, and more. Imagine monthly reports magically appearing and zero accounting stress. [00:19:35] Jason: Sound good? Head to KRS Books. At K as in Kansas, R as in Roger, S as in Sam. Books. Sarah's already dying. She's like, you didn't do the right military phonetically.  [00:19:46] Sarah: I really am dying inside.  [00:19:47] Jason: KRSbooks. com to book your free discovery call. Integrity, quality, and a dash of bookkeeping brilliance. That's KRS Smart Books. [00:19:58] Jason: Alright, how should I phonetically do KRS?  [00:20:00] Sarah: K like Kilo, R like Romeo, S like Sierra.  [00:20:04] Jason: Alright, Sarah, by the way, is Becoming a pilot. She's taking pilot flying lessons.  [00:20:11] Sarah: I've known the military code for years  [00:20:13] Sarah: because I used to work in a casino and that's how they would communicate in slot machines.  [00:20:20] Jason: Yeah, alright. [00:20:21] Sarah: But now it's also handy being a pilot.  [00:20:24] Jason: Okay.  [00:20:24] Sarah: Alright, so if that sounds good, I think it sounds really great. Because I know a lot of property managers struggle with bookkeeping, and that's usually not something that's fun for property managers. It's definitely necessary, but it, oh man, it's not fun, and it's really draining. [00:20:38] Sarah: So if you can find someone that's great at what they do, and you can allow them to handle that, and just kind of check in and make sure things are going well, then, whoo, man, life gets a lot easier.  [00:20:51] Jason: Yeah if you're not paying attention to the finances or the financial health of your business or your accounting You're probably getting stolen from it's just I've seen it happen so many times. [00:21:01] Jason: So get a great bookkeeper. Yeah have people you trust to take care of that. Okay.  [00:21:07] Sarah: So speaking of finances, let's talk a little bit about what kind of goes into an event. So for example, we have our DoorGrow Live coming up in May this year. So we have been working on this event now since, so our last one was in May, and then I think we started working on the new one in like July, June or July. [00:21:31] Sarah: So things that have to kind of happen just to be able to have the space, obviously, you have to look into venues, you have to, you know, look at the space, make sure it's going to work for the size of your group, which means you kind of have to estimate a little bit what it's going to look like, and then make sure that the room can. [00:21:48] Sarah: fit more or less if needed.  [00:21:51] Jason: You've got to negotiate with the hotel.  [00:21:53] Sarah: Yep. You've got to negotiate what the rates would be. You know, am I paying for the space or am I paying for the room block and the food? Because there's different ways to do it. So you've got to figure out, you know, how many rooms in the room block do I need? [00:22:09] Sarah: Because if you overestimate that, if you go, "Hey, I think I'm going to have a thousand people come" and 100 people come, it is not going to be a good time for you because every room in the room block that is not sold, you are financially on the hook for. So you get to pay for that. And it's like, it's a certain number of nights. [00:22:28] Sarah: So it's not even so much how many rooms it's, how many nights someone will book. So you want to track that along the way. And then you want to start looking at a lot of the tactical things that go into it, like, well, who is going to speak at the event? So you want to start looking at speakers and when you're looking at speakers, you start to think about, you know, who would our audience resonate with and what kind of value would they provide? [00:22:55] Sarah: And, you know, is this strategic and tactical stuff or is this like mindset and empowerment stuff? Because you kind of want to get a mix of both at each event because everyone who comes to an event They're looking for a different thing. So it's really impossible to satisfy everybody make sure everybody, you know is super happy with everything sometimes people say, "oh, I wish there was more of this and oh, I wish there was more of that," but you kind of have to do like this balance and mix to make sure that everybody gets something out of it. [00:23:25] Sarah: And that they have a great experience. You also want to build a little bit of fun into it. So that it's not just, "hey, show up to this conference, sit down, learn something, take some notes and walk out of the room." You know, we've been to events like that before. Where it's like, "okay, that was a lot. But also, man, it would have been really cool to like, do something fun and you know connect with people," so you want to you know start to build in some time so that people can connect with other people, you know, so are you going to do a mixer? [00:23:52] Sarah: Are you going to do some sort of networking event? You know, are you going to you know go do kind of some fun event before like the night before? Are you going to, you know, send them off to lunch together? What is that going to look like? So that they can really connect with each other especially when you've got a room full of people who are in the same sector, in the same industry, there's so much knowledge in that room. [00:24:15] Sarah: So just talking to other people in the room is really valuable and making connections. So there's got to be some room for that as well. And then you want to think about well, are we going to have any vendors or sponsors? Yeah, and are those vendors or sponsors people that have services that are valuable and that we trust? Because there have also been times where, you know, someone had wanted to sponsor us and we did not want them to be a sponsor. [00:24:43] Sarah: Because if they don't provide a great service, you know, can you throw some money and be in the room? Yeah, but if it's not the right person to be in the room, then that matters. That matters a lot. So we have turned down money. We've turned down sponsorships. So then you also have to think about all of the tactical things. [00:25:05] Sarah: Well, you know, am I doing round tables? Am I doing classroom style? Are we doing full circles? Are we doing semi circles? Like what is the front of the room? And what's the back of the room? And where are the vendors going to be? And what doors do people walk in and out of? And as soon as they walk in, what is the first thing that they see? [00:25:20] Sarah: In what direction do we want to go in? And are they crossing over our equipment? Is somebody going to trip and fall on all the 10,000 chords that we have like taped down and. Then you have to also think about things like your AV. So does the room have internet? Is there power in the room? And I know that seems like a silly question to ask, but guess what? [00:25:40] Sarah: Sometimes they charge you for power. So you would think, hey, there's power in the room, obviously, because like it's at a hotel. They obviously have electricity. Yeah, but do you have to pay for it?  [00:25:49] Jason: Yeah, AV is expensive. Like we rented it initially and it was so costly.  [00:25:54] Sarah: Yeah.  [00:25:54] Jason: For the price you could rent it for it made sense to just buy it. [00:25:58] Sarah: To buy it.  [00:25:59] Jason: And so we eventually bought all our own equipment, but that means now we have to set it up and we have to figure it out. And so, yeah, so there's always a challenge.  [00:26:08] Sarah: Before the actual conference, like before anybody even steps foot like on property, Jason and I and several members of our team are there setting things up. [00:26:18] Jason: Sometimes my kids. Yeah,  [00:26:19] Sarah: sometimes the kids, sometimes an assistant, sometimes Madi comes on in.  [00:26:22] Jason: We're hooking up lights, we're plugging in audio equipment.  [00:26:25] Sarah: So we like pack everything up in Jason's SUV. We drive it over, we unload it. I'm doing this in stilettos, mind you, because I'm a stubborn  [00:26:33] Jason: You do everything in stilettos. [00:26:33] Sarah: Yeah, that's what I am. Right, so we like, we get there, we unpack it, we have to set it all up. You know, we're making sure that, like, all the lights are working, a sound system has to work, because there's no point in having a microphone if it's not going to work. There's always technical errors, and I'm horrible with technology, so Jason is our tech person, and he is the only tech person that we have. [00:26:54] Sarah: So he gets to figure everything out. And then it's like, you know, is the screen working? And can people see it? And is the laptop connecting to the screen? And is it blurry or is it too big or too far? Like there's always these weird little issues that happen and I don't know how to solve any of them. [00:27:10] Sarah: Yeah, so Jason knows how to do that. And then there's the other things like well. What about swag? And you know, are we doing a registration table and who's going to be there to, you know, check people in and make sure they know what to do and they know where to go? And, you know, is there like just kind of first come first serve seating? [00:27:27] Sarah: Or is there like a separate section for, you know, special clients or VIP clients or speakers or the team? And there's also things like, "Oh, well what about name badges?" You know, are we doing, like, are we doing name badges? Are we, you know, making sure that everybody kind of knows who everybody else is? Is there anything special or is it just like a bunch of people walking into a room and then hopefully they figure out that they're in the right room? Like there's so much that goes into it and then there's the scheduling. So well, you know, who's going to go in what order, what day and time are certain speakers available? Because just because they commit to an event doesn't mean, "oh, I can speak at any point during the event." [00:28:11] Sarah: So, you know, it's putting the agenda together and how long do you give them for lunch and where are they going for lunch? And are we doing lunch? Are we, you know, letting them facilitate it on their own? Are we doing breaks? How do we get them back from breaks? Are we, it's crazy. Like it's so, there's so much. [00:28:28] Jason: If you give people a break at an event, it's like 30 minutes of downtime. Oh yeah. It's really hard to get people to like get to the next thing or come back right away. And they all start talking to each other, which is cool. They want to network. Yeah, so getting people back from lunch.  [00:28:43] Sarah: Yes, absolutely. Yes. [00:28:45] Sarah: And then it's, you know, who kicks off the event? Who opens it? Who closes it? Who's going after lunch? Because we all know most people, what happens to them after lunch? They're tired. I'm fine. But a lot of people, they're tired after lunch. So you can't have a, you know, more mundane or quiet or low energy speaker after lunch. [00:29:06] Sarah: You just can't. Because you'll lose everybody. So there's a lot that goes into the scheduling as well. And then there's things like, you know, who's going to MC it? Who's making announcements? Who's making sure that everybody knows where to be? And what time? And what to do and when to come back? And who's doing the intros for speakers? [00:29:26] Sarah: Are you doing music for every speaker that comes up? If so, like, are they picking it? Are you picking it? What happens? Like there is so so so much that goes into it, and then after you like run the event then you got to break it all down if it's your equipment. Yeah, so then it's like pack it all up and put it away and make sure nothing gets damaged or lost and repack the car and unload it again, and like there is so much that goes Into it. [00:29:53] Sarah: And I would say at this point, it's funny because Jason now can show up to DoorGrow Live and nine out of 10 times, he has no idea what's going to happen or when.  [00:30:05] Sarah: I love it.  [00:30:06] Sarah: I just call him up on stage and he's like, oh, okay, because, and I'm like, my team handle most of it. Talking on this go.  [00:30:12] Jason: Right now. I still just have to make sure the tech stuff all works. [00:30:15] Jason: But yeah, other than that, yeah, I don't. I don't have to do as much which is nice, but because it's stressful enough. It's stressful enough So yeah, so it's a lot. There's a lot that goes into it, but it's been worth it to have you know to see people's lives change to see people impacted. We've noticed there's some sort of magic that happens that when people come to something in person with us even if they've been a client for years, they start to get different results. [00:30:40] Jason: They start to see things differently. They start to absorb all of our content, our information, our training material, our ideas more effectively. Everything just magnifies. There's something about in person. You can't get the same sort of benefit in your business. If you think, "all I need to do is read books and watch videos and show up to zoom calls to grow my business. [00:31:04] Jason: Look, there's a lot of benefits in all of those things. I do all those things, but we still go to in person things. There's something different about in person that I don't know if it's the energy of being in the same space as the people you're learning from. If it's the group energy and that group mind that makes you able to like learn and faster. [00:31:23] Jason: There's, but there's some, I don't know if maybe there's some quantum physical magic, magical stuff, but there's something different about it in person. It's happened too many times for me to like believe otherwise or to dismiss it. I've had too many clients that I've been working with for years, go to their first in person thing with us, and then they have some breakthrough. And I'm like what? And they tell me about it, and I'm like, "I've been teaching you that for years!" Like "I know but like but it's just hit differently." [00:31:51] Jason: Yeah, "I just got it." [00:31:52] Sarah: It hits different. It feels different and you just absorb things. [00:31:57] Jason: And because we've seen this pattern, we've seen this pattern, we now make it part of our onboarding of every new client to come hang out with Sarah and I in person for a one day with usually a small cohort and like, and just get some things figured out and dialed in their business. [00:32:14] Jason: And that's been magic for our business. Like it's been magic for our clients, magic for us. So we give them that in person experience early on. And then DoorGrow Live allows them to connect with others, which is there's just something different about the people at DoorGrow. The property managers at DoorGrow are different. [00:32:30] Jason: I've been to a lot of conferences. A lot. Like in various industries, but especially in property management. And there's something different about the people that we attract and the clients that we attract. They're growth minded, they're positive active in mentalities, which means they're not like the skeptical, negative Nancy's that are grumpy about the industry and the business. [00:32:51] Jason: That there's this positive growth minded, healthier sort of personality that we attract at DoorGrow. And maybe that says a little bit about who we are, because that's what I tried to be. But we attract amazing people and the connections people make, when you're connecting with other people that are like you, that are growth minded and you both share an industry and a share a business model, like it really helps you grow. [00:33:15] Jason: Your business is the sum of the five property management business owners you as a business owner are most connected to or that you're most influenced by. So look at those property managers if you've got coaches or mentors, and they're not people that you really like that maybe you think they're smart, but you don't really want to be more like them, then maybe you're around the wrong people. [00:33:34] Jason: Maybe you have the wrong coach, and I'm not the coach for everybody. Sarah's not the coach for everybody. But you should have a coach. Otherwise, you're selling yourself short if you're not accountable to anybody, you're definitely getting less results than you could or should be so come to DoorGrow Live come check us out. This DoorGrow Live, [00:33:52] Jason: I want to open our playbooks up if Sarah lets me. I want to just reveal some really amazing stuff that only our clients get to see because I want to show anyone that shows up that's not part of our DoorGrow ecosystem. Our clients know the magic's there. We have more case studies or testimonials than anyone else in the industry, but if you're not a DoorGrow client, and you want to come to DoorGrow Live I'm going to give you some gifts for sure, some magic. We're going to make some significant changes in your business. They're going to help you make a lot more money a lot more easily and keep a lot more of your profit and so come hang out with us. [00:34:29] Jason: You're not going to be disappointed for sure So there you go.  [00:34:33] Sarah: Yeah. This event we've got some really awesome things planned. We can't let too much out of the bag at this point. But we always have some really great things planned and every event we do, like we always learn from it. [00:34:46] Sarah: And we always do like a little team meeting afterwards and we get feedback from people. We're always looking to make it better and better. And this year is absolutely no exception to that. So the things that we have planned for this year, like I know that if you come to this event, it will change your business and it will change your life. [00:35:12] Sarah: And I know that's a really bold statement and we're ready to back it.  [00:35:16] Jason: Yeah. And maybe that could be a later podcast episode as we get closer to the event. But we can tell you a little bit more about what's going to be happening there, but hopefully this was interesting to get behind the scenes at all that goes into DoorGrow Live and we meet on this you know, we're talking about it weekly, monthly in our planning meetings, like and quarterly. [00:35:37] Jason: And so, and that's it for today's episode. So if you are interested in that, go check it out at DoorGrowLive.Com and get your tickets and get things booked and get ready to come have an amazing experience in May at DoorGrow Live. So, and until next time to our mutual growth, bye everyone. 

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.

In this new episode, Sarah sits down with Emily Shull to explore the complex relationship we have with money. They delve into why many people find this topic challenging and stressful, discussing common beliefs and narratives that shape our financial decisions. The conversation highlights how our upbringing and family culture influence our perceptions of money as adults, and the emotional aspects that play a significant role in our financial behaviors. Together, they address the taboo surrounding money and share insights on fostering open, healthy dialogues. By examining the difference between scarcity and abundance mentalities, Emily provides practical steps for entrepreneurs to begin healing their relationship with money, ultimately guiding them to align their wallets with their true purpose. Tune in for a compassionate discussion around a dry topic: money! Here's what we talked about: The reason so many people have a difficult relationship with money and why it causes stress. Common money beliefs or narratives that people develop and how they influence financial decisions. How upbringing and family culture shape the way we view and interact with money as adults. The role of emotion in financial behaviors and how we can become more aware of it. Why money is such a taboo topic and how we can start having more open and healthy conversations about it. The impact of scarcity mentality versus abundance mentality on our relationship with money and how to shift towards abundance. Practical steps people can take to begin healing their relationship with money. A teaser for what we'll work on during the Collab workshop on October 2nd.   --- Intro with music NEW 2022 + 4 [00:00:00] Sarah: [00:01:00] [00:02:00] [00:03:00] [00:04:00] [00:05:00] Hi, Emily. It's good to see you, hear you. We we see each other regularly because we're in this book lab. And so it's good to have this conversation just one on one with you on the Humane Marketing Podcast. Welcome. Emily: Yeah, thanks so much. Thanks for inviting me, Sarah, and I'm really looking forward to our conversation. Sarah: Yeah, talking about a taboo, money, right? You, you made that your topic, so we're gonna dive right in and I'm gonna ask, start by asking you why Why is it a taboo? Why do so many people struggle with this [00:06:00] topic of money? What have you seen in your work? Emily: Yeah, that's a great question. Money, our relationship with money is so complicated. Because what we're taught about money is that it's just math, it's numbers, it's accounting, it's logical. So you should be able to learn about it easily, make good decisions. And that's what it's all about, you know, making things add up, but our relationship with money. It's actually something that we feel inside of us. It's very emotional. It has a very long history that's been starting since the time that we were born. And so it's, it's a difficult and complicated and taboo relationship because it's so filled with emotions and are very deeply personal history. And so what I do as a holistic money coach is help people connect these two things.[00:07:00] Their rational mind that wants to make good decisions with money that has intentions for their lives and wants to fulfill them and this emotional side that sometimes contains these unconscious drivers that are keeping us from reaching the goals that we that we want for ourselves. Sarah: Yeah, you called them unconscious drivers, I guess. Is that the same thing as limiting beliefs, something else that we often hear limiting Emily: belief. Yeah, you can, you can identify them in different ways. Another, another way to think about that is that it's different parts of ourselves. When we're making a money decision, we have all these different parts that want to chime in and have a say in that. And so. 1 is the logical part that says, no, we don't need another sweater. And then another part comes in and says, oh, but oh, but this makes me feel so cozy. And it reminds me of what it was [00:08:00] like to feel like, really warm and snuggly as a child. And then another part that's kind of shaming and saying, no, why are you even having this conversation? You know, we don't need this. You need to be responsible. So there are many ways to think about this. unconscious part. Sarah: It's interesting. So it's, it's conscious, unconscious left brain, right brain, maybe mind and heart. So it's always these yin and yang. You could probably also say that, you know, the yang part is, is the logical part. And the yin part is the more kind of like flowing and being in harmony and just using money. When it feels good, right? So yeah, it's, it's so interesting. So what, what are some examples of, of some of these beliefs that maybe we have formed in our childhoods? Because I think you did mention this story with money [00:09:00] starts in our, in our early years, right? Or maybe, and that's a question to you, maybe it actually goes even beyond that. Like, maybe it's our history that starts even before we were born and it goes into the history of our ancestors as well. I, I personally believe that. So curious to hear what you think, and then maybe you can give us some examples. Emily: Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. Our relationship with money goes so far back. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. So when we're born, our parents beliefs about money and everything that they experienced, which includes their parents beliefs and everything they experienced and back and back and back. That is all put upon us when we're born. So this is what we're born into. And this becomes our money beliefs. And 1 of 2 things happen. We either we usually [00:10:00] just take them on. We inherit them. They become ours until we mature and see different ways of being with money and then decide for ourselves how we want to be. Or we reject them, we say, we know this is totally not us. This is not the way we want to be. And so we do something completely different. But either way, it's an unconscious decision until we mature and. Really take a look at ourselves and our own experiences. Then we're able to tease apart. What is actually inherently mine? What are my values around money versus what I was born into my parents and the culture around me and what I find is that. It's so deeply personal, so there are so many layers of our origins with with money. We're affected by our environment. You know, the, the country we were born into our culture [00:11:00] has a big impact on how we think about money. If you think about some Asian cultures, save, you know, 30, 40 percent of their income in the United States. I think the savings rate is in the, in the single digits. So that's 1 impact. And then as you go narrower, then there's our parents and household that we grew up. You know, when I grew up, if we didn't eat out that much, but when we went even to a fast food restaurant, my mother was very frugal. So, you never ordered the big sandwich, you know, you never ordered the drink. You just got your drink at home. Whereas in another, you know, a friend of mine, you know, that wasn't the case for her. But it all really filters down to your own personal experiences. So what I find is that even though in our environment, and our parents play a big role in what we think about money, it's really our own lived experiences that have the biggest impact. And it's [00:12:00] usually related to something that happened, as when we were children, and that just hasn't been brought to light that hasn't been healed. So I'll give you an example of 1 person that I worked with. She came to me because for her money was always. A struggle, she just felt it felt heavy. It felt like no matter what she was doing, no matter how much income she was bringing in or what her assets were. It felt like a constant struggle. And this may have been surprising if you looked at her life from the outside, she was very intelligent and talented. She had multiple. Degrees, she was respected in her field of work, and she did all the things that you're supposed to do to to have a good relationship with money and to make it work. You know, she read books, she followed strategies she had a supportive partner, yet she still felt this constant struggle with money. Like she was. Yeah, like she was in it on her own, and that was always really hard. [00:13:00] Well, what we found during our work together was that it was tied to her loss of her sister when she was very young. So when she was about 10 years old, her sister, who was close in age, died, and her parents really turned inside at that time in their own grief. And so there was no space for her to, to express her grief and to process that. Yeah. Yeah. And then, in addition to that, her mother died when she was in her early 20s, and her father quickly remarried and really abandoned her after that. And so when, when we looked at her history, not just related to money, but her family history as well. It was really surprising how directly this was tied to the feeling of struggle. It was all about feeling abandoned and not having that family support that she needed at that very crucial age. So, I see this In my work with everyone that I [00:14:00] work with, it's it's not just about what is our money belief, but what very specific situation happened to us that brought that and usually it's not something we would ever associate with money. Sometimes it could be money related, but other times it's not. It's just a purely developmental wound that almost all of us have. Sarah: Yeah, I'm so glad you shared such a deep example because that really shows how deep this, this goes, right? How far back we need to go and, and how, how many layers we need to uncover. And it's very vulnerable. Work to, to go to these places because usually they're, they're not exactly happy moments at least from what I've seen because we talk about money in the marketing, like human program as well. And it's, it's usually not. the happy moments that created these limiting [00:15:00] beliefs, right? It's something that happened in our childhood that, yeah, was, was difficult, probably. Not always, but not always like, you know, as difficult as the example you shared. For me, it, it really had to do with not feeling guilty to be a business owner. Because my parents I, I grew up in a small hippie community, as, you know, Emily and, and, and like all the people in, in that community were from the working class. And so the the entrepreneurial world, or, you know, the people making money were not. Put in a good light. And so I, I just had to uncover that and go, Oh, but I can actually be an entrepreneur and make money in a good way for a good cause. And it's not money is not bad per se, right. It's the intention that, that counts. And so, yeah, just uncovering those. Those layers is so, [00:16:00] so important. I was thinking also when you were talking that you're, you were saying it's, you know, it's very personal and it truly is. And then often what happens in life, we, you know, find a partner and get together with someone else and we get married. And oftentimes today, if we're married, well, the money kind of merges, right? And then there's two human beings with completely different money stories, and that is not always easy to manage either. Do you sometimes work with couples as well, or, or does maybe not together, but. Is that a topic where it's like, oh, but I have this money story and he or she has this completely different money story? Emily: Absolutely. Yes. So I work with couples sometimes. It's often kind of like a can of worms because it is so difficult because, because we all have our own money [00:17:00] story that most of the time we're not even conscious of where our own money patterns come from. So you put two people together who are not conscious of where their money patterns come from, and it's, it's, it can be impossible to have really constructive Arrangements, I was going to say arguments, sometimes arguments or agreements or conversations about this, because you don't even know where it's coming from for yourself. So, the 1st step is to understand. Your own money history and then to understand where your partner is coming from. And that's the only way to move forward when it comes to money. But there are so many layers in that. And I find that couples. There's so much going on within a relationship so I don't do much couple work myself because of that. Sarah: I think it's probably borderline therapy there, and you're not a therapist, right? That's not the same thing, so, because I would argue that there's probably a lot of couple, work [00:18:00] that goes back to money. And so, yeah, that, that is definitely has to go into couple therapy and not, not just money, because like you said, most of them are probably not conscious that it's because of their different money stories that they have you know, relationship problems. Anyways, we, we digress, but, but it's yeah, it's interesting that it has, it didn't. Impact so many different aspects of our lives. And of course, here on this podcast, we talk about, you know, entrepreneurship but also marketing. And, and when I did this research and created the marketing, like we're human program, I really looked at this idea of abundance and how that impacts, yes, your. You know, beliefs about money, but then also your beliefs about marketing, meaning that if you come from a abundant [00:19:00] perspective, then marketing doesn't feel as heavy anymore because you don't feel like you have to push or persuade or, or, or manipulate even, right? Because you just feel like there's enough out there for me. And the same thing applies with money. But I'm curious, To, to hear your perspective on this often talked about topic between scarcity and abundance mindset, right? We're, we're hearing everywhere, Oh, you just have to have an abundant mindset, but how can we have that if we are, haven't healed our childhood wounds yet? Maybe. Emily: Yeah, I think it all goes back to the childhood wounds. So, yeah, so this example of talking about abundance versus scarcity. I think it's, it's always more helpful to get as as specific to your unique circumstances as possible. So, what I mean by that [00:20:00] is. Marketing. I'll give you an example from my own life. The first time that I marketed a program. Oh, my goodness. I was so resistant to sending an email to my network because I didn't have a list at that time. So it was just people that I knew. Talking about this free webinar that I was giving, I wasn't even asked them to buy anything, but I was so resistant and I tried to really figure out. Oh, my gosh, what is stopping me from doing this? And at 1st, I thought it was I thought it was. My, my environment of you know, my mother, I remember her telling the story when we were young of her father was in business with his brother and his brother somehow cheated him and became rich and my mother's family stayed poor. And so there was this belief that, you know, wealthy people are, you know, take advantage of people and I wanted to be a nice person, so maybe somehow this was related to my marketing challenge. But the more that I sat with that, I [00:21:00] realized there was something much deeper. So, it was this voice that I kept hearing when I was trying to send that email was I don't want to bother people. And so that was a much deeper message that I received growing up of feeling like I was bothering people when I was sharing something that maybe they didn't want to hear what I had to say. And so, instead of talking about, do I have a scarcity mindset or an abundant mindset, I think the most direct way to understand our behaviors, whether that's. You know, to do with managing money or marketing our business or selling our product. It's always going layer by layer to see where is this coming from? What is this feeling that I'm feeling in my body? When was the earliest time that I experienced this? What is this really about? Because when we get to the root and we heal that, then all the other behaviors [00:22:00] disappear. We're actually able to act in alignment with our true intentions. Transcribed Yeah, it really Sarah: is this domino effect, right, where you, when you go back, then all the other dominoes kind of start to fall in place and yes, Emily: and so much of what. Is out there as solutions is it's it helps in the moment. For example, if you have a fear of visibility, you know, you can try to talk yourself out of that. Oh, of course, these are my, this is my network. They won't be bothered by what I have to say. If they're not interested in my webinar, they simply won't attend. It's okay. I can send this email. So that might work in the moment and I can send the email and have my webinar. But then the next time I have to do it, it's all going to come back again and again. So if you're able to get to the root of it, then you won't need to take these steps again and again and again. And it yeah, it, it connects us more to who we [00:23:00] are more of our, our core self. And that's really the beauty of doing money work is that it. It makes you feel better, not just about money, but about yourself. And it connects you more to who you are. It's ironic because so many of us don't think of money as a spiritual thing. In fact, it's often thought of as the opposite of that. But in my opinion, doing money work is one of the most spiritual and personally connecting things that you can do because really to get to the root of it, you have to understand yourself on a level. And and become more compassionate for yourself on a level that you hadn't before. Sarah: What would you say to You know, some of the offers around money coaching they promise you, you know, a six figure business or a seven figure business, or, you know, they're promising you that you can manifest money [00:24:00] whenever you want because you now healed your childhood wounds. What do you think about that? Emily: Well, I think they usually don't talk about the childhood wounds. They talk about a strategy that they offer. That's going to get you the 6 figures. And strategy, it, it can only go so far. If you're not. If you can't implement it, because you're stuck, because you have all these unconscious, beliefs, then then it's not going to work. So then you just need to go a little bit deeper. I think most of these programs out there, they just don't go deep enough. And that's they work for people who are capable of implementing them. But if you're not, because you're stuck somehow, you need to understand where that stuckness is coming from and deal with that 1st. Sarah: Well, I would add that I think a good money coach just like any good coach [00:25:00] cannot make promises about, you know, you now making tons of money because you healed your money story. That's to me, not what money work is about. It's about. Yes, healing those wounds and, and, you know, helping you to live your fullest potential and have a healthy relationship to money, but there's no promise that. You know, you are in this lifetime meant to make a million dollars and, you know, maybe you don't even want that. So, so it's just like the two things are not related. It's like, it will help you yes, heal that, heal that story and, and, you know, maybe not spend everything every time you, you get money, but it's, it's not going to help you just have money fall from the sky either. Emily: Yeah, a lot. Yes. That's a really good point. So I do see that some money coaches are really like wealth coaches. Like they want you to be wealthy and that is their goal for you. [00:26:00] And my goal for people that I work with is to help them feel more calm around money. Like their, their money goals are their business, right? I know desire or, you know, yeah, it's completely up to them. When you, yeah, as a coach, if you go into it thinking, well, you're, you know, you should be rich and I'm going to teach you how, well, that's different from having a healthy relationship with money. That's just. I'm going to make you wealthy. Sarah: Yeah. Emily: Yeah. Sarah: I'm glad we clarified that. So what would you say are kind of the next steps for people who are listening? How can they start on their own to heal their money story? Emily: Yeah, so paying attention to what you're feeling in your body when these money challenges are coming up is a great place to start. [00:27:00] Journaling, drawing, those are great places to begin to understand what's really going on beneath, peeling back some of those layers. Yeah. And. Sarah: I remember your, your workshops in the Circle Expo with, with drawing people, people love those. I think it's, it's when we tap into, like we said before, into the unconscious or the, the heart or the, you know, the, the right brain that's when kind of these, inhibitors maybe, yeah, fall away and we can just really let the emotions out and that, and yeah, people really enjoyed that, letting out the creativity to think about their money. Emily: Yeah, drawing is such a great avenue to explore what's really going on behind the scenes, because when we draw, we think in whole [00:28:00] images, and that includes all of the emotional undercurrents of what's going on. So that that's why that that exercise is usually so powerful because it's so simple. I do want to say when you say creativity, it is a creative process, but you don't, you don't have to think of yourself as a creative or artistic person in order to do this. You know, drawing with stick figures, which is the only thing I'm capable of, is perfectly fine and will, and will get you to that emotional the emotional space that you're looking for as well. Sarah: Yeah, that's great. So you're coming into the Humane Marketing Circle for a collab workshop that is open to the public and well attended by the community members as well. Can you give us a little teaser on what we'll do on October Emily: 2nd? Sure. We're, you, we're going to discover where our money beliefs come from learn how to identify unhelpful money beliefs. [00:29:00] And then learn how to free yourself from unhelpful money beliefs so that you can align your actions with your goals. So we'll be doing that. I'll do a little presentation, but there also be breakout rooms and exercises that we're going to do to begin to explore our own origins of our money behaviors. Sarah: Yeah, can't wait. I think the, the, the beauty of these workshops is that they're really hands on. So it's, yes, it's a presentation. Yes, it's content that you provide, but then like you said, we have the time to go into breakout rooms and talk to other humans and, and really apply directly, because I feel like. When we attend the webinar and we get bombarded by great ideas and inspiration. But then if we don't actually do something with it right away, sometimes it just goes in here and out on the other side. Right. So I really look forward to to this workshop and. Maybe we'll be doing some drawing and as well, [00:30:00] who knows? But yeah, can't wait. So if you are listening to this and would like to join us, humane. marketing forward slash workshop is the link that you can sign up for. As I said, this is usually reserved to the community. But these collab workshops are open and you can join with a small donation and Emily will share all her wisdom there. So can't wait, Emily you Emily: tap into your own wisdom. Sarah: Yes, that's true. Yes, exactly. Yeah, because maybe that's where we can end. I really feel like. You know, this whole money conversation, even though money is something external that we use with other people, and that kind of brings us or, or ties us into the world outside, it really is this inner job that has to do with it. Yeah. Solving or, or [00:31:00] healing some stuff inside first, right? Yep. Very well said. Yeah. Great. Well, what a delight. Thank you so much for being here today. Do please share with people where they can find you and I think you have an assessment you want to share as well. Emily: Yeah. Yeah. Thanks so much for having me, Sarah. So you can find me on my website, me, myself, and money. com. And there you can find a, I think it's a pop up. So it'll just, it'll gently appear after a few seconds. It's my money assessment. So you can assess your relationship with money. And we're used to seeing this in terms of, you know, do you have investments? Do you have savings? All these practical categories. But what my assessment does is help you understand more holistically what your relationship is with money based on what your relationship is with yourself. Sarah: Mm. Emily: Yeah. Sarah: That, that's a, definitely a good starter. And then it gives us [00:32:00] a result based on, on the answers we gave on, yeah, I, I'm curious. I'm going to have to take it. It's like, Oh, you're in love or no, you're, you know, breaking up or it'd be, it'd be good to understand the results after the, the assessment. Wonderful. Well, thanks so much, Emily, for being here. And yeah. Please do sign up for the workshop, again, humane. marketing. com forward slash workshop. And can't wait to see you on October 2nd. See you then. Thanks, Sarah. Thank [00:33:00] [00:34:00] [00:35:00] [00:36:00] [00:37:00] [00:38:00] [00:39:00] [00:40:00] [00:41:00] [00:42:00] [00:43:00] you.

In this episode, we delve into the impact of the new groundbreaking research uncovering the RNU4-2 genetic variant linked to neurodevelopmental conditions. The discovery, made possible through whole genome sequencing, highlights a genetic change in the RNU4-2 gene that affects about 1 in 200 undiagnosed children with neurodevelopmental conditions, making it more prevalent than previously thought. This discovery represents one of the most common single-gene genetic causes of such conditions. Our host, Naimah Callachand, Head of Product Engagement and Growth at Genomics England, is joined by Lindsay Pearse who shares her journey through the diagnosis of her son Lars. They are also joined by Sarah Wynn, CEO of Unique, and Emma Baple, Clinical Genetics Doctor and Professor of Genomic Medicine in the University of Exeter and the Medical Director of the Southwest NHS Genomic Laboratory Hub. We also hear from the 2 research groups who independently discovered the findings: Dr Andrew Mumford, Professor of Haematology at the University of Bristol Link to the research paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03085-5  Assistant Professor Nicky Whiffin, Big Data Institute and Centre for Human Genetics at the University of Oxford Link to the research paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07773-7 To access resources mentioned in this podcast:  Unique provides support, information and networking to families affected by rare chromosome and gene disorders - for more information and support please visit the website. Connect with other parents of children carrying a variation in RNU4-2 on the Facebook group.   "I think one of the things we really hope will come out of diagnoses like this is that we will then be able to build up more of that picture about how families are affected. So, that we can give families more information about not only how their child is affected but how they might be affected in the future."   You can read the transcript below or download it here: https://www.genomicsengland.co.uk/assets/documents/Podcast-transcripts/How-has-a-groundbreaking-genomic-discovery-impacted-thousands-worldwide.docx  Naimah: Welcome to Behind the Genes. Lindsay: So, this feeling that like we've been on this deserted island for eight years and now all of a sudden, you're sort of looking around through the branches of the trees. It's like, wait a minute, there are other people on this island and in this case actually there's a lot more people on this island. Yeah, it's very exciting, it's validating. It gives us a lot of hope and, you know, it has been quite emotional too and also a bit of an identity shift. Being undiagnosed had become quite a big part of our identity, and so now that's kind of shifting a little bit that we have this new diagnosis and are part of a new community. Naimah: My name is Naimah Callachand and I'm Head of Product Engagement and Growth at Genomics England. On today's episode, I'm joined by Lindsay Pearse whose son Lars recently received a genetic diagnosis, made possible by research using data from the National Genomic Research Library, Sarah Wynn CEO of Unique, and Emma Baple, a clinical genetics doctor. Today we'll be discussing the impact of recent research findings which have found a genetic change in the non-coding RNU4-2 gene, to be linked to neurodevelopmental conditions. If you enjoy today's episode, we'd love your support. Please like, share and rate us on wherever you listen to your podcasts. Naimah: And first of all, I would like everyone to introduce themselves. So, Lindsay, maybe if we could come to you first. Lindsay: Great, thank you. So, thank you for having me. I'm Lindsay Pearse, I live outside of Washington DC and I'm a mum to 3 boys. My oldest son Lars who is 8, he was recently diagnosed with the de novo variant in the RNU4-2 gene. Naimah: Thank you. And Emma? Emma: My name is Emma Baple. I'm a Clinical Genetics Doctor which means I look after children and adults with genetic conditions. I'm also a Professor of Genomic Medicine in the University of Exeter and the Medical Director of the Southwest NHS Genomic Laboratory Hub. Naimah: And Sarah? Sarah: Hi, thank you for having me. I'm Sarah Wynn, I'm the CEO of a patient organisation called Unique, and we provide support and information to all those affected by rare genetic conditions. Naimah: Great, thank you. It's so great to have you all here today. So, first of all Lindsay, I wonder if we could come to you. So, you mentioned in your introduction your son Lars has recently been diagnosed with the de novo variant. I wondered if you could tell us a bit about your story, and what it's been like up until the diagnosis. Lindsay: Sure, yeah. So, Lars is, he's a wonderful 8 year-old boy. With his condition, his main symptoms he experiences global developmental delays, he's non-verbal. He's had hypertonia pretty much since birth and wears AFO's to support his walking. He has a feeding disorder and is fed by a G-Tube. Cortical vision impairments, a history of seizures and slow growth, amongst other things. So, that's just a bit of a picture of what he deals with day to day. But he's my oldest child, so first baby. When I was pregnant, we were given an IUGR diagnosis. He was breech, he had a hernia soon after birth, wouldn't breastfeed. But all of these things aren't terribly uncommon, you know. But once he was about 3 or 4 months old, we noticed that he wasn't really able to push up like he should, and we were put in touch with early intervention services for an assessment. So, we went ahead and did that when he was about 4 or 5 months old. And as parents, we could just kind of tell that something was off from the assessors. And, you know, they were very gentle with us, but we could just get that sense that okay, something is off, and they're worried here. So, that kind of kickstarted me into making appointments left, right and centre with specialists. The first specialist that we saw was a neurologist. And yeah, again, that's another appointment that I'll never forget. She referred us to genetics and to get an MRI and some lab work but at the end of the appointment, she said to us, ‘Just remember to love your child.' And, you know, that was quite shocking to us at the time because it wasn't something that had ever crossed our mind that we wouldn't do or felt like we needed to be told to do this. But on the other hand, it certainly set off a lot of worry and anxiety of okay, well, what exactly are we dealing with here? So, fast forward, we saw genetics and that was about when Lars was about 8 months old. We went through a variety of genetic testing, a chromosomal micro-array, a single gene testing, then the whole exome testing. Everything came back negative, but it was explained to us that what was going on was likely an overarching genetic diagnosis that would explain his like, multi-system symptoms. And so meanwhile as he was getting older his global delays were becoming more pronounced and we were also in and out of the hospital a lot at this time. At first, he was in day care and, you know, any sort of cold virus would always turn into like a pneumonia for him. So, we were just in and out of hospital seeing a myriad of specialists, trying to put together this puzzle of what's going on and it was really hard to accept that nobody could figure it out. That was just, you know, sort of mind-blowing to us I guess. So, we applied for and were accepted into the Undiagnosed Diseases Programme at the National Institute of Health over here. The NIH as it's commonly referred to. So, we first went there when Lars was 2. He was one of their youngest patients at the time. But that was a really great experience for us because we felt like they were looking at him holistically and across a bunch of all of his systems, and not just seeing a specialist for sort of each system. So, we really appreciated that. We also did the whole genome sequencing through this research study. Although that also came back negative and so at that point, we were told to kind of keep following up symptomatically. Keep seeing the specialists and eventually maybe one day we'll find an overarching diagnosis, but that science just hadn't quite caught up to Lars. It was hard for me again to believe that and to sort of wrap my head around that. But certainly, it was an education from all of the doctors and geneticists and everyone we saw at NIH, to realise like how far there still was to go in terms of genetic research. How it wasn't also that uncommon to be undiagnosed in the rare disease community. I would say that being undiagnosed sort of became part of our identity. And it's, you know, it was something that, you know, you had to explain to like insurance companies and to his school, and it became part of our advocacy around him. Because without being able to say oh, it's this specific thing and if it was someone who hadn't met Lars before, trying to explain to them that, you know, yeah, within the range of this community you can be undiagnosed, and they just haven't found it yet, but I promise you there is something going on here. And I'd say the other thing too without a diagnosis you have no prognosis, right? And so, trying to figure out what the future would look like. Also, family planning. We waited 5 and a half years before we had another child and, you know, it was certainly an anxiety ridden decision. Ultimately after seeing as many specialists as we possibly could, we still were left with the same answer of well, we just don't really know if it will happen again. So, that was a big decision to make. But again, it just kind of became part of our identity and something that you did eventually accept. But I would say in my experience I feel like the acceptance part also of Lars' disabilities perhaps took me a little bit longer. Because again, I didn't have a prognosis, so I didn't exactly know what we were dealing with. Only as he has become older and, you know, you're sort of getting a better sense of what his abilities might be than being able to understand, okay, this is what I'm dealing with. I need to accept that and do what I can to care for him and our family in the best way that we can. Naimah: Thanks so much for sharing that, Lindsay. I feel like you've touched on a lot of really, you know, a lot of complications and difficulties for your family. Especially, you know, with regards to keeping hopeful and things about the prognosis as well, I'm sure it was really difficult. You've mentioned that Lars was able to be diagnosed recently due to recent research efforts. So, Sarah, I wonder if you can tell us a bit more about these and what the findings have meant for patients with neurodevelopmental conditions. Sarah: Yes. So, I think we know that there are lots of families that are in Lindsay and Lars' position where they know that there is almost certainly an underlying genetic condition, and it just hasn't been found yet. And so, I think we know that lots of researchers are working really hard to try and find those causes. I think over time we know that as time goes on and research goes on, we'll find more of these new genetic causes for neurodevelopmental conditions. I think particularly as we start to look at regions of the genome that we haven't looked at so much so far. But I think one of the things that's really extraordinary about this one is that actually it turns out to be much more common than we might have expected, for one of these new conditions that we haven't found before. But I think it's about one in 200 of those undiagnosed children with neurodevelopmental conditions, have this diagnosis so that's not a small number. That's not a rare finding at all actually, that's much more common than we could ever have anticipated. But I think one of the things that we do know is that as we look further and deeper into that genomic sequence, so, we've started off looking at the bits of the sequence that are genes that code for proteins. This changes in a gene that actually doesn't code for protein, so it's less obvious that it would be important but clearly it is important in development because we know when it has a spelling mistake in it, it causes this neurodevelopmental condition. But there will be as researchers look more and more at these kinds of genes, and also the other part of the genome that is not genes at all, we'll find out more and more the underlying genetic causes of these neurodevelopmental conditions. I think it's also really important to stress why this is so important to find these genetic changes and it's because families really need a diagnosis. Lindsay talked quite eloquently and a lot about that knowing something was off and really wanting to know the reason why. Getting these diagnoses might change care management or treatment, but actually really importantly it just gives an answer to families who have often been looking for an answer for a really long time. Naimah: I just wanted to go back to the point that Sarah made that actually this genetic change is relatively common. Emma, I wondered if you could tell us a bit more about maybe why it took us so long to discover it? Emma: That's an interesting question actually. I suppose the sort of slightly simplified answer to that question is we haven't been able to sequence the whole of a person's genetic information for that long. And so, children like Lars would have had, as Lindsay described lots and lots of genetic tests up until they had a whole genome sequencing which is what Sarah was talking about. The types of tests that we had up until the whole genome sequencing wouldn't have allowed us to look at that bit of the genetic code where this RNU4-2 gene can be found. So, we can only really find that using whole genome sequencing. So, before that existed, we wouldn't have been able to find this cause of developmental condition. Naimah: Okay, thanks Emma. Naimah: Now we're going to hear from one of the two research groups who are responsible for these research findings. First of all, let's hear from Nicky Whiffin. (Clip - Nicky Whiffin) Naimah: How were the findings possible using the Genomics England dataset? Nicky: So, most previous studies have only looked at genetic variants that, in genes that make proteins, but only a subset of our genes actually do makes proteins. The Genomics England dataset we have sequencing information on the entire genome, not just on these protein coding genes and that means we can also look at variants in other genes. So, those that make molecules other than proteins. And RNU4-2 for example, makes an RNA molecule. Naimah: These findings translated to direct patient benefit for patients like Lars who were able to receive support from Unique. How does this demonstrate the value of the dataset? Nicky: Yes. So, it was incredible that we could find so many patients with RNU4-2 variants so quickly. This was enabled by access to Genomics England data but also to other large sequencing datasets around the world. So, we worked with people in the US, in Australia and also in mainland Europe. These large datasets enabled us to spot consistent patterns in the data and by looking across multiple datasets we can also make sure that our findings are robust. When we realised how significant this was and how many families would be impacted, we very quickly contacted Sarah at Unique to see if we could direct patients to them for support. (End of clip) Emma: There's one thing I wanted to raise. It's important to recognise the way that was discovered was through the National Genomic Research Library that Genomics England hosts. To highlight the value of that, and the value of having this centralised resource where families have been kind enough really to allow their data to be shared with some limited clinical information that allowed these researchers to be able to pull this out. And I think it highlights the power of the National Health Service in that we were able to create such a resource. It's really quite astounding that we've found such a common cause of a rare genetic condition, and it wouldn't have happened in the same timescale or in this way without that resource. And then to just say that as Sarah talked about the fact that we've been able to get that information out there, also the researchers were able to get out there and contact the NIH and all of these other programmes worldwide. In Australia, America, everywhere in the world and quickly identify new patients who had this condition and get those diagnoses out really rapidly to people. But all that came from that power of sharing data and being able to have that all in one place and making it accessible to very clever people who could do this work and find these answers. It's so important for families like Lindsay's, and all the families in England and around the world that have got these answers. So, I guess it's a big plug for the value of data sharing and having a secure place where people feel that it's trusted and safe, that enables these diagnoses to be made. Lindsay: If I could just echo that, we're so grateful that that exists in the UK. Just acknowledging like the privilege here that we have had to be able to, I mean for our family in the US, that we've been able to, you know, get ourselves into the NIH study and into the study at Children's National. That takes a lot of work. I feel like not everybody has that opportunity to be able to spend the time to do these applications and to go to all the appointments and get the testing done and have the insurance to cover it. So, very grateful that the system exists in a way in the UK that made this sort of research possible. I just hope that that can be replicated in other places, and also to what Emma was saying earlier, come up with a lower cost test as well for this to further the growth of the community and of course then the corresponding research. Sarah: I think firstly we have to sort of thank all of those families that took part and do share their data, because I think it's not always clear why you might want to do that as a family. I think this is really a powerful example of the benefit of that. I also think the data sharing goes one stage further. So, it's partly about getting the diagnosis, but the data sharing going forward about how this condition impacts families, both clinically and sort of day to day lived experience, is how we'll be able to learn more about these conditions. And so, when families get this diagnosis next week or next year, not only will they get a diagnosis, but they'll get a really good idea about what the condition is and how it might impact their child. Naimah: And Lindsay, coming back to you. So, we've talked about, you know, what it meant for your family before the diagnosis, but what has it meant to have a diagnosis and how did you feel? And what happened whenever you received the diagnosis? Lindsay: Sure. Lars was again part of the NIH Undiagnosed Diseases Research study. So, once you attend this programme and if you are not diagnosed like at the end of your stay, they keep your details on file and you're part of this database at the NIH Undiagnosed Diseases Programme. So, if you're undiagnosed after your sort of week-long work up, your samples stay within the research programme. We were also part of a research programme at Children's National Medical Centre, the Rare Disease Institute. So, our samples were sort of on file there in their database as well. And so, at the end of March I was really quite shocked to receive a call from our long time and trusted geneticist at Children's National that they had found a diagnosis. It was quite emotional. I really kind of didn't believe it. I just kept asking, you know, ‘Are you sure? Is this it?' you know, ‘How confident are we?' Because I think in my head, I sort of always thought that we would eventually find a diagnosis, but I thought that Lars would be, you know, a 30- or 40-year-old adult. I thought it would be decades from now. Like I felt like for whatever reason we had to wait decades for the science to sort of catch up to him. So, we were very, very grateful. It felt very validating, I guess. I had always kind of had this intuition feeling that we were sort of missing something and it's more that the science just hadn't quite caught up yet. But, you know, it was validating to know that okay, Lars is not the only person in the entire world with this, it is something that is relatively common in fact within the rare disease community. That is also very exciting to me personally because I'm hopeful that that will lead more researchers to be interesting in this, given how, quote on quote, common it is. I've sort of been describing it as like a mass diagnosis event but also more so this feeling that like we've been on this deserted island for eight years and now all of a sudden, you're sort of like looking around through the branches of the trees. It's like, wait a minute, there are other people on this island ad in this case, there's actually a lot more people on this island. Yeah, it's very exciting, it's validating. It gives us a lot of hope. And, you know, it has been quite emotional too and also a bit of an identity shift. Because I spoke earlier about how like being undiagnosed had become quite a big part of our identity. So, now that's kind of shifting a little bit that we have this new diagnosis and are part of a new community. But yeah, we're just very grateful that the research had continued. And, you know, I think sometimes you sort of have this feeling of okay, our files are up on a shelf somewhere, you know, collecting dust and are people really looking at them? And actually, it turns out that the research was ongoing and yeah, we're just very grateful for that. Naimah: Thanks so much for sharing, Lindsay. It sounds like it's been a real rollercoaster of emotions for your family and I'm glad to hear that, you know, you've got some hope now that you've got a diagnosis as well. So, moving onto the next question. Emma, I wanted to ask you then, how will these findings improve clinical diagnostic services for those for neurodevelopmental conditions? Emma: So, you asked me earlier about why it had taken so long to find this particular cause of neurodevelopmental condition, and I gave you a relatively simple answer. The reality is one of the other reasons is that almost eight out of ten children and adults who have RNU4-2 related neurodevelopmental condition have exactly the same single letter spelling change in that gene. So, actually that in itself means that when researchers are looking at that information, they might think that it's actually a mistake. Because we know that when we sequence genetic information, we can see mistakes in that sequencing information that are just because the machine has, and the way that we process that data, it's not perfect. So, sometimes we find these little mistakes and they're not actually the cause of a person's problems, they're just what we call an artefact or an issue with the way that that happens. So, that is part of the reason for why it was tricky for us to know whether this was, or rather the researchers to know whether this was or was not the cause of this particular condition. But that in itself is quite helpful when we think about how we might identify more people who have this going forwards. Because unlike in Lars' case where we didn't know what the cause was and so we were still searching, and we didn't know where to look in the billions of letters that make up the genetic code to find that answer, we now know that this is really very common. It's unbelievably common. I think we didn't think we would be finding a cause of a rare genetic condition that was this commonly occurring at this stage. But the fact that it's just a single, it's commonly this one single change in the gene means that we can set up pretty cheap diagnostic testing. Which means that if you were somewhere where you wouldn't necessarily have access to whole genome sequencing, or a more comprehensive testing in that way, we could still be able to pick up this condition. And it's common enough that even if you didn't necessarily recognise that a person had it, you could still have this as part of your diagnostic tool kit for patients who have a neurodevelopmental condition. It's common enough that just doing a very simple test that could be done in any diagnostic lab anywhere in the world, you would be able to identify the majority of people who have this. Naimah: Now let's hear from the other research group who are responsible for these findings. Here is Dr Andrew Mumford. (Clip - Dr Andrew Mumford) Naimah: Why are these research findings significant? Andrew: It offers genetic diagnosis not just for a handful of families but potentially for many hundreds of families, who we all know have been searching often for many, many years for a genetic diagnosis. But actually, there are other gains from understanding how this gene causes neurodevelopmental disorder. We know that there's GRNU4-2 in codes, not a protein actually, but a small nuclear RNA which is unusual for rare, inherited disorders. It's a component of a very complicated molecule called the spliceosome which in turn regulates how thousands of other genes are regulated, how they're made into proteins. So, fundamentally this discovery tells us a lot about the biology of how the spliceosome works. We already know that some other components of the spliceosome can go wrong, and result in diseases like neurodevelopmental disorders. This gives us an extra insight and actually opens the door to, I hope, a whole load of more discoveries of genetic diagnosis possible from other components of this complicated molecule. Naimah: Your research group used a mathematical modelling approach. Can you tell me a bit about this, and what this means for other rare conditions, Andrew? Andrew: So, identifying relationships between changes in individual genes and different kinds of rare, inherited disease is notoriously difficult because of the volume of data that's involved and the need to be absolutely certain that observed genetic changes are actually the cause of different rare, inherited disease. So, applying statistics to that kind of problem isn't new. But what my collaboration group have achieved here, is to develop, actually developed some years ago a completely new approach to applying statistics to genetic data. We call that BeviMed and we've been working for many years on the genes in code that make individual proteins. Most rare disorders are caused by genetic changes in genes that make proteins. What this discovery comes from is actually we've applied the BeviMed statistical technique to genes that don't make proteins, they're non-coding genes. For example, genes that make small nuclear RNA, it's just like RNU4-2. What's unusual about the BeviMed approach is that it's very sensitive to detecting links between genetic changes and rare diseases, and it can detect statistical associations really driven by very, very small numbers of families. So, we apply it to datasets like the 100,00 Genomes dataset and identify associations using statistics that have got a very high probability of association. Other members of the team then seek to corroborate that finding by looking at if we can see the association in other datasets, and we certainly achieve that with RNU4-2. But also, assessing biological plausibility by investigating what we understand already about in this case, a small nuclear RNA, and how it can possibly result in a disease. And we normally try and employ other independent evidence such as experimental investigation. Or going back to our families and asking for additional data to help really test this sort of theory that changes in this particular gene have resulted in a problem with neurodevelopment. (End of clip) Naimah: Emma, are there any other ways that we can identify these conditions based on their clinical presentation? Emma: So, Lindsay and I were talking with you just yesterday, wasn't it? And I asked Lindsay about what sorts of things Lars had in common with other children and adults who have been diagnosed with this condition? I actually think Lindsay probably gives a better summary than I would, so I might ask you to maybe repeat what you said to me yesterday. But the bit of it that really stood out to me was when you said to us that a lot of parents have said, ‘I'm not sure how we weren't all put together in the first place because you notice so many things that were in common.' So, maybe if you can give that summary and then I can translate that back into medical terms, if that's okay Lindsay. Lindsay: Sure, of course. Yeah, it been again, kind of mind blowing, some of the similarities. Especially as we've exchanged pictures and such, and baby pictures especially where some of the children like look like siblings. So, definitely some similarities in facial features, you know, everyone seems to experience some of the slow growth, so a short stature or quite skinny. There's feeding issues also that seem to be quite common. Also, you know, things like the global developmental delays, that's certainly across the board and histories of seizures, that's also quite common. Some people have experienced also some, like, bone density issues, that's not something that we've experienced so far, but that also seems to be quite common. But then also, behaviourally, there's a lot of similarities which has been, I think, quite exciting to a lot of us because you've always thought okay, so this is just my child. And of course, some of that is true but it's also interesting to find out some of these other things that are, you know, are quite similar. So, a lot of people have mentioned their child having, like, an interesting sense of humour. Kind of like a very slapstick sense of humour which is quite interesting. Or everyone seems to love water, everybody loves swimming pools and bathtime, and all of that. Lars loves a windy day. Something about the wind, he just loves it and plane noises and things like that have also come up with other people. So, yeah, it's been really interesting and cool to see. Emma: So, I guess Lindsay's sort of very beautifully summed up what is written in the research publication. So, there's only two research publications so far on this condition, it's all really new. And I am definitely not claim to be a clinical expert on this condition, and I don't think there are any yet. It will take people time to see lots of children and adults who have this particular condition. But ultimately what Lindsay summarised was the common clinical features that have been described by parents. In my job as a clinical genetics doctor, part of what we look at is a person's appearance. So, Lindsay described the photographs of children particularly when they were little, looked very similar. In the photographs that I've seen, I would agree with that. And so obviously those children look like their mum and dad, but they have other features that are in common. They have a characteristic appearance and that helps doctors like me to have an idea as to whether a child or an adult might have a particular condition. Then put together with the sorts of information that Lindsay gave us around the low tone, so being a little bit floppier particularly when they're little. The slow growth and growth problems, problems with eating, also with seizures. Those are all common things that were pulled out of both of the two research publications on this condition and putting that all together into one picture helps doctors to have an idea whether somebody may have a particular condition. That would help us in this case to potentially request that simple test I was talking about, if maybe we were practicing in a part of the world where we wouldn't have the resources that we thankfully do have in the United Kingdom, and in the USA. Naimah: So, Sarah, just coming to you next. How does this research spread awareness and help other patients with these conditions? Sarah: So, I think one of the things that's been really great about research now is that we are able to, you know, social media and things like that mean that we can spread this information really quickly across the world basically. I think what that does is that as well as helping bring people together that they've got this diagnosis, what it does is I think it provides hope for all of those people that Lindsay was talking about at the beginning who don't have a diagnosis. So, that piece around people are still looking, the researchers are working hard and that even if you don't have a diagnosis today you might get one in the future. Lindsay talked about your sample being dusty and not being looked at. I think it gives lots of families, not just those that get this diagnosis but all of those that haven't got a diagnosis, hope, that hopefully in the future they will get a diagnosis. I think one of the things we really hope will come out of diagnoses like this is that we will then be able to build up more of that picture about how families are affected. So, that we can give families more information about not only how their child is affected but how they might be affected in the future. That prognosis information that Linsday said is really missing when you don't have a diagnosis. And I think the other thing that hopefully is the next stage in this journey with this discovery is that those two science publications that Emma talked about, what we will want to do here at Unique working with the researchers and those families that have got a diagnosis, is to produce a patient family friendly information leaflet about this condition. One of the things we know is really important about those patient leaflets is including the photos. Because as both Emma and Lindsay have said that idea that they have facial features in common. And so, if you look at a leaflet and you can recognise your child in it, and you can see others that look like it, that can be a really sort of quite heartwarming experience in what often is a lonely experience with a rare condition. Naimah: And I think kind of on that point about it being a lonely experience, I wondered Lindsay if you could talk a bit more if this research has allowed you to connect with other parents and families who have received a diagnosis, and what impact that's had on your family? Lindsay: Yeah. I mean, and I think everything that Sarah has said was spot on. It's wonderful to have resources like Unique to connect families and have those diagnoses on the platform, so other clinicians can look for it and sort of grow this group. I think that has definitely been the highlight of getting this diagnosis at this stage, right. Because there's not much more you can do with it, with someone so brand new so being able to connect with the other families has been wonderful. One amazing mum who with this diagnosis set up a Facebook group, RNU4-2 Family Connect. And, you know, it's just been amazing to see people from all over the world joining this as they receive this diagnosis, you know, sharing their stories. We've spent countless hours on the weekends over the past couple of months on Zoom calls with total strangers, but just you find that you can just talk for hours and hours because you have so much in common. It's great to see what has worked well for other families and, you know, what has not worked. Sharing resources, just kind of all learning together. Also seeing the spectrum of this diagnosis, I think most genetic disorders have a spectrum and this seems to be the same here. So, that's been very interesting. And of course, our son is 8, Lars is 8. There's now a 33-year-old and a 29-year-old in the Facebook group. Speaking for me personally it's just amazing to see them and like it's very cool to see where they're at. That sort of helps you answer some of those questions about that before were quite unknown when you were thinking about the future. Obviously, everybody's development whether you have a genetic disorder or not, it is going to be what it's going to be, and everybody is going to do their own thing. But being able to see what a path might look like is just so helpful. And, you know, we all want community and connection, and so this has been really, really great to have that now. Sarah: I don't think there's much more that I can add because Lindsay articulated so well. But it's really heartwarming for us to hear the benefits of those connections because that's really why Unique and other support groups exist. Is to provide, partly to provide information, but I think predominantly to put families in touch with other families so that they can find a new home and connect and share experiences. And, you know, stop feeling as alone as they might have done before. Naimah: Okay, we'll wrap up there. Thank you to our guests, Lindsay Pearce, Sarah Wynn and Emma Baple for joining me today as we discussed the research findings which found a genetic change in the RNU4-2 gene which has been linked to neurodevelopmental conditions. If you'd like to hear more like this, please subscribe to Behind the Genes on your favourite podcast app. Thank you for listening. I've been your host and producer, Naimah Callachand, and this podcast was edited by Bill Griffin of Ventoux Digital.

In May, we had our annual DoorGrow Live event! What makes DoorGrow Live different from other property management conferences? In today's episode, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull talk about our most recent DoorGrow Live conference and some of the topics discussed. You'll Learn [01:12] What was different about this year's DoorGrow Live? [04:48] Tactics vs. Mindset [06:41] Changing the order of your priorities [10:17] Hard choices, easy life Tweetables “Tactics and the how can always be figured out.” “It's not really the tactics that are the problem. It's almost always the mindset.” “The hard choice is to not go for what you immediately want, but to reorder and prioritize some things that are more relevant to the long term.” “If you don't like the results, then it's probably because your priorities are not in the right order.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: If you don't like the results, then it's probably because your priorities are not in the right order.  [00:00:08] 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. [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 Hall, the owners of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show. Okay.  [00:01:12] And so what we're going to be talking about today is we just had DoorGrow Live and DoorGrow Live was a success. It was a lot of fun and it was a little bit different this year. So how would you say it was different this year, Sarah?  [00:01:27] Sarah: So I think a lot of people were saying, "Hey, it feels like there was really just a lot of heart that went into this event." [00:01:35] So usually when I think you and I run events, we're very tactical. How do you do this? How do you do that? And let's share this strategy and let's talk about this thing. And this year we changed things up a little bit and you were maybe a little hesitant to follow the formula that I put together, might I add. [00:01:53] And so maybe on the podcast you can tell people that It worked?  [00:01:57] Jason: It worked.  [00:01:58] Sarah: And? Do you have anything else to say about that?  [00:02:00] Jason: Anyone that knows Sarah knows what she wants to hear right now. You were right. There it is! There it is. There it is. That's what she wanted. There it is.  [00:02:10] Sarah: So this year when I was putting together the schedule and the agenda, there was this whole plan that I had. [00:02:17] And I was like, "Oh no, we need to order things like this and do things like this. And this is what I wanted." And he's like, " I don't know if that's going to work. And why are we doing this whole thing? And we're like putting this whole thing together. And like, you don't even know if it's going to work the way you want." [00:02:30] Jason: Is this how I sound?  [00:02:31] Sarah: Yes.  [00:02:32] Jason: "I don't know if it's gonna work."  [00:02:34] Sarah: "I don't know if it's gonna work."  [00:02:36] Jason: That's totally what I sound like.  [00:02:38] Sarah: It was perfect.  [00:02:39] Jason: I'm shaking my head no, by the way, for the listeners.  [00:02:41] Sarah: See you probably, they probably didn't even know that was me talking. They just thought it was you.  [00:02:45] Jason: Oh, yeah. [00:02:46] You do such a good impersonation of me. I know. It's really quite impressive. I'll go back to my normal voice so that you realize it's Sarah talking. Yeah, for the listeners, we need to make sure there's two distinct voices or they're going to be really confused why I'm talking to myself because you sound so much like me. [00:03:03] Sarah: I know. I'm so sorry if I confused anyone.  [00:03:06] Jason: Nobody was confused. Okay. So...  [00:03:08] Sarah: so he was giving me a little bit of a hard time about it because I, like, made him sit down and map this out and I was like, "no, there's a formula that we're supposed to follow and this is what I want it to look like." And I think it worked out really well. [00:03:21] Jason: Yeah, the event went really well.  [00:03:23] Sarah: Yeah.  [00:03:24] Jason: Things ran pretty much like clockwork. That's hard. It's hard to do that in events. Like speakers go over, people don't stop. Like, we had this big, huge red LED clock right in front of the speaker. So it was like super obvious, like, and we, I think we had conversations with all the speakers, like everything worked pretty smoothly. [00:03:43] The general feedback I got from a lot of clients one of our clients, Ed Golding, came up to me and he was just smiling. He'd been to some previous ones and he said, "this was different, you know, what was different about this?" I said, "what, Ed? " He said, "heart, this one had heart." [00:03:56] And it was an emotional event. There was lot more emotion at this event. Did we talk about tactics? Yes. I explained how I've been able to leverage social media and different tools and, I've made millions of dollars off social media. And I shared some really cool tools and very tactical stuff. [00:04:12] That's how I opened up the event. But we got into a lot of mindset and what we've realized over time, that we talked about at the event that most of our clients are not winning or losing because they don't, or do have tactics. Tactics and the how can always be figured out. And I liked Jeff Garner's tattoo he talked about but....  [00:04:33] Sarah: he's funny.  [00:04:33] Jason: He's like, " can I say it? There's children present." I had my kids at the event.  [00:04:36] Sarah: They're my kids. Like they hear it all the time.  [00:04:40] Jason: Yeah, so he's got a tattoo that's FTH Which stands for "fuck the how" so and so a lot of times people are so worried about "how do I do this? How do I do this?" And we do share tactics. We do a lot of that at DoorGrow. However, It's not really the tactics that are the problem. It's almost always the mindset. And so whenever I teach tactics. I always am going into the why behind it and the mindset stuff. And when they start to understand this stuff, then they will actually do it usually. [00:05:13] So there was a lot of mindset at the event. And then also, there's vulnerability. Like I openly shared how I've been reevaluating my priorities and what those look like and how how that looks. You were sharing about your upbringing and how like the difficult things in life are also the things that make us who we are and help us to enable us to help others and how to view it through a different lens, which I thought was really awesome. [00:05:39] And everybody's crying. Sarah's making everybody cry. Like I was crying, like...  [00:05:44] Sarah: I made people cry in a very different way this time though. I'm usually making people cry because I'm yelling at them.  [00:05:50] Jason: That's not true.  [00:05:51] Sarah: It's a little true. It's a little true.  [00:05:54] Jason: Not our clients, just me.  [00:05:56] Sarah: No, I don't do, but I do give our clients tough love when they need it. [00:05:59] And Kelly came to the event and she's like, "this is exactly what I needed." I'm like, "I know that's why I was on you for like three months." [00:06:07] Jason: Yeah. I think some people had some breakthroughs, which that's the goal. Like we want to change lives. And so there's something just really beautiful about this DoorGrow Live. [00:06:16] There was a lot of more depth to it and I just feel grateful to be able to be part of it and to see, our clients that believe in us and that, that came in just seeing their progress and, there are people there that have been in our program for years, which is just. [00:06:29] It's really awesome to see. So, so I thought I would share just a little bit today about what I had shared and this will be a quick episode cause Sarah doesn't want me to go long. So this'll be a quick one.  [00:06:41] Sarah: Back to back today.  [00:06:42] Jason: You got a busy day. So what I shared is I talked a little bit about prioritization and I've talked about this previously, but what what was interesting, one of my breakthroughs recently was recognizing I was basically merging in my mind, the five basic needs. [00:06:57] Which I don't know who put that out. We learned it from our friend Roya.  [00:07:01] Sarah: But maybe it was... [00:07:02] Jason: maybe it's Tony Robbins. I don't know. So there's five basic needs and the five basic needs are love and belonging, power and achievement fun and adventure, fun and pleasure, safety and security. [00:07:15] Sarah: And I'll see when you put them in a weird order, then I don't remember them. Freedom and flexibility.  [00:07:20] Jason: Freedom and flexibility. Freedom. There we go. Yeah. Okay. These are five basic needs and we all have one that's primary. For Sarah, it's power and achievement. Nobody's surprised, right? For me, it's actually love and belonging. [00:07:33] And a lot of my achievement and a lot of the things that I do. Are to, that's what motivates that we're helping clients working with clients love and belonging and having that connection. That's why I like working with entrepreneurs because I don't feel like such a weirdo when I'm around other people that are that weird, that are also entrepreneurial. [00:07:51] But what I've come to realize that if I make that my highest priority, I tend to get less of it. And I think this is true for anyone with their basic need. If you really think about it, if Sarah just went after power and achievement. And didn't prioritize like relationships and other things, it could be pretty destructive and it would likely have the opposite desired effect in trying to achieve power and whatnot, right? [00:08:13] Because we need others. And then for me, if I'm just going after love and belonging, I would be less likely to get it. If I didn't have my own oxygen mass first, if I didn't have financial wealth and health, if I didn't have physical health then it wouldn't be nearly as effective. I wouldn't be nearly as present. [00:08:31] I wouldn't be able to enjoy much love and connection or belonging, in relationships. I wouldn't be able to feed into relationships as much if I weren't taking care of myself. And so based on that I, I had everybody map out or stack or list their priorities in their life, and then I showed how my priorities were listed and then Like what my natural inclination is placing like love and belonging at the top. [00:08:59] And then I showcased how I've intentionally consciously listed them and rearranged the priority and how that affects my decision making in my day to day so that I spend more of my time in my day to day moving towards the top priorities, which are not on my new adjusted priority list are not the love and connection related things related to family, sex, relationship, stuff like that. So above that, I've placed God at the top which is, for some of you that might be your highest ideal, whatever that is. And so I want to always be pointed towards my highest ideal. Second, I put power, achievement, impact, and that's related money status, all that. [00:09:41] And that allows me to have impact. Which leads to me getting what I want. It's a leading sort of thing. And then the next is health. I need to be prioritizing health. And then it gets into more of the relationship stuff in the priorities. Whereas before I was putting family, friends, fun was probably higher on the list, but I felt like I wasn't ever able to do as much of that as I wanted. [00:10:04] Because I was so focused on the other stuff. And so by reordering the priorities, it takes work. Like it takes effort to go towards what's easy and what's natural usually leads to a harder life. And so there's this stoic phrase that I like that is "hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life." [00:10:26] And the hard choice is to not go for what you immediately want, but to reorder and prioritize some things that are more relevant to the long term, playing the long game, doing what maybe I feel deep down inside I should do connected when I'm connected to God or focusing on my health, doing the playing the long game instead of doing the short term, right? [00:10:49] The short term is like eat, Häagen Dazs vanilla ice cream, vanilla bean ice cream. It's like my favorite right now. I love that. Or whatever, right? When we're just trying to please our tongue and our genitals, we tend to have a much harder life, right? And this is the short term. We're just going for the short term gain. [00:11:05] And so we want to make sure we prioritize the long game, the long term. and give up where that means sacrifice in the short term. That means work. That means effort. And a lot of people just aren't putting in enough work or enough effort in the lazy people in society are the people that are always trying to please their tongue and their genitals. [00:11:24] Maybe it's crass, my crass way of saying it. Okay. It's a little gross. Okay. So that's what I shared at DoorGrow Live. And so I encourage all of you listening, like make a list. What are your priorities? And what I shared is your results reveal your priorities. So if you don't like the results in your life, write them down. [00:11:43] Like, what are your relationships like? What's your business like? What are you doing in the business? What aren't you doing in the business? Or what are you enjoying? What are you not enjoying? And if you don't like the results, then it's probably because your priorities are not in the right order. It doesn't mean you give up or change your priorities, right? All of the things that were my priorities before are still priorities for me. I've just rearranged the order and by just rearranging the order, it changes everything. It changes the results that you get and you'll get more of the results that you really desire if you rearrange those priorities in a way that probably will take you more effort and more work, but will allow you to get everything that you want in the long run. [00:12:28] So that was my message. That's the simple message. Rearrange your priorities figure out your basic need, put that lower on the list, and figure out what needs to come before in order for you to have as much of that as possible because I want you to enjoy your life, but you need to do make hard choices. [00:12:41] And you need to do hard things.  [00:12:43] But it was an awesome event and make sure you are keeping an eye on doorgrowlive.com for the future and make sure to attend in the future. [00:12:52] Everybody says our conferences are different than any other property management conference out there. And That's a good thing. Like we do it in a good way. So, I recommend you attend. So you can check out more details about future events at doorgrowlive.Com. And if you are wanting to grow your property management business and have success like our clients were showcasing at DoorGrow Live and grow your business, scale your operations, have a better lifestyle, enjoy your team more, enjoy your business, be less frustrated, have more peace, reach out to us at DoorGrow. You can check us out at DoorGrow.com. We would love to see if we can help you scale your business. And until next time to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. [00:13:36] 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!  [00:14:02] 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.

Join us for an insightful episode of the VRTAC-QM Manager Minute as Brittny MacIver and Sarah Clardy from the VRTAC-QM team share their expertise on case management systems. Brittny, an expert in Program and Performance within our Quality Management team, and Sarah, the Program Director for Fiscal and Resource Management, delve into best practices and the growing trend of states seeking to upgrade their systems. Learn about the nuances of state requests and the RFP process, and gain valuable knowledge to help you decide whether it's time to stay with your current system or make a move. Listen Here   Full Transcript:   {Music}   Brittny: Avoid over customizing the system. There's a lot of systems out there that are already available in VR agencies, and so if it works for that VR agency, there's a good chance the majority of the processes are going to work for your agency as well.   Sarah: Silos, how do we break down silos? And this process really can be a nice segue to combining program and fiscal together. I know we've said that multiple times, and I don't think we can say it enough. This process really is an opportunity to develop relationships.   Brittny: Be curious. Your agency may have a process that you're unsure why it exists. Some may say that's how it's always been. I think it's good to be curious, figure out the reason behind it, and see if there's a way that you can streamline those processes.   Intro Voice: Manager Minute brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management, Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Here is your host Carol Pankow.   Carol: Welcome to the Manager Minute. Today I'm thrilled to have two of my esteemed colleagues, Brittny MacIver and Sarah Clardy from the VRTAC-QM, joining me in the studio today. So, Brittny, how's it going for you?   Brittny: It's going great. How about you?   Carol: Awesome. I'm better for seeing your smiling face this morning. And how about you, Miss Clardy? How are you doing?   Sarah: I'm great. Great to kick off a new week.   Carol: Excellent. So for our listeners, Brittny serves on the program and performance side of our QM team. And Sarah is the program director for the fiscal and resource management side of our QM team. And both of these ladies have extensive experience with case management systems. And during one of our regular Core QM Team meetings, I asked the team, I'm like, hey, what are some potential podcast ideas? And Brittny said, you know what? There are a lot of state voc rehab agencies on a quest right now for a new case management system. Either your state is requesting you to do another request for proposal or you're just like, hey, is there something better out there? So with lots of new players that have entered the market, your case management system is a lifeline. And if it's not functioning optimally, it can really lead to some significant issues. So we just wanted to have a conversation today that can help to guide you through this journey with open eyes. So let's dig in. So of course our listeners always like to know, like how did you people get into VR? Everybody wonders, like what's your story? So I want to hear from each of you about kind of your journey into VR. So Sarah, I'm going to kick it off with you.   Sarah: So many of you know Ron Vessell, he's a staple around VR. Ron actually hired me back in the year 2000. I was a very green government accountant just starting out, didn't know what I was getting into, and they took a chance on a new, young professional. And so I did a deep dive early in my career and never looked back.   Carol: Very nice, I love that. How about you, Britt? How did you find your way into VR? You came a little different way.   Brittny: Yeah, I think it was definitely a unique path. I actually worked in criminal justice at the prison system as a counselor for quite some time. They were privatizing the position, which meant we were kind of losing benefits. We're no longer going to be a state employee. So I started looking around for other counseling positions. And at my time at the prison, I found that there was a lot of individuals with disabilities and a lot of obstacles that we had to address and assist with while we were there. And so when I seen the position at VR, I was very interested in it interviewed. And that's where I got my start about 14 years ago.   Carol: And which state was that in? Britt.   Brittny: That was in.Indiana.   Carol: Yeah. That's cool. I think that's great. So you worked with Teresa?   Brittny: Yes.   Carol: Very good.   Brittny: I always joke and say my four years at the prison. And then I have to clarify when I was working.   Carol: I love that. In fact, we had a guest last month that also had come up through the correctional system as well. It was really fun, but that definitely having that skill set behind you coming into VR is super important, really needed. So let's talk a little bit about your work. Both of you do for the QM. Just so our listeners have a little sense. And Britt, I'm going to start with you about that. Like can you give them a little flavor kind of for what you do in this TA world?   Brittny: Yeah, as you mentioned I work on the performance team. So really all things performance. But we help agencies address performance related needs. So this can be anywhere from training on performance measures to data analysis on performance data, reviewing policy procedures, internal controls and sometimes even assessing the system impact around performance and seeing how that impacts the reporting pieces.   Carol: Yeah, I love our performance team, the stuff you guys do, and you're so good at your analysis and really looking at taking that data and really digging in deep as to what's going on. So it's a very, very important piece of what is happening out there for our VR programs as we're delivering that technical assistance. How about you, Sarah?   Sarah: I have the great pleasure of leading the financial arm of the VRTACQM, and understanding that the VR award is the probably the most complex award within the grants management world. It really covers a wide array of skills and knowledge and isn't just financial based, it's also program based. So under the QM, we help agencies sort of manage the grant from the whole life cycle perspective, making sure that all the federal requirements are met, taking a look at individual state requirements, how those two things intersect, and we spend a lot of time, probably the majority of my time is actually spent in the period of performance arena, and specifically as it relates to this topic today with case management service systems.   Carol: Excellent. So, Brittny, you had mentioned the issue of people are looking for a new case management system. And I know as of late it feels like we've had at least a half a dozen folks saying, you know, we're doing a new RFP. We either have to for the state or we're going out for a new system. What advice do you have kind of off the bat for people who are considering venturing into this new RFP process?   Brittny: Yeah, I think before writing the RFP, I think it's important for the state or the agency to do some research on what systems are out there. A lot of agencies are writing an RFP based on what their current system does, and they end up with a very similar system. The process and all the hard work of getting a new system can be really exciting. It could mean new innovative features and easier case management process, which leads to improved efficiency, improve services and outcomes. You could find a system that would help with documentation times. You can reduce that, and then that way the counselor can spend more time with their participants. So I think just seeing what's out there and what's available to help you write that RFP is huge.   Carol: Sarah, how about you? What's your perspective on making sure those fiscal pieces are addressed as they are thinking about RFPing?   Sarah: Oh goodness. There's so many perspectives to consider here. I think first and foremost states need to understand period of performance. I feel like that's a term that we make really complicated. And it's really nothing more than just looking at the funding sources that are available and understanding the timeline that agencies can obligate and expend funds. So I think, first and foremost, understanding period of performance. The second key piece really is understanding state requirements. We have a lot of states that aren't either aware of what their state requires, or there are things that are in place that they think is required by the state. And when we start doing a deep dive into what that looks like, sometimes those things really aren't state requirements. It's something that somebody put into place years ago that everybody just thought was what was required. So I think understanding those two things. And then third, I would say understanding what your end game is when you're working with a fiscal and a case management system, and we're looking at just sheer fund accounting and tracking those funds all the way through and then being able to report at the end of that cycle. And so I oftentimes will tell states, if you kind of look at the end game, look at the reporting that's required at the end, it really kind of establishes the things that are necessary along the way in terms of system adaptations, structure, configuration.   Carol: So definitely I'm going to tie you two together when a state is going out and they're looking at doing the RFP, you want to really think about your complete process so that you've got all the right team members in place from the get go, which can't just be the program side of your house. And I remember us doing this back in Minnesota as we were going through the requirements. It's like, what are those fiscal people doing here? They're all important. Like you need all the pieces together, talking through how this system is going to work, how you're going to connect to your statewide accounting system. So that becomes really important. Now, I know I was on a call, I want to say within the last three, four months and we had a state say, yeah, we're thinking about RFP for a new system to go into place January 1st. And Brittny, I want to kick this to you. What is a realistic time frame if somebody is considering a new case management system, is it really possible to do that in, uh, maybe eight months or so or not? What do you think is a good timeline?   Brittny: I think this really depends on several factors as far as a timeline when considering a new case management system, typically it could take up to six months to develop that RFP. And it's really doing some background homework, seeing what's out there, doing a business process analysis and understanding your own business processes. But typically, I'd say depending on agency size, how many years of converted data you're looking at, converting it into the new system. And I know there's federal requirements, but there's also state requirements that are sometimes even longer than the federal ones. And then also if there's any interfaces. So if you have other systems that are connecting to your current case management system, this is going to make a huge difference, because now you've got a lot of different teams having to help out with the specifications and then also test the system. So you've got to think of their timelines as well. And then lastly just that preparedness piece. So how much work did you do up front on the RFP. How much have you analyzed your business processes. And like Sarah had mentioned, are these things that somebody put into place ten years ago, or are these things that are actually a state policy or a federal policy that you're aligning with? I think the typical timeline that I typically see is around 18 to 24 months for the full implementation once you sign in that contract. But again, that could range short or longer depending on that prep work and then that agency size and things like that.   Carol: So eight months is probably a little aggressive.   Brittny: Yeah very, aggressive yeah. But optimistic I like it.   Carol: I love it. So what are some pitfalls that we want to help our listeners avoid as they're kind of tackling this process? And Sarah, I'm going to kick that to you first.   Sarah: First and foremost. And I think the listeners are probably going to see a recurring theme here, as Brittny said, not just taking current system functionality and developing that into a checklist or using that to develop the specifications. I think really sitting down and outlining what are the requirements, what are the things that we're using right now? Where did that come from? And the possibilities going into this process allows a lot of opportunity to think outside the box and think about what are the things that systems currently aren't doing, or things that are requiring a lot more work right now where we could really get creative and do some really cool things. So I think avoiding the pitfall of just not spending that time up front to understand what it is that agencies need, and then also, again, bringing fiscal and program together to understand the requirements from a physical standpoint. A lot of times that is kicked to the finance folks in the House, we're still seeing in a lot of agencies a breakdown or a gap between program and fiscal, and there's a lot of danger and not bringing those two teams together to understand on both sides of the coin, what is it that we need to do? Oftentimes within that space is where a lot of the creative ideas come out and allow greater efficiencies within the agency and more internal controls.   Carol: Very good. Britt, what do you think about pitfalls? What are some things that we could help our folks avoid?   Brittny: Yeah, I once talked to a chief technology officer and he said the two main reasons why usually a case management system implementation fails is because of fiscal and data validation. So hitting those two pieces very hard, making sure that you're not only converting the data into the system, it's almost like that toy where you've got a round circle and you've got to fit it in the round circle. The data conversion doesn't always work like that, and sometimes you're trying to fit that round circle into a square peg. And that's because the way the systems line up. So making sure that you've got individuals on the front end in different roles, looking at that data and then also testing that RSA 911 to make sure things are mapped correctly and going in correctly before you go into production. At one example I've seen of that is significance of disability. And so one system may calculate significance of disability a little bit differently than another system. And even though they've got everything mapped together, doesn't always go hand in hand and can cause some major issues. The fiscal piece, I think Sarah mentioned that quite a bit, but just making sure that you're doing heavy testing and understanding how the system will work, especially when you go into production. Working in a new system, the biggest ones are dealing with authorizations that already have partial payments on it, draft authorizations, pending payments, amending an authorization, and vendor logic. These are all pieces that may be different in that new system. So making sure you're testing every angle and you're prepared for that transition. I think a third suggestion is just my personal preference would be to avoid over customizing the system. So there's a lot of systems out there that are already available in VR agencies. And so if it works for that VR agency, there's a good chance the majority of the processes are going to work for your agency as well. And sometimes those states like to over customize that system just because they want to have what they've always had. But that ends up being sometimes pretty expensive down the road, because then you're paying for additional testing and maintenance of that customization. So I'd be open minded to changing business processes, or see if you could find your business processes met in a different way and achieving that same result.   Carol: Yeah, I like it. I remember when we had our new case management system and it was built. We went in with all our partners, our WIOA partners, and so we had this kind of groovy new system, but it was supposed to meet all these different needs. Well, it gets complicated, but we couldn't forget about our field people because a lot of those folks in the field. So while you're talking to program, you know, a lot of times it's supervisors and different folks are involved. Having those direct field staff, your VR techs and your counselors who are inputting stuff every day and they're like, hey, this weird thing over here, you know, they may not talk techie, but they can explain the stuff that isn't working so well in getting all of those ideas right from them so they can see, hey, they really can help to impact and influence the system is important.   Brittny: Definitely.   Sarah: You know, Carol, along the lines of what Brittny just shared too, I think there's a caution there in terms of customizations that are in existing systems, whether it's an off the shelf system or a homegrown system. We have a number of agencies that have their own in-house systems. Sometimes there are customizations that work for a particular state or might work for a group of states, but it's not applicable to all states. Again, because we go back to those state requirements. And then sometimes when agencies implement that, it causes some compliance issues because of their own local procurement standards. So asking the question, you know, if they're developing those specifications and not just taking everything from what they're doing or is offered to them currently, but really looking at it with a cursory eye to determine, is this something that we need or we even can use because we're seeing period of performance compliance issues from some system functionalities that are in place that worked for other states that aren't necessarily a one size fits all.   Carol: I think one thing I've noticed too, and I just noticed from the periphery, you know, it's really statewide IT systems and the IT groups have been put together. You know, we see that consolidation happening where you may have had your own IT folks that you were dealing with, and now you have a State Department of IT or something. There's some other consolidated area that has put together different processes or requirements. So I think for some folks, if you're used to maybe the old way when you were entering into this process and maybe doing an RFP and you had more control over everything, you may have a little less because you do have now these sort of statewide IT system requirements. And so it's really important to get hooked up with those folks as well, especially for listeners who may have not done this for a while. Maybe, you know, it's been a long minute since you have looked at your case management system, and you were remembering back a decade ago when it was a little easier. You could just do something a little more at the drop of a dime. But I think the benefit that having those statewide IT groups is they have so much experience. And when they're looking at how they really address putting out an RFP and they can have a lot of their expertise to bring to the table to make sure this gets put together really well. You just want to remember that you may have some other things in play that you didn't have a long time ago. Just a thought. Alright, I know Brittny, when we were talking to you, had some ideas on cool stuff and I love cool stuff. Like, you know, if you're doing your case management system, you said, well, gee, don't, don't just recreate the same old thing like you want to put cool things in place. So do you have ideas like new technology or features or things people could include in their request?   Brittny: Yeah, I've seen dashboards where there's visual dashboards and graphs or pie charts that assist the counselor and case management. So seeing how many individuals they've got enrolled in an education program and how many of those individuals have earned an MSG in the last performance year. And this allows them to check those that haven't and reach out to those participants. I've also seen a central print and mail where the state's just actually the agency put a checkbox in there, and they've got an interface with a local company and that company, they hit the checkbox and everything gets bashed up that night for a letter or anything that they want to mail. And there's a mass every night they mail out all these letters. So that way the counselor could be anywhere. They could be at the school, out in the field, anywhere, mail out a letter, and not have to worry about printing something off and stuffing that envelope. I've also seen invoice payment systems. So systems where vendors can apply to be a vendor, they can document what services agree to terms, things like that. The agency can review them and approve them in there. And then that system can work back and forth with authorizations and payments. So an authorization could be drafted in the case management system could shoot over to this invoice payment system. That vendor can view it, upload documents, invoice against it, put reports and things like that in there, and they can communicate back and forth to one another. I've also seen states exploring various ways to integrate artificial intelligence and case management systems. So I know you did a podcast on one that was kind of outside the case management system, but I'm hearing a lot of states be interested in how to integrate it in the case management system, whether it's in case notes or informed decisions across. So I'm really excited to see what states come up with and how they're able to integrate that within. But I think that's a great idea.   Carol: I love that whole area of artificial intelligence. It was super fun when we did the podcast with Washington General, because they had that really cool piece that was, you know, an add on. It was kind of outside of the system. But boy, the staff love it. But there's a lot of possibilities. I know we were kicking around on the team about ways you could use AI within VR. I mean, when you think about the development of plans, even the way you speak about things, to make it more plain language, and I still I think people are so freaked out a little bit about AI and you go, gosh, it's all over. You know, it is in our whole world. It's when you're talking to Siri or Alexa, you know, every day you go to the airport and you're getting your eyes scanned to get through, Clear whatever you may do. It's just integrated into everything we do. I think that is a really fun, developing new area that has a lot of possibility for the case management systems. Sarah, did you have any ideas too, about any cool possible groovy tools? Maybe fiscally related? I didn't mean to put you on the spot.   Sarah: No, that's okay. We haven't seen as much innovation on the fiscal side, although I think that there are a lot of opportunities. I think, again, in the AI world, I think mapping that out, looking for the possibilities, it goes back to what I said earlier, just being an innovative thinker and looking at what are the challenges and efficiencies that we're battling and what are some of those possibilities that we can use to address that. Staff recruitment retention continues to be a challenge in our VR world and especially in the fiscal arena. And as staff look to bolster their internal controls and the program at large, looking for some of those opportunities. So I don't know that I have as many cool things like Brittny shares, but I'm hoping that we'll see those on the horizon.   Carol: Yeah, me too. I think there's a lot of possibility out there now. I know Sarah, you had developed a tool that coincided with the 2023 spring CSV conference because a lot of folks were asking like, okay, what do I do with my case management system and the fiscal requirements and all of that? Can you talk a little bit about that? Because even though we felt like we widely publicized it, people are still like what? There was a tool. I don't know anything about it.   Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. And I'm still excited about it. So we developed a fiscal technology checklist for case services last year in conjunction with the period of performance training that we offered at the conference. And we found that in our technical assistance to state VR agencies around this topic, there's a gap in communication between either the CMS companies and VR, or even if an agency has their own internal program, a gap in communication between the program and fiscal and whoever those IT experts are. So we took that opportunity to map out all of the areas to consider. And so when we're working with agencies under the VRTAC-QM to analyze their processes and look at how their systems are set up, there's a linear fashion and way of looking at that. For instance, is the system set up on a state fiscal year or a federal fiscal year? There's a lot of agencies that have a system set up on a state year that really doesn't make sense for reporting, and it's causing a lot of challenges on the financial side with producing reports for the RSA 17, for example. And they thought that that's the way they had to have it set up. There's very few states that have very state specific requirements that would necessitate that. So it's not that it never would work, but it involves sort of a deep dive into why do we have our systems set up and is that necessary? The other big piece are the budgets. How are budgets set up within the system? Does it map out to the available fund sources that are available to the agency? And then there's a ton of bells and whistles that act as internal controls in the back of a case management system that really dictate how the system behaves and helps the agency navigate through period of performance. And so it's going through a whole list of considerations to make sure that the agency is well equipped to manage period of performance, manage those different fund sources and make them able to do that reporting at the end. So it's a really good list. And honestly, as states are struggling with that communication piece, particularly with the companies that they work with or through the process to develop a new case management system, it's a very nice way of considering all of those different elements that need to go into either evaluating the current system or looking at a new system to make sure that it's meeting exactly what their state requires while still taking into account those federal requirements. So we're constantly reverting folks back to that list, and hopefully agencies are taking the time to sit down as a team and combining the program and fiscal staff to walk through that, to make sure that they understand all of those elements. And if they have questions, we have a number of trainings that we offer through the VRTAC-QM to assist with that. We've even had some agencies seek out that training before they start developing those lists for their RFPs, to make sure that they both understand from a physical standpoint what all those requirements are. So anyway, it's Fiscal Technology Checklist for Case Services. It is on our website, I'm sure. Carol, you're probably going to mention that and hint, hint it is available to the public. So I know that there's been some current CMS companies that have gone out and looked at that piece also, so that they can better understand and hopefully fill in the gap for that communication gap exists so that everybody's talking the same language and on the same page.   Carol: Yes, of course, I have to make a shameless plug for our lovely website. So you will go to vRTAC-QM.org and we have a top navigation header. You can go right to resources and everything's listed under the CSAVR Spring 2023 Session Recordings and Materials. And it actually was Session Two is where you can find that checklist. But if you scroll through you can actually listen to Sarah's session recording. And then you can see the checklist there as well, as well as all of our other awesome sessions from the 2023 Spring Conference. Oh, thanks for that. So how about other words of wisdom from you fine ladies? Because I think of you both as just like, oh my gosh, such powerhouses in the case management system. Brittny, I'm going to go to you first.   Brittny: I've got a few. I think the first one is to be curious. Your agency may have a process that you're unsure why it exists. Some may say that's how it's always been. So I think it's good to be curious, figure out the reason behind it, and see if there's a way that you can streamline those processes. I would also allocate staff specifically for this project, and I think we mentioned it already a little bit earlier. But looking at those projects subject matter experts and making sure you've got the right people at the table. So this is going to be administration, IT, but also your fiscal people, your front end people. It's really important to make sure that you have some direct service or direct field staff that are knowledgeable and have a long agency history that you can integrate into that project as well, and they can provide feedback. I would also have a designated project manager that could be somebody. You within your department, or that could be somebody that you decide to contract out. But I think it's important that they have that project management experience because it is a giant project, and it is going to take quite some time to get from that RFP contract to implementation. I'd also weave in changes as much as you can. So during the project, you'll start to have the opportunity to see the differences between the two systems, your current one and your new system. And so if there's any way that you can weave in changes early and often, this will help that transition for staff much, much easier. And then also as you're preparing or updating revising business processes, that also helps with that piece of it. I've seen states do statewide quarterly demos to kind of show staff the new system and help them kind of process that change along the way. And lastly, I would definitely emphasize not to overlook accessibility. I'd pull in your accessibility users early to begin testing the system, and then also integrating those accessibility terms into training documents. I think one thing I learned is that using language accessibility language is huge. I couldn't imagine trying to learn a new system and somebody saying, use a dropdown box. But yet my system is calling it a combo box. So using that terminology and making this transition much easier for all staff.   Carol: Awesome points. I want to highlight a couple, that be curious. I can't emphasize that enough. There are so many agencies where I'm going to call it urban Legend. You're doing something because everybody always says, RSA said. You have to do that and RSA will come out. I've been in monitoring. They're like, we never told you that. Whatever that is in your system, you made that up like you made that happen. So I love that being curious because you want to ask questions. A lot of times you just go with the flow. You know, somebody put it in play 20 years ago and then you just keep bringing it forward. So I love that. And definitely when you talk about dedicating staff, you want to make sure you dedicate those staff, but you also want to think about all of the other roles that have been assigned to that person. You cannot put them as the project manager of this whole project, and they're still maintaining all their field services duties and doing all the other stuff, because this really is a full time job. And I know I'm going to apologize right here to Natasha Jerde. We had her as a project manager for our new case management system. At the same time, she's, you know, rewriting our policy and procedure manual and doing a million other things because I just had zero clue at how much went into this. And that was really it's really terrible. And I've actually seen some of the staff across the country burn out. We've had people retire early. They're like the case management system process killed me. So when you're dedicating staff, please do give them some time to do it. And don't expect that they're not going to work an 80 hour workweek because that is not so fabulous. But I loved your points, Brittny, those are great. How about you, Sarah? Any words of wisdom?   Sarah: Yes, thank you. I think we constantly hear from state agencies about silos. How do we break down silos? And this process really can be a nice segue to combining program and fiscal together. I know we've said that multiple times in our discussion today, but I don't think we can say it enough. This process really is an opportunity to develop relationships and I know even from the agency that I came from, the introduction that I had to the program side was through a new case management system conversion. And at first I showed up at the table. And Carol, like you said earlier, people were like, who invited her? Why is she here? Does she need to be here? People wouldn't talk and share ideas. And then as we both committed to developing that relationship and understanding one another better, not only did we end up with a quality product, but we had quality services, we had better management and leadership within the agency. So looking at it as an opportunity sort of through that lens, engage the folks in the field as well. Sometimes as leaders, we tackle these types of projects and we think the folks in the field are too busy. And really the best ideas can come from our counselors and those individuals who are supporting in those roles our field staff, our fiscal agents. And I know we have a separate training on that that we offer VR agencies, but engaging them in that process and getting their ideas on, hey, what's working and what's not working? What are the challenges that you're facing so that as you are curious to Brittny's point, you're taking into consideration maybe some of those wins that you can secure on the other side and maybe cut out some process or things while still meeting those requirements and engaging in those efficiencies. The other thing I would offer, and we're having lots of discussions now about fiscal forecasting and spending strategies within VR agencies, as VR agencies are getting over the hump of Covid and taking a look at what their spending looks like, the case management system really is a system of record. And as we look at the statewide accounting system and in its function, we can't ignore the case management system and the role that it plays in navigating through all those fiscal requirements. And so if we think about the CMS sort of as the VR checkbook, and when we are authorizing for services and obligating funds, not only are there requirements around how to do that and how to capture that, looking at the individual sources of funds that we have available, it really is a way to capture those obligations within a checkbook so that we can take a look at any point in time from a leadership standpoint, what is our financial position? And so being able to look at how much do I have in my 23 carryover checkbook and how much do I have in 24. And plan ahead so that I can make decisions around re-allotment and I can think ahead so that we're not leaving funds on the table and lapsing funds at the back end of our of our award. It really is important that we look at how we capture all of that in the case management system in a way that allows us to continue managing our programs with a strong fiscal focus. So tying all of that in is also important at a higher level, so that we can use the data to make quality financial decisions.   Carol: Well said, well said. So in case our listeners want to get a hold of either of you, would you mind sharing your email address, Brittny?   Brittny: Yes, definitely. My email address is bMacIver So m a c I v e r@sdsu.edu. It's also available on our VRTAC website. If you go to our staff you'll see my email address there as well.   Carol: Excellent. Sarah, how about you.   Sarah: Yes thank you. It's sClardy. so, that's s c l a r d y at Sdsu.Edu.   Carol: Thanks so much I appreciate you both joining me today. Have a great one, you guys.   Brittny: Thanks.   Sarah: Thank you.   {Music}   Outro Voice: Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time, brought to you by the VR TAC for Quality Management. Catch all of our podcast episodes by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening!

If you have been struggling to grow your property management business, you might have been prioritizing the wrong things… In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull discuss how having the right priorities and getting support helps with business growth. You'll Learn [01:30] Are you prioritizing the right things? [08:30] Why you CAN'T do everything yourself [20:20] How prioritizing safety might hinder growth [27:30] Why you should be willing to take risks [30:50] Prioritize results and get those results Tweetables “You may have all the right priorities. They're just in the wrong order.” “I think a lot of times we hold onto things simply because ‘we want it done right' means ‘done according to my set of values.'” “Pain's an inevitable scenario if you keep trying to do the same thing and expecting a different outcome.” “You can either have your excuses or you can have results, but you can't have both.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Sarah: Isn't that the definition of insanity? It's doing the same thing over and over and over and then expecting a different result. [00:00:06] Jason: I think that's what creates insanity. Like, pain's an inevitable scenario if you keep trying to do the same thing and expecting a different outcome.  [00:00:14] Welcome DoorGrow property managers 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 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. [00:00:56] 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 founder and CEO and the COO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.  [00:01:25] I did the intro right this time I think. I didn't screw it up. We could just have it prerecorded, people. You never know what you're going to get. Okay. So I was thinking about what we could talk about this morning and I've been doing some reflection and some study and the topic that just keeps coming up in my mind is prioritization and priorities. [00:01:44] In fact, I'll probably talk a little bit about that and do an exercise with some of the cool people that are coming to DoorGrowLive. Cause I really think if you're not experiencing growth and you're not having the success that you want, you're not getting the results that you want in business and life, then it's pretty simple. It's just that your priorities are out of alignment with you getting the results that you want. And you may have all the right priorities. They're just in the wrong order. And so you're prioritizing something over the thing that if you prioritize would give you the results that you actually want in your life. [00:02:20] And so I was thinking about this question and I threw it out to Sarah while she's getting ready this morning. And I said, "what are people prioritizing over growth?" Because the people that come into our program, the work with us, they get great results. They are different. They're prioritizing growth over certain other things. [00:02:39] And so people that don't work with us, why do they not spend money on coaching? Why don't they invest in coaching? And so why don't we go to Sarah and find out, what do you think? Why are people not spending money on coaching? Like where entrepreneurs at in their journey that mentally that's preventing them from spending money on a coach, moving the business forward or working towards growth? [00:03:05] Sarah: Well, I think there's a few reasons that this could be the case. And one might be that people don't even know what a coach would do, right? Like, "how would a coach help me?" And some people might not even be aware that that's an option.  [00:03:22] Jason: Got it.  [00:03:22] Sarah: I wasn't for a very, very long time. Even when I was running my business, I didn't know, "Hey, there's people that will help you." [00:03:30] Jason: Okay. That's fair enough. So what cracked your mind open to the idea or possibility of coaching?  [00:03:38] Sarah: Well, honestly, it was you. You're really big on coaching. I had never had a coach in my life. Ever. And when you and I had moved in together, you are so big on coaching and you do a variety of different types and styles of working with coaches. [00:04:00] And some of it is mastermind style and some of it is one on one and some of it is event type. And I realized, "wow, this is really great." Like, I just did not make that connection and realization that there are people who genuinely want to help other people succeed in life and in business.  [00:04:21] Jason: So I want to clarify what you're saying. [00:04:26] Clarify something. Some people listening will hear, "Oh, Jason's into coaching. Yeah, we know he coaches people. That's what he does. It's what he's trying to sell." And what you're saying is you saw me getting coached.  [00:04:38] Sarah: Oh yes, working with coaches.  [00:04:39] Jason: Working with coaches, joining masterminds. Like I'm the student.  [00:04:43] Sarah: I knew what you did when obviously when I met you.  [00:04:45] Jason: Yeah.  [00:04:46] Sarah: But I also saw you embody that and you work with a lot of coaches yourself. And in seeing you and the business, our business, work with coaches, that was something I was like, "Oh, wow. Okay. That helps a lot." Because coaches, especially when you work with a coach that's been there, done that... because there's a lot of coaches that they don't really know. They're like, "well, this was a great theory." But when you work with a coach that has. done the thing and gotten the result and had that experience and now they can talk about it and they can share their experience and they can share their knowledge and they can say, "Hey, I tried this and it didn't work. So avoid this," and "Hey, this got me in some hot water, so definitely don't do that," And, "this was really successful and here's how I did it and here's why I did it this way. And I kept testing and refining." And then they can share that knowledge with you. And when I started experiencing that in DoorGrow, With the coaches that we worked with, that was something that I was like, "Oh, well, that would have been nice to know." [00:05:52] Jason: And Sarah learns super fast. Like I've always been super impressed by how quick you adopt new information or new ideas. Like most people I think it takes a while for people to absorb certain things, but some things you're just like, "yeah." And you're like, "let's do coaching." [00:06:05] And we've tried lots of different coaches out together. Like some not good.  [00:06:09] Sarah: Some are not good.  [00:06:10] Jason: Right. It's like a...  [00:06:12] Sarah: colossal waste of money.  [00:06:14] Jason: Some really good.  [00:06:15] Sarah: Some really good.  [00:06:16] Jason: Some we weren't ready for. We just like didn't have the capacity or the bandwidth to work with them.  [00:06:21] Sarah: Mm hmm.  [00:06:22] Jason: We just had so much going on. [00:06:23] Like we took on too much. Maybe we had too many coaches at a time, something like this. Right. Even right now, like I'm onboarding and I'm coaching and training two new sales team members, plus my son in learning setting and sales. But I went and got outside help. So I have a coach right now that's coaching me and them. [00:06:45] And then I'm spending each day coaching them, but each week we're meeting with a coach and he's an expert in sales and he's helping us go to another level and work on scripts and work on our communication, work on language. And that's been really helpful. I'm always leveling up my skills. [00:06:59] And I think it's important to never get comfortable. And I think for me, I just try to imagine like if I didn't have coaches or mentors and I'm every day trying to like coach people and sell coaching to me, that would feel like a gross lack of integrity. Feels like I'd be grossly out of alignment, and a lot of the coaches that we have, I found them through coaching programs that we were in with them. Right. And so I know that they believe in coaching and they're in integrity. And I know that they're in the areas, at least that I am seeking help in, they are ahead of me in that game. And and so I can trust them. [00:07:39] There's evidence they can help get results and they've given some value already. And so I'm like, "okay, I should, we should work with them." And I think that's one of the challenges. And so everybody out there, if you're like, " why am I not spending money on coaching or why don't I have a coach?" [00:07:52] I think there's a lot of reasons for that. But I think just as a side note, if you're going to get a coach, don't work with a coach that doesn't have a coach , right? If they went through one program one time, they're like, "I went through this coaching program and got a certificate one time." Then do they really believe in coaching? [00:08:10] No. They just believed in getting the appearance of being a good coach and they're not actually a coachable person. I believe in order to be able to coach others, you have to also be coachable and being able be able to learn. I learned a massive amount just by coaching, coaching clients and supporting them. [00:08:29] And so let's get into what people maybe are prioritizing instead of growth. If they're not growing. Because some people are listening to this and they're like, "well, I've been stuck at the same number of doors I've been at for like two, three years." So what priority might be off or what are they prioritizing that's different? [00:08:45] What might be off? What are some of the things they're prioritizing?  [00:08:48] Sarah: I think one of the big things is this need to control everything. And I understand because I am a control freak. I get it. And for a long, long time, I had always said, "if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself." [00:09:08] So, why would I ask somebody else to do this thing, and then I'm just going to have to go check and see if they did it the right way? And "oh, they made a mistake, so now I have to... it's just easier and faster for me to just go and do it myself!" Right? Instead of teaching somebody or training somebody or just asking them to do it, but then really secretly I'm going to go and check and see if they actually did it. [00:09:28] So delegation for me was very hard for a very long time. Because I am very detail oriented, and very OCD, and very organized, and I'm very particular in how things get done. So, I believe there's a right way, and a wrong way to do just about every task that there is.  [00:09:49] Jason: Yeah, that's very, very INTJ thinking of you. [00:09:53] But I'm not incorrect. Most of the time, you're not, right? And so, if you want it done right, you do it yourself. Is that true? Sometimes, right? Like there's a lot of situations where that's true. The challenge is: could it be possible that if somebody else did it, it could be done better than you? [00:10:12] Right. That could be true too. And so I think getting a coach is you start to recognize where you might have gaps and the ultimate evidence is our results. If we're not getting the results that we want, then maybe we're not the person that should be doing that thing. Because we're not getting the results and we're doing it. [00:10:29] So it's us, right? But yeah, I think that's a belief that a lot of people have in the beginning. "I want it done right." And I think a lot of times we hold onto things simply because "we want it done right" means "done according to my set of values." There's lots of different ways to do something and the outcome could be similar or could work or could be positive, but we have certain values that we want it done in a certain way to be the right way. [00:10:54] The right way. Yes. And INTJs very much feel there's a right way and a wrong way for everything. The challenge is a lot of times, if we're super rigid and believing we always have the right way, we can't see around corners. There's certain personality types, though, that can see a lot more opportunity and a lot more variety of options. [00:11:13] And they usually can crack those strong J's brains open, that are judging, to some new ideas and new possibilities. And eventually they'll adopt those, right? And so that's, I think where we have a nice balance in our relationship is you're usually right. A lot of things and very strategic brain and can figure stuff out and you're like, something's off here. [00:11:35] You're very intuitive. And and usually right when you're like, "something's not right here." And then also, I'm very good at seeing alternatives, other possibilities, and exposing you to some other options or some other ideas.  [00:11:48] Sarah: Yes. And you're also very good at human emotions.  [00:11:52] Jason: Oh. [00:11:52] Sarah: I'm not good at human emotion. [00:11:54] Jason: Right.  [00:11:55] Sarah: You're like, "well, you can't do that because it'll make people feel like this." And I'm like, "so?" [00:12:01] Jason: Yeah, yeah, this is a constant frustration. You're like, "why won't people just do what I told them to do when I just tell them one time in a very succinct way, exactly what I want?  [00:12:11] Sarah: Right? Like I have all the answers, just listen and then do what I tell you to do! That's it. Like, it's so easy. I feel like life would be so much easier if you just listen. [00:12:22] Jason: And so the one advantage, one of my maybe few advantages over you cognitively maybe is the idea that I can empathize a bit more with other people and I can figure out what would it take to get this installed into their brain? [00:12:38] What would make this digestible for them? What would make this palatable? What would make them able to adopt or absorb this idea or to remember this idea or for this to work? And you're like, "just tell them!" Because I can just tell you and you get it. And you'll get annoyed if I start to explain and use analogy. [00:12:53] Sarah: I got it, I got it.  [00:12:55] Jason: Yeah.  [00:12:55] Sarah: Give me the thing that I need.  [00:12:56] Jason: Those things are very effective. I got it. Other people.  [00:12:58] Sarah: And now I'm going to go and do it. That's how I work.  [00:13:01] I think other people work like that too, but sometimes they don't and it's crazy to me! I don't... crazy!  [00:13:07] Jason: So I think one of the things that people prioritize over growth sometimes is that self struggle. Like there's people that value doing it themselves. [00:13:17] Like even as a little kid, my daughter, Madi, I would try to tie her shoelaces and she didn't even know how to do it! And she would say, "no, I do it! I do it!"  [00:13:25] Like she wouldn't let me do it.  [00:13:26] Sarah: Hey Madi.  [00:13:27] Jason: Madi edits our podcast, so she'll see this. She wanted to do it. And I'd be like, "okay." [00:13:32] And she's just sitting there struggling. But she was determined and eventually she figured it out and eventually she might be frustrated enough to allow me to help her. Right? And sometimes we have to allow people to struggle, but a lot of times we're self struggling and it's self imposed and we're not having success in our business or success in growth or adding doors or making more money or retaining clients or whatever it might be. And we're so stuck on this idea of self struggle, which is DIY, right? "I'm going to do it myself." and I've been this guy. I'll watch YouTube videos. I'll read books. I will figure it all out on my own. [00:14:06] " I'm smart enough. I can do this." And what I want to say to everybody listening, that that's you. You're right. You're totally right. You are smart enough to figure everything out eventually, it's just going to take you probably a decade longer than somebody that goes and gets coaching or gets helped. And I've been that I've done that. [00:14:24] Jason: I've spent like a decade doing stupid stuff. I'm in my forties. I've spent at least a decade doing some things and struggling with some things before I got help with it. And the amount of time somebody that already has succeeded at this or knows what works can collapse for you in the experimentation, in the struggles, in the financial risks, in the time wasting is pretty significant, like dramatically significant. [00:14:48] I've had mentors... I have one mentor. I paid him three grand a month and it was the biggest expense ever. Like I signed up for this coach and I immediately was like in a short period of time was making 30 grand more a month. That's a pretty decent return. Right? And I would have been stupid to not have done that, but it was a calculated risk. [00:15:07] At the time I was in a dysfunctional marriage and my wife at the time cried when I told her I was spending three grand a month, and we've spent a lot more than three grand a month on some of our coaches and mentors.  [00:15:19] Sarah: At the time three grand was a lot and it was scary.  [00:15:21] Jason: Oh, yeah.  [00:15:22] That was my first dive into high ticket coach. Yes. Working with the coach.  [00:15:26] Sarah: Yes, and I think the other thing to point out too about working with someone else is that It's not always about, "well, I must be bootstrapped. I must do it myself. I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to do it all. I don't need any help." [00:15:40] Sometimes it's not even that sometimes it's, you just think things are really good because we hear that sometimes. Not all the time, but sometimes like, "Oh, things are pretty good in the business," but you don't know what you don't know.  [00:15:51] Sometimes you just don't know what you don't know. And you think, "well, if things keep going the way that they are right now, that's okay. Like, maybe it's not my dream situation, but I'm also not really hating my day to day. And I'm not in this massive struggle." So I'm like, "things are okay. So do I actually need help? And do I need to reach out and work with someone?" And a lot of times, even if you think things are pretty good, and " maybe I don't need help." And you're right. You maybe don't need help. Perhaps you just need help to see what else is possible for you. [00:16:31] Jason: And they may not need help. They may not need it. If you're smart and you have big goals and you want to move forward quicker, then maybe you would want it, right? You would desire it instead of feel like this needy energy, like, "Oh, I need this." I think that's sometimes what limits us is we don't want to feel like we need something. [00:16:48] We don't want to admit we need something because it's a gross energy to be needy or to need something. It almost feels victimy to some people. I think when we have goals and we know what we want and we see that other people can help us, it becomes a little bit more natural for us to be able to do that. [00:17:03] Sarah: And I also think, this is another gripe I have with our lovely education system, is that in school, you are taught, "do it on your own." [00:17:13] "Don't look at other people's. Don't cheat. Don't ask your neighbor." If you're stuck, you pretty much ask the teacher. Refer back to your lesson and figure it out. When you're taking a test, you can't go "hey Joe, I don't know what number 13 is. You know what number 13 is?" You're not allowed to do that.  [00:17:32] Yeah, like getting help is wrong.  [00:17:33] It's wrong, right! So just have it memorized and regurgitate it. So take the information in, memorize it, and vomit it back up on a piece of paper, and then I will give you a passing grade. In the middle of a test, are you able to raise your hand and say, "Hey teacher, I had a question. I'm stuck on this. I don't really understand this. Can you please help me arrive to the answer?" No! No, you cannot! So in school, they teach us the self reliance. And I do believe that that is a very positive thing in one way. And in another way, it hinders our growth. Because in business, you should rely on other people so that you can get better results and go farther faster.  [00:18:17] Jason: So I think also what school teaches us, the way school is set up is there's this one guru expert at the front of the room that we have to listen to all the time. [00:18:27] And so we learn to be reliant on the leader for all the answers. And sometimes the leader doesn't have them, right? Sometimes they don't know. Sometimes they have blind spots. Everybody's been a student when they've called their teacher out on something that was off or wrong, right? Or seen that happen, and they lose that credibility. And teachers just usually don't tolerate that very well. They don't like being seen as having flawed thinking. Having a wrong idea or being wrong. And so there's this sort of authoritarianism that's like involved in schools. It's like, trust the authority, trust the leader, be this blind, dumb beast and let them lead you around. And that's like the Bible and book of revelations talks about the mark of the beast and the hand and the forehead. And maybe it's just your thoughts and your labor just being controlled by outside unearned authority. And people should earn. their authority, right? I work with coaches because they've earned authority, not because they just told me like somebody like put a gun to my head or forced me or I was in a school system and they said I had to do it this way. [00:19:30] So I think the irony of self struggle or DIY is that A lot of you are frustrated and thinking "I've got to do everything myself," but then you are probably because of that energy that you are being and creating in the universe and just how you show up with other people, you probably are really triggered and really frustrated with all the people that you encounter that think they could do a better job themselves. [00:20:00] Because you have the same energy or problem as them, and so they trigger you. So if you're running, you're butting your head all the time with these DIY people in the industry, people that are trying to self manage their properties or people that are trying to micromanage really self manage through you to get you to do the work, it may be because you're carrying this belief of self struggle or doing it yourself. [00:20:22] So just something to chew on. So another challenge that I think why people don't spend money on coaching or what they're prioritizing maybe over growth is there might be prioritizing safety or ease or comfort. And so what do you have to say about that?  [00:20:38] Sarah: So you have to get uncomfortable if you want results. [00:20:42] If you want results that are different than what you're currently getting, you can't take the same actions you're taking now and expect to get different results. I think, isn't that the definition of insanity? It's doing the same thing over and over and over and then expecting a different result. [00:20:57] Jason: I think that's what creates insanity. It stresses people out and makes you start to go crazy a little bit. That's a pretty painful. Pain's an inevitable scenario if you keep trying to do the same thing and expecting a different outcome. Now, everybody, as we age, we tend to move towards more and more comfort. [00:21:14] I saw a video the other day. I think it was Gary Brecka, this health guy. He said that after the age of 30, most people will never do another sprint again in their life.  [00:21:24] Sarah: Well, I don't want to sprint. If I'm sprinting, y'all better follow me because...  [00:21:27] Jason: right. That's what people are saying. Like, they're like, "yeah, I don't want to. That's uncomfortable. I don't want to be cold. I don't want to be too hot." Comfort is he like described as is what leads us towards death ultimately. We want to be comfortable. We don't go work out at the gym. We don't build muscle, which affects our cognitive functioning later in life. It makes our bones more brittle. We then have a broken bone and like like we're hospitalized till we die right in our later years if we don't do the right things And so we're always seeking comfort and ease, and when we're always seeking comfort and ease, we shift the weight towards others. We Become, what I would kind of phrase as a victim or a blamer. We're a victim. We blame other people. We're complaining about our circumstances constantly, right? [00:22:17] And instead of doing work or taking action or doing the things that are uncomfortable. And I think there's this stoic phrase that from, I don't know, one of the cool guys that is involved in stoicism or whatever, but the idea is "hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life." [00:22:34] And a lot of people, I think could go, "that's true." I've seen some people make some easy choices, choices towards comfort, choices towards ease and their life's pretty difficult because they've avoided doing the hard, uncomfortable things, having the hard, uncomfortable conversations with people they should have, doing work, working hard to get the outcomes and a life of greater ease and comfort, right? [00:22:55] And so I think if you prioritize ease and comfort over growth, what's going to happen?  [00:23:00] Sarah: Not much.  [00:23:01] Jason: Well, you're not going to grow, right? Because growth isn't necessarily about ease and comfort, right? And so, even in nature, if we take a fruit tree or a bush that produces some sort of, fruit, whatever, if we cut that, tree and trim it, it will then yield a bigger result. [00:23:19] And sometimes if it's overgrown, it can't even produce fruit very effectively because it's too busy feeding everything else, all the branches leaves. So trimming it allows it to produce more fruit. And we're similar in that we need some friction and some intentional discomfort in our life and action in order to produce or bear fruit, in order to get the things that we want in life. [00:23:42] Having uncomfortable conversations creates greater peace in our relationships. Being willing to take action in our business allows us to have more freedom, more revenue financially, and to be able to take care of our team and ourselves better. And so we can't be a victim and a blamer and complain about the market and complain about COVID and whatever your stupid excuses are, whoever's listening. [00:24:04] If you've got all your excuses why you're not growing, you can either have your excuses or you can have results, but you can't have both. So which one would you rather choose? Right? And there's a lot of people that would rather choose their excuses because it allows them to not do anything. It allows them, "well, the market's tough, so I just might as well not do anything." [00:24:23] Like right now, real estate agents, some are like, "oh, real estate market's tough. Can't get deals." Right? And then there's people that are still closing a bunch of deals and making plenty of money. And so our beliefs and our mindset and how we prioritize things shifts things. And so are you prioritizing ease and comfort? [00:24:40] Sometimes it's not even about our own ease and comfort. Well, maybe it is. Sometimes people won't join a coaching program because their spouse doesn't want to spend the money or their business partner doesn't want the business to grow. We see that like they're an operator personality type. [00:24:54] They're not really focused on growth and they're like, "no, we have good, stable, residual income. Like why rock the boat? And I'm getting 50 percent of the revenue," or whatever I've seen. And they're like, "why change anything? Don't disrupt my comfort here." And the other person's like, "let's have more doors. Let's go crazy. I'm a visionary." [00:25:12] And the operator personality type's like, "yeah, but that would make my life worse. I don't need more money. I'm comfortable. Don't mess up my comfort." [00:25:21] And sometimes the business visionary, or if it's with your spouse, we're not having that uncomfortable conversation with them because it means rocking the boat. [00:25:31] It's uncomfortable. It means there might be a fight. It means you might get screamed at or get some angry emotion thrown at you. In some scenarios. And so I think it's really important to connect with deep down. Like, what do we really want? And what really should we be doing that we just know is right for us and being willing to step into that discomfort. I made some very uncomfortable choices in my day in order to get to where I'm at now. And sometimes it involved me having to look stupid in front of a group in a mastermind. Sometimes it involved me having to have uncomfortable conversations in relationships or even to end relationships. [00:26:10] That's super uncomfortable. In order to move forward and do what I felt I was called to do or what I felt deep down. What I think is also interesting is more people are a lot more comfortable with those that are willing to do uncomfortable things and speak uncomfortable words. [00:26:29] It makes everybody feel safer because they can trust that person. You can't trust people that are always focused on ease and comfort. I don't think they're as trustworthy of people because part of life in order to have integrity, in order to be honest, in order to work hard, in order to benefit the people that you have a fiduciary duty or responsibility to benefit like clients, you have to be willing to do the uncomfortable things. [00:26:53] Otherwise, you're shifting all the discomfort on to everybody else. "Everybody else around me has to be uncomfortable so I can have comfort." And that does not create great relationships, safety, or create a good client or business relationship in the longterm. So that's my soapbox about that. All right. [00:27:09] So, another reason people don't prioritize that they don't prioritize a growth is they might be looking at the short term. Maybe it's related to comfort. Maybe it's related to just, "I need to make sure I have cash now and they're giving up the longterm, maybe more cash later, maybe a bigger business later." Any thoughts about that?  [00:27:28] Sarah: This was your thing.  [00:27:29] Jason: I've run into this where I've talked to people and they're like, "well, I don't know. I don't have a lot of money right now," I think this is where you need to be willing to take a risk and bet on yourself. [00:27:37] Find a system that's proven. We've got plenty of case studies and results to show that our stuff works. It's all proven. It all works. What I find is the only real question people need to figure out is, are they willing to work? Do they trust themselves? Are they willing to bet on themselves? And a lot of people don't. [00:27:53] A lot of times we've struggled to even do the little things that we've told ourselves that we were going to do. And so we're out of integrity and we don't trust ourselves anymore. Like, "I'm going to work out at the gym tomorrow. I'm tired." Right. We've all done that. I've done that this week. Right. I did work out this morning though. But we've done that. We've all done that. And so it's the making these little movements of taking action towards our own integrity. Like I'm going to do this. And then I do it learning to trust ourselves again. And the one person you can control is you. And so when you have strong trust in yourself. [00:28:28] Very few things are supremely risky because you're betting on yourself, especially if you're getting support to become better. And so, it may be a cash investment now, but if you can see there's a system and you can see there's results, then maybe the risk is worth it. You should get an ROI if you do the right actions, if it's a proven system. So I think those are some of the things. So why don't we look at the reverse real quick, and then we'll wrap up.  [00:28:54] The reverse would be what are our clients like? What's different about our clients? What do they prioritize that made them decide to work with us? What are they prioritizing differently that said " why would I not spend money on coaching? I should totally do this."  [00:29:08] Sarah: Yeah. Well first I think they believe in their ability to do it.  [00:29:13] Jason: Hmm.  [00:29:14] Sarah: Because if you don't believe in yourself, there's nothing that you're going to be able to do. No coach can help you. You've got to figure that out first. So they believe in themselves and they are also committed. [00:29:27] And I think that is something that sometimes people are lacking. It's, they're just lacking a actual true commitment.  [00:29:37] Jason: So commitment, I feel like is, maybe it's a choice, but I feel like it's also an outcome of choices, right? So what are they choosing to prioritize? You think that maybe makes them more committed? [00:29:49] Sarah: You're so cryptic today. You're like, " what are they choosing?" Like...  [00:29:52] Jason: well, I don't know, this is an interesting question I think to chew on.  [00:29:55] Sarah: What makes people more committed?  [00:29:56] Jason: Why are some people committed and some people are not? We're talking about priorities today, so I'm thinking, what are the priorities that they have that leads to being strongly committed? [00:30:05] Sarah: It's either you're in it or you're out. It's like a pool. You're either in the pool or you're out of the pool. Yeah. That's it. You, like, you're either wet or you're dry. That's it. You can't like, "well, I've got a toe in the pool." Like it doesn't work. It doesn't work in business. [00:30:19] And if you're finding that, "well, like I have my foot in the pool a little bit, I'm going to pull it out if I have to pull it out," that business will forever be hard. You have to either go all the way in or go all the way out. Because if you're in the middle, it is difficult and it will remain difficult. [00:30:37] Jason: Yeah. It's really painful to be in between.  [00:30:40] Sarah: So either jump in the pool or jump out of the pool. Neither one is wrong.  [00:30:45] You might go, "I hate this pool. I don't like it." Great. Then find a different pool.  [00:30:50] Jason: So in chewing on this, I think in looking at myself when I'm fully committed to something, it's because I have prioritized the outcome. [00:31:00] The outcome is clear enough and important enough and motivating enough that I will do whatever it takes to get that outcome. That's when I'm fully committed to something. I'll do whatever it takes to get that outcome because I know what I want. That's one of the things is our clients know what they want. [00:31:17] Like they know that there's outcomes that they want. You mentioned, they believe in their ability to do it, to learn, to take action. And so they are a hundred percent committed. If you're committed to something and you don't know how to do it, you'll figure it out because you'll do whatever it takes. [00:31:34] You will struggle. You'll do go through trial and error. You'll fail. You'll make mistakes. And I think that's another thing is our clients believe in their own themselves enough to be willing to make mistakes. Whereas some people prioritize not looking bad or not making mistakes. And so they don't take the action. [00:31:51] They were like, "I need it all to be perfect and to know how to do everything before I do it because I don't want to be embarrassed or look stupid." And so I think some of our most successful clients are willing to just try stuff. They're just willing to do it. They don't have this need that they have to look so smart or whatever. [00:32:07] And sometimes those people struggle the most, right? Sometimes they are super smart, but they have to look good and look smart all the time. So I think in short, our clients prioritize growth, they prioritize learning, they prioritize taking risks, experimenting, and this is why they are able to move forward. [00:32:26] So hopefully this episode helps you reassess some of your own priorities. Like if you're not getting the results, make a list of what your priorities are and figure out like "what am I prioritizing currently that's leading to my current results?" Because if you can't see that, then you can't change it. [00:32:40] And as soon as you can see it and you shift your priorities, "well, I need to start prioritizing this." Maybe you need to start prioritizing action. Maybe you need to start prioritizing your health more. Maybe you need to start prioritizing learning more. Whatever it is, in order to get the outcomes that you want. [00:32:55] But if you're not getting the outcomes you want, your priorities are off. And hopefully this is an opportunity and an invitation for you to introspectively figure that out. And I hope that was beneficial.  [00:33:05] If you're struggling with any of this and you want some help getting clarity figuring out your priorities figuring out what you need to do in order to grow, you have a blind spot, you can't see it... like you need some external perspective, we all have problems we can't see. [00:33:20] And if you're not getting the results, you lack some knowledge. You lack some insight. And so reach out to us at DoorGrow. One of our growth consultants can help you figure this out, help you figure out where you might be stuck, what you need to get to the next level. [00:33:33] And you probably have some garbage or junk beliefs that are preventing you from being able to take things to the next level. And once those are out of the way, you're golden, right? So until next time to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. [00:33:46] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. 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In this new episode, Jayne Warrilow joins us to talk about the essential role of trust in humane marketing and business. We explore why self-trust is the foundation of all other forms of trust, especially for entrepreneurs navigating challenging times. Jayne shares insights on how trust shapes a business's reputation and client relationships, offering practical steps to enhance trustworthiness. We also discuss the journey of becoming a trusted authority in your field, and how confidence and courage play crucial roles in this transformation. Join us to discover how making trust your competitive advantage can elevate your business in the world of compassionate entrepreneurship. In this conversation they talked about: What trust has to do with Humane Marketing and Humane Business Why self-trust is the foundation of all other forms of trust in business and how entrepreneurs can build and maintain self-trust, especially in challenging times How trust influences a business's reputation and client relationships, and what measures businesses can take to ensure they are seen as trustworthy How entrepreneurs can discover and embrace their calling to become a trusted authority in their field How confidence and courage influence the perception of authority and trustworthiness, and what strategies entrepreneurs can use to build confidence in their industry A sneak peek of what Jayne will cover in our Collab workshop on July 3rd --- Sarah: [00:00:00] Hi Jane, it's wonderful to be with you again today. Jayne: Oh, Sarah. It's such an honor to be with you. I'm really looking forward to our conversation today. Sarah: Yeah, me too, because trust. Oh my God, we could talk about this for like hours and hours, right? So such an important topic. And I think specifically for you and I, I've known each other for a long time. And we're very much value aligned and wanting to create businesses for the long term and helping our clients create their life's work and businesses for the long term. So yeah, trust just seems this kind of, I have to admit for me, it was kind of just this like given it's like, yeah, obviously that's part of the thing, but people do wonder. You know, how do you create trust and so that's why you and I talked and I'm like, yeah, it'd be great if you could come in and talk to us about that, because you have spent [00:01:00] a lot of time thinking about that deeply and came up with frameworks and and you'll share some of that with us. And I'm super excited. But let's start with kind of the foundational question. Like, why do we need to trust when we want to create a business and also maybe what does that have to do with creating a sacred business like you call it or a humane business like I call it? Yeah. Jayne: It's a really interesting question because just like you said at the beginning, Sarah, I think so many of us Take trust as a given, you know, if we're a good human in the world, you know, we're taught from a very young age to be kind and, you know, be kind to our neighbors and, you know, treat other people as we'd like to be treated ourselves. And most of us go out into the world with that kind of energy. And that I've used that word energy very specifically here, because in a way, trust is invisible. It's not something that's [00:02:00] tangible that you can see that you can, you know, Have on your business dashboard and measure necessarily how you're doing. There's data that points to it for us, but really it's such a, there's layers to trust, you know, and and what it really means for us. For me, what I've learned over the many years that I've been working with business and leaders is it's actually the foundation of everything. And it's not just the foundation of business because more and more as I get older, Like life and business are integrating together in a way. And it's so interesting, you know, like there's many of us that will have been to business school and we've learned leadership theories. We've learned business theories. We've learned what it takes to be successful in business today. But one of the things that I noticed in my reflections is I look back at like my time in business school. Nobody ever taught me to be kind. Or compassionate or the things that actually [00:03:00] come about building trust in the world. And at the end of the day, I think somewhere along the way, we've, we've somehow forgotten the fact that business is deeply relational it's about. Humans. Yes. It's also about technology today. So when I talk about relationships, it's not just about relationships between people, which of course you need, you need really good, solid, foundational relationships to make, you know, to be successful as both a leader and in, in your business. But also it's about kind of the relationship with technology. Okay. Your relationship with your business, your relationship with yourself, trust comes across all these different layers, which is what we're going to be diving into. Because once we start to pull it apart and, you know, I have a number of frameworks I've developed, it. It kind of, you look at the frameworks and you go, Oh yeah, that makes perfect sense. But somehow along the way, we forgotten [00:04:00] to really look at what it takes to actually create trust. And I think that's probably why we're all now doing business and leadership in a context where trust is at the lowest level it's ever been because we've neglected it. Sarah: Yeah. So good. Yeah. And it feels like we can immediately finger point at people or businesses where we don't feel that there's trust, right? But it's much harder to figure out, well, what are the things that create trust? Because like you said, it's kind of the invisible and it's just kind of like this energy that you either feel or you don't feel. And when you don't feel it, you're like, yep. It's because they're doing that. And in the humane marketing kind of realm, it would be the marketing that creates distrust, right? But, but there's so many other things besides marketing. And you mentioned this relationship to self [00:05:00] but also to your business and technology. Yeah. So let's maybe start with the self because that feels like a good starting point, because. Yeah, I feel like as business owners, that's where, you know, if you don't have trust in yourself, it's very hard to, to kind of give that to others. So, right. That's really Jayne: true. And, and I think, you know working in organizational life for many years, you know, seeing leaders talking about business as though it's out here. So when we think about trust, you know, very often in a business context, we think about, okay, how can we build trust, like from the business to our audience, for example, but in a lot of businesses that my audience, and I think probably yours as well, need to think about is, you know, how do we show up in, in our life? Right. And our business, because I think it was John Kabat Zinn that says, wherever you go, there you are. So you're not going [00:06:00] to be completely different in business than what you are in life. And, and really this, this external view of, you know, I can make my business success by doing things out here. It's kind of becoming an outdated notion today because the marketplace is demanding so much more of us. And the first thing that I want to speak to is this idea of trusted authority, which to me, I think you can't be successful in business today, unless you can build both trust and authority and authority doesn't come until you have trust in the first instance. So it begins. It's like, you know, just very simple questions. Like, do you trust yourself? And when I ask that of say clients or people that I meet, they'll, they'll stop and they'll think, and they'll, they'll, they'll come back with, well, there's some areas where I do, and then potentially there's some areas where. And maybe not so much. And so it's then that inner work of [00:07:00] really understanding yourself at a deeper level and understanding things, just very simple things. You know, this isn't new. It's like, what do you need? In any situation, for example, to feel confident in a situation, what do you need? And also, what do you want? How do you want to show up to your life, to your business, to your relationships? Who do you want to be and who do you want to become? Because what I'm really speaking to here is something I call your personal energetics or your personal resonance. Now. What do I mean by the word resonance? I just mean the relationship, the quality of connection that you form with yourself in this, in this inner space. Like, what is that quality of connection? Do you know yourself? Do you trust yourself? And in what situations do you trust yourself? And in what situations don't you? Now it's really interesting because what the research is showing [00:08:00] that Other people, other people know when you show up and you don't trust yourself because we all read energy. I mean, we don't talk about this all the time, but before anybody opens their mouth, right? We have a sense of who they're being and how they're feeling. Particularly as females, women particularly read emotional energy. And so really understanding that at a different level, you know, can really kind of accelerate the, what it is that you want out of any relationship. Whilst also enabling the other person to get that. So we're not just talking about you coming in here with a me, me, me energy. It's actually the beginning of the win win the me to we journey of how do I be in relationship with others? Well, I've got to learn how to trust myself and be in relationship with myself first so that I can inspire trust from others because if I don't trust me, nobody else is going to trust me [00:09:00] either. Sarah: Yeah, we're always so aligned in our thinking, right? The way I think about this recently, I, I started to think, well, we're talking about company cultures, right? This idea of cultures. And I'm like, well, as entrepreneurs, we need to start thinking about that. Think of it as, as personal cultures, what's the culture, you know, your personal culture within your one person business. And that's exactly what you were talking about is this resonance. How do you feel Because, yeah, that reflects on other people then, and then that's where this resonance comes in, right? And people seeing how you feel. And I love how you made that transitional. So from the me to the we so yeah, clearly it's like, it's not just you and your business, it's you in relationship with. You know, clients, [00:10:00] other people one point you also made was this idea of the authority. And so that I feel like a lot of people are kind of scared already of that word. It's, you know, it feels kind of maybe a bit heavy, maybe even a bit. Kind of like past paradigm, you know, so tell us more about this this idea of authority for me. Also, what comes up what I like more is the word courage because you and I both work with change makers. And so I feel like having this. Working on themselves, this inner work, this self confidence it leads to more courage and that's really what you need to kind of show up as, you know, more of an authority, but I'm curious to, to hear from you what you think about authority and courage and all of these things. Jayne: Yeah. And I love the word courage because of course it comes from the [00:11:00] French, you know, that the courage of it's the heart opening at the end of the day. Interestingly, as you were speaking there, I was thinking, I don't actually use the word authority without the word trust. And why? Right. Because I think you're right. I think authority in a way is the old paradigm because it's got a very masculine energy with it. It does, doesn't it? No, it's kind of got a bit of a push energy and a bit of a, let me blow out my chest and show how good I am. Right. Right. And so this masculine energy comes forward with the word authority, but if you put the word power, Trust with it. Trust is a very feminine kind of feeling kind of energy. And one of the things I learned over, you know, over the years, working with so many different coaches and consultants and also leaders and global leaders and C level leaders is this, this idea that a lot of my work with these individuals, particularly in coaching, has really been around. And if I say these two words, people will get it straight away. Owning. Owning it, [00:12:00] whatever the it is for you. It's not just learning that you have a message, but that you are a message. Right. And so when I look at the word trust and authority together, it's the integration for me of the masculine and the feminine, because. It's like, if you only, if you only operate through a feminine energy in today's market, you're not going to get enough done. There's not going to be enough structures in place to actually attract the people. Life's going to be hard because yeah, you're going to be working as an individual. Maybe you're a solopreneur, but you'll still be trading time for money because you won't have learned how to build the, the structures in the business that can start to take the pressure off your back. Right. And so it's this combination of. Trust, or like you said, courage, courage for me is one of the things that I talk about in different levels of consciousness. I'm kind of going off piece a little bit, but different levels of consciousness is the energy of the heart. [00:13:00] So for your audience, if you know, you're listening and you're not familiar with my work, right? So if you just think about the chakra system, The lower levels of energy are connected to the higher levels of energy through the hearts, right? Through courage. And so authority is really built off of trust, which is the foundation of it. But the old style authority. Didn't really have trust in there. It was just like, let me just shout as loud as I can to everybody who'll listen about how amazing I am. And maybe some of it will stick, but in today's market, it's much quieter than that. And the reason it's built on trust is because you're not the one giving. Being your self authority, like in the old days, it's other people that will then say, you know, I trust you and I trust your authority in this space. And for you to be that person, you need to have done your own [00:14:00] inner work. Now, what does that mean? When I look out into the world, and this is quite a triggering statement for some people, I feel that we have a lot of issues in our leadership. And one of those issues is there's many, many leaders that are leading from what I would. Term as unhealed stories. So they've had trauma, maybe in their childhood, maybe in their adult life. You know, we've all had trauma, but they've not done the inner work. They've not done their own work to actually kind of heal that. So they go into work and life and business. And what they're doing is they're projecting these. This trauma, these unhealed stories onto other people in not, they're not aware of it at all, but it also causes more aggression, lack of care, lack of compassion in the workplace because somebody's unaware. They're not. Conscious really of what they're doing and their impact on [00:15:00] others. And so really this is where trust all begins is, are you prepared to do the work to earn trust? Because we all know trust isn't, and we all know from our own experiences, trust can be lost very quickly. And then it's harder, you know, you really do have to do some work to bring it back. So really understanding. Not only the foundations of trust, but the different elements that build trust generically, because it's been a lot of research done in this space. Once you understand that, it's easier to be aware if you're ever breaking trust inadvertently with somebody else, you can do things that actually bring it back before it kind of falls down the abyss. But also you can trust yourself and show up as a trustworthy individual. And that's a very attractive energy in this marketplace today, just in life. Because we don't meet that many people who've done their own inner work, who trust themselves and then show up [00:16:00] with trust because they own their message. They don't just have a message. You know, they own the message. They know their life. Is making a difference, not just their business. Sarah: And I Jayne: think embodying what matters most in today's marketplace is probably the most important advice I could give anyone. Sarah: Yeah, so much good stuff in there. I always want to like take notes for yeah, where, where can I. I don't want to add anything. It was just perfect. So, so let me just go in another direction because I, I think in one of the frameworks, I saw that you also talk about collaboration and maybe you hinted at it a little bit just prior how, oh, yeah, you mentioned it because you're saying, well, trust needs to be earned. And the old paradigm was kind of like, well, I just show up as an authority where actually you know, the other [00:17:00] people make you an authority. You don't even call yourself an authority. Right. And so how does this all have to do with collaboration? Because it's not just me trusting myself. Yes, we saw that was a big deal and that's where it all starts. But then how do we. not use, but collaborate with other people to increase maybe that trust and maybe also the authority what have you seen in your work? Jayne: Well, you see, as soon as you mentioned that I went straight into power dynamics in my head, because. You know, we've lived for so many years with positional leadership in organizational life. And even in small businesses, you know, there's the founder, the CEO, and, you know, maybe an admin assistant underneath. So what it, what happens when you do your own inner work is you start to realize and kind of have compassion for other people. And I don't know, this is [00:18:00] certainly true for me. The more I learn about what's on the inside here, the more I realize there's a bit of a crowd, but also. That I'm no better, really, or worse than anybody else. So it's almost like a humility comes into the way I feel. And I also realize that everybody that I meet has something that they can teach me. What do I mean about the power dynamics and trust? Well, What it does for me is it shifts my belief system about who I think I am and who I think I'm being, which then in a relationship with somebody else, or if I'm collaborating with, what I'm doing is I'm really partnering. I'm having the energy of not power over or power under, I'm in the power with. space. So when I'm in that space now, it's shared power, right? So it is collaborative because I'm listening as much to the person that I'm in relationship [00:19:00] with as much as I'm like speaking from my own perspective, but we're in true dialogue now. Every, whenever I say dialogue to people, everybody thinks that this is something we do every day, all the time, but it's not. I'll just say to anybody who's listening, just go out into life, sit in Starbucks and listen to the people behind you on a table. I can guarantee they won't be in true dialogue. Why? Because it's almost like we've forgotten this power with, we've forgotten how to be with each other in some ways. And if you listen, I can more or less guarantee what you're going to hear is what I would call two parallel conversations, whereas somebody is just waiting for the other person to finish so they can say the next thing they want to say, and the other person's waiting so they can say it. Speak and say what they want to say, but there's no real collaboration, even in a communication that's happening. [00:20:00] And again, this is why we've lost trust. You see, so this is also, there's so many different layers to trust from power, how we're showing up to the belief space to have we, do we trust ourselves? We've got our own, like. Have we healed our own stories so that we can actually be in the world in conscious and intentional ways? Because that's the beginning of humane marketing, because if we're not being human and we're acting like machines, then, well, we're pushing because we feel less than on the inside. So we feel we've got to get our stuff out because people need to hear what we've got to say. That's a very different energy then. Hey, yeah, I'm here and I'm ready to help, right? I'm ready to help you. And one of my mentors used to say to me, you know, like we talk a lot, don't we? In marketing about let's get a funnel. Let's get a lead magnet. Let's do this. Let's get it all in place. Right. Content marketing. And what one of my mentors, [00:21:00] one of my early mentors here in the States said to me, Jane, at the beginning of a relationship with anybody, Just help them, just help them, right? Don't keep proving that you can help them. Don't keep telling them you can help them, just help them. And when I think about trust, right, if I think about it from my own perspective, one of the first things when I'm in a new relationship, whether it's a business, professional relationship, or whether it's just a personal one is this idea of don't let me down. This is what research shows. The first thing that comes into our head is, are you someone I can trust? Don't let me down here. Whatever it is, don't let me down. So that's the first thing you, you need to prove is that you're someone who cares and that you're not going to let them down. You've got their back, right? It's simple. Sarah: It, it, it, I love this word, humility that you used and what comes up right now for me also when you said, don't let me down [00:22:00] is the word integrity. So kind of like walk your talk, follow through, do what you say, you're, you know, do what Said you were going to do all of these things. Like that's, it's these small little things that people notice. Kind of like the credit system from Stephen Covey, where he's like, well, you know, you, people, Don't pay attention, but they actually accumulate credits like if you do good things the other person will kind of have a credit count and every time they, you know, you do something that is like, not in integrity or not trustworthy. Well, you lose credits, right? And you it's very, very hard to then regain these credits once you are like, under zero. So. So yeah, just kind of like paying attention to, to the unspoken, to the invisible, like you mentioned, it's so, [00:23:00] so key in, in trust and authority building. And I feel like what you mentioned also about collaboration and partnership. It's, it's really this new paradigm, right? It's not about you building your own authority, but partnering with others on the same level that creates authority for both partners. I feel like that's the way we both, we all rise together. Right. It's not like I rise by abusing the people under me. It's like we all rise. And I just, I just love that way of thinking about business and marketing and building trust. So, yeah. Jayne: Yeah, it's so important. And you used a word there, Sarah, which is so important in business for me, which is the word integration, because even though I've talked about, you know, do you trust yourself? So this idea of personal trust and personal [00:24:00] resonance, then moving that out into like what I would call then social resonance or relationship. Like that inspires when you trust yourself, it's then how do you show up in the world that enables others to trust you? But this space of integration for me, like the crucible of that is in your business, Sarah: because Jayne: that's the space of being and doing, because we want you to embody the message that you have. We want you to lead from this integrated space. And we want you to bake this in to your business so that, for example, all of your team, like if you have assistants or whatever, anybody who's representing your business understands how they're going to go about building trust, because actually we can build trust through technology too today, but we can't do that if the, we can't do it in human ways. Unless those first [00:25:00] two, the personal and the social are in place. And if you think about this from, you know, like the, the, the work that leaders have been through, like there's emotional intelligence, which you could argue is a good piece of self trust. Then the social intelligence, which you can argue is a good piece of the relationship trust. And these two things are so important in business today. Why? Because the market's changing and we're going beyond the transactions in business now. So it's not just, will you do what you say you will do when you say you will do it? That's kind of the baseline now, but now people are looking for. Purpose. They're looking for meaning. They're looking for you. Are you a force for good in the world as one individual human living in the world? Are you a force for good in the way you're living your life? Or are you part of the problem? Right. And then that of course, ripples out into your relationships, ripples out into your business. [00:26:00] So, you know, one thing that I always say is a business that doesn't resonate. Can never be successful, just like a person that doesn't resonate can never be successful. And you can't resonate unless you can build trust. Sarah: Yeah. You can't build trust unless you do the inner work and the workshop with Jane. To tell us a bit more about the workshop that you're gonna yeah, Jayne: share with us. Yeah, well, I'm really excited cause I have a number of frameworks. And one of the things that I love is, is putting the, I'm very visual. So putting things into a visual framework really helps me to kind of understand. And there's a lot underneath these frameworks and I've got, I think, three or four that I'm going to be sharing. And, and the first one is looking in a way, looking at the context. It's looking at how is the market changing in terms of trust and what [00:27:00] are, and what are our customers like asking for? What are, what's the invitation that they're giving us right now in terms of the way that we show up to do business. Right. So that's kind of the first one. And then we're going to see. So we're going to start looking at this integration of the self and the relationships and the business. And what does it mean to truly integrate the being and doing in business? And we're also going to look at the five key elements of trust, of building trust in depth so that we can understand what they are, because of course, they work in the individual space, they work in the relationship space, and they also work in the business space. Because the ideal here is. It's not just you as a human being very trustworthy as an individual, and then building relationships that are trustworthy. That's a key part, but also building the trust into your business, baking it in into all of your kind of. Processes, your structures, your systems, even if they're run through [00:28:00] technology, that they still got your voice, they've still got your energy baked in at the very core. So we're going to be looking at what these things mean and how to actually practically implement this in your business, because trust can feel like something that's floating around up here. But we actually want to bring that energy down so that, you know, it makes a difference in your daily reality. So that's, I love Sarah: that so much and I love that you making it practical, right? It's like, while I love big concepts and you and I could talk about these things, hours and hours, but at the end of the day, what the entrepreneurs want is like, okay, I get that, but how do I bring that down into my business, into my systems? And I love that you talk about technology as well, because there is kind of this. You know, resistance to. Maybe using technology or seeing it as like this bad thing from the [00:29:00] past paradigm, but I'm very much about saying, no, no, no, we use the technology, but we just need to infuse it with the new paradigm. Recipe, you know, it's like, yeah, we, we can use both. And it seems like that's exactly what you're going to be sharing with us. So not wait, it's going to be amazing. So please people, if you listen to this and you want more of Jane and building trust and courage and all of that good stuff have a look at humane. marketing forward slash. workshop and join us on July 3rd because it's going to be amazing. And you, I think. It could, it could feel like this is just a nice to have for business, but don't get that wrong. It is a must have for the new business paradigm. We are going to be inundated with anything AI, right? And I just talked about the [00:30:00] positive things of AI, which I do a hundred percent believe in. But the other side, the dark side of AI is all the. You know, the generic stuff that we're going to be inundated with, and so that's why we need to work on the foundation and the trust building and all of that so that even in the technology, people can tell this is trustworthy and this is not, you know, so yeah, I can't wait. Jane, anything you want to add about the, the workshop or anything else? Jayne: I just want to say, I completely agree with what you're talking about with AI because at the moment, I mean, I can't necessarily talk about the future so much in the long term, but at the moment right now, this is a distinct advantage because you're absolutely right, Sarah. AI is. Causing us to reflect back on ourself to what does it mean to be human and be human as a leader and human in business. So that, this is why your brand and humane [00:31:00] marketing, I know the work that you do is so very important because if we can't claim and there's right now, there's no shared definition of what it means to be human. So if we can't claim. Ourselves and our energy and what it means to be human. How on earth are we going to keep up with AI coming in? So the, this sounds, you know, like it sounds fundamental in many ways because it is, but it's also right now, what I want you to know is, My clients that are doing this in the marketplace right now, this is a competitive advantage because it's what the market is asking for and the market is in some ways slower to move with the large corporations than we are when we're entrepreneurial and we can pivot on a dime. So it's a real competitive advantage right now. And people are yearning for the humanity back in business. So let's just give it to them. Sarah: Yes. Let's [00:32:00] do it. Can't wait, Jane. Really. I very much look forward to this and thanks so much for being on the podcast and let's just say to be continued. Yeah. Jayne: I love it. Sarah: Thank you, Sarah.  

As a property management entrepreneur, you know how stressful day-to-day work and life can get. Over the years, we've noticed that property managers often neglect their own health until they burn out… In today's episode, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull chat about the importance of taking breaks and relaxing periodically as a property management business owner. You'll Learn [01:36] You're stressed out! Now what? [07:44] If you're burnt out, you aren't effective [15:32] Why you need to take a vacation ASAP [17:37] Take a break… or else Tweetables “Just because you're working more or working harder does not mean you're productive or you're effective.” “The thing that will give you more productivity is to stop and take a break.” “Cars have both the gas and the brake. You need to realize that in your business, there's a time for gas and there's a time for the brake.” “If a vacation seems crazy to you, schedule one.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Sarah: If a vacation seems crazy to you, schedule one. That's exactly when you need one. When you go, "I just don't think there's any chance that I could be taken away from the business. Like everything is on me and there's no possible way that I can do it." [00:00:15] That is exactly when you need to do it. [00:00:18] Do it. Book it. You have to. Otherwise this is your life forever.  [00:00:23] 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 are 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. [00:01:04] 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, and 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. [00:01:25] And now let's get into the show. All right. So today's topic Is what?  [00:01:30] Sarah: Relaxation.  [00:01:31] Jason: Relaxation. [00:01:33] Sarah: Yay. You know that thing that you guys never do?  [00:01:36] Jason: So, property management can be a little bit stressful. I've talked to thousands of property managers and this is a common theme. It can be a bit stressful. [00:01:44] And I can't tell you how many I've talked to that said they haven't taken a vacation in like years. They're not taking breaks. They're not taking time for themselves, like things like this. And so I think it's important to recognize that just because you're working more or working harder does not mean you're productive or you're effective. [00:02:05] And so it's important to make sure that you are taking breaks. So I think I shared on an episode recently at a client that I was coaching. And we had him do a time study, which is one of our tools we use to help clients figure out stuff. And he realized it was taking him like an hour to do things after three o'clock that took him 10 minutes to do in the morning. [00:02:26] And so that's a clue to take. a break that we need to take breaks. Yesterday I was working on some tasks and I was getting a lot of stuff done, but then I eventually hit a wall where I was trying to work on something and it just like, was really hard. Like it was just felt really difficult for my brain to work on it at that moment. [00:02:43] And I realized, "Oh, it's like in the afternoon I haven't eaten lunch yet and I probably should take a break." And so rather than forcing it and pushing forward, which I used to do in the past and do less productive work. I went and took a break. So, all right, what else should we say about taking breaks?  [00:03:01] Sarah: All right. So I know that it seems like the opposite thing that you should do when you're very busy And you've got a lot on your plate and you've got 10, 000 tasks to handle and you just have to push through and keep going and get it all done. And that if you stop, it will get harder because then you'll fall behind and then you'll have more to do and then it'll take longer and then you'll be going until midnight or later. [00:03:26] And. It's really crazy, but it is backwards because if you are just pushing through and you're trying to just get it done and dig your heels in and keep going, even when you're tired, even when your body is telling you like, "Hey, I'm tired and I need a break." Then you're still able to keep going, but you're just not efficient and you're being less productive. [00:03:50] So the thing that would give you more productivity is not to just push through and say, "I'm just going to keep going until I get it all done." The thing that will give you more productivity is to stop and take a break. I know it sounds wild, but it's true. So you need to figure out what can you do in that moment to then get some space, remove yourself from the situation and actually get into a state where your brain and your body can start to relax. [00:04:19] Jason: Sometimes breaks are not enough. A quick break's just not enough. You're right. So especially if you've been in burnout for a while.  [00:04:25] Yeah.  [00:04:26] Sarah: We've been working really hard. I talked about this on the scale call last week. There are seasons in your business where you will be because maybe you are bringing on a whole bunch of new units. Maybe you're hiring a new person. Maybe you're implementing a new system or changing softwares or working with a new coach. And there are definitely times for that. But you also have to realize that there are times for breaks and rest and relaxation. [00:04:52] Cars have both the gas and the brake. You need to realize that in your business, there's a time for gas and there's a time for the brake. So you must have both.  [00:05:04] Jason: Yeah. So we've been working really hard lately and I think we're both getting to a place of burnout. We were outfitting an an Airbnb that we're going to use for some client events and stuff as well. [00:05:14] And we've just been working on the business. We're onboarding new sales people in the company too. And it's just, it's a lot, right. And so we just a week's vacation basically. We did a cool training. If you missed it last week, it was really cool. So we did do some work but we took a break and I think it was well needed, especially after that marathon move that we did moving all that furniture into that rental. [00:05:38] Sarah: So I was pretty burned out physically, and I was nearing burnout. I was just, my stress level was through the roof. I was telling Jason, "I am on the verge of a breakdown, could happen like any little thing" and little things, little stupid things that I would normally not care about as much were setting me off like big explosions over a little stupid things. [00:06:03] Jason: Every married guy can resonate. We know when you women get like that.  [00:06:07] Sarah: Well men get like that too, though, in a different way, I think sometimes when the little things that they're an annoyance, they're a slight frustration, but it's not the end of the world. But when your body reacts to that little stupid frustration as if it is the end of the world, that's a really good cue like you need a break. So we took one. And we pushed ourselves probably to the limit and just about every capacity as business owners often do, we're like "go, hurry up, get it all done, make it happen. So we set up we set up an Airbnb in 26 hours. Everything. We cleaned it and we had no furniture. [00:06:48] We moved everything in, we assembled it, we decorated it. We got decor, silverware, dishes. There's five beds in there.  [00:06:55] Jason: Five beds.  [00:06:56] Sarah: And everything. And not just like beds...  [00:06:58] Jason: purple mattresses and stuff ready.  [00:07:00] Sarah: Yeah. It's ready to be rented out right now. And we did all of that.  [00:07:04] Jason: And it's two story.  [00:07:05] Sarah: In 26 hours. [00:07:06] Jason: All the rooms, all the bedrooms are upstairs except one. It was a good time. Hudson, my son, and I were the heavy lifters.  [00:07:12] Sarah: Yes. I wasn't going to break a nail. These are like, it's 75 to get a new set! I'm not... you do that. So we did all of this. And then we actually had this trip booked for a while. [00:07:24] It was booked last year. But the timing just worked out really well. Yeah. So we got done Sunday evening. late Sunday evening. And then Monday morning we flew out to a property, very rural in Arkansas, in Bentonville, Arkansas. It's actually Decatur, but there's like three properties in the city of Decatur, I think. [00:07:44] And then that week, it wasn't that we didn't work at all because we did, but I only worked for maybe a few hours a day and it was selective work and it was focused work. So instead of doing everything that I would normally have done, I had to then prioritize. And say, okay, "if I have two hours to do everything because I'm only going to work for two hours today or three hours today, then what are the things that I must get done today in that time?" [00:08:15] And those were the things that I focused on and anything that wasn't that I either didn't do it or I delegated it to the team. Because the thing that we also don't realize is sometimes things can wait and that's okay. We're in this era now of everything is instant. It's, "I want it right now. I want this now. I want an answer now. I want to talk to somebody now. I want Amazon right now. Like, I want everything instantly." And that has trained us to instantly respond to everything and then to be in this mindset where, "Oh, somebody needs me and then I must drop everything. I must handle it right now." It is okay to wait. [00:08:55] Jason: It's okay to say no. It's okay to say, "Hey, no, I'm not doing that today, or that's going to be done next week." Depending on the situation, you don't always have to be reactive. you should be in control in your business, right? Where you're not reacting to everything. So.  [00:09:10] Sarah: So I'll share what I shared on that Scale call is I challenged everybody to give themselves Megan Cuthin talks about this. [00:09:18] And so if Megan ever sees this. Megan, we love you. So Megan is our friend. She's out in Nashville, Tennessee. She's great. And she coaches on operations. And one of the things that she had talked about is she was noticing that every so often she would just get exhausted and then she was no longer effective. [00:09:35] And she was just like, she had no more gusto to her. She didn't want to do things. And that's because she was hitting a burnout cycle. So she was realizing her burnout cycle was happening pretty often, like every other week. And then what she needed to do when she was like that is just take a break. [00:09:53] So what she started doing is just building these little like mini breaks in. So what she does is she just chooses a day. And she blocks that day out so that she doesn't do anything that day. She has no calls. She has no appointments. She doesn't wake up at a certain time. She just treats it like a vacation day when she's at home. So she'll wake up whenever her body feels like waking up. If she wants to just read a book or watch TV or go take a nap or meditate or take a walk or go bowling or do whatever that day she does that. And then when she feels pretty well rested. relaxed and pretty well rested. [00:10:35] Usually what happens then when we start to feel that way is then our brain starts going "Oh, I should take care of that. And Oh, what if I did that? And Oh..." and we start to get pulled back in to the idea of work and then work seems now exciting again versus, "Oh, I have to do that, but I really just don't want to do it." [00:10:55] There's a big difference between going, "Oh, you know what? I could probably just do that. Oh, you know what? I had this great idea. We should do that." Then you feel excited and energized about it. That's your cue now to go back to work. And it might happen. It might take a day. It might take a few days if you're, especially if you haven't done this in a while, it might take a few days. [00:11:12] It only might take a few hours. So you might be on like this burnout day for like three hours and that's it. So that's it. My challenge to everybody on the scale call last week was to schedule yourself a day like this, where you don't do all of the things that you would normally do and allow yourself that time to relax. [00:11:31] And then my other challenge was to do this regularly. Also, don't just do it once and be like, "Oh, I'm good now." You're not, you have to continuously do this thing. And we had a client actually Josh, he closes his office every single week now on Friday early. And he's His whole team goes home early. [00:11:48] Can you imagine that? So they have about like a four and a half day work week now instead of a five day. And the whole team gets everything done. They appreciate having that extra time in that extra afternoon. And instead of going "Oh, well I like, I can't not work on Friday afternoon because then all of this stuff won't get done." [00:12:08] They get it done. So they're getting the same amount of work done, but in a shorter amount of time because they're properly motivated and they get extra time now to relax. So essentially they're getting a longer weekend. So I would challenge you to do the same thing, pick a day. And if you're like, "there is no chance I could do that right now!" That's fine. [00:12:27] Do three weeks from now. Pick a day and close your office early. The nice thing is you don't actually have to do it. You just have to tell your brain that you're going to do it. So say, "I'm going to close at one o'clock today." And then what you'll subconsciously do is start filtering all of the work and all of the things that must get done. [00:12:43] In that time frame, because you're going to close at 1 o'clock, and you'll get them done, and then, even if you don't close at 1 o'clock, you don't have to, but you just tell yourself that you will, if you then don't close at 1 o'clock, and you say, well, now I have an extra 4 hours in my day, what can you do with those extra 4 hours that your brain wasn't actually planning on having? [00:13:03] Jason: Yeah.  [00:13:03] Sarah: So you can trick your brain, but you really, you have to do a little bit extra to like trick your brain. Because if you go, "Oh yeah, but I'm not actually closing at one o'clock. I'm going to be here until five anyway." Then your brain will give you until five o'clock to get all of your crap done. [00:13:16] But if you're like, "I am closing at one o'clock, I am stopping at one o'clock and that's it." No exceptions. Then all of a sudden you work in the capacity that you have, you get all of your stuff done, and now you have some extra time in your day. And you might then decide to reinvest that time back into the business and go, "Oh, you know what? I think I'll go take a quick lunch. Maybe I'll go take a quick break. Maybe I'll take an hour break. Maybe I'll take a two hour lunch." I don't know. And then if you want to come back, you can always come back. It's your business. You can do whatever you want, but you have to actually trick your brain into, hey, "I need to get everything done by one o'clock or 12 o'clock or two o'clock or whatever time, pick a time, close early and get everything done by then." [00:13:55] And then all of a sudden, you will be a lot more efficient that way. And you'll prioritize the things that need to be done because a lot of the things that you're doing, They don't actually need to be done.  [00:14:06] Jason: So this concept is Parkinson's law, right? Is the idea that the more time you get for something, the more time it's going to take. [00:14:14] And so things will just always fill up whatever container you make available. Related to that, because work expands to fill the time that's available for its completion, things become harder. The more time you allow. And so sometimes by collapsing the amount of time available and having deadlines or having requirements. [00:14:36] And this is one of, I think the brilliant pieces of our planning system, DoorGrow OS, by collapsing the time allotted in order to achieve something, people actually like work more efficiently and it's less hard to accomplish and they get more innovative And they start like looking for all these other alternatives and options and whatever and they do what's most effective. [00:14:58] And so we've seen this with team members like they might spend way too much time on something if we just say this is when we need it's like we need this by next week and They we could give them a month And they would take an entire month and spend a ton of time and more time doing it. And that doesn't mean it's more effective or that we're getting a better result necessarily. [00:15:17] So, same thing for you. Like set a cutoff. I'm done with work at this time. I'm going to take a break at this time. I'm going to take a vacation at this time. And then you will find that things become more and more effective. So Parkinson's law. Cool.  [00:15:32] Sarah: If a vacation seems crazy to you, schedule one. [00:15:36] Yeah. That's exactly when you need one. When you go, "I just don't think there's any chance that I could be taken away from the business. Like I can't take away from my team or I am the team. I don't even have a team yet. Like everything is on me and there's no possible way that I can do it." [00:15:52] That is exactly when you need to do it. So just do it.  [00:15:55] Jason: Yeah.  [00:15:56] Sarah: Do it. Book it. You have to. Otherwise this is your life forever. This is what you want. Do you want to be stuck? Doing all of this stuff every day, all day, burned out, exhausted, tired, miserable? No, so you have to get out of that. And sometimes to get out of that, we have to physically remove ourself from the situation because I know you guys out there, you'll go, "Oh yeah, I'll take a break." [00:16:20] And then you'll bring your cell phone with you and you'll be doing stuff anyway. Actually take a break and remove yourself.  [00:16:28] Jason: So at one of our DoorGrow Live events, we have brought in an expert trainer that trains pro athletes for the San Antonio Spurs and some other pro teams that are around Texas. [00:16:41] And she talked about how is part of their training mechanism and what she coaches on and supports them in recovery is a big part of that piece. It's a big piece of all of that. And if you don't have recovery, then you're going to have more injury. You're not going to perform as well. And so she talked about how the recovery piece is usually this most neglected piece because they're super driven. [00:17:05] And a lot of entrepreneurs, you're high D in a DISC assessment. Like you're very driven. You want to like get things done. You're motivated, but you may not be giving yourself the recovery you need to be effective. [00:17:16] During the recovery stage, it's built during those early morning hours where you're sleeping. That's where muscle's built. You do the work and break the muscle and tear the muscle and whatever doing the workouts, but it's built during recovery. And so if you're not giving yourself what you need and setting aside the recovery time, you will inevitably burn out. [00:17:35] So you have to find that balance. So.  [00:17:36] Sarah: And You need to take a break before your body does it for you.  [00:17:40] Jason: Right.  [00:17:41] Sarah: Because that's the other thing, if you've ever noticed that when you're just tired and you're exhausted and you're stressed and you're like, that's usually when all of a sudden you straighten your back or you twist your ankle or you get this weird cold or bronchitis or whatever. [00:17:57] It's because you're not listening to your body. Your body is giving you clues and telling you what it needs. "Hey, I need to eat Hey, I need to sleep. Hey, like I'm not relaxed. There's way too much cortisol in here. What are we doing?" And if we just keep pushing through it will break down And something will happen either a sickness or an illness or an injury And then you have to take a break because it will force you to take a break. [00:18:24] But then the problem with that guys is then we're not taking a break that's fun. We're taking a break because we're sick and injured.  [00:18:31] Jason: Yeah. So we don't get to really enjoy it. Yeah.  [00:18:34] Sarah: So you're not enjoying it now. You're going, "Oh, I feel like crap." Of course you do. So you should choose to take a break before your body chooses it for you.  [00:18:43] Jason: So I think, one of the things I'm noticing is it's really important for entrepreneurs to become attuned to their nervous system. They need to be familiar with how they're feeling and just check in with themselves. And for entrepreneurs, we usually operate at a high stress level and not all stress is bad necessarily, right? [00:18:59] The stress of working out actually gives you more runway and gives you more time, productive time. But we need to make sure that we're paying attention to our nervous system because we'll get preloaded and then we'll get like really like heightened and really anxious. And then to the point where we're exploding at that team members and like freaking out and like we're really heightened and we might then some entrepreneurs will get to the point where they're having panic attacks and they're not sleeping at night and they're having. [00:19:25] Heart palpitations, right? And so we need to make sure we are honoring the body and our body will give us clues, nervous system. So go take a walk, take a breather, take a vacation, take a break, but start listening to your nervous system. What's it telling you right now that you need right now? Maybe you need to take care of your body. [00:19:41] So, all right. Anything else?  [00:19:43] Sarah: I think if you need to take a break, then take a break and you can take a mini break. You can do that. So just get up and walk around the office. Even if you pace around the office. We have a couple of clients who do that. Like Yair every, I think it's four o'clock every day, he plays the Rocky theme in his office. And then he does like pushups and like burpees and like jumping jacks and lunges and stuff. Now you don't necessarily have to do all of that, but Schedule it throughout the day, put it right on your calendar, and then every so often get up and go walk around, even if it's just walking around your office. [00:20:23] Rest your eyes, close your eyes for a few minutes, look away from your screen. Don't take a break from your screen by looking at your cell phone. That's another screen. That's not a break. Then your eyes are strained all day long. So actually look at something that's not a screen, rest your eyes or close your eyes or do some eye squeezes. [00:20:40] You can meditate, you can listen to some music, you can start to read a book. And even if it's only for a few minutes throughout the day, that few minutes is going to help rejuvenate your body. So then you're not just feeling like you're constantly drained. And when you need a longer break, take a longer break, even though it might seem impossible. [00:21:02] That's exactly when you need to do it.  [00:21:04] Jason: Okay, cool. So there's a cool app that I used for a while called Rise Sleep and it shows your circadian rhythm and there's usually a big spike in the morning where you ramp up and then it dips down in the afternoon and then you get a littler spike in the in the evening and where you get a another boost. [00:21:24] But that lull in the afternoon, that dip can be pretty severe if we're not taking care of our health. And you can be really fatigued. And so that's a great time to maybe go for a walk or take a break or do something to wake yourself up or go do a workout or something like that. So, all right, well, hopefully this was a helpful and effective for you to honor your nervous system. [00:21:44] Get some breaks in. towards burnout. We know that if you're not burning yourself out, you're going to be a lot more productive, a lot more effective, and we can help you grow your business a lot faster. And if you'd like to learn how to get your business growing faster, how to lower your stress levels and make the business a calm workplace, and get more effective and efficient team members, get better systems in place, this is what we do at DoorGrow. We're able to help grow companies dramatically, and we would love to help and support you. So reach out to us and talk to our team and let's get you going. So until next time to our mutual growth, bye everyone. [00:22:17] 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!  [00:22:44] 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.

Property management business owner, do you have an assistant? We've talked before about how important it is to build a team around you and get support as an entrepreneur. In today's episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hull discuss why property management entrepreneurs need to hire an assistant for themselves. You'll Learn [01:14] The Most Important Hire in Your PM Business [02:41] How to Get a Really Good Assistant [04:57] Two Types of Team Members [06:42] When Should I Get an Assistant? [08:17] Benefits of Having an Assistant Tweetables “I think the very first person that somebody should hire. is an assistant.” “If you continue to build the team around the business, you will end up more and more miserable instead of helping yourself more and more, which actually makes you a lot more money.” “Nobody's good at being two or three different types of people.” “I've seen business owners have team members that they've gotten assistants for and they don't have an assistant for themselves.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: I've seen business owners have team members that they've gotten assistants for and they don't have an assistant for themselves. [00:00:07] That always just drives me crazy because it's so obvious that there's a problem there.  [00:00:13] 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. [00:00:40] 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. And let's get into the show. All right.  [00:01:13] So today we're going to be talking about assistants, right? [00:01:16] Sarah: Yes. Why don't you have help yet? Okay.  [00:01:20] Jason: So one of the challenges that we've noticed with our clients and with other property managers is that a lot of times they don't have an assistant for themselves. And so they'll have some team members even, but they won't have an assistant that supports them. [00:01:36] And I think this is a common trap entrepreneurs fall into. I think the very first person that somebody should hire. is an assistant. You start getting yourself some help instead of just helping the business. And if you continue to build the team around the business, you will end up more and more miserable instead of helping yourself more and more, which actually makes you a lot more money. [00:01:58] That's like everything in a nutshell.  [00:02:00] Sarah: There you go. We're done. There we go. We can wrap up. Have a great day. So get an assistant.  [00:02:03] Jason: Goodbye. Alright.  [00:02:04] Sarah: Madi will edit this one and she'll be like, "oh wow, that was so fast."  [00:02:07] Jason: "Wow, that was the shortest one ever." Kidding! So let's talk about this. I have an assistant. [00:02:12] Giselle's sort of your assistant. I think. Somewhat. Operationally? No, you don't think so? Okay. All right.  [00:02:18] Sarah: She's really good at really anything because she asks people on the team and she's like, "Hey, is there anything you need help with this week?" She always usually messages me at the beginning of the week and she says, "Hey, is there like anything I should be aware of or any special projects that you need me to work on this week?" [00:02:34] And sometimes I can't think of anything until later. And then I go, "Oh, you can help me with this." And she's like, "great. I'm on it." [00:02:41] Jason: So how do we get people really good assistants? Well, we have them do one of our DoorGrow time studies to figure out which things are energetically their plus signs and which things are their minus signs. [00:02:51] And then we build out a job description, but it needs to be one personality type, not two or three different personalities that like that human being doesn't really exist.  [00:03:01] Sarah: And if they do, they're hard.  [00:03:03] Jason: There's people that can do everything.  [00:03:04] Sarah: They have like multiple personalities in one.  [00:03:07] Jason: Yeah.  [00:03:08] Sarah: Let's think about it if we want to hire them. [00:03:09] Jason: No, we don't. We don't want that person. We want somebody that's good. At being one person, right? Like in, because nobody's good at being two or three different types of people. Right. You're not going to have somebody that's like, "man, I'm the salesiest person ever and super salesy. And Oh yeah, I'm a really brilliant detail oriented operator." [00:03:27] Like it's just, for example, so we need to get you your ultimate assistant. We also then like to figure out your personality, figure out who you are. So when we get into our DoorGrow hiring, and if you need help with hiring, reach out to DoorGrow, we have a really great hiring system called DoorGrow hiring, and it's going to cost you a lot less money than working with a placement agency where they charge thousands of dollars and you'll probably get better results. [00:03:48] Not probably. You'll get better results typically because their job is just to get somebody into your office and get paid. But we assess people, we make sure they're the right personality fit. We help you make sure you have the right culture fit and the right skill fit, which I've talked about many times, the three fits. [00:04:06] So, I've had lots of assistants over the years. Lots. I've had some really amazing ones. I've had some okay ones. I haven't really had, well, I guess I've had a few like bad ones as well, right? So I've had lots and lots of assistants. And what I usually look for in hiring an assistant is I need somebody that I can trust their judgment and their intelligence to do things so that I don't have to do it. Right. And so my assistant Mar, she's better at several things than I would be. She has more patience. She's willing to like get frustrated at people if need be to like get things handled, whatever it takes.  [00:04:46] I think it's really important. A lot of people think, "well, I'll go get a VA and I'll go get some low dollar, low wage, cheap sort of worker in Mexico or the Philippines, and that'll be my first assistant." [00:04:57] So there's two types of people you're going to hire in your business. Some are people as process. People as process are basically like people you hired that function like a robot. Just do what I tell you to do. Don't get cute. Don't be clever. Just follow the checklist. [00:05:10] That's not a great assistant. It's not really a good assistant to have because you're going to have to do all the thinking for them and then give them tasks and you, then you're gonna have to show them exactly how to do every task and that's going to be really frustrating for you. That's not the ideal assistant. [00:05:25] So then there are people that are thinkers or decision makers that you can trust to make decisions without you and to make judgments. And so that's the type of assistant that you want. You want somebody that is intelligent. Intelligence is the big differentiator here. And you can tell when you're talking with people, are they bright? [00:05:46] Are they quick? Would you trust them to do things over you on the things that you're going to give them to do because they're better at those things? So you want to hire people that are intelligent, not people that just can follow tasks That's not going to be a really good assistant for you. Now later on if you do have some low level work or tasks in the business that you just want to offload, you can hire some people as process we have people on our team that are people as process. [00:06:11] They follow things. They do the same sort of work each time. They're not really involved in making a lot of decisions in the business. They don't come to our weekly meetings. They don't come to our monthly meeting, planning meetings, stuff like this. They're just doing their work and they're valuable and we appreciate them. [00:06:28] However, if you need somebody close to you, that's going to help you double your capacity and help you get accomplished a lot more, they need to be next level. They need to be higher level from that. So anything you would add to that?  [00:06:41] Sarah: I would say, let's talk about: when should I get an assistant? [00:06:46] Jason: Okay. When do you think they should get an assistant.  [00:06:48] Sarah: Like now? Now. Usually somewhere and it's different depending on your capacity, typically, it's somewhere in between the 50 and 100 door mark. It may be a little bit sooner depending on your market and is this your full time thing? Are you trying to run eight different businesses at once? [00:07:07] Like, what is your focus like? Really how much time are you spending in the business and willing to spend in the business? All of that will be factors in when this happens, but typically it's somewhere between the 50 and 100 doormark, which is why if you're in the DoorGrow mastermind, then the belt level requirements in order to reach the orange belt, which is your hundred doormark, you need to hire an assistant. It's one of the things on there and most people skip this step and they'll hire other positions in the business. They just don't hire an assistant. And I ran my business, that was the only person I had was an assistant and she was boots on the ground. And then that way, all of the stuff I didn't want to do, I didn't have to do because I had somebody else who could just take it off my plate and do it for me. So it was great. Without her, man, I don't know how I would have been able to do it. I would have had to work probably double or more. And I would have had multiple other positions in the company going at the same time. It just would have been really hard to do everything, especially the way that I did it without somebody there boots on the ground. [00:08:17] Jason: Yeah. So for me having an assistant has like been hugely beneficial so that I can free up my time like it's completely gotten me out of email. I don't look at my email. Do you email me? I probably won't see it, but I'll be told about it.  [00:08:33] Sarah: We closed on a property and he didn't see any of the stuff. Yeah, we were at the closing table and he's like, "hey, I got questions on this." [00:08:40] I'm like, yeah, that's all in your email. He's like, "oh, I don't look at my email." [00:08:43] Jason: Yeah. So, yeah, I don't like dealing with email, right? It's not like my favorite thing in the world. So I was able to offload email. I don't have to like worry too much about my schedule. I just show up and live and do what my calendar tells me to do. [00:08:57] So, having an assistant has just made things a lot easier so I can focus on higher level tasks and working on the stuff that I more enjoy doing and my assistant enjoys doing all those things. Those are things that drain me and my assistant loves it Like she messaged me last night saying how much she loves her job and how much she loves doing all this stuff for me And i'm like, "that's great because I would hate doing it." I just don't want to do a lot of those things that she does. So when to get an assistant? I think most property managers, yeah, certainly once you get up to 50, 60 doors, you're probably feeling a little bit overwhelmed as in that solopreneur sand trap, that's a great spot to get your first team member. They could be a part time assistant, but get somebody that can take some load off your plate. [00:09:40] Maybe you can graduate them the full time as you add more doors, but it's going to double your capacity. Getting a really good assistant can double your capacity overnight, especially if they're taking off your minus signs because you'll have so much more energy, so much more mental capacity, so much less decision fatigue. [00:09:57] You'll be able to get more juice out of the second half of your day if you can get those things offloaded. And so we've got some great resources for how to leverage an assistant that we can support you in at DoorGrow and how to know what an assistant should be doing, which is unique to you. And yeah, and how to make that relationship really effective. [00:10:17] So, so reach out to us and check us out at DoorGrow.Com if you're curious about any of that, and if you don't yet have an assistant, what I think's really wild to me is I've seen business owners that have hundreds of doors, hundreds. And they have an entire team and they're stressed out and they're frustrated. [00:10:34] And this happens a lot, especially in the two to 400 door range, they'll just be burnt out and they wonder why they can't get to the next level. They keep stopping their growth and adding doors and then focusing on trying to get their systems and processes dialed in and they don't have an assistant and they wonder why things are so stressful for them. [00:10:51] And it's cause they're not taking care of themselves. They're not taking care of the most important person in the business. The one person that should have the most support, they're not allowing that person to get support, and it's you, the business owner, like make sure you have an assistant. I've seen business owners have team members that they've gotten assistants for and they don't have an assistant for themselves. [00:11:12] That always just drives me crazy because it's so obvious that there's a problem there. And when I'm talking with them, they're like burnout, they're frustrated, they're hating their business, and, "oh yeah, my operator has an assistant or this person has an assistant or my property manager has an assistant property manager, but the business owner has no direct support." [00:11:32] I'm like, "'well, everybody in my team supports me,' but you didn't build the team around you. You built the team around the business." And so they're just burning themselves out. So this is your invitation. If you're listening and you don't have an assistant right now, and you have any other team members, this is your invitation, or maybe you don't have any team members yet. This is your invitation to go get yourself an assistant. I'm giving you permission that you can go get yourself an assistant. Not that you need it, but you deserve it. Like go get yourself an assistant. You can definitely afford it because if you were able to take half of your time off your plate of the crappy stuff you don't want to be doing, you could easily make a lot more money. [00:12:11] You can spend a lot more time doing revenue generating activities and growing the business. It's almost never an excuse that you financially can't afford an assistant. Because it just means you just have to spend the time doing the stuff that makes money, and you know how to make money and if you don't for some reason know how to add doors or know how to close more deals or know how to make money, we can help you do that dramatically and very quickly reach out to us at DoorGrow. So anything else we should say?  [00:12:37] Sarah: I don't think so  [00:12:38] Jason: Okay, so what's the core message?  [00:12:41] Sarah: Go get an assistant. Do it.  [00:12:43] Jason: All right. Do it now. That's it for today. So until next time to our mutual growth Bye everyone. Oh and get your tickets to DoorGrow live. [00:12:51] This is gonna be an awesome event So go get those you can go to DoorGrowlive. Com. Be there. It's going to be be cool [00:12:56] 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!  [00:13:23] 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.

Join us for another episode on the Humane Marketing podcast as we explore how to ethically partner with AI, with our guest, Naully Nicolas. We talk about Naully's journey into the world of artificial intelligence, the crucial ethical and legal considerations surrounding AI implementation, and how AI empowers us to work smarter, not harder. Naully shares his PLATON framework, inspired by Plato and infused with philosophical principles, guiding us through the pillars of legality, accountability, transparency, objectivity, and neutrality. Together, we envision the future of AI and work, inspiring us as Humane Marketers to embrace technology with empathy and mindfulness, shaping a future where humanity thrives alongside innovation. What we addressed in this conversation: How Naully got interested and started with AI The ethical and legal considerations of AI How AI enables us to work smarter not harder Naully's PLATON framework, based on Plato and philosophical considerations (principles, legality, accountability, transparency, objectivity and neutrality, because in French Plato has an N at the end) How Naully sees the future of AI and work and much more... --- Ep 187 whole episode Sarah: [00:00:00] Hello, Humane Marketers. Welcome back to the Humane Marketing Podcast, the place to be for the generation of marketers that cares. This is a show where we talk about running your business in a way that feels good to you, is aligned with your values, and also resonates with today's conscious customers because it's humane, ethical, and non pushy. I'm Sarah Santacroce, your hippie turned business coach for quietly rebellious entrepreneurs and marketing impact pioneers. Mama bear of the humane marketing circle and renegade author of marketing like we're human and selling like we're human. If after listening to the show for a while, you're ready to move on to the next level and start implementing and would welcome a community of like minded, quietly rebellious entrepreneurs who discuss with transparency what we're doing. Works and what doesn't work in business. Then we'd love to welcome you in our humane marketing circle. If you're picturing your [00:01:00] typical Facebook group, let me paint a new picture for you. This is a closed community of like minded entrepreneurs from all over the world who come together once per month in a zoom circle workshop to hold each other accountable and build their business in a sustainable way. We share with transparency and vulnerability. What works for us. And what doesn't work so that you can figure out what works for you instead of keep throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what sticks. Find out more at humane. marketing forward slash circle. And if you prefer one on one support from me, my humane business coaching could be just what you need, whether it's for your marketing, sales, general business building, or help with your big idea like writing a book. I'd love to share my brain and my heart with you together with my almost 15. Years business experience and help you grow a sustainable business that is joyful and sustainable. If you love this [00:02:00] podcast, wait until I show you my Mama Bear qualities as my one-on-one client, and find out more at Humane Marketing slash coaching. And finally, if you are a Marketing Impact pioneer and would like to bring Humane Marketing to your organization, have a look at my offers and workshops on my website. Humane dot marketing. Hello, friends. Welcome back to the Humane Marketing Podcast. Today's conversation fits under the P of partnership, I'd say. We're partnering with AI. If you're a regular here, you know that I'm organizing the conversations around the seven P's of the Humane Marketing mandala. And if you're new here and this is your first time listening, well, A big warm welcome. You probably don't know what I'm talking about, these seven [00:03:00] P's in the mandala. Well, you can download your one page marketing plan with the Humane Marketing version of the seven P's in the shape of a mandala at humane. marketing forward slash one page. Humane. marketing forward slash one page. That's the number one and the word page. And this comes with seven email prompts to really help you reflect on these different P's for your business. For this conversation about partnering with AI in a humane way, I brought in my colleague, Noli Nicola. Noli is renowned Digital transformation consultant with over 16 years of experience in I. T. engineering and 12 years in marketing specializing in emerging technologies like web three, the metaverse and A. I. Noli provides pragmatic advice to business leaders. Particularly in [00:04:00] SMEs, navigating the complexities of the digital age. His stoic philosophy combined with a profound understanding of the digital landscape makes him an invaluable guide for companies seeking strategic opportunities in technology. So what we addressed in this conversation with Noli is how he got started and Interested in AI, the ethical and legal considerations of working with AI, especially as a humane marketer, how AI enables us to work smarter and not harder, Noli's framework based on Plato and philosophical considerations. Principles, legality, accountability, transparency, objectivity, and neutrality. Because in French, Plato is Platon and has an N at the end. [00:05:00] So that's where the neutrality comes from. And then also how Nolly sees the future of AI and work and so much more. So I'd say without further ado, let's get into it. Hi Noli, how are you? Como ti va? Naully: I'm fine, and you? Sarah: Yes, I'm great, thank you. You're in the middle of a move, so very stressful. We can't really use AI to help us move yet, or can we? Naully: Yes, I also I hope I use AI maybe for to do the planning for my moving, so it was quite useful. Sarah: Oh, wow. You'll have to tell us more about that. But yeah, I'm glad to have this conversation in between trips and moving boxes and things like that. Because yeah, we're, we're super excited to have you come and teach an in depth workshop on May 1st. [00:06:00] And, and this is just kind of like a teaser and I'll ask you some questions that we then also have more time to go in to on, on May 1st. And so. If you're listening to this and feel like, Oh, I want more of this content. And please join us on May 1st that it's a 90 minute workshop, humane. marketing forward slash workshop, but let's dive into it. And I'll, I'll just kind of start with how did you get into AYA, AI NALI and, and, and like, what does it represent for you in this day and age? Naully: How I discovered AI, I would say it's a normal step in my long career because I've been working for almost I would say 19 years into the IT universe. So, and also since my childhood, I was very curious, I like to dismount my own [00:07:00] PC and remote the remote again the PC. And it's also. On my personal view, I was there during the, the passage between the old internet, which was the I would say the effects of Minitel for some, and let's say the first browsing on internet. So it was like into the nineties, I think, around, around this era. And Then I work in IT for almost 20 years and I saw the progress. Also, I saw the constraint also of let's say the digital world. And I discovered AI when I was, reading a book, I would say it was not only, I would say sci fi books, but also I would say it was, I came across a book, so I don't remember the name and I was sure that in the next step of our digital world will be the AI. And And I was able also to sense [00:08:00] the switch between the, let's say, all the world. And I'm not that old, but the way that we interact with the computer and the new way that we are in this AI universe now. Sarah: Do you feel like we're completely there in the AI universe or we're still like at the very beginning of it? I Naully: think we are in the beginning because most of them. Approach that we have is only true chat, GPT and code and song, but I think it's only the tip of the iceberg because maybe your audience don't really make sense, but we're already using AI in every day. So, for example, for in Spotify, for example, it's an algorithm, it's not AI per se, but we are using the data, right? Yeah. Like when you're browsing on Netflix or something. It's a kind of [00:09:00] AI, which is gripping you the best show after you finish one. I'll tell you how you finish this show, there's also this one in which you might be interested. So, Sarah: yeah, so it's, it's kind of this blurry line between algorithms that are kind of gearing us towards where they want to go. And then also. Yeah, AI for like what you said, planning things like a move and, and probably if you can plan a move with AI, you can also plan a vacation with AI. Like you can do so many things and, and we'll get into some more of that. But I think when I brought up the topic of AI and. You know, Chachi PT is kind of the most note one right now. In the humane marketing circle, our community, there's a lot of I wouldn't, maybe a day, a day wouldn't say it's fear, but I think it's fear or [00:10:00] hesitation. And then there's also all these ethical considerations, which. Obviously are very important for someone who's doing humane business and humane marketing. So, yeah, what are some ethical considerations we should keep in mind when, when we're going down this road of using AI in our business? Naully: I would say if we talk in terms of fear, I can say we have the same when I would say the first software network appears. So because some people are afraid to me on Facebook, never, never, never, never. Some people switch to to Facebook anyways, but I think the thing different with AI is the fact that they can aggregate a lot of data, which are mostly it's a personal data. And also the carry things is they can be more [00:11:00] personalized that before, because I would say before we look up information into Google, but now we can create our own, I would say chat GPT with in every sector, for example, but I can create a personal coach GPT, which contains all my Let's say, personal view or approach that no other coach can have. And there is the main, let's say, reflection about what, what are stored, those data, because now we can put, let's say, more personal data, like the, the people that we have interaction with, name, date, address and so on. And those that are located in country who are less more, I would say, regarding internal flow. For example, in the US, we have the Patriot [00:12:00] Act, in which any federal agency can look into those data without asking you. So that's why in Europe they have the G-G-D-P-R. Sarah: mm-hmm . Naully: And now they in, they want to enforce the EU Act in, which is a kind of G-E-D-P-R for ai. So it's to determine which is the good usage of AI and which is the, would say risky usage of hair. Sarah: They're trying to kind of come up with laws. They're catching up, really. They have to catch up. Yeah, because there Naully: is some issue, for example, with AI using for credit score, for example, because we have to we have to determine who is responsible for these tools. Sarah: It Naully: is the developer. It is the person who is using the tools. Or this is the user, [00:13:00] Sarah: right? Naully: So I would say the same, like if you buy a car, there is a responsibility. It's the one who drives the car, that's the car manufacturer, Sarah: right? Naully: So, Sarah: so the Naully: ethics is the main, I would say the main point of ethics in AI is to determine the responsibility. in the creation and the use of those tools. Sarah: Right. Yeah. Because I think the one thing to keep in mind is that you can always go. Either way, right. You can use AI for good, or you can use AI for evil. And that's what we're all afraid of. When we talk about, oh, AI is going to take over, the robots are going to take over, well, we're afraid of things going in the wrong direction. And so is that what they're now trying, trying to kind of come up with legal responsibilities of who's [00:14:00] responsible for what? Naully: Yeah, I, as I said before, it's. It's not perfect or ideal, but it's better than nothing because at least we have a framework in which someone can and which some people can refer to, so it's not the wild, wild west in terms of AI, so there's some moral, moral and legal framework. In the use of AI, Sarah: right? Is this what happened after Elon Musk and a bunch of other people sent that open letter? Was that in response to that or kind of happened Naully: anyway? I think it's that. But also there is the thing that. They don't want to this kind of tool to be out of control because things can go badly and we can see in country like China that are using AI not. In the right use, [00:15:00] mostly for surveillance of their steel. And I think the country in Europe, they don't want to that rule. So, so, and I think also there is some moral issues of also, of kind of still. Sarah: Right, right, yeah, it's interesting because everything happens so fast that governments and legal people, they, they have a hard time catching up with everything because that's, that's from the old paradigm. So it's just like very slow and admin heavy and all of that. Right. So you think there is ever going to be a point where. They're on the same page and they caught up. Well, Naully: there is now, I think, more and more countries are, I would say, are just according to the same principle, because I think there is, I would say, there is some universal [00:16:00] principle that you will find anywhere in the world. It's the world of justice. Sarah: I think Naully: everyone want want to be as the Stanford justice, and also to have the opportunity to questions also the AI, because it's like, Well, you're, let's say, in your common life, you're also the right to question if you're arrested by a police officer, you have the right to, to have a lawyer and also to to be in a tribunal. So it should be the same also when we use AI for this, I think it's the kind, it's the same. Universal principle that you can find in any country from Switzerland to France to Peru, anywhere. So, Sarah: yeah. Yeah. Okay. So we went in a bit big picture in terms of, you know, what needs to change in a society on the legal aspect, the justice aspect for us in order to, to [00:17:00] work with AI. But now if we take it down to our entrepreneurial level, how can we. integrate in, you know, AI in our businesses in a way that is. Ethical and makes us work smarter and not harder, but also stays away from like, the one thing that I don't like about AI is, is this push towards even more productivity, toward even more working and, you know, more hustle. And I'm like, well, no, I think that's getting it wrong. It's like, we have this amazing tool that helps us actually. Work smarter, not harder, but then freeze us with more time to be more human. That's the way I look at it. So what are some practical ways that you have worked with entrepreneurs that they use [00:18:00] AI to work smarter and not harder? Naully: But the first thing that I told my. Entrepreneur is that AI is not there to replace you, but to help you. So you should consider AI as a tool because AI is not perfect because by extension, AI was created by a new man. So the human is not perfect per se. So also AI are subject as we call hallucination because. Yeah, it's predicting, let's say, words, it's not contextualizing the words, so you have also understand the limits of the AI because it can be considered as a magic tool can rule, but you have also to understand that AI has also its own limits. So you won't, you won't pass you in any ways, you will simply help you [00:19:00] maybe in turn now in term of workload, I would say that. AI is a good tool if you want to, I don't know, manage your content. For example, if you are someone who loves to write content, it could be a good assistant, but it won't replace you to create your content, but also it can help you to I don't know, create a content schedule for the next two, once a month, next two months. And then you can schedule those contents and then you can sort of manage your day to day life also easier because you already create your content for the month for the next two months. So you can maybe take a day off because usually before you took, well, I don't know, one week to create your content, to write it and publish it. And those, I would say, save time, you [00:20:00] can save it elsewhere. Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. You can actually invest it in the human relations, right? Yeah. Have, have coffee with a friend or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. And I like how you said you can help you, it assists you, it can help you with brainstorming ideas and, and give you content ideas you know, never ending lists of content ideas. Yeah. And it can then even help you, guide you through writing it. But I think we should not just rely on AI to now take over all the writing because knowing you and what you write, I would definitely be able to tell, I think, if all of a sudden it would just just be AI writing it. Yes, you can train it to a certain extent probably to, you know, have talk like you. And that's what I'm experimenting with as well. But then I [00:21:00] still. Go in, like I still am the manager, right? And AI is the assistant and then I have to change it and make sure it speaks like I do. So I think that's really important to understand because What we see a lot out there is like these bland sounding things, right, that you can tell, oh, this is just like, you know, AI created content that has no humanness and no personality to it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And then Google actually just said that they're starting to punish the pages on Google that are only content, I mean, AI created. So that's a, that's a good good move from them. Obviously they're a bit scared as well, I think, but yeah, I think that's a good move. So where would we, would you tell. Actually, before, before that, I, I [00:22:00] know you have this framework based on Blayton. Yeah. And, and so I, I'm just wondering if you could explain a little bit. Your approach to philosophy and AI, because that kind of, from hearing that, that kind of sounds like an, it's, you know, an oxymoron, like how do those two go together? But Naully: tell us more Sarah: about it. Naully: Yeah, for sure. So I, I, I'm always being, I would say I'm a huge history buff. So I always has book in my house and I love read books about history and all kinds of books could be philosophy, psychology, and I found that philosophy was a good way to be grounded in what we are doing and all what we are thinking, especially in this time with everything is going so fast and we can be so lost [00:23:00] rapidly. And during my one of my reading, I came across a biography of. Plateau, which is plateau in French. And I was thinking that maybe we could use some aspect of the story, story season, but in how we approach technology, because sometimes we are using technology because we have. We are using it, but we don't really think what we do with it project. So that's how I came up, I came with this idea of Platon, which is put in French. And the first, let's say P is for principle in the wishes. What are the, the principle that I put it in my content, it could be also in my content or the principle that on why I'm using the ai. So it ask me to [00:24:00] myself when I'm using a tool, which could be charge GPT and some to ask me what are the consequence of using this tool if the tool are, I would say. Ethically based or the people are treated, I would say, correctly or humanly. And then the L can stand for legality. Maybe it's more about when I'm using an AI tool is my content is not under, it's not copyrighted by someone else. And actually, there is a huge debate about AI, because mostly they are using data scrapped from the internet, and most of the data are copyrighted. Sarah: So, Naully: so you need to ask yourself, is the thing that I'm using is completely legal or not? Then there's the A, [00:25:00] which is for accountability, which I have to be concerned that I'm using a AI tool. Don't say that if for example, if I'm putting wrong information, because I use AI tool, I have to count accountable after I, that I put, if I use, for example, if I'm using a AI tool like me Journey, maybe I should be aware that maybe I'm using copyrighted. Image from illustrator and maybe if needed, but who put any annotation when I'm using those kind of image also to be transparent and the T for transparency. So for example, is to be transparent in the use of AI tool, especially if you're working for a journalist. You have to say that for example, that I, this part or this part of your article has been [00:26:00] written with the help of AI2 or this image has been modified by the AI2. For example, recently there is a journalist who made a Documentary about the young in Iran, and it's instead of using blurred image, they use the, he praised the faces of the person who are being interviewed with AI generated image. So, so they made a disclaimer saying that those people faces have been generated by AI. So, and O stands for objectivity. So you have to be like concerned or so, but on why you're using the AI in your marketing. It's of course, the N stands for neutrality, which it says that it's mostly when you're would say. Using AI to in marketing, it's saying that you are [00:27:00] using the tool, not in a harmful way. So you should be conscious that you are not using the tool to do arm on or give false information. Sarah: I love, I love that. I love these words. Let's so principles, legality, accountability, transparency, objectivity, and neutrality. Yeah, they, they sound very humane, like, you know, they're very humane words and it's, it's a really good idea to, yeah, to go into AI with these considerations, right? To, to think about that deeply And, and we'll talk more about that in the, in the workshop and, and I think you have some you've created a game, so I look Yes. Yeah. Taking some questions from that game around that framework. Yeah. So in terms of where we're going with this, because like you said, it's just, you know, the kind of like, we're just seeing a tiny [00:28:00] bit of the iceberg right now. So where do you think. We're heading in terms of entrepreneurs using AI, how is it going to take over more of our, yeah, workload and what so many people like last year, this year, I don't hear it so much anymore, but so many people were afraid of AI taking over their jobs. So, so yeah what do you see as future development? Naully: I think also people fear what they don't understand also, because really new is like the first internet came up. We had the same fear because people didn't know how. How to use it, what it is really, because, and I think it's, there is a lot of work in terms of education, in terms of educating people, because, I won't say it's difficult to stop technology. [00:29:00] So then it's better to. Learn it with it. That's to fear it. So I think also it's it asks us to maybe to embrace the change because a lot of people don't like to change. Also, and for some people change bring fear because fear, but maybe they have to, if they work for a job, like, I don't know, like service job for like the 10 last year. Maybe they need to go to school again. So maybe they don't have the money or don't have the energy or maybe they're near from the retirement. So they ask, they ask themselves why they, that I need to go to school because I just have to five years to work, then I will be able to retire. And I think, I consider we are on a good path. It's not the perfect one, because at [00:30:00] least we are not into the apocalyptic one, the one we can see into the movie, because I think we can, we are able to see the fear. Also, there is some people who are pro, some people are against. I think neither side does. The monopoly of a reason and for now, I think it's in, in between, I think we should be in both sides. Maybe you have fear of maybe this technology, but also we can embrace technology because maybe they can help us to with our current, I would say. On environment issue, for example, or or maybe with a social issue also. So I think it's there's a lot of challenge for this technology and it's difficult to say what happened in five years, 10 years because they're in a few months, every, every two, every [00:31:00] two weeks, the new AI app. So it's difficult to say what, what the future brings. Sarah: Yeah, it will happen so fast though, right? Like that's the main thing with this AI technology. It's like, like I remember when Chachi PT came out, well, it's been already out, but nobody talked about it. And then within, let's say three weeks, everybody was talking about it. And so that's probably going to happen again with the next thing and the next thing, and the next thing, and. And what I like that you said is like, yes, we're on the right path because it would be probably really spooky if there was no fear at all like that. And I think that's kind of where Elon Musk and the gang, they got a bit freaked out because they're like, whoa, like this is going too fast. So they backed up a bit. And, and so I think that's a healthy. [00:32:00] kind of relationship to, to something new that, that we need to learn to live with. And so I appreciate that. Naully: I think it's I love to compare AI like the yin and yang. Sarah: Mm. Naully: It's like it should be equ equilibrium between those two. Sarah: Yeah. Mm-Hmm. Naully: it can be good, it can be bad. I think it's a mix of, can be cannot, it can be not. Also fully and utopia. Or fully a dystopia. Sarah: Right. Naully: I think it should be both at the same time, so. Sarah: A little mix. A little mix. Naully: I think it's like, I think I think it's like us. I think we, there is some day we are full of energy. Some day we are just, we just want to lay in bed all day. And I think it's this the circle of life also, we have your spring, summer, autumn, [00:33:00] winter, I think it's a cycle. So, Sarah: yeah, and you're right. I mean, it's in the end it's created by humans. And so it's still the humans that influences AI. And so if humans. Right now you can't say that humans are all good. Like we're in one of the biggest messes that we've ever been in. And so how can we expect the AI to just be beautiful and loving and all of that. So I feel like if we're working on becoming better humans, then the AI. We'll follow that trend. So that's, yeah, that's kind of my thought on that, but yeah, any, any closing thoughts that you have, that you, like what you're going to talk about on the workshop, maybe give us a, a little sneak preview of, of what we're going to do there. Naully: I [00:34:00] think we are, we are going to the. Ethics of AI and also the the ground base also of ai, which is which, which is where is it is and which is, is not, mm. Sarah: Right? Yeah. And then also doing some, some breakout rooms, right? And, and, and also, yeah, working on, on different, Naully: so we'll do some workshops and, Mm-Hmm, , all the, the, the pattern framework is working. Sarah: Yeah, I, I look forward to that framework and the, and the questions from that. So yeah, exciting. So yeah, again thank you so much for coming on, Noli. And if you're listening to this and you're interested in AI, but you're just a little bit also afraid of, you know, how does it work in a, in a business that is supposed to be humane. In marketing, that is supposed to be humane. Well, I invite you to join us for this workshop on [00:35:00] May 1st with Noli, because we're definitely going to approach it from the humane side of things. So, Naully: I just say, I just want to say that you mean it's always in loop AI or Sarah: not. Say that again. I didn't. Naully: I would say the AI human is always in the loop or not. So, yeah, Sarah: yeah, that's, yeah, that's nicely said. So yeah, do join us on, on May 1st go to humane. marketing forward slash workshop to reserve your seat and Noli and I look forward to having you there. Thanks so much. You're there. Yes. Thank you. Thanks for coming on to the podcast as well, Noli. I hope you got some great value from listening to this episode. Please find out more about Noli and his work at nolinicola. ch and [00:36:00] join us on Facebook for a 90 minute workshop on May 1st in the safety of our community, the Humane Marketing Circle. Members can attend these workshops for free, but you can join us with a pay what you can amount between 15 and 27. Find out more and reserve your spot at humane. marketing. com. And if you are looking for others who think like you, then why not join us in the humane marketing circle? Find out more at humane dot marketing forward slash circle. You find the show notes of this episode at humane dot marketing forward slash H M 1 8 7. And on this beautiful page, you'll also find a series of free offers. Such as the Humane Business Manifesto and my two books, Marketing Like We're Human and Selling Like We're Human. Thank you so much for listening and being part of a generation of marketers who [00:37:00] cares for yourself, your clients, and the planet. We are change makers before we are marketers. So go be the change you want to see in the world. Speak soon.

We're talking about how one of the characteristics of a cult is that they often present as a really good thing. A lot of times, they are doing really good things on the surface. If this weren't the case, people wouldn't be joining them. Additionally, not every cult starts as a cult. Sometimes it starts as on organization with really good intentions to help people. We'll discuss all of that, in this episode. https://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_edmondson_how_to_spot_a_cultSarah Edmondson is a Canadian actress who has starred in the CBS series Salvation and more than twelve films for the Hallmark Channel and Lifetime. She is also a well-established voice-over artist for popular series such as Transformers: Cybertron and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. In 2005, when NXIVM, a personal and professional development company, promised to provide the tools and insight Sarah needed to reach her potential, she was intrigued. Over her twelve-year tenure, she went from student to coach and eventually operated her own NXIVM center in Vancouver. Questions kept coming up about the organization's rules and practices, which came to a head in 2017 when she accepted an invitation from her best friend to join DOS, a “secret sisterhood” within NXIVM.In 2019, Sarah published Scarred: The True Story of How I Escaped NXIVM, the Cult that Bound My Life, with Kristine Gasbarre. In this tell-all memoir, she shares her story from the moment she takes her first seminar to her harrowing fight to get out. Her full story as a whistleblower is featured in the CBC podcast Uncover: Escaping NXIVM (downloaded over 25 million times) and The Vow, the critically acclaimed HBO documentary series on NXIVM. Now with the launch of “A Little Bit Culty,” Sarah and her co-host/husband Anthony “Nippy” Ames are keeping the conversation going by discussing the healing process with the help of experts and fellow survivors.Uncertain is a podcast of Tears of Eden, a community and resource for those in the aftermath of Spiritual Abuse. If you're enjoying this podcast, please take a moment to like, subscribe, or leave a review on your favorite podcasting listening apparatus. You can support the podcast by going to TearsofEden.org/supportTo get in touch with us please email tearsofeden.org@gmail.comFollow on Instagram @uncertainpodcastTranscript is unedited for typos and misspellings:Katherine: Well, hello, Sarah, Sarah: how are you? I'm great. How are you Katherine: doing? Okay. Do you know? Okay. It has been gloomy and St. Louis and today the first sign of sunshine and I like went outside to like be in the sun, but it was 30 degrees. And so I didn't stay there very long, but. It's beautiful today. Beautiful to see the sun.How are, how's the weather in your area? Sarah: I'm in Atlanta. We're in our very brief winter and it's, it's, it's just a couple of weeks, I think. And it really fluctuates on a day to day basis and I have no idea what's in store and I'm just getting used to that as a concept. Yeah. Katherine: I just kind of ups and downs.Yeah. Yes. I have relatives in the Atlanta area and I hear about the bipolar weather. Of yeah, very [00:02:00] similar to St. Louis fun times. Well, thank you so much for being here and your openness to telling your story here. Really excited to hear from you just about The impact of your experience in NXIVM and then your recovery process.You also have your podcast, a little bit culty that I highly recommend to everyone. It's just entertaining. It's good stuff and you learn a lot, but then it's also super entertaining. And so I hope folks will listen to that as well, but you get to interact with a lot of cult survivors through that. And so I w I'm very interested to hear.Just patterns and things that you have seen as you have been doing your podcast and working with folks in this, this area. But just to just start us, start us off for folks who may not know who you are or have not seen the vow or maybe haven't. About on HBO or the, or have listened to your podcast and you give us a little summary of who you are and why you are here. Sarah: [00:03:00] Sure. So my cliff notes slash, you know, elevator story, which I've had to use a fair bit since moving to Atlanta is that I am, you know, from Canada, born and raised, I. I pursued acting as a teenager and young adult, and I took a little tangent, a little detour when I joined a personal and professional development program, which I was taking to help me with my goals as an actor and my relationship at the time.And that was really wonderful in many ways for a long time at first. And it ended up being 12 years later, after many missed red flags, I didn't understand what I was looking at. A high control group or some, some people know this term as a cult, but I realized there's basically bad things going on behind closed doors and the personal development program that I'd been touting for many years as an advocate and as a recruiter for the company.I say company loosely was really a front [00:04:00] for our pipeline, for the leadership. To coerce and manipulate and ultimately not in all cases and not not for me, but for many people sex traffic as well So that's why it is now known as the sex cult in the in the newsletter And I newsletter sorry in the newspapers The headlines media does love a good sensational story.Sure do. Yes, as they sure do. And my role in that was that I was one of the whistleblowers that showed the physical abuse, which is the physical manifestation of emotional abuse, which had been going on for years in the form of branding. And I showed that on the New York times cover and that led to an investigation and the trial and eventual conviction of the leader.Six week trial led to 120 year conviction of the leader. And that was I left six years ago. The trial was about four years ago and three years ago, two and a half years ago. My sense of time is a [00:05:00] little off. My husband and I were in a docuseries that, that documented this whole journey, how we got in and how we escaped on HBO max called the vow.And that really propelled us into this really interesting space where, where we were now sharing something that a lot of people could relate to is like, Oh, I would've, I would've totally joined that. And that's flipped the script as a lot up until then. So many people we encountered, especially since leaving and shouting from the rooftops, we were in a cult you know, they were watching it going.I could have, I could have fallen for that when that's very different when the past people would say I would never have fallen for that. And that's opened up a whole, you know, set of bizarre doors and opportunities for us as whistleblowers and survivors to speak about our experience. Educate people. And that's been like a phenomenally rewarding thing.And ironically, and I didn't say this at the beginning, I, one of the reasons I joined next team as well was to help people. I was, you know, I really enjoyed that process and [00:06:00] now I get to do it for real on the other side and help educate, shine light, prevent, help people get out. If they're already in something, help people heal.If they've already gotten out. All the different stages along the way and help families. And overall just bring awareness to this topic that is kind of become a lot more mainstream now. Narcissism, cultic abuse, gaslighting. It's much more accessible and people are more aware of it. So it's been an interesting time to be part of the zeitgeist in that way.And and then now we have a podcast that emerged in COVID when we had stopped acting. So it's been a interesting, organic progression to be a podcaster as I wrote a book and also and now doing more speaking events and panels on the topic. So yeah, here we are. There we are. Yeah. Cliff notes.Katherine: Yes. I remember watching the vow. I don't remember. I think it was in during COVID watching it and [00:07:00] had just left an abusive church. And that was cult cults like they're definitely very high control, very lot of, you know, stuff being hidden by religiosity and God speak and Jesus talk. And I, I, a lot of us.who had left were like, have you seen The Vow? Have you guys been watching The Vow? Are you watching The Vow? Because The Vow is like very, very, very similar to what we just went through. And I think that that was the thing that stood out to me as well as how engaging it was. And it just I was like, that sounds like Christianity, like so much of so much of the, the attraction and the way that like the evangelizing that was happening and the way that people were getting brought into this thing that, that was presented as this very good thing.And in some ways it seemed like it actually was a good thing. Yeah. Tell me a little bit about that part of [00:08:00] it of like what attracted you to this. And like, what, what drew you in as a very professional human being? Sarah: Yeah. You know what? There's every single group that we've ever talked to anyone about in our podcast.There is always good stuff on the outside. And that's actually one of the first questions we ask people so that others can. See what some of those red flags are of like, you know, what's the catch with this perfect, shiny, amazing, happy community. Well, what, what drew me in was a number of things. And, and partly it was, you know, the age that I was.Where I was, you know, doing this acting work and it wasn't really filling my soul. It wasn't filling my cup in terms of like, this is not the meaningful work that I want to be doing. And the thought of. Cause really they offered a lot of things. The community was presented almost in a way that would appeal to whatever the person wants.And I later learned to do that for others. Like what, what is it that you're looking for? What I was looking for was a, [00:09:00] a community, a supportive, helpful community. I was looking for more meaning and purpose in my life being a, you know, Being in a Budweiser commercial wasn't like really that meaningful to me, even though it paid well, but it was like, this is not what I signed up for or what I wanted as an actor.And I've always been into personal development. I've always believed that. And I still believe actually that you can work on yourself or be, you know, be better or like work through. And there was a term that they used. I don't think I was really using this term before was limiting beliefs. That there's beliefs that we have, and I actually do believe that we have still believe that we have limiting beliefs about ourselves.Like Katherine: something like, I can't do it. Like, yeah. Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. Just like, you know, even as an actor, like even thinking things, thinking something like, which was had at the time, like I always get nervous and auditions, there's some beliefs under that about myself that caused me to be nervous. [00:10:00] Which would limit me about, you know, without, with auditions, cause that's like a big part of being an actor.So I really love the idea of working through my limiting beliefs, being, the best version of myself and, and striving to follow this model. And one of the things that appealed to me, I mean, I didn't like it at the beginning, but I eventually did like it after my first five day training, which is my first foray into Nexium is they offered this growth path in the form of.Like a martial arts system with different levels and stripes and colors and I liked that. Like I, there was something about that that was measurable for me. If I do this, I'll go to the next level and that, that appealed to me because an actor, we don't have that either, like get the job or you don't, you don't really know why you do or you don't, and you could do all the right things, but not actually go to the next level.So I liked the concept of being able to. Complete a task, work on a skill, and, and evolve. It was certainty. With certainty. Yeah, it was [00:11:00] certainty in a very uncertain world. Needless to say, I mean, it was all bullshit, but if it was what it was supposed to be, it would have been great. Katherine: Yeah. And if it is, if it is something that like is actually delivering what it's promising, then it would be a really awesome. Yes, exactly. Yeah, so, so those were some of the good things that drew you in just to create some context for folks what were some of the, like, things that started alarms, that started going off that were like, Hmm, maybe this isn't what it, what it's promising.Sarah: I mean, Honestly, there were, there were red flags right from the beginning, but I didn't know what I was looking at. If I had done, if I, if somebody invited me to something now that was. And with the education I have, I wouldn't have even signed the paperwork, let alone attended because I would have known, Oh, I'm feeling pressured and they're using a scarcity mentality in order to, you know, [00:12:00] like this is the only one.And when, you know, when are you going to do this and when are you going to change your life? And any hesitation I had would be. Proof of how I was not ready to commit to my goals. Like it was a lot of manipulation tactics just getting me there. And then once I was there a lot of red flags in regards to what I now know as setting the stage for future abuse.Even as simple as they said, like, you're going to feel uncomfortable and you're going to feel like you're going to, you're going to doubt that maybe even this is the right place for you to be. That internal dialogue is an indication of what they call the disintegration. So you're either integrated on a concept or disintegrated and any internal questioning was just a sign that you needed to work on something.I know. So, if you agree to that, which I did. Because I'm, I'm assuming that these people who, I just never, I never projected bad intent because that's the thing is when you give yourself over to a higher power or a higher authority, [00:13:00] you're saying, you know, better than I do. And tell me, tell me what to do.Tell me how to be. And I was, I was like, okay, well, I pay just paid like 20. 2, 100 is 2, 500 Canadian to spend five days in a room and I want to work on my issues. I am saying, I trust you. You got to tell me what you see and if what they're saying is different than how I feel, that's a problem. Katherine: Yeah, absolutely. Oh, and that's such a such an easy thing to happen and then it's presented as you're like to listen to someone else tell you and name you and tell you what you need to work on and listen to someone else outside of you is. Is held up as like a humble thing and like a character quality.Yes. And if you were to resist and ask questions or say, I don't feel comfortable with Sarah: this. And that's, Oh, then I'm also being defiant. Katherine: Yeah. Yeah. Or selfish or, or you don't want to work on your issues or you don't really care Sarah: about this. Yeah. I mean, they said that you should be able to ask [00:14:00] questions and put your hand up, but it was very clear when people did ask questions, you know, how they felt about that.And also like it was, I learned very quickly that there were names for the feelings I was having that weren't good. So I was just suppress them. And I want also, I'm a good girl, I want to be a good girl, I want to get it right, I like the gold stars. Yeah. I like the validation. Katherine: Absolutely. And there was a very clear like type of person that fit and you like, learned to Sarah: fit.Yes. I learned to fit and I wanted to get the, I wanted to go up the levels and I wanted to get the next stripe. And I learned to override the feelings because the other thing they said is like, you're here to work on your shit. You're here to work on your stuff. So. Yeah. You know, don't leave. We're just talking about these things.If the sash around your neck, there was a sash systems for the martial arts ranks. If that bothers you, why can't you even talk about it in a room? Like we're just talking about it. So I should be able to talk about it. And so therefore don't leave. If I'm leaving, I'm just running away from my issues.so [00:15:00] many double binds. We call them massive double. Katherine: Yes, literally the phrase that popped into my head. Yes. Well, I, I want folks to be able to hear your whole story. And so I'll just plug your book, which is called scarred. Correct. Sarah: Yes, thank you. And I don't know if you ever do giveaways on your podcast, but we can do that too.Katherine: Let's do it. Why not? Yeah, I haven't done one of those in a long time. Let's do it. And then a little bit culty, and then also the vow on HBO, or not HBO on max. So those are places that folks can get more. About your story and actually get your get your full story and all the details about that.And so I want to step into talking about the impact of this. And if you want to talk about the impact like while you were in it and like what, what this coercive control manipulation was doing to you while you were in it. And then very specifically after after you left, like how was so I'm going to ask you to tell us a little [00:16:00] bit about how you experienced this, this trauma showing up for you and what, what did this experience do to you?And if you want to also share some examples of just similar patterns you've seen in folks that you have been interviewing on your podcast as well. Yeah, just paint us a picture of what happens after this experience. Sarah: After leaving? Yes. I mean, there was many different stages, I would say, like I've been out for six years and there was a lot of just grief, like I was, I had a massive PTSD reaction or potentially CPTSD just from the sort of ongoing abuse, but I, in many ways, I was like kind of the, one of the least Can I swear on this podcast?I was one of the least fucked with because, because I was a recruiter and I brought so many people in many ways, they kind of left me alone. I, I had, I was in Vancouver. I was running, I had been running my center. Which is sort of like a. You know, a separate, like, it's sort of like a franchise. Like I had my, I had [00:17:00] my center and I was using the tools and the parts of the program that were good and that I liked.And I, you know, brought people in that were going up the pipeline to the leadership. So they kind of left me alone, but I, so I didn't have the same amount of. 100 percent commitment. Like I'd never moved to Albany. I'd never moved and given up my whole life. And I always had my foot in reality. In other words, like my foot outside of the compound, it wasn't an actual compound, but some people gave up everything to be there, you know?And so that kept me in many ways, it protected me and gave me a soft place to land. There's a lot of people I could go to and that I always knew that we. Were you know, people thought that we were in a cult. I, I knew that. And I, and I thought that they just didn't understand. Mm-Hmm. , right. I just, I was like, oh, they don't get it.And for, for the first couple of weeks. And, you know, I was just going through those people and being like, okay, you were right. And I'm sorry. And I'm really kind of fucked up right [00:18:00] now. Shouting from the rooftop and like doing all the stuff that we did to get the media attention and things like that so there was like different stages of first I was on this yeah rampage of like I got to take this thing down and I felt like I was one of the There's a few of us that were at the forefront of that and I think in many ways It was the ones that of us that could whereas other people were so had been so head fucked and so gaslit and so manipulated that they were like, you know, literally in bed depressed Couldn't move or, or just had to shut down and like pretend it never happened and move cities and like not even deal with it, which people dealt with it in different ways.My dealing with it was because I've been so public and so such a vouching you know, zealot. I was like a fundamentalist personal growth junkie. Yeah. This is the way, this is the only way, red flag, to person to, you know, to grow and to reach enlightenment or whatever. Like. And so then on the other side, I had to be just as loud.So that was like one big stage, and I spent [00:19:00] like a long time just on the phone with people, trying to de enroll them, trying to explain like, yes, I was branded, and no, I didn't consent, and no, I didn't know it was Keith's initials, and like, trying to show them that it was bad. And for the people who are real diehards, there's some people who still don't think that was bad.Because they've, they've so committed their lives to this path. They're so bought in and to look now and go like, Oh, maybe this isn't good is just too hard for them. Like they're just, yeah, it's Katherine: just too much given to it and it's Sarah: just, yeah, it's easier to go. No, this was good. You know, Keith may have. I've heard them say you know, this is, maybe he's not conventional, but he always, he's a good person.Like they, they can't even fathom that maybe he's a bad person. So. That was one of the stages also was like just reallycoming to terms with like I lost so many of my of my good friends and I and I and I lost them [00:20:00] quickly. I lost them overnight. So that was a big part of it. Like leaving my community again because I had some community and friends outside of it. I think that was partly what saved me. I, you know, I hadn't burnt all my bridges, I'd burnt many bridges, for sure, but not all of them.Thankfully there were some friendships I never touched, I never tried to recruit, even though I did try to recruit many people. So I'd say all of, you know, that was a big stage. And then and then I got pregnant. I got pregnant with my second child a couple years after we got out as I was writing a book.And that was, I was, I was really working through and like having a big catharsis with that process. And having to also say no to, like, I was at that time I was going to do a Tedx talk and I was going to do a bunch of things. I was like, that's gonna be too stressful. And I want to like create a safe, loving incubator for my baby.And that kind of forced me to block out a lot of the stuff that I've been doing. There was like a sort of an ongoing campaign still to [00:21:00] expose and destroy and I mean, by say destroy, like, Make sure that nobody else was recruited into NXIVM and those things happen. Like NXIVM itself does no longer exist.There's no company. Are there people who still believe Keith is good? Yes. So I, that's part of the reason why I'm still talking because I want to get everybody out. . And then, and then, and then I'd say that like, I'm most, I think it's a lifelong healing journey, but there's a lot of things that I've done over the years that have really propelled me to another level of healing and yeah, having kids being kind of forced to stay present and not be in that war, that campaign pulled me to another stage.And then there's just lots of things I do for self care that I wasn't kind of, I wasn't allowed to do. It just wasn't a lot of time for it. Purpose probably. Yeah. On purpose. Yeah. And just like family time and being able to change my schedule and do things like You know, go to the farmer's markets on the [00:22:00] weekend and the old days when in the cult days that like there was never a free weekend, there was never every weekend if there was a free weekend where there wasn't a training and be like, Who should we fly out from the mothership to like, do a coach summit or, you know, oh, there's nothing happening.Let's organize a, you know, nationwide or citywide barbecue and like, it'll be a great enrollment opportunity. Like every weekend there was something going on with the You know, with my center and you know, three nights a week as well, Monday and Wednesday. And anyways, it was like always just go, go, go, go, go.So to be able to get my, you know, reclaim my time and, and like clear my schedule, which I think anyone is in any kind of group doesn't realize until they get out of something and they clear their schedule. They're like, wow, there's so much time devoted to this thing. Right. Katherine: Absolutely. And then probably like a reward for that time commitment is always more and always more and always pushing and, and, and to some extent that's just like wired into our our society.So when we get into a group that's like that, that just [00:23:00] feels so, so normal. It's like, that's just what you do in this group. I remember being in the, the abusive church and like. It was going through a lot and a lot of people were leaving and there would be these like events that we would have every year.And there were a few times where we were like looking around and we're like, we've lost staff. We are exhausted. Can we just not do this event? Can we just Not do this this year, because we're so tired and the leadership was like, it was always like, you know, PR move like no we have to pretend like everything is fine and you have to present like a united front to the, to the, you know, congregation and like having to like, you know, just kind of power through these events, and there wasn't this like posture of like what's best.For you and care. I mean, like want to like intentionally care for this community. That idea of like, no, we know what's best for you and we know what's best. And this is what what's best looks like and always moving and always pushing. [00:24:00] And yeah, just that, that's that environment that I think so many people can relate with, even like a work culture, you know, like, just like.Work cultures can be like that too. And I think it's safe for us to say, well, then that's an unhealthy work culture. We're allowed to say that, like, we don't have to just say, this is just normal. This is just the way it is. Like, no, we can say that's toxic. Like that's not a, not a helpful environment. Did you have any else thing else you wanted to say just about Impact on you, the CPTSD, PTSD, like how is that showing up for you? Sarah: Yeah, I mean, again, different stages. There was a time at the beginning where I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat, I lost a ton of weight. I was just like, I was, Nippy called it sniper mode.We were just so hypervigilant. Yeah. I didn't know if we were being, you know, like, you know, spied on, if they were coming to get us. We just, yeah, we were a mess. That didn't last too, too long in the scheme of things, but I'm still a little [00:25:00] jumpy. Yeah. Like if, you know, it's so funny. I just said that my husband just made a loud nose in the kitchen and I was like, what was that?Like, you know, I've been broken into. So, you know, things like that. My trust in humanity is definitely restored. Like, it's amazing how, when we stepped away from that. That world, all these incredible people sort of showed up and you'd think maybe I wouldn't trust them right away. But I was like, I, I felt the difference to like a good versus, I wouldn't say bad person, but like, you know, I just, some, some angels showed up and kind of swooped us up and took really good care of us, especially the people that made the vow.Like that was a really wonderful experience and that impact of doing the vow. You know, that could have, that could have gone so many different ways. Like that could have, that could have been a shit show for us. And it wasn't. And like you said, you're, you and your friends were listening and watching going, have you seen the vow?I can tell you, I still get messages from people in all different groups and relationships, mostly things like different [00:26:00] religious offshoots or like particularly closed communities or like the Jehovah's witnesses, a ton of Mormons message, the Mormons especially were like, Oh my goodness, we were in lockdown watching tiger King.And then we were watching the vow and they're like, Holy shit, we're, you know, in a really not good situation. So that, that continues to be very rewarding for me. And, you know, I think that if had there not been so many silver linings from this experience. You know, I don't know if I would have like recovered like I, it was, it was such a, I didn't mention this before the betrayal, the betrayal wound is one of my, one of the things in my, my therapist, I call it therapist Dan Shaw helped me with and who's a, who's a narcissist expert really helped me see is that when you're people that you trust betray you on that level, it can be a wound that is, takes a while to heal.And these were like. People I considered family who knew what Keith was up to and they were lying to us. And that's something that I never, you know, [00:27:00] and I always say we underestimated people's capacity to lie. We just totally took things at face value. Oh, Keith is celibate. Oh, okay, cool. He doesn't need sex.Great. What are all these women around him? Oh, that's part of his team. Like, okay. mean, it's so obvious and I feel probably like I was very naive. Now, but, Katherine: and, yeah, I'm a trusting person, go into relationships thinking, oh, they're lying to me. Yeah. Most Sarah: people don't. Yeah. But I do, what I do know now, and I see in almost every group, there's some term for it, which is basically like in a group like ours and every, every group we've looked at, there's this sort of.Belief that it's okay to lie for the greater good, and it's okay to lie to protect the leader. Or, you know, for, there's some other greater reason it's okay to say, you know, no, we're not doing X, Y, and Z if it means to, to print like. The big picture. It's okay. The ends justify the means. Katherine: Yeah, that ends justify the mean things.Means [00:28:00] thing. You said that people came in like as you were leaving and kind of supported you and you said it felt different. Can you describe what that different feeling was? I mean, there was just no manipulation. Like I remember once having a conversation with, it wasn't even my therapist, just somebody who's a, who was a family friend who was a therapist. And I had shared briefly sort of what had happened and his first response was, wow, that sounds like.Sarah: That sounds really horrible. It sounds really hard. Mm-Hmm. And, and then I was like, whoa. Because in nex Im, if I shared, shared something that bad that had happened, the an the question would be, you know, well, how did you cause that? Mm-Hmm. , and you know, what, you know, or, or, or, how did you author that? Or, what's your responsibility in it?Mm-Hmm. . Or what's missing in you that you felt like you needed to create that? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So all that kind of bullshit was, really upsetting. Katherine: It sounds like they believed Sarah: [00:29:00] you. Yeah, they believed me. Yeah. And that's, that's the thing. And also, I had a lot of moments like that where I was like, whoa.That other way was actually really bad. And I had no idea how toxic it was until I was No longer dealt with that way. Katherine: Yeah. Yeah. And in the church world, it's called the, the, the reverse of that is like, well, what's your responsibility or, you know, why don't you give, or you're being bitter or you're angry or whatever.And then, and then they'll call that accountability and character development and, and it's framed as this like good thing. When it's just. Invalidation and bypassing. Sarah: Yeah, I definitely see that in almost every religion is that people are shamed into like to not express a concern because then they're then they're complaining or they're stinking thinking or it's negative or whatever.So they learn to not say it so there's no there's no place to bring forward a concern. And that's a that's a really that's a [00:30:00] really, you know, great protective mechanism for somebody who's a. Cult a hole. Do you know what I mean? Like, or somebody who's just being a, you know wants to abuse power or do bad things if there's no place for the people around them to, to question it or say, you know, is this good or is this bad?Then that's, that makes the, the clo we call it the closed loop system, right? Katherine: Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. And all of the accountability is like outward towards everyone else, but then that like, yeah. Leader or leadership doesn't, it doesn't, they don't play by the same rules, Sarah: like, right. Well, that, and that was something also that I saw as a consistent thing is that all of the dogma and, and, you know, there's like a lot of great truth to taking responsibility for things that happen in your life and that's, it can be a good thing, but if it's always.It's always your fault. And the other person didn't have any responsibility. Then, and that's, that's something I say all the time. Wait, especially in XM. There's no victims and you create everything in your life. Now, Keith is in jail. And he's the [00:31:00] victim. Like he's the victim of the like, Oh, the FBI plan. Oh, the FBI must have planted evidence.Oh, but, but Keith, how did you cause this? How did you get yourself into jail? Like, where is that? Where is it now? Where is it now? You know, and that, that's, that's such a huge inconsistency and inconsistencies are something that if you, you know, you bring up then you're. Not trusting the process or in the yoga communities, like you have resistance.What's with your resistance? Katherine: Oh my goodness. Wow. Yeah. Like the inconsistency thing in the as a, as a red flag is, is something that's It seems to happen a lot. And these groups, there's a, there's a double standard where there's between two different people or it's between the leadership and everyone else or whatever.That double standard inconsistency is definitely something that pops up I would love to hear from you just a little bit about. Recovery has been like, [00:32:00] and what are things that have helped you? Sarah: Again, different stages. I think the biggest part of my recovery at first was just talking about it and being with other X members and being able to speak freely without the shackles of the language constraints to be able to say, Oh, Oh, remember that time when so and so did this.That was a really mean thing to do. We never could have talked that way because that would have been. You know, breaking rank and, you know, all sorts of rules, broken images, expressing that way. And I didn't realize how suppressed I was. I couldn't go up line in my, in the authoritarian, you know, thing because they didn't get in trouble.And if I went down, that's bad leadership. So I was kind of like, you know, hogtied. I could talk to my husband, which is, I think, kind of a rare situation. And most people in my situation, we just couldn't talk to anybody. And also Mark Vicente, who was the person who brought me in. If you've seen The Vow, he's the director that.That brought me in, but also got me out. So speaking about it, and then you know, Reclaiming my time educating [00:33:00] myself. I did a lot of watching of other documentaries and podcasts and movies and all sorts of things that really helped me connect the dots. And I have notes from my early days of watching movies like going clear and Scientology or holy hell about Buddhafield and just seeing.Like, holy shit. This is the, it's, it's the exact same. Like really even in our podcast, every time we interview someone, it's like the, it's the exact same template. Yeah. I mean, some of the content, yeah, some of the content points. It always the same school and learned. We did the same school, even like with holy hell, the leaders doing this, forced ballet classes and with us it was volleyball.But it's the same kind of like obsession with this one thing. Physical, yeah. Just yes. And like, you got to get this thing right, but the performance and the adulation of the leader and all that stuff. So that was really helpful. And then there's a lot of things that I've done, I guess. So therapy wise at different stages, having an actual cult therapist was really helpful for me.And I saved a lot of time there because not only did he understand the dynamics, but he actually already knew [00:34:00] Nexium, which was great. So if I said, well, Nancy did this to me once, or Keith said this to me or whatever, he knew what I was talking about. Having a psychologist that didn't have cult training was laborious, but also really helpful because I would have to explain things that, that I realized, like, as, as explaining it, I was out of deprogramming myself.You know, in one particular moment I was saying to him, Oh, well, in our, in our belief system, we. Believed that needs were like survival based, you know, air, shelter, water, whatever. And anything else was considered a desire and therefore a non integrated fixation. You need to work on like, why did you think you needed this thing to be okay?Love, connection, community, blah, blah, blah. So then he, I remember, cause he didn't know anything about cults and he was like, well, those are needs to survive. But what about needs to thrive? And I was like, Oh, they didn't want us to thrive. And I always thought that the people in Albany who live there look fricking miserable.And I was like, [00:35:00] that's why they were miserable. They weren't allowed to have a career or relationship because then they were, they were shamed into like, that that was just a deficiency based desire. In other words, there's something wrong with you that you're even searching. Like, why do you even need that from the outside world to be complete?So that was you know, an interesting process to have a you know, a cult. A therapist and then a regular therapist, but I think a lot of my therapy came from just talking and educating myself and talking to other survivors. And then there's a whole series of things that I've done and continue to do.Like I'm, I do yoga, but I do like a not culty yoga. Like there's no dogma. There's no education. There's no leader. There's no, it's just more of like a fitness thing. Because that's how I protect myself, like I don't do kundalini or, yeah, like that. I walk a lot, you know, after this podcast, I will walk and, and like, clear my mind.Some like sort of spiritual, somebody, some might say woo woo practices that I do, but there's no It's not, it's not like a [00:36:00] tied to a certain school or program. It's just like a little practice here, a little practice there. I take my green juice. I'm very health oriented. I'm all about like getting good sleep and all the things that we weren't allowed.Like I remember when I started Nexium, I was They would say I have, I would have had an attachment to comfort because I was like, I'm getting my eight hours. And they're like, well, why do you think you need eight hours? And I'm like, well, that's just what, how I function best. And I'm like, why do you think that would if it's a limiting belief?And by the end of it, I was having like four or five hours of sleep a night to prove to them how much sleep I didn't need and how I could be like such a bad ass, you know, but really I do need, like I, I do best on as much sleep as I possibly can get. So prioritizing that and prioritizing what's right for me and not going with somebody else.Going on what somebody else says is right for me has been also huge. A lot of baths. I take Epsom salt baths for my CPTSD almost every night. Putting a lot of money on hot water. I'm sure. Katherine: Hey, it's very sensory and it like, yeah, it's you and [00:37:00] your body. It helps you be present. It's Sarah: yes. Yes. And you could cut this out if you want, but I also microdose psilocybin a fair bit, which also does, does all of those things keeps me, my body has to be present.I don't get, I'm not doing it to hallucinate or get high on mushrooms, but it just helps me not be anxious. Yes. So yeah, that's, that's kind of, those are my main, lots of variety. Yeah. Lots of variety. And oh, and hiking, I like love being in nature and that's like super important to me. I try to get out at least once a week.Katherine: What would you say this is something that like is I think just like a constant question that a lot of folks have and something that I'm, I'm kind of exploring as well is like the difference between having someone help you like a therapist and like that language versus a guru who was like telling you what to do and like, what does it feel like to have that difference.Or what does that difference feel like? [00:38:00] Sarah: Yeah, I'd say that that like a healthy therapist feels like they're on a journey with me and they're just, , questioning and , it's like they're going down in the cave with me. We're both shining lights and we're looking together. Whereas the, the guru approach or, you know, like an axiom, I always felt like there was literally like a.Such a power power difference. Like I'm sitting down here and they would be sitting up there like even the seats were raised and we're kind of looking up at and tell me what to do, like, what do you think and Reclaiming that has been definitely been a huge part of my healing.Katherine: Yeah, so the guru is more like the expert Mm hmm or life telling you how to do it Sarah: And I have to be so careful with that too, because I do love to give people unsolicited advice. You know, especially in our podcast. I do like to be Katherine: like, that's not a good thing. Don't do this. Sarah: And I'm like, you really need to be taking more baths.Okay. I'm just kidding. But I'm like, well, what, how do I try to phrase it now? I was like, this is what's worked [00:39:00] for me. This is what works for me. And you can do whatever you want. I don't care. Katherine: Yeah, no, I like the phraseology. I have to do the same thing. It's like, well, you know, I have that same situation and this is what I try.Yeah. Do with that what you'll exactly. Yeah. And then that would be as opposed to someone who is like, partnering with you in this journey and, and just like being empathetic to the experience rather than telling Yes. That they know better what you need than you do. Yes. Yeah. Exactly. I love that.That's great. Any, any final things that you would like to share as we wrap up put all of your information in the show notes, but if you have any information that you want to give folks about how to interact with you, Sarah: I mean, I'd say like if they want to know the full story, my book in combination with the vow, I think is a really good balance because the vow has my story, but also massive gaps in some things that happen.But the vow [00:40:00] has a lot of other people's stories. And if you want to go down an axiom rabbit hole, there's tons of other memoirs out there. But I think that our podcast I've, I've been told is very therapeutic for people of all different groups, religions you know, even abuse situations because you're hearing the stories from different, different people's perspectives that.You're not maybe necessarily as attached to like defending or being protective of your group, whatever that is. So when you hear when other people's stories, you're like, Oh yeah, I relate to that. And it can be, well, it's free. It's free therapy. So not that it's not in lieu of therapy. I'm not saying like, don't do therapy, but it's gonna be a bonus.And I also say, like, there's some episodes that will resonate and some that won't. Just skip them. You don't have, you don't have to listen to all of them. If it's something that that, that is resonant for people, there's a, we're also on Patreon and we do a lot, we do another bonus episode every week.And that's more casual. And we answer questions from the audience. We do voicemails. And we also have a Goodreads account. I recommend a lot of books [00:41:00] and I interview a lot of authors. So all of the books that we love are on our little bit culty Goodreads account. And I think the best way if you want to just reach out to me personally is on my Instagram.I, I answer every message. A little bit culty is a little bit backlogged, but people can check us out there as well. And if they want to be a guest, a little bit culty, they can apply through our website. Oh, the one thing I would say also that's really cool, I think that I did recently is a TEDx talk.I don't know if you had a chance to see it or hear it. Yeah. It's 15 minutes of like the summary of why people need to educate themselves about cults. It's very, it's like a lot. It's like some people call it the best of a little bit culty in a very short period of time. So it's a lot of quick nuggets.Yeah. And I think, I think your community would like it. Katherine: That sounds good. I might reach out to you. I might reach out to you later about that because a couple of years ago I had talked to someone about doing a TEDx talk about spiritual abuse and they kind of discouraged me from [00:42:00] it because it's supposed to be inspirational and it didn't, they're like, Sarah: that's inspirational.Well TEDx actually has some kind of like a little bit quality rules. Like you can't talk about politics or religion. Okay. It's in, it's in their rule book. But. So talking about spiritual abuse, I don't know how you would frame it in a different way. You have to frame it in a different way. Yeah. Go ahead and talk about spiritual bypassing and just not mention religion.Ah, Katherine: yeah, that's true. True, true, true. Cool. Well, thank you so much for giving us your time. I'm excited to just see what, see what develops. Thank you for all the work Sarah: that you're doing. My absolute pleasure. It's, it's a total joy to talk about and I will continue to talk about it until everybody is out.So everyone. Yes. Free the slaves. Katherine: Free the slaves.

If you are a property management entrepreneur, you have likely been your own salesperson or BDM at some point. Eventually, every property management business owner will need to hire a salesperson and develop different growth engines. In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull talk about their BDM Bootcamp event You'll Learn [01:52] What is a BDM? [03:00] Get your BDM Ready for BDM Bootcamp [08:42] You Need a Sales Pipeline! [14:26] Benefits of In-Person Events Tweetables “It's not the growth strategy that's the problem. It's that there's multiple stages in a pipeline for each growth engine, and you are not identifying the leaks that exist in this pipeline.” “Your pipeline will literally never ever work if you don't even have one.” “If you're not working the pipeline and you don't know the different stages of a pipeline, you're just guessing, and you're just hoping.” “You need to get to the real pain and related that you need to get to the real pleasure, like what they really want. Nobody really wants property management” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: It's not the growth strategy that's the problem. It's that there's multiple stages in a pipeline for each growth engine and you are not identifying the leaks that exist in this pipeline or you're tolerating drop off at one of these stages.  [00:00:17] 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 a business and life. And you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:36] 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, Jason and Sarah Hull. [00:01:15] Now let's get into the show. All right. So today we're going to be talking about BDMs.  [00:01:24] Sarah: Yeah.  [00:01:26] Jason: In honor of this event that we have coming up, which is. Going to be super cool. I don't know that there's been anything like this. That's been as cool as this that's existed in the property management space, maybe ever. [00:01:39] There's a lot of people that talk about BDMs, but there's very few that are actually getting BDMs to get great results. And we're going to be hosting a BDM bootcamp. And so Before we go any further, every time I start talking about BDMs, as if everybody knows what it is. I just talked to a guy with, I think, 800 doors the other day. [00:02:00] He's like, "what's a BDM?" I was like, man, okay, I need to make sure I explained this. BDMs are business development managers. Sometimes they're called BDs, business developers and they're salespeople for property management. That's what people will call them, right? Business development can happen in any industry. [00:02:18] But the reason we use the phrase BDM in property management is because property management is closely connected to real estate. And whenever you mentioned sales, people get it confused with real estate brokerage sales type of stuff. And that's why. Now everybody knows what a BDM is, and we're going to be talking a little bit about that today. [00:02:37] Sarah: Okay.  [00:02:38] Jason: So anyone listening to the show, you better know what a BDM is from now on. That's it.  [00:02:43] Sarah: There's a quiz at the end.  [00:02:44] Jason: What is a BDM? Did you get it right? If not, go back and start this episode over.  [00:02:49] Sarah: Try again.  [00:02:51] Jason: Okay. All right. What do we talk...? Do you want to like tell them about the event? [00:02:56] What do we want to talk about?  [00:02:58] Sarah: Yes. Tell them about the event. So we are launching a BDM bootcamp. So there's a lot of companies that promote getting BDMs. And there's a lot of companies that promote getting BDMs and then spending a bunch of money to run ads and get leads and pay for leads and then have the BDM work the leads. [00:03:21] And then if you just want the BDM to close more deals, it's simple. All you have to do is spend more money and buy more leads. Which is really expensive and wildly ineffective. So we have strategies that BDMs use...  [00:03:35] Jason: that actually work  [00:03:37] Sarah: ...that are free, or at least very inexpensive. [00:03:40] You might have to pay for lunch. That's okay. You get something out of it too. And we've decided that we're going to launch a BDM, aka salesperson, boot camp. It's going to be a one day training. And we've never done anything like this before. For those of you that are current clients, there's some trainings on DoorGrow Academy. [00:04:01] We run every wednesday, our growth accelerator calls, but it's hard to amass all of this information that Jason and I have learned about sales over the last, what, 20 something years and put it in a course. Or talk about it on a one hour call. It's darn near impossible, right? So what we wanted to do is we wanted to take some of this information and spend one day going over all of it. [00:04:31] Now, this is very likely going to end up being a series because we can probably talk about sales and strategies and tactics and how to improve your scripts and what to say and like NLP language and filler words and all this good stuff, we can go over this for probably days on end. So what we're doing is this is very likely going to end up being a series, but we're going to launch the first one in April, so for those of you that are watching live, you all have a chance to get in on that for those of you that are watching this recording is will probably be released after the event, but don't fret because  [00:05:11] Jason: you may have missed it.  [00:05:12] Sarah: You might have missed it. Oh, man.  [00:05:15] Jason: Maybe you should get in our Facebook group and pay attention to the live streams. [00:05:19] So you don't miss stuff.  [00:05:20] Sarah: Sometimes we do some cool things that you need to know about right now.  [00:05:23] Jason: The Facebook group, go to doorgrowclub.Com apply. We reject 70 percent of the applicants, which is why the group is good.  [00:05:31] Sarah: Okay.  [00:05:32] Jason: Okay.  [00:05:32] Sarah: Anyway. So that was our shameless plug. All right. No, right. Go ahead. [00:05:36] If you've missed it. Yeah, we don't have a word from ourselves yet. That's a great idea. Who wants to sponsor this podcast? We'll plug you on every episode. Talk to me, baby. So anyway, if you've missed it. Sad for you, but don't fret because there's going to be more of these. This won't be a once and done thing. [00:05:55] So for those of you that are listening now and or hear the information before the event, then this is going to be for you. So here's the information. It will be Thursday, April 11th. So this is also open to anyone on your team who handles sales, meaning it might be you, it might be somebody else. You may have multiple people on the team who handle sales. So if you would like Jason and myself to train your salespeople for a day. This is a really great opportunity for you because that's exactly what we're doing. [00:06:33] So do you want to tell them a little bit about what we're talking about? Or do you want me to do that?  [00:06:38] Jason: I'll go ahead. So we've seen a lot of problems with businesses growing. And so if you, have a BDM or if you are the BDM, you're the business owner, you're the one that closes deals and you are not adding at least a hundred orders a year, hopefully through organic methods instead of wasting a bunch of money on advertising to get cold crappy leads, we're going to give you the strategies, we're going to focus on some different growth engines talking about those. We're going to get into specific pipeline stages because what I often identify is that it's not the growth strategy that's the problem. It's that there's multiple stages in a pipeline for each growth engine and you are not identifying the leaks that exist in this pipeline, or you're tolerating drop off at one of these stages. And not making progress and so we're going to help you identify where the leaks are if you've started building some of these growth engines, you may have started doing things like trying to do realtor referrals and it's not working very well. [00:07:39] You're not getting easily 10 doors a month from that. You might maybe you've heard of our neighbor strategy and you're not getting referrals from that. Maybe you've heard of some other of our strategies, it's not working. And if you haven't heard of these, then you might want to show up, but we're going to talk about the different stages. [00:07:55] We're going to talk about what maybe is affecting things at different stages. This will be very tailored to those that are in attendance. We want to help you move your business forward significantly. And sometimes there's very simple tweaks that could be done at each of these stages that opens the floodgates. [00:08:10] So you have a lot more flow through the pipeline, which means more deals and more money.  [00:08:15] Sarah: Yeah. So back up because you skipped to topic number two, which is cool. We can do two and then one and then three and then four, but that's fine.  [00:08:21] Jason: They're not numbered.  [00:08:22] Sarah: They're not, but they are in order on the document. [00:08:24] Jason: Okay.  [00:08:25] Sarah: Yeah. [00:08:25] Jason: So Sarah's an operator and everything has to be done a certain way. There is a right way for operators.  [00:08:32] Sarah: There's a right way to do literally every task on the planet.  [00:08:34] Jason: I'm talking to the business owners and they care most about what is interesting or different, but...  [00:08:42] Sarah: yes, and I understand, but your pipeline will literally never ever work if you don't even have one. [00:08:50] Jason: That's true.  [00:08:51] Sarah: Or you don't know the stages of a pipeline because a lot of times, and I bet this happens to you too, but it happens to me when I ask people, okay, "what does your sales process look like?" [00:09:00] " Oh, I talked to somebody." "Okay, great. And then what?" "Oh, and then I send them some information." "Great. And then what?" [00:09:05] Jason: "I wait." [00:09:06] Sarah: "Oh, then I wait." "Oh, okay. Like, do you call them again or do you check in or do you like set up another call?"  [00:09:13] Jason: "Or I follow up in a way that I look needy and creepy?"  [00:09:16] Sarah: Sometimes the answer is yes. And then sometimes the answer is no, but even if they do follow up or have another call or check in again, somehow, then my next question again is "okay, and then what?" And then they go, "oh, and then I just wait." So essentially what happens is you have no pipeline. Okay. And you don't know that you don't have a pipeline, but you don't have a pipeline. [00:09:35] And that means if you're not working the pipeline and you don't know the different stages of a pipeline, we're just guessing, and we're just hoping. We're going, "I don't know. I keep talking to all these people, but nothing seems to be closing. And I don't understand why," because you don't have pipeline stages. [00:09:49] Jason: Okay.  [00:09:49] Sarah: So you got to need a pipeline.  [00:09:51] Jason: So we'll teach you how to build out the pipeline. We'll talk about the different stages that need to exist. And then it'll be a lot more clear and we'll talk with you about how to build that out in your CRM of choice. So you'll understand the principles. [00:10:04] You can go apply this to whatever CRM you use, whether it's DoorGrow CRM or lead simple or whatever else is out there. Okay, I'll go to number three now that we're back in order. Okay. All right. Number three, [00:10:19] Uncovering your client's pain points. So superficially people think they know the pain of their target audience. So they want their property manager. They don't want to have to deal with managing the rental property. That is not the real pain that gets you to close deals that you have to go a lot deeper than that. [00:10:36] And so we're going to talk about how to disarm people, how to not come across as super salesy, how to create authentic communication and an authentic relationship where they believe that you can help them and how to get them to open up about what the real pain is, the real stress of the real emotion that might be motivating them to have a conversation with you. [00:11:00] And one of the biggest problems we see in sales is that a lot of people don't take time to identify what the real pain is. The pain often has not really anything to do with the rental property. It's something going on in their personal life. And so you need to figure out how to connect to that. [00:11:16] And for some that's like, "Whoa," that's like, "I don't know how to do that. That'd be weird or awkward," but you need to get to the real pain and related that you need to get to the real pleasure, like what they really want. Nobody really wants property management, right? Just like if you're booking a trip to Hawaii. [00:11:34] Property management is the flight to Hawaii. It's not the paradise. It's not the outcome that they're hoping for. It is property management. So we want to sell the trip. We want to sell Hawaii, not the flight there, right? Which is property management. So we'll talk about also getting towards the, not just the pain, but the pleasure. [00:11:54] Those are the 2 ingredients you really need to know and uncover in order to close the deal. And so if you're not closing deals, it's probably because somebody else is better at that than you. You're one of your competitors, or they're just going to go with the cheapest company because you haven't really created a connection. [00:12:11] And so they think you're a commodity. You do everything everyone else does. And so that we'll get into that. All right. So good?  [00:12:18] Sarah: That was good.  [00:12:19] Jason: Number four, reviewing and improving your call scripts to book more appointments and close more deals. So we want to like, take a look at what are you saying? And you may think, "I don't have scripts. [00:12:30] I'm just awesome. I just wing it every time." I guarantee 90 percent of the time, you're saying similar things, dealing with objections in similar ways. And so you have a script. It just probably isn't a very clearly defined one, which means it's probably not a very good one because you haven't taken an objective look at it to optimize or improve it. [00:12:50] And so we're going to take a look at some scripts that are effective and figure out ways to improve your scripts. And sometimes it's not even about what you're saying. It's about how you say it. And so we're going to focus on some of the magic that comes with how you communicate with people. I've got clients that are not salespeople, like no real training in sales, terrible at sales. And they're crushing it because they know how to be authentic. They are communicating in a way that's disarming and they're just being helpful. And so we're going to talk about some of that stuff. How to close more deals. Some of you that are so good at sales, you're super salesy, you like cut your teeth as a baby in real estate and like you're a shark, like we're going to help you figure out how to undo a lot of that mess so that you can create more trust and sales and deals happen at the speed of trust. [00:13:44] And so we're going to help you close more business, which will make things a lot better. Okay.  [00:13:50] Sarah: That's what we've got. All right. That's our agenda. And if this sounds interesting to you, now, our hope is that once you come to this event, you'll obviously get a lot out of it and learn a lot about sales that we just typically can't cover on a one hour call. [00:14:07] It's just, it's too much. I can talk about 1 of those things for more than an hour. Right? Once you come to this event, you'll learn a lot and you'll be able to immediately implement these things so that very quickly, you will start seeing some changes and some positive results and momentum.  [00:14:24] Jason: So why do this in person? [00:14:26] So let me talk about that. One of the things we've noticed in DoorGrow's, I'm starting to call it the real bubble. And so there's this mentality, I think, unconsciously in our brain. So when we're doing stuff on zoom calls and zoom meetings, which we do a lot of cool stuff that way DoorGrow, but we've noticed that when we get people in person for the first time they meet Sarah and I and realize we're real human beings. [00:14:48] We're not just something on video and that we're real and they can like hug us. And like we touch right? Like then something shifts in their brain that everything else they're saying is real. When they start to meet clients that they've seen on some of the Zoom calls, sharing their wins and talking about crushing it and adding doors. [00:15:07] They're like, "Oh, these are real people." And then the brain shifts and they start to connect that, "Hey, if they're real, and this is real and they're getting real results and they're like me, I'm a human, like I can do this too." And all of this stuff is actually true, impossible. And so we've noticed a shift in clients once they come to DoorGrow live, which is coming up in May, or they come to one of our in person events. [00:15:32] And so we want to do this in person because there's something magical about in person that content and information is absorbed. A lot more easily. There's also that sort of kinesthetic aspect that we're there physically but the learning is a bit more experiential. We'll be able to maybe even role play, go over some scripts, talk, like, say things. [00:15:52] It's just a bit more real than just seeing something on video or watching a video replay or something like that. And so come pierce the real veil with DoorGrow and realize the real magic that exists.  [00:16:03] Sarah: All right. Yes. And at this point you guys might be wondering all right, so this sounds pretty good. [00:16:09] I think I might be interested. What do I do? Contact me. Don't contact anybody else on the team. They're not even going to know what you're talking about. Just contact me so you can get in touch with me. It's Sarah S-A-R-A-H. If you go to our website and you end up talking with somebody else on the team, they will point you in my direction and you can get registered that way. [00:16:29] Now, tickets for this will be 1k per person. You can have as many people on your team attend as you would like. So if you have 3 BDMs and you want to send all 3. If there's just one or two, maybe that you want to send or you want to come check it out yourself, go ahead. But you'll need to let me know now spots are going to be limited. I don't even have 20 spots. I actually need to go back and confirm how many I have left because I know we had some people interested. But the price for this will be 1k per person. And I know that the price will not stay. At that rate. [00:17:03] So we're launching it and we're doing something special with the price. So for now, take us our one case. So get in while the cost is low.  [00:17:12] Jason: There you go. All right. You will easily offset the cost of doing this. For most of you, that's like getting one more deal, right? So lifetime value for most of your clients, probably a lot higher, like maybe 10 times. [00:17:27] Maybe 20 times higher if you can keep them a while, right? So this is a no brainer. This is very easy and we can get your BDM adding a lot more doors. So just like some client results, we've got clients that are easily some BDM are adding 200- 300 doors a year organically without paying for any SEO or pay per click or content marketing or social media marketing or pay per lead services like APM and they're able to grow and scale their business quickly through organic methods. [00:17:56] Sarah: And we have some clients that turn business away every single month because they just cannot.  [00:18:02] Jason: Get pickier and pickier.  [00:18:03] Sarah: Yeah, they're backlogged. And then they ask us on the calls what do I do? Like, "I don't want to say no, but then I can't take on this many." And we're like, "now you have a waiting list and you can take on X money per month." [00:18:14] And if they can't come on this month or they missed that deadline, then roll them over to the next month. If they qualify.  [00:18:20] Jason: Okay. All right. So that is BDM bootcamp. So check out BDM bootcamp, reach out to sarah@doorgrow.Com. Sarah with an H.  [00:18:28] Sarah: Yeah, if you spell my name wrong, I'm not talking to you cause I won't get it. [00:18:32] Jason: Okay. That's your punishment.  [00:18:34] Wow. Okay.  [00:18:35] Sarah: So don't forget my H because everyone does.  [00:18:38] Jason: Just email me. I'm nicer.  [00:18:40] Sarah: He never checks his email. Don't email him. That's true.  [00:18:42] Jason: My assistant does. Don't do it. All right.  [00:18:44] Sarah: You'll never hear back the black hole.  [00:18:46] Jason: No, my assistant's good. She'll take care of it. I just won't see it. [00:18:51] She'll tell me about it if it's important. All right. For those of you that are wanting to join a community, be part of something awesome, reach out to us. And so you can learn more about DoorGrow Mastermind. You get access to some of the coolest stuff and to be part of the coolest community of the most growth minded property management business owners in the industry. [00:19:11] And we can help you get your business to the next level. So whether it's scaling operations, whether it's figuring out how to grow, whether it's cleaning up the front end of your business, getting your website and your pricing, right, all this kind of stuff. So we can help you. All right. Check us out at doorgrow. com until next time to our mutual growth, everybody. Bye for now. [00:19:33] 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!  [00:19:59] 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, we will learn how Easter is celebrated in the United States and Australia. We will hear Tom and Sarah's conversation about their plans for Easter this year. And with a point-of-view story, you will learn grammar in context without memorizing boring rules. Hi! Thanks for joining me for another episode of the podcast. I'm Georgiana and my mission is to help you improve your fluency. If you want to support me, please share the podcast with your friends and family. It would mean a great deal to me. Thank you! Remember that you can get the text of this episode on my website SpeakEnglishPodcast.com Okay! Let's start! Tom, from the United States, and Sarah, from Australia, were catching up on a video call before the Easter holiday. As they started chatting, they quickly realized they had different traditions and plans for celebrating the holiday. Let's listen to their conversation: Tom: Hey, Sarah! Happy Easter! Sarah: Happy Easter to you too, Tom! I hope you're doing well. Tom: Yes, I'm doing great. So, what are your plans for Easter this year? Sarah: I plan to attend church and celebrate Easter with my family. We usually have a big Easter dinner and spend time together. Tom: That sounds lovely. I'm also planning to celebrate Easter with my family. We usually have an Easter egg hunt and decorate Easter eggs. Sarah: Oh, that's a great tradition. We also decorate Easter eggs but don't have an egg hunt. Tom: That's interesting. Every family has their own traditions. Sarah: Definitely. What other traditions do you have for Easter? Tom: We usually go to church and have a big Easter brunch. We also exchange Easter baskets filled with candy and small gifts. Sarah: That sounds like so much fun. We don't exchange Easter baskets but give each other Easter cards. Tom: That's sweet. Do you have any special Easter foods that you eat? Sarah: Yes, we usually have ham, deviled eggs, and hot cross buns. Tom: That sounds delicious. My family has roasted lamb, mashed potatoes, and asparagus. Sarah: That sounds amazing. It's interesting to see how different cultures celebrate the same holiday. Tom: Yes, I agree. Speaking of cultures, I heard Easter is celebrated differently in Australia. Can you tell me more about that? Sarah: Sure! In Australia, Easter is also a Christian holiday that celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ. However, since it's celebrated in the fall season there, it's more of a harvest festival. We also have a lot of outdoor activities like camping and hiking. Tom: That's so cool. I didn't know Easter was celebrated as a harvest festival in Australia. Do you have any special Easter foods that you eat? Sarah: Yes, we have hot cross buns and chocolate eggs, just like in the US. But we also have meat pies, seafood, and others. Tom: That sounds amazing. I'll have to try them sometime. Sarah: Definitely. Maybe we can exchange some Easter foods and try each other's traditions. Tom: That's a great idea, Sarah! Sarah: Ok! I'll see you later. Happy Easter! Tom: Happy Easter!

In today's episode we have the pleasure to talk to George Kao, a seasoned entrepreneur and advocate of authentic business growth. George unveils his 111 Formula, a holistic approach designed to cultivate authenticity in entrepreneurship. We explore why George views business as a practice akin to athletics, emphasizing discipline and continual growth. Discover what truly constitutes an authentic business and gain invaluable insights into effective market research. George shares his philosophy on "gentle launches" and explores the intersection of AI with authentic business practices. Tune in for an inspiring conversation that empowers entrepreneurs to navigate their business journey authentically and ethically. In this real conversation, we talked about: Why business is a practice - and why George refers to entrepreneurs as athletes What an authentic business really is How to do market research and why George's approach to launches (he calls them gentle launches) George's shared fascination with AI and how he thinks it fits into an authentic business Our Collab Workshop on April 2nd (go to humane.marketing/workshop to sign up) and much more... --- full Ep 185 Sarah: [00:00:00] Hello, Humane Marketers. Welcome back to the Humane Marketing Podcast, the place to be for the generation of marketers that cares. This is a show where we talk about running your business in a way that feels good to you, is aligned with your values, and also resonates with today's conscious customers because it's humane, ethical, and non pushy. I'm Sarah Zanacroce, your hippie turned business coach for quietly rebellious entrepreneurs and marketing impact pioneers. Mama bear of the humane marketing circle and renegade author of marketing like we're human and selling like we're human. If after listening to the show for a while, you're ready to move on to the next level and start implementing and would welcome a community of like minded people. Quietly rebellious entrepreneurs who discuss with transparency, what works and what doesn't work in business. [00:01:00] Then we'd love to welcome you in our humane marketing circle. If you're picturing your typical Facebook group, let me paint a new picture for you. This is a closed community of like minded entrepreneurs from all over the world who come together once per month in a zoom circle workshop to hold each other accountable and build their business in a sustainable way. We share with transparency and build trust. Vulnerability, what works for us and what doesn't work so that you can figure out what works for you instead of keep throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what sticks. Find out more at Humane Marketing slash circle, and if you prefer one-on-one, support from me. My Humane business Coaching could be just what you need, whether it's for your marketing, sales, general business building, or help with your big idea like writing a book. I'd love to share my brain and my. Heart with you together with my almost 15 years business experience and help you grow a [00:02:00] sustainable business that is joyful and sustainable. If you love this podcast, wait until I show you my mama bear qualities as my one-on-one client. You can find out more at Humane Marketing slash. And finally, if you are a marketing impact pioneer and would like to bring Humane Marketing to your organization, have a look at my offers and workshops on my website at humane. marketing. Hello friends. Welcome back to another episode. Today's conversation fits under the P of promotion, and I'm speaking to George Kao about how to grow an authentic business. If you're a regular here, you know that I'm organizing the conversations around the seven P's of the Humane Marketing Mandala. And if this is your first time here, you probably don't know what I'm talking [00:03:00] about, but you can download your one page plan with the Humane Marketing version of the seven P's of marketing at humane. George: marketing Sarah: forward slash one page, the number one and the word marketing. page and this comes with seven email prompts to really help you reflect on these for your business. You know, authentic business and George Cow is a business mentor who infuses his teaching with a unique spiritual perspective since 2009, he has been helping people. Thousands of coaches, consultants, healers, and course creators on their path to creating sustainable and joyful businesses. George has published five books spanning the topics of authentic business, content marketing, joyful productivity, George: and spiritual growth. In this Sarah: real world. Conversation, real and authentic George: conversation may speak about Sarah: why business is a practice and why George refers to entrepreneurs as athletes, [00:04:00] what an authentic business really is, how to do market research, and why George's approach to launches. He calls them gentle launches. It also feels like a struggle. George, it's shared fascination with AI and how he thinks it fits into an authentic business. George: When do I Sarah: my thoughts George: as well on that topic. Authentic business Sarah: tries to, I guess, solve both of those issues by, by bringing, I'm just going to say it like personal George: development or spiritual growth into all the actions we take in our Sarah: business. So for example George: in the beginning, you know, when we're struggling to get clients and clarify our message and all that stuff that process itself doesn't have to. It doesn't have to feel like, Oh, I'm postponing the fulfillment of my life and my, my purpose, but like the actual work of [00:05:00] clarifying and putting systems together can be done from a deeper purpose of service. Service to our higher self, actually, and then, of course, service to humanity or the people that we most have compassion for and want to want to support and uplift through the products and services of our business. So, it's like, it's like. No matter what stage we're at, whether we're, we're, we're like the, the, the struggling beginner all of that can be actions taken in, you know, like I said, in, in service or in, in, in in alignment with our deeper, more, Purpose of life so that it's not like, I mean, I use this, but then, you know, sort of mundane example of if you're doing bookkeeping and you're not a bookkeeper, let's say you're not, it's not something that you'd naturally love to do. You can be like, ah, let me just get this out of the way. And, oh my God, so it's such a, such a, so tedious to have to like, look at these numbers or whatever, [00:06:00] or you can take a moment and say, this is my life also like, like, this is not. Yeah. Do this so that I can have, I can live life. No, no. This very moment is life. And therefore, how shall I live? It's like, Oh, okay. Bookkeeping. How can I come to it with a perspective of curiosity about the numbers and what the numbers suggest to the greater narrative of what my business developing into, how can I bring focus? You know, can, how can I practice focus in this moment? How can I practice gratitude that I can even Even have a business or even, like, think about this, you know, or even work on numbers. You know, some people can't even don't even have a computer, right? Like, like, how can I have the gratitude? And what does this moment mean for my personal development? Like, right now, like, and we don't have to spend an hour journaling before we do it. I mean, literally, most of us, even if we took. Two minutes [00:07:00] to just pause and say, what is the meaning of this moment? And the, the potential deeper potential at this moment, it changes. And it's like, what if our entire day could be like this? And that to me is really the core spirit of authentic business is at the beginner. For the beginners like that, and then later on you know, businesses like yours and mine, where things are humming along, it's like, rather than just go, I'm making money now and whatever, but it's like, how can I yet again bring my money. Courage to be, to be vulnerably exploring what my, my true purpose is in my business and, and pivot when I need to, but it's all like, I think of it as marketing, the act of marketing is a business finding is calling, you know, it's a business exploring with the market and with ourselves, what the calling of the businesses. And at the same time, the actions of a [00:08:00] business is also a stage. Okay. For our continued personal evolution. And then, so it's like, no matter what stage of the business, the authentic part of it is how much soul is being placed into this moment. And if there is, if there's soul in this moment, then I say, Hey, that's off, that's an authentic business. So Sarah: that's yeah, you and I need to have a conversation about my third book. I'm working on business. Like we're human because what you just is, yeah, it's very much aligned with I, I feel like you've talked a lot about spaciousness as well, right. And just, Yeah, just being a human as well as having a business and, and oftentimes we feel like as entrepreneurs, we, yeah, we need to struggle so much. And that means filling our calendars to the brim because we're just [00:09:00] not doing enough. But what you're saying is the opposite is just like, well, the business, and I think in your YouTube video, you share that the business is a practice and authentic business is a practice. And so it becomes. Part of your life, like it fits into your life. Yeah. And it's not like we need to fit our lives kind of around our business. The, you know, few minutes that are left each day. So it's the, it's the other way around. I like that. Yeah. Yeah. Another thing that I think oftentimes, and I'm curious what you, if you have the same feeling, authentic kind of became this buzzword a little bit. Yes. And it became this thing that we. Again, need to use our left brain in order to do authentic, like, you know, do authentic marketing. Well, here's the seven steps on how to do that. That's not what this is, George: right? Yeah. It's interesting. In 2023 Miriam [00:10:00] Webster, the dictionary company said the word of the year was authentic. Yeah. Yeah. So it really is literally a buzzword. And I feel like that the word of the year is often at least a year behind what the culture actually has been so authentic has been around for several years. I feel like as a, as a, as a very important or a very common kind of like bringing, bringing people back to, to what's meaningful for them. And anyway, but yeah, it's, I, I, I, so, you know, Appreciate this idea of practice, because to me, it's it almost doesn't matter what we're doing in our business. I mean, if, if, if we are, if we are living an authentic life, I mean, kind of kind of starting there. I mean, I mean, let's set aside authentic business. Like, the question is, are we living an authentic life? It's like, it's like, like, are we dedicated to living the most meaningful? And [00:11:00] highest life or deepest life, however you want to put it, like, if, if, yes, we are dedicated to that, why I don't see why, why the, I mean, those of us, those of you who are listening to this podcast, you're part of Sarah's audience, of course, you're dedicated to living the highest and the deepest life. It's like, what else is there, you know, what other possibility is there that actually draws us forward. And so if we are, in fact, have that passion and that dedication, then of course we have to bring that spirit into hopefully everything we do in our business. And the opposite of this is I often see come across spiritual teachers Well, they're spiritual teachers, so they must be dedicated to the highest and deepest and the best life possible. And yet I sign up for their email list or I follow them on social media or whatever. And their marketing is [00:12:00] just, it does. If there's like a, like, it's like a big. Disconnect between how they market themselves and how they sell their stuff to what they espouse as their principles and values. And I'm like, why, why is it that, why does business and marketing have to be. Different somehow, it's like separate thing. Yeah. It's like, it's like, oh, I, I, I'm, I'm very deep and, and, and real when I'm with my clients. And now let's do our marketing and using, you know, really manipulative funnels and really like scarcity type tactics. I'm like, what is going on here? It's like, why is there such a disconnect? It's kind of like the, yeah. You know, like the preacher who is so holy on, you know, on TV. And then, and then they have like some dark, you know, scandals and they're like, they're, they're, they're, they beat up their families and they cheat on their wives and it's like, it's like, it's this disconnect and, and and that's what I'm trying to say. Authentic means that you are authentic in, in everything that you do. [00:13:00] Yeah. Sarah: I think the issue is I, I kind of. Looked into that because of in the whole thing. Well, marketing like we're human selling like we're human business, like we're human. So what does it mean to be human? So I, I looked at Yuval Harari and one of the things that he shares is. One of the distinctions between us and other species is that we are myth makers. So we're really good at creating these new truths that we then all believe as humanity. And I think this online business world is one of those myths, right? And so everybody just started to believe. This is how business works online, or this is how online marketing works. And so even the, the really spiritual coaches, they're like, this is the mess that everybody is believing that myth. So I need to believe that [00:14:00] truth as well. And so that's why we need people like you are like, well, no, you don't have to believe this myth. There is another way, but I thought that was a fascinating concept. It's true. It's like, We decide this new thing, and then everybody follows, and that's what happened you know, 15 years ago. George: Really, really good observation. Yes it's there's, there's also this setting aside our inner authority. When it comes to, Oh, well, business, I'm not a business person. Well, I'm not a marketing expert. I'm a spiritual teacher or I'm a holistic healer, or I'm a life coach or that, that, that's, that's where I shine and I'll, I'll just, you know, business, they, they seem like they know what they're talking about with business and marketing, so I'll follow their systems that they're, they tell me the systems work, so let me just follow those systems. It feels off to me. It doesn't feel authentic to me, but it's going to get to an authentic end at the end when I finally can work with [00:15:00] clients. Right. And, and this is the old, you know, means to an end fallacy, which is, Oh, I just have to do this thing. That's soulless or that's not really me so that I can get to the part that is me. That is like, well, okay, particularly when it comes to your own business. Oh, you do it is going to be how you do end up doing just about everything else. So it's like the, the mindset you take on when you follow the mainstream business experts and the marketers ends up corrupting the mindset of your entire business and your audience feels that. I mean, this is why. People have been kind of looking at my stuff and following me for, for all these years. It's like they feel the difference. It's like there is a difference and they feel it. And I'm, and I feel it too, because I used to be, I used to be quite unhappy, deeply unhappy when I was following those systems without realizing that that's what I was doing was setting aside my own [00:16:00] authority to follow someone else's authority. Yeah, they said that, you know, even though it didn't feel right and finally, when I, when I get shut out all that stuff down and say, no, I don't have to do that. Let me try to try. It's what is could be an authentic way of doing business and marketing. It's like, oh, my gosh, I can really now settle deeply rest deeply and, and, and work deeply because now I see it as a practice. That's a soulful practice as well. Yeah, Sarah: that's wonderful. Yeah, exactly. All right. Well, we're hosting a workshop together on April 2nd, right? And it's called the 111 Authentic Business Formula. So tell us a little bit what this formula is about and it has all these different numbers and practices. So tell us George: a little bit. Totally. Well I'm yeah, I'm glad to be able to tell you about it. And I do hope those who are listening to this will sign up for our, our joint workshop [00:17:00] because this is where I'm going to dive, dive deep into the one 11 formulas. Okay. So, so why one 11, first of all, the backstory is I've always found that to be some kind of magical number for me 11, one 11, 11, 11. Those have been at times, I feel like at times, particularly when I needed, you know, encouragement or I guess, quote, unquote, self help. Signs from the universe that that, you know, I, I deeply believe this to be true for myself and for all of us that we are in some mysterious, magical way, being deeply taken care of and being guided. With a still small voice within us, and sometimes the universe is kind to give us little signals of like, yeah, just remember you're not alone and it's going to be okay and not just okay. You are on a brilliant path. It seems windy, long and winding road sometimes, but [00:18:00] it is a necessary path toward your Highest good and your ability to serve the world in the, in the most powerful way, authentically powerful ways possible. So the 1 11 has been that kind of number for me. So when I was you know, I get asked by my clients and students all the time. It's like, all right, just give us. Give us, you know, tell us exactly what to do, you know, and I always, I always kind of fight against that because I'm like that is the opposite of authentic. If I tell you exactly, exactly what to do on a Tuesday at 10 a. m. you should do this and Thursday at 2 p. m. you should do that. I'm like, then you are following my authority again, rather than. Discovering your own inner authority, but still they're like, yes, yes, we get it. We get it. We get it, but we still need more clarity. Some structure, please on what to do. I'm like, okay, okay, let me, let me try to put together a structure. That has embedded in it the wisdom of all my successes and failures and having worked with [00:19:00] hundreds of clients and seeing their ups and downs and it seems what seen what's worked and what, what are the pitfalls? Let me try to put this structure together. So that's what I did. I said, okay, if I could guarantee you success in business, an authentic business success, this would be my best bet. And I always say, no one can guarantee you success, of course. And if anyone is saying, I'm going to guarantee you, just sign up for my program. You should run the other direction because they are either lying to you or they are. Going to become your, your authority instead of either going to supplant your in our authority. And that's not good for your sovereignty. And and so I said, okay, this formula has a lot of wiggle room in it. I'm going to give you numbers, but the numbers are more of a suggested shall I say prioritization of sorts, but you can, of course, take this formula and make it your own. So I'll [00:20:00] give you I'll give you the sort of the quick overview of the of the. But what the numbers are, and then, you know, we could talk as much as we have time here about it. And we'll go, we'll dive deep in the workshop itself. So the 111 is made up of 111 components to this so called guaranteed formula, or the best that I can do. And it has, I'll just give you some of the numbers here so you can get a sense of it. It has 40 for zero content experiments, because I. Believe deeply, not just believe, but I've seen in my own life and in my clients and students lives, the way we really discover our voice as well as our message. As well as that blessed intersection between imagine your passion and natural talents. Okay. So what you're, what you're deeply built for and led toward is one circle. And the other circle is what the world needs [00:21:00] and wants at this time. And that blessed intersection between what you're built for and what you're led towards and what the world is wanting at this time, which is the market. Okay. What they're happy to spend money on, what they're, what they love to engage with that blessed intersection of the two of them that I consider is our authentic business calling. And we discovered that through content experiments. Okay. Meaning we, whenever we. Try sharing a message or we have an idea, and we're going to just put it out there and see if people get it. Oftentimes, they might not get it. We might be ahead of our time. So we're not might not be saying it in a way that is understandable yet to this to this. Anyway, so 40 content experiments are, you know, and with the one 11 is, you know, Loosely meant to be a 1 year plan, so in the 1 year, you kind of do this and so it's like 40 content experiments over the course of a year. Not too many. It's like, maybe 1 a week, you know, something like that. If you work 40 to 40 weeks in a year, and then we've [00:22:00] got 10 stage 2 content pieces and we're going to dive deep into in the workshop what this means. But essentially, when out of the 40 content experiments. Which of those 10, I mean, as you go along, every time you do four of them for content experiments, you look back and go, which of those four had the most engagement? This is a clue, an important hint. Into what my intersection is between what I love and what the world wants. Ah, okay. So the stage two is basically taking one of those four and improving it and distributing even further. Okay. So that's what stage two content. So 10, 10 of those. During the year, definitely not too many, and that's at stage 2 is what actually builds your audience for the 40 content experiments is for you. I mean, you publish it for you, you don't you don't worry about the metrics and whatever you analyze it afterwards after 4 of them, but the stage [00:23:00] 2 is really what's going to grow your audience over time because it's the best of. Okay and then and then so now we're up to 50, right? 40 plus 10. So now we have 20. Market research conversations. Again, we're going to dive deep into the, in, in, during the workshop, 20 market research conversations over the course of a year, it seems like a lot, but in my early years of authentic business, I was doing more like 40 a year. Actually. I was, I was sometimes even doing more than 40 a year and a market research conversation. What is that? It's you being in actual conversation. With another human being that you're able to reach. Okay. So one of your fans, one of your friends, one of your colleagues, one of your clients, past clients, et cetera, where you are asking, where you are talking with them about what it is that they want, because, and particularly what they want as related to the [00:24:00] kind of stuff you offer. So that those conversations bring huge clarity to, Oh my God, I should be offering this. I should be creating content on that. I should be selling this. I didn't even know. And I like being able to talk with people like this, especially like on zoom or video, you know, or in person, but like where you can see their expressions is hugely helpful. So, so those 20 market research conversations sometimes turn into clients also, but we're really approaching them as out of genuine curiosity and care. Yeah. Okay. So, so that's that. And then the next 20, there's 20 collabs, collaborations. And again, my favorite. Yeah, exactly. Here's what we're doing, right? This counts as one of them. Right. And in the, in the early days when I was trying to build my audience and grow my business, I was doing, I was doing 40 collabs a year. So I'm only asking for 20 from, from all of you. And again, these are all, there's no hard and fast rules, right? These numbers are suggested and you can always change them. Take them as [00:25:00] whatever fits your rhythm, but a collaboration is well, Sarah, you excel at these reaching out and connecting with colleagues whom you're fascinated by their work. And they probably are interested in you there. If they respond to you, they're at least interested in connecting. There's kind of a bit of a heart connection. And I really go with heart connections. I mean, I, I interviewed lots of people. I've interviewed lots of people over the years. Only certain one of them, certain few of them like you have a hard connection where I'm like, I want to keep up with this person. And it's like, you grow. So, so these 20 collapse over a year are not like, oh, I'm dedicated to these 20 people for life. No experiments. You're just reaching out and, and doing maybe doing an interview, interviewing them for your channel. That's the easiest for me is I interviewed people for my channel. Just kind of sense into that connection. Is there something more for us to keep doing together? If not, that's okay. At least I, I did them a little favor by sharing them with my audience and my audience. I did them a [00:26:00] favor by saying, Hey, check out this person who could be really cool. You might want to follow them too. Having that abundance mindset, as you do, Sarah, is, well, it's just makes us happier, number one, and I think it's more true. T with a capital T of what reality is. Anyway, so that 20 collapse Sarah: and I love how it feeds into the authentic, authentic business. Yes, yes. Because I used to, you know, before the humane marketing and everything, I used to like be in these joint venture clubs and affiliate clubs and it was nothing like that. It was not a collaboration. It was masked as a collaboration. But it wasn't, so it wasn't that authentic heart centered kind of George: connection. So I'm so appreciate you bringing that up because, Oh my gosh, I've been there. Maybe some of the people who listened to this have been there or have been invited to these kinds of things where they, they, [00:27:00] they, they sound like they care and like want to collaborate with you and say, Oh, we would love to have you in our, in our summit. Would you like to be a, one of our guest speakers? And then you reply back and says, Oh, that sounds wonderful. Sure. Sure. Well, yeah. Okay. So to be this, you have to have a minimum of 5, 000 email lists. You have to send two emails to your list of 5, 000 to be qualified. I'm like, okay, so you're really using my list to grow your list. Got it. And then once I, once I show up in the, the, the few times I've said yes to this kind of thing, I show up and sometimes they say, just go and record 20 minutes, you know, just go and record 20 minutes of something and we'll add it to our summit. I'm like, Oh, you don't really care, do you? You just want me to do whatever. And then, like, and then, like, I never hear from them again until several years later. Oh, let's do another summit where you can build my list. It's like, oh, yeah. So, you know, collabs are really an experimentation of, are you us? I mean, could I say this? Are you a soulmate? And [00:28:00] I believe in business. We have many soulmates. Are you one of my soulmates? Let me, let me, let's play together for a bit and see if it anyway. So, so 20 collabs and then moving on to 10 gentle launches, 10 offers and gentle launches. 10 over the course of a year. Now, again, this sounds like a lot, but let me tell you what a gentle launches, a gentle launch is not. All right, get ready for a 90 day, you know, challenge where you're going to have like 90 videos, you're going to make it, you're going to have this funnel where after the challenge, they get like five webinars until they join your year long. No. That's yeah, some people do launches like that and it exhausts me just to even talk about it. Okay. What a gentle launch for me is, is ridiculous, ridiculously light. It's two posts, two messages. That's it. Again, we're going to dive deeper into what these two messages are, but essentially it's It's a humble [00:29:00] and curious offering to your audience, the people you're able to reach. Even if it's right now, it's your, you know, 200 Facebook friends or whatever. It's like you're a humble and gentle offering of, Hey, everyone. I'm really this is work that I love doing. And I love doing it for these kinds of people in this kind of way. And I'm just wondering if, if, if this resonates, With you, I have some spots right now. And so it's, it's a gentle offering. It's very authentic. It's very real. And then the second message is simply it's, it's, it's that same offering, but you could, you could talk about a a case study, or you could talk about the story of how you became so passionate about this area. Or you can, you can talk about the reminder of, Oh, this thing is starting or whatever. So it's like two messages only. And it is and that that's the same two messages are sent. Everywhere you're on social media and sent to your email list. If you have one, and I find this Sarah, it's so, it's so interesting. I've been doing this gentle offering stuff for at least four years, [00:30:00] five years, probably actually, maybe longer than that too. Every time I launch something, it's two messages only. And I find that over time, my audience has leaned in more and more and more. Because whereas usually when someone else launches something, we have to, like, as an audience member, we have to, like, almost hold them off because it's so coming on so strong. So many emails, so many posts. And it's like, okay, all right. All right. I just, oh, yeah. Another thing about their launch. Whereas because of my gentle launch rhythm, my audience, I find I started to lean in more and often people go, Oh my gosh. And it's like, Oh, I missed that. Oh, that's okay. I'm going to have another offer in a month or two. And then they, they lean in and I find that now even one message. Now I can tell if it's going to be a successful launch or a medium launch or time to pivot. And it's so helpful for me because I, I do a single light launch and like, Oh yeah, this is going to do really well. The second message, like usually the first message brings [00:31:00] a lot of the sales and then the second message brings some of the sales too. But it's like once your audience is leaning in, they pay attention whenever you offer something and if it's right for them, they're going to buy much more quickly than. The usual launches where it's like, Oh my God, it's full of anxiety. And like, Oh my God, this is going to work out. And anyway, so 10 gentle launches. Sarah: I like that. Yeah. And I'm, I'm really personally listening and paying attention because I, I think that's something I'm wanting to shift as well. So just. I, I felt like my launches were gentle, but I do still feel like, because I actually just had feedback that, you know, there was too many emails and so it's like, yeah, I, I, I get it. We're all, you know, having too much. And even though, you know, even though the content is gentle, it's still, George: it's still the rhythm itself. And the funny thing about it is that. Not only can the rhythm be gentle for our audience, it's also gentle for [00:32:00] our, for our own systems because we're, because, you know, writing two messages as opposed to writing 10 later, which one is easier for us. And, and really, I really had, and you're lucky that I can tell you from my experience, because I had to like, it was, it was ironically, a lot of courage to only send two emails to only make two posts, like in the, in the early days. I'm like, I'm let's see what happens if I only do two of them, but it worked out so well over time. I'm like, I'm, I'm, I'm preaching this to the whole world. Like, please try this, but it, it, it takes a bit of patience because your audience needs to get used to it. Right. Like two or three launches later, they're like, Oh my God, I got to lean in now. Well, the thing Sarah: is, I only do three launches because I only have three programs. So would you say maybe then three George: emails? So. Yeah. I mean, of course, now let me be clear. Yes. When we have a larger program, it does [00:33:00] warrant more messages. I agree. Because like when I launched my year long program I send, well, we're going to talk deeper about this in the, in the workshop. I call it my circles of enrollment, meaning there's the inner circle that I send to, and there's the middle circle that I sent to, and then there's the outer circle. Each one has two messages. So it ends up being six. Yeah. For my, for my yearlong program, I can't wait to talk more, but yeah, we'll talk, we'll talk deeper, but, but what I want to just wrap up here with gentle launches is I do encourage everyone listening to consider. Experimenting with more offers, lighter offers, which again, we will dive to more deep, but let me, let me finish the one 11 formula. Okay. So there's two more elements. Okay. There's, there's, if, if you've been taking notes and counting the numbers, now we're down to 11 elements left, 11 components left. Okay. So out of these 11 components, there's just two, two pieces. There's two categories. There's six [00:34:00] joyful productivity practices integrated. Okay, so 6 joyful productivity practices integrated over the course of a year is certainly quite spacious, but it's also very rational. So for those who haven't heard of joyful productivity, it's basically my framework for how to manage yourself in business. So this is everything from how to manage your time to your how to manage your energy. For your attitude to energy and physical, mental, emotional, how to manage the flow of information, all this information coming in through your email, social media, and also the information going out. So how to manage all that. Within your computer. So I have a course called joyful productivity that goes into 24 of these practices that from my perspective, and that's actually when I polled my audience on which of my courses I have, I now have 24 courses, actually 24 separate courses, only, but which of my 24 [00:35:00] courses do you love the most? The winner was joyful productivity. So anyway, so, so I have 24 practices in that course, and I'm only asking for six of them to be integrated per year. So essentially when you take that. Of course, it's like a four year program, so six times four, that's right for your program. So so, so six of them in a year means every two months you're focusing on one of the Georgia productivity practices and that's great because according to research, so called the average time it takes for, for someone to develop a new habit is two months, 67 days, basically, and approximately two months. So anyway, so those are six Practices of self management integrated, uplifted optimized, you know, kind of like upgrading your, your own way of managing this. Because I know I want to take one more moment to say this. Like I, a lot of people don't realize. I think being a solopreneur, being a successful one is more like being an athlete than, than [00:36:00] a hobby, hobby artist. And I think unfortunately that's how a lot of people authentic solopreneurs, solopreneurs I call them. That's how they take it. Oh yeah, it's kind of like my hobby. It's kind of like my art. Oh, I play on, and of course I play too. I play a lot, you know, the experimentations. The way I recommend everyone think of it, it's more like you're training for a marathon. It's really more like that. Which means you've got to be really organized if you want this thing to work and if you want to succeed and have a lot of good work life play balance, you've got to like go. I'm serious about my training regimen. If I'm going to run a marathon, I'm going to be serious about my training regimen, which means when am I going to get up? You know, what am I going to be eating? Right? I mean, for marathon, there's certain things. And then, you And how much am I going to train? How am I going to rest? Right? What's my rhythm of, of exercise versus rest. And, and what, what can I eat and what shouldn't I eat and all that stuff. Business is [00:37:00] kind of like that. I mean, for those of us who have been around for years, I've been around since 2009, most of the people who started with me are no longer doing their business. I think it's largely because they didn't treat their business like it, what I call a joyful productivity athlete. So anyway, so that's why it's really important. And then the final category, one 11. Is 5 client case studies and over the course of a year, I don't think that's too much. That's less than 1 every 2 months. And the client case study again will dive more deeply into this is simply this is simply. Before they came to work with me, this is what they were going through. This is what they came to me for during our work together. These are the elements of our work. They loved the most. That they found most helpful and then after our work now, their life has changed in this way. Their business has changed. Their relationship has changed. Their health has changed in this way or that way, whatever this we work with people on. So these case studies don't have to be like, Oh, my God, I, [00:38:00] you know, they were, they were broke and now they're making a million dollars an hour. Or, Oh, my God, they were on stage for cancer and now they're the picture of health. It doesn't have to be that dramatic, but, but what it does do is help us to see the journey of our clients and what really works well for our, our ideal clients. And it didn't really case studies are more or less for us. But of course, the piece of the study can be put out as marketing and very inspirational as well. So I Sarah: find. Thank you. Case study is so much more beneficial than, than testimonials, right? Because they're more authentic. That's the reason because you can actually follow the journey where the testimonials, it's just kind of like, it was amazing. And I made six figures, you know, like oftentimes they don't feel authentic. George: Yeah. And, and it's like, if you take on the case study mindset. It kind of even changes how you work with clients. 'cause you're now, you're now being more aware of the, the, their journey and you're really [00:39:00] curious how their journey is gonna turn out. So then you, you work with them in that kind of way. It's like, oh, let's, oh my gosh, you, you, you, you know, there's a pitfall here. Okay, let's, let's work with a pitfall. And seeing them as seeing the hero's journey throughout the whole thing. really amazing. I love that. So, so if you add those all together, you might have to listen to this again. Yeah. So you add them all together. Should add up to 111 and and, and yes, in our workshop, I can't wait to dive into the nuances of these different things. In fact, I, I'm, I'm hoping that those who attend the workshop will listen to this 1st, so that I will send Sarah: it out to, I don't have to, I George: don't have to get the overview again, but we can directly into, okay, what do I mean by content experiment? What exactly are the market research questions? What are the, what are, you know, Six of the most important joyful productivity practices, whatever we can, we can dive into the nuances and the details, but I didn't want to overwhelm everyone who's just actually listening to a podcast episode here about these things. So, yeah, Sarah: that's wonderful. [00:40:00] I'll use it as prep work. George: Yes. Yes. Sarah: Yes. Yes. To listen to it. Yeah, no, it is really fascinating. And I can't wait to dive in. Definitely the, the launches where I was like, Mm, 10 launches, you know, just the, I just a word. I'm very fond of words, certain words and others not right. And it's just a word launch kind George: of does like, I need to, I need to probably wording has always been one of my weaknesses. It's, it's, it's ironic because I'm a marketing person, but despite my weakness for wording, I've made a very successful business. So I'm open to anyone. So I Sarah: like the fact that you call it gentle, right? That definitely George: explains it. Or a light launch, sometimes I call it. Yeah. Sarah: Yeah. So, so yeah, I'm, I'm very excited to, to learn more about that. And, and yeah, definitely gonna have your voice in the back of my head with the two messages. So, so thank you for that. [00:41:00] Yeah. I have one more question as we wrap this up, because it also feeds into the authentic and it's kind of timely. I know that just like me, you really like tech, you like AI as well. And so for a lot of people, that's kind of like an oxymoron. How could you like say authentic business, authentic marketing, and also like AI and chat sheet BT. So yeah. And then that's what's your answer? I love George: I love this question so much. Oh, my gosh. I have I've definitely made several videos about this on my YouTube channel, but I'll give it. I'll give an overview summary of things. So, 1st of all. The resistance against AI is reasonable. Okay. It's reasonable because, you know, they said it was going to take a lot of jobs and it has begun, it really is taking over a lot of human work and it's only going [00:42:00] to get worse. I, and the reason why I put a question mark on worse is because we can also see it as getting way better. So let me explain what AI does. Is it's able to speed up 10 times 100 times the work that and become tedious and automatable. Okay. For example when you are brainstorming ideas. Brainstorming examples and metaphors, analogies for something you're trying to teach or trying to explain, you can, of course, sit there and go, All right. All right. And for an hour, right? And you can brainstorm. I don't know how fast you are brainstorming. Maybe you could brainstorm 5 things in an hour or 2 things or 50 things, depending if someone is really, really good at idea generation. With chat, GPT or Google Gemini or any of the AI chat bot tools. Now you can, instead of brainstorming, maybe you were really slow before. I I'm pretty slow at [00:43:00] brainstorming. I mean, maybe I'll brainstorm like five things in an hour. Now I can brainstorm those five things in 15 minutes. With the help of chat, you PT. Now I think of, I think of AI as a smart intern intern, not, not you know, not on par with us. I don't think it. Okay. I don't think it will ever be on par with humans in terms of the integration of intuition, body hormones light lived by definition that cannot be, it doesn't have the lived experience of a human. So, but what it does is it gives us the average. I mean, as you use Google Gemini, chat, GBT, whatever, and you go into your field, you talk to it about your field, you'll see, oh, it's very average. I mean, The responses, well, by, by definition, it took all the blog posts from your field and averaged it out to say, well, this is basically what your field says, but it doesn't have the nuances that's unique to [00:44:00] you. And to me about our own fields, because when I talk to you about authentic business or about business, like your answers, like, give me a marketing plan about this. I'm like, oh my God, the marketing plan is so generic. I can't even stand it. This is not what I would give a client. But when I say help me brainstorm three different analogies to talk about this. And an instant within a minute, three analogies come up. I'm like, okay, I kind of like the first analogy, maybe go more in that direction. I definitely don't like the second one. The third one's kind of interesting. I like this part about it. And I work with it like an intern and it can helps me to refine. And I'm like, well, what about this? Have you thought of this? And it's like, well, I oftentimes talk to these. Yeah. I'm like, what about this? Have you thought of it? Like, no, that's a great idea to like, well, it's because it doesn't. Yeah. It doesn't have the nuance that humans do. And so I don't, I never, so this is maybe the short answer to your question. I never use AI to do the actual writing. Or to do the actual, certainly not video, but certainly definitely not writing. I don't use it for writing George. What do you [00:45:00] mean? I use AI more than most people. I use it for brainstorming and for checking things and for as a thinking partner. But then I always look at it like, Oh, you're an intern. I know you, you're not that good yet. I mean, you're fast. You're very, you're very fast at giving average answers, but I'm going to take what you give me. I'm going to just up level it to the George cow or deepen it to the George cow way. So I really recommend it for that. As, as long as we see it as a smart intern thinking partner, I think we can get things done a lot faster. I've, I've, I, it has really sped up a lot of my work so that therefore we can do higher work. We can do higher Sarah: work or be more human. That's what I say as well. It helps us create more spaciousness to have a connection call or go out in nature or, you know, that's, that's the thing that a lot of these chat GPT prompts and things like that. It's, it's all about, well, create [00:46:00] more content, right? You do more. It's not about doing more, it's about being more productive, George: but gaining time, actually. It's gaining time and, and, and Google has, has just come out with a press release just as a few days ago. Okay. Basically saying this, we are now going hard on the Google search engine of getting rid of AI content. Not getting rid of it, but like we know, obviously Google is AI, very deep into AI. We know what's AI content and we're going to downgrade your website if you have a lot of it. That's what they've just came out with. So, so in other words, the more we get into AI, the AI is fortunately or unfortunately, it's not going away. It's only get more intensified built into every product now, right? Gmail now has AI and everything has AI. Now it's going to get even more embedded. The more that happens, the more there's room for authentic humanity in content and [00:47:00] offers and connections. Meaning like. AI is never going to get right the way that we are quirks the way that we pause on video because it's very natural. Yes, they'll get, please have 17 percent pauses for this video bot, but it's always going to feel off. It'll be Sarah: weird. It'll feel weird. Yeah, very strange. Yeah. Yeah, no, I love that. I knew that there would be alignment and it sounds like, yeah, you're using it for similar things. I, I also love, like, for example on LinkedIn posts where I want to do a list of emojis, you know, instead of the bullet points have emojis. It used to take me hours to look up a couple of emojis, give it the content and say, give me the emojis. And George: yeah, I asked AI, I have, of course, I know all the emojis. You can keep, keep, keep having a conversation. Give me more unique emojis. Well, what about this? What about that? And like, [00:48:00] I just look, look at it as a extended, Search engine. That's all it is. Like I help it solve problems. I figure trying to research things like those are, it's really fast at that. So let it do it, you know, Sarah: wonderful. Great. Well, wow. I can't wait for more of you, more of your. Content and more of the one 11 formula. So please everyone have a look at the workshop. It's under humane dot marketing forward slash workshop, and it takes place on April 2nd. And we'd love to see you there. So can't wait for that, George, so much gratitude for you. Where can people find you if they can't make it to the podcast? Yeah. Oh the workshop. George: Tell anything is you can. Actually, this, this will be a fun exercise. Go to AI chat bot, chat GPT, Google Gemini being being chat and ask, tell me about George cow, authentic business coach. And then let it no, really. It's like, [00:49:00] okay, given what you know about George authentic business coach, what might he say? About this question that I have, I really welcome it and I'm actively, I'm like, well, it's going to take my job anyway. So I might as well actively partner with it to help me take my job so I can do, I can do more better work than this. Sarah: Have you experimented with the, with a chatbot? Bought George: I, I have, I have a custom experiment. I have a custom GPT Okay. Called the Authentic Business Coach. So those of you who have a chat, GPT subscription pro subscription or plus subscription, can actually find the authentic business coach Chat custom GPT, which are trained on all books. Oh, wonderful. My, I'll look that up. They're trained on all my books and it tries to sound like me, but of course, , it's, I, I talk with him myself. I'm like, yeah, you, you, you got it. Like. 60 percent right, what I might say, but it's, it's okay. It's better than nothing. Sarah: It's fun. Yeah. It's just fun to experiment with. Wonderful. Yeah. So go to chat GPT and look for George cow there. And otherwise you'll also find [00:50:00] them on on YouTube wherever, George: wherever, wherever, wherever books are sold and that Sarah: too. Yeah. You have so many wonderful. Well, thank you so much, George. And we'll see each other on George: April 2nd. Thank you. Thanks, Sarah. Thank you so much. Thank you. Sarah: Take care. I hope you got some great value from listening to this episode and took notes about all the different numbers that make up the 1 1 1 formula. You can find out more about George and his work at georgecow. com and also look up at his YouTube channel, for example, or do what he suggested. And go to chat PT and type in George Kao. You'll also find his curated selection of articles about authentic marketing at George Kao as KAO. By the way, ka and dot com slash authentic dash marketing. And please do join us for the 90 minute workshop [00:51:00] on April 2nd, where we go in depth into these topics. All the details can be found at humane. marketing forward slash workshop. If you're part of our community, the humane marketing circle, you can join us for free and you get the recording as well. And if you're not part of the community yet, well, this is a good reason to join us. But otherwise it's donation based. The suggested price is 27, but there's also a pay when you can option 15. To become a member of the humane marketingforward. com. a marketing circle. You can go to humane. marketing forward slash circle. You find the show notes of this episode at humane. marketing forward slash H M 1 8 5. And on this beautiful page, you'll also find a series of free offers such as the humane business manifesto, as well as make two books, marketing like a human and selling George: like a human. so much for listening and being a [00:52:00] part of a generation of marketer's friends. For yourself. Sarah: We are changing history for America.

At this point in the year, it's still early enough to make some plans to level up your property management business. One of the best ways to learn new strategies is by masterminding with other professionals. In this episode, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull talk about the importance of strategic time as a business owner as well as some upcoming events for property management entrepreneurs. You'll Learn [02:06] The concept of your default future [06:43] The four reasons for having a business [10:26] 2024 events for property managers [16:51] Why masterminding matters [19:44] The ultimate event for property management entrepreneurs Tweetables “If you're working with any business, they should be helping you change your future outcomes.” “Worse is still different, but not probably the change we were hoping for.” “I never want to be the smartest person in the room. If I am, that means I'm in the wrong room.” “They say you're the sum of the five people that you are around the most or something like that, but I think your business will be the sum of the five property managers are the most connected to.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: They say you're the sum of the five people that you are around the most or something like that, but I think your business will be the sum of the five property managers are the most connected to and to be connected in our mastermind to other mastermind members  [00:00:13] Welcome DoorGrowers 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 are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrower. DoorGrower property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many 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 Hull and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show. All right. [00:01:11] So before this show, we were talking about what we should be talking about in today's episode. So what are we going to talk about today?  [00:01:18] Sarah: We will talk about getting ready for your 2024 and prepping, getting your schedule ready for some events that we've got coming up. [00:01:27] Jason: Okay. It is January 26. January 2nd. Sorry. I don't know why I said that January 2nd. What's wrong with you? I don't know. I don't know. I think I saw the clock. All right, so it's January 2nd The new year has just started. This episode will probably come out on the main podcast a little bit later, but we wanted to kick things off for the new year. [00:01:49] Make sure that everybody gets in momentum. I think 2024 is going to be a wild year. Every election year is. It's going to be interesting. So let's talk about your property management business, how you can get more of what you want and grow. So let's talk about some of the stuff coming up. All right. Where should we start? [00:02:06] Sarah: Let's first start about talking about what did your 2023 look like? Was it what you wanted it to look like? Was it maybe a little different where there's some curve balls that came at you in the middle of the year and threw the whole plan that you had off balance and if so, what are you going to do differently in 2024? [00:02:26] So if you change nothing, if you do nothing different, your 2024 will look probably pretty similar to your 2023 if not worse because the market is totally different, at least part of 2023. The market was good. The real estate market was pretty decent. It's not so decent right now. It's a little bit cooler. [00:02:45] In fact, we're really close to it flipping over to a buyer's market.  [00:02:49] Jason: Okay. And for those of you listening, I think you'll really enjoy this concept. This is one of my favorite closes when it comes to converting people into clients or customers. And we call it the default future versus created future close. So it's important to take a look at your default future is. What you're going to get in the next year, and you can easily base it on what you did the last year and the year before that, and the year before that, you should have a pretty good idea of what your default future looks like. And if you're working with any business, they should be helping you change your future outcomes, right? They should be helping you improve your future. So for you selling to your clients, they should have a default future if they continue to DIY, do it themselves, manage their own property, work with the crappy property manager they've got now, whatever their current future is. [00:03:36] They should have a different created future if they're working with you and you need to help them see a different alternate future reality that includes you. So we run into people all the time that have had a very uncomfortable default future in property management. They have not grown for the last sometimes 10 years. [00:03:55] They've struggled. We have a client we just got on. He's been around 50 units for a decade. So that means it's a grind. That means there's a lot of churn, losing a lot of customers while you're adding customers and you're just not growing, right? Some of y'all are down in doors because I've heard the excuse of the pandemic or people, a bunch of my clients sold or whatever. [00:04:15] So a lot of you might be down in doors. And so your current future, default future looks even worse than last year or the year before, right? So we want to shift you towards a created future. Yeah, so how do we do that. Okay you do that with DoorGrow, right? So we are really good at helping create a different alternate reality for you a different future That includes us. [00:04:39] And because we've been able to coach and support so many, like hundreds of property management, business owners, we have tactics strategies that we've developed over time that we're always. Honing, improving, figuring out that have allowed us to increase our client's door count, make their operations smoother, improve their team, lower the entrepreneur's pressure and noise, decrease their stress, make the business more fun so they feel like they're more of a business owner. [00:05:07] And so these are the things that we do. At door girl. All right. And we've got a bunch of events that we do throughout the year that help to facilitate our vision in helping transform property management business owners and their businesses.  [00:05:20] Sarah: Now is a really good time to plan out "what do I want my year to look like this year? Do I want it to look like more of the same? Or do I want it to look different, but positively different" because it can still look different, just maybe worse. Worse is still different, but not probably the change we were hoping for. Yeah. So if you want your business and your life and your income and your team and your day to improve, then you may need to just be open to doing things a little bit differently than you have before. [00:05:52] And I think being that we're at the beginning of the year, this is a really good time to set some time aside for you. Set some time aside to make sure that you're prioritizing the things that you really want to get out of the business or out of your life. And how do we do that? There's a few events that we have coming up throughout the year. [00:06:12] You can find all of our events, all of the details on doorgrow.com/events. And that will show you our event calendar. What event, who it's for, what the cost is, where it's located, the dates, all of that kind of information is on there. And if you go all the way to the bottom, there's a quick little video I recorded with even more details. [00:06:34] So you can watch the whole thing. It's only a couple minutes long, or you can skip to the part that talks about the event you're interested in.  [00:06:41] Jason: Okay, cool. So for this new year, I would like to recap the four reasons, because I think. It's important to take a step back and assess your business through the lens of these four things. [00:06:55] We have a fifth reason, so maybe the five, but we want to take a look at your business through this lens and make sure you're actually headed in the right direction. Because it's very possible to be making more and more money in your business and become more and more miserable. And that's not the goal. [00:07:09] We didn't start businesses to become more miserable. We thought we started them to make more money, but what we really want is what more money can give us, right? We're hoping more money can give us more, number one, fulfillment. We get to spend more of our time doing the things we enjoy doing. More and more freedom. [00:07:24] We feel free. We don't feel trapped. We don't feel stuck. We don't feel like we're controlled. We don't feel like our business runs us. We don't feel like a slave or servant to our business. We feel free, right? Freedom. The third reason is Contribution. So if we have freedom and fulfillment, usually then we want to make a difference to others, right? [00:07:44] We want to benefit other people too. It's just innate I think in entrepreneurs, we want to change the world. We want to make it a better place. We want to improve things. We see problems and we're like, "I can make money solving that problem, right? That's contribution. That means making a difference to your family, to your team, to your clients, to everybody that you can have impact with and so contribution, I think, is one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves. It feels really good to benefit others. And then the fourth reason is support. It's really difficult to have fulfillment, freedom, contribution if we don't have a team because then we end up doing and wearing all the hats that we don't want to wear and we should only be wearing the hats. Eventually, if we had the ultimate business, it gives us the ultimate level of fulfillment and freedom. Then we are only spending our time wearing the hats that we most enjoy wearing, which would mean we have a really good team that supports us and they enjoy wearing the hats that they're wearing and they take those off of our plates. [00:08:41] So we don't have to wear those hats. And so those are the four reasons. Now there is a fifth reason, and this is important to recognize. This is what your team members want more than the four reasons, typically. This is what your clients want often more than the four reasons... they want safety and certainty. [00:08:58] They want peace of mind. And so this is why a lot of people are willing to give up fulfillment, freedom, even contribution. They're willing to give those up and trade them in order to have safety and certainty. This is why they will go get a job. This is why they want to do what they're told to by maybe the media at times, right? [00:09:17] They want to be safe and entrepreneurs were a little bit, we're wired a little bit differently. We care more about having our freedom than safety and certainty, but we also want that too. And so having our business built out in a way that gives us all five of those things gives us the ultimate business and it allows us then to make a real impact and to have a really good team and to have less stress. [00:09:39] And so this is our primary goal with DoorGrow is to move you towards that. So take inventory. How do you feel you rate on each of these five areas right now? Do you feel you have safety and certainty? Do you feel like you have support and a really great team? You really feel supported in your business? [00:09:54] Do you feel like you've got freedom and fulfillment? You get to do the things that you really want to do. You're really enjoying your day today. You feel like you're making a difference out there and contributing in the best way. If you don't have those things, even though you have a bunch of money coming in or a lot of doors, you built the wrong business. [00:10:11] And it doesn't mean you need to change businesses or industries. It just means you need to change what your role is in that business. So 2024, let's move you towards more towards the four reasons. All right. So should we talk about some of the events we have coming up? Yeah, let's do it.  [00:10:26] Sarah: Let's talk about the events scheduled for 2024. [00:10:29] By the time this airs, it'll still be early in the year. So you should be able to mark your calendars for the things that sound interesting to you and make sure that you prioritize your business so that you are set up for success so that you are able to grow so that you are able to get more of the day to day stuff that you just don't enjoy the stuff that bogs you down off of your plate because this is not the life that you need to live, but it's really common for property managers, so make sure that you prioritize this stuff. [00:10:59] So let's talk about some of the events that we've got coming up this year. What's first? Okay. The first thing we have, this is for our clients only. It's in January this month now. And that is open to all of our current mastermind clients. We're going to San Diego, California. So these type of events if you join the DoorGrow Mastermind, you'll have access to them. [00:11:20] So what our tribe events are. They're usually smaller events. They're not huge with, like 100 people or more. They're smaller, more intimate events. So if you're a little bit more on the introverted side, then this event might be really good for you because you get to create close connections with people. [00:11:39] So Jason and I attend these events as well as some of our clients. So you'll get to network and spend some time with other property management business owners. And what we'll be doing, this event, we do a little bit of business and a little bit of fun. So we have some activities planned out there for the day and either before lunch or at lunch or probably both because that's what happened last time is we're going to be, talking shop, talking business, what's working, what's not working, what's your plan? [00:12:07] What are you working on? How can we help support you in that? So that's our first one.  [00:12:11] Jason: Okay, cool. Now we have some other things happening in January. [00:12:13] I'll just throw out there. If you're hearing this later and you miss this stuff, we might have recordings that you might be able to get access to if it's one of our public things. But make sure that you stay connected to us, follow us and are connected to us on social media or you're inside our Facebook group at doorgrowclub. com where we broadcast this and stream it live so that you don't miss out each week. January 11th in a week, we are going to do with our clients a jumpstart 2024 call on zoom where you can 10x your year. And we're going to talk about 10xing your growth in your property management business. [00:12:47] What's next? [00:12:48] Sarah: Okay. So the next event that's coming up will be open to everyone So if you're currently in our mastermind or not yet in our mastermind, or you were formerly in the mastermind, this will be open to everyone. We have our boardroom event that's coming up March 13th and 14th. It will be in Round Rock, Texas, which is just north of Austin. [00:13:10] And that event, we actually launched a lot of these events for the first time last year in 2023. We've had some success with them. Clients really enjoy these style of events, so we carried them on into this year. So the boardroom event, it is a smaller event. We will probably limit it to about six clients, like six businesses total. [00:13:35] For that reason, because we really want to be able to go deep. If the event gets too big, then we have to stay granular and more topical and this event, we call it boardroom because we sit on each other's boards, it's a two day event. And what we'll do is we'll really get in and we'll like tinker with your business and see, where are you spending your time? [00:13:55] What does your team look like, what does your profit margin look like? What does your revenue look like? Where are you struggling? Where are you succeeding? So we really get in and we go deep with clients on the smaller style events. So spots will be limited. If you're interested in attending any of our events or getting more information, just go to doorgrow.com/events. [00:14:15] All of the information is there.  [00:14:17] Jason: Yeah. The last boardroom room event that we did was pretty awesome. So everybody walked away with a really solid set of clarity and to do items to take their business to the next level. And what was interesting is, a lot of them were really stuck and couldn't see where they needed to go next. [00:14:34] And so this allows us the opportunity to really go deep with the business owners. And so they get a lot of value from this.  [00:14:40] Sarah: So that one is coming up March 13th and 14th. It will be in round rock, which is like North Austin here in Texas. That one is very focused on business. So we do break for lunch. [00:14:52] We do go for dinner. But it's boardroom style events. So we're in session almost all day. It goes from about nine to five  [00:14:59] Jason: is serious stuff. All right  [00:15:01] Sarah: Yes, cool. All right, then this one personally is my favorite is our premium mastermind events we also launched that last year for the first time and This one for me, it's just so fun because it mixes the two things that I love, which is business and travel. [00:15:16] I'm like all about both of these things. So if you're looking for an event that allows you to travel, do something fun, explore the area and really dive into your business in that same depth that we offer in the boardroom, then this event will be for you. So this we do reserve for our current and former mastermind clients only. [00:15:38] It's not open to everyone. But what we do is we get a luxury Airbnb or rental of some sort and we will rotate where they're held. This one that's coming up, it's April 9th and 10th. It will be in Bentonville, Arkansas. Very random spot, but the home is beautiful and it's huge. So we'll do some fun stuff in the area. [00:16:01] What we do, it's about a day and a half event. So we come in, we'll do a mastermind during the day, and then at night we spend some time just, hanging out at the property and getting to know each other and really connecting. It was really interesting because we did this last year in April, and then in May, we had our DoorGrowLive and the clients that attended our premium mastermind, oddly enough, they all also attended our DoorGrowLive, they were like their own little group of people because you just know each other so well, like you've spent time with each other. You really get to know each other's businesses and like business model and what are they doing and what are they all about? [00:16:39] So it was like so worth it for me. And it was amazing to see that at our DoorGrowLive. So if you are a current or former mastermind client, then. This might be a really great event for you.  [00:16:51] Jason: Yeah. These are super fun. It's more of a more personal, more of an intimate setting. [00:16:56] We're hanging out together in the same house. And so the conversations are just, they're just really great. And this allows you to create some relationships and friendships. They say you're the sum of the five people that you are around the most or something like that, but I think your business will be the sum of the five property managers are the most connected to and to be connected in our mastermind to other mastermind members and our mastermind members are different. They're just different than the typical NARPM crowd or the typical crowd of people that are involved in property management. They like love what they get to do and they've shifted more towards the four reasons. They have a much healthier mindset because we've installed a lot of mindset things. This is why we want to bring mastermind clients to these, they're just a different crowd and being able to hang out with other people that are playing a similar game that have a similar mindset is just like next level. [00:17:45] And so the relationships that are created, I think will last a lifetime, which is really awesome.  [00:17:50] Sarah: And I think that's a really good point is there's a lot to be said about who's in your circle and, who you're spending time with. So if your circle is doing things that are either similar or if they're even a step ahead of you, that's fantastic. [00:18:06] You're in the right circle. So I never want to be the smartest person in the room. If I am that means I'm in the wrong room.  [00:18:12] Jason: I like being the smartest person in the room sometimes, but not all the time  [00:18:15] Sarah: No, it's like when we run the events, yeah. I'm talking about when we attend.  [00:18:19] Jason: Yeah, we invest a lot. [00:18:20] We invest a lot And we're a part of groups and have mentors that are like beyond where we're at here at DoorGrow. And being able to create that for clients and facilitate that, is really awesome. We love being able to experience that as well. So great leaders, I think are also great followers. [00:18:36] And I think that's why we're able to deliver so much to our clients is because we go join programs and events and do things like this, where we're the student, where we're learning, where we're connecting with people, where we're masterminding, we want to bring the same value to those that we serve. [00:18:49] So we've gotten really great benefits. We've done some really cool trips, different places, hang out with other entrepreneurs, and we always get a lot out of it. Even when I don't think I'm going to, I'm like "it might be fun." But then it like, sometimes it's changed my life. It's been really impactful. [00:19:04] All right.  [00:19:05] Sarah: Next, we've got our DoorGrow Live. Okay. And as an added kicker this year, if you are a current mastermind client in our super system tier you get your own special event. Yay, so we're tacking it on right before DoorGrowLive, that way it's not additional travel, it's not really like hard to do, it's just gonna mash in with DoorGrowLive, so it will be the day before DoorGrowLive, which is, I believe it's a Thursday, it's May 16th, this is for our current SuperSystem clients only, we will be diving into all things SuperSystem, all things operations at this event. [00:19:41] Jason: Okay. So now DoorGrowLive. The DoorGrowLive is our ultimate event. This is where we get everybody to go, clients, non clients. It's our biggest event of the year. This is fun, interesting. We've got speakers, there's lots of interaction. We've got a lot of fun stuff going on. So this is going to be at the Kalahari Resort in Round Rock, Texas, which is the North Austin area. And it's a super cool resort has a huge indoor water park. It has a bunch of restaurants.  [00:20:11] Sarah: It is Friday and Saturday. It's May 17th and 18th. This is open to everyone. So whether you are a current, former, it doesn't matter. You are never in our mastermind, never a client at all. [00:20:21] Does not matter. It's open to everyone. This is our big event of the year. So we bring in a bunch of different property managers. We bring in some vendors, we bring in some speakers, like it's a two day event. And we're holding it in again, North Austin. So Round Rock, Texas. And the resort is really, it's really great. [00:20:43] It's very nice. The rooms are nice. They have plenty of restaurants to choose from. We did our DoorGrowLive last year there, and we liked it so much. We decided to go back.  [00:20:54] Jason: Yeah. Some venues treat you really well and some treat you really not well. And this one was really good. We really liked it. [00:21:00] Yeah, so make sure you get tickets to DoorGrow live. If you're wanting to just initially put your foot in the toe in the water to see what is it like around the DoorGrow culture? What is it like around DoorGrowers? What is it like around people that are involved in their ecosystem? This would be a great way to decide whether or not you should be spending a whole bunch of money with DoorGrow, right? [00:21:22] Is come hang out at DoorGrow live and see the magic that's going on and learn about the DoorGrow code, learn about people that are scaling up, talk to people that have their different lanyard colors with their different belt levels. Like we've got a whole program of ascension and, just like in martial arts, and so come check it out. [00:21:40] It really is a different thing. This is not your usual conference. Let's say it like that. This is like the ultimate conference We've decided like we want to make these the best that we can make them. So sometimes NARPM events are okay and sometimes NARPM events... maybe they're not. Some of them though, we like we've even had clients say well on some of them our event and NARPM event were right at the same time and they said "there's no way I would skip DoorGrowLive to go to a NARPM But what we've done is we've done everything that we could to make these conferences, the best conferences ever for property managers. [00:22:16] Sarah: There's a lot that goes into it like every little detail that we put into it, we really try to make sure that this is so beneficial and it's the big event of the year. It's open to everyone. So if you're thinking, "Hey I don't know what event I should go to," this would be a really good one to go to because it's so big and there's just so much that goes into it. [00:22:36] You'll get a lot out of it and it's not the boring conference that you're going to go and sit and fall asleep. And go, "Oh God, is it lunch yet. Can I go home now?" It's not like that at all. It's very exciting. There's a lot going on and we always provide really good opportunities to meet and talk with other people too. [00:22:55] So it's not just like you're in session all day long. There's a lot of opportunities to network with other property management business owners.  [00:23:02] Jason: Yeah we actively try to facilitate that because we know that that's one of the biggest benefits we've gotten from going to events. It's just the connections that we actively facilitate that. [00:23:11] I think what makes, the DoorGrowLive events stand out is that it's a bit more holistic. We're not just focused only on property management. We're focused on improving you and your life and focusing on entrepreneurship, focusing on taking things to the next level. So people get a lot out of it and it really can be life changing instead of just business changing.  [00:23:30] Sarah: So that's our big one. Now, if you like vacation style events, this one is a newer one. So we're testing this out this year. This is going to be our first one ever it's DoorGrow retreat. Yeah, so this will mix a little bit of business and lots of vacation style. [00:23:47] So this is open to your family to your kids to your spouse, whomever wants to join you and let it be like a business trip on a tax write off for sure So we will still do some business stuff and it's vacation style event, and that is going to be July 17th through 21st. And it will be in Punta de Mita in Mexico. [00:24:10] Yay. Super excited. So you will need a passport.  [00:24:12] Jason: Get those passports ready. Get them now. We're going to mexico. So yeah, and this is gonna be a nice resort.  [00:24:19] Sarah: Oh, it's yeah, it's very nice.  [00:24:21] Jason: We go to nice places. All right. Yeah. Cool. A little picky. All right. All right.  [00:24:25] Sarah: Then, second half of the year, we just mirror what we do the first half of the year. So for a lot of things, not for everything, but for a lot of them, we like to have a spring session and a fall session. [00:24:35] So our tribe meetup, we do two per year, one in January and then one in September. And again, this is for our current mastermind clients only. It will be September 11th will be our next in person tribe meetup location to be announced. Why? Because if you're a mastermind member, you guys get to submit your ideas and vote on it. [00:24:52] Then we have another premium mastermind event. So again, spring session, fall session, our fall session will be October 22nd and 23rd. This is open for our current and former mastermind clients. Only this one will be in Water Sound, Florida. We've got a really nice place there lined up. And then boardroom. So again, spring session, fall session. Our fall session will be November 20th and 21st, and we'll hold that here in round rock, Texas. Those are our events that we've got coming up. I'm super excited for all of them.  [00:25:21] Jason: Yeah. I don't know that we've ever talked about all the different events and there's a lot of virtual events and online things we do for our mastermind members as well, besides all of this. [00:25:29] And we've never really talked about this. I don't think as much on the podcast. So I'm sure there's people listening. They're like, "Oh, I didn't realize DoorGrow did all this stuff or had all this stuff going on." We've got a lot going on. Yeah. In fact, one of the consistent pieces of feedback we get from Mastermind members is, "wow, there's a lot." [00:25:44] There is a lot. It can be a little overwhelming in the beginning. So we really hold people's hand to make sure they can navigate everything in DoorGrow Academy, all of our events, all the online classes, everything that we've got going on to make sure that it is geared towards what they need most and they don't get distracted by all the shiny objects everywhere. [00:26:02] So it's important. But if you're interested in any of this. You're interested in coming and jumping into the DoorGrow ecosystem. We have plenty of free trainings we would love to throw at you based on what your current challenges are, so you can get an idea of how we can support you, how we can help you. We've got a lot of case studies and testimonials. [00:26:18] I think over a hundred now on our playlist on YouTube of our case studies you can check out. See if you can trust these DoorGrow people. And once you're beyond the paywall and you're in with our clients, you'll get it. It's pretty awesome. But between now and then, feel free to join our Facebook group, which I mentioned earlier, go to DoorGrowClub.com and you get access to our podcast live. You get access to our masterclasses that we promote. That are free, you get access to a lot of really cool stuff and we've got a bunch of stuff, cool stuff in the file section there as well. It's available.  [00:26:51] It's a great online community. And if you join it and you have to put in your email address, answer the questions and if we give you access, it's for property management business owners. We reject 70 percent of applicants. So it's a little bit exclusive, which makes it really cool. But if we give you access, you'll also get five emails that are sent to you. Like a fee Bible we're gonna send you gifts, we're gonna send you some free stuff.  [00:27:15] I think we've covered all the events. Sarah's always coming up with more ideas, so there might be more stuff that we're going to be doing. [00:27:21] But yes, this is a pretty good overview.  [00:27:22] Sarah: If you can give me the opportunity to travel, I'm probably going to take it.  [00:27:25] Jason: She'll add it to the program for sure. All right. All right. So we appreciate everybody hanging out with us. We hope that this has opened your eyes a little bit to some of the cool stuff that's going on in DoorGrow, inspiring you to get plugged into our ecosystem. [00:27:37] And we are all about helping property management business owners take their business to the next level and grow. And until next time to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. [00:27:46] 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!  [00:28:12] 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 on the podcast, Sarah joins us from Minnesota. Sarah got COVID-19 very early on in her first pregnancy during the height of the pandemic. The protocol at her practice was to recommend a precautionary 39-week induction. Sarah trusted her doctor and consented to the induction along with other interventions that were suggested. Her birth ended in a Cesarean under general anesthesia. During recovery, Sarah's knees would buckle to the point where she needed assistance walking and fell until the problem slowly resolved. When she achieved her VBAC, Sarah was able to immediately walk unassisted. She wasn't groggy from just having had anesthesia. Her throat didn't hurt. She got the immediate skin-to-skin she missed the first time.Sarah is such an amazing example of how powerful a VBAC birth can be, especially with the right prep and the right team. We just love how hands-off and supportive her doctor was. Sarah went into her birth mentally and physically strong. She labored hard, stayed calm, and pushed her baby boy out in 20 minutes!Additional LinksNeeded WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Welcome to The VBAC Link. We have a story for you today coming from Minnesota. We have our friend, Sarah. And Sarah, tell me. Did you have your babies both in Minnesota or have you moved since then? Sarah: Yes, both in Minnesota. Meagan: Both in Minnesota. All right, so Minnesota parents, listen up. This is a wonderful episode in your area. Review of the WeekAs always, we have a Review of the week but first I want to talk a little bit about COVID-19. Sarah and I were just talking about how we have seen so many COVID-19 stories coming through. They had their C-section through COVID-19 or even had their VBAC during COVID-19 and then now they have gone on to VBAC. There is definitely a trend of situations that we are seeing so I'm just so curious today. Go comment on today's episode and let us know if you have any relation, but a lot of providers are wanting to induce if you have the virus, COVID-19. Sarah, that was kind of the case with you, right? They wanted to induce because you had COVID-19. Sarah: Yes. That was kind of the standard of care at that point. Meagan: Yes, which is kind of interesting to think about the new standard of care. I really am curious to see one day what the Cesarean rates did during COVID-19. You know, there is some evidence here and there on it, but I'm really curious to see what the Cesarean rate did because we do have a lot of people saying that they were induced because they had COVID and then they ended in a Cesarean. So we're going to talk a little bit. She's going to share her birth and her induction story that then led to her VBAC. But of course, we have that review. It is by Raving Abbeh and the title is “Confidence.” It says, “I found this podcast at 34 weeks pregnant and it helped me gain the confidence to fight for my chance and get a VBAC. I hope to submit a success story in a few weeks.” And guess what? This was also during 2020, so Raving Abbeh, if you haven't submitted your story, we would love you to and as always, you guys, we're always accepting stories. We definitely record in chunks, so know that if it takes time, that doesn't mean you haven't been chosen or you will never be chosen, but if you want to submit your story, go to thevbaclink.com/share. Sarah's StoriesMeagan: Okay, Sarah. Welcome to the show. Sarah: I'm so excited. Meagan: I'm so excited. I'm so, so excited. Well, tell us more about this 39-week induction and why they were saying it was the new norm. It was the protocol, right? Sarah: Yes. So at this time, I was working full-time in the hospital where I gave birth as a radiographer– an X-ray tech. I was kind of in the world a little bit. It was definitely not a fun time to work in the hospital. I actually tested positive when I was 8 weeks pregnant, so very newly pregnant. I was seeing family med for my provider and what they were doing at that time, they said, “Okay. This is what's going to be different. You're going to meet with a high-risk OB who specialized in COVID.” I would have growth ultrasounds every 4 weeks and then also, they were recommending this induction at 39 weeks. When I asked about that, what she said was that they had seen issues with the placenta. That was the reason that they had. I actually looked back on it now and I think in the study, they really only had 16 pregnant people so that was what they were basing this all off on. Meagan: Which is really nothing to start making a protocol so wide-ranged. Sarah: Right. Right. And actually, right now, my sister-in-law had COVID and she's pregnant. She had COVID at the same time I did at 8 weeks, but now it's 2023 and her doctor is not doing the growth ultrasounds. They're not recommending induction. There actually is nothing different with her current, right-now pregnancy which I find interesting. Meagan: Interesting, right? Right? Sarah: But again, it can range. Meagan: In 2020, it's interesting because they were like, “Oh, we're going to have you with this provider who specializes in COVID pregnancies,” but how does someone specialize that fast? Sarah: Right. The person that was the specialized person was the highest-up person in the department of OB. Meagan: Okay, so definitely a specialized OB. Okay. Sarah: Right. I actually only ended up meeting up with her one time because if there was anything abnormal, that's when I would go to her but my pregnancy was completely normal. I had no issues related to COVID or related to anything else which was obviously a blessing, but kind of also a bummer because now, I'm going to have this completely unnecessary induction at 39 weeks.Meagan: Yeah. Sarah: She did mention at the time that if I wanted to go past 39 weeks, I could definitely make that choice but she would do NSTs. Now after learning so much and being where I am now, I would have been like, “Okay. Let's go longer and do NSTs,” but at the time as a first-time parent, I was like, “That sounds kind of weird. Let's just do what you think.” Meagan: It sounds intense with all of these extra visits. It's a lot. It sounds like a lot. Sarah: Yeah. Otherwise, about that pregnancy, being a first-time parent and having this medical background, it's no surprise probably that my attitudes towards the doctors were that I completely trusted their knowledge with the COVID stuff because it was so new. Meagan: Oh yeah, and scary. Sarah: Yeah, definitely, but I was completely unaware that there was such a wide range of ways to treat pregnancies and so many different attitudes on how to birth babies. I was just clueless to the whole thing about the cascade of interventions and why do inductions have an increased risk of C-section? I was completely clueless to it. I am just used to with a doctor, you have a certain condition and there are ways to treat it. It was very narrow. But with birth, there are midwives. There are doulas. There are so many different ways to treat someone's birth and pregnancy that was just over my head. When people would ask me, “Oh, why are you having an induction?” and tell me that maybe I shouldn't do that, I was like, “Oh, well why wouldn't I when they say that is the best thing to do for this COVID situation?” For me, it was like, “Well, they know better than me.” Meagan: Right, yeah. Sarah: I think you say all the time that you don't know what you don't know. Meagan: You don't know what you don't know and you can't judge yourself for not knowing what you don't know. Sarah: Yes. I definitely had to work through forgiving myself for sure. Meagan: Yeah. You have to take the information. I think I talked about this too. My husband had said this. We took the information we were given and made the best choice that we felt we had with the information provided. Sarah:  Yes. Meagan: Right? And that's what you did. Sarah: Right. Honestly, it's funny now. Even just preparing for birth in general, take away the COVID part, it's kind of funny how I did basically nothing to prepare for birth. I just focused on my registry and other things like that after the baby got there. It was kind of because I had this, “Oh if I go with the flow, I'll have the best outcome. I don't want to put too many expectations on myself. I don't want to pressure myself. I'm just going to go with the flow. I don't know how my body is going to handle it,” which does have a place. There is a goodness to that, but I think I was a little too extreme where I was like, “My mom had C-sections. I know if that happens, it happens.” It was just very, “Whatever happens, happens.” Now, I look back and I'm like, “Well, now all I did was have no tools in my toolbox to deal with pain, labor, or resources to help make those hard decisions that I was going to have to make.” I had nothing in the background to help me with that. Meagan: No tools in your toolbox. Sarah: Exactly. That's why it was very different for my second birth but at that time, I was like, “Okay, whatever happens, happens. I don't know what's going to happen to me or how my body is going to take it, so we'll just see what happens.” I was scheduled at 39 weeks on a Monday and actually, that Friday before, they called me and said, “Hey, do you want to come in early? We have a lot of people scheduled on Monday.” I was like, “Oh, I'm excited to meet my baby. I'll go in even earlier,” which is like, oh. Okay. That weekend, we were actually moving into our new house an hour away. Meagan: Oh my gosh. Sarah: We actually spent one night at our new house and the next day we drove back to Rochester to have our baby but we were so excited. Meagan: Yeah. Absolutely. Sarah: I wasn't even thinking about anything else. We were scheduled for a 7:00 PM Saturday appointment then. When I got there, I was completely 0% dilated. Closed. 0, 0, 0, -3 station. Furthest from ready. Meagan: Not ready to have a baby, yeah. Sarah: No. So they started me with Cytotec overnight and in the morning, they placed the Cook catheter then they started Pitocin right after. I faintly remember watching Beauty and the Beast bouncing on a ball, but that was the extent of any movement in my labor. Like I said, I didn't prepare for anything. I just was like, “Oh, bounce on a ball. Everyone says that's good.” I didn't do much. But what did start happening was the baby was having decels, not liking the Pitocin, so I had to get moved from side to side. I was lying on the bed– not the best position to have the baby not be so high up. Meagan: Right. Sarah: But then by 10:00 AM, they took out the Cook catheter. I was 4 centimeters dilated. Things were moving along. But then at 11:00, they had to turn down the Pitocin because again, the baby was still not tolerating it very well. Then I felt a big pop in my belly and I was like, “Oh, is this what it feels like when your water breaks?” I was excited. I'm like, “Oh, that sounded like a balloon popping.” So they came in and they were like, “No, we don't see anything. Your water didn't break.” I was like, “Oh, okay sure.” Meagan: I felt something. Sarah: So then a half hour later, they came back in because they had to actually turn off the Pitocin because the baby still wasn't happy. They checked me and they're like, “Oh, there's all your water,” and it gushed out on them. So I was like, “Okay, well at least I know that I can trust my intuition even though you didn't quite believe me.” Meagan: Yes. Sarah: But I'm not crazy. It did break. The contractions were getting really intense at this point. I tried laughing gas. It didn't really work. At that point, I decided, “Okay. I'm ready for an epidural. I feel like I've gotten as far as I can with what I prepared,” which was nothing. I actually found out this after the fact, but at this point, they actually gave me medicine to stop my contractions. Meagan: Like terbutaline or something?Sarah: Yes, exactly. They gave me that at this point. I actually have no recollection of this, but I was able to look at my records after the fact and I was like, “Oh, I never knew they even gave me that.” Apparently, they gave me that to stop things or slow them down or whatever. I was about 5 centimeters dilated at this point and they placed the epidural. Everything went smoothly with that and then an hour later, they were like, “Oh, we're going to start the Pitocin again.” I was like, “Okay.” I was 5 centimeters at that point and then 40 minutes later, they checked me and I was 9 centimeters. Meagan: Whoa, so your body went into total relaxation mode and dilated. Sarah: Yes. Yes. I was like, “Cool. That was fast.” They had just sent away the doctor. They had to call her back. Shortly after that, I was at 10 centimeters, ready to go. This is when they had me start pushing. One important part that I know now is that I don't remember ever feeling pressure or the urge to push or anything like that. They were just like, “Okay. It's time to push.” I'm like, “Okay.”I did end up pushing for about 3 hours. They did let me try a few different positions. They tried to turn down my epidural to help too, but she never really progressed past that zero station. So nothing was happening. I was mostly on my back for all of it.I remember them saying that they would let me push for the most at 4 hours, but at the 3-hour mark, I was exhausted. I felt like we had made no progress. I was just like, “Nothing's going to change in another hour at this point for me. I don't know what I'm doing. You try to tell me how to push. I still don't know.” Meagan: Yeah. You're just like, “I'm tired.” Sarah: Exactly. The contractions were beginning to be really painful. Again, I didn't really have a way to cope with them. The pushing wasn't working so I consented to the C-section. I just remember feeling so defeated and just crying, being wheeled into the OR. My doctor stayed right by my head and talked to me until my husband was supposed to come in because I kept saying, “Hey, I feel these contractions. They are strong.” They were trying to give me all of the medicine to numb me enough. They were doing the prick test to make sure that I couldn't feel it and I just remember it was really hard because my nose was plugged up from crying. I felt like I couldn't breathe anyway. I wasn't sure about the pokes. I was like, “They are sharp to me. I feel them. They don't feel like pressure. They feel sharp.” They were like, “Okay. Well, we're going to have to put you under.” They put the mask on me. I breathed in and went to sleep. Meagan: And you were gone. Sarah: Yep. Then I was gone. Meagan: Your husband probably never came in then? Sarah: So he did get to go into the OR. She was born. They let him go in so he was all gowned up. He was in the OR. He kind of tells it like, “Yeah, it was so weird. I looked over and there you were on the table.” He wasn't so close to me. Meagan: Sleeping. Sarah: But yeah. I was sleeping. He did get to do skin-to-skin. They let him do that in the OR which was really nice. They got a bunch of pictures of her getting weighed and him cutting the cord in there so it was nice to have some of those pictures that I can look back on. Meagan: Right. Sarah: That's something. Meagan: Right, yeah. It helps you relate, too, when you're not awake. Sarah: Exactly. It was definitely a weird experience. But when I did come to, apparently, I had been awake longer but you know how that works. When you're waking up from anesthesia, it's kind of weird. But apparently, when I woke up, they told me that I was just like, “Where's the baby? Where's the baby? Where's the baby?” They rushed me back. I don't remember any of that, but what I do remember is when I woke up, my throat was so sore and hurt so bad. But she was on me and she latched immediately and started feeding so that was really special. Meagan: Yes. Sarah: Just how she was able to eat right away and I didn't have any problems with that which was really nice. I know that can happen sometimes. That's basically that birth. Meagan: An unexpected ending and a less-ideal situation, but then to come out and have things work out really nicely was probably really healing and comforting. Sarah: Yes. Right away, I was definitely happy. She was healthy. I was okay. She was eating. But I remember just recovering from a C-section, you're in a fog. I remember my legs being in those machines to keep the blood flowing, having a catheter, having my sore throat, and whispering to talk. That kind of thing was definitely not a fun recovery in that aspect right immediately after. Meagan: Yeah. Sarah: I actually had a really weird thing. I had problems with my knees. Meagan: Oh. Sarah: I have never heard anyone else talk about this. Meagan: Interesting, like wobbly and strong? Sarah: So what happened was once they took out the catheter and then they give you the, “Okay, it's time to try to go to the bathroom for the first time.” When I tried to stand up, my knees would just buckle. The first day, I had to have two people assist me to the bathroom. The second day, it was also a two-assist. Slowly, they started to not always buckle. I was in the hospital, I think, for four days. Four or five days. Eventually, they wouldn't buckle but when I got home, they would buckle when I went upstairs. I did fall twice but slowly, they did get better. It was fine. It was just if I unexpectedly took a step. My cat scared me and I stepped and then I would fall because my knee wasn't expecting it. Meagan: I just looked it up because I am legitimately curious. It says, “Acute lower limb compartment syndrome after a Cesarean.” Sarah: Oh. Hmm. Meagan: Interesting. So it can happen. Sarah: Interesting. I was just kind of assuming it was a mix of me being numbed from the waist down for hours and then my legs being up in the air for hours and then being in the C-section, and then also laying down. Do you know what I mean? Something with that, but no doctor or anything ever said anything to me about it. They were just like, “Oh, okay. That's weird.” Meagan: Yeah. Really, really interesting. It says that it's rare. Sarah: Oh. Meagan: It's pretty rare, so you get to be in one of those rare groups. Thank you for sharing. Sarah: Yeah, so otherwise, I hadn't really fully processed the birth but every time I would tell my birth story, I would choke up or cry and that's when I realized, “Oh, maybe I didn't really like that very much” because at first, you're just happy the baby is okay and you're okay. I actually remember right afterward, I was like, “Oh, okay for any other baby, I'll just schedule a C-section. This time it will be planned and I'm going to be awake for it.” I honestly wasn't even thinking about VBAC right away. I was just like, “Oh, the future will be easier. It will be fine.” But when my daughter was around 6 months old, I started to listen to The Birth Hour and I found myself searching C-section stories, looking for things like mine which led me to hearing VBAC stories, searching those out, and then finally finding The VBAC Link. That was the big game changer. I am so appreciative of you guys having this podcast and keeping it going on and all that. Meagan: Absolutely. Sarah: Such an inspiration. I learned so much even from both podcasts about interventions, doulas, birth teams, and most importantly, trusting in a woman's body. It kind of leads me to this big thing. It's like, why do we have to go through some sort of trauma to become an advocate for women and educate ourselves? Meagan: Right? Sarah: I feel like that's such a theme. Meagan: It's so true though. It's so true. Why do we have to go through a really crappy experience? It doesn't always have to be crappy. I'm not saying C-sections are crappy, but a big experience to have passion and to feel that motivation behind that.Sarah: Exactly. Yep. Sometimes, it's so hard because it's like when you talk to someone who hasn't been affected by this kind of situation where it doesn't go their way in the hospital, it sounds like a conspiracy theory. “You can't trust the doctors.” That's not what we're saying. It's so much more than that. Meagan: It is. It really is. It's not even just in birth. Truly, right? My husband does not do what he does, I think, mainly just because he didn't want to do it one day. It was like, “Hey, this really unfortunate situation happened to someone I love and I want to be available in a different manner to help them or help anybody else.” So he took on his profession. It's like IBCLCs– I'm sure a lot of them have had unfortunate or poor nursing experiences and are like, “We want to help other people have better experiences.”Sarah: Yes, because it's the information that, “Oh, wow.” It makes complete sense that, “Oh, things might go a little bit better if you let your body naturally do it.” Oh, well yeah. That makes sense. It makes sense that, “Oh, if I have someone who's trained in positioning, maybe if I move my body in this way, then I can get my baby in a better position to come out better. Oh, that makes sense. Why didn't I know that? Why didn't my doctor say, ‘Hey, there are some positions that can help.'” It's confusing to me. It's like, well that makes sense. Meagan: Yeah. Sarah: Yeah. So obviously, I just dove right into all of the VBAC stuff and learning all about that and listening to different stories. I was super excited for my next pregnancy because I had made the decision, “Yes. I'm going to go for a VBAC and I'm super excited about it.” I was ready to do all of the things to make it more successful. We got pregnant when my daughter was around 15 months old. We wanted a two-year age gap and they're both two years apart in April so that worked out for us. Meagan: Perfectly, yeah. Sarah: So the things I did to make it more successful– they are all things that people on this podcast talk about. For physical things, it was workouts that focused on birth prep. I didn't do anything crazy like walking for miles and miles every day. I just did the minimal which was doing some exercises every day for hips opening, cat/cow, and all of that stuff. I did the Miles Circuit later on in pregnancy every day. I ate my dates every day. I drank my tea.Then I think the biggest thing, too, is mentally preparing. For mentally preparing, I got my doula. I really love that the doula does the meetings before the birth. I didn't even know that when I had heard people talk about doulas but meeting before and talking about what birth plan I wanted, what things– Meagan: Your desires. Sarah: Exactly and what things could happen. I'm like, “This would be so helpful for a first-time parent to know all of this stuff.” I wish I had gotten her with my first. Also, just talking about coping mechanisms, what are some positions that we are going to do, talk about scenarios. It was great. Then I also, for mentally preparing, I looked up a bunch of different coping mechanisms. I actually did Hypnobabies. I wasn't consistent with the meditation, but it was very helpful to practice the breathing and visualization. Meagan: I did too. I did it as well. Sarah: I was really bad at the meditations so that didn't stick with me, but it was really, really great to practice the breathing and all of that. And honestly, just listening to birth stories is mentally preparing because I would really only focus on positive stories toward the end of my pregnancy. I was like, “Okay, now we are in the home stretch. We are just going to stick to all of the positive ones.” The big thing, too, was finding my provider. I joined The VBAC Cesarean Support Group on Facebook way earlier and everyone had all of the recommendations of who to go to. My provider is actually family med, but he is more like a midwife. Actually, my doula said that he's actually more crunchy than a midwife as a family med. For all of the births that she attended, she said, “He is more hands-off than a midwife.” I'm like, “Wow.” Meagan: Wow, that's cool. Sarah: And what's great is that he attends all of his births so there is no rotating call schedule. Meagan: Which is huge. Sarah: There's no, “Who's going to be there?” He's very trusting of women's bodies. I did my due diligence and I asked him, “How often have you personally seen a uterine rupture? How often do you use the vacuum? How often have you done episiotomies?” You know, so just asking him all of the things. He had really great responses and I felt really solid with him. Meagan: Which is really important, right? To have those conversations also. We know that when they come in and they say, “Hey, do you have any questions?” It's really okay to ask questions. Sarah: Yes. That's the big thing. So because he's not an OB, I had to go do a consult with the OB that he works with in the hospital. The OB who works in the hospital definitely wasn't making me fearful, but there's a certain form you have to fill out that says, “Hey, obviously if you're successful with your TOLAC, that's going to be the safest option for you. But if you're not successful, that's the least safe.” It's easy to plant doubt, but after I saw him again, I asked my provider, “How often do you see it?” It was such a small amount and since he's one of the VBAC go-tos, I felt very confident with him. It was really nice to have that fear taken away in that way. Meagan: Yeah. Yeah. Sarah: And then this is kind of interesting. Just for fun, I did message my old provider at my previous hospital just to see what she would say about my chances for VBAC. I actually messaged her before I was pregnant. I said, “Hey, I am kind of processing and struggling from my C-section. What do you think about my chance for VBAC?” It was just on a message. What she said was, “You did everything you could at that time to have her vaginally, but she just didn't fit your pelvis for whatever reason. We think of fitting as a lock and key situation. Both pieces have to work together to open, so there's no way to know if a future baby would ever fit your pelvis better than she did.” Then she kind of went on. I thought, “Nope.” I'm like, “Nope. I'm not taking that in.” Meagan: Yes. Sarah: It was interesting. Meagan: Thank you so much, but no thanks. Sarah: Exactly.Sarah: Exactly. I'm like, “I don't think she didn't fit my pelvis. That's not a thing.” Meagan: But you know, it's an easy thing for people to say or diagnose. It's like, “Oh, well your baby was perfect. You were perfect, but the two together didn't really match that time.” Sarah: Right. Meagan: That doesn't necessarily mean that's true. We just don't know. Sarah: Again, we can't go back in time and have me try something different. Meagan: Yes, yes. Sarah: But I think it's interesting that she said that. Meagan: It is. Sarah: Again, I talked to my doctor. He's like, “Oh yeah. Great. Let's do it.” Meagan: Yeah. Sarah: He said, “You've got this.” So you know. Otherwise, I'm preparing. This is the funny thing too, again. At first, I didn't have any intention of trying to go unmedicated. At first. I was like, “I definitely want to VBAC,” but I wasn't trying to do that. I was just focused on the VBAC part. But once you hear enough birth stories, you know that if I do all of this preparation and I go as long as I can without this intervention, I'm going to have the best possible chance of a healthy vaginal birth. If it still ends in a C-section, it's because that was what had to happen not because I didn't know any better. Meagan: Right. Sarah: So that's when I was like, “Yes, okay. It makes sense for me to try. I should just try to go unmedicated. I should just do it. Whatever happens, happens.” I still am keeping my go-with-the-flow but with a lot of preparation. It was kind of funny because when I would tell people that, “I'm trying to go unmedicated,” people will say the craziest things to you. Meagan: Right? “I could never.” Sarah: Yes, or “I know someone who did and it was the worst thing they ever chose to do. They said, ‘Never do that.'” It's like, I know and I've heard many, many stories of people doing it and are very happy with the outcome. So definitely right before, I was 37 weeks. I was like, “I'm going to read Ina May's Guide to Childbirth.” Everybody talks about it, but I just wanted to hone in and focus on those unmedicated birth stories and just say, “How did you guys do this? How was it successful?” That was really helpful. I really liked that book. That was really good. Meagan: Yeah. I really like it too. Sarah: Yeah. Otherwise in this pregnancy though, I physically felt really good. I got Braxton Hicks contractions which I didn't have in my first pregnancy. That was definitely new. Meagan: Yes. Probably exciting. Sarah: It was exciting. I was like, “Okay, yeah. Every birth is different.” That was one of the Hypnobabies thing that stuck with me. Each baby is different. Your birth is going to be different. Don't let that fear creep in on you. But at 33 weeks, I found out the baby was breech so that was scary. Meagan: Yeah. It throws you for a loop, right? Sarah: Yes. When I found out that he was breech, I immediately messaged my doula. She gave me Spinning Babies exercises to do every day. I was making sure I was sitting forward and all of that stuff. Then I went to see a chiropractor first and then she also gave me this massage therapist who was trained in breech balancing massage. I went to both of those and the baby was flipped at my next appointment at 35 weeks. Meagan: Yay. Sarah: So I was very happy. The coolest thing with the massage therapist—in our state, I'm pretty sure she is maybe the only one who does this breech balancing massage. She told me because I actually went to do a follow-up appointment. Even though he was already head down, I was like, “Let's just go again to make sure.” She said that she was treating six other breech moms at that time and they had all flipped when I came back from my second appointment. Meagan: Oh my gosh. Sarah: Yeah. I'm always in the groups. I'm like, “If anyone is breech, try this specific breech balancing massage. Yeah.” It's really interesting just listening to her talk about it because she is so knowledgeable about, “Hey, your baby is breech for a reason. You have these muscles that get tightened. Your pelvis is this bowl and if things are in the wrong position, the baby wants to be head down. If I can release all of these muscles and make more space in there, even if the massage might not on its own make your baby flip, but giving your baby that space, then your ECV is more successful if you do that. Meagan: Right. Sarah: I was very happy because I had done all of this work and hyped myself up. I wouldn't want to have to schedule a C-section for this reason after all of that but if it happened, it happened. Meagan: Yeah. Sarah: So everything was going good then until my 39-week appointment. I had a high blood pressure reading so I was like, “Oh great.” But my doctor was not worried. He had me do an NST, labs, and monitor at home. I came back in a few days and everything was good. That was nice. Actually, the day that I went back for my follow-up for my high blood pressure was the day that I got my birth records. They had my birth records there for me. I had gone this whole time. I was almost 40 weeks and I was like, “I still really want to see.” Meagan: You had requested them? Sarah: Yeah, and it just took a really long time to get them. When I had that appointment, I was able to get my birth records earlier than I thought. I didn't think I was even going to get them by the time I had the baby. I was able to read through them and kind of work through it. My doula was like, “Oh, do you want to call and talk about it?” I was like, “Yes.” It was kind of like a fear release for me because that night I went into labor. Meagan: Yeah. Did you find anything in there that you didn't know before? Sarah: I mean, that one thing was that terbutaline. I didn't know that. And then I was just curious about some of the dilation. Also, I saw on my records too that the surgeon who did my C-section put, “This patient is a candidate for a TOLAC.” Meagan: Oh yeah. Sarah: It was nice just to have that and to see that the surgeon who did my C-section would put that on my note like, “Yeah. They are a candidate.”Meagan: Yeah, it's helpful. Sarah: Just working through it too was nice to see it in a timeline. So that night was the night I went into labor. At 2:00 AM, I woke up with my contractions. Right away, they were 3-7 minutes apart. I had the same situation three weeks before where I woke up and had contractions that were 3-7 minutes apart, but they fizzled out and didn't come back. I only had that situation one time earlier. So I was like, “Oh, this could be another practice. This could be the real thing.” But they were stronger than the last time. That's the biggest thing too. Even though they were so close together, I was handling them so well that I was like, “I think I'll just wait this out,” which is interesting because if you're a first-time mom, you're like, “Hey, this is 4-1-1. I'm having them.” Meagan: You have to go! Sarah: And they're long. A lot of them were long like at least a minute, but they just weren't strong so I was like, “Okay, well I'll wait.” Then my husband woke up at 4:00 AM. I was like, “Hey, I'm having these contractions.” His response was, “I'd better hurry up and go work. I've got some work to get done.” He's like, “Oh no. I gotta go.” So then he went away to go work on stuff. Then by 6:00 AM, I was like, “Okay.” I had a couple really strong ones so I was like, “Oh.” Then I was also getting back labor so I was like, “All right. Time to text the doula.” I was like, “Hey, this is what's going on.” She was like, “Well, your back pain might be because of the baby's position, so try to do the Miles Circuit. Eat a good breakfast. Hydrate. I'm preparing you for possibly a long day.” I said, “Okay, sounds good.” I had my bagel with cream cheese. I got my Body Armor drinks out, but when I tried to do the Miles Circuit, it was so intense. I could not. The minute I laid down and I had a contraction in the Miles Circuit position, the laying down one, it was like, “Whoa, no.” Meagan: Not gonna happen. Sarah: I'm like, “I think this is time for me to start going into some prep mode here.” So I dimmed the lights in my room. I had my ball but I actually didn't like bouncing on it so I never bounced on it. Meagan: Was it uncomfortable? Sarah: Yeah. For me, that seated position was uncomfortable. For me, I was in a forward-leaning position. I'd lean against the wall and sway or I'd have my husband come. I'd hug him and sway. I'm like, “This is working out okay.” The back labor was a different aspect that was like, “There's got to be something I can do for this back labor.” I messaged her and she's like, “Okay, well obviously have him try to do hip squeezes,” but he wasn't really getting the job done with the hip squeezes. She recommended the shower to also help us see if it's going to calm down or if it will keep going. I got in the shower and it was magic. The heat on the back was perfect. My favorite thing ever, but the hot water ran out after 15 minutes and I was so sad. Meagan: Oh shoot. Sarah: So the hot water ran out and I was like, “Oh man.” I got out of the shower and I was like, “Now we might just have to go to the hospital right now because I need hot water. I want to get in that tub.” That was my dream was getting in the tub. Meagan: Right. Sarah: So my doula checked in with me at this point and asked about the shower. I was like, “Yeah.” I think I was kind of in denial because I was like, “Oh, it's medium intense,” but they were still happening. She was like, “Okay, well maybe you should start heading in as long as they are staying 3-4 minutes consistently for an hour. Go ahead and start heading in.” At this point, she also tells me that she is actually in another birth. Then she joined me with the backup doula so she was at another birth. I was like, “Oh bummer.” But my backup doula ended up being amazing as well. But you know, when you're preparing with someone— Meagan: Can I just say right there that is a real thing? It's usually if you have to have a backup doula, it usually works out so well. Right? Sarah: Yeah, it was so good. Meagan: But like you were saying as I was cutting you off, as you were preparing with someone else, it's hard. Sarah: Yeah, it's kind of a bummer because you know this person so well and you had worked with them, but it worked out perfectly fine too. I really like my backup doula. She's great as well. She told me, again because I was like, “Hey, what can I do for now? We're going to head in probably soon but what else can I do for this back pain?” She was like, “Do you have a heating pack?” I'm like, “Ooh, yes.” I was putting a hot pack on my back which again, wasn't hot enough for me. Meagan: You needed a hot tub. Sarah: It did something. At this point, my daughter had actually woken up because we were still at home. It was about 8:00 and she was so sweet. Every time I'd have a contraction, I'd go into my room. I'd have my calming music on and my swaying but then I would leave and I'd come back out with her. She was just so sad. She wasn't crying, but she had these big tears welling up in her eyes. I would hold her and she would pat my back. She was like, “It's okay.” It's like she knew that something was going on. I was like, “I'm okay. It's okay.” She was just kind of like, “What is going on?” I wasn't making loud, loud noises but I would be doing horse lips through them or moaning. Meagan: Coping. Sarah: Yeah, nothing too crazy, but for her, she could tell that something was going on. Luckily, my mother-in-law and sister-in-law came over shortly after that around 8:30ish. My sister-in-law took my daughter and was like, “Let's go play,” so she was good. She was good. My mother-in-law saved me because she said, “Oh, I will boil hot water.” So she got a big pot and boiled hot water. She put cloths in them and put those on my back. That was amazing. Meagan: I bet that felt really good. Sarah: Right. So at this point, my husband probably should have been getting the cars ready for us to go to the hospital, but instead, he was cleaning the house frantically. Meagan: That was probably his way of coping. “Oh my gosh, this is happening. I'm going to go work and then I'm going to go clean the house.” Sarah: Yes. Yes, so we're like, “Okay, it's time. We've got to get going.” I'm like, “Yeah. I've got to get going.” So finally, we get in the car. My back is soaking wet from these hot towels but they are saving me. Luckily, the drive was only 10 minutes. I had my hot towel in there. It wasn't the most comfortable, but we got there. They checked us in and they moved us to triage. At this point, again, the sitting position was not my position for labor. It was, “Nope, not happening.” I was always kneeling, facing the back of the bed. The back of the bed was up. I held onto it. Then when I was in triage, though, I didn't have my coping mechanisms. I didn't have my hot towels. My next plan that I had was the comb technique. I had packed a couple of combs. I was telling my husband, “All right. Your hip squeezes—” he was trying to find the combs and of course, he couldn't find the combs that I brought. But he did remember that he brought his own comb. Meagan: Hey! Sarah: So I was able to take his comb which I can say RIP to his comb. I used it. There were little comb tings, whatever they are called, the teeth of the comb were everywhere at the end of my birth but it definitely worked. So then every time I would have a contraction, I was pushing on the comb and breathing as they were checking me into triage. But they were able to kind of get the band on me. They gave me an ultrasound to make sure the baby was head down while I was in triage. Then they checked me. The nurse checked me and when she was down there, she was like, “Oh, it's really hard to tell how dilated you are because you have a bulging bag of waters and I really can't tell what you're doing.” She was like, “I think you're almost complete.” I'm like, “Okay.” Meagan: Whoa. Sarah: I'm like, “Okay.” This whole time, she'd been trying to call someone on her radio, but they were really busy. At that point, she was like, “Okay, let's get this room.” She was like, “I'll just wheel you on this bed unless you want to walk.” I'm like, “Actually, I want to walk.” I was actually thinking, “You know what? I think I want the bed that is in the room. The triage beds aren't probably as comfortable.” That's where my mind was so I was like, “Let me just walk.” Meagan: No. Sarah: So they get me in the room and again, my doula is on her way but she's not there yet. It's about, I think, 10:00. My doctor comes in. They put the little IV on my arm in case I need any medicine. All I'm doing right now- Meagan: Hep lock. Sarah: Yes, exactly. All I'm saying is that I just wanted to get in the tub. This is me the whole time in triage. Meagan: I just want the water. Sarah: I want to get in the tub. I want to get in the tub. The comb is helping, but I want to get in the tub. So he comes in. I'm like, “Hey, can I get in the tub?” He's like, “Well, you can but I should probably check you first if you want me to. If you're really close like the nurse thinks, then you'll have to push soon possibly.” I'm like, “Yes. Check me because then, if I'm not, I can get in the tub.” That was in the back of my mind. He checked me. He's down there for a while and I'm finally like, “Okay, you've got to get out.” He's like, “I understand why they are having a hard time. Yes. You have a big, bulging bag of waters. I can tell why she had a hard time and I think you're maybe 7 or 8 centimeters but I can't tell. As soon as the water breaks, you're going to be fast.” I was like, “Sounds like I can get in the tub.” He was like, “Yes, you can.” Meagan: You're like, “Perfect.” Sarah: Perfect. This is when my doula came around this time. She helped get the tub in motion because they were like, “Well, it's going to take a while. We've got to get you on these mobile monitors.” She went in and she got the water going and I was able to get in the tub. The only problem is that once I got in the tub, I was like, “Oh, I think I have to poop,” which is the magic— Meagan: Means you're going to have a baby! Sarah: She was like, “Well if you want, you can sit on the toilet and see if you actually do poop.” I was like, “Sounds like a plan.” I sat on the toilet facing the back of the toilet. I had my hands on my comb. My comb was with me everywhere. That's when I had the scary, scary transition contraction. I was so happy I had her there because she was saying all of the right things and at this point, I can't remember any of them except for her saying to me, “This is the hardest part, but it's also the shortest. You are in transition.” When I heard her, I was like, “Okay, that makes sense.” I was a little shaky. You just feel so out of control. I was like, “Whoa. I don't know about this. I'm not sure about this.” Meagan: You start questioning. It's weird. Sarah: It is really, yeah. But she was saying all of the things I needed to hear, so I was good. So then I was like, “Okay, no poop is coming. Let's get back in the tub.” So I got back in the tub, and then I had probably one contraction and then a lab person came to the door and was like, “I've got to take your blood.” We're like, “Uh, okay. Let's just wait until she's in between contractions.” I'm like, “That's a good idea.” So she comes in. She turns on the light. I'm like, “This is throwing off my vibe.” She sits down next to me and she scans my band and then they were like, “Okay, let's wait for the next one.” The next contraction came and it was the, “My body is pushing! I'm pushing. Help!” I had that fetal ejection reflex, but my water was still intact so it was more of the water ejection reflex. Meagan: It was pushing that, yeah. Exactly. Sarah: My body did the thing where it pushed on its own. I've always heard about this when I've listened to the podcasts that this happens. I was always like, “Oh, I want that. That sounds nice. Do it for me,” but I did not like it. Nope. Especially because I was in the tub, maybe that's why, but I just felt so out of control. I was like, “Whoa. I'm not controlling this pushing,” but I was also very excited because I knew that meant it was time. The lab person promptly left the bathroom and they never got my blood. I don't know why they needed it, but they never got it. Meagan: I know. It's so weird, “We need your blood right now.” It's like, “Really? Why?” Sarah: Yeah. Especially when, “Oh, I'm in transition about to have a baby.” I think you're okay. Meagan: Seriously. Sarah: I had that. So that happened and then my doula was like, “Well, do you think you want to get in the bed?” I'm like, “Yes. If a baby is coming, I need to be on the bed.” So again, my favorite position—even my tub position was my hands and knees. I was draping my hand on the back of the bed kind of in that—I wasn't really hands and knees because I started that way and then I ended up hugging a pillow and kind of squatting back. Meagan: Yeah, okay. Sarah: Yeah. I started pushing. Again, my waters hadn't broken yet which was obviously, this is a big thing with my provider. He is hands-off. Any other provider would have said, “Do you want me to break your water?” Meagan: Absolutely. Sarah: That would have been a thing. It was kind of interesting that “Nope. I'm just doing it all on my own what my body wants to do.” I was pushing for about 10 minutes and then my waters exploded. They all knew it was coming, so no one got drenched, but it was so loud. Meagan: Everyone was probably a little sensitive in that area. They were probably like, “I'll walk over here.” Sarah: Yes. They expected it. My doctor was like, “I might get drenched, but I'm ready for it.” But he didn't. Meagan: That's okay. Sarah: It was so loud. I was shocked. It was like a gunshot. It felt like it was just like BAM when I pushed it out. So that was great. Then about 5 minutes after that, he was born. I pushed the waters out and then pushed him out. His head was right there and they were like, “Oh, you can reach down and feel the head.” I'm like, “I can't.” I had to reach down. I'm like, “My arms are too short.” So then I pushed him out. It was about two pushes I think.Yes, as soon as that water was done, yeah. He was two pushes after that. It was about 20 minutes of pushing total. Meagan: Whoa. That's like nothing. Sarah: Yeah, then I got to flip around. They put him on me and they didn't cut the cord until it was done pulsing. They did delayed cord clamping. They did the golden hour. He was just on my chest the whole time. I birthed my placenta which was fine. I did have a small tear which was just something I was scared about with an unmedicated birth. I'm like, “Oh, that will be not pleasant. I hope I don't but again, no idea. I probably will. Most people do.” It was a very small, I guess, second-degree tear but he numbed it. It just felt like a bunch of little bee stings. He numbed it and stitched it. It was fine. Baby was on my chest for that whole hour. What was crazy to me—I also consented to having the Pitocin drip afterward to get the— Meagan: The uterus to contract down, mhmm. Sarah: Yes, yes. I had that. Once that was done, I was able to just stand up and go to the bathroom. Meagan: Amazing, right? Sarah: I could just get up to go to the bathroom. I felt good. I felt fine. This was about 10:50 in the morning, so yeah. I was at the hospital for an hour and a half before he was born. Later that night around 5:00, we had family come over to see the baby that night. I felt as great as could be with still normal postpartum stuff. Meagan: Right. You did just push a baby out. But you weren't knocked out and coming too and all of those other things. Sarah: Yes. So yeah. That's about it for that.Meagan: Aw, yes. Well, congratulations. I'm sure that was a very different experience. I mean, I'm sure both babies were, right? We all cherish our babies' births but to be more present in your baby's birth, I'm sure definitely left an impact. Sarah: Yeah. Even my husband told me that for this time, he actually teared up and felt like it was just such a more of an emotional experience even for him which is completely understandable. It was actually really scary for him with the C-section he told me. They tell you, “Hey, we're going to go put your wife out. We're going to come back and get you and then you're going to come and be part of it.” He's sitting there waiting, waiting, waiting. They just kind of say, “Hey, you can't go in anymore. We knocked her out. You have to wait here. It's going to be a while.” Then he's just like, “Oh, is she going to be okay?” It was a little scary for him too, that first one. This was a lot, obviously, more emotional and just a really cool experience for both of us. Meagan: Yeah. I'm sure it was very healing for both of you like you said. That couldn't have been easy for him walking in and seeing you in that manner. I mean, the fact that he even brought it up. “It was weird when I walked in and you were laying there but then I'm over here doing skin-to-skin with this baby.” Sarah: Yep. Meagan: I'm sure it was so healing for both of you. Huge congrats. Sarah: Yeah, thank you. Oh, and one thing to mention with the doctor is that because I gave him all of my birth plan too, at no point in this hospital situation was I ever offered anything. They knew what my preferences were. They never said anything about any interventions at all. They never said, “Do you want us to break this water?” Everyone was on board. It was great. Meagan: Yeah. You really didn't feel like you had to fight along the way. Sarah: Yeah. It was all supportive which is what I wanted. Meagan: Yeah, and what you deserved. Sarah: Yeah. It was really great to have that. Honestly, the thing I also really liked about pushing in that position where you are facing the back of the bed was that I didn't see all of the people staring at me. It was nice because—and not that it would have mattered—but I'm kind of socially anxious in that situation so it was nice to just be focused on my husband's hand holding me. I've got my comb. I'm breathing. I'm totally in it. I'm not looking around. With the C-section, that labor was like everyone was staring at you. You're pushing and trying and nothing is happening. It was so nice to just be here in my world. I never even saw anyone. Meagan: Yeah. Sometimes you see people's faces and they are not wanting to communicate with their mouths so they communicate with their faces. So when you are just staring at all of these people surrounding you, you find yourself, “What are they saying?” Sarah: Yeah, exactly. Meagan: You start questioning it. It pulls you out of that space. It sounds like you were really able to stay in that space because maybe you didn't see any of that. Sarah: Yes, exactly. When I was pushing, it was really hard. I'm not saying it was easy. “Oh, unmedicated in 20 minutes.” No. It was hard work. There were times when some doubts would creep in and I was like, “What if he's in the canal too long? Will he be okay?” It would be easy for those doubts to creep in, but my doctor and my doula were all saying the things that I needed to hear. “You're doing it. Your body knows what to do. Keep pushing this way. Push like you're going to poop.” They were saying all of the things to keep me focused. It would be so easy if you're not ready to give birth to a baby, that feeling would be very scary. You would feel very out of control. I could see how easy it would be for that to be very, very scary. Having the people there that knew what to say to me was very helpful. Meagan: Yeah. Absolutely. The team is really that powerful though. It really, really is. Sarah: Mhmm. Meagan: So get a team. If you're looking for a doula, we've got doulas on our website that are VBAC-trained and certified. Get a good provider who is supportive and loving and willing to just like Dr. Ryan, just yeah. “Let's do this. Let's do it.” Super supportive from the get-go. “Yeah, we have to have this consult, but I'm not not supporting you by sending you to this consult.” Sarah: Exactly. Yep. He's like, “This person knows that I do a lot of VBACs. They've been through this before.” Meagan: Yes. Yes. Sarah: Yeah. Meagan: Well, huge, huge congrats.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

Ever wondered what a Declaration of Independence document would look like for property management entrepreneurs? Jason did, so he fed ChatGBT his mission statement and core values. Join property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull as they go through The Property Management Declaration of Independence. You'll Learn [02:44] Article I: Liberation from Limiting Beliefs [09:40] Article II: Autonomy from Bad Clients [11:54] Article III: Emancipation from Inefficient Processes [13:12] Article IV: Freedom of Experimentation [20:26] Article V: Independence Through Education and Collaboration [29:01] Article VI: Allegiance to Our Core Values [31:36] Article VII: Pursuit of Holistic Success Tweetables “There's few things that will steal more of your sense of autonomy and freedom than bad clients.” “If you have limiting beliefs, one of the best ways to get liberated from it is to just be around somebody that doesn't hold those same limiting beliefs for you.” “If you say, "Oh, it won't work because of this and this and this." You are right.” “If you have a shitty mindset, just know it will hold you back and you will only accomplish what you believe you can accomplish.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Sarah: if you believe that you have the knowledge and the ability and the resources to be able to figure out how to make the shifts that you need to have the business that you want and run it the way that you want, then it's absolutely possible.  [00:00:16] Jason: 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 are interested in growing in business and life, and you're 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 along with Sarah, the COO of DoorGrow. I know, I need to rewrite this intro for when you're here, because sometimes you're here-- and now let's get into the show. All right.  [00:01:24] Sarah: You stumble on that every time. So funny. I know. I have to like wing it. He's like in the middle of reading it. Okay. " And her over there." [00:01:33] Jason: Let's get into this. All right, so it is Independence Day. It is the 4th of July in which United States declared its independence and fought for freedom, right? So we'regoing to be talking about property management entrepreneurs declaring your independence. So, this is something that I think is important because you've heard me talk before about the four reasons: fulfillment, freedom, contribution, and support. Entrepreneurs, we want freedom. And so let's talk about a declaration of independence for property management entrepreneurs. So, I actually have been really having fun playing around with chat GPT and I gave it a bunch of info of how we kind of do things and our philosophy and I had it create a Declaration of Independence. So this should be interesting. So we can go through some of this and we can chat about some of these ideas. And does that sound good? All right.  [00:02:34] Sarah: Well, I guess so because that's what we're doing.  [00:02:36] Jason: Alright. This is what we're doing. She had no clue. She just walked in here. No, and I'm like, this is what we're talking about.  [00:02:42] Sarah: I just show up.  [00:02:44] Jason: She just shows up. Yeah. because she can do that. All right, cool. So, declaration of Independence for property management entrepreneurs. "In the spirit of entrepreneurial growth, the pursuit of freedom in the property management industry." We need to queue up like some patriotic music. [00:03:02] Maybe. I'm just kidding, Madi, maybe you'll add that.  [00:03:05] "We, the United Community of Property Management entrepreneurs solemnly declare our independence from the constraints, inefficiencies, and setbacks that have bound us for too long. We assert our dedication to a brighter, more prosperous, and thriving future." [00:03:20] "Article one, liberation from Limiting Beliefs." So one of the number one things before I read it. One of the number one things clients say that they get from us is mindset. It's just mindset shifts. because that changes everything of how they do things, how their business runs. All right, this is what it says.  [00:03:37] "We vow to liberate ourselves from self-limiting beliefs that hinder innovation and growth. We pledge to foster a growth mindset and no longer allow the words, 'I can't,' or 'it's not possible' to define our reality." So, what have you noticed about limiting beliefs with clients?  [00:03:55] Sarah: Well, I think whatever you think is possible is exactly what is possible. So if you think like, "oh, I can't do it that way," or "This won't work," or like, "oh, my team can't do this," or " I don't have the right tools," then you're absolutely right and it won't happen the way that you want it to or the way that it could. I think some of the biggest shifts I've seen in clients is when they open their mind to different possibilities and when they start to do things just a little differently.  [00:04:27] Jason: So most of our clients are pretty good at believing in us. I think we've gotten really good at convincing them through the sales process and once they get on board, we've got plenty, tons of case studies. But occasionally we get a client that comes in and they are skeptical about everything and maybe somehow they missed all the details during the onboarding and the sales process, and they don't believe. They have these limiting beliefs, "this stuff won't work." What do we notice in terms of results between those shitty clients and everyone else? [00:05:00] Sarah: Well, first, I don't think it's fair to call them shitty clients.  [00:05:03] Jason: Okay. Maybe we don't. Shitty mindset clients.  [00:05:05] Yeah. I think it's fair to say  [00:05:06] Sarah: like, "Hey, your mindset is shitty." Yeah. And I get that like my mindset used to be completely different. Totally different. Like I grew up in a place , where. Anybody that was making a million dollars a year, like I just didn't know it. Like, I was like, "oh, like, Hollywood. That's like what happens there, like when you're famous and you're like, this is just what happens out there. Or like, maybe big cities but not here. And because they didn't have any kind of example or anything tangible to say like, "Hey, they did it so I can do it." I just didn't believe that it was possible. And when I got out of that area, and now I'm in an area where it's very entrepreneurial based and business friendly and people just have a different kind of thought process around here, and we spend a lot of time with people who they're elevated in their thinking. And now I'm like, "yeah, it's a hundred percent possible." Absolutely possible. So I think first is if you have a shitty mindset, just know it will hold you back and you will only accomplish what you believe you can accomplish. So if you think, "oh yeah, none of this stuff is going to work for me," and we've heard it all, like, "oh, my market is different," or like, "my team won't do that," or like, "oh yeah, my clients will never go for that," or like, "my tenants are different. My properties are different." And like all of the reasons, what they're doing is they're like giving us all of the reasons why it's not going to work for them. And they're correct on every single reason. [00:06:39] If you say, "oh, it won't work because of this and this and this." You are right. What we need to do is like change your mindset to believe like, "Hey, this can work for me and it can work in my market and it can work with my team and it can work with my clients and it might mean that I need to make some shifts. It's not just going to be, "oh, I believe it and now it's true." we need to make a couple shifts and it can be true, but if you believe that you have the knowledge and the ability and the resources to be able to figure out how to make the shifts that you need to have the business that you want and run it the way that you want, then it's absolutely possible. [00:07:18] Jason: Okay, so some clients come to us. We have quite a few actually, that they don't believe in themselves. And one of the things-- this is a confession on my part-- one of the things that I failed with clients in the past, because I couldn't see this-- is that sometimes clients come to us and they're lacking hope. They don't have belief in themselves, and my mindset at the time was, "well just do the stuff and you'll see that it works". And the clients that would do it, they would get results and it would work, and some clients just wouldn't put in effort. They'd say they did, but they would blame us and like stuff like this, and they don't realize it takes like three months to get something really well dialed in. So they'd try it for like a couple days. Right. So I think one of the things that I've realized since from some of my coaches and mentors is that, we as coaches get to believe and provide hope and faith into our clients that are lacking it. [00:08:16] And so I think we're much better now at helping clients that lack that mindset and lack that belief and have limiting beliefs in themselves or even in like the strategies. If we give them enough belief, they still start to get results and that belief it rubs off on them. And so instead of blaming clients, I now take accountability more and say, "all right, I'm not giving them enough belief. I need to be more in their corner. I need to believe in them more." And I see them energetically change real time while on a Zoom call with them, like I just start feeding them belief like, "somebody else did this. You can do this too. They're not more special than you. They're not more charismatic. They're not better looking than you. They're not smarter than you. You know how to do property management. If they can do this stuff, you can do it too." I believe that I believe in them. And then they start to go, "wait, maybe he's right. Maybe I can do this." And then it starts to help their belief. [00:09:16] And so I think if you have limiting beliefs, one of the best ways to get liberated from it is to just be around somebody that doesn't hold those same limiting beliefs for you. They believe in you. They believe in you. Do you believe in me?  [00:09:27] Sarah: Yeah. Of course. I believe in you. [00:09:29] Jason: Sarah believes in me. I believe in her. Do you feel like I believe in you? Yeah. Yeah. So, and that creates momentum. That creates momentum. All right, let's go to the next one. Article two, autonomy from Bad Clients. "We assert our right to work with clients who respect and value our expertise. We shall not allow our business to be dominated by clients who undermine our values, ethics, or the standards of service we strive to provide." [00:09:58] So this goes along with our concept I, this of the cycle of suck and not taking on bad clients, which-- [00:10:04] Sarah: we should give this to our clients. And just like-- [00:10:06] Jason: have them sign it? Yeah.  [00:10:07] Sarah: This is your new declaration. We're doing it.  [00:10:10] Jason: ChatGPT is really good if you give it good data, like garbage in, garbage out. Right? I know. So, yeah, I gave it our whole client avatar document. I gave it our DoorGrowShow manifesto. I gave it our client-centric mission statement, and then they give it all that and this is what it came up with. So it's pretty cool. Pretty good. So yeah, I think this is involved with, our previous episodes where we talked about the cycle of suck or not taking on bad clients, but yeah, you deserve, you have the right to choose who you work with that value, your expertise. Why would you tolerate anything less? This is your business. You can build it however you want. You can build it full of a bunch of clients that don't value you, or you can build it full of clients that share your values, your ethics, your standards, want you to be able to do your best job and are willing to pay you for it. Anything else we should say about that?  [00:11:03] Sarah: I think we covered this a lot in our program, but what's really nice is to see when clients start to make that shift for themselves. Like we've had a few clients say like, and it was very clear to me that this is not the client that I wanted to work with. So like, sometimes they turn it down, sometimes they just know like, Hey, if I get the deal then, I'll consider taking it on if it seems to be a decent enough fit. But like, this is not my ideal client, so I'm really just not going to put a lot of time and energy into this because I can see like, this is just not what I'm looking for. [00:11:38] Jason: Autonomy from bad clients. I mean, really there's few things that will steal more of your sense of autonomy and freedom than bad clients. I mean, that's a real strong thief, so you deserve freedom from that. Declare your independence from bad clients.  [00:11:54] All right, article number three, emancipation from inefficient processes. "We declare to free ourselves from inefficient, archaic, and time consuming processes. We will actively seek, implement, and embrace technology and systems that streamline our operations, enhance productivity, and allow us to serve our clients better." [00:12:16] Sarah: Like that. These are these shifts. We got to make some shifts. If you're expecting your business to just change overnight and without really changing anything in it, then it's like, the definition of insanity. Like we're doing the same thing over and over, but we're expecting different results.  [00:12:35] Jason: Yeah. We've got a lot of software tools and tech that we use with clients to facilitate them having a greater sense of freedom and emancipation from inefficient processes. So yeah, technology can help with that. Okay.  [00:12:52] Sarah: Well, so can a great team though. Yes. Not everything needs to be technology because I've seen property management companies that they're like," we just rely on technology," and like humans are very rarely involved and it just doesn't work the way that they want it to work.  [00:13:07] Jason: Systems, right? Systems. Yeah. Building systems. Okay.  [00:13:12] Article four, Roman numeral iv. Okay. Freedom of Experimentation. "We recognize our freedom to experiment with new approaches and marketing strategies. We will not be shackled by "this is how it's always been done," shall embrace the diverse, evolving landscape of our industry." So I think innovation is a big part of what we focus on at DoorGrow. We're always like adding new things and coming up with new ideas and pulling in the best ideas from our clients that are also working towards innovating and making a difference. And I think innovation comes from. Innovation. And so as our clients are doing these new ideas and these new things, they're seeing little ways to improve. because that's what entrepreneurs do. Like, Hey, we could do this, we could do that. And so, and us sitting on top with a bird's eye view of all these clients that are doing all of these things that we've helped to bring to the industry or to innovate, they're also helping us to make this better for everybody else as well. [00:14:16] And so this innovation incubation system that we've created at DoorGrow is pretty powerful, I think. So, I mean, just some of the ideas that some of our clients have presented at some of our conferences have been pretty awesome, so, yeah. All right. Yeah. Anything else about that?  [00:14:32] Sarah: I think the only other thing I would add is like, the way that we implement things in our business. because we just move so fast. Yeah. Like Jason and I, we don't like to waste time. We don't, him and haw, we're not like, oh, is this the right decision? Like, what do we do? I don't know. Let's take like four months and figure it out. We see something, we make a change and we're like, let's just do it. And if it's the wrong thing, then we'll undo it because we'll see it very quickly. But we take action really quickly. We just went through our annual planning and from just one year. Our business is completely different. Like our model is different, our coaching is different, like what we offer is different. [00:15:10] Totally. Like literally every piece of it is completely different. It was like we took our old business model and we just blew it up and we were like, Hey, how can we make this like 20 times better? Yeah. And we did it. And we did it all in less than one year. So it was so funny because when we were going through, we start off with wins, we're like, Hey, what wins do we have from the last year? And it was like, we had so many wins. Like, it's like hard to even think like, Hey, remember a year ago when our business was like this? So what's nice about that is we get to pull up like what the business looked like last year in the system. We were like, oh yeah, we totally forgot because it was so long ago to us. We're like, oh God, I like totally forgot it used to be like that. We used to do things like this, and these are all of the things that we changed or improved or added in order to make things that much better. And I think just being able to like add a new piece or do things a little bit differently is something that sometimes doesn't feel super comfortable for people because they're so worried about like, is this the right decision? [00:16:14] And it might not be. It might not be the right decision, but the inaction will keep you like tethered to the ground for a really long time. So if we just worry all the time like, oh, I don't want to do it because I just don't know if it's the right thing, you are never going to know if it's the right thing. Unfortunately, like no one makes a crystal ball yet. We don't have like the answer to predict the future at this point in time. So sometimes you just have to make the leap and guess and know that if you make the leap and it's the wrong one, we can always change it because your business should be this like ever evolving, ever changing thing. It shouldn't be like this stagnant old like pond, with like murky water that never gets any movement.  [00:17:00] Jason: So, I think one of the things that has facilitated the speed and the innovation and the experimentation, which is the Article four that we're talking about, is DoorGrow OS, like having this really strong planning system, which you mentioned we just did annual, quarterly, monthly, and weekly planning. We did it all in a week. It was like planning week. So this planning system, really, and not all technology is software. Not all technology is software. This is a piece of technology, which there is a software aspect to it, but really the technology of this is this system that of planning that we're able to create this cadence of momentum in the business that gets everyone on the team moving it forward. [00:17:51] It's probably the most important system we have in our business. It creates our culture, it creates our business, it creates our results. It creates an immense amount of speed. No one can keep up with the level of changes like Sarah's saying, if you worked with DoorGrow in the past, like three years ago, or even one year ago. Even one year ago. [00:18:10] Sarah: If you were a client with us like one year ago, yeah, you have no, is not, you have no idea what DoorGrow is now because it's just so different.  [00:18:18] Jason: This is like a newer. Way more improved company and clients that worked with us maybe five years ago or maybe even 10 years ago. They have no clue what DoorGrow is even about or what we do anymore. It's even one year ago transformed so much one year in what we do. It's like, so it's so very different. Totally.  [00:18:36] Sarah: One year ago we had one program that was it. Like we had one program and we had like a baby scale program with like a little bit in it. But it's really flourished. So now we have like three different three different programs and like so many things that are available that we just didn't, we didn't have at all before.  [00:18:57] Jason: Now you said we don't have a crystal ball, but if there was something that was as close as you could get to a crystal ball, it would be having a planning system like DoorGrow OS because we are creating the future. We map it out and there's a super high likelihood we're going to achieve it because of how it's all broken down. And it creates predictable results. Like we consistently are able to scale our revenue, scale our programs, and get the things done that we want to do at a really high pace. And we're able to create predictable results we can, we create and see the future. A of entrepreneurs have a vision of the future and they try and throw that vision to their team, like a grenade with a pin pulled. And the team are like, what? What? Okay. Sure. And then they teach. A lot of entrepreneurs don't have a good system like this, and so they teach their team to lose. [00:19:44] They're like, Hey, we're going to hit this great goal this month, and then they don't. And they're teaching their team to be comfortable with losing, and they get more and more comfortable with failure. Our team's pretty comfortable with winning, right? Yeah. Like if we don't hit an objective, something major happened. Like painful. Yeah. Something major happened. Yeah. And so our team are used to winning and we win early. We set goals and we hit them usually early. Is the goal. DoorGrowOS is one of the systems we in help clients install. This planning system better than EOS, better than traction, better than whatever else you've, like, experimented with. You'll get far bigger results from your team and you'll get a lot more momentum and money.  [00:20:26] All right, so let's go to article number five. Article five. Independence through Education and Collaboration. This is something we are a big part of that we believe in.  [00:20:37] "We commit to continual learning and collaboration, understanding that our strength lies in the collective wisdom of our community. We pledge to share insights, strategies, and experiences with our fellow property management entrepreneurs for the greater good of the industry." [00:20:54] A lot of people are worried about the competition and they don't want to share their ideas. Yes. And how small is their thinking?  [00:21:01] Sarah: Oh yeah, I know. There was somebody just yesterday that said, "oh my God, like, this is such an amazing program. And like I, I've been part of multiple coaching programs on the real estate side and this blows all of those out of the water. Obviously we're focused on property management, but he's like, this blows all of this out of the water." And he is like, "I just hope that my competitors don't find out about this and start using you guys because that would be really bad for me." And like, I get it. I do, I understand it. Because-- [00:21:30] Jason: this is a new client. [00:21:32] Sarah: Yes. Yeah, he's newer. They'll figure it out. Yeah. He's newer. So I get it because I used to think that too, like, oh God. Like it's like that we have to have like this abundance mindset, like a, there's always enough to go around. And b, we say it like a rising tide raises all ships. So if you are like, oh, I can't, like, I can't tell my secrets to my competitors. [00:21:55] I must keep everything like you, I'm not telling you anything that you do. I, and I used to be, I used to be like that. So I, I do understand it because I used to be like, I'm not telling anybody what I do. Like you do what you do and I'm justgoing to do what I do, and you don't need to worry about what I'm doing over here. And I've gotten out of that just because. My mindset has changed. And I realize there's so much more than like our brains can even fathom. If you think, hey, like I can make, a hundred thousand dollars a year and this is what my business can look like, there's more to be had and there's always more like to go around. If you're like, Hey, I know I can do a hundred thousand. I feel like I'm in the mindset where I could do two 50 or 500 or a million dollars a year. I can have multiple locations. Like I can just keep acquiring businesses. I can grow and grow. with a client this week that has 1300 doors. Let's pause there for a second, because a lot of times, 1300 doors is really hard to even get to, and most property managers don't even reach that level. And he's at 1300 doors and he goes, I haven't even like made a dent. Like I haven't, I'm just a drop in the bucket. Of where I want to go and where I want to be. Why is that? Because his mindset is open. Like he's opened his mind to realize there is, there's more if we think of it like this, like, hey, You are just like this tiny little pinpoint on the map because when we expand out, it's like, here's me and my business. [00:23:26] But if we expand out, you are in an entire like city. We expand out more. You're in an entire state. We expand out more. You're in an entire country. We expand out more like we're in an entire planet. If we just keep going and going, like, the universe is just so infinite. And if you're, sometimes it's just so hard to conceptualize because your brain is like this is what I'm doing and like, this is what I can see, touch, and feel around me. [00:23:53] But if you, once you realize like, Hey, there is always, there's always more. You're not going to worry about what your competitors do. Not at all. You're not even going to be concerned. Like, I don't really care what Johnny's doing down the street. He could do all of the same things that I do, and I'm just not worried about it because I know that there's so much abundance to go around that I'm, I don't care what he is doing. [00:24:17] Jason: So when your vision is small, you see the competition. When your vision's bigger, you see a lot more opportunity. And we really try and push the idea mindset wise and with our clients and here on the podcast, collaboration over competition, right? When we get our clients collaborating, like we just talked about before, innovation starts to happen, the whole industry can move forward. [00:24:42] Two thirds are self-managing, there's like 70% or so that are self-managing. There's no scarcity in this industry. If you feel like there's scarcity. And it's because you're playing a game that is not very winnable. You're probably doing the wrong things to try and grow. If it feels scarce, get with us and we'll help you see bigger opportunities. [00:25:02] So once we get clients in our system and they're focused on adding doors, and they start adding doors, and they start to do this in the blue ocean, instead of doing it in the red, ugly bloody water through SEO or pay per click or content marketing or social media marketing or pay per lead services. They realize there's plenty of business. It's not hard to grow, and they become completely like, like, it's like not even paying attention to, or not even caring about their competition. Yeah. They're like, they're so busy adding doors and making money and trying to get their own stuff together to be able to handle the growth. [00:25:37] They're not even paying attention anymore to the competition.  [00:25:40] Sarah: Exactly. Like Mike with a 1300 doors seat, like no. Never ever at that, like at any point in our conversation did he say like, oh, but I'm like, I can't do this because this person. Never, like he, he's worried about what he's doing. He is like on this one track, and he is like, this is my mission and this is what I need to do and this is where I'm going. And I don't care about anything else. Like, I don't care about anything else around me when, like, they put blinders on the horse, right? We've got to put our blinders on and just run towards that goal as fast as we can. You don't care about what's going on over here or over here. You just get to the point where it's completely insignificant. [00:26:21] Even our smallest clients, once they get into momentum of growth and they see how easy growth can be, I mean, it takes work, but once they see that it's super doable and it's repeatable and they're adding doors like crazy, that goes away. Like I think there's always a competitive nature in our clients, and I like to leverage that in the beginning. So I, in some of my content in trainings, I'm like, Hey, if you want to crush your competition, do this or do it this way, or do this. And that brings out that competitive entrepreneurial side of themselves. But once they start getting into it, our challenge sometimes might be with some clients they like lose the drive because they start to see this is not so hard. [00:26:58] But hopefully they get inspired and excited to like, take things to the next level. Right. Okay.  [00:27:03] I don't think they so much lose drive. I think it's just that it's shifted. It's a like you versus me. Versus like, I'm just doing what I'm doing. It's me versus me now. And that, like, that's happened with me in my business a couple times where like I'm like, oh, it's me versus my competition. [00:27:21] Like it's me versus that guy down the street. It's me versus like every other like management company and my area. And it's not, it's only me versus me. I have to outdo what I did yesterday or last year or last month. Like it's it just changes because you start playing a game with yourself instead of trying to worry about like, I'm, I've got to beat you. [00:27:44] Jason: Well, your power and achievement. So this all makes a lot of sense, hearing how you think, but some of our clients are not, and like one of our clients like Mark and Brandon, they had gotten to a point, they'd been adding doors and then they got comfortable and they were like, and I think what happens is they had this big goal to like leave their day jobs and get a bunch of doors and they did that and then they were like, well, then they lost a little bit of steam. So I think what happens with a lot of entrepreneurs is we have this away motivator. Like we're trying to get away from something. We want to get away from a job we don't like, or we want to get away from scarcity or starving or whatever. Right? We have this, we're trying to run away from this saber tooth tiger that's chasing after us each month, and then we have to shift towards some sort of toward motivator. [00:28:31] So with them in my coaching call, I had to like help them identify what is? We talked about their why, which is their personal why, which is something that we get into deeply with clients and each of their, what they want. And how do we connect their why to the business now? Like what do they want more of or what do they want to move towards? And so that kind of lit them up again. And so we have to find that toward motivator. And we've gotten off track the education and collaboration, but, all right, but that's the idea. All right, so let's go to Article six vi. All right. Allegiance to our core values. "We affirm our allegiance to the core values that guide our business. We will strive to uphold integrity, transparency, excellence, and client centricity in all our operations, and we shall not waver in times of adversity." I love the shalls. All right, so we're big on core values. We help our clients define their core values. We even took a look at our individual values and then figured out what should they be for the business and took a fresh look. [00:29:41] And they were, we had a lot of alignment and we didn't really change much, I don't think we changed any, anything on the company core values.  [00:29:49] Sarah: No. We added like one, one sentence. Yeah. But I think mine, if I were to add one is just. Do whatever it takes. Right? Do whatever it takes. Like we have a do whatever it takes mindset and if that means you have to come out of your comfort zone, you come out of your comfort zone. That means you have to make phone calls? You make phone calls. Yeah. If that means you have to, do whatever. It's like ethically, of course. But if you have to do things that don't. Seem fun or like, these are not my normal job duties. [00:30:20] Well, that's okay. Like, we're going to, we're going to do it because that's what we need in the business.  [00:30:26] Jason: So I think it's important for property managers to be really clear on their values. So, so you, as an entrepreneur, if you're listening to this, you need to be very clear on your values. Not like 10 values or 20 values or infinite values. You need to figure out what are your, like top three maybe four values that if everybody on your team believed these, they would be great team members. They would fit you. And that's something we help clients work on. But I think it's super important to have values in the business because it that's the how you go about doing everything in the business. [00:31:02] And if you're worried about how your team members are going to do things, it's because they don't share your values. You can work all day on the whats. You can define every process and try to micromanage, but you cannot control how you need people that fit your culture. You cannot create that in them. You have to find the right people that have the right culture and the right values. Values come from mom and dad, God, religion, whatever, right? DNA, I don't know, genetics, but people have their values somewhat hardwired, and you're not going to really move the needle on their values. So you got to find people that fit them  [00:31:36] All right article, what are we up to? Six. Seven. Seven, okay. Article seven. All right. Pursuit of holistic success. [00:31:47] "We vow to pursue not just financial success. But the overall wellbeing and fulfillment in our personal and professional lives. We will commit to creating balance that nurtures our personal growth relationships and contributions to society." [00:32:03] All right. It's pretty good. So a holistic success. I mean, this really is I've never, I don't know, like. I used to like tag myself on Facebook when I would create a post, that'd say, holistic business coach or something like this. Because that's the idea. Holistic means it encompasses our personal life, our business, and that's why in our podcast intro it says " and our mission at DoorGrow is to transform property management, business owners and their businesses." So we have a strong holistic approach.  [00:32:34] Sarah: Yeah. For sure. I was it Ed Mylet that said it at Funnel Hacking Live last year? It might have been Ed Mylet. I'm going to have to look it up. Sorry Ed, if it was not you. So I think he said if the game for you is making money, if you're just in this to make money and that's all you care about, you are not going to make very much of it. You just won't because that's the only thing you're focused on and you don't care about anything else. But if instead, oh, it might have been Russell Brunson. Oh God, I owe one of them an apology.  [00:33:03] Jason: We heard it. We heard it at Funnel Hacking Live Conference. It was Funnel Hacking live at conference. So I can tell you that for sure. So, and it was either Ed Millet or Russell Brunson. I can tell you that too. They probably both said something similar.  [00:33:13] Sarah: So credit to both. But if you're only focused on making money, you're not going to make very much of it. You won't be very successful. However, if your focus is on helping people. Now you're going to be successful and you'll make a whole bunch of money. So if money is the thing that you're after, it's just going to feel like really hard. [00:33:34] It's going to be really, really draining for you. But if we're focused on like, Hey, how can I, primarily, first and foremost, how can I help people? That's the thing that's going to unlock all of the money for you.  [00:33:47] Jason: This is where your business mission becomes client-centric. This is where it becomes outward focused and our personal why should be outward focused as well, right? This is where we start to have that impact, but everybody wants to have some sort of different impact. We're all unique, so I think it's important to discover that. We talk about the four reasons, like moving towards more greater fulfillment, freedom, contribution, and support is why we have a business as motivators, and if you're moving towards that and you're committed to creating a balance in your business and personal life and personal growth and relationships and contributions to society, right, then you're going to have a much more profitable business. You're going to enjoy it more. Your team are going to be more inspired to work for you and be part of this vision and this mission. [00:34:39] So I like this article. It's a good one. That's the last one. So this ends this way. "Let this declaration serve as a compass that guides our actions, decisions, and collaborations with resolve and unity. Let us forge a path that transforms not just our own lives, but the entire property management industry for the betterment of the communities we serve. Signed your name and all fellow DoorGrow Hackers." All right. So I like that. Yeah, we're using that. That's pretty good. We're going to keep that. Maybe we'll post that somewhere. Yeah. All right. And that's basically it. Anything else we should add? I mean, we want, we all want more freedom and there's probably something that you feel like right now is holding you back. [00:35:22] You don't feel free. You wake up in the morning and maybe you don't feel like you are excited to go to work or excited to take that next phone call or excited to do property management. You may not feel a sense of freedom right now. You may not even think it's possible in that industry, so I promise you it is absolutely possible. We've helped lots of clients do this, and it can happen a lot faster than you realize as well. So you can have freedom and you can have freedom from bad clients. You can have freedom from bad deals. You can have freedom from bad phone calls. You can have freedom from bad team members. You can have freedom from all the bad stuff that you want to have freedom from. [00:36:02] So, all right, what should people do? Let's give them a call to action.  [00:36:07] Sarah: Well, I think the easiest thing to do is work with a great coach. Might be us, might be somebody else. I'm a bit biased.  [00:36:16] Jason: It should be us and you should reach out to DoorGrow. Go to DoorGrow.com and join our Facebook group, which you can get to at... [00:36:25] Sarah: I don't know.  [00:36:25] Jason: DoorGrowClub.com. doorgrowclub.com. Join our Facebook group community, and this will start getting you connected and indoctrinated. We're going to convince you to believe in yourself and we're going to convince you to also believe in DoorGrow. And then we're going to help you win through DoorGrow and we're going to change your life. This is what we do at DoorGrow. So, If you want some help. Otherwise, join our Facebook group and eventually reach out once you realize that you want our help. And until next time to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.  [00:36:57] 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!  [00:37:24] 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.

DoorGrow has changed a lot in the last few years. We've added tons of new features and perks for our clients as well as new coaches… including Sarah Hull, COO and property management growth coach. Join property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull to learn more about Sarah's role at DoorGrow, operations, and how you can scale your property management company. You'll Learn... [02:47] Sarah's Property Management Experience [05:19] Improving Operations and Cutting your Staffing Costs in Half [15:38] Why You Need an Operator in Your Business [22:02] Personality Types and Their Roles in a Business [27:24] The Clue that You Need a Better Team Tweetables “You can't build the right team around the wrong person.” “Here's the clue that you don't have the right team: your day-to-day is something you don't enjoy doing every day.” “Is the bruised ego worth a better, more profitable business that takes, a lot more off your plate and is less stressful?” “The most important person you'll ever hire in your business will be the operator.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: Here's the clue that you don't have the right team: your day to day is something you don't enjoy doing every day. If you're still wearing hats that you don't enjoy doing and you've built an entire team around you, and you're the wrong person in the roles that you're sitting in, then you've built the wrong team around you. You can't build the right team around the wrong person. [00:00:18] 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're open to doing things a bit differently then you are a DoorGrow hacker.  [00:00:36] 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 gateway to high trust, real estate deals, relationships, and residual income At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their business 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 along with Sarah here, property management growth experts, Jason Hull and Sarah Hull, the founder and CEO and the COO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.  [00:01:22] All right, so I'm already messing up the intro as I'm reading it because I'm looking and seeing her here in the screen, and I find her highly distracting. So, we were talking before we talked last night, we're like, what are we going to talk about on the podcast? And and then this morning, I said, what are we going to talk about? She says, I don't know, we only talked for like five minutes about last night, and we didn't come to a conclusion. So, I said, let's talk about you. Can I intro you and brag about you first? Sure, go ahead. So I wanted, I thought we would talk about Sarah today because she's probably a lot more interesting certainly to look at than myself and maybe to listen to. So I thought we would talk about her. So, I'll tell you a little bit about Sarah. So what's really amazing about Sarah and what I really like about her is that her wrists are really tiny.  [00:02:10] Sarah: That's really, it is true. It's not not true.  [00:02:14] Jason: My hands are not enormous. Dude hands. I buy child bracelets for her. I'm just kidding. All right, so  [00:02:19] Sarah: I have a five inch wrist. So like I can take, I can actually wrap my my pinky and my thumbs and touch. That's about, and they overlap. So it's about this big.  [00:02:31] Jason: Oh yeah. I can do the pinky as well. That's, yeah. Very small.  [00:02:34] Sarah: I train a lot on the rest. Get them that way.  [00:02:37] Jason: I do actually like that. I think it's a cute trait. All right. But I'm joking. What, what I really want to say is, so what's interesting to the audience is that Sarah has managed her own property management business. She has exited that. She sold it. Great job, by the way. Mm-hmm. And she managed a decent amount. At that size, most property managers have a team, like a full team, like five to 10 people I've seen. And usually at the stage, these companies are very unprofitable. Like this is the worst profit margin stage they've been at in their business. And they get stuck. And I call this area the second sand trap. They can't afford to really like expand or do more marketing or, and they're just not able to take a lot out of the business and, and their profits are all getting eaten up by staffing costs. Now Sarah had one part-time person, boots on the ground part-time and managed her business remotely part-time. Part-time, yeah. She was bored. Very. And people are like, well, these must have been really nice properties. These were C class properties? Duplexes, small plexes. [00:03:52] Sarah: Yes. We had a good mix of single family, duplex, triplex, and then I think we had maybe two that were like 10 units, which was kind of big for my area, but  [00:04:03] Jason: Okay. Yeah. And so, what was your profit margin?  [00:04:08] Sarah: Over 60%. Okay. 60% was a not great amount.  [00:04:12] Jason: Okay, so a lot of you dream of that, right? And you think, how's that even possible? It's possible because one, Sarah is very efficient. She's a very good operator. That's why she is now the COO of DoorGrow. And everything in the business is better as a result of having her in the business. Everything's improved. But I wanted to qualify Sarah as a badass. Like she's really good at what she does, and she wasn't really connected to the property management industry. She just did what made sense to her. And she didn't really want to be talking to tenants and she didn't really want to be dealing with talking to the owners very often, and she just set up her business in a way that was very efficient. And so we'll be talking about that in the priorities training. So, Sarah also has come into DoorGrow and she runs all of our operations. She runs I everything that I've taught her that I like I've developed DoorGrow os and how we plan our cadence. She just knows it to the point where she can teach it. And she learned it all very quickly. And now she's the one that coaches clients how we did our hiring. She like has improved on that and built it out even more and teaches clients how we do hiring and so we help clients get all these systems in place to become more profitable and more efficient. Sarah does all that. So as an example, why don't you share the story of maybe Jade and Andrew. I think that's a great story. Because they were at a similar size of a business as you had had.  [00:05:46] Sarah: Yeah, yeah. Well, they had about 188 units and they had 11 team members total, like 11. So really, really overstaffed. And some of them were in the office and some of them were VAs and we just really had to like dive in because they said, well, like, what are they doing? And they kind of gave me like a surface answer. Like, oh, well this person does this and they do this. And I said, yeah, but like, what are they really doing? Because with 188 leases, like, let's just pretend that. We had all hundred and 88 due in the same month with, which isn't going to be the case. We're going to, spread that over the course of multiple months. But if we had all hundred 88, due even in one month, I still can't figure out what, two or three leasing agents are doing with 40 hours a week every single week. So we are just really going through and trying to figure out like, who's doing what. And sometimes I find that either no one's doing something or two people are doing something. And if two people are doing it, just know that it's not getting done.  [00:06:56] Jason: That's a 17 to one ratio. I just did the math. [00:06:58] So that's, that's for each, for every 17 doors, they have a team member.  [00:07:04] Sarah: It was really bad. So we just kind of went through with them and figured out like, what is everybody actually doing? What should everybody be doing? And then how many people is it really actually going to take? And they they had a lot of meetings and discussions with each other and then like we kind of met a couple times throughout this process and they came to the conclusion that they needed to let go of about half of their team. And they did. And then once they did that, all of a sudden they're like, Hey, we're like profitable and we're making money. But when we first started talking with them, they said like, actually, we're losing money every month. Like we can't pay ourselves. We can't take anything and we're losing money. Like this business is costing me money to run every single month. Yeah, little uncomfortable situation to be in, especially because property management isn't, it's not easy, it's not a cake walk. You're not, like doing nothing all day. So if you're in a business like this, And it is complicated and it is challenging. Then the least you should be able to do is like get yourself a decent profit margin so that you can make sure that you're paying yourself and that your business isn't struggling to keep up with. [00:08:14] Jason: Drive this home. Sarah did one call with them and the result of that one call was, what? What are all the results?  [00:08:21] Sarah: Well, on the one call, they realized, I have no idea what most of the people are actually doing. Like, they gave me the answer and I'm like, yeah, but how do you spend 40 hours a week doing that thing? [00:08:32] Yeah. And from there they realized like, we need to make major, major changes to our team. And most of these people are going to have to go. On the second call, that's when they actually decided to take action. Okay. And they got rid of, so. [00:08:47] Jason: The second call, which is she did this one call after that. [00:08:51] Mm-hmm. They fired half their team, half their team then, and as a result, their profit margin, which was not very good, which was negative, losing money, was then what? What did they get to? I didn't get their profit margin. Okay. It was significantly improved. Oh, no. Significantly improved.  [00:09:09] Sarah: I know they weren't losing money anymore. [00:09:10] Jason: Yeah. Yay. All right. We'll have to get some stats on that cause I want to brag during the priorities training about that. All right. So, Sarah has been able to dramatically improve our clients' businesses and lives. One of the things she's also helped a lot of clients with is completely restructuring their teams. Mm-hmm. They just did two of them last week. Okay. Why don't you explain Yeah. Kind of what you've done.  [00:09:37] Sarah: Mm-hmm. Well, all right, so one of them had about 360 doors and there were 1, 2, 3, 7 people on the team total. Which to some of you might sound like, yeah, that makes sense. And to me it's just, I'm like, there's too many people. And it was kind of like the same thing where everyone is saying like, oh, I'm so busy. I'm so busy, I'm so busy, and I'm looking at things going, I just don't understand what actually is is happening. Like, there's a lot of work that has to be done. It's like busy work. It's, it's like grunt work, but it's not, super helpful. It's just the things that are going to keep you afloat and that's like a bare minimum. So what we ended up doing is this client had one BDM, three property managers and then three assistants that were basically like assistant property managers. And we, he's like, I don't know if a lot of them are like good fits. [00:10:37] And I just, I, I really don't know what they're saying they're doing because they all tell me like, I'm so busy. I'm so busy, but what's actually happening? So when we kind of like dove into things, we realized like, you are overstaffed and very similar situation. He wasn't able to really take a lot out of the business because there was not a lot left. [00:10:57] Jason: Who is this? Kevin. Okay, so Kevin had three property managers. Mm-hmm. Each property manager and they were portfolio style. And each property manager had their own assistant. Yep. Because they were not, for some reason able to get done what they needed done. [00:11:13] And Kevin himself was having to do lots of things, put out lots of fires, and be involved in micromanaging everybody. And when I first shadowed, and--  [00:11:22] Sarah: he wasn't micromanaging anybody, there was nobody leading the team.  [00:11:25] Jason: Okay. Kevin wasn't leading the team then? Nope. So what, Kevin? No one was leading the team. [00:11:30] Sarah: Team was just kind of doing whatever they thought was the right thing to do.  [00:11:33] Jason: All right. Well, Kevin seemed pretty stressed out and what, yeah, and Kevin didn't have any personal support at all. Like nobody was helping Kevin with anything. He didn't even have his own assistant, but he got assistance for three people on the team that weren't very productive or efficient. So, what's the plan with Kevin? [00:11:53] Sarah: Yeah. So, half of those people are going too. So we decided the BDM is excellent, so we're going to keep the, the bdm. He is taking one of the people who was a property manager and she actually tests okay as a property manager on our assessment. But she tests better as an operator. She is like, is a better fit for kind of this operator position. So we're going to shift her into the operator role. We're going to keep one of the property managers to do all of everything. And then one VA who's going to be like an assistant property manager.  [00:12:29] Jason: Where'd the BDM come from? [00:12:30] Sarah: The BDM was already there. Oh, okay. He was one of the seven originals. Got it. So he had three property managers, three assistants, and one bdm. Those were the seven.  [00:12:39] Jason: Got it. Okay. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Who's the other one you said there were two? Josh. Josh? Yeah. What's the deal with Josh? [00:12:46] Sarah: Josh had about 300 doors and his whole team was kind of like a hodgepodge of people. Not that he was super overstaffed, but just people weren't in the right seats. And when you have the right people, but you're not putting them to the best like use, then you kind of still run into issues. And Josh, same thing, no operator. There was no operator on the team and largely he was kind of handling operations and he is like, I don't mind doing it. I like doing it, but I don't want to be the only one doing it, and I don't want it to always fall on me. Mm. So what we're doing with him is he had a VA that he had let go, like right in the middle of our talks. And he said, Hey, I'm hiring a new va. I said, great, let's like test the new VA to see if they're going to be a good fit. And then he decided, like we shifted his team around a couple of times and like through the assessments realized and he had talked with you. This was the one that we took who he thought was going to be the property manager and then put her in the BDM role instead. Mm-hmm. Because he is like, well, I don't know how to like, make everything work. So now he's he's going to have like a whole different team structure. Not that he had to let anybody go. He wasn't like crazy overstaffed. It's just he still wasn't super profitable because he didn't have the right people in the right spots. And he didn't have anyone doing the operations. Mm. You can get as big as you'd like, but if you don't have someone handling the operations, and this is that back end piece, this is not front end stuff, like everyone always, this is what we start with, is we start doing front end stuff. Because when you start your business, you are doing the front end stuff, you're doing the leasing, and you're doing the showings, and you're talking to tenants, and you're handling the maintenance.  [00:14:37] This is all the front end stuff. This is the stuff that absolutely must be done just to make sure that the business runs. When your business reaches a certain size, you now need to have someone doing the backend stuff. Mm-hmm. And if you're not having anyone doing like the backend stuff, which is like, hey, making sure that everyone on the team is following the same direction and everybody is contributing to the vision of the CEO and running things like your daily huddles and your strategic planning and doing hiring and firing and getting job descriptions, doing team reviews like. For those of you that are hearing all of this and you're going, blah, that sounds horrible, then it means you're probably not the operator. And at some point, if you're not an operator, it's okay. Jason's not an operator, like he doesn't like that. It's not his brain functions. So you need the counterpart whose brain does function like that, and that would be me. [00:15:29] Jason: I like to build out the systems and I must have been mis mixing up Josh's team. I think you did team with Kevin, so I think you did. Yeah, I remember Josh. So the most important person you'll ever hire in your business will be the operator. That's very true. And because visionary entrepreneurs do not like the details. I like building out the systems. I like creating DoorGrow, hiring and DoorGrow os and these systems. But I don't want to run them in my own business. I want someone else to run them because running those things is not as fun and it actually, the results are not as good because especially with planning, if I run all the planning, it's not as good. Bad, and so bad. [00:16:09] Sarah: There was one week where I couldn't run the planning meeting because I was on a flight and I said, can you just run the planning meeting? And he did it. And I came back and I was like, I don't know what happened in here, but this is bad.  [00:16:20] Jason: It was okay. I did just fine. It was bad. So the issue-- just fine. The issue is it's not fun for me to run the meetings, but also when it comes to like actual strategic planning, we as the visionary or as the main leader of the business, or even as the operator, we have to be the last to speak. Otherwise, we influence things. And if I run the meeting, it's really hard for me not to say certain things and not to steer things a certain way. [00:16:48] And so I don't get as valid of feedback from the team. I don't get as valid of information. So what happens is as visionaries, a lot of times we think we have all the best ideas. And it's not generally true, right? Our team members are closer and more connected to what's actually happening on the ground, and they can see things we can't see, and they have ideas that we don't have, and they can share these things with us, and we can get their buy-in into the plan if they help create it. [00:17:16] But when we are just top down pushing everything, because we think we're the visionary, and this is one reason I really don't like EOS. One of the big fundamental flaws in EOS is they intentionally overinflate the ego of the visionary. The visionary has all the best ideas and they're so important, and that feeds the ego and it helps them to sell integrators, which in their accountability chart, they place the visionary at the top, and then they have a line going down. And this is just a fancy name for a stupid org chart that doesn't make sense, but you have the visionary connected to the operator. Which they call an integrator. And the integrator then is connected to everyone else on the team. This is one of the most flawed structures I've ever seen, and nobody runs their business this way because integrators or operators are not the people that should be over sales and marketing generally. They're not the people that, because they have a very different personality type, they're opposite. And they want to conserve and they want to make sure money is handled well and they don't want to take risks and they don't want to, like, this is more stuff for maybe your head of sales and marketing or maybe your BDM or whoever you want to place in your executive team. They're really usually equals, but they have to report their stats. Everybody reports their stats to the operator. And so the challenge is we have to have a system in which the team can all give feedback and give information first, and it isn't top down. It's really bottom up. And this is how we designed DoorGrow Os and why people that come from the EOS system get a much bigger result and a bigger yield from their team and much more profitability than they were able to get under u s or traction or rocket fuel, right? [00:19:00] These are some of the things that Sarah's able to do with some of our clients. And I have to say, it's amazing to be able to have somebody that I can trust to not just understand all this stuff. Because she, she's super sharp but also to be able to teach it to clients and to be able to help clients work through all of this and trust that it's just going to be handled and that's really what we want in a great member of our team or in a business partner. [00:19:25] Or with anybody that we work with, we want people that we can trust to just handle stuff and to do it well. Sarah does it really well, so, what else should we say about you?  [00:19:36] Sarah: I think that's just how my brain works. Like every job that I've ever worked before I owned my own business, I would be there for a little bit and it was super clear to me like, Hey, if we make these changes or if we do these things differently, or if we just shift this a little bit, it's going to be better and here's how it's going to be better and why. [00:19:55] And it's so frustrating for me when you know, like I was at multiple insurance companies. Before like I kind of got into property management and I on all of them, I was like, oh, we could just do it like this. Well, we don't do it like that. I'm like, I know you don't do it like that, but you should do it like that and here's why. And when it's frustrating for me where I'm like, oh, you could just make these changes and you could do things like this. And this is just how I think my, my brain is just wired to work. because I can like look at the overall picture of things and I'm like, well, why do we do things like this? You could do it like this instead and we should change this and this should be different. And that's really good. This is really great. Keep this, but change this little thing. And then these are the results that you'll have. And at all of the insurance companies I had worked with prior, I had like made some suggestions and they're like, oh no, we're not going to do that. We can't do that, we can't do that. So I think looking back, it's funny for me because I'm like, oh well yeah, I was kind of, almost like destined to like get in and, and run my own business because then if I think, Hey, we should do things like this because of this, then I can just do them. I don't have to go and ask like, oh, hey, can I really think this would help your business? Like, we can do it. And they're like, no.  [00:21:08] So now, like, just looking back, I'm just able to kind of pick it apart and see things that sometimes other people don't see because you're just, you're too close to it. Mm. And, and it's it's personal for people too. They're like, oh, this is my business and I'm really proud of it and this, I worked so hard and I know, like, I know what goes into running a business. Like I know it, blood, sweat, and tears doesn't even begin to cover it. I understand that. And that being said, I think that's one of the reasons why you should be looking to improve it. So if you can make a few small changes, like your, your ego might have a little bit of a bruise, right? But is it worth the trade off? Like, is the bruised ego worth a better, more profitable business that takes, a lot more off your plate and is less stressful? So for sometimes, sometimes people are like, no. I don't want that. I just want to know that I have all the answers and I'm right all the time, and that's okay. [00:22:02] Jason: All right, so what's unique about Sarah, and some of you might identify with her a little bit. So in Myers-Brigg, she's probably an INTJ.  [00:22:13] Sarah: Well, not probably, I'm like the epitome of INTJ. [00:22:16] Jason: So INTJ. Is very intuitive. They are introverted. They're a thinker and they're judging. Now INTJs are because they're super intuitive. They're called the strategist because they're logical and they figure out solutions to things, but what's I think really in interesting, and I think there's women's intuition and she's very intuitive. She just knows things without knowing why it's true. Mm, yeah. Like she's like, there's a problem over here in the, in our business or there's a problem over here and I don't know why, but it, something's not right. So. And what's frustrating is I will say no. I don't see it. Like everything's fine. And she's always right. She loves when I say, you were right. She loves it a little too much by the way. But she's usually right. And so I've learned to trust her intuition tuition and sometimes I think our unconscious. Has a lot of information and can process a lot more than our conscious mind can and picks up on little details and things. Mm-hmm. And has worked some things out and just knows things and it bubbles up to the surface of our conscious mind and we're like, Hey, something's off here. And she gets these flashes of intuition that when there's like some sort of threat and things like this as well. So I've learned to trust your intuition because it's proven accurate multiple times. And I've always considered myself fairly intuitive in the business, but her intuition is kind of next level. And so I think being able to trust your gut and having a partner in the business or some, or an operator that you can trust, their gut can have a significant impact as well. [00:23:52] So I'm a bit opposite of her. I'm an ENTP. So we both are the intuitive, which is the n and we're both thinkers. Thinkers. But. I am a bit more extroverted probably. Even though I really feel like an introvert a lot of times, but I like need to be around some people occasionally. [00:24:12] Sarah: Well, I know, but you usually like will kind of, you'll you'll break in that arena before I do. You're like, we like I just want to get out of the house and be around people and I'm like, oh, I don't.  [00:24:22] Jason: Yeah. And then I'm definitely more, we think very differently. Like very differently. Mm-hmm. I'm perceiving and you're judging and perceiving means my desk is chaos right now. If you could see it. And it means I love pulling in ideas from lots of different places. I have a crazy variety of books on the bookshelf over here. I've like, I pull in things from a lot of places to formulate my thinking. Then I'm able to formulate some new ideas and I'm very creative that way. And that's part of, I think why we have such great IP at DoorGrow. I get a lot of coaching and a lot of input from different sources and we improve those ideas and we have, I think, the best ideas and innovate the quickest in the coaching space in this industry period, maybe out of a lot of coaching businesses. We consult and share ideas with other coaches and coaching businesses as well that we're in Masterminds with. I don't want to do all the implementation. I don't want to make sure everything gets done. And so I'll be like, Hey, here's this great idea, but Sarah also brings really great ideas to the table. She's like, Hey, I had this idea. And then she'll just rapidly implement, like she just gets it done. She's like, Hey, let's do this premium Mastermind event and have people, we'll rent out an Airbnb and we'll get people to go and we'll do this and it'll be awesome. And I'm like okay. And she just makes it happen. Sells all the tickets to it, gets everything organized. I just showed up and got to look cool and she made it all happen. [00:25:50] He's like, what are we doing at this event?  [00:25:52] I showed up, I'm like, so what are we doing?  [00:25:54] He's like, what are we even doing? I'm like, just-- [00:25:56] I'm like, okay, Sarah's leading this. So that was our last DoorGrow Live too. Like Mar-- Yes, that's true-- my assistant who did a lot of planning and Sarah like, handled some of the details and ideas and I was just like, all right, I'm just here. I'm the tech guy. [00:26:11] Sarah: Just when we call your name, get to the stage, just go up there.  [00:26:14] Jason: Yeah. When, when it's your turn, Jason, you go speak and talk about something and I did. So that's kind of how we work together. So, what else should we say about Sarah? She's still working on getting her last name changed because it was Hall and she's switching it to Hull. [00:26:31] Sarah: Well, right now, I really don't know what it is. Yeah. Truly. I don't know because the Social Security office has me as Hull.  [00:26:39] Jason: So you got to change. Yeah. To my last name.  [00:26:41] Sarah: Yeah. But the DMV is like, so super booked out.  [00:26:46] Jason: So not, not in Texas yet. Your license doesn't say it yet.  [00:26:50] Sarah: No, no. Not my license doesn't say it yet, but my social security card does. [00:26:56] Jason: So, and your social media, I think you've changed most of it. I changed it before. Long before this. Yeah. So, but Hall's her ex-husband's last name, so yeah. So I'm trying to like, he's trying to buy a vow. I'm trying to buy that vow. I think I paid for that vow. What's on your neck and on your finger. And I think I've, I think I've accomplished that. I don't know. I don't know. So, cool. And I don't know what else, what else should we say?  [00:27:24] So Sarah's one of the key coaches in our business here at DoorGrow. Our mission is to transform property management, business owners and their businesses, and she does that like, she helps to do that. She runs a lot of the group coaching calls when I'm focused on other things in the business, which is awesome that I have somebody I can trust to do that at a really high level and to do it really well and clients really appreciate her test.  [00:27:49] Sarah: When you're busy, I run the whole scale call. Yes, every single week. [00:27:54] Jason: Well, you do. You go beyond that. You also run some, some of the other calls that I-- Yeah, for sure. I used to run every call. You can run every call. So, yeah, which is awesome. All right, well I think, for those of you that you want to experience some of the magic of Sarah and improve your operations, you're struggling with things, your profit margin is not what you wish it would be, and you think you need more kPIs and micromanaging and to like squeeze more juice out of your team. That's probably, there might be a little bit of truth to that, but generally you'd probably need a better team or you need to optimize your team and that's one of the most profitable changes you should make first before you start messing with micromanagement, KPIs, more pressure, stuff like that. You need to make sure first you have the right team, and here's the clue that you don't have the right team: your day to day is something you don't enjoy doing every day. If you're still wearing hats that you don't enjoy doing and you've built an entire team around you, and you're the wrong person in the roles that you're sitting in, then you've built the wrong team around you. [00:29:05] It's pretty obvious if you look at it from that perspective. You can't build the right team around the wrong person. Can't build the right team around the wrong person. So, we can help you make sure first, who are you, we can help you figure that out, and what do you really enjoy? And we have processes for that. And then we can start to build the right team around you so that you are supported and you get to move closer and closer to having more fulfillment in your day-to-day. More freedom, more contribution, and more support. And then your team members will be able to have those four things and you'll get probably three times the output from those team members. And that's the biggest expense and that will give you the biggest profit in your business if you can get these systems in place that we can help install. With DoorGrow OS and DoorGrow hiring and DoorGrow Flow and DoorGrow, CRM and DoorGrow. What am I missing? Flow hiring, crm, you said all of software. Those are our software. Okay, cool. Which we call our super system. So we're going to be doing this event on the 22nd, talking about priorities and how to increase your profit margin and how to decrease operational costs. We hope to see you there and or watch the replay if you see this later. Make sure to reach out to DoorGrow if you would like to experience some Sarah Magic. And until next time to our mutual growth, everyone.  [00:30:26] 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!  [00:30:53] 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

Today I'm talking to Christine, a Humane Marketing Circle member and Creative Start-Up Coach about passion and happiness. Join us for a thought-provoking conversation with Christine Michaelis, author of the book “The Happiness Formula.” We explore the intriguing question of why some business owners find greater happiness in their endeavors than others. Throughout our discussion, we uncover a treasure trove of insights, examining the transformative power of habits that promote happiness, the art of setting achievable goals that foster fulfillment rather than disappointment, and the joy derived from being part of a vibrant community. Drawing from her extensive research and expertise, Christine offers practical strategies and illuminating anecdotes that are sure to inspire and motivate listeners to unlock their own path to happiness in business and beyond. So tune in as we embark on this captivating exploration of what it takes to be a truly happy and fulfilled business owner. In this episode, Christine and I share a conversation on: Why some business owners are happier than others Habits that make us happier How to set achievable goals that make us happy and not disappointed The happiness that comes from being in community with others Her new book ‘The Happiness Formula'  And much more Imperfect Transcript of the show We use and love Descript to edit our podcast and provide this free transcript of the episode. And yes, that's an affiliate link. [00:00:00] Sarah: Hello, humane marketers. Welcome back to the Humane Marketing Podcast, the place to be for the generation of marketers that cares. This is a show where we talk about running your business in a way that feels good to you, is aligned with your values, and also resonates with today's conscious customers because it's humane, ethical, and non-pushy. [00:00:23] I'm Sarah z Croce, your hippie turn business coach for quietly rebellious entrepreneurs and marketing impact pioneer. Mama Bear of the Humane Marketing Circle and renegade author of marketing like we're human and selling like we're human. If after listening to the show for a while, you're ready to move on to the next level and start implementing and would welcome a community of like-minded, quietly rebellious entrepreneurs who discuss with transparency what. [00:00:52] Works and what doesn't work in business, then we'd love to welcome you in our humane marketing circle. If you're picturing your [00:01:00] typical Facebook group, let me paint a new picture for you. This is a closed community of like-minded entrepreneurs from all over the world who come together once per month in a Zoom circle workshop to hold each other accountable and build their business in a. [00:01:15] Sustainable way we share with transparency and vulnerability, what works for us and what doesn't work, so that you can figure out what works for you instead of keep throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what sticks. Find out more at humane.marketing/circle, and if you prefer one-on-one support from me. [00:01:37] My humane business coaching could be just what you need, whether it's for your marketing, sales, general business building, or help with your big. Idea like writing a book. I'd love to share my brain and my heart with you together with my almost 15 years business experience and help you grow a sustainable business that is joyful and sustainable. [00:01:58] If you love this podcast, [00:02:00] wait until I show you my mama bear qualities as my one-on-one client can find out more at humane.marketing/coaching. And finally, if you are a Marketing Impact pioneer and would like to bring Humane Marketing to your organization, have a look at my offers and workshops on my website@humane.marketing. [00:02:32] Hi, friends. Welcome back. I hope you're doing well. Today's conversation fits under the P of Passion, so we're back to the first P of the Humane Marketing Mandala. If you're a regular here, you know that I'm organizing the conversations around the seven Ps of the Humane Marketing Mandala. And if this is your first time here and you probably don't know what I'm talking about, you can download your one page marketing plan with the [00:03:00] humane marketing version of the seven Ps of marketing@humane.marketing slash one page. [00:03:07] That's the number one and the word page. This one page marketing plan comes with seven email prompts to really help you reflect on these different piece for your business. So it's not a, you know, six step plan here, do this. But it's more like prompting you with questions that help you reflect on your different piece. [00:03:29] On today's show, I'm talking to Christine, uh, Michael's, uh, humane Marketing Circle, member and creative startup coach about passion and happiness. But before I tell you a little bit more about Christine and today's show, I'd like to tell you about our upcoming storytelling, like We're Human Workshop that takes place on June 7th. [00:03:52] As you may have noticed, I have this series of workshops, live workshops, with the theme of being [00:04:00] human. Something being human, right? And the idea is to look at these different concepts. Marketing strategies, et cetera, from the perspective of humane marketing and marketing like we're human. So this, uh, time we're looking at storytelling and rather than looking at storytelling from this, Hero's perspective, right? [00:04:22] Hint, hero's journey. We're actually looking at it from being human. So how are we going to tell stories that feel like we're human? Uh, I think we are kind of tired of the, uh, heroes, uh, stories and we'd watch, rather hear from a human level. Connect on this human level and in order to get ideal clients, we know that we, uh, need to bring more of us to our marketing, more of us to our story, but. [00:04:55] How, that's the question, right? In which stories are relevant? [00:05:00] Well, that's exactly what we're discussing in this 90 minute live workshop on June 7th, and I'm so thrilled that Hillary Ria, uh, my co-host will help you find your five word life story. And I'm really super excited about this because I. I'm so happy to have found a storytelling expert that agrees with me that, you know, the, the typical heroes journey story type is kind of outdated. [00:05:29] We need to bring more of us to our story, and that's what we're gonna do in this live workshop. So it starts from within. That's actually what we're doing. Instead of trying to fit our story into the story arc, the hero's journey arc we're coming from within. And there's still a, you know, framework. [00:05:47] There's still structure, but it really comes from within. So please have a look at the details at humane.marketing/storytelling and uh, join us for only [00:06:00] $27 for this confidence boosting workshop. Cuz once you. Own your story. That's when you're really going out there and resonating with your ideal clients. [00:06:09] Right? Of course, if you're already a Humane Marketing Circle member, you can intend all our workshops for free. Okay, back to today's episode. Let me tell you a bit more about Christine. Christine Marketing and creative startup coach, founder of the Creative Startup Academy, author of multiple books, public speaker, podcast and workshop facilitator. [00:06:33] She has worked in marketing and advertising for more than 12 years before she decided to start her own business supporting startups. When her hands-on approach, she has helped hundreds of individuals validate their. Business idea and create a successful startup, as well as working with small businesses, supporting them, getting clarity and marketing their business. [00:06:56] She sees entrepreneurship as a way of life and [00:07:00] loves the passion that comes from working in that industry. In our conversation today, we talked about why some business owners are happier than others and how to help, uh, those who are not always happy to get to more happiness. Some habits that make us happier. [00:07:20] How to set achievable goals that make us happy and not disappointed. The happiness that comes from being in community with others. Her new book, the Happiness Formula, and so much more. So let's dive in and be happy with Christine McKays. [00:07:40] Hi Christine. Thanks so much for being on the Humane Marketing Podcast. I look forward to this conversation about happiness and bliss. [00:07:48] Christine: Yes, thank you. I'm very excited to share Rod It and um, Hopefully make some people happy. At least smile, [00:07:56] Sarah: at least. We're definitely smiling. Uh, I just said [00:08:00] offline, I spent most of my day in nature. [00:08:02] We saw these little ducklings and you know, it's finally spring. Yeah, I'm definitely happy today. So, but let's, let's start with you like, you know, it's, um, I'm basically featuring this episode under the P of Passion, which is the first P of the Humane Marketing Mandala. And so when you said that you're coming out with a book about happiness, I'm like, well, happiness, passion, you know, it's all these good feelings that we want to have more of. [00:08:31] So tell us yeah. What you are passionate about and, and then also obviously then we go into the, the whole definition of happiness and how do we get more happy as autism. [00:08:43] Christine: Yes. Um, well, thank you. First, uh, for having me. I'm, I'm very excited. Um, I know we've done so many things together and I know there will be so many more collaborations coming out of that. [00:08:56] Uh, and I think you can't find a more passionate person [00:09:00] about, uh, what they do. I know everyone is, but I really explode with passion when I, when I talk about, um, What I do and, and I just love it. Uh, and always I say I'm an accidental entrepreneur because I never wanted my own business. Um, but it had just happened and I absolutely love it. [00:09:19] And I only basically work with people because I work with entrepreneurs, um, that are really passionate about what they're doing. And that's lovely. That wraps off on me. And it really gives you energy, I think, um, when you, uh, yeah, when you work with people that are passionate. So what am I passionate about? [00:09:39] Work. Mm-hmm. In this case, my own company. Um, if we are looking from a business perspective, I'm really someone who loves getting things done and crossing things off the list. I, I really love, I'm, I'm like kind of, I'm really passionate about having this and I used to not anymore, uh, have to-do lists for [00:10:00] personal life. [00:10:01] Okay, do the sports, uh, go out for, for a walk, wash the dishes and stuff. Now I don't do that anymore, and I'm learning more and more to also sometimes do nothing, uh, which is really difficult for me because I love to finish things also. That's not very strange. But I love to finish a shampoo bottle or to, to finish a product or something. [00:10:24] I have to, that's fine with me. Um, I know what you [00:10:27] Sarah: mean. Yeah, I know what you mean. It's kind of like that's. Oh, okay. We finished this, you know, and it's like, oh, we can move on to the next thing. [00:10:35] Christine: Yeah. And challenges work really well for me. If you give me a 30 day challenge, I will do all 30 days. Um, But what I'm really passionate about is as well, um, is making people smile. [00:10:47] I think really people always say, oh, what's your purpose in life and stuff? And this sounds very cheesy now, but I, I love making people happy because it makes me really happy and it's all interconnected and it's lots of science behind it [00:11:00] as well. Um, however, that really, that may, that, that's what I'm passionate about, spreading some happiness in, in swan's life. [00:11:09] Hmm. Yeah. [00:11:10] Yeah. [00:11:11] Sarah: So, so let's talk about this happiness. Um, what, what I was thinking about is like, you know, how come what makes some entrepreneurs, business people happier than others? And, and then how can we help those who are not currently happy in their business or in their life? But since we're on a business podcast, we can talk about business. [00:11:37] Um, Yeah. How can we help them to find back to being happy? [00:11:44] Christine: I think the very first thing, I mean there's also official definitions of happiness and stuff. The very first thing is obviously to know and understand, um, which probably people do that. Happiness means different things to different people. Um, however, there's also science [00:12:00] that shows what doesn't make happy. [00:12:01] Um, but we are gonna focus, of course, also on the things that. Will make people happy and also, um, business owners. So, um, I, I would say you would need to define first, what does happiness mean to you? What does success mean to you? Because therefore, for, um, entrepreneurs are often interlinked, um, let's say saying, okay, if I have success, That makes me happy and that makes also the business sustainable. [00:12:28] But what does that mean? It does not necessarily mean, uh, a lot of money. It might mean I help X amount of people with what I do, or I have an impact on society, on an, the environment, whatever. Uh, a specific, uh, success definition. I think everyone, uh, as a business owner should have. I, uh, again, I appreciate that we all have to pay the bills and that is a business. [00:12:54] Um, so it, um, it's thinking about the money, but not in, in the connection with [00:13:00] happiness really. So understanding what does happiness mean to you and your, in your business, um, and what does success mean to you? It's the very, very first thing. And then if we go into a few really practical things and steps into what, um, science has shown, what really works, um, and what helps with happiness and increasing your happiness, Is, um, investing into experiences in instead of materialistic things. [00:13:29] So because they create lasting memories and give you the sense of personal growth as well, and that overall can contribute, um, to a deeper understanding and satisfaction and fulfillment. And, um, basically when you do that, you prioritize time. Over resources. You prioritized, uh, your time and resource in a way that really align with your values as well and your personal interests. [00:13:58] So in business [00:14:00] or in personal life as well. And again, this can give you this sense of fulfillment, fulfillment and feeds into the purpose that you might not have defined yet for yourself because it's a very difficult question. What's your purpose like? Mm-hmm. I just talked to someone else who said, I don't believe in that stuff. [00:14:17] I don't think we have any purpose. And I was like, okay. Uh, that's okay. Everyone has their own view. Um, but really you can, you can do that. And investing into experiences. You also invest in relationships with other people. You create memories together. And, um, you also share that, that success with, uh, other ones. [00:14:36] And in that case, um, you can share successes, for example, that you had or the company had with the team, with co-founders. With, uh, freelancers that you, that you work with, if you outsource something with suppliers, with clients, you can share this. If, if the client had a success, you should celebrate that. [00:14:54] Mm-hmm. Not because, oh, I'm so great. That was me, but really because you're happy for that person. [00:15:00] Mm-hmm. And it will make you happy. So that would be the next experiences. [00:15:04] Sarah: I really like that because I just come back, uh, from, from an experience. So, so basically we have a mastermind, uh, where we meet every, uh, every month and every month that somebody else hosts the, the get together. [00:15:18] And so today, I hosted and so I just, I said, instead of staying at our place, let's go down to the forest because I'm. Lucky enough to live next to a forest, next to, um, a little water, uh, stream as well. And so, um, you know, it takes time though to take time of our, out of our busy lives, right? Mm-hmm. And so, uh, only five out of the 10 people could make it, but those who made it, we just appreciated it so much. [00:15:47] And then, like I said, we saw the ducklings, we created memories together, right? And, and yeah, we just. Felt really happy. Where had we stayed in our office and, you know, [00:16:00] maybe, yeah. Made more money or, you know, had another client that it wouldn't have given us the same feeling of happiness. I'm sure. Yes. It's, yeah. [00:16:11] It's really those times where you step out of the. Normal kind of, um, things that, that you feel these moments of awe and, and experience what you, what you said. [00:16:23] Christine: Another thing that, and also with others. I mean with others, exactly. You, you can go by yourself and you have a great experiences, but if you share this moment with others, the shared moment again as another. [00:16:32] Yeah. Um, yeah. So another [00:16:34] Sarah: layer of happiness. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Another, um, point you make in the book that contributes to happiness is about building. Habits. Um, so talk to us about these habits. Why do habits, one could say, well, habits make it more boring. So, so how do habits make us more happy? [00:16:57] Christine: Yes. So building habits is [00:17:00] another thing like you just mentioned. [00:17:01] Uh, I just wanna mention three quickly other things as well. Um, before we jump into the habits, maybe because it's about the experiences, uh, that jumps back into that is the savoring the moment. Meaning that you really see and, and stay in that moment and see the positive side and aspects of things. And what you can do is you can share that with others. [00:17:23] So if it's an experience that you had yourself, um, to have a bigger impact, you can share this with others as well via the phone. Maybe a video, maybe a quick call, video call or something. Um, that can help that. Um, You can physically jump up in the air and, and be happy about things and, uh, stuff like that. [00:17:42] But anyway, just to, to, uh, combine that again with the experiences, so with the habits, um, because habits, um, enhance, can enhance if you're talking about good habits. Um, so, and these might have to be defined, but they, um, enhance really [00:18:00] your physical health, your mental health. Um, your emotional resilience and can really contribute to, uh, again, to this greater sense of purpose and fulfillment. [00:18:12] Mm-hmm. Now, creating habits, I'm gonna talk about this in a second, but, uh, engaging in hobbies or activities that bring you joy and there's a difference between joy and happiness. Officially there's this definition. Happiness is like the longer state and, uh, of something. The joy is the one that you have in that moment. [00:18:32] Mm-hmm. Um, but I would say find something that brings you joy outside of business also. Um, of course you should have joy in the business and what you're doing. But make sure you do find hobbies in, um, groups that you, um, go out with in nature and things that have nothing to do necessarily with your business. [00:18:56] Because I think as entrepreneurs as well, we [00:19:00] have difficulties to detach from work because it's always there and it's our baby and we're passionate about it so that we. Mm. Don't see that we overwork ourselves sometimes. So, uh, take some stuff out of there as well and create habits around it. Um, have regular working hours is a habit that I think everyone should have. [00:19:20] Um, when you ha work for someone else or if you work for yourself, have your own business. Make sure you have working hours set and don't work after those hours. There might be exceptions cuz maybe there's a podcast recording that you're doing with someone else after hours or. Um, you speak at an event and it's not possible to do otherwise, but the norm should be that you have regular set hours. [00:19:45] That's, I think, a good habit to have. Um, to have a end of work routine is something that I never had. And after I worked with someone, um, that was also a remote coach, basically that was one of the first things she said, [00:20:00] you should have. A habit, a routine when finished working because you can signal your brain. [00:20:06] Okay, that's it. That's the end of the work today, especially if you're working from home, right? Because, and you might be even in the same room and where you do other things, um, in the not have extra office. That's another great habit. Um, morning routines. I'm a massive fan of morning routine. Um, you don't have to be extreme, but having some kind of routine to start your day to wake up in a slower way. [00:20:30] I get up very early. I have almost two hour morning routine. Um, but where you involve different kind of senses, bit of exercise, doesn't have to be a massive exercise. Can be also yoga, some breathing exercise. Maybe people like to do visualizations in the morning, maybe to ride whatever you feel, what works for you, which gives you the time. [00:20:50] To wake up and to set up for the day. I think that would be a good habit to have. Um, healthy eating, which can be sometimes [00:21:00] challenging if you are in, in this run of getting things done. Um, Eating very fast. Even if you eat healthy stuff, uh, is also not, uh, recommended. And I'm still eating too fast. I'm, I'm done in six minutes with my whole, uh, lunch, which is, uh, not good. [00:21:19] I take an hour because then I do a walk and things like that, but the actual eating part is too short actually. Mm-hmm. Um, But eating healthy because it will give you energy, it will be good for your body. Um, and it will really have a big impact on your health and wellbeing and your happiness as well. [00:21:37] Sarah: What I hear is like there's a lot of habits that are actually more life related than they are business related. Um, and those are the ones who are really established as. Solid foundation. Right. Of course. Then we could also be speaking about, you know, create a habit to write every day, you know, [00:22:00] write blog posts every, like mm-hmm. [00:22:01] All of these other habits. But it sounds like the ones that really build a foundation and that make you happy, happy are, are more life related [00:22:12] Christine: habits. Yes. Yeah, because they, they impact you. Yeah. And the same with getting enough sleep. If you don't get enough sleep, you won't be able to focus enough during your day and get stuff done that you want to get done. [00:22:22] Right? So everything impacts your, um, impacts your work as well. If you don't eat healthy, you probably don't have enough. Uh, if you don't drink enough water, if you're not eating healthy, you don't have enough energy to get through the day, you will have a down point as well. Um, if you. If you don't give yourself enough time to wake up in the morning with a morning or dinner, that will impact your day. [00:22:44] Yeah. Um, of course these cutoff days and stuff that I mentioned are more work related, but yes, for sure. Yeah. I'm also [00:22:51] Sarah: a big fan of, um, I think it was Tim Ferris, at least that's who I heard, uh, talk about it. Uh, first is, is you know, kind of. [00:23:00] Minimizing the decision fatigue, like making, we we're making so many decisions every day as entrepreneurs, right? [00:23:08] Mm-hmm. So if you can just cut a few of these decisions and just have the habits, uh, for example, you know, I have oatmeal every morning, and that's just. Who I am now, it's basically who I am. It's like I'm Sarah who eats oatmeal with, um, turmeric every morning. And so then it just becomes part of you. I do yoga every morning. [00:23:30] It's becomes part of you. And so you don't have to decide, should I eat yoga today or should I not? And so that in a way that it's not boring to me. It just makes me happy. I look forward to my oatmeal every day. Right. Yeah. So, [00:23:44] Christine: and that's exactly the, the point of habits and, and because it becomes a habit, it's effortless. [00:23:50] You don't have to take a decision. It's just part of what you do. Yeah. And it's also okay, and I'm someone who also struggles with that because I'm so, [00:24:00] um, Chiefer mindset, uh, if you want to call it and crossing off things to this, but. It's also okay to be flexible if you stayed up longer, wake up later to get enough sleep and don't compromise on that part just to get your habit in. [00:24:17] Um, so I think this flexibility around habit building. Um, so they become part and become easy and you don't have to take the decision to do something. However, if for whatever reason you can't do it at one day, that's also okay. Yeah. And I think it, [00:24:33] Sarah: you have to struggle with, with yourself and say, okay, fine today, and don't do that habit. [00:24:38] Christine: Exactly. And just a, a couple of tips there. Um, maybe. And people have heard that before probably on how to actually build habits and how to create habit and to make it effortless and there's lots of science behind it. How long does it take? If some people say 21 days? Some people say, uh, 30 something, some 70 something, I think depends on the person, depends on the habit. [00:24:58] Hmm. Uh, getting rid of [00:25:00] habit is even more difficult than creating healthy habits. Um, but starting small. Is of course the, the really, the biggest thing. If you say, I wanna meditate every day, one hour, you won't, if you've never meditate before, if you say, I'm gonna take a mindful breath every day before I get out of bed, I can do that. [00:25:20] That's the smallest thing you can do. Take one mindful breath, that's like a meditation, or I do a five minute guided meditation from YouTube or stretching or something that probably you can do. Um, accountability can be something that can help. So find someone, uh, that you share this again, shared experiences. [00:25:39] Mm-hmm. They maybe the habit with, um, or you, some people like use tracking apps. Uh, right. Strangely enough, I don't, but, uh, I know there's a lot of happy tracking apps and stuff. Some people, for some people that works. Um, again, tracking the progress. Um, if you do yoga, like you mentioned, for example, if you.[00:26:00] [00:26:01] Um, you see, you get more flexible and, uh, it's, it's better and you have probably as back pain because, uh, we probably sit a lot in front of the computer with a lot of zoom meetings, things like that. A good habit to have is also have taking screen breaks, for example, um, not to be in front of the screen for eight hours a day. [00:26:20] Taking the breaks. Make sure your eyes can relax. Um, celebrating when you've done one of the habits, okay? You, you created something. So if you wanna do yoga, if you take a breath, whatever it is, then in the end, that habit is you celebrate that you did that. And that doesn't mean you have to then go out and drink something, or you, you go on a holiday every time you do a habit. [00:26:42] But it can be just like a Well done, Christine, a head on the shoulder. Maybe you wanna hug yourself. Maybe you look in the mirror and say, yes. Yes, I did that. Thank you. Good. That was good. That's like little celebration to signal your brain, that little success moment as well. [00:27:00] Yeah. Feeling more accomplished. [00:27:02] Um, and a final thing is, um, finding the situations and the support and the surroundings that help you to implement your healthy habits. So if you wanna establish something and your life and the people around you is not, just not set up for that. Then think about it and doing it consistently will help you to do that. [00:27:23] And um, I think the last thing they always say is, make sure you attach it to something that you already do. So someone said to me, oh, if, if you wanna do five sit ups in the morning, if we talk about physical exercise and you attach that to when you stopped brushing your teeth, Then you will do it more likely than trying to do it outside of something that you already do. [00:27:46] You wanna drink more water. That's why some [00:27:47] Sarah: people have their running shoes already out when they go to bed. Right, right next to the bed. [00:27:53] Christine: Yeah. Also, yes. Yes. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, this, uh, would be like, good, good tips. Thanks. Thank [00:27:59] Sarah: you. [00:28:00] Yeah. I, there's another thing I really wanna make sure we have time to talk about. [00:28:05] Mm-hmm. Um, which is goals. Because in a way, it kind of probably ties into our definition of success because we, as entrepreneurs, we set ourselves sometimes quite aggressive goals, right? Mm-hmm. And then we're not happy or we're sad if we're not achieving them. And so you talk about this idea of making sure that we set achievable goals. [00:28:34] Mm-hmm. Talk to us about that and how that makes us happier. [00:28:39] Christine: Yes. Um, well, because if we feel, um, first of all, if we are achieving goals and then we talk about how I usually set goals as well, um, then it gives us this sense of fulfillment that we achieved something, uh, we should always celebrate, we achieved the goal. [00:28:55] So it, it gives us a sense of moving forward. I think if you do not [00:29:00] set goals, it can be very demotivating in business. Um, and I always say, if you don't set yourself a goal, how do you know you achieved something? If you never wanted to achieve something because a goal is nothing else, then okay, I wanna get something done if we, okay. [00:29:15] Goal setting is a harsh, harsh thing and I know we all do it and, and stuff, and we're in business. Um, however, I think getting to a specific point where you want to be, It's already setting yourself a goal. And we all want to be somewhere. We all want to be, have specific impact. We all want to have a certain amount of money to support a lifestyle that we want. [00:29:36] We all, um, want to make work with X amount of people because then we know, again, we have that impact in that kind of way, so that that really can support making us happy. But one thing is extremely important. Goals might change. Goals are not written in stone like they say you can, it's your goal. [00:30:00] Well, I always say you have three questions. [00:30:02] Um, is it your goal, yes or no? Is it maybe put onto you by someone else? Um, especially when you work in a company and it's, you are not a business owner, then you often get goals set by other people. Um, does the goal excite you? And, um, if any of the answers to these questions is no. Revisit the goal because you will get demotivated. [00:30:27] Mm-hmm. And then there's obviously a lot of acronyms and formulas and stuff that you can use to set goals and, uh, one of the most used ones is smart. I actually don't like that too much, even though it does work. But I, I just don't like it too much because it's always used in corporate situations and stuff like that. [00:30:47] Um, so I, um, use actually a different one, which is called Achieve, which already has a great word in it. Okay, so the acronym like that much better? Yes. Um, so it's basically stating a goal as if [00:31:00] it already happened. So not I want this, but, um, as as it, I have a successful business. Let's start with that. [00:31:08] Instead of saying, oh, I don't want to be in a full-time job. Um, then we have the C, which is clear and specific, so you need to know what that means. What does a successful business mean to you? Where is it with whom is it? How much many clients do you have? The turnover, because you will have to think about the money side as well. [00:31:26] Um, and then, um, be very clear and specific on that. And then the age is actually the hittable, which is. Achievable. Um, is this actually realistic? Too often I hear people that, oh, I'm gonna have, uh, this company that will have 2 million turnover at the end of, uh, year two. This is not realistic. Um, probably depends on the company. [00:31:49] Um, the I in Achieve is in a positive direction. So state what you want rather than what you don't want. Also has a bit to do with how the brain works. [00:32:00] Um, because they, uh, the brain does not understand negatives. Um, and if you give it what you already want, then there's a lot of research done that you will actually be more likely to achieve that e uh, so achieve, uh, is exciting. [00:32:16] So it should be exciting for you. If it doesn't excite you, I would not recommend. You're not gonna Yeah. Call, go for it. Yeah. And then the V is actually value-based. Um, and I think that's really important because, um, it should align with your values. You need to be clear on your values, what's important to you, what don't you want, what do you want in life, um, and it needs to align with that. [00:32:40] And then we have the last E, which is ecological. And basically what that means is who and what is affected by you achieving that goal. Because maybe you say, I want to have this company and I wanna run it in New Zealand. If you have a family, For example, or also friends or uh, husband [00:33:00] or children, they will be affected by you moving to New Zealand. [00:33:04] So you should check if they're okay with you achieving that goal. You might have less time for anyone because all of a sudden you have to work more. Um, and you check if they're okay with that. And if they are not okay with that, are you okay with them not being okay with that? That makes sense because it's your goal, it's your life. [00:33:24] But you, [00:33:24] Sarah: you're part of a bigger ecosystem and Exactly. You need to check in with them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like, I like that achieve much better than the the smart. Yeah. Mm. It's, yeah. It's somehow outdated and Yeah. It's maybe it's also bigger. It's overused. It's like from the corporate day, so we're like, nah, we're getting Exactly. [00:33:44] Christine: Exactly. [00:33:47] Sarah: I love that. Yeah. Um, We both have communities. Um, and so I'm just wondering also what happiness and community, where they [00:34:00] overlap what they have in common. Um, yeah. You wanna talk about your community and then we can also talk about the circle a little bit. [00:34:09] Christine: Yeah. Yeah. So in, in general, I would say just, um, to answer the question, what do communities have to do with, um, happiness? [00:34:17] Um, it's actually scientifically proven as well that soul through connection, doing things with others, um, is extremely important for happiness and it's crucial for your over overall wellbeing, um, and happiness. And I talk in, um, my book about that as well, a lot. Um, and they actually found that it's. If you are connected in a community, so that's even in a church or in our cases, right? [00:34:46] Sarah: Professional communities. Real life communities or [00:34:48] Christine: online? Yeah, online communities. Yeah. Yeah. Um, it, they, they've shown the studies have shown that you're less likely to experience, um, uh, premature, uh, [00:35:00] death and have more chances to survive fatal illnesses. Because it, it is a bit strange, but it's really, makes, makes total sense to me. [00:35:10] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think so because, um, it will also build up for more resilience and, um, you will have a support system when you're going through difficult times. You will, um, less likely feel loneliness and isolation, have this sense of belonging and you can discover your purpose there as well. Um, and usually you are part of a community that you have shared values with, right? [00:35:35] And, uh, this is where our communities and especially also yours come in and we just be a part of something and we can create new experiences together. So that's based again, of the shared experiences. Um, so having social connections and groups and communities that you belong to really play a massive role in health. [00:35:57] Physical health really. Um, but also in the [00:36:00] mental, um, health and wellbeing and, um, what my community is, uh, for entrepreneurs in the first three years to support them with all kind of things, uh, support, uh, in, in resources and life support and with the community. Um, and yours obviously is a fantastic community of professional people, but that are not. [00:36:22] Mm. Because sometimes when people hear the word professional, they're a bit put off because they think it's like that kind of person that just thinks, uh, uh, about numbers and about, uh, how many followers do I have and, um, how much money do I make? And stuff like, it's not that you can, in my point of view. [00:36:39] And also I know everyone in your community you can be professional, meaning reliable. Um, Exchange knowledge. So you're knowledgeable as well in what you're doing. And I think your community's amazing for that because I've met so many amazing people, started already collaborating with them. And I remember the very first [00:37:00] session that I attended life, I had so much that I took out of that that I then implemented into my business, which really works as well. [00:37:08] Um, and you. All the focus is obviously all on humane and gentle, um, marketing techniques as well. And it, it's really, it's really lovely and it, it does give me that sense of, I found a tribe that I belong to because I can feel that we have, um, shared values, we create these experiences. It's very relaxed and, um, but. [00:37:34] Still professional. Like I say, [00:37:36] Sarah: I love to highlight that. Right. It's this idea, well, I guess we do speak a lot about being human, right? Mm-hmm. Marketing, like we're human. And so that's really what I've wanting, wanted to create is a place where we can be human. Mm-hmm. And yet still be professionals or talk about marketing and business and, and I think that's what also [00:38:00] creates the happiness because we are. [00:38:02] All being our authentic selves. I think that's what you also meant by the community where you feel like you can be yourself, [00:38:10] Christine: right? Yes. And you can feel that passion that everyone has. Yeah. So coming back to the passion that everyone has for their business, and again, if you, if you talk to people that are passionate about something, this will wrap off on you because it's positive energy and it will really, really gives you energy. [00:38:28] Because I, I know it can be sometimes difficult to attend a meeting after hours. Um, right. But every time I, I attend, for example, one of yours, which will be for my time, for example, at five o'clock, sometimes once a month, um, or twice a month. Then I do think, oh yeah, I had a long day. Yeah. But I do know after this meeting, I will be energized actually. [00:38:51] Right. I will be energized because of the people [00:38:53] Sarah: in there. It's experience, again, it's how we started, right? Yeah. It's more of an experience rather than just like, [00:39:00] oh, let me listen to another meeting, or, yes, yes. Because it's not that. Yeah. And, and I just, because you started talking about, um, you know, other communities, church, or mm-hmm. [00:39:12] You know, faith-based or whatever. It's almost like, at least in Europe, that's kind of diminished, right? Mm-hmm. We don't have. Or a lot of us are not really in faith-based communities anymore. And I remember talking with my husband about it, and it's like, we're not craving the church, but we are thinking, you know, at least his parents, they were very, um, involved in church and he's like, yeah, we had a place to be on Sunday. [00:39:43] Mm-hmm. And, and it, and we, you know, we did things together and stuff like that. And it's true that. It's almost like we need to replace that now. [00:39:53] Christine: Mm-hmm. And there is actually someone who is doing that across the world also very successfully. Uh, they're called Sunday [00:40:00] Assembly Uhhuh, and they're on purpose, uh, not religious based. [00:40:03] So, um, he's actually saying, I don't believe in any gods or anything, but he believes in community and he creating those places where people go every Sunday. And have fun together. So I went to a lot of these in when I was in the UK because the guy who founded it, um, Who's also was hosting some of my events that I was doing across Europe, actually, because he's a comedian. [00:40:27] Um, they're really amazing events because people go there, you meet the same, and they, they're like a franchise. So people, they pop up everywhere. Also around the world, also in the US and stuff. And people go and you sing along to a someone to a karaoke song of, uh, of queen. Then there's someone who's, um, There's always a theme of the day. [00:40:48] Mm-hmm. Someone who has written a poem about that theme. Then there's someone who gives a talk about something. And then, um, so I, I actually also did a talk there about community building because of another project I was working on. [00:41:00] And then people stay together and they go together in the pub and, and stuff like that. [00:41:03] And that is really exactly what you mean. Yeah, [00:41:07] Sarah: yeah, yeah. It's so needed, so yeah. Yeah, I think so. I'm happy that you are creating your community for your people and, and yeah, I think there needs to be more opportunities for people to, to [00:41:22] Christine: commune, to get together. Yes. And also to get together, uh, in person. [00:41:28] I mean, we've never met in person. Hopefully we will next, uh, next year around this time, of course. Um, because I know you're organizing something, but. Everything is online and everything. It can be very difficult as well to activate a community and to get together and to have this community feeling, even though you're on the screen for zoom fatigue, this new word that came out, this new illness that all of a sudden happened. [00:41:50] But yeah, I think, yeah. [00:41:53] Sarah: Well, obviously everything we talked about here is, is kind of, well not everything, but a lot [00:42:00] of what we talked about here came from your book. So yes, please do. Tell us. Uh, and for those of us who are watching on YouTube, you can hold it up because you just got it today. Oh, [00:42:10] Christine: yes, wait, I have it here. [00:42:11] It's a first printed copy. Yay. The Happiness Formula. Thank you. Uh, you can get it on Amazon, basically on Amazons, but, uh, there is, uh, greatest startup academy.com/books where you can find that if in case you would be interested. Um, however, um, we are also for, for you, for the sense of this podcast, I would like to offer. [00:42:34] The Kindle book, at least the English version in this case are for free. So, Ooh. Thank you. Yeah. So, so when this one is, uh, aired, which, uh, is on the 2nd of June, I think. Yeah. Um, which is the Friday. So Friday, Saturday, Sunday, this book will be available, the Happiness Formula for three on Kindle. Wow, [00:42:55] Sarah: amazing. [00:42:55] So I'll make sure I use the right link where we can, uh, [00:43:00] download that and, and read about the habits and the goals. And there's so much else we had prepared but didn't have time to talk about. So yes, I'm just gonna have to read the book. Wonderful. Well, do you tell us, um, where people can find you, uh, your website again, where you most often hang out on social [00:43:20] Christine: media and all of that? [00:43:21] Uh, I think LinkedIn. Um, would be, um, one of the preferred ways to get in contact with me. Um, but you find everything on my website. Also the LinkedIn link on, on the bottom, uh, and the footer, um, to my profile. So if you go to creative startup academy.com, there you find everything, the book and also my LinkedIn. [00:43:40] Link the books [00:43:41] Sarah: because you've written like 20 books, right? Yeah. This is the [00:43:45] Christine: 20th. Yes. I got a bit [00:43:47] Sarah: obsessed. Make sure you celebrate because you tell everybody else to do it. So [00:43:52] Christine: make sure I, I, I, yes. I already celebrated when I unpacked earlier. Uh, and, and actually was running around and, and dancing and put a song on.[00:44:00] [00:44:00] And also my, my boyfriend was dancing with me, but we will celebrate more this weekend. [00:44:05] Sarah: Yes. Nice. I always have one last question on my podcast, and it's actually also, uh, another thing we skipped, which is gratitude. Uh, so what are you grateful for today? [00:44:17] Christine: Um, uh, this week apart from being grateful to have, uh, this opportunity to spread more joy and happiness, uh, in people's life, I think. [00:44:26] One, there's two big things I'm very grateful for. First, I, uh, I found love. Mm-hmm. Finding, uh, the person that you want to stay with for hopefully for the rest of your life that will be hopefully long and healthy. Mm-hmm. Um, that's one massive thing I'm massively grateful for, and that's always going in my gratitude journal every day. [00:44:46] Um, and the other thing, uh, is really to have these new opportunities, meeting so many lovely people. So there's so much support out there emotionally and um, with business [00:45:00] advice practically and everything, and I'm really, really grateful for that, that people are so openly sharing and supporting. [00:45:09] Sarah: Nice, nice. [00:45:10] Two things to be grateful for. Yeah. I'm grateful for this conversation. Thanks for being here. Thank you. [00:45:26] Thanks so much for listening to this episode. I hope it put a smile on your face and maybe got you curious about Christine's book to learn some more Happy. Habits so you can get her book, and as she said, she's offering it for free until June 4th, 2023 at creative startup academy.com/the-happiness-formula. [00:45:53] So go there now and download, uh, your free version of the Kindle book for free until June 4th. [00:46:00] You can find out more about Christine and her work at Creative Startup Academy. Dot com. And if you're looking for others who think like you, then why not join Christine and I in the Humane Marketing Circle? [00:46:14] You can find out more about, uh, this at humane.marketing/circle, and I also hope to see a few of you at the storytelling like we're human craft, your five word life story workshop. On June 7th with Hillary Rio, you can find out more about that at humane.marketing/storytelling. You'll find the show notes of this episode@humane.marketing slash 1 65. [00:46:47] And on this beautiful page, you'll also find a series of free offers, such as my Saturday newsletter, the Humane Business Manifesto, and the free Gentle Confidence mini course, as well as my two books, marketing like [00:47:00] we're human and selling like we're human. And if you're an audiobook fan, I have good news marketing like We're Human is. [00:47:07] Available on, uh, audible or everywhere else you get your audio books. So if you are kind of tired of reading, especially now as we are heading into the, um, nice sunny season, at least on my side of the world, maybe you just want to go for a walk in nature and listen to the book while you're walking. Uh, again, you can look that up on Audible or anywhere else where you find. [00:47:32] Uh, audiobooks, of course, read by yours truly. Thanks so much for listening and being part of a generation of marketers who cares for yourself, your clients, and the planet. We are change makers before we are marketers. So now go be the change you want to see in the world. Speak soon in.

Discover the secrets to unlocking employee engagement in this eye-opening episode of the Count Me In Podcast. Join us as we welcome Sarah Rubenstein, Chief Accounting Officer at Clearway Energy, as she shares valuable insights into employee engagement, strategies to transform disengaged employees, and the importance of creating inclusive communities within the workplace. Don't miss this chance to learn how to maximize productivity and employee satisfaction in your organization! Connect with Sarah: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-rubenstein-a724632/ Full Episode Transcript:Adam:            Welcome back to Count Me In. In today's episode, we're thrilled to have Sarah Rubenstein, Chief Accounting Officer at Clearway Energy. With us to discuss the crucial role that employee engagement plays in an organization's success.  Sarah brings her extensive experience in cultivating positive work environments to the table. Offering valuable advice on identifying disengaged employees, implementing effective strategies to boost engagement, and the benefits of fostering an inclusive, collaborative workspace. Stay tuned as we uncover the keys to unlocking a happy, productive, and thriving work environment. Adam:            Well, Sarah, thank you so much for coming on the Count Me In podcast, today. We're really excited to have you on, and today we're going to be talking about employee engagement and all that that encompasses. And maybe to start off, maybe, you can start by defining what is employee engagement to you. Sarah:            Sure, to me, employee engagement is how positive people feel about their work, and we measure that in a lot of different ways. But, really, I'm lucky, the company that I work at, we survey our employees every year, regarding employee engagement. And we ask some really good questions that were developed by very smart people at Harvard, and Yale, and Stanford, that tell us how engaged people are.  And, so, we're able to evaluate, and a lot of the questions relate to things like management, leadership, integrity, work-life balance, workload, allocation, autonomy, and things like that. And all of those factors really tell us how engaged our employees are. Adam:            That's interesting, and when you mention engaged, a lot of times when you see discussions about employee engagement. You see engaged employees versus disengaged employees. And, so, maybe we can start by talking about that a little bit. Because you have your engaged employees, and you can usually tell who those are. But the disengaged maybe a little harder to see, or maybe not so hard, depending on what they're not doing, I should say. Sarah:            Yes, sure, and the first indication we have, that some employees are not engaged, is that they don't answer the surveys. So we don't get 100% participation. So that tells us that some people feel like maybe their voice won't be heard, even if they answer. And those people, usually, just have a negative outlook, maybe, on what type of work they're doing or their future within the company.  And, so, a lot of times, you lose the engagement when people feel like there's no career development path for them, or the work that they're doing isn't valuable, or they're not being told that the work that they're doing is valuable. Adam:            And that can be very difficult for an employee, especially, when you don't feel like you can't move up in an organization. How do you take somebody who is disengaged and try to get them to be engaged? Sarah:            That's a great question, and, especially, when you don't have a development path for a person, it is really challenging. And, so, what we try to do is we try to provide a lot of personal and professional development opportunities. And we talk to our employees about how those types of opportunities can help them develop themselves. Whether for this particular company and role or just in general for their career. So we try to offer them opportunities to learn and also to, maybe, work in an area that isn't related to their job.  So we try to look for things we call stretch assignments. Where there might be an opportunity in another group, where someone needs help with a special project, and that might give that individual the opportunity to learn new skills that they can put on their resume, even if it doesn't give them direct path to promotion. So we try to demonstrate what we can offer the employee, even if it isn't upward mobility, and that maybe we can't keep them forever, but we can keep them a little bit longer, and that helps us overall. Adam:            Yes, because it shows that you care and that you're engaging with them, even though they seem to be disengaged. And, so, it encourages them, even if there is no upper mobility at that moment. Sarah:            Right, because everyone is looking for some type of personal development, even if they don't see a future for themselves at that company. So we try to offer something for everyone. If you don't see yourself as a leader at this company, that's okay, we'll work with you on how you can make yourself a better employee and a better person. So that, at least, we can keep you around, and have you feel happy to be working at the company for the time being. Adam:            Mh-hmm, that makes a lot of sense. So maybe we can focus a little bit on what are some benefits, to organizations, to creating an engaging environment? Sarah:            I haven't read all of the studies, but there are numerous studies that show that engaged employees are better employees, they're more productive. Of course, we know that hiring new employees, and training them, and getting them up to speed is very expensive and time-consuming. And, so, it benefits us to take the time to develop programs to promote employee engagement. Because, overall, we end up with better productivity and just a better workforce. Adam:            I mean, that makes a lot of sense to want to have a better workforce, especially, when they're engaged. And, so, maybe, we can talk a little bit about what do you need to look for, especially, when your team is not engaged. Are there certain signs that you can look for? Obviously, you mentioned you can tell people are not engaged when they're not taking a survey. But then what are other signs that you can look for, within your team, if you can talk a little bit about that? Sarah:            Yes, no problem, I think, there are  a couple of different signs that I look for. Generally, I look for people who aren't participating in the conversations, who don't speak up in meetings. People who have been doing the same work for an extended period of time. And, of course, you look for the signs of people who are not responsive. They're taking a long time to reply to emails or teams' messages.  Those are all signs we look for, for people who aren't engaged. And then we really try to find ways to bring them into the conversation. To make them feel like we're committed to their success, and that we're interested in having them as part of the conversation. Adam:            Do you think that having engaged people with the not so engaged people, connecting them together, that can help drive or improve a team? Sarah:            I definitely do. Maybe one other thing I'll say about employees who aren't engaged is they tend to leave. So, really, our primary focus on employee engagement started when, and I won't say it started, we've always had a focus on it. But we renewed that focus when the great resignation occurred. We were hearing about that.  It didn't really happen at my company. But we were very concerned that once everyone was out of sight, out of mind, working remote from home, people might start to feel disengaged when they're working on their own. Without interacting with others. They might start to look at other jobs online while they're at home and things like that.  So we really wanted to focus on making sure that didn't happen. So we started some programs that were designed, specifically, to promote employee engagement. And one of those was a mentoring program within the accounting department.  So we matched up individuals who were at lower levels with our managers and directors, so that the managers and directors could give the staff-level folks an idea of how they could get to that level. And also they could just give them the ability to communicate with someone they didn't work with all the time. So that they would feel more engaged in the overall department, and not just able to speak with their direct supervisor and their specific team. Adam:            That's great. Mentorship is a huge way of connecting different departments, different people, within an organization. And it also helps people feel like they're part of a community. Because a lot of times corporate structures feel like a prison, in a lot of ways, with the fluorescent lights and everything. And it sounds like you guys are building a sense of community. Has that been what you're looking to do? Sarah:            Yes, definitely, I would say there were two very large parts of our program were communication. So making sure that we had adequate amounts of communication across the department, and within the specific teams, and then collaboration, in general.  So having a team's channel for our whole department, where people could even just share a photo of their pet or something funny that they wanted to share. So that people do feel like they're part of a broader community and not just a small, little, group. And, then, I'll say that I'm very fortunate, I work for a company that is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion.  And, so, two years ago we started inclusion groups, and those have been a really big help in employee engagement and in helping people feel like they're part of a community. So I will say for companies that don't have inclusion groups, yet, I think, it really is a big benefit to employees. Adam:            Can you, maybe, talk a little bit more about the inclusion groups? What does that look like? Sarah:            Sure, so, typically, they're focused around a specific group. So we have a women's inclusion group. A veterans' inclusion group. We have a Latinx inclusion group, things like that. But it's to give employees, across the company, the ability to connect with people that they relate to and then also the ability to share with the whole organization, the things that are important to that inclusion group.  And, so, it's really been great, both, for bringing employees together with people that they relate to. And, then, also, making them able to share that with the whole company and educate them on the issues that are important to them. So it has been really great in bringing our whole community together. Adam:            That's awesome, that's a great way of connecting people and also helping to educate the greater community, as well. Because a lot of times, if you only are focused on what you know, you never get to experience or understand what other people's experiences are, which helps you understand the human condition better. Sarah:            Right. And the other thing that's nice about the inclusion groups is that they have executive sponsorship. So the issues that are important to the inclusion groups are brought to the attention of the executive leadership. So they're then aware of what's important to their employees and it gives them a forum to do that. But without the inclusion groups, the executives might hear about it but it wouldn't, necessarily, be in a positive way and it doesn't give them as much exposure to it. Adam:            Mh-hmm, and it also gives people a voice who may not have had a voice before. Sarah:            Yes, and that also because it's open to anyone. It's nice that some of the people who are at lower levels, in the organization, can still become very active in these inclusion groups. And have access to people at different levels that they might not have access to if they didn't join that inclusion group. Adam:            Mh-hmm, that's awesome. So we're thinking about engagement, I want to talk a little bit about what are some drivers that bring employees to become engaged or to engagement, within an organization. And maybe you can talk about some drivers that have helped your organization, as you've seen it, especially, over the last two years? Sarah:            Yes, the main one that I see is employee development because it demonstrates that you care about your employees and their own career. And, so, that you're not just worried about the company or yourself. You care about that person and how they can grow themselves. So we've focused a lot on personal development. Fortunately, we have some really good training tools, online training tools. So we have a lot of programs that our employees have access to, and what we've tried to do is go through and identify some that would be useful to people. So they don't have to go combing through a thousand training programs. So leadership training and teaching them how to manage people and how to improve their interpersonal communications. And then technical training to help them develop their technical skills, so that they can perform their job better or be able to potentially move into a different role.  We have a really good opportunity for our employees to receive coaching, which a lot of our managers have taken advantage of. Which is really great because it gives them a chance to work with a trained coach, to improve the skills that need improvement.  So that they can work to become future leaders of the company. And, then, I mentioned before the stretch assignments. But all of those things have been really helpful, showing our commitment to the development of our employees. And, then, the other area, I'd say, especially, during the last couple of years people have really looked for is just empathy and understanding. We're very aware that everyone has things that they need to do outside of work. We're very respectful of people's time with their families.  We're flexible in work arrangements and we try to be aware of what's happening in people's lives. So that we can make sure that we're not putting too much work on them. If they have something they're dealing with outside of work that they need to focus on. And I will say we've gotten really positive feedback, when we do take the time to show that we care about our employees, as individuals, it makes them feel very positive towards the company. So things like that really pay off.  And, then, the third area would be recognition. So I think that recognizing the positive contributions of your employees, has a huge benefit. And some studies show even more than compensation, I don't know if that's true or not. But it really does help to ensure that people know how much you appreciate them.  And, so one thing we've started to do is we have a quarterly meeting for our entire department. And every quarter I ask people to nominate people that they work with, that they think have done something that was, particularly, special or helpful. And, so, then we acknowledge that in front of the whole group, and that really goes a long way towards making people feel really appreciated and that the work that they do doesn't go unnoticed. Adam:            That's amazing to hear, and in the conversations that I've been having, even just in this podcast. It seems like the common theme is that we've all understood our human condition outside of the corporate structure. And recognize that it's okay to have a kid run into the room when you're in the middle of a meeting, or a dog barking, because that's just life. And you can still have your meeting and still be professional in the midst of all those things, and it kind of brought us all together at the same level. Sarah:            Yes, I agree. And it is true, you do observe those things happen to executive vice presidents, down to staff-level people. Especially when we were all home, we're all dealing with the same type of things going on, and it does help everyone feel like we can relate to one another. Adam:            Yes. And, so, as we look forward into the future, a lot of people have moved to a hybrid situation, or all in the office, or partially in the office, every organization is different. How do you think we can continue engaging employees in the midst of rising costs? In the midst of shareholders saying, "Hey, okay, you had your little break from the COVID now you need to get back going there." And a lot of organizations are finding it difficult to find that balance. Because workloads are starting to increase, as people are increasing what they want out of their employees. How do you balance that? Sarah:            That's a great question and it is really difficult. I'll tell you my experience because we have our own struggle with bringing people back to the office. And we're recommitting to a hybrid work schedule because we had attempted one, and people still really wanted to work, primarily, from home. And it's hard because people do want the flexibility of working from home. And we know that they're very productive at home.  I think that we've tried to emphasize, to our employees, that "We know you're productive from home. We're not worried about productivity. But we want people to have that human connection. Because it is an important part of engagement to talk to people in-person, and just have a conversation that's not related, primarily, to work.  And, so, we're going to renew our enthusiasm for encouraging people to come to the office two days a week, and we are emphasizing that we're going to be very flexible with the time that people arrive and the time they have to leave.  We understand they have commitments outside of work. And, then, it still gives them a few days a week to work from home, and have those really productive stretches of uninterrupted work. Where they're not having to drive to the office or someone is not stopping in to say hello. And, hopefully, this gives everybody the best of both worlds.  Where they can have those two days with the in-person interaction, maybe some visibility to higher level executives that they can't get from home. But then still have that uninterrupted time at home, the productive time, and that flexibility to not have to commute.  And then the other thing that we're trying to do, we did this year, was we did have a, and, although, it's expensive, but we got our whole team together in one location, for a couple of days to just do some training, and some brainstorming, and some planning for the future. And it was such a great experience and everyone really loved being together in-person, and being able to brainstorm together. And then everyone left feeling renewed about the future and excited. And, so, I think, that goes a long way towards keeping everybody engaged, is having that opportunity to all come together. Adam:            Yes, there's something about the human connection and seeing somebody, as opposed to as you and I are, we're looking at each other through little webcams. But sitting across the table from somebody, there's a huge difference in that connection point. And I think we do need that, as humans, we need that human touch. And, especially, getting out of the house every once in a while is good for everybody. Sarah:            Yes, I think so, I enjoy the two days a week in the office, and then I enjoy the rest of the week working from home. So I'm hopeful that the hybrid approach works. Adam:            I am too. I think this is the new normal, is hybrid, because everybody recognized, "Hey, we can be successful working from home and be just as productive, if not more productive." And then finding that balance will be the way forward. Because if you can't adjust your organization to be a hybrid, then, you might find more resignation. Because people are like, "I'll go to someplace where they will let me do that." Sarah:            Yes, and that's a fear that a lot of companies have and, especially, in accounting because there are a lot of jobs. If people want to work fully remote, then, they will. So we're trying to emphasize what are the benefits you get from being around people. We understand there's benefits to being home, and that's very appealing. So we're trying to show the appeal of the two days in-person, and the opportunity to interact with people and benefit from those in-person connections and interactions. Announcer:    This has been Count Me In, IMA's podcast. Providing you with the latest perspectives of thought leaders from the accounting finance profession. If you like what you heard, and you'd like to be counted in, for more relevant accounting and finance education, visit IMA's website at www.imanet.org.

Let me tell you about today's guest, Alexander Inchbald. Alexander is on a mission to help 10,000 changemakers to create their Masterpiece and become Rainmakers. He is the founder of the #Masterpiece Movement, a growing community of pioneers, changemakers, misfits and rebels. Together with other likeminded communities they are creating a system that will sustain humankind. Alexander is a global authority on creativity: how we master our mind and body during the act of creation so we create a Masterpiece. He has studied Masters from the worlds of art, science, religion and leadership, explored the cutting edge of psychology, neurology, physiology, epigenetics and metaphysics, and experimenting with creativity, painting in gale force, freezing conditions and blizzards all over the world. The story that has emerged will literally blow your mind. He is a bestselling author a few times over, has worked on all of the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals and lives with his family above Lake Geneva In today's episode, Alex and I talk about: The story of money, from the industrial revolution until today What this means to us today WooWoo mountain, the feminine vicious cycle and why it prevents us from building business that make money Reclaim the artist as well as the art director How we can change our relationship to money The inner and outer game The role of creativity (and the right brain) in making money Why can can't neglect the left brain And so much more [00:00:00] Sarah: Hello, humane marketers. Welcome back to the Humane Marketing Podcast, the place to be for the generation of marketers that cares. This is a show where we talk about running your business in a way that feels good to you, is aligned with your values, and also resonates with today's conscious customers because it's humane, ethical, and non-pushy. [00:00:23] I'm Sarah z Croce, your hippie turn business coach for quietly rebellious entrepreneurs and marketing impact pioneers. Mama Bear of the Humane Marketing Circle. And renegade author of marketing like We're human and selling like we're human. If after listening to the show for a while, you are ready to move on to the next level and start implementing and would welcome a community of like-minded, quietly rebellious entrepreneurs who discuss with transparency what. [00:00:52] Works and what doesn't work in business, then we'd love to welcome you in our humane marketing circle. If you're picturing your [00:01:00] typical Facebook group, let me paint a new picture for you. This is a closed community of like-minded entrepreneurs from all over the world who come together once per month in a Zoom Circle workshop to hold each other accountable and build their business in a sustainable way. [00:01:16] We share with transparency and vulnerability what works for us and what doesn't work, so that you can figure out what works for you instead of keep throwing spaghetti. On the wall and seeing what sticks. Find out more at humane.marketing/circle, and if you prefer one-on-one support from me. My Humane Business Coaching could be just what you need, whether it's for your marketing, sales, general business building, or help with your big idea like writing a book. [00:01:47] I'd love to share my brain and my heart with you together with my almost 15 years business experience and help you grow a sustainable business that is joyful and sustainable. If you love this [00:02:00] podcast, wait until I show you my Mama Bear qualities as my one-on-one client can find out more at Humane Marketing slash coaching. [00:02:09] And finally, if you are a Marketing Impact pioneer and would like to bring Humane Marketing to your organization, have a look at my offers and workshops on my website@humane.marketing. [00:02:29] Hello, friends. Today I have another deep and intriguing conversation for you, and it falls under the P of pricing. It's more about money, but money has to do with pricing, right? If you're irregular here, you know that I'm organizing the conversations around the seven Ps of the Humane Marketing Mandala. If this is your first time here and you don't know what I'm talking about, you can download your one page marketing plan with the seven Ps of Humane [00:03:00] marketing@humane.marketing slash one page humane.marketing, not.com humane.marketing. [00:03:09] One page, the number one and the word page. And this comes with seven email prompts to really help you reflect on these different piece for your business. So it's not a blueprint or a step-by-step or cookie cutter approach. It's, uh, not perspec prescriptive, but it really is, um, helping you to reflect on your seven Ps for humane marketing. [00:03:37] So today I'm speaking to my new friend, Alexander Ald, whom I, I've met in December at a lovely fondue afternoon with nine other beautiful human beings, and we somehow telepathically connected and he gifted me his book Masterpiece, which is truly a masterpiece. [00:04:00] And, uh, that's what we're gonna be talking about today. [00:04:03] And. Obviously, like I said, going to talk about money, pricing, and also this idea of the masculine and the feminine energy, but mainly the masculine because money has to do with masculine energy. Before, I'll tell you a little bit more about Alexander. I'll also invite you in the behind the scenes of my pricing journey with our community. [00:04:28] The Humane Marketing Circle. I started this community in late 2019. It has been kind of going already in a small group before, and for the first year, people could basically join for free as part of, uh, my book launch on Kickstarter, and they were free members for a full. And then obviously, you know what happened in 20 20 20, uh, and then whoever wanted to stay after 2020, [00:05:00] they, uh, paid 20 bucks per month. [00:05:03] Then I increased it to 37, uh, dollars per month and then to 47, and now it's back at 37. You know, economic circumstances and all of that. But meanwhile, more people joined. We added a second monthly call. We moved from, uh, tr a Trello board, which was very simplistic, and it worked for a while for us. But now we're kind of going pro onto a new online platform. [00:05:35] And now we have an engaged online component to the community, and we're hosting that on cajabi, which I kind of joke about. It's, it's very much like us, um, because Cajabi bought this new, um, platform just recently. And so it's a, it. Kind of the little sister of Mighty Networks. It has big dreams, and yet it's [00:06:00] not perfect yet. [00:06:00] And that kind of reminds me of ourselves as a quietly rebellious and, uh, heart-centered changemakers and marketers. You know, uh, we're not perfect. We we're, uh, doing our very best and that's what our online platform is like. And, and so yeah, people are loving it. And in January I hired a community facilitator, uh, Eddie, who's connecting men members amongst each other and really cry, creating this interconnectedness between members, which is so important in a community. [00:06:36] So together we have created something just beautiful and unique and. Totally ready for this new business paradigm that's very Aquarius oriented, you know, power to the people. Um, it's not a top down approach where I'm basically the guru and te teaching you how to do it. No, we're tapping [00:07:00] into our own personal powers and, and sharing what works for us and learning from everybody else what works for them so that we can then figure out, well, I'd like to do this in business and I, you know, this person shared this thing. [00:07:16] I wanna try that. And, and so it's, it is very much in this, uh, Aquarius energy. If, um, if any of you listening are into, um, astrology or kind of follow that even loosely. So yeah, we've really created something very beautiful and unique, I think, uh, together. And now it's time for me to bring in the masculine energy and walk my talk about creating sustainable businesses. [00:07:46] Um, I always share that with my clients and the, the marketing like we're human program. And even in this circle we talk about how just because we come from this place of giving and lots of empathy [00:08:00] and, you know, humane approach to business does not mean that we don't want to have a sustainable business. [00:08:07] We operate from this principle of maximum sustainable generosity, right? And this community has definitely been grown based on that principle, maximum sustainable generosity. And now has come the time where, um, I need to bring in that masculine energy and make it sustainable for me. Uh, beautiful things, good things take time to grow. [00:08:33] And we are at the point now where I feel like. This is just absolutely a gorgeous community. Uh, and now I do need to bring up the price because up till now it wasn't sustainable for me, and that's okay. Again, it takes time and uh, you can't charge the full price from day one. That just makes logical business sense, but now it's time. [00:08:56] So on May 5th, I'll be [00:09:00] introducing a new humane three-tier pricing that is, Conveying all the value you really get in this community and it's sustainable for the host and everyone else's work that needs to be paid fairly. I'm announcing this price increase not to use urgency to get you to sign up, but it wouldn't feel fair that I'm doubling the price overnight without giving you at least a last chance to sign up at the current rate. [00:09:29] You know, it has happened to me where I go to a website and offering, all of a sudden the price is like much higher and I'm like, well, I wish I knew about this. So that's kind of why I'm doing this. Um, now so. Again, um, if you've been playing with the idea of maybe joining us now is a good time, you'll still be kind of considered, I wouldn't say founding members because, um, again, I've been hosting this for over three years, so, [00:10:00] uh, it's not really a founding member rate anymore, but it's just kind of like this, um, you know, maybe a budding rate. [00:10:07] Like we. Add the verge of something that is going to grow. And, and, and if you get in now, uh, well, you get in at that $37 per month rate. The new rates will come into place on May 5th. Have a look@humane.marketing forward slash circle and see if, uh, this is a good fit for you. And we'd love to have you okay with that. [00:10:35] Um, and I hope Alexander is, is proud about me demonstrating my, uh, masculine energy here. So let me tell you a little bit about today's guest, Alexander ald. Um, Alexander is on a mission to help 10,000 change makers to create their masterpiece and become rainmakers. He's the founder of the Masterpiece Movement. [00:10:58] A growing community of [00:11:00] pioneers, changemakers, misfits, and rebels. Together with other like-minded communities, they are creating a system that will sustain human. Alexander is a global authority on creativity, how we master our mind embodied during the act of creation so we can create a masterpiece. He has studied masters from the worlds of art, science, religion, leadership, explored the cutting edge of psychology, neurology, psychology, epigenetics and metaphysics, and experimented with creativity, painting in gale force, freezing conditions and blizzards all over the world. [00:11:41] This story that has emerged will literally blow your mind. Alexander is a bestselling author a few times over and has worked on all of the United Nations, sustain sustainable development goals, and he lives with his family here in Switzerland above Lake Geneva. And [00:12:00] I've had the pleasure to, uh, be over at his house just recently with a beautiful view. [00:12:05] So in our time together, we speak about. The story of money from the Industrial Revolution until today. What this means to us today, uh, I get him to talk about woo woo mountain, the feminine vicious cycle, and why it prevents us from building a business that makes money, reclaim the artist as well as the art director. [00:12:30] How we can change our relationship to money, the inner and the outer game, the role of creativity, the right brain in making money. Why we can't neglect the left brain and so much more. Um, this is a deep conversation. It's a conversation where I use my. Um, left brain and Capricorn being to, um, you know, kind of ground and bring ourselves [00:13:00] back because, uh, Alexander can go really far into these concepts that I have to admit are, uh, sometimes even, uh, a bit far out for me. [00:13:10] So, um, it's a rainy conversation. So if you're ready for that, let's dive in. Hi Alexander. So good to see you speak to you today. [00:13:23] Alexander: Wonderful to be here. Sarah, thank you so much for having [00:13:25] Sarah: me. Yeah. Um, I was on a webinar with you last week. That was amazing. And then of course, uh, as I mentioned in the intro, we, uh, met in person, which is like so rare nowadays, right? [00:13:40] That you get to meet people in person. And we get to meet again actually, uh, tomorrow after this recording. So I'm looking forward to that. But, um, let's share with, uh, my listeners a little bit of the conversations that, uh, partly from your webinar, also from your book, [00:14:00] that you, um, so kindly shared with me and I entitled this, uh, conversation. [00:14:06] Can't remember the exact words, but something about money and masculine energy, because that's what I feel like. You bring to us, right? This kind of dance between the feminine and the masculine and what that has to do with money, uh, how art comes in as well, because you are an artist. So yeah. Let's, let's dive in. [00:14:30] Um, why don't you start with kind of like, um, an excerpt of the story that you sh shared in this webinar. Um, I was on last week, I think it was called, um, it was called The Path of Prosperity, right? That was the title. Yeah. So sh sh Start us out there. [00:14:49] Alexander: Wow. Um, you know, the Pathway of Prosperity is, is a model that emerged, uh, in Switzerland. [00:14:55] Last year I was working with a group of pioneers and one of my business partners, a guy called Peter [00:15:00] kk, and Peter looked at our relationship to money and has looked at it for the last thir 30, 40 years. Um, and he discovered some really, really interesting things when he looked at our relationship to money. [00:15:12] Um, And the modern conception of money was created and designed by some very conscious people 250 years ago, um, around the time of the Industrial Revolution. And the industrial Revolution kind of, um, represents the extreme of the masculine end of the pathway. So there's a feminine end to the pathway, and you'd have to go back 200,000 years really to the dawn of humankind, um, in the Great River Valley in Africa, or at least that's one history you could say. [00:15:43] And that was kind of all feminine energy. So what is feminine energy? Feminine energy is, is, is being in connection. And if you've ever been in a real state of flow, you feel that you're in connection with something, something greater, um, than yourself. And somehow the energy of creativity [00:16:00] flows through you. [00:16:00] So just go to a moment like that. Maybe it was a moment you. Deeply in love with somebody in front of you, or a moment that you, you know, you created a painting and it just hours flew by or, or you finished a report at that moment. Actually the mind isn't really very active. You, you're just kind of in a state of connection or in a state of communion. [00:16:20] And then the opposite end of that is, is the industrial age. Um, and the industrial age. We've gone from kind of being connected to all of it, um, to being a cog in a wheel. Um, and the pathway, we actually talk about the pathway all the way from this to this. But, um, that takes about an hour. So, so I'm not gonna do that in this conversation. [00:16:40] Let, let me start this end. Let's work our way back. So this is the pathway of separation, moving from being connected to, disconnected from being part of all of it, to being a cog, a cove machine. And so if we, if we look at the, the industrial age, what did we say? We said, well, [00:17:00] um, life expectancy was pretty short, kind of, uh, 30 to 50 years, um, in most advanced countries in the world. [00:17:07] Um, and how do we, how do we increase, increase our health? And so some very, very conscious people actually designed a system, a financial system, in order for that to happen. And it included things like interest rates. Um, but the externalities of that, according to Peter's research, are two things. Um, one is extraction of people, extraction of the resource of people. [00:17:30] In other words, led to the idea of the cog in the wheel. And the second is the extraction of raw materials. And those two externalities, at the beginning, they were okay, because if you look at the numbers, the numbers are incredible that life expectancy went up and quality of life went up. E extraordinarily. [00:17:49] Um, and num, those numbers don't lie. It's not like somebody's faked those numbers. I was looking at the work by hands roling the mind gap. You can go, go and see it, mind gapper.org. Um, [00:18:00] incredible. It literally shows how you increase the amount of earning and the life expectancy increases. In other words, there is a direct correlation between those two, right? [00:18:10] And yet that system also divided us. So it was a system of silos. Um, think of the traditional factory and even a factory today it divides things down into silos. And so that was the system two 50 years ago. And there's some organizations that still follow it today, the un not far from where you and I are sitting right now. [00:18:29] You know, it follows a silo-based mentality. Governments, they follow a, a silo-based mentality. Education, you know, in, in class we get taught maths very separate from science, and that's very separate from, you know, art and, and languages. And yet today when we look at the challenges we face there, They're horizontal challenges, not vertical challenges. [00:18:51] Right. And so that, that kind of model started to evolve. Um, and about a hundred years ago, it evolved from the silo based system, uh, which we call the [00:19:00] control system into the, the, the compete system when compete system, not just vertical lines. You add in the horizontal lines. So you see this in big business now, everything divided from, you know, the, the factory line into departments and teams. [00:19:18] Mm-hmm. And you, you kind of had groupings in organizations. And then what we started to see about 20, 30 years ago is, is a kind of emergence, um, of something which can be traced back way before this, but the, the role of the individual in the organization, um, and the philosophy shifted and the philosophy shifted from, from over here in this model, the control and the compete model. [00:19:42] It was all about what was good for the organization, was good for the individual. It's a very paternalistic top down. And this one started to become a little bit more feminine. It said, well, actually what's good for the individual is good for the organization. We started to see that in Silicon Valley. So, you know, the growth of Silicon Valley, um, [00:20:00] w was predicated on the idea of giving people time to do what they were passionate about. [00:20:05] Think, think of Google. They said one day a week, 20% of your time, you can do whatever you're passionate about. And that led to Gmail and Google Maps and Google Calendar, and 50% of the innovation and AdWords, 50% of the innovation from Google came from that 20% time. And yet, what we are getting to see now, 20, 30 years into, you know, the, the massive rise of the internet is the limits of that system. [00:20:33] And, and a new system has been emerging for, uh, 20, 30 years. Um, Behind the scenes. And what we're now seeing is these systems, which are all a variant, a different flavored, you know, vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, let's say. And we're now seeing that actually ice cream isn't the answer. Um, [00:21:00] [00:21:00] Sarah: well I'm gonna interrupt you there then. [00:21:02] So if we continue this ice cream analogy, what is the answer though? Um, and also what does dad have to do with our money story? [00:21:15] Alexander: Yeah, great question. Um, well, I, I'm at risk of course, continuing the analogy and saying, well, we all get fat and get addicted to [00:21:24] Sarah: That's true. And if you, if, if you continue there, it's like, well, money makes you fat. [00:21:30] You know, it's like fat in terms of like too much. [00:21:34] Alexander: Well look exactly, and, and you, you are spot on because. What, what is really happening? Where is the money in the world? Mm-hmm. Well, it's in these three systems. So it's, it's in government bonds, it's in government treasury, it's in big business and it's in Silicon Valley. [00:21:53] And more money has been printed in the last 10 years than has ever been in existence [00:22:00] in the entire history of humankind. And 40% of that wealth, 40% of the world's wealth is owned by 10 men. Um, and I used to be able to get even more of my high horse in this and say 10 white men, but actually there are now two Indian gentlemen who are in the top 10 men. [00:22:19] Um, and despite that, all the other organizations in the top 10 were founded in Silicon Valley. So you've got this, you've got this lake, if you like, of wealth, and it sits. In these three systems, think of a dam, right? And you know, behind the dam you have, you have a lake and it, and it's, and it's actually held here. [00:22:41] Mm-hmm. And it's, it's being hoarded, right? Um, and, and the money is not flowing right. It's not flowing out of the dam. It's, it's jammed behind the dam. And that isn't very natural. Dams are [00:23:00] not natural things. You know, there are no natural dams in nature. There's no hoarding in nature. There's nothing in nature that actually hoards anything. [00:23:07] If you look in, okay, so bears hibernate, squirrels hibernate, but what they do is they store the food that they need to get through the winter. That's not hoarding, right? Storing is, okay, I'm gonna just keep enough that I need with me. Uh, and, and as nomads, we did the same. We, we just carried what we needed at that moment. [00:23:29] If you've ever, ever been backpacking, You know, the first day you go backpack and you're like, oh, damn, I was wondering whether I could swear that, uh, I'll, I've bought in like stuff, I don't need all this stuff. So then you kind of start throwing away stuff, right? And then you, you thin down your rug sucking like, this is what I need, this is all I need. [00:23:51] Sarah: So yeah. You're, you're saying basically the, the money is all held in behind that dam. The question I guess I have is [00:24:00] like, well, what do we, the people, um, what can we do as the people? Um, because you started to talk about this journey, right? And you showed, basically showed us history. So the question is, um, is the, is this history a linear path and things just kept, keep going worse and worse, or? [00:24:27] And I think, uh, I remember from the webinar, of course, it's not a linear path. Uh, it, it it's this shape of, um, the, the the figure eight, um, and the infinity sign. So tell us about the return of Yeah. Uh, you know, how, how it's gonna change, basically. [00:24:48] Alexander: Yeah. Well, it, it looks like it's linear. It, it really does. [00:24:51] It does. It looks like we're heading, heading towards complete collapse. And [00:24:54] Sarah: right now, uh, you know, most people are gonna tell you, well, Alexander, I don't know, [00:25:00] but right now it doesn't look like there's any return. [00:25:03] Alexander: Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't look good. I mean, you know, we are recording this, aren't we? Um, just after, you know, the second, uh, valley Bank has just collapsed, um, we're recording at the same time as, um, UBS is just made an offer to buy credit Suis. [00:25:19] Right. Um, we're recording at a time that. Uh, the Economist is saying that there's a hundred billion dollars in the US banking system missing. Wow. But that's, that's, um, an unwanted gap. And you know, I remember back in 2007, 2008, you know, the beginning of the financial crisis, um, and Lima's Brothers collapsing. [00:25:40] And, and I'm sure you do as well. And it kind of feels like we're, we're at a similar time. And yet I am less concerned about it than ever. And some people, you know, watching like, what you crazy? I'm like, no, actually thi this is, this is absolutely what is being called, uh, forward. [00:26:00] And so there is a world beyond this. [00:26:03] Um, and in fact it's incredibly exciting and amazing world. And everyone says, oh, the system's gonna collapse in Ajara Diamond's book. If you've ever read that about civilization collapse, uh, the whole thing is gonna fall down. Well, maybe, um, The dam actually, there are people standing on both sides of the dam. [00:26:25] So let's take it from the, the global to the specific. Let's take it from, from, you know, what's happening at a societal level and let's, let's focus it on an individual level because this one [00:26:37] Sarah: you are talking about. That's a great idea. Mm-hmm. Because I was just gonna say that cuz it's a bit out there, right? [00:26:43] And it's like, okay, it would be great if we can talk about, well, what does that mean to us? So yeah, take us there. [00:26:50] Alexander: Mm-hmm. So some of us are standing on this side of the dam and we've got big fat ca bank accounts and we're like, I'm scared of spending my [00:27:00] money because the collapse, you know, the collapse is coming. [00:27:04] If I read the, if I read the the papers, watch the news, read the Economist or whoever, the system's about to collapse. So I need to look after my money. In other words. We are hoarding more because we're, we're afraid. And then there are people on the other side of the dam who are, who are kind of looking at the dam going, oh, there's no money coming to me. [00:27:29] And so some of us, you know, some of us are on this side of the dam and we're like, the river's dried up. There's, there's a drought, there's no money flowing to me. Um, how do I, how do I avoid this? Well, maybe I need to climb back up and, and get this side and go back into this world. Maybe I need to go back into the world of business and get a job and just stop trying to create this new system, whatever this new system is. [00:27:58] Um, [00:28:00] and then those of us who are in it are like, am I gonna lose my job? So we've got these kind of two different mentalities going on and it, Peter puts it like this. There are someone, us who are unconsciously. Pushing money away, and some of us who are running after money unconsciously, so let me kind of unbundle that. [00:28:18] Mm-hmm. You can actually see this in your own life. Like either money's flowing, uh, there's money in your bank account or there's not money in your bank, in your bank account. You, you can literally look at it and you could diagnose what's going on by the health of your bank account. Now the secret here is about flow and you mentioned that this is an infinite loop. [00:28:40] The figure of eight turn on its side, it's actually an infinite loop. And the secret is very simple. The dam is actually a belief system held in mind. The dam is actually in our mind and it's an unconscious thing. You're like, no, no, no. It really exists. Like [00:29:00] 40% of the world's wealth help help buy 10 people. [00:29:02] They keep, you can't deny that you know that the money is all in here and it's not here. Well, actually that's not true because there are people over here I know. And we could talk about at length. And they have all the money they need flowing through them and flowing through their bank accounts, and they genuinely are creating a new world. [00:29:21] So what is the difference between those people and, and you and I now, why is the money flowing through their bank accounts and not through all of our bank accounts? And why is the money stuck here? And actually what we find is that most of us have part of ourselves here and part of ourselves here. So in fact, we're doing a little bit of both all the time. [00:29:45] We're, we're kind of hoarding onto the money that does come in, um, because we're afraid of the drought and we're looking at the money saying, when is the money gonna flow to us? And so the, a lot of the work we do is about helping people to break down [00:30:00] this, literally this mental barrier, this mental dam, um, so that the money flows again. [00:30:09] And so that ultimately prosperity flows, um, and the natural design of, of nature is everything in flow. Mm-hmm. It, it's not building downs, it's not building restrictions. [00:30:24] Sarah: Yes. I, I hear you Alexander, but my rational mind is still has a lot of questions because you just went through explaining, you know, the kind of system we are in right now. [00:30:39] Um, and you know that 10 men basically own 40% of the wealth and they are not the ones that I would say represent the feminine energy or even like dual energy. They're the patriarchical, um, kind of not the nicest people on [00:31:00] earth, I would say. And I don't care that they own, uh, that much. So the question is if you're saying, okay, it's just in our mind, well, it's not, it's a reality. [00:31:11] And so the, the thing is, what I want you to, um, talk about is, you know, kind of this concept of owning the masculine energy Yes. As well. And probably more like where we're headed, because clearly right now it's not the case, you know? Yes. Like, we're not at this point yet where we're money flows to everyone. [00:31:37] It's just Yes. You just showed it yourself. So Yes. Take us to, to owning these both energies and, and what, what that could look like. [00:31:47] Alexander: Look, that's such a good question. Um, and brilliantly put, and just to be clear, Um, I'm not saying that that the 10 white men or the eight white men and two Indian [00:32:00] men are in our mind. [00:32:01] I'm saying the dam is in our mind, right? Yes. Right. So the dam is what is in our mind. Mm-hmm. Which is blocking the flow. And you mentioned going into the fem energy. So let's look at it from this perspective. Yeah. Because it's easier to look from down here, looking up at the down. But if we go all the way into the feminine energy over here, we are not separate from the whole. [00:32:29] We are part of mother nature. We are, we are part of it. We are an integral part of it. We're not separate from it. The separation only happens in mind. So the only part of ourselves that can sense the separation is our mind, but our essence, whatever we call it, is not separate from the whole. It's an integral part of the whole. [00:32:52] Right. So if we look at it from this perspective, and then we look at these eight white men and two Indian [00:33:00] gentlemen, and we talk about the, the patriarchy as you just did. And then we, we have all this kind of stuff coming up inside ourselves and we're like, I really don't like those people. That she's the person in that system that you like the least think of that person, that leader, that that individual in that system. [00:33:22] Whether he's an entrepreneur, I'm gonna say he, because undoubtedly it's a man in, in a, in a right. So probably a, uh, a business leader, maybe a politician, but just bring to mind that person. It doesn't have to be, uh, in North America. It could be, it could be somewhere in Europe, it could be, it could be somewhere in Russia. [00:33:43] It could be somewhere in. Um, in the East, right? So just bring to mind that person, and then think of the, the, the thing that you like least about that person. What trait do you like least about that person? And is it, is it, it's, is it corruption? Is it, is it [00:34:00] bullying? Is it misogyny? Is it lying? Is it cheating? [00:34:03] Is it manipulating? Is it bullying? What is, what is it all? What is that trait All above? Yeah. Okay. All of the above. Right? And you can write a long, long list, right? Here's the scary thing. When you look at it from the feminine energy that is part of us. If we are part of the whole, they are also part of the whole, and they are part of us. [00:34:28] And this is a horrible, horrible thing, a horrible realization because mm-hmm. You're suddenly like, oh shit. What? Really? No, no, no, no. Because the mine will then go, no, no, no. That's ridiculous. I've done my work. I've done my own work. I, I, that's, that's how I got here. Don't be so ridiculous. I, I worked at my purpose five years ago, 10 years ago. [00:34:46] I've been doing spiritual development work. I've been doing personal development work. I've been doing all this work for the last 15, 20 years. My whole life has been dedicated to this work. Don't be so ridiculous as part of me stuck over here. Well, if we are on the planet right now, the bad news [00:35:00] is there is, there is an aspect of us that is holding this system in place, that's holding this dam here. [00:35:08] Mm-hmm. This dam in our mind. So what can we do about it? And this is where you're absolutely spot on, that actually we need to re-embrace this masculine energy over here. And, and, you know, Carl Young talked about this idea of the shadow. You know, what's held in the shadow. What's held in the collective consciousness of the planet right now is primarily masculinity. [00:35:35] Cuz this isn't been going on for 250 years. It's been going on for minimum 5,000 years, probably 10,000 years probably. You can trace it all the way back to the moment that, um, well, 5,000 years plus civilization in Suma, where we started to create hierarchies in cigarettes and money and all these things, or 10,000 years. [00:35:54] The moment that we settled down and we said, actually, we can cultivate crops and we can, we can [00:36:00] domestic animals, in other words, with a little bit above nature. Or you could trace it back 40,000 years and say, actually it was the moment that the prefrontal cortex, you know, mutated and gave us consciousness and the moment that the larynx gave us the ability to talk. [00:36:14] So each of these moments are kind of moments of separation along this journey. And now here we are at this, at this moment in history right now, the most amazing moment possibly ever in human history to be alive right now. And, and most of us still have this, they'll have this wall. The wall will dissolve. [00:36:36] It will, it's inevitable for some of us, and those of us who do will just go on this infinite cycle within this life. And for those of us who don't, will go on this cycle, not on this slide. Yeah, [00:36:54] Sarah: I like that. Um, I think, so you, you [00:37:00] kind of talked about the masculine energy and embracing that, um, I think in your book, but also in the webinar. [00:37:07] He also talk about the ego, right? And it's, um, it's part of that, those shadows, um, that, that we need to look at. And in some of the self-help, more self-development, uh, personal development, uh, um, things you hear while you just need to like go of the ego and you know, that's how you're coming to this feminine energy. [00:37:32] You instead say, well, don't let go of it. Uh, look at it and embrace it and, and, and, and yeah, commune with it in a way, right? And I think that's exactly what's happening now as well. Um, in, in on the bigger, um, scheme is all of that ego stuff is coming up and. And we're, yeah, we're having to look at it as a [00:38:00] society and, you know, the big, um, kind of, um, people that we talked about with all the wealth. [00:38:06] Well, that's really coming up for them, uh, specifically right now. And, and so what you're saying is not completely let go of it, but take I guess the good things from the ego with you so that you can then apply those. Let, let's kind of bring it to a business owner level because li my listeners are, are entrepreneurs, right? [00:38:30] And I do feel like a lot of, uh, you know, I'm talking to heart-centered entrepreneurs, so already that kind of says, well, there are a lot in the feminine energy, uh, which is great, right? Which is exactly what we need, uh, more of, so we're on this pathway back to the feminine energy. And what you are saying, and I'm saying it as well in different words because I talk about the doing and the being, um, the yin and the [00:39:00] yang, right? [00:39:00] We need both energies to be an entrepreneur and to, you know, stay ground and, and, and claim our worth. And, and, and yeah, do sell Right to sell. We need, uh, some of that, um, masculine energy as well. So yeah, tell us a bit more about the ego and, and what, what good parts are in the ego, right. That we can bring back to, to business. [00:39:26] Oh, [00:39:26] Alexander: beautiful. Great question. Um, well let, let's, let's take this model actually, and, and flip it up, right? So this, this figure of a, and let's flip it this way and, ok. So now [00:39:37] Sarah: let's, now standing straight, [00:39:38] Alexander: it's now standing straight, right? Yeah. And the base is the feminine and, and the, the top is, is the masculine. [00:39:45] Mm-hmm. And now let's imagine that's a tree. Right? Mm-hmm. And this is your tree and your, your business. Mm-hmm. And what you wanna do is you want to attract more trees into your forest, more trees into your community is [00:40:00] right. And the bigger, the bigger your forest grows, the more sustainable it becomes. So trees that grow in forest live far longer than trees that, um, that are isolated on their own, on hilltops. [00:40:13] So let's, let's assume that what you're trying to do is, is build a forest. A sustainable forest doesn't have to be the biggest forest in the world, but it's a sustainable forest. It's a heart-centered forest center. At the heart of this forest is the mother tree, your tree. Now if you think about that forest, and let's say, you know, it's, it's currently a cops or maybe it's a wood, but actually the potential is to grow to a forest. [00:40:36] Or maybe you are just starting out and you've literally just sewed the seed and it's, it's a seedling or a sapling. But you know, you know the potential of it is not just to grow into a tree. It's actually to grow into a forest. And of course what you go is do is you go through growing pain. So let's see if yours are sapling, you may be blown away, away, you know, around by the wind. [00:40:57] And what we often focus on is we try [00:41:00] and, you know, we try and grow the tree, right? You imagine this like you're a little seedling and you're, you're like, grow faster and you're like, let, you're trying to pull this more, more [00:41:08] Sarah: clients, more, [00:41:09] Alexander: yeah. More clients. More, more, more, more grow this way. Mm-hmm. And, and of course that doesn't work. [00:41:13] You'll literally just pull the seedling outta the ground or you'll pull the sapling outta the ground. Mm-hmm. So what stops you from doing this is, is the roots. And in fact, the height of the tree is dependent on the depth of the roots. Right? And don't worry, I'm gonna get to, to this thing about the ego, right? [00:41:28] Um, so let's assume that the roots is the feminine, the roots is in, is in connection with all of it. What, what we call the purpose. And that the, the tree is your mission. This is what you're growing towards and you want all the other trees to grow towards this, towards this mission. And that creates a microclimate underneath which sustains life because it's not too hot, it's not too cold. [00:41:52] It helps the, um, the, to conserve the water that all the trees need, the nutrients that all the trees need, the minerals [00:42:00] that all the trees need. And then they share this underneath. So the height of the tree is dependent on the depths of the roots. The sustainability of the forest is dependent on the consistency of the canopy, but what stops the roots from growing deeper are rocks. [00:42:18] Now, most people would tell you to remove rocks. When you see a block, you remove the block. When you see the dam, you take the dam out. [00:42:29] But what if the rocks had helped you to get here? See, if you were to remove all the rocks under a forest, the trees would become unstable. Mm-hmm. And then they'd fall over. But actually if, if the roots wrap around the rocks, then the tree becomes more stable. Yeah. And the whole forest becomes more stable. [00:42:53] Sarah: It reminds me of what we just said before, recording, no pain, no gain. Right? The rocks are the pain [00:43:00] here. The rocks are the dark nights of the soul. Um, so [00:43:04] Alexander: yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. And in our research we've identified all different types of, of pain. Pain around money, which we've just been talking about. We're either mentally hoarding it or we are mentally, um, you know, we're in a scarcity mindset. [00:43:23] Um, so we're pushing it away mentally or we're running after it power, relationship to power. So either we're standing at the top of the dam or we're standing at the bottom of the dam. And in order for somebody to be standing at the top, there has to be somebody standing at the door. In other words, in order for you to have, um, power over somebody, somebody unconsciously has to accept to have power over them. [00:43:46] Right. Oras, my partner, Jean Plip, puts it, um, obedience is the key to power. Mm-hmm. The third rock that we look at is, is love, because most of us were brought up in a world of fairy tales, Grims fairy [00:44:00] tales where, you know, the, the, the prince and the princess lived happily ever after. Uh, which implies that you are happy every after when you find your soulmate. [00:44:09] And so we've reinterpreted that, that modern myth is you can only be happy when you find your soulmate, which implies that love is outside of you. And of course, those of us who've done personal development work and a lot of it know that actually it's inside of us. And yet there's so remnants of that old model because it's so deeply embedded in society. [00:44:29] Mm-hmm. And then the fourth area is time. Um, that we, we constantly perceive we are running out of time and we've got to do things by this time. Um, and so these are, these are the four rocks or we procrastinate and these are the four rocks that we find underground. And what we've explored and examined is how you can embrace these different rocks. [00:44:56] Because in them is first of all the secret of how you [00:45:00] got here. Your tree grew, you grew cause the rock was there. And if you really embrace it consciously, and this is the difference, most of us are, uh, kind of embracing or resisting it unconsciously. And because we're embracing it unconsciously, we're not really embracing it. [00:45:21] We're pushing away from it. So if you take a, you know, you mentioned being very practical in business, let's say. Um, we are unconsciously pushing money, right? Let's come back to money. We are running a program around money. So we think money is bad, or money is our security, or money is our freedom. Um, and that, uh, in Carl's words is a projection. [00:45:51] So we're not seeing money as money. We're seeing money as a vehicle to something freedom or [00:46:00] away from something corruption. And when we actually embrace the freedom with or without money, we actually become truly free. Mm-hmm. [00:46:14] Sarah: But we can't, I think, I think in the book, yeah. Go on. Sorry. Yeah. I think in the book you mentioned surrender. [00:46:21] Right? And that I think is a big piece of that journey is to, you know, just surrender to. The rocks. And, and does that mean surrender to the ego as well? Because we started this track with the ego. So does that mean surrender to your ego, uh, as well? [00:46:43] Alexander: Yeah, great question. Um, I would say more surrender to the feminine. [00:46:48] Hmm. But in the surrender, what most of us forget is that the feminine to take the sea behind me. Right. [00:47:00] Um, but the canvas here, so this is a painting, it's a painting of, of, uh, M Blanc, um, painted a few years ago in black. And, um, it was pretty windy up there. Like it's what, 3000 meters? So 9,000 feet. Um, and it's pretty windy. [00:47:18] And you know, when the canvas is moving, it's very difficult for the feminine to feel like, uh, She can come out and play. So the feminine creates, mother nature creates, um, the divine. You know, a birth is normally through the feminine form, like, you know, new, new life comes onto the planet through the feminine form. [00:47:39] And so the, the, when the canvas is held, the feminine can come out to play. So the masculine is, is the easel and it's holding. And normally I tie with string from the corner so that the, the canvas is completely held. And if the canvas is held, then the feminine has the confidence to come out to play [00:48:00] so that the, the, the feminine aspect of this needs the masculine at a certain level of awareness, right? [00:48:09] It needs to be held in that way. And that's where most of us are right now. And most of us have, have observed masters and we're like, you know, look, look at Nelson Mandela or, or Mother Teresa, and we observe no ego, you know, look at, look at Eckhart. No ego. we're like, there's no ego there. Ego's gone. So we look at it and we go, oh, I know what I need to do. [00:48:33] I need to get rid of the ego. I need to get rid of the rocks. Right? But actually, that's like trying to climb a ladder by removing the runts. Mm-hmm. So if when you get to the top of the ladder, you don't need the ladder, but in order to get to the top of ladder, you needed the rungs in the ladder. So most of us look at that state and we think, well, what I need to do is I need to remove the ego in order to reach the top [00:49:00] of my mountain. [00:49:01] Actually, it's the inverse. The rungs of the ladder are embracing every aspect of ego and finding the gold in the rock, cuz there's gold in each of these rocks. And when you realize there's a benefit in, I dunno, security. And you find the conscious benefit in that, the gold dust in that you climb up a run and then you keep doing this. [00:49:27] It's, it's a, it's a very long ladder, by the way, really, really long ladder, you know? And like you, you can go on and on and on and on and on. Like, it's, it, it feels like it's infinite, right? Um, but at a certain point, you, you reach the top of the mountain, you're like, oh my God, I'm here. Then you don't need the ladder, but you do need the ladder to help other people get to the top of the mountain. [00:49:52] So this is when you build ladders for other people, right? [00:49:55] Sarah: So once you build your ladder, you can then help other people. Yeah. Yeah. [00:50:00] I, I see how you, yeah. How you tie in the, the rocks and the ego and that. The point is not to let go of the ego, but to embrace it. Because we need both of these energies, right? [00:50:15] Yes. Um, Maybe just to kind of bring it down again to the level of, uh, the individual, the entrepreneur. Um, what I see a lot in, um, uh, the entrepreneurs that I work with is that, um, and, and I think in your book, you call it the woowoo Mountain, right? And I have my WOOWOO prompts in, in, in the marketing, like we're human book. [00:50:39] So I think it's very much needed today that we can go into the woo and that we can, you know, embrace our feminine energy. But you and I both make the point also to say yes. And you do also need, uh, the masculine energy, um, to [00:51:00] build a business. There's just certain things, even in marketing, you know, you need to look at your numbers, like all of these kind of left brain things, those are the masculine energy, and we need those for building businesses, and we need those even for, um, Yeah. [00:51:17] It, it's a structure, like you said, the easel is the structure. It's kind of like, um, we need both. We need the roots, which you said was the feminine, and then we need some kind of system or, or structure. Um, I love that. Yeah. Thanks so much for, for taking on us on that journey. What I'm curious, uh, kind of to wrap up, what I'm curious, um, about is, is, is this return and. [00:51:45] You know, we, we kind of briefly touched upon it, the, the communion. Um, what you, um, mentioned also is the, you know, the, these different, um, business models. So we started with, uh, [00:52:00] industrial Revolution. Now we're kind of still in the big corporate systems. So where is this going? Uh, what do you see, uh, as a new paradigm in terms of business and, um, yeah, humans. [00:52:16] How, how are we [00:52:17] Alexander: evolving? Yeah, so the, the, the big leap beyond the dam, um, if we, if we kind of put the tree back and actually the other way around and, um, we have the infinite loop, then the big leap beyond, um, the, the dam is, is a leap into what is variously known as as a teal organization. Um, it's a kind of decentralized organization. [00:52:40] But most people have misunderstood the decentralized organization. Um, and they think we, we go into co creativity and we immediately jump to communion. There is a step in between, there's a rung in the ladder in between this current system, Silicon Valley system, which is still extracting wealth, um, and this new emergence [00:53:00] system before you get to communion. [00:53:02] So the future is communion, and that's one end of the cycle. And then there's the other. And really what you're looking for is a constant flow between them. So in order for that constant quote to happen, you'd have to reclaim these positives, as you said over here. So what's the positive of the control system? [00:53:18] Discipline structure. What's the, the positive of the, of the second system? Focus, like steely, focus on, on whatever you call that thing is your mission or the uniqueness. Your promise was the third thing. The third thing is about shifting our mindset. It's about unlocking our mindset and moving towards a mindset where things can grow. [00:53:39] But the real leap is here. This is the leap. This is the leap that's emergent. And it's, it's like it builds on all of these. We think it's linear, but actually it's like the Russian dolls. So this is an outer Russian doll, and then there's another Russian doll here. And this one, to get to this one, you have to accept all of these [00:54:00] phases. [00:54:01] And what that means is that it's not co-creation, that's delusional. Wbu Mountain stuff. That it occurs because somebody is holding the space. What my, my partner Peter calls the source, there's an easel there holding the canvas for everyone else. And so there's, there's this famous book by, uh, Fred Lulu. [00:54:22] Fred Lulu, um, called Reinventing Organization, which kicked up a whole creativity, co creativity movement, and became a cult classic in 2015. And when Peter interviewed Fred, cause he knows him very well, he said, Fred, you only interviewed sources, didn't you? And Fred's like, yes. In other words, he was observing the canvas, but not realizing the role that the sources, the people, the founders of the business were playing as the easel. [00:54:52] What does that mean? It means. The holding at this level without the, the, the masculine, strong [00:55:00] masculine energy nigro is, is a mapp like this with bubbles inside, without the arms holding the space. Without that discipline, without that focus, without that structure, the whole thing falls into a mess. And I, I launched a company, um, based on the idea of co-creation. [00:55:18] I was the source of it. I had some incredible partners, really, really impressive people. And it collapsed. We never made any money. There was never any flow in it. So in order to create this system, we have to embrace the shadow of the masculine and the shadow of the masculine is encompassed in the, in the worst of the people who we see running this system. [00:55:44] And so I am incredibly optimistic, but it's not even optimism. I know, I know that, um, some of us are already doing this. And I see what's been created and it is phenomenal. [00:56:00] Phenomenal what has been created. I mean, I was speaking with my friend Heath yesterday, what Heath is up to, unbelievable. I mean, I can't give any details out at the moment, but you can feel the energy of what he is doing. [00:56:14] I'll give you one example. So Carrie is 25 years in the un, has created a parallel organization to the UN called United Cities in Google it. She's now the source of a 13 billion fund to realize the SDGs, uh, the sustainable development goals. Her mission is 10,000 cities. By the end of decade, she will do it. [00:56:34] I know she will. She's operating from that level of awareness. That's just one example. But there are, let's [00:56:42] Sarah: go back to the, let's go back to the, uh, individuals, um, you know, the entrepreneurs who are listening, cuz that's kind of like a high level example. Um, because I, I do have to say, I'm like, well, here I am always talking about co-creation and collaboration, and you [00:57:00] just come in and say, well, that's not working. [00:57:02] So what's the alternative then? Because if the ultimate goal is communion, then what's the alternative? If not collaboration? [00:57:13] Alexander: So collaboration is key, but the key to get to the communion is to appreciate that each of us have a role in that collaboration and each of us are tapping in as a source into something greater, whatever we call that. [00:57:35] So the collaboration happens because each of us take a marriage. In a marriage, you have two people, and we talk about us as, as a, as a something, but actually each of us are independent, um, beings. And we, we used to say in the old system, we used to say, well, when you find your perfect partner, [00:58:00] you create perfect harmony, the beast with two bags. [00:58:03] But actually we know that doesn't work because when the person is not there, they miss the other person. Actually, what we're talking about here, true collaboration is this, both individuals become whole, complete and whole. And the dance between those individuals is to help each other become whole. And then what you get, of course, is an infinite loop and freedom in between. [00:58:25] Mm-hmm. And this is what true collaboration is. So each person sourcing what they're there to source and being really, really clear that one is playing the role of the easel. And holding the space, and the other is doing the creation in there. So it's a nuance of collaboration. It's not saying forget co-creation, forget collaboration. [00:58:47] It's a nuance to it that integrates the masculine world over here into the emergent world, because again, it's the matri dog. You don't embrace this world. [00:59:00] This world falls apart and it never actually grains the traction that it needs. So that's the distinction. So is it happening? Yes. What, what does practically that mean for an individual operating from this space? [00:59:14] It means practically actually looking back into the world that you might be in resistance to, and you might have rejected, and not throwing the baby out with the bathwater and seeing the gold dust in that. Um, and then accepting that gold dust, embracing that gold dust, reclaiming the strong summary, you know, that the masculine energy in you, in order to do that holding, knowing that beyond that is communion. [00:59:41] But you can't miss that rung on the ladder. You miss that rung on the ladder. You don't get to the top of the mountain, the whole thing falls apart, the tree falls over. Yeah. [00:59:50] Sarah: I, yeah, totally. I, I, I see you, you, you talk so beautifully and I just, I, it feels sometimes I'm kind of like the translator who [01:00:00] brings it down to the level of the, of, um, you know, kind of the ground 11. [01:00:05] I'm a Capricorn. Uh, and so I'm like, okay, you know, very, there's my daughter straightforward. And, and so in a way I can also make a parallel to my own journey. And, and I know you shared it in your book. Um, About your journey to the Woohoo mountain, right. And the artist and, and all of that. And then from there, coming back to the, yeah. [01:00:29] To the, the yang energy and, and, and I'm a Capricorn and a cancer rising. So I really have these both things. You know, the very, I call myself the mama bear of the, of the Humane Marketing circle. So I have this cancer energy, uh, that is very feminine, very woowoo, right? But. At the core, I'm at Capricorn, I'm very down to earth and structured and, and so it's almost like I wanted to get rid of those things and rid of the mind, and I'm like, no, no, no, I [01:01:00] have to, I don't be, you know, very meditative and in this state of Woo all the time. [01:01:05] Um, and yeah, it didn't work. Like, I'm like, no, this, you know, I need both. And that's what we're constantly talking about as well. And in humane marketing, you, you need both the doing and the being. So it's, uh, yeah, beautifully, beautifully said. You have, you have definitely a way with words and, and, and making this, uh, parallels that. [01:01:26] Yeah. It's just, it's such a journey, right? It's the journey of transformation basically, is what you're, you're talking about. And, and it's a journey of the money journey. But then of course, m you know, everything kind of goes back to money. And, and it's our journey as, as humans and as entrepreneurs. [01:01:48] Alexander: Yeah. [01:01:48] Yeah. It's exactly that. It's, it's those two being and doing. Right. And, um, the doing comes from a [01:02:00] state of being, right? [01:02:02] Sarah: Yeah. Which, which I know you, and that's why we need to start with the being. Right. We do [01:02:07] Alexander: need to start with the being. We do need to unlock this because we've been in a state of doing the way too long for too long. [01:02:13] Yeah. When we jump into the being, and it was, it was Einstein who said, let's call this the intuition, this the intellect. He said, um, you know, the, the intellect is a faithful servant, and the intuition is a sacred gift. And if we can understand that it's the gift that uses the intellect, that uses the mind, it's like a tool in the toolbox. [01:02:42] Mm-hmm. And when it uses it, Actually, you can create whatever you want, but most of the time it is the minds trying to suppress and forget this sacred gift. Yeah. And that really is the, the infinite journey [01:03:00] is realizing the gift, using the tool in order to create, and th this, this, this journey. It's, it's the journey of creation. [01:03:15] Yeah. It's the journey of humankind. It's, it's any painting, any masterpiece. That's the journey. Mm-hmm. [01:03:21] Sarah: Yeah. Thanks so much for being here and taking on us on this journey. Uh, Alexander, really appreciate it. Please do share where people, I think you run these webinars, uh, on a regular basis. So I think the best, uh, idea is probably for people to actually, uh, attend this webinar so they, they can see you in action and do share about that and the book and your website [01:03:48] Alexander: and all of that. [01:03:50] Yeah, sure. Well, um, we will be running another, uh, webinar on the 20th of April Arthur Prosperity, while we [01:04:00] begin into this little bit more detail. I dunno whether this episode comes up before then or not, but if it does, then great. Sign up and join us. Uh, you can also, uh, find my book, a free chapter of my book on, on my website, uh, Alex Alexander hable.com. [01:04:15] Um, and then, um, Yeah, there are, there, you know, we're just about to launch a community which you can join. Um, and then we'll have regular, uh, conversations on a monthly basis. And then we run a series of, of retreats, the Masterpiece retreats, which are online and offline, uh, which is up to Japan to, to run a retreat in Kyoto, which I'm pretty excited about. [01:04:38] We're doing first Men's retreat in May, um, in Morocco, which again, I'm really excited about. We'll be going up to see Kari, who I mentioned, um, earlier in, in Norway. Um, and then we'll be running something in Switzerland in October. Um, and then we do online retreats as well, um, called Masterpiece Tribes, and we're on the 11th Tribe, um, 12th Tribe [01:05:00] will be in June. [01:05:00] So lots of, lots of amazing things happening. Um, and if any of that speaks to you, then, um, you know, come along, get, get some of the free information. The, the, the, there are lots of videos on the site as well, and you can get lost in the videos and learn as much as you need to. Um, yeah. Thank you for having [01:05:19] Sarah: me. [01:05:19] Yeah, wonderful. Thanks so much for being here. I always have one last question and that is what are you grateful for today or this week? You. Thank you. I'm grateful for you too. Thank you. Thanks for creating masterpieces. [01:05:38] Alexander: Likewise. Thank you for creating your masterpiece. That's what I'm grateful for. Thank Youe marketing. [01:05:50] Sarah: I hope you enjoyed this conversation, a bit of a different approach to, uh, money and pricing, but ever so important. [01:06:00] In order to find out more about Alexander and his work, please go to alexander dash inch ball.com. Uh, the community can be found@themasterpiece.community, and Alexander also has a podcast called Insights From the at and uh, that is also on his website, alexander inal.com. [01:06:25] As I said in our conversation, I really enjoyed Alexander's. Called the Masterpiece, and you'll find out also on his website or on Amazon directly. Finally, if you're looking for others who think like you, who are deep thinkers as we demonstrated in this conversation, then why not join us in the Humane Marketing Circle? [01:06:47] You can find out more at Humane. Dot marketing slash circle. You'll find the show notes of this episode with all the links we mentioned here at Humane [01:07:00] Marketing slash H 16 two. Uh, this beautiful page also contains, uh, links to my free offers, such as my Saturday newsletter, the Humane Business Manifesto, and the free gentle Confidence mini course, as well as my two books, marketing like we're Human and Selling like we're human. [01:07:23] Uh, just a reminder also that marketing like We're human is now also available in audio format on Audible or anywhere else where you get your audiobooks. Thanks so much for listening and being part of a generation of marketers who cares for yourself, your clients, and the planet. We are change makers before we are marketers, so go be the change you want to see in the world. [01:07:49] Speak soon.[01:08:00]

Miriam Schulman, my guest today, is an artist, author and host of The Inspiration Place podcast. She's helped thousands of creatives around the world develop their skill sets and create more time and freedom to do what they love. Her signature coaching program, The Artist Incubator, teaches artists go from so-so sales to sold-out collections. After witnessing 9/11, Miriam abandoned a lucrative hedge fund to become a full-time thriving working artist. Featured in major publications including Forbes, The New York Times, Where Women Create, Art of Man, and Art Journaling magazine. Her artwork has also been featured on NBC's “Parenthood” and the Amazon series “Hunters” with Al Pacino. NOW, Her book with HarperCollins Leadership, Artpreneur, has been released in JANUARY 2023. In today's episode, Miriam and I talk about: The definition of art Why creative artists struggle most with marketing How embracing your inner weirdo and honoring what comes easy for you Why talking about the problem doesn't work for artists About Miriam's love for email marketing Why art matters And so much more [00:00:00] Sarah: Hello, humane marketers. Welcome back to the Humane Marketing Podcast, the place to be for the generation of marketers that cares. This is a show where we talk about running your business in a way that feels good to you, is aligned with your values, and also resonates with today's conscious customers because it's humane, ethical, and non-pushy. [00:00:23] I'm Sarah z Croce, your hippie turn business coach for quietly rebellious entrepreneurs and marketing impact by. Mama Bear of the Humane Marketing Circle and renegade author of marketing like we're human and selling like we're human. If after listening to the show for a while, you're ready to move on to the next level and start implementing and would welcome a community of like-minded, quietly rebellious entrepreneurs who discuss with transparency. [00:00:52] Works and what doesn't work in business, then we'd love to welcome you in our humane marketing circle. If you're picturing your [00:01:00] typical Facebook group, let me paint a new picture for you. This is a closed community of like-minded entrepreneurs from all over the world who come together once per month in a Zoom circle workshop to hold each other accountable and build their business. [00:01:15] Sustainable way we share with transparency and vulnerability, what works for us and what doesn't work, so that you can figure out what works for you instead of keep throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what sticks. Find out more at humane.marketing/circle, and if you prefer one-on-one support from me. [00:01:37] My humane business Coaching could be just what you need, whether it's for your marketing, sales, general, business building, or help. Idea like writing a book. I'd love to share my brain and my heart with you together with my almost 15 years business experience and help you grow a sustainable business that is joyful and sustainable. [00:01:58] If you love this [00:02:00] podcast, wait until I show you my mama bear qualities as my one-on-one client can find out more@humane.marketing slash. And finally, if you are a Marketing Impact pioneer and would like to bring Humane Marketing to your organization, have a look at my offers and workshops on my website@humane.marketing. [00:02:31] Hi, friends. Welcome back. Happy Spring. Today's conversation fits under the P of product, and if you're irregular here, as always, you know that I'm organizing the conversations around the seven Ps of the Humane Marketing Mandala. And if you're new here, big warm, welcome. Uh, you probably don't know what I'm talking about, but you can download your one. [00:02:53] Marketing plan with the humane marketing version of the seven Ps of [00:03:00] marketing@humane.marketing slash one page. That's the number one and the word page. And this comes with seven email prompts to really help you reflect on these different PS for your business. It's kind of the foundation of your business and your market. [00:03:17] So today I'm talking to New York based Miriam Schulman about making art your product. I'll tell you more about Miriam in just a second, but first I want to give you an update about the Humane Marketing Circle, our community. Um, I wanna tell you that bringing in in a young community facilitator was one of the best moves I've ever made. [00:03:40] You know how it is. You have to invest in something in order for it to grow, but investing at the stage where you know the income is just not there yet. It is always scary, but. My gut was telling me, you know, this is the right thing to do and I'm just so excited to [00:04:00] be working with Eddie now, um, who's our community facilitator and, and carer and, uh, net weaver, that's how he, uh, refers, um, to himself as. [00:04:11] So besides adding a second monthly call that's hosted by three of our ambassadors, we, uh, have also transitioned in January to a new online platform. Uh, it's on Cajabi not Mighty Network, and we're really loving it. It feels like Cajabi is kind. You know, is, is one of us, it feels like us, not perfect, but very playful and kind. [00:04:39] It's kind of like, I think of it as the little sister of Mighty Networks with big dreams. And so after every call, Eddie, um, is giving us a challenge to complete. So either something that deepens our connection with other members. Because that's a big priority for us, is [00:05:00] that members are interconnected. [00:05:02] That's the definition of a community, right. So, uh, Eddie helps us with that and puts a challenge up on our, uh, cajabi. We call it our water hole, our place, you know. Kind of nicer image than just a water cooler. So we call it our water hole. Uh, the place where animals in Africa get together in the morning and drink. [00:05:24] So, um, he puts a challenge up there and helps us, uh, connect with each other. Or it might also be a, a challenge that helps us with our marketing and our. Business. So, um, yeah, if you've been thinking about joining for a while now is really a good time because it's time. In May I'll be doubling the monthly rates. [00:05:47] Uh, besides the monthly calls and the active online community, you also get one live 90 minute workshop on a marketing or business topic, as well as all the recording. And we will soon [00:06:00] also probably be, be adding a third call per month. So yeah, I feel like stepping into my personal power and it's, it's time to raise the, the rates, but there is still time to join us at the current monthly rate, which is $37 per month. [00:06:17] So have a look at the details at humane.marketing/circle and also look for the circle inaction link, uh, on that page. On that circle in action page, you'll see some excerpts from our calls and testimonials and all of that, um, kind of real behind the scenes info. Thanks so much for checking that out. All right, Miriam Schulman. [00:06:44] My guest today is an artist, author, and host of the Inspiration Place podcast. She's helped thousands of creatives around the world develop their skill sets and create more time and freedom to do what they love. Her [00:07:00] signature coaching program, the artist incubator teaches artists to go from so, so sales to sold out collections. [00:07:09] After witnessing nine 11, Miriam abandoned a lucrative hedge fund to become a full-time thriving working artist featured in major publications including Forbes, the New York Times where women create Art of man and art Journaling. Her artwork has also been featured on NBC's Parenthood ND Amazon Series, hunter Hunters with Al Pacino, and now her book with Harper Collins Leadership Art Printer has been released in January, 2023. [00:07:42] In this episode, we talk about the definition of art and how art may not just be what we think it is, uh, why creative artists struggle most with marketing and what to do about it, how embracing your inner weirdo [00:08:00] and honoring what comes easy for you. Frees you up and actually lets you do the marketing, uh, that is aligned with you. [00:08:09] Why talking about the problem doesn't work for artists and what to do instead about Miriam's love for email marketing, why art matters and so much more. So let's dive in and talk to Miriam about making art your product. [00:08:28] Hey, Miriam, so good to speak to you today. I can't wait for this conversation about art. [00:08:35] Miriam: Well, thanks so much for having me, Sarah. It's, it's an honor to [00:08:38] Sarah: be here. Thank you. So I was just, we were just recording an episode for your podcast and, and now, um, you know, I'm on the other side of the mic and I'm excited to Yeah. [00:08:50] To kind of pick your brain, uh, around art and entrepreneurship because as we just discussed offline, they have a lot to do with each other and it really [00:09:00] depends how you define art. And so I think maybe that's a good place for us to start. Why don't you. Tell our listeners how you define art. Yeah, that's [00:09:11] Miriam: a, that's a great question. [00:09:13] Um, so my book is Entrepreneur, but the truth is, in the way we're gonna define art, every entrepreneur is an art preneur and vice versa. So, when I started writing the book, it's not, it was very, it had to be very clear. This is not just for visual. And it's not. And then we made the definition very broad. [00:09:35] Could be your art, could be writing, it could be um, music, it could be dance, it can be ceramics, it can be fashion. But once you make that definition, definition so broad, your art really is whatever product that you're producing. And so all I'm doing in this book is teaching people who cons. Don't believe that [00:10:00] business lessons apply to them. [00:10:01] I'm showing them. Mm, yes, they do. But the thing is, there's a lot of people who don't define themselves as artists who maybe look at marketing advice and they're sitting there if their arms crossing, oh, that doesn't work in my industry, or, that doesn't apply to me when actually it does. [00:10:16] Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. I I I was just gonna say, like, what, when I was thinking, when I, I was preparing for the episode and I'm like, well, art and marketing. [00:10:27] It's not usually a good marriage, right? People are who are artists, they're like, yeah, that's not for me. Or, or maybe they do wonder, well how do I sell my art? But what they see out there, they always feel like that doesn't apply to me. And so you're saying the same thing. That's what you're seeing usually [00:10:49] Miriam intro: from artists. [00:10:50] Why is that? Well, you know what, I, I get a lot of pushback cuz I, I like to say, you know, anybody. With a, who wants this can do it. [00:11:00] Anyone with a dream can do it. And so what the pushback I get is, yeah, but what about talent? Mm-hmm. And here's the truth, Sarah. Marketing trump's talent every single time we've all seen, um, not so good artists. [00:11:17] Succeed or you know, ones where like, huh, you know, we all seen that. And the same thing is true in, in business marketing is gonna trump every single time. Like the, you know, if you don't, people don't know about you, they can't buy your product or service. [00:11:34] Sarah: Right. It's, it's that just saying, you know, you stay the best kept secret. [00:11:39] It's like, yeah, you're really good, but nobody knows about [00:11:41] Miriam: you. Exactly. Exactly. So, and there's a lot of examples in the art world. So there's this, uh, American artist. Is he, he may not be American. Damien Hurst, is he American or is he from London? Okay. You don't, it doesn't matter cuz you don't know who he is. [00:11:56] It's fine. Um, he sold [00:12:00] a shark in formaldehyde for like a million dollars. Now is that talent? You know, it's like, I don't think so. So that is just a marketing stunt and people who are creating, um, like NFTs, like there was this guy who made this huge gold cube and put it in, uh, central Park to sell as an N F T. [00:12:22] Was, is that talent? No. It's a big marketing stunt, right? So, [00:12:29] Sarah: yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Why do you think then that creative entrepreneurs struggle most with, uh, um, marketing or, or what part of the marketing do they struggle with? [00:12:42] Miriam: Yeah. A a lot of it is is the mythology for artists in particular. There is that whole idea of they, they're taught you can't sell out or like, you're not a true artist if you are trying to market, which is complete BS because we have a [00:13:00] history going back to Michelangelo, where he was very much interested in the commercial side of things. [00:13:06] I mean, he's not just pa uh, sculpting and painting whatever he felt like. He didn't wanna paint the Sistine Chapel, but the Pope said, yes you do. Here's the money I'm gonna pay you. So he, he did projects for monetary reasons, so it's not a sellout to create art that's marketable that the, the market wants. [00:13:26] So that is a big thing that holds people back. But I also see. And Sarah, tell me if you see this too for, for women in particular who are socialized and, and I don't mean only some women are socialized this way. I think all of us women are socialized this way. We're socialized to play small, to not desire money, sex and power. [00:13:50] I think it's, that's probably more true in the US with the, because of the tradition of Puritanism, this is how our country was founded by. Though [00:14:00] that very conservative religion, so Right. Um, not to play small, and whether you're looking at images of thin women, the, the message that women are getting is not to take up space. [00:14:13] Mm-hmm. And that it's wrong to want money. So that plays a significant role because people will continue to sabotage themselves if they don't believe that it's okay. To desire money and success and to play role a bit a role and be visible and be big. So that is gonna sabotage people if they're trying to stay quiet and small when they have, and, and also be visible at the same time. [00:14:43] It just, they don't work together. [00:14:45] Sarah: Yeah, I hear you. That I'm sure there's a, there's something on that belief level, right? Um, I also think it's like, so. Right. Like I often talk about the right brain and the left brain. So I really [00:15:00] also think like creative's brains are wired differently and they're, um, you know, there's so much in the creativity that when they are then seeing, uh, you know, marketing advice that is very structured and follow steps and, and they're like, this is how you do it. [00:15:19] That's when they get turned off. They're like, no, but I wanna. Me, I just wanna, you know, it's kind of like almost rebellious, maybe. Artists seem to be more [00:15:29] Miriam: rebellious in a way. Yeah, I I, I can see why you would say that. I think for, for, at least for me personally, I found a lot of the marketing advice out there, a turnoff, because it was coming f like it was very bro marketer. [00:15:43] It was like, okay. Right. Exactly. You know, these very. Um, hustle style, whereas the best marketing in the world is being your true, authentic sell, right? [00:15:54] Sarah: Yeah. So not in your book, you have this line, embrace your inner weirdo, right? [00:16:00] Yeah. So tell us more about that. What you, what you mean by that. Okay, [00:16:04] Miriam: so the word weird, the original definition comes from Scotland, and it meant fate or destiny. [00:16:11] And then you may recall in Macbeth there were the three witches who were called the weird sisters. So then the meaning meant something associated more with faith, the supernatural. And as time went on and the supernatural became vilified, The word weird took on that negative connotation. So to be weird is really to embrace your destiny. [00:16:39] To embrace what's really special about you. So I, I say love your inner weirdo and be a weirdo in the most affectionate way possible. [00:16:48] Sarah: Hmm, yeah. You also say, um, like one of the examples you mentioned in that chapter is share your values and. You know, that's a [00:17:00] huge part of humane marketing as well. It's like, share your worldview. [00:17:04] Share what matters to you. People don't typically see that as marketing. They always think, maybe especially artists, they think, oh, you have to talk about, you know, this art piece or this book. I've written a book and now I have to constantly talk about this book. Not true. If you share your worldview and your values, that is part of your marketing. [00:17:28] Miriam: Oh, for sure. So there are a lot of artists who are afraid of speaking out. So I live in the US we have very divisive politics, and they're worried of losing business if they have. One point of view and they express a view that me, other people might get them upset. So for me, I'm very progressive. I have a lot of liberal views. [00:17:55] I'm not worried about alienating people who are [00:18:00] conservative. Yeah, I may alienate some people. There are some diehard conservatives though, who like I've had some words with and they're still following me. But people respect that more. And what happens if you don't share your values, they're gonna assume. [00:18:15] So right before we hit record, Sarah was asking me, so you just had an election, what do you think? And I don't know if you were like trying to see where I was at on that political [00:18:25] Sarah: No, I knew from reading the book, I knew. Okay, right. [00:18:27] Miriam: You read my book. But, but let's pretend you didn't now. And I said, oh, I, you know, and I gave a very witchy, rashy response. [00:18:34] You, you may as assume, you might assume that I don't care about politics when, meanwhile, I care very deeply about the unraveling of, of women's rights and what I see happening. So it's important to dive deep into that. I was very impressed Billy Eilish, um, went on record, uh, on Instagram, telling people to vote and why this was important. [00:18:58] Yeah. Other people [00:19:00] say vote, but only if you agree with me. You know? But, uh, yeah, it's, it's, it's really nice to see some people who have big platforms not being afraid of alienating people and the ones who are very big on all parts of the political spectrum. Are not afraid of being polarizing because you can love me or hate me, but there is, when you're in business, there is no money in the middle, and when you're trying to please everyone, you're just striving for mediocrity. [00:19:34] Right. [00:19:35] Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. It's so interesting. Um, I just, I, I follow Guy Kawasaki, uh, you see who he is. Um, he's, he's kind of the, you know, past Apple and then Canva. Um, he's just a spokesperson now, pretty much. And he just really shares his political views and just, I think before the elections he put, he's active on LinkedIn or that's [00:20:00] where I see him. [00:20:00] And he, he was saying, you know, Uh, your influencers, what are they saying right now? Are they saying, you know, go vote and, you know, here's what's really happening because go vote. That's kind of an easy out as well, because that doesn't really share your worldview. That's correct. Um, so he was, you know, being more specific, um, or so, so artie's influencers telling you who to vote for and why it. [00:20:27] Or are they telling you the latest car they bought or you know, which mansion they're staying at and all of that kind of stuff that we're so used to from the bro influencers. Right? Yeah. And I thought that made a lot of sense. That's exactly the worldview that we're interested in and we're not so interested in, you know, the latest car you bought and all of. [00:20:49] Miriam: Yeah. Yeah. And there's actually a very significant, um, population that the data shows, they're called the conscious consumers that they do shop with. They do vote with [00:21:00] their pocketbooks. Of course. Yeah. So they're checking, you know, you know, and they don't all have the same causes that they care about. You know, some people care more about sustainability of a brand when they're shopping, some care more. [00:21:12] Inclusion. I know that when I receive a clothing catalog, if it's all white women, I throw it out now like I'm, you know, they don't care enough to show, have diversity in the catalog. Um, I, I don't shop there. So there is a, a, a large percentage of people who. This is their values matter. And what matters is that the brands are doing it in an authentic way. [00:21:36] Not like, oh, so this is gay Pride week and here's your rainbow smoothie, or whatever, because they people can see through that. It's how you're showing up all year long. That's gonna matter. [00:21:47] Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. And the, the reason again, we're bringing this up is, Oftentimes creatives don't realize that that's part of marketing. [00:21:57] Um, that's right. Yeah. And it's, it's not just the, [00:22:00] you know, follow these three steps to market your art. It's, it, it, it's. A whole package. That's the other thing that you mentioned in your book, um, is honor What Comes Easy for You. And I love that. That's kind of like my motto for life, right? Um, and so you have a, a funny gardening story in there. [00:22:19] Uh, would you mind sharing that? I think that's such a good example of, of how that works. Yes, yes. [00:22:25] Miriam: Okay. So I, I live in New York City. I'm staring at a brick wall right now, but we do have a, a farmhouse two hours away. It's in the Catskills in New York. And my husband started a garden, um, when we first moved there, and we, he went to the nursery and he spent. [00:22:42] Oh, I don't know, a couple hundred dollars on plants, like these starter plants. And then when we were at the counter, he just grabbed a couple of seed packets. So the seed packets, we just scattered in the plants. You know, it made a mess in the back of my car with the dirt. I wasn't happy about [00:23:00] that. And we spent a good back breaking afternoon, putting in these starter plants. [00:23:07] Well, a couple, whatever, whatever the time span was later. The seeds were doing really well. It was like Jack and the bean sprout, like all these, like these stalk came up and we had beautiful string beads. The starter plants on the other hands, like all the bugs ate them. So it was like, here's a situation where. [00:23:27] The seed packets were the easy way to go and they actually were the easier the, the best result, whereas this harder, more expensive thing didn't work out as good for as well for us. But we do this a lot in our business where we try to make things so hard and we have something that comes easy for us and we think that couldn't be as valuable. [00:23:46] Right. [00:23:47] Sarah: Yeah. I just love that story, I guess, because I, I also, I'm not a big fan of gardening, but my husband is, and yeah, I would just totally throw some seeds [00:23:56] Miriam: out there. That's right. Well, it was like the sunflowers came from seeds. [00:24:00] The green beans came from seeds. Um, we tried something else this year. I forget what it was, and it was like, yay [00:24:06] Sarah: seeds. [00:24:07] Yeah, exactly. And it's funny how we often. You know, it's kind of a metaphor. Plant a seed, and I love that also for marketing, where you might just have a conversation and you're not actually pushing it and trying to sell them something, but in your head, you know, I just planted a seed, and this might turn into something bigger that you weren't even expecting. [00:24:33] I love the metaphor of seeds as well, so yeah, that's a beautiful metaphor [00:24:38] Miriam: that you, the way you just [00:24:39] Sarah: used it. Yeah. Yeah. Um, another thing that I know that you love is email marketing. So it seems like you really built your business based on email marketing, so, Maybe you, because right now I feel like people are still understanding. [00:24:57] Okay. Yes. Uh, email [00:25:00] marketing is a good strategy, especially with all the talk about social media going down the tubes and Twitter disappearing and all of that. So how does one start an email list today? Um, you know, starting out as a creative, how do you actually get people's attention? Because I do feel like. [00:25:22] A lot out there. And I know that my people, they're like, yeah, but there's so much also crap out there that I feel like I give my email and I get this one pager that is not even valuable. Um, so what would you say, what would you tell creatives how to get started? [00:25:40] Miriam: Well, let me just start with that last example you gave just because you had a, you meaning the listener had a bad experience with somebody's Jan. [00:25:49] Email doesn't mean you have to emulate that. Right. You be that bright spot in someone's email where they look forward to opening your emails or they love the [00:26:00] freebies that you're sending them. You, you be, you, you make a, you can, you're the one who has control over that and can make a difference. Right. [00:26:07] One thing I like to tell my clients, or what I talk about in the book is emails are really love letters to your audience. Mm-hmm. And that is the best way to nurture a relationship. [00:26:18] Sarah: Right, so, so when you work with clients, when they ask you, well, so how, what do I create? You have some great examples of what creatives created as a download, as a free [00:26:33] Miriam: Yes. [00:26:34] This, this was a very important chapter for my audience because there is so much advice out there for people who are weight loss coaches. You just give them a cheat sheet or a menu and they like, I have no idea what it is that they want, and they come up with things. That really have nothing to do with what they're ultimately selling. [00:26:55] Like I'll see artists have screensavers or something. It's like, yeah, but you're not [00:27:00] selling that. So that is not, and also people don't want your screensaver. They want their kitty as their screensaver or their kid or their doc. So, The, the things are pe again, this is where people make it way too hard for themselves. [00:27:13] So for, for my audience who are selling products, one of the best things to give away is just early access. So you don't even have to create something. And this does work. So a good example of this is in, in April when the war first br, when the war first broke out in March and then Easter in April that year. [00:27:34] Uh, Stanski eggs, which are Ukrainian eggs, I don't know if you you've seen them, but they're very intricate, intricately painted eggs. This was cut out of the preview book that you got, by the way. I think we put it back in for the final version. It doesn't [00:27:51] Sarah: be, you see? Yeah. So there, I thought you were tricking me, but No, [00:27:54] Miriam: no, no, no. [00:27:55] Yeah, so we, we had it in, we cut it out, we put it back in. [00:28:00] So there, there was this artist creating eggs and she sells them for over $200. And they're, they're absolutely gorgeous. These very intricate, and they're made by, um, using I think like a toothpick and putting boutique on to make these fine lines and doing these, the dipping process. [00:28:21] So she was completely sold out at these prices. Now people are gonna wanna join her email list just to find out when they come back in stock. Wow. So people who are creating one of a kind things, this is something that is a reason. If you're selling a service like a class, it's re, it's a reason enough that people wanna be on the wait list when, when it opens up. [00:28:44] So that's like the easiest place to go. Uh, if for, for the visual artists out there, I love the giving them a post, people, giving people a postcard with your art on it. That does require. The person giving you their email [00:29:00] address to also give their postal address, which is more of a commitment, but that means they're more serious about your art. [00:29:06] And again, everything that you're giving as your lead magnet needs to be a free taste of whatever it is that they're ultimately gonna buy. Hmm. So that's why I said a screensaver doesn't work. Um, artists who give away coloring pages, that only works if you're selling a coloring book if you're trying to sell something else. [00:29:26] Not a great idea. Yeah. [00:29:28] Sarah: Yeah. Okay. Um, I'm just trying to figure out how, you know, the, the Etsy website, how does that play into the whole I'm an artist and I'm selling my art because Etsy, it's, its stand. Website and I see a lot of creatives putting their art up there, but, but then how would they, yeah. How would. [00:29:53] Still build an email list and then say, yes, absolutely. It's now available on Etsy. Yes. Something like that. Okay. [00:29:58] Miriam: Yeah, so that, [00:30:00] that is why I encourage clients to build their own website because if you're gonna have to drive traffic anyway, you might as well drive it to your own site. Yeah. The artists who do well in Etsy are driving traffic fair. [00:30:16] Yeah. And then Sarah, do you want me to circle back to the lead magnet thing? Because we can also discuss what lead magnets work? Well, if you're not a visual artist, like what I use in my own business, please. Okay. Yep. Let's do that. So, of course there's the free masterclass, but one thing that I, I've done that works really well is transcribing the masterclass and turning that into an e. [00:30:37] Without the sales pitch, but basically giving the same exact content. So think about all the different content that you're giving them. How can you repackage it and give the same experience? Whether that is a masterclass, some people prefer to read the book, right? You know, like whether it's Terry Potter or the movie. [00:30:55] Like some people rather read the book than see the movie. Right. So, [00:31:00] yeah, to give them different experiences. Yeah, [00:31:03] Sarah: I like that. And then I guess, you know, for. I don't know if you've set that up, but the free chapter for the book is usually what you do when you have a book. Have you set that up? I haven't [00:31:15] Miriam: set that up yet, but I probably should. [00:31:16] You should. Yeah. I know I probably should. I have to talk to my, uh, yeah, my [00:31:21] Sarah: publisher about that. Yeah. I, I feel like people, you know, they, they like, uh, uh, free down download of the first chapter and then decide of course on Amazon. Usually you can kind of see the first couple of pages, but it's not, it's not the whole chapter usually. [00:31:36] Yeah, so it's helpful too. You [00:31:38] Miriam: wanna hook them in. So yeah. What is it that you can give away that will hook them in and want more of what you got? [00:31:43] Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. Now, uh, just yesterday in, in my Humane Marketing Circle community, we talked about actually having freebies without getting people's email, there seems to be a trend [00:32:00] of. [00:32:01] B, because people kind of feel like, well, it's not really free if I have to give my email. And so my people, they're like, oh, I want them in my world, but I don't. I want to have options. I want to have maybe one thing that they can just download for free and then come back for more. What do you think about this strategy? [00:32:24] Miriam intro: Well, you're taking a big chance that they're not gonna ever come back again. It's kind of like a one night stand. [00:32:31] Sarah: Yes. Like it, but it could be, you're so good on this one night stand since we're going with this example, that they wanna come back. Right. Because [00:32:41] Miriam: they're like, they're really, that's the problem that I see with, with TikTok. [00:32:45] It's like the death of and, and reels on Instagram too, but, but we'll just talk about TikTok. It's the death of the scroll. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, and I know entrepreneurs are spending a tremendous amount of time creating content for. [00:33:00] TikTok, social media and social. But, but especially those videos, they take a lot of time. [00:33:04] Now, if you've been on the consuming end of those videos, you know that before you get to that end of that video, they're already making you push up to the next thing. Mm-hmm. So I found that I can have thousands of views on, on a reel with nobody going to my profile. And I had an artist who created a viral reel. [00:33:24] She got 45 thou, 45,000 views without. Um, like maybe a couple followers, but nobody going to our website cuz you can see the stats. Now with TikTok, the followers there are completely meaningless. You can have, um, you can follow someone and never ever see their content ever again. So somebody who has millions of followers, that's not a relationship with millions of people. [00:33:48] It's kind of a meaningless metric, right? I would be very wary of trying to build a relationship where you can't, you're not in [00:34:00] control of getting in touch with them ever again. Hmm. Yeah. [00:34:03] Sarah: Okay. It's interesting, uh, and I totally agree with the, with social media, people spend so much time on there and oftentimes entrepreneurs are exhausted and, and, you know, to go back to the do what's easy, well, social media nowadays is not easy anymore. [00:34:21] No. It's not really want to get something out of it. So, um, I think it's important to, to say that not enough people. You know, say the truth, how it is, and it's not easy to build a following or, or nevermind a following, just a business, uh, on social media today. So in your opinion then, what's the best way, where would a, a creative, uh, an artist, an entrepreneur start when they're just starting out their. [00:34:51] Miriam: Well, bill, bill, that email list, and I wanna circle back to a question you did ask, but I don't think I really answered. It's like, well, how and where do you start? Mm-hmm. [00:35:00] And there are only three ways to build your audience. There is what I call your universe. So your universe is anyone you come into contact with, whether it's in person or online. [00:35:13] Then there are other people's univers. So that could be like what we're doing now. Sarah, I'm on your podcast. You came on mine. Right. So that's basically, other people call it earned press, earned publicity. Mm-hmm. And then, which is free. And the third category is paid publicity. Mm-hmm. Or paid platform. So those are, there's, those are the three ways. [00:35:39] And they're really, I don't think there is any other way other than those three areas your platform. Other people's platforms and rented platforms. Mm. Yeah. [00:35:49] Sarah: I, I like that. It, I mean, I know that, but it, explaining it this way, it feels like, okay, if you're just starting out, You gotta start in your [00:36:00] own universe. [00:36:01] Yes. Cause you don't have the credibility yet to go, or you can start with the paid, but that's also correct. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but you don't really have the credibility yet to go out there and say, okay, can I be on your podcast? Or can that co Or not just credibility, but maybe also confidence. [00:36:19] Miriam intro: Well, actually, let me. [00:36:21] Circle back so you can get, um, free, free press. And I did that even in the very beginning. But you need to start local. Local. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So you can't jump, jump the ladder. It's like, it'd be great to be on Oprah. Right. But yeah, there's different levels. Exactly. Like there's things like, you know, I would love Brene Brown to invite me to her podcast, but you know, [00:36:45] Sarah: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:36:46] It, yeah, it just kind of goes the same with anything in life. It's like, oh, am I on this level or Yeah. Am I evolving to future levels? Yeah. [00:36:56] Miriam intro: And, and that's why we should talk about something, which I don't think I talk about in the book at all, but [00:37:00] who knows? Maybe if I write another book, who knows. Um, so that's why I spend so much time building what I call relationship capital, because the way to get the. [00:37:12] To expand outside of your universe and get some of those earned opportunities is by building relationships, which is why joining communities like yours, Sarah, is so important. Like those relationships, yeah. Can help you. And I never have regretted investing in paid programs, paid masterminds, because those networks have been hugely. [00:37:36] Yeah, [00:37:37] Sarah: don't you agree? Oh yeah, totally. So much so that, you know, the partnership is the seventh p of the Humane Marketing Mandala. Uh, because I really think partnership is the way to, to market and, and, you know, collaborate with others. And, and what you just said as well is there's different levels within partnerships as. [00:37:59] [00:38:00] There's the free levels, which is peers, and then there's the paid levels, which is mentors and coaches, which again, it's just like these unwritten rules. You probably can't go to, you know, ask, uh, Brene Brown if she would, you know, feature you or something because there hasn't been a paid relationship for some things. [00:38:21] There just needs to be a paid relationship for them to pay attention to you. You know, they have so many people they could be paying attention to. [00:38:30] Miriam: Yeah. And, and one thing that I think is very important, especially now with um, let's just say it like it is the demise of, of easy social media, right? Is I think it is a very important to have your own platform because it's one thing to, uh, to, to get media. [00:38:49] But it's much better if you are the media. Mm-hmm. Yeah. If you have a YouTube channel, if you have a podcast, and by the way, blogs are coming back. I have been reading people's [00:39:00] blogs posted on in. LinkedIn. That seems to be the new thing. Have you noticed that too? That trend? Everyone's like running to LinkedIn lately. [00:39:06] Sarah: Oh yeah. No. I've been on LinkedIn for, for years like that. [00:39:11] Miriam: I've been there, but I haven't been like consuming the way I started to. It's like, well that's a good article. Like as people are actually putting some quality things there. Yeah, so that's be be the media. If you want opportunities, give opportunities. [00:39:25] Mm-hmm. People like, if you are one of Sarah's coaching clients, invite her to your platform. Right. Am I putting you on the spot? Is this gonna be edited? [00:39:37] Sarah: N no, no, this is all good. No, we're not editing the, well, we are editing the, but I'm not cutting anything out. Okay. Cause this is, this is a Cuban conversation, so, yeah. [00:39:47] Yeah. No. [00:39:48] Miriam: So lemme, instead of putting you on a spot, I'll just talk about myself. So when I joined Masterminds and I started a podcast, I had my, my first guess was my business coach, right? Then I [00:40:00] could say to my business coach's friends who were like, kind of jumping a level here. Mm-hmm. You know, they weren't my level, they were my business coach's level. [00:40:07] Right. Hey, Jason Van Orden was a guest on my show and I'd love to have you on as well. So now this is already giving me credibility because my business coach. Said yes to me on my podcast, which was an easy yes for me. So now somebody says, oh, well if Jason was on it, I'll do on it. And then I went to the third person, Hey, Jason was on it and such and such was on it. [00:40:29] Would you like to come on it too? So it's like, this is how we build that ladder of credibility is starting with your own network, starting with peers. And then you can add, just go up those, uh, go up that ladder with baby steps. Yeah, [00:40:45] Sarah: that's so. I feel like you, you just said blogs are coming back and I, I was also thinking art is come, coming back. [00:40:55] I really feel like, you know? Yeah. So, so maybe the question would [00:41:00] be like, why does art matter now more than ever going forward? [00:41:06] Miriam: Yeah. Well, because we're going through such an existential crisis in the world, and art is what gives us meaning. [00:41:13] Sarah: Mm-hmm. So good. And, and, and that would've been a nice ending, but I wanna come back to that, to that one point you made when I was on your show about the, you know, in marketing we always talk about these pain points and Oh yeah. [00:41:29] And you have such a good point about. Well, I'll let you explain [00:41:33] Miriam: it. Okay. So this is like, it's not that marketing doesn't apply to creatives. It just may be the way you've been taught. It's not the right way. So we're talking about the bro marketers and a lot of them also they say find the pain point and twist that night. [00:41:49] Exactly. Like if you heard it, that's what, but that's what they say. Yeah. All right. So, but the problem is when you're, when you're selling something that gives people pleasure, like [00:42:00] let's say, I'm the producer of Harry Potter. I'm not gonna market the movie by saying, well, their pain point is their bored. [00:42:08] Watch Harry Potter. It alleviates boredom. You don't do that, right? So, or, or, or what's, what's the pain point of the Oreo cookie? Nothing. We just want it cuz it tastes good. Right? So, And that doesn't mean that your art has to be all rainbows and daisies. Cause there's plenty of art that is dark and goth and emo, and people get a lot of pleasure from that. [00:42:31] But instead of worrying about what people's night sweats are, what their pain points are, what's keeping them up at night, you gotta think what are their wet dreams? What is it that they, they really want, what they really desire? Mm-hmm. Yeah. And sell that pleasure. [00:42:49] Sarah: Mm. Yeah. And, and that ties in with why art and pleasure is so important right now is because, you know, who wants to open their email and, and, you [00:43:00] know, Find out how much they suck and how much their life is miserable and because they're not this and that, and not enough. [00:43:07] No. Like, like you said, we're living in a crisis, so we, we want positive reinforcement, not negative reinforcement. And I think all the right brainers, that's what they're bringing to society right now. Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful. Well, do you tell people where they can find your book in, in your website, and all of. [00:43:30] Miriam: Okay, so if you like this conversation, you will also love. Sarah on my podcast, the inspiration plates. I'm not sure who, I don't remember who is coming out first. Me neither. But yeah. But you can find the inspiration plates if I'm, if she's not there yet, just hit that plus sign or the follow sign and you'll get it very soon. [00:43:50] Cuz we had an amazing conversation, which was completely different, I think, than what we talked about today. Mm-hmm. And my book Art is available. There's a lot of [00:44:00] pre-order goodies, so I hope you'll check that out. Art. Dot com. [00:44:05] Sarah: Wonderful. Entrepreneur book all in one word. [00:44:08] Miriam: Yeah, that's, that's the website to, to get the book Or just search Entrepreneur. [00:44:13] But you get bonuses when you go to my page, so there you go. It's all about the, it's all about the freebies. [00:44:19] Sarah: I always have one last question, and that is, what are you grateful for today, Miriam? More this week? Oh, [00:44:25] Miriam: that is such a beautiful question. Did you tell me ahead of time? I would have to answer. [00:44:29] Sarah: No, I did not. [00:44:31] I put you on the spot because we all have to have something that we're [00:44:35] Miriam: grateful for. I, I am very grateful for my family right now. Um, I'm grateful that I have a husband who lets me be weird. Um, I'm grateful for, for my children who don't give me too much angst. They're adults, by the way. And, uh, yeah, I'm very grateful for my family. [00:44:52] Wonderful. [00:44:53] Sarah: Awesome. Thank you so much for [00:44:55] Miriam intro: being. And I'm grateful for, for this opportunity too. Let's just, let's [00:45:00] just say that too. [00:45:01] Sarah: Thank you. If you're an artist or a creative mind, I bet this conversation resonated with you. So do take some time to find out more about Miriam and her work@schulmanart.com and check out her book called The Art Printer. [00:45:19] Wherever you get your books, if you go to schulman art.com/prophet, you'll find, uh, Miriam's, uh, free download. It's called the Artist Profit Plan Guide, and it helps you dig deep to go beyond the starving artist mindset to uncover what's really sabotaging your success. So again, go to schulman art.com/. [00:45:45] And finally, you can also look up her podcast. It's called The Inspiration Place. And if you look for episode 239, that's the uh, show where I talk to Miriam about humane marketing. So again, [00:46:00] look for the Inspiration Place podcast. And if you wanna hear me on her show, that's episode 239. And if you're looking for others who think like you, then why not join us in the Humane Marketing Circle? [00:46:15] You can find out more at humane.marketing/circle. You find the show notes on this episode@humane.marketing slash 16 one, and on this beautiful page, you'll also find a series of free offers. It is my Saturday newsletter, the Humane Business Manifesto, and the free gentle mini confidence mini course, as well as my two books. [00:46:41] Marketing like we're human and selling like we're human. Thank you so much for being part of a generation of marketers who cares for yourself, your clients, and the planet. We are change makers before we are marketers. So now go be the change you [00:47:00] want to see in the. Speak soon.[

Today we will learn how Easter is celebrated in the United States and Australia. We will hear Tom and Sarah's conversation about their plans for Easter this year. And with a point-of-view story, you will learn grammar in context without memorizing boring rules. Hi! Thanks for joining me for another episode of the podcast. I'm Georgiana, and my mission is to help you improve your fluency. If you want to support me, please share the podcast with your friends and family. It would mean a great deal to me. Thank you! Okay! Let's start! Tom, from the United States, and Sarah, from Australia, were catching up on a video call before the Easter holiday. As they started chatting, they quickly realized they had different traditions and plans for celebrating the holiday. Let's listen to their conversation: Tom: Hey, Sarah! Happy Easter! Sarah: Happy Easter to you too, Tom! I hope you're doing well. Tom: Yes, I'm doing great. So, what are your plans for Easter this year? Sarah: I plan to attend church and celebrate Easter with my family. We usually have a big Easter dinner and spend time together. Tom: That sounds lovely. I'm also planning to celebrate Easter with my family. We usually have an Easter egg hunt and decorate Easter eggs. Sarah: Oh, that's a great tradition. We also decorate Easter eggs but don't have an egg hunt. Tom: That's interesting. Every family has their own traditions. Sarah: Definitely. What other traditions do you have for Easter? Tom: We usually go to church and have a big Easter brunch. We also exchange Easter baskets filled with candy and small gifts. Sarah: That sounds like so much fun. We don't exchange Easter baskets but give each other Easter cards. Tom: That's sweet. Do you have any special Easter foods that you eat? Sarah: Yes, we usually have ham, deviled eggs, and hot cross buns. Tom: That sounds delicious. My family has roasted lamb, mashed potatoes, and asparagus. Sarah: That sounds amazing. It's interesting to see how different cultures celebrate the same holiday.   Get the full transcript here: speakenglishpodcast.com/podcast/

Today's topic is Ethical Marketing and I'm speaking to Alica Karolina about it. Alice is a brand coach + strategist and the founder of The Ethical Move, working with changemakers to find + use their voice. She believes making an impact in a changing world requires a new way of thinking and communicating — businesses that stand out tell stories of substance, share products that serve the world, and sell with integrity. It takes courage to fully trust oneself and leave the status quo behind. But if we stop looking outside for answers, we discover we already have the power, knowledge, and ability to make this world work for everyone. In this episode, you'll learn about ethical marketing as well as...   Ethics and how Alice defines it for her Ethical Move Whether marketing is unethical by default The unethical practices we've all being bombarded with daily How we can change those into ethical practices - and still sell. How the new economy can look like if it was up to us How you too can take the ethical pledge And so much more Alice's Resources   Alice's Website The Ethical Move Connect with Alice on: LinkedIn Facebook   Sarah's Resources Watch this episode on Youtube (FREE) Sarah's One Page Marketing Plan (FREE) Sarah Suggests Newsletter (FREE) The Humane Business Manifesto (FREE) Gentle Confidence Mini-Course Marketing Like We're Human - Sarah's book The Humane Marketing Circle Authentic & Fair Pricing Mini-Course Podcast Show Notes We use Descript to edit our episodes and it's fantastic! Email Sarah at sarah@sarahsantacroce.com Thanks for listening!   After you listen, check out Humane Business Manifesto, an invitation to belong to a movement of people who do business the humane and gentle way and disrupt the current marketing paradigm. You can download it for free at this page. There's no opt-in. Just an instant download. Are you enjoying the podcast?  The Humane Marketing show is listener-supported—I'd love for you to become an active supporter of the show and join the Humane Marketing Circle. You will be invited to a private monthly Q&A call with me and fellow Humane Marketers -  a safe zone to hang out with like-minded conscious entrepreneurs and help each other build our business and grow our impact.  — I'd love for you to join us! Learn more at humane.marketing/circle Don't forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes or on Android to get notified for all my future shows and why not sign up for my weekly(ish) "Sarah Suggests Saturdays", a round-up of best practices, tools I use, books I read, podcasts, and other resources. Raise your hand and join the Humane Business Revolution. Warmly, Sarah Imperfect Transcript of the show We use and love Descript to edit our podcast and provide this free transcript of the episode. And yes, that's an affiliate link. Sarah: [00:00:00] Hi Alice. So good to see you and hear  Alice: you. Thank you so much for having me  Sarah: here. Yeah, thank you. I think this is probably the only time that I get to chat in Swiss German on the podcast, even though it's before we hit record, but it's definitely the only time ever I get to speak in my mother tongue and dialect, and it's just. I don't know. It just feels like home, so it's good to be home.  Alice: I know. Likewise, I feel exactly the same way. I actually spoke to some friends of mine back home, like via voice message just this morning to get into the groove of things. Cuz I have to remember my native tongue. , I love this.  Sarah: Hmm. Yeah. But obviously you are not in Switzerland. , you are in, , Canada and not. Eastern side, but the western side. So even more complex to get to talk to each other. But I'm so delighted that you're here and it's kind of a funny story actually, the [00:01:00] way, , we met, or I guess like all of these stories online is just kind of sometimes serendipity, but, , you're the, the founder of the ethical, , move This movement has been mentioned to me a few times in the past and, and I had to look at the website and I was like, oh, that's great. Know what they're doing. , I told you that I think in a conversation it looked very, , so branded and then obviously you were a brand specialist. So it all makes sense, but I, I thought, okay, there's like a company behind it, or like a huge team, so I didn't. Investigate further until it was mentioned to me again and have you, , taken. , it's not a pledge. What, what do you call it? The No, it is a pledge. Yeah. A pledge. Yeah. A pledge. Yeah. So have you taken the Ethical Pledge? And I'm like, oh yeah, that thing I gotta, you know, look at it again. And so I did. And then I was really curious, , let me look who's behind it, and then mm-hmm. , you know, here we are, find out [00:02:00] that you are, , fellow Swiss and Swiss German, which is just, yeah. Really funny. So I'm delighted to be here. Definitely very, very like-minded because you're, yeah. You're building something very similar to me and I'm just, , super excited about it. Yeah.  Alice: So likewise. I know. It's so cool to have, it's interesting to me as well, because we clearly have very similar mindsets around it, and it's unsurprising to me because of the sort of collaborative way that Switzerland works in a way, . In politics in the way that we interact. I feel like because we're such a densely populated place as well, I feel like we are immediately enmeshed with other people whether we want to or not. , and so I feel like there's a lot more understanding and personal responsibility around the collective. That's my, my experience anyway. So it, , it doesn't surprise me that we would have . This feeling of, hey, this could be done differently if we sort of [00:03:00] take the collective into account. , so yeah, it's cool to actually finally have this conversation with someone who gets it, . Yeah,  Sarah: yeah. No, it's, it's amazing. I never thought of it that way, but it's true. I come from this hippie upbringing and I always just thought, well, That's why I'm community driven. , but you're right. If you think about the political, organization of Switzerland and, and the fact that we are sandwiched in between all these other countries and that we speak, you know, at least three languages, uh, fluently, , it does make it, yeah, kind of more like, you know, oriented towards the other. Alice: yeah, in the good and the bad .  Sarah: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Right. Well, let's dive into the, the topic and, what I wanna unpack is your ethical move. And in that kind of starts with maybe defining ethics, because when you think about ethics, there. So many aspects to [00:04:00] ethics, and I'm just curious to know how you define it and what you understand by it. Because the ethical move is, is yes, it's about ethics and business, but then it's also very specifically about marketing, from what I've seen on your website and from what I know now from the community. So tell us how you define ethics, right? For the  Alice: big, big guns. Hey, . Yeah, I, , I have to say I'm not an ethics major in any way. I haven't studied it. I have studied marketing and sales in all their various forms. So for me, really it comes down to what I know to be called applied ethics, the way that we actually use, , the concepts. I would say a collective common good, , which comes from my understanding, there's, there's a few different viewpoints on this and I feel like people learn it differently in different countries and all the ways that they're [00:05:00] educated. , But to me there was always a difference between morals and ethics in the sense that morals is very subjective and personal. And then ethics is, sort of collective and society driven and how do we interact, , with each other. So, , I find it's almost like a collective decision to. For the common good, if that makes sense. Mm-hmm. . So all the various ways in which it shows up from the very personal to professional to all the different, , areas that it touches, which is basically everything that humans touch . , we have different ways that we apply ethics, , and I think that we sort of as a growing society, Humans, you know, taking over the planet. we need to sort of take more of that into account, I think. And so the ethical move really was sort of a nod to, hey, what is a collective situation right now where we are all humans and our customers are our products, , our businesses are not just ways to make money, but also [00:06:00] very much have to do relationship and how we are human together and. Sort of bringing business and all of that into the field of, hey, this is a place where we can also do good in the world. And it's not just, you know, politics or government that takes care of welfare, , you know, we are also responsible for that as citizens in, in our own selves, like as humans, but then also as citizens, as businesses, right? Because legally we are required. Technically we are a citizen, , in our countries as businesses. And so really looking at what the responsibility of that means. So that's a bit of a broad, probably context, but Yeah,  Sarah: no, that, that makes total sense because I feel like yeah, ethics really has these different layers and it's like global layers. Like, you know, you can even talk about environmental ethics. So you know, very in the psychic obviously, , and then. I guess down level would be governments and [00:07:00] countries, and then you're taking another level down. Then it's humans and, and you can talk about yeah. Humans in a workplace. , you can talk about the relationships between humans, so like gender ethics, I guess.  And then what, what you are talking, , specifically is. Yeah. It's almost like consumer and cus Yeah. Consumer ethics maybe as individuals, but also as entrepreneurs and, and business owners, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Again, it's, it's just so similar to what we're trying to do here with Humane Marketing. It's like, yeah, let's, let's use marketing and let's use business as a liver for good. That's really what we're doing. Right? And then, And, and you come from this background in, in marketing and and sales as well. So I'm just curious to hear whether you think marketing has always been [00:08:00] unethical, like , has that always been the way it is or has it gotten worse over the last 10, 20 years? Alice: A good question. I mean, marketing in itself is not unethical. I don't actually wanna eradicate marketing. That to me is not. The goal here, , even thinking, you know, our common experience of the Saturday market with everyone, you know, yelling about their wares and, , with the beautiful smell of fresh tomatoes. And I just feel like market itself is not unethical. , just like the word influence is not unethical or ethical. They're neutral terms. I think what has happened is, Over the years, and I wanna go back even further, like in the early 19 hundreds, , people discovering psychology as a ways to do marketing.  So using psychological tricks to like, for the first time, discovering psychology being a thing, you know, obviously. And then, and then really sinking [00:09:00] into what can be done with it. How can we use it in order to sell our things? . , and then from there, just kind of like the extrapolation of that through suddenly having a mass market and then suddenly having mass media available. , I think the, the possibilities to use it just grew and grew and grew. And I don't think we had, I mean, some people have a bit of an achy feeling about it, and I'm sure people in the fifties and sixties and seventies had moments of like, this might not be great. Or, or sort of like, There is a bit of a stench to it when you just sell for the purpose of selling or when you, you know, you work for a company that you know is harmful to people on the planet, , to sell their stuff. , and even as marketers today, right? Most of our, probably most of our community members, most of the people in our, in our sphere experience, Marketing is something almost dirty, right? Something that we don't wanna do. However, in itself, it has just been tainted with [00:10:00] this idea that humans are a commodity, humans are a product, , and using sort of these tricks to bypass our humanity in order to sell things. Selling more and more and more of things we don't naturally need, creating false needs, creating this, this unimaginably harmful feeling of not being enough. We're not having enough, which is just, it permeates everything, all of us, right, on either side of the spectrum, whether we are selling or being sold to. We all have this experience of I must get as much as I can for as little as possible. whether it be effort or money or, you know, and so I think that the experience of marketing has become a lot more complex with the amount of, just sheer amount of people and ways to reach them. And then it also has. Become more insidious because we know more about the brain and we [00:11:00] learn more about it and more studies are being done and how we can, you know, how we can use scent and how we can use music and how we can use different ways of influencing people, in, in a direction that is actually not based in their own conscious choice. So in that way, it has become more unethical, but not because in itself it's unethical, but because we have lost sort of. Yeah, I do think we have lost touch in a lot of ways to, you know, what is actually good for us, you know, which in the heart of hearts, we're usually just like peace of mind, quiet, family life, you know, if we're getting right down to our true desires, it's usually not more stuff. That's where I see it landing on a  Sarah: spectrum. Yeah. And I love this. When you said, we've, we've kind of started to bypass our humanity. That's exactly what's happening. , and I think. Maybe what, what I would add is also the use of technology has increased. Yeah. Uh, over the last, you know, maybe 10, 20 years. And so [00:12:00] even more, we've lost touch with the human side of things because we realized all the things that we can use. All the technology that we can use to automate everything and more and more and more, right? Yeah. And so, yeah, it's totally that loss of humanity that made things unethical and that once you're in that cycle of greed for always more is really, really hard to break away from it, right? Yeah. And I think that's why we're finding ourselves in this difficult transition. Your gut knows it's wrong to do certain things, but your brain is telling you, well, yeah, but it makes money. So, why would I stop it? Yeah. So yeah, I think that's the question. So how do we, you know, change those bad practices into ethical practices and, and still make money? I guess, yeah, we [00:13:00] still do wanna make money, but, but maybe that's maybe the next conversation. Well do. We also need to change our approach to money, but first let's discuss how do we, how do we change those practices and, and still sell?  Alice: I think there's a misconception that ethical tactics, Ethical ways of using those tactics or flipping them on their heads, , somehow results in no sales, or less sales. And yes, on a large, large scale, of course, if you, you know, stop using term prices or if you stop visually merchandising, if you stop, you know, yes, those were. Specifically the ways that, you know, stores are laid out and the way that we have these little trinkets by the cash register, like all of those things were specifically designed based on our, our brains, how they work. So if you do take those away, [00:14:00] then yes, you would sell less. , But if we look at the very sort of, simple service, service based business, , with maybe a couple of services to sell, it's not gonna have that impact. It's probably more built on relationship than anything else. So using psychological tactics, in my opinion, undermines that relationship and undermines that trust. So in, in my world, , the way I see it anyways, is, If we start with trust and we start with honesty, and we start with relationship and truth, we actually gain a lot more in the long run. We might not sell in the immediate because it's not a high pressure situation, but people will always need to have their problems solved, and there will always be people with those answers. So I feel. If we have a good product, whether it be a service or an actual product or anything else that you, that you sell, and you have like a really, a really clear message around it and you have, and you're aligned [00:15:00] with, you know, what you're actually trying to do in the world, then the people that need that will find you. It's a pretty simple equation in my opinion. It's just, here's the thing, this is how much it costs. What do you. and the other person could say yes or no. And to me, especially in today's world where we talk about consent, , so much, and it's so important, obviously , for all the obvious reasons, why is consent not considered important in marketing and sales? Because that's all we're doing is like, Hey, here's the facts, here's everything laid out for you. And now do you agree or do you not? And maybe you change your mind like. We're allowed to change our minds midway through a sales process. We're allowed to, you know, yes, it sucks on the other end, of course, we've all been there. You know, we're this close to signing a contract, and then the person is like, nevermind, I can't do it. But in the end, We actually make a sale that is beneficial to both sides, and that will result in referrals, that will result in word of mouth, that will result in better [00:16:00] relationships down the road. Recurring sales, which happens a lot that we just sort of forget in the frenzy of this, like corporate imitation. You know, we, we think that those rules are the only ways we can. , but it's, they're not, it's just how we've grown up. That's all. It's like, well, this is my parents' religion doesn't mean I have to adopt it. , but we were grown, you know, we were grown into that and we were educated in that. So it makes complete sense that we would adopt them, and it makes complete sense that we would adopt the mindset that we can't sell outside of them, but we can. It's just we're not doing it. That's. . it's pretty simple in my opinion. But then again, everybody has a business they need to take care of and I think that really getting down to what is your product and how do you sell it in a sense of like, what is actually the message and what are you, what is it within and who are you serving? That's more important than how can I best bypass their conscious choice,  Sarah: yeah. , so much in there, what I always say is like there's this huge gap now between.[00:17:00] The consciousness of the current consumer and, , how we still market to them, , like we did back in the sixties. So marketing hasn't changed, and yes, consciousness of the consumer has changed, like over the five, last five years. A huge evolutionary jump, right? And yet we're still treating customers as if they're completely stupid and like they didn't know that we're actually tricking them. And, and so I, I feel like maybe the old way of marketing this pushy way will work for another maybe two, maybe five, who knows, maybe even 10 years. Things are evolving even faster now. And so eventually customers will not buy with those, , manipulative things anymore. And so what are the companies are gonna do then? Well, if they don't change their strategies now and go with trust and relationships, well they're gonna, [00:18:00] they're gonna go, bankrupt in a few years. And I think it's really, really important to realize that now, even though it's hard because they have to step out of that hustle. Mode. It really is a lot of unlearning and saying, okay, I'm gonna step out of the hustle mode because obviously these pushy methods, they do create sales and instant sales. For now still. Right, but they don't create a sustainable business, that's the thing.  Alice: Yes. And I do wanna add to that. There are also more insidious ways being built into how to sell. Like we do have to remember that there's new technology for those who want to sell more, behind the scenes as well, like, Ways in which that technology really comes into play. Like learning to read people's emotional cues on Zoom. Like that's one thing that is starting to become a problem where people are using that in high pressure sales situations, you know? Wow. So we do have to remember that, that [00:19:00] that technology is not resting. , the way to sell more at profit is, is it late stage? Do they say, call it late stage capitalism or something? It, it is holding on for dear. Life. Like we have to remember that. So it's  Sarah: this collision between the two worlds, right? We see that in politics too. It's like the old power wants to grab on as much as they can and the new world is slowly developing. But you're totally right. It's not gonna change just from one day to the  Alice: next. No. So we do have to, I do think we have a responsibility and this is why we exist. You and I, , and our teams. We have the responsibility to point to those things and say, Hey, zoom is doing this thing. Hey, there's dark patterns. Hey, there's places in which we don't even know we're being tricked. Yes, we can identify when it's $99. We're like, yeah, that's a char price. We get it. Like people are starting to understand that that's a thing we've always known. It's not 99, you know? But the insidious behind it, there's still places that that can [00:20:00] go. And so reminding ourselves and, and sort of like, it'll be a daily practice of doing it differently because it will keep. Doing the thing, and we will keep having to, you know, stay grounded and not participate, which is so hard, even for me. I mean, I feel like you and I have studied this stuff for so long, right? It's just I can't handle it. I need to like step away from the computer, like put that away for 24 hours. It's a thing that I really need to practice. So, yeah.  Sarah: but that, but that's exactly why we're both creating communities, right? Because you exactly, there's, there's also not enough examples. Of this more humane or ethical ways. And, and so if you don't see the example, well you're gonna follow what the big gurus tell you to do, which is Yeah, which is just the same old thing. So once people see more of the ethical marketing, the humane marketing, that's when they have a new. Kind of not, we [00:21:00] don't wanna be gurus, that's for sure. But they have a new example to follow and say, oh, it does work that way as well. , and what I talk a lot about in marketing, like we're human, is like, well, you have to figure out what works for you. Not just, you know, find a new guru and follow them. It's like, no, you have to bring all of you to, to your marketing. And so yeah, these communities are so important.  Alice: And I think that's exactly the point. And that's what I feel like my, my point to all of my work in all the ways , not even just the ethical move, but also in my branding work is how can I get you to listen in as opposed to out? What is the way that I can establish a really strong voice from within that you don't need to continuously participate in what is being told, , because the narrative isn't healthy for anyone. And. I mean the current narrative. And so taking up that space and changing that is also part of it, right? Going back inside and going back to listen to what we really want and what our desires are and what, you know, what's good for our loved ones. [00:22:00] Yeah. Remembering that day in and day out because we are so inundated with those messages of, like what our bodies are supposed to look like and what our minds are supposed to look like and how productive we supposed to be, and all the things in which we We're not enough. We're not perfect. We're not, we're not perfect. We're never gonna make it. And no matter how many times we learn about, the, the perfect body doesn't exist, we know that, calories are a sham. We know that like all these things still, somehow I look at the calorie tag in a grocery store, like, what is it? I know it's bogus. Anyway, it just, we just have to keep grounding ourselves within ourselves and within our communities.  Sarah: Why we do what we do. Yeah, exactly. And, and, and before I hinted at the definition of success and that maybe we also need to work on that, right? And, and so that's part of it, that is that work on the being. And so how do you do that with maybe with. Your clients in, in branding because I really feel like, whether we're [00:23:00] branding now or we're marketing or we're selling, it all comes back to first figuring out who we are and it's, it's just so sometimes really difficult for people to understand that. We're now marketing, but we're doing personal development first before we ever go out into, you know, creating a brand or, or, or market or anything like that. So how do you work with  Alice: clients on that? That's exactly it. I think the, that's the part of branding that I enjoy the most anyways. the other side of it, you know, how do you sell better? How do you market better? How do you message better? That to me is almost, has gotten a bit tired, I feel. The identity piece is such a strong core anchoring that kind of makes everything else make. Continuously and reliably and sustainably. , because otherwise you just put blown around in the winds of change, right? Like it's constantly moving and having a really strong, rooted, grounded knowledge of yourself [00:24:00] and what you care about. , that is huge. And I also think, I mean, definition of success , is probably one of the bigger ones and it always, it gets talked about so much and I feel like we. This idea that it's, well, it's not, it's not this, it has to be this, you know, it's not like we know it's not money, so what else is it? Or we know it's not, you know, and still we obviously have desires that live within us and there's something that I've recently learned, , from many sources around desire, which is to like trust them and that they are inherent and they don't change. They are who we. . Like, we can't, we can't, there's no choice in our desires. And so what I've been practicing just based on this, is just tracking my desires, like writing them down every day. Mm-hmm. , what are my desires? Love, affection, laughter, joy. Mm-hmm. , freedom, peace. Like whatever it is that in the day, on the day and the moment that I'm writing it is [00:25:00] like my deepest desire in that moment. Writing it down and trusting that that is where I wanna go. And I feel like since then, The way that I look at what I actually want has completely changed, and I do think there's a difference between what I want and what I desire in the sense that desire is sort of innate and what I want can be very shifty and weird sometimes, you know, it could one  Sarah: day. Could it be that what you want is also maybe more material? , little bit.  Alice: It could be. It's more in the moment. I think my desire feels more like something that is like in the core from who I am, you know? Mm-hmm. . Yeah. And I noticed this the most when I was recently, like, I checked myself because I. Counting my hours for the week, you know, I, I track my hours for everything that I do, just so I know where I'm placing my time. And then at the end of the week, because of my sort of neurodiversity, because I have ADHD and complex ptsd, and there's lots of like ways in which I was always told that I was either lazy or not doing enough or whatever, you know, like the millions of ways that we are [00:26:00] being told were not enough again. I noticed myself wanting to get to a really high number at the end of the week of like collective hours worked, and I'm like, oh, only 30. Like I didn't do, , I should be. And then I checked myself for like the first time and went, why am I trying to get more hours out of me? Like, what is this I wrote down this morning. My desire is freedom to like lay in the sun in the middle of the day. Like that doesn't actually work with working more. So I had a moment, like a real sort of like insight where I thought, what if I count the hours of pleasure and leisure instead , and count that as a win, you know, instead of how many hours I work. And that really just, I feel like. Individually, obviously this works for me, but individually, everybody, like I wish everybody had the chance to just kind of go reverse that and kind of go, well, what's possible for me? And of course within that comes privilege, right? I am privileged enough that I can work 30 [00:27:00] hours and make a living. , other people cannot. And that is also part of this definition of success, has to be. What do I need to do to make a living that doesn't necessarily have to be the same thing that makes me happy? It would be nice, but sometimes we have to, just go, okay, the world is what it is and I need to make money for it. , but disentangling that from what we desire and how we wanna live our days, I guess. Yeah. Yeah,  Sarah: that was a bit of a tangent. . Yeah, no, it's, it's really good because cuz we are placing this, this conversation on the, the p of people and, and, you know, I should have called it humans, but, but that didn't start with a p so, so it is all about the being human and being human as an entrepreneur and having, yeah, having so much to unlearn really. , that's what comes to mind. It's like, All these things that we think we should be doing, especially in marketing. Another thing that's kind of timely, because we're at the end of the year, is a goal setting, right? [00:28:00] So, , yeah, I'm thinking about goal setting, like we're human , and I know, uh, Tara McMullen just came up with a book about goal setting in, in a radically different way, and excited to read, read her book. That is part of that pressure. It's like, oh, I only work 30 hours per week. I should be doing much more. I should have all these goals of how much income I'm gonna make next year and all of that. And yeah, we, we. Need to shift everything because, otherwise absolutely. We feel like we, , if we have these huge goals, numbers that we want to achieve, then obviously we're gonna fall into the trap of I have to market and I have to hustle and I have to sell so much. It just, yeah, it goes hand in hand. Absolutely.  Alice: One of the things I learned from Tara is having a commitment first approach to the goals like, What are my commitments for the year? And then matching those goals to them. And then one thing I learned from Marie Collin, [00:29:00] who's our, , resident notion expert, , The idea of setting identity goals as well as smart goals, you know? Mm-hmm. , like having goals around who I'm becoming or who I want to become, like, for her, it's like being a great facilitator of her course or things like that. And for me, it might be being a really good steward of this land and learning more about, you know, our aboriginal roots and so, what are identity goals that actually match, you know, who we are as humans. And of course we have smart goals because we also have businesses with numbers. Like we also have goals that need to have a specific outcome, but maybe they can live parallel to these, sort of like more personal. Real goals that we have, and maybe they don't, they're not called goals anymore then, but I don't know. I just feel like that might be a worthy exercise. Yeah,  Sarah: yeah, yeah. It's kind of like how I talk about the new business paradigm, and you call it the New Economy, is is that goal setting? That's in Terror . Oh, is [00:30:00] it? Okay. Yeah.  Alice: Yeah. Tara actually called it the New Economy because she said, We are gonna inform government. We're the largest growing sector of small businesses online. , and that is the place we're going to. So the new economy is not just this like corporate, you know, these Bama, but all of us little ones. , and that is partially why I started following her and became part of her community, , because of. Sort of outset of saying, Hey, we are that impactful. And it probably started a lot of the conversation around the ethical move as well. Because if we are the new economy, if we are basically what's gonna like the example of what's next, then we better, we better take the responsibility, right. You know, that we have with that and start acting as if, you know. Yeah,  Sarah: yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so good. I love it. Anything else? We talked about goal setting, we talked about ethical marketing. What else fits in [00:31:00] that new economy,  Alice: for you? I think the biggest part that we keep forgetting, well, we might not forget, but we see it a bit of, , a bit of, as a checklist is, , our collective liberation. I. Understanding that, well, other people might call it social justice or whatever you wanna call it. , we call it collective liberation because, well, first of all, liberation is the biggest word we can find for everyone to be free because as you know, many people have said the world is not free until we're all, all free, or the world doesn't work unless it works for everyone. , so the understanding that we are in a big collective and that we are all working together on this and that we. Supposed to be alone. This is just a very western, northern, you know, capitalist mentality that we are on our own and we need to individually muddle our way through this. Rugged individualism has not helped us, and it is not how the global South usually operates either. So [00:32:00] learning from people who are living collectively or being in collection, in collect. Really will inform how we can go forward. So that is also something that we practice in the ethical move. Like what is this consensus collective, community driven, way we can be together and we can learn together so that no one person is gonna tell us. You know, I'm not the expert in ethical marketing. That's why I built a community. I'm not, that's why I have, you know, a team of nine people. I can't do this on my own, nor should I, because the collective is what's gonna get us to the next stage. , and like taking our time, slowing down, not just, you know, on the technology side of things. Yes, sure. Unplug your phone at eight to 8:00 PM whatever, like, do your thing, but also understanding. It takes time to process things and it, and processing is important and nuance is important. And understanding each moment that we are aware of a change or aware of [00:33:00] something that is shifting within us to give ourselves grace and the people around us, grace, to go through those shifts and to have process take place so that. We can come out the other end with like, okay, so I don't have all the answers yet, but I do have a sort of a sense of where I wanna go next and I'm gonna try some things and then see if the people around me agree. And then we keep going in this like very collective consensus based way and that hopefully will help the most marginalized. In the way that it's supposed to help, not by us white saviors going down and building schools in Africa. Oh my gosh. I'm saying that in quotation marks cuz I just, philanthropy and I don't have a good time together, , . But this idea of, you know, what is a way that we can all be because we're all benefit, if the most marginalized among us benefits, then it works for all of us. So yeah, that's basically the, the biggest underlying piece I think that we don't focus on enough in my. Yeah,  Sarah: yeah. Yeah. There's, there's so many [00:34:00] challenges that we need to focus on, and, and you're, you're right. I mean, we, we do have a responsibility to take and, you know, if we haven't taken it yet, it's about time. , yeah,  Alice: absolutely. I think there's something in addition to that full circle to ethical marketing, which that's the part that I think that ethical market. Sometimes people misinterpret it as, you know, how can I sell better? How can I make it so that I don't feel icky about myself? But I really wanna bring it out and zoom it out and say, it is about the bottom of the supply chain. It's about how we treat every single person within an organization or corporation. So this is about changing the way that the global crises are currently happening around environment and you know, displacement and war, and all the things that we can possibly look. All of those are impacted by how we sell and how we market. So instead of looking at it just from our individual lens of how can I still sell things, which is also [00:35:00] important and just as valid and looking at, you know, the bigger picture that has, if we all, you know, spun in that direction, then maybe there's a way we can change things.  Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's really about taking responsibility but also giving back responsibility to the consumers because it really plays together. Right. And that's what I feel like we've taken away, , a lot. Yeah. I agree. Thank you so much. We could go on and on and on for hours. I, I'm sure. But, , yeah, please tell listeners where they can start to, you know, take ownership, be responsible, take the pledge, tell us everything,  Alice: , so we can be found on the ethical move.org. , we'd love your pledge. , it's basically a three part pledge that. Sets the sets the intention. It's an intention pledge. There are resources that we're sharing around how to change [00:36:00] tactics. And then of course there's a community which you're also part of, , which is where we actually work on this and we exchange things and we have workshops and, , events happening, , and where we all sort of get to have this collective discourse. , and. I think the best place to start is just sort of taking stop, you know, like looking at what's in front of you, taking, making a touchpoint review maybe, or looking at what the first step could be and, and following what immediately comes to mind to take on. If it's like, oh, I wanna look at my pricing strategy and really understand what my pricing means and how I can maybe make it more, beneficial or a little sort of just better for the people who buy from me, maybe in other countries, or, just even that is a huge topic and understanding that it takes time. Like if that topic takes you half a year, then good for you. Mine's I'm still going , it's taken me a year so far, so really understanding that this is a lifelong journey and it's probably gonna go on beyond our lifetime. So just keep, just  Sarah: [00:37:00] keep pushing. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. , I'm so glad you didn't give us a, you know, three steps, . Nope. Here's the easy three steps. Like, yeah, I wish, I wish it was that easy,  Alice: right? No, it's not. And it's, and it's totally fine that it's not because it, we're all in the same boat together, or maybe not in the exact same boat, but we're on the same ocean like it just is. A collective effort and the idea that we need to muddle through on our own, as you know, with your community is just, yeah, it's over. It's done. We're, we're done with that. Now I feel like we're, I think we're done with that. Yeah. We can stop being individuals on our own. Scared and lonely .  Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for, for this collaboration because it is a collaboration, right? It's a partnership and a, and I really appreciate having you on. So thank you so much. Thank.  Alice: Thank you so much. This was a great conversation. Thanks.

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! 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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.

We hear about the dangers of pornography, rightfully so. But can pornography ever be helpful in the process of healing from trauma and with one's sexual identity? In this podcast Sarah bravely shares her story as a faithful LDS who experienced sexual assault and how pornography helped her reclaim her identity and heal from the abuse.    0:00:00.0 Speaker 1: Welcome to Improving Intimacy, a podcast to help single and married Latter-Day Saints strengthen their family connections and marriages. Daniel A. Burgess is the host of Improving Intimacy. Daniel's a marriage and family therapist, father, husband, and author. Here's Daniel on this episode of improving intimacy.   [music]   0:00:24.6 Daniel A. Burgess: Welcome to another episode of improving intimacy. On today's episode, we have Sarah who has offered to go into a very vulnerable and maybe even scary past with sexual assault and what you did to... Is it fair to say, heal or recover? Thrive in spite of that tragedy. So welcome, Sarah, I'm glad to have you here. This is a topic I haven't discussed yet, so one, I wanna be sensitive to your background and history, and I'll let you guide the conversation, but you've expressed the importance of sharing this for other people, so I'm excited to hear what you have to say. So Sarah, tell us a little bit about yourself. Why are you here today, and what is it exactly you wanna share?   0:01:11.7 Sarah: Well, thank you first of all for having me on. I am very passionate about this because I remember growing up thinking that this was... I was surely the only person who this was happening to, and then as we'll discuss later, some issues that came up in marriage that just increased that feeling of isolation and shame and loneliness, and I vowed at the time to... If I ever have an opportunity to talk about it, to talk about it so that someone out there is not feeling the same way I did. So that's why I'm so passionate about this, and I think we can just start with that kind of history of what it was like to grow up and date and then move into a marriage and have some of those same issues with little education.   0:01:53.5 DB: Yes, it's an important topic that we don't discuss a lot now, I appreciate your bravery in doing this, so let's... We don't need to go in, you're welcome to go into as much details you absolutely want, but for context, are you comfortable with sharing maybe the age this happened? So that we have a little understanding of the history of what's going on there and any details that you're comfortable with sharing.   0:02:18.0 Sarah: Sure, so I grew up just in a normal LDS family, a very strong LDS family, all my siblings remained active, so I had great role models, looking up to them, I was active in a Young Women's, everything was just in line for the perfect fairytale story. And I never really dated much in high school, and I just remember thinking, "Oh, I just want a boyfriend so badly," and I watched all my friends date and I just thought, "Oh, that sounds so wonderful. That's something that I'd really like." And then I had my first boyfriend, and we went out on a few dates, and I was 17 at the time. And I remember thinking, being so excited for the first kiss, and then the first kiss happened and when within maybe five to 10 seconds, my shirt was off and he was un-fastening my bra clasp and I thought...   0:03:12.7 DB: So you mean he took it off...   0:03:14.1 Sarah: Yeah, yeah, he... It was like first kiss, peck, and then I thought I was gonna have this time to like, "Oh, kinda float away and enjoy this moment of happy ever after", and I was like, "Whoa, what is going on?" And I didn't know what was going on, I didn't know what these things I was feeling, what they were, and I was just very overwhelmed with the situation and I didn't stop anything, 'cause I think I was just struck with terror and just being overwhelmed and thinking, "Well, no one's talked about what this is, I don't know what is going on." And I don't actually even remember how that ended, but I remember leaving, sitting in the car feeling like I can't go home. My parents are gonna know that I broke the Law of Chastity, I wouldn't have to talk to the bishop who's my best friend's dad...   0:04:06.0 DB: You felt responsible for it.   0:04:09.7 Sarah: 100%. It was my fault, 100%. And just that was the beginning of... And I was 17 years old, that was the beginning of not talking to my parents about these experiences, thinking that I was the only one, but also thinking that that's what every girl was experiencing.   0:04:26.9 DB: You had no idea?   0:04:27.6 Sarah: Yeah. I was the only one, yeah, I was the only one responsible but every other girl surely had to be having these experiences, but it wasn't their fault. So that was just kind of the beginning of a long trail, and I didn't necessarily at that time know that that was sexual assault. I just kind of thought, "That's dating, here we go." [chuckle]   0:04:49.3 DB: How scary.   0:04:50.9 Sarah: So scary. And he was preparing to go on a mission, and so I was like, "Oh well, he's this great guy who's gonna go and serve the Lord and do all these things, and surely it's my fault." And I'd been raised with this mentality that modesty is my responsibility and how I dress will directly impact what boys do to me and how boys think.   0:05:12.6 DB: And that's what you're thinking was your fault?   0:05:16.6 Sarah: Totally.   0:05:17.1 DB: Was because... Do you feel like you were dressed immodestly that evening?   0:05:19.6 Sarah: No, actually, I had come from playing a volleyball game, so I had been wearing athletic gear and in my mind, I'm like sweaty and gross. [chuckle] No one wants to do that, right? And also, I should note that I developed rather quickly as a child, I was... I started puberty at 10 years old, so at 10 years old, I was fully grown as a woman, and I think I internalized a lot of shame about that, of having this really grown-up body and this little girl's brain and not really understanding how to handle both of those mindsets. So when that happened, it was like, "Oh, well, that's because I have this grown woman's body, [chuckle] and he can't control himself."   0:06:03.9 DB: And therefore, it was your fault.   0:06:05.3 Sarah: Oh, totally. Totally. So that was the first experience. Then I graduated high school, he went on a mission, and I just kept having experience after experience with these boys who were raised in the same faith that I was raised in, who had just no concept of boundaries. I just started to think that if I was going to be kissed, I was gonna be touched, and there was nothing really that I could do to stop it, it was just normal. I came to expect that of good return missionaries, good boys who were leaving on missions, that was just what dating was for me. I didn't think anything different.   0:06:49.7 DB: I think that's the most tragic thing I'm hearing... Well, one, the most tragic thing is that you were abused, I guess the close second is that you weren't even aware that you were abused and taken advantage of, and at what point did you look back and say That was wrong. That wasn't my fault?   0:07:09.4 Sarah: Not until I was married.   0:07:11.3 DB: Oh, wow.   0:07:14.3 Sarah: Yeah. And because I had nothing to compare it to. I didn't know anything about sex, I didn't know anything about consent, I didn't know... And at this point, I didn't even know that girls could masturbate. [chuckle] I literally thought that it was just a boy thing.   0:07:27.2 DB: Oh, you mean physiologically.   0:07:29.4 Sarah: Yes. I didn't think it was possible. I knew absolutely nothing about sex and about body, so this was happening, and I was just thinking, "Oh, this is just normal." So I didn't equate it with abuse, I wasn't having traumatic reactions to it, but I did start to kind of spiral a little bit where I just kind of thought, "Well, if guys are gonna do this to me, then I'm just gonna kiss and have fun with whoever I want and do whatever I want and.   0:07:54.2 DB: Interesting.   0:07:56.0 Sarah: Not worry about the consequences."   0:07:58.1 DB: Tell me a little bit more about that line of thinking, what led you to that as opposed to not dating at all, maybe, or some other... I don't wanna put words in your mouth. What gave you that conclusion, you're just gonna have fun, you're gonna kiss and regardless of the consequences, what led you there?   0:08:19.4 Sarah: I think part of it was I was seeing my dear friends get married, from what I understand, and maybe they had been through similar things and just hadn't talked to me about it, but they were getting married and I wasn't. And so I kind of thought, "Oh, well, I'm just like the girl who's gonna get passed around.   0:08:38.7 DB: Oh my goodness.   0:08:38.7 Sarah: So, I'm gonna have fun in the meantime."   0:08:41.3 DB: So you were taken on a narrative that you were broken or undesired, or would that be fair to say, or what were your feelings or thoughts?   0:08:49.9 Sarah: I wasn't feeling broken, but I was feeling very much... They're just interested in my body, they're not interested in a long-term commitment, they're not interested in marriage, I'm not like these other girls, they're the marriageable type, they're just in it for my body, and at the same time, I was kind of having this body awakening where I was finally feeling my brain match up with my body in maturity, I was feeling like, "Oh, I'm coming into this woman's body, I'm feeling myself become less impulsive, I'm feeling myself develop as mentally as a woman, I'm leaving that childhood teenage years behind, I'm feeling empowered in my body. And at the same time, I'm only being wanted for my body." So I was like, "I'm just gonna use my body however I want."   0:09:42.7 DB: I'm curious, we talked about this a little before we started the podcast, and we shared some thoughts and ideas here, but for the listeners, you're in your mid-20s, just for context, so we're talking about a younger generation, and I realize... I have a good 20 years on you, and dating has always been a struggle, and so I don't know if there's a way to say it's worse now or better or the same, however, in the context that it seems like we as a church have been doing more, whether it be through fire sides or church manuals, really emphasizing how men are supposed to treat women with respect, I think they've done more with that in the last 20 years, yet, you're not alone. This is a story I hear all the time, you're just one of the first, who've been willing to come and talk about it. Tell me what are your thoughts, what's your opinion of why the young men are thinking this way, why do they think this is, okay, or do they think it's Okay?   0:10:49.2 Sarah: Well, and we know that sexual assault and rape has been around for as long as people have been on the earth, that's just... It's just the downfall of man... Well, and woman, both can be abusers or perpetrators, but I think in the context of this, there was this generation of 60s and 70s where it was free love and the world was going so radically in one direction that the church narrative pulled so radically in the other direction. I remember talking to my mom like years later, after I had actually been more assaulted and saying, "Why didn't you tell me, why didn't you tell me what to expect or tell me anything about my body, or just tell me what sex is? And she said, "Your father and I felt like if we talked about it, we were giving you permission to do it." And that to me, was just that mindset of that generation, the policies that were coming out from the church in that generation was all fear-based, shame-based and at the same time, there's more material available, so our children at this time are educating themselves with porn, which is a terrible sex educator, and they're not learning, they're not reconciling what they're seeing, what feeling and what the person in the porn is doing.   0:12:09.5 Sarah: And so if the person in porn who's on the receiving end is showing fear and showing discomfort and these young boys are watching it enjoying it, how are they to not know that it's gonna be different in person with a partner? Now how are they not... They're not gonna know, "Oh, this is a boundary that I'm crossing. This person is scared, their body is showing scared, their face is showing fear, their voice is showing fear, they may not have said, no," but... We've set them up for failure, we've set them up in this position of not knowing they're crossing boundaries, not knowing what consent is, because we've been so afraid to talk about it.   0:12:54.6 DB: I think you articulated it perfectly, this is a constant problem I'm seeing. I usually see two extremes where young men refuse to date or they don't know how to engage in dating at all, and so they don't even... It's not even a physical thing, they don't even know how to involve themselves, and again, this has always been the case, but I've been seeing this kind of this extremism getting bigger and bigger.   0:13:23.1 Sarah: The divide.   0:13:24.4 DB: And then we have the others who, while they understand that porn is bad, and it seems like in the church we've done, we've talked more about porn, we have more anti-porn programs and organizations out there than we've ever had yet this is becoming a bigger and bigger issue. And I think what I was hearing you say was, "Yes, we're told... " And I wanna clarify for the audience too, 'cause it could sound like we're saying, "Oh gosh, the church screwed up in all of its teachings there... " Do you consider yourself an active member now?   0:13:55.0 Sarah: Yeah.   0:13:55.1 DB: And this is...   0:14:00.1 Sarah: Yep, active member, temple holding member, half callings... I was the Young Women's president just barely.   0:14:03.7 DB: Forgive me, I didn't wanna make that as though that was the most important thing here, I just wanna give context that this isn't just criticism, this is crucial for a healthy, engaging dating behavior. Absolutely, and so what we see here is young men who're told what not to do, and you said it before the interview, it's because they're not taught what to do. We could talk all day and night about what not to do, but when you're placed in a situation, all you have to go off of is what you've seen and heard, and that's the don'ts and the bad role models of porn.   0:14:43.4 Sarah: Exactly. And at the same time as a girl, the rhetoric that I was receiving was not what not to do, dress your body in this way so that the boys can control their thoughts, you act this way so that you're not tempting to the boys. There was all this don't, don't, don't. And it very much was my responsibility how the boys and the men in my life treated me, and I have a fantastic father, and I have fantastic brothers who never once crossed any sort of sexual boundary, never even came close to it with anyone that I'm aware of, not with myself and not anyone else, but it was... I remember walking up to the stand to give a Young Women talk thinking, "Oh my gosh, are the men in the ward like looking at my butt?"   0:15:28.3 DB: Oh my goodness.   0:15:29.1 Sarah: As I walk up there, "Is my skirt too tight? Are my hips too wide? Am I... [chuckle] Are they cheating on their wives by lusting after me?"   0:15:37.6 DB: Because... Oh my goodness.   0:15:38.1 Sarah: And I was like 16.   0:15:41.8 DB: First of all, the thought that comes to me is, "No youth, should ever be concerned with that thinking about that," and you're saying those fears and concerns were present because of the modesty lessons that you've received.   0:15:53.0 Sarah: Totally.   0:15:55.7 DB: And thinking that you need to do everything you can to help protect these men, young and old from being tempted.   0:16:03.8 Sarah: Totally.   0:16:06.0 DB: That's heavy.   0:16:07.4 Sarah: Super heavy.   0:16:07.9 DB: This is heavy, and I'm gonna diverge just a little bit here, because I think it's important to speak to... People are probably listening here and saying, "Oh gosh, Well, if young men understand that porn is bad, then why are they behaving... " Okay, I hear that they weren't taught how to behave correctly, a little insight that I've discovered in working with young men is this kind of same thing again, they have been tempted, they cannot resist their urges... Sorry, this is the scripts that they're told once they experience desire, they're on a dangerous path. One support group, and I don't mean to be critical, but the concern is one support group actually says it's Satan's Chemical, and this is an LDS support group, so imagine... So the reason why I'm bringing this up is you as a 16-year-old, you were concerned about married men sinning by looking at you.   0:17:10.4 Sarah: Yes.   0:17:10.4 DB: And now, with young men, what I've seen is something similar, different, but similar in that they start to have this experience where they're getting aroused, they have an erection, they immediately think, they're doomed. I had one 14-year-old tell me, I thought... I thought he... I'm not trying to be loose with my words or silly at all, this is the impression and his countenance when he came in, I thought he killed somebody. This kid was scared and he looked at me and he started to say things like, young man saying things like, "I'm on the path to becoming a rapist, I'm on a path to become a serial killer." He was saying these things, and then he said something that just... That alone was scary and heavy, but where I'm going with this is, he said, "I've also destroyed my... " What was the word he used? He said something to the effect of, "I've disappointed my future wife and let my future kids down."   0:18:18.6 Sarah: That's so sad.   0:18:19.9 DB: Just like you... Well, again, different, but like you're carrying this huge weight, so these young men, what I'm seeing is they feel like they're at this impossible journey.   0:18:32.0 DB: And so, they just give up and they say, "I'm just doing it, I'm already gone." And this poor kid, he was scared out of his mind. So people are probably listening say, "Still why would... " Well, because they're not taught what is good, so all they're going off of is their fear and they're giving in because they recognize, they can't even resist it, it seems impossible. That relate to your experience or what are your thoughts?   0:19:01.9 Sarah: Totally. Well, it's... Looking back now, and even at the time, I thought, "These were good guys." In every other regard, they were good guys. And then, I think it just was... There was no boundary, there was no consent. It's hard because we've damaged both, both genders in this talk, we've told the girls that it's their responsibility and they're... Sorry for the strong language, but they're damned for having the female bodies, and we've told the boys they're damned for having physiological responses that they can't control. [chuckle] And this is the extreme that I think we deal with is... I was 21 years old and my minor was sex education, and I remember sitting at the University of Utah, going and my professor saying female masturbation and going, "That's not possible." I was 21, and I had no clue that that was something that girls did, because I had only ever heard masturbation in reference to boys in the church, and that was the extent of my sex education, that was a mind-blowing thing of like, "Holy cow." We have hurt each other so badly just by not knowing, A How our bodies work. B, our bodies are working normally, and C, let's now communicate with each other. None of that was in my vocabulary.   0:20:30.0 Sarah: So to kind of continue with my story...   0:20:31.2 DB: Please.   0:20:31.5 Sarah: I kinda went through this rough patch where I was like, "I'm just gonna kiss anyone who has two legs and walks into the room." And at the same time, I'm still... I'm the secretary in the Relief Society presidency in my singles ward, and I feel like I'm living these two separate lives. There's the version of me who is dating and there's a version of me who's going to church and I can't reconcile them. And then the age I turned in my mission papers and I said, "I'm gonna go on a mission, that's gonna be what's kinda turned my life around, I'm gonna go on a mission." So I got myself straightened out, I went on a mission, I had a great time, I came back, and then I started dating again. And this guy who I was dating, I thought, "This is gonna be different." He took a couple of weeks to kiss me, we went out for a couple of times, and my mission for me was very empowering because I learned how to speak up and out for myself, I think it's really hard to go on a mission and not kinda gain that confidence, a little bit in yourself. So I came back with that confidence of, I'm gonna...   0:21:47.6 Sarah: Now I know how to say no. And then I started dating this guy, and it's like, "Oh, it's different." He's being such a gentleman. And this could be, this could be the long-term thing, and then things started to change again.   0:22:01.3 DB: My goodness.   0:22:03.7 Sarah: So we had to hung out one night and his parents had left out of town, and he was like, "Why don't you come out, you come over, and we'll just, hang out and it'll be a really good evening, and... " I ended up spending the night. And nothing like nothing happened during the night, we just fell asleep in the bed, we cuddled all night long, there was no sexual pressure, and then it was in the middle of the night, something changed, and then suddenly it was like he was begging me to do all of these things, and I just said, "What is wrong with you? What has happened?" And...   0:22:44.2 DB: You called him out.   0:22:45.2 Sarah: I called him out, and he... And then I just said to him, "When was the last time you looked at porn?" And he disclosed to me that he... And he said he'd had a porn addiction since he was 14. And at this stage in my life, I was like, "Oh, well, that's okay. I know a lot of guys deal with that, so this isn't gonna end our relationship, but I want you to work through it and I want you to talk to the bishop, and I don't expect perfection, but I do want respect." So I'm thinking, I'm so grown up, I'm having this really grown-up conversation. This guy is telling... I won't go too far into what I think about that now, but for the context of the story at this time, I was thinking, "I'm so great that I can work through this with him, and he's so great that he's being honest with me." So I think we're on a great path and we keep dating, and then he just starts walking across that boundary again, and I just keep thinking, "Oh my gosh, I've gotta fix him, I've got to be sexier, so he's not looking at porn. I've got to... " And I was trying so hard not to do the things that he was wanting me to do, and at the same time he was telling me, "If you don't do these things, I'm gonna look at porn."   0:24:02.9 DB: Oh my goodness.   0:24:04.8 Sarah: So again, I'm like, "Holy crap, how am I back at this spot where I'm again responsible for this guy's sexuality?" At the same time he's telling me he loves me and he wants to get married, there was just something about the relationship that was making me stick my heels. And if, "We're not gonna be exclusive, we're gonna date other people, 'cause you can't figure this out, and until you can figure this out, I'm not jumping in with you." And I think honestly, that was probably, is the spirit trying to keep me safe, and I didn't recognize it at the time, but... This was the relationship where it turned violent pretty quick.   0:24:42.4 DB: Physically violent?   0:24:43.3 Sarah: Sexually violent. So there was just a lot of fear involved in it, there was a lot of manipulation, there was me saying, No. Me begging to stop, and there was just, No, I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do." But it had never turned into full penetration, and then he at some point in the relationship, he brings up marriage again, "If we get married, I'll be able to stop looking at this porn because we'll be able to do everything that we want. It won't be... "   0:25:14.2 DB: Such a lack of education there.   [laughter]   0:25:17.1 Sarah: Huge lack of education.   0:25:17.9 DB: Or bad education.   0:25:21.6 Sarah: Yeah.   0:25:21.7 DB: Oh my goodness, and...   0:25:21.8 Sarah: And I'm believing it, because I don't have any education either, so... And my minor now is in sex education and I'm like, "Sure...   0:25:30.2 DB: Yeah, I was going to bring that up.   0:25:30.3 Sarah: Great. This will fix it." 'Cause that's what we've been taught in the church is like, you get married and then it's, "No, it's no, no, no, to go, go go, and all your sexual problems are gone."   0:25:38.4 DB: Yeah, it's one of the biggest myths. I don't think it's fair to say a lie, because I think the leadership and the people who are saying this truly believe it, I don't think they're being deceptive, but it just goes to the core of this whole podcast episode is the lack of education. The lack of good education, not just in the negative, but in informative strategies, and I don't even know where that idea came from, that if you get married, the porn habit goes away. That couldn't be further from the truth.   0:26:11.0 Sarah: Right?   0:26:12.1 DB: If it does, it's coincidental. That's mere coincidence. We could talk about that a little bit more, but this is sad, this is the thing that is most upsetting to me when working with people who have a lack of sexual education, 'cause all they know is porn is bad, but they have no idea of what it looks like to have a healthy relationship. So you're dealing with this. Are you able to say... Can you say, how you got out of it, or what did you do?   0:26:46.4 Sarah: Yeah. So there were... So while we were dating, I kept thinking, there's this other guy who I know, we're really good friends. If he would just come to me and just say, "Hey, would you marry me? I would do it in a heartbeat." I just felt so strongly about this friend, and at the same time this other guy is treating me so poorly, and I'm thinking it's all my fault, and I'm feeling so guilty and I'm going to my Bishop and I'm telling my Bishop, "These things are happening. How do I fix them?" And he's giving me more tools than anyone ever had, he's giving me books about pornography, he's giving me... Which were I think, [chuckle] very skewed towards the church's narrative. I don't think they were necessarily a scientifically-based, they were much more along the basis of, "It's an addiction. It's the same thing as doing cocaine", which is absolutely not true.   0:27:44.9 DB: I wanna get into that. And of course, I don't wanna diverge you... I do wanna come back to that. So he was helpful. Was that... At what point... Okay, so what you're saying is that guidance was helpful in ending this current relationship?   0:28:00.5 Sarah: It was helpful in knowing that it wasn't just my fault.   0:28:03.0 DB: Okay.   0:28:03.3 Sarah: And that I could be empowered in the relationship, and he was the first person who kind of said to me like, "If this isn't the future you want, then you don't have to be in it."   0:28:14.2 DB: Good for him.   0:28:15.1 Sarah: Right? And so, but there was still... And that's the hard part about Bishops is that, I think if it had been someone with clinical understanding, they would have said, "This is an abusive relationship," and instead it was like, "If you just don't want porn to be a part of your relationship, just date someone else." And I was like, "Well, that would be nice, but open your eyes, that's not possible."   0:28:40.3 DB: Exactly.   0:28:40.8 Sarah: So at this point, I'm taking my garments off, 'cause I just feel so unworthy and...   0:28:48.7 DB: You weren't instructed to, you just chose to.   0:28:51.1 Sarah: No. And I'm just myself choosing not to take the sacrament, 'cause I just feel so unworthy. And then this guy who I've thought so much about calls me out of the blue and he's like, "Hey, let's go to lunch." And we go to lunch one day and I just thought, "Okay, I'm ending it. I'm ending it because there's something about this guy, I'm gonna end it." So I did, I ended this relationship, then I didn't hear from this guy again. [chuckle]   0:29:20.6 DB: The guy you were interested?   0:29:21.7 Sarah: Yeah. The guy that I was interested, who kinda gave me hope again for men, and I was like, "Well, that's probably better, 'cause I'm in the spot where I probably need to do some healing and working on myself and... " So I don't date anyone for a while, and I work on myself, and then I'm getting lonely, getting really lonely, and I run into this guy who I had been... This guy who I'd been in the relationship with, and I run into him on campus and he's like, "Hey, do you wanna come over?"   0:30:00.3 DB: Even though you've cut it off?   0:30:00.5 Sarah: Yeah, I've cut off. It's been months and I was so lonely that I was like...   0:30:03.9 DB: 'Cause, there's no boundaries.   0:30:05.0 Sarah: Yeah, there's no boundaries and I'm just lonely. So I'm like, "Yeah, of course," it's like, we're good friends and I still cared about him even though, 'cause I didn't know that it was an abusive relationship.   0:30:14.5 DB: Right. And I'm making an assumption here. You just said that you were really lonely, and do you feel like that played into you saying yes also, or...   0:30:26.4 Sarah: Yeah, totally. I just was... I was lonely, all my friends had been married, I'm just back from my mission. [chuckle] It's a hard transition back. We've been dating for seven or eight months when we ended it, so now it's probably like nine or 10 months after, and so we just start talking again, we just started being friends. And then, the other guy who I was interested in at the other time, he calls me up, and he's like, "Do you wanna go on a date?"   0:30:57.9 DB: His timing is interesting.   0:31:00.8 Sarah: At the same time. Yes. So at the same time, these guys are like back in my life at the exact same time, and... So long story short, I ended up saying... This is gonna be so confusing probably to the listeners, but I ended up saying to this guy who I had been dating, "Hey, this other guy asked me out." And, 'cause we were just friends and something... I saw something in his eyes switch. He was like, "Oh, well, yeah, you always talked about him and how much you liked him and how much you respected him, and he's kind of the obstacle that was in our path of us moving forward." I was like, "Not really."   0:31:37.6 DB: Rather he's... The hope in saving you?   0:31:38.9 Sarah: Yeah, I was like, No, it was probably the narrative, but I had, was that I was responsible for your sexuality, for your porn use, and I couldn't fix that anymore, so he ended up asking me to join him for the middle of the day for lunch, and I went over...   0:31:58.3 DB: Which one?   0:31:58.3 Sarah: The guy who I had dated.   0:32:00.7 DB: Okay.   0:32:00.9 Sarah: So I went over to his house during lunch, we left campus together, he drove me there and we were... I remember thinking, "Okay, are we ever gonna eat lunch?" 'Cause we just sat in his room for a while, and then he raped me. And I just remember laying there and it just started off as just normal kissing, and I was like, "Hey, this is weird, but where is this going?" And then it was right back to 17-year-old me who suddenly was being touched and this time I was saying, "No, please stop. No, I don't want this." And it happened anyway. And so that happens, and I looked at him afterwards and he got up and he said, "Let's go back to school." And I looked at him and I hugged him. I hugged him, and I said, "I didn't want that to happen." And I hugged him, 'cause I was so scared that I wasn't gonna be, like I wasn't gonna survive or something, like... My brain just went in to do whatever you need to do to get out of there.   0:33:09.1 DB: Trauma mode.   0:33:09.9 Sarah: Oh, totally. So we got back at school and then I called my... I texted my friend and I texted her and I said, "I just had sex. What do I do now?" And this friend had had sex before marriage as well when she was dating.   0:33:26.6 DB: Not, I was raped, and how do I report him, but what do you do?   0:33:30.1 Sarah: No. No. 100 percent, in my mind it was, "I had had sex." So I call her and she's like, "Oh, it's okay, you'll be okay, it's hard, but you can... You might not be able to take the sacrament for a couple of months, but you can get back and call your Bishop and... " So at this point, I am about to go into work, I'm sick to my stomach, I am shaking and I think, "I just had sex for the first time." So I call my Bishop, I go to the Bishop's office or I go to his house, 'cause it was a Friday night and I'm just devastated, and I walk in and he's like, "What can I do for you?" And I slide my temple garment across the table to him, and I'm like, "I'm no longer worthy of this." And he was like, "Okay, well, tell me what happened?" And so I start saying, start describing to him what happened, and.   0:34:24.6 DB: Is this is the same Bishop that provided you good resources? .   0:34:27.2 Sarah: Yes. Thank goodness.   0:34:27.8 DB: Yes.   0:34:28.4 Sarah: Same Bishop, and he stops me and he says, "No, you didn't have sex. You were raped." And it just suddenly was like, "That's what that was."   0:34:39.2 DB: He called it out.   0:34:39.4 Sarah: He called it out.   0:34:41.1 DB: Excellent.   0:34:41.6 Sarah: Yes, and he said, "I have, I've known you for a while. I've been working with you for a while, from what you've described, your relationship with this guy, you've tried really, really hard, and he has not respected that, and he took full advantage of you and he raped you." And I just sat there stunned. I finally had a word for what was happening, and thank goodness, this Bishop was so in tune and he said, "You know, I don't know how to help you." He said, "I can help you with spiritual healing if you need it, but I don't know how to help you and I'm gonna pay for you to find help." 'Cause at this point, I also didn't have insurance and I was too afraid to tell my parents, so I'm like, [chuckle] "Ah, what do I do?" And I didn't go to the hospital to get any forensic exams done, 'cause I didn't know I had been raped, and suddenly here's this ecclesiastical leader pointing me in the direction of help, and it was life-saving, so he paid for me to see a therapist and I was in therapy within a week, and that made all the difference in my life. And I had a male therapist where... He said, "I'm gonna send you to a male therapist" and I said, "What have you been smoking Bishop? I'm not gonna go sit across from a man and tell him what happened." And he said, "I think that you need a man to listen to you." And so I had to sit...   0:36:02.1 DB: This Bishop wasn't a counsel, he had no training.   0:36:05.1 Sarah: No. No training.   0:36:07.6 DB: This is interesting. Sorry, I think this is actually an important concept that a lot of...   0:36:12.6 Sarah: Totally.   0:36:12.7 DB: People don't realize. When I was working, in my training, I was serving the community in a community center, and that was the first time that I found women who had been raped were asking for male therapists, and that was before I really understood something called Gestalt therapy, if you're familiar.   0:36:30.3 Sarah: Yes. Yeah.   0:36:32.4 DB: And this is their opportunity... There's many reasons to do this, and there are some... I wanna be clear, there are some reasons not to do it either also, and so what this allows, and I'm curious to hear your experiences is, I like how the Bishop said, is it gives a man an opportunity, you get to have a man listen to you and validate you. It also provides the victim an opportunity in a gestalt model for those who aren't familiar, there's this concept of empty chair or imagining that the therapist is your aggressor and you lash out at them in a therapeutic way or whatever, you confront them that way, and so it can be very therapeutic if you're ready for that. It's always hard to tell. But what was your experience? So he suggested this, it looked like you're a little surprised.   0:37:25.1 Sarah: Totally.   0:37:26.4 DB: But you followed through and you found a male therapist?   0:37:28.0 Sarah: Yeah, he actually gave me a referral, he said I... He had had a friend who was a therapist or was very aware of clinical concepts or whatever that... She suggested I see a man. So he gave me the number, I called and made the appointment myself. And I walked in not really knowing what to expect. I had never been to therapy before, and I walked in and I sat down and just kind of started talking about my life and my past and everything that was going on in this relationship and being stuck on the concept of like, "I had lost my virginity." One thing that he said in that first day was, "No. No, you don't lose your virginity, that's a social construct, you don't lose your virginity. No one takes that from you." And that was the beginning of realizing, "Okay, I've got some very unhealthy and harmful narratives in my mind, and I need to change them."   0:38:26.9 DB: So, you're presenting this is as very accepting and like, "Oh, yeah." What's it like that for you at the moment? Did you push back at all? Did you... What was your awakening, healing process like, was it difficult to receive that information or was it healing?   0:38:43.5 Sarah: The difference was, is that he was clinically trained, and so he... As opposed to saying it to a bishop or a parent, he had this clinical training to... I could see the surprise on his face when I was telling him these things that I thought were normal. And so, much like, right now, I'm telling you things and you have these surprise looks on your face and it's so validating.   0:39:04.9 DB: Oh good. [laughter]   0:39:06.9 Sarah: Right? It is 100% validating to think, "These things that I thought were normal, that every girl experienced, are horrifying to this man, and he would never treat a girl this way or a female this way." And I can see it on his face. And he's a member of the church, and this isn't right.   0:39:24.4 DB: The therapist?   0:39:25.3 Sarah: Yeah, this therapist. So that was probably what made me actually accept it, was that, "Here's this guy who believes the same thing I do, who is horrified and shocked and in tears at some point with what I'm telling him and how I've assumed and accepted as a normal behavior."   0:39:47.6 DB: You can't... I don't know, I can't speak for every therapist, but I've heard stories and no two stories are the same. Everybody's experience is unique, but it's heart wrenching each time. I hope, one, I hope I never get used to hearing it. If I do, I need to check myself.   [laughter]   0:40:11.7 DB: It's heart-breaking, and again, to repeat what you're saying, this at the beginning... This is why it's so important for you to speak out and I appreciate that. So, continue from there. What was your journey like? How long were you in therapy? What was your discoveries along that path?   0:40:28.7 Sarah: Well, I think the most important discovery that we made in therapy together was I had this pattern of dating guys who I thought I could fix. 'Cause that was also a narrative that I had taken on is like, "As a disciple of Christ and as a woman of Christ, I have to fix people and I'm gonna make them better." And he said, "You date these people who you think you need to fix, and this is... So, this is like you're going along in your car, and I want you to think of your rape as like you've hit a brick wall. And that brick wall is stopping you from what could be." And I remember thinking, "Oh my gosh, if I had married that guy, this would have been my life, and I would not have known." And it always shocks people when I say this, but I will say it, I'm so grateful for it. I'm so grateful for that experience because I walked out of therapy going, "Not again. No one will ever treat me that way again, and I'm not gonna date a guy who's gonna treat me like that." And long story short, I ended up marrying that other guy.   0:41:33.8 DB: The one that was...   [chuckle]   0:41:34.1 Sarah: Yeah. The one who I always wanted to date while I was dating this other guy. We got our act together and we ended up getting married. So, that was... And he was the exact opposite. He was the guy... And ironically, I thought before this experience, I was never good enough for him, either. He's this amazing, incredible guy, and I was like, "I'm not good enough." And I walked out of therapy going, "Oh, I am so good enough for him, and he would be so lucky to have me."   [laughter]   0:42:06.6 DB: What a wonderful discovery. And you brought up something that we kind of glossed over it. I can't tell you how many women end up marrying a situation like that where, because they don't have this discovery, and I'm not... This is tragic. And it's years later that they discover this was horrible. So I appreciate, and I realize it's probably difficult for a lot of people to hear it. We're clearly not saying the abuse was okay.   0:42:36.4 Sarah: No, not at all.   0:42:39.3 DB: But that, as a result, you were awakened, it was an opportunity to get help and to discover more. I'm sure it wasn't as simple as having that discovery and everything's better.   0:42:53.6 Sarah: No, not at all.   0:42:53.7 DB: What was that journey like from there on out? So, you're dating your husband, and...   0:42:58.3 Sarah: So, we're dating, and I'm thinking, "Okay, that's the end of our... The end of my sexual problems." [chuckle] And again, great guy, we start dating, he takes like a month to kiss me and then it's just like little pecks here and there for months, and I'm finally like, "Hey... "   0:43:14.0 DB: Is he aware of this recent experience yet?   0:43:18.1 Sarah: So at this point, no, at this point...   0:43:21.0 DB: So, he's acting all on his accord, he's not... He's not like over...   0:43:23.2 Sarah: Yes. He's not being over-aware or over-sensitive or over-thinking anything.   0:43:28.6 DB: I think that's important for the listeners to know.   0:43:29.0 Sarah: Totally. Yeah.   0:43:30.2 DB: So this is... You found a guy who's true to his behavior here. This is...   0:43:35.5 Sarah: Yeah. He is living his behavior, he is showing me his behavior. And I'm starting to get worried of like, "Okay, why is this not unfolding? Why are we not progressing at all?" And...   0:43:46.8 DB: Isn't that interesting? You're expecting this will happen.   0:43:51.3 Sarah: Yes. I'm expecting that this will happen, 'cause I wanted to, know... I wanted to be able to say no, I like, I was gonna set those boundaries and like we're gonna talk about them, there's gonna be none of this business going on. And he kisses me one night and I pull away from him and I go, "Why won't you kiss me for longer?" And he goes, "I don't wanna have an erection." And I was like, "What? [chuckle] What are you saying?" And he said, "If I have an erection, I'm being disrespectful to you."   0:44:19.0 DB: Wow.   0:44:19.5 Sarah: And he said, My... He had a Bishop when he was 16, tell him the erections were breaking law of chastity, and I was like, "Hey, buddy, if we're kissing and you don't have that response, there's something wrong. There's a bigger issue." [laughter] I was just was so shocked.   0:44:38.7 DB: You had such insight... You had that insight at that time?   0:44:41.7 Sarah: Yeah.   0:44:41.9 DB: Is that something you learned... Forgive me, I'm coming from maybe a place of ignorance here in making some assumptions. After your traumatic experiences, it would seem like, my naive response here, "Oh, good, you're not. You would... " Some people might feed that behavior and say, "Oh good, now I know I'm safe." What allowed you to say, "Oh, this is actually unhealthy?"   0:45:08.6 Sarah: So, my therapist and I worked a lot through that. 'Cause my therapist was very concerned that I started dating this guy, 'cause he said, "You know, I don't want that...   0:45:16.8 DB: Your now husband.   0:45:17.7 Sarah: Yes, my now husband. "I don't want you to feel like that you're getting into this relationship where he's saving you and you're working through some really traumatic things, and we don't want to get that tied up in your relationship."   0:45:29.1 DB: Good.   0:45:29.5 Sarah: So we worked very closely to... And I was very transparent with my therapist with this, now relation... My husband. And so I was talking to him about these concerns and he said, "Well, why don't you just ask him?" I was, at this point, and we had talked about how it's, an erection is a normal response to any sort of stimulus and not to fear it. So I didn't. I wasn't fearing it. And he said, "Any guy who's gonna respect your boundaries is gonna be able to say, 'My pants will calm down,' and I won't touch you." [chuckle] And I... Yeah, I just... I knew this guy was gonna be that way, there was just something about him that he... From the very beginning, he respected me. So, I have this discussion with him and I'm like, "Why are you not kissing me longer, and he's like, I don't wanna disrespect you, is disrespect for you." And I'm like, "Well, I would like to make out. [laughter] So, I'd like to kiss you a little bit longer." And we've been dating for months and let's see if this is going somewhere, and... So, long story short is, he had a lot of that narrative in his mind that he was so afraid of disrespecting women and girls that he had shut down everything.   0:46:40.8 DB: Like I was saying at the beginning.   0:46:41.8 Sarah: Totally. He is the opposite.   0:46:42.7 DB: That extreme. Yeah. I wanna point out, and I hope you don't feel like I'm putting you on a pedestal here, but it sounds like, and I realized, we're reflecting back on the past, the maturity that you gained to have that conversation is amazing.   0:47:00.8 Sarah: Thank you.   0:47:00.9 DB: It's... I don't want that to come out in a way that if others have been through a traumatic experience, can't do that, as any way shameful.   0:47:10.0 Sarah: Not at all.   0:47:10.1 DB: But I wanna emphasize how significant that is, that you didn't just run away or stay or not say anything at all. There's this culture of, "Don't talk about it at all." But you used it as an opportunity to connect with him. Which is a huge part of what I believe is healing, creating connection.   0:47:31.9 Sarah: Totally.   0:47:32.9 DB: Have an awareness of each other as opposed to assuming and labeling and ignoring or just not discussing. That is... I'm trying not to be extreme in my language, but that is truly impressive.   0:47:47.8 Sarah: Thank you.   0:47:48.7 DB: And I think it's important for the listeners to understand both how difficult that is and the fact that you were able to do it, was beautiful.   0:47:56.7 Sarah: Thank you. Well, and I do... It was so helpful to be falling in love, at the same point in therapy, weekly, [chuckle] and at the same point, having these really open discussions with the suitor. So, we'll fast forward to a couple of weeks and he's doing something playfully, like I think he picked me up and twirled me around and I had a traumatic response and I shoved him. And he stepped back and looked at me and was like, "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry." And I was like, "Oh, no, no, no, no, no, you're fine. I just don't like... "   0:48:35.6 DB: You're still taking the responsibility.   0:48:36.9 Sarah: Yeah. I was like, "I just don't like being picked up." And later that night, I thought, "Okay, I've got to tell him what's going on. I don't want him to think that this is his fault, and, well, this needs to be... "   0:48:47.9 DB: Oh, that's right. 'Cause you hadn't shared with him yet. So this was your opportunity.   0:48:49.0 Sarah: Yeah. So, at this point he has no idea what's going on. And so I sat him down on the couch and I said, "Listen, this is what's happened, and I understand if you wanna walk away." And he was like, "Why would I walk [chuckle] away?" And he just sat and cried.   0:49:04.7 DB: What a different experience?   0:49:05.9 Sarah: So different. He sat and cried with me, he held me while I cried, and he... I don't know how he did this, but he managed his traumatic response in front of me. So, he cried, he... And I told him, "This is a lot for you to handle, I understand that, if you need to tell someone, if you need to tell your parents, if you need to tell a bishop, if you need to tell a friend, please tell someone so you're not holding this by yourself. I have my people who are holding it with me, please get your people." And he... That's when he had his traumatic response of like, "I'm gonna kill this guy, I'm gonna find him... " That's when he had his response to my trauma, but that I was... I didn't have to carry it. And I think that's why we are married. [chuckle] He was able to separate that. [laughter]   0:49:51.1 DB: Yes. And I'm gonna point that out. How crucial that is, again, not to put you on a pedestal, but your ability to create differentiation in the relationship early on and not feel like, while you're communicating and being open and creating connection, you also emphasized, "I'm carrying my load, I've got my people, and if this is concerning, the most effective way to deal is get your own people. Let's not blend our trauma together. Let's support each other, but let's not be each other's therapist."   0:50:22.7 Sarah: Oh yeah.   0:50:23.0 DB: There's a fine line there, of course, but... Very impressive.   0:50:28.5 Sarah: And his mom has been a therapist, and so I said, "Please talk to your mom about this." And I was trying to not be ashamed, and so I didn't want this to be a secret. So I didn't want... You know, [chuckle] to be like, "Oh, my girlfriend's gone through something, but I can't tell my parents about it." It was like, "If I'm a part of your family, this is a part of my life, like this, we're not gonna put it in the closet, it's just gonna be out there. It's what it is." And so our relationship progressed. He went to therapy by himself. He came to therapy with me a few times, and we fell in love, and we got married and I was like, "Okay, here we go, here comes sex. Real sex."   0:51:05.5 DB: Oh-oh.   0:51:06.1 Sarah: Good sex.   0:51:07.1 DB: So, it is good, everything's great, happy ever after, right?   0:51:11.4 Sarah: We would like to think, right? So, back to my Bishop, great insightful Bishop, where we are... We're getting ready to get married and he pulls us in his office and he says, "You guys, this is gonna be hard for Sarah. It's gonna be really hard for Sarah to go from these traumatic experiences to, Let's do it all in one night." And he says, "I'd like you to explore each other's bodies." And he said, Your only... He gave us limits and he said, "Your only limits are oral and penetrative sex."   0:51:45.5 DB: Your Bishop counselled you this?   [chuckle]   0:51:46.6 Sarah: My Bishop.   0:51:47.3 DB: I want his name and number.   [laughter]   0:51:49.3 Sarah: Alright.   0:51:50.4 DB: This is phenomenal. When you heard him say that, what was your response?   0:51:56.0 Sarah: Well, I was like, jaw dropped. Because my husband's bishop, at that time, he was like, "You can't touch each other at all. Satan's gonna be trying to destroy you as a family, and if you... "   0:52:08.4 DB: Oh, yeah. I hear that all the time.   0:52:09.7 Sarah: Yeah. [chuckle] "If you touch each other at all, you're gonna have sex, the passion is just so alive, no touching yourselves"   0:52:14.9 DB: You no longer have agency.   0:52:16.3 Sarah: Right. Like, we're children again. And then we had my bishop who was like, "Please get to know each other before you have sex." And we talked about it as a couple, and we decided, "Okay, what is appropriate for us? What do we feel like we can handle? What's our plan in case we start to feel overwhelmed? What happens if I have a traumatic response? And what are our boundaries?" And we talked about those things that people don't talk about in their marriage for years. And it just set us up on what I thought was the perfect happy ever after.   0:52:51.2 Sarah: So, we get married in the temple. We have a great sex life for a couple of months and then I can't get there. I can't climax. And I remember, [chuckle] it was Valentine's night, I had bought, on a meager student income, I had bought this red piece of lingerie and I was so excited. And I was anticipating it so much and looking forward to connecting so much, and then I was feeling the feeling, feeling the build-up and then, boom, exhaustion, can't get there. My husband gets up and puts his garments back on and I just remember thinking, "Oh my gosh, I'm so broken. I am so broken." And that was my spiral back down hill, that night. That's when everything changed from it being something that my husband and I participate in together where my pleasure matters as much as his pleasure, and we need to be clear that my bit does. My husband has never once pressured me, he's always been 100% understanding. We both just didn't have the tools. So, this is the spiral of...   0:54:06.0 DB: You not only didn't have the tools, 'cause that's my concern in general, is no one's taught how to have intimate relationships, sex and orgasm. Who teaches that? But you're up against also trauma.   0:54:20.1 Sarah: Yeah.   0:54:21.3 DB: And so you've got a few fronts here that you're battling, and this is happening at this moment. So, where do you go from there?   0:54:29.3 Sarah: So months progress and I'm just becoming increasingly more depressed and I'm feeling increasingly more isolated. I started seeing a different therapist, I had moved, so I had a different therapist. It was a sex therapist. And the sex therapist kept telling me it's this trauma that's in the way of you being able to connect with your husband, and I was sitting there saying, "It's not the trauma. I've worked through so much of the trauma. Of course, I have bad nights where something triggers me and I can identify the trigger and work through it, but it's not the trauma that's preventing me from this." So I tried a different sex therapists, and I tried an OB-GYN. And I tried a different OB-GYN. And the problem was, is I would feel the build-up and I would... We'd be in the moment and we'd be feeling really, really good, and then I would just hit this wall of exhaustion. And it felt like I was being knocked off my feet. And it was time and time and time again, and I just started feeling like, "I'm only here to be like this vessel for other men's pleasure. And it's not... My husband's not making me feel this way, this is how God designed my body to be a vessel for other men's pleasure, not my own, for other men's pleasure."   0:55:45.1 Sarah: And that was the beginning of just months, years of severe depression and anxiety, and it got so bad that I had suicidal ideation. Because my husband and I have always been able to be so transparent from the beginning, I was able to disclose to him, that I was having these ideations and he said, "Okay, you've gotta get help, like this is obviously not working." It terrified him enough that I could see on his face of like just the idea of that was so scary, I don't think I could ever go through with it, which kind of brought me back to reality. But... So, nothing's changing, I'm just super depressed. I'm seeing doctors who are saying, "We're just gonna prescribe you these anti-depressants, it will kill your libido. Here's some anti-anxiety, work on your trauma." So I start EMDR. And so, for those of the listeners, it's a great form of trauma therapy where you process it without really describing it, so you're not re-victimizing yourself, you're processing more of what your body is holding on to. So, I go through it and I'm like, That's not the trauma. It's not... There's something that's stopping me, physio... My physical body is stopping me.   0:57:01.0 Sarah: There's something in the way. I can feel it. So again, I'm just hopeless. No one's believing me. Every single person is telling me it's your trauma, which was at this point, more traumatic than my trauma.   0:57:13.5 DB: Interesting, yes. I was actually gonna point that out and... Well, I won't jump ahead here. I wanna reflect back on that but... So what was it? What did you end up discovering?   0:57:27.2 Sarah: So I... So we move out of state, and I'm talking to this woman in my new ward and something... She was a doula. So for those who aren't aware of what a doula is, they're basically a birthing partner. So they... She professionally goes in and helps women deliver their babies as their advocate, and I had... She had mentioned to me that what got her interested in it was she had had a traumatic response giving birth because she had been molested as a child, and that resurfaced for her during her birth. And I was like, "Holy crap. That might happen to me." And so I disclosed to her my history of sexual assault, and then I disclosed to her my problem of not being able to climax. And she didn't bat an eye. She said, "Oh, go visit a pelvic floor physical therapist." And she gave me a name. So I made this appointment and I go in, and at this point, I have kind of like this PTSD from visiting providers. 'Cause none of them believe me. Everyone is telling me... It ranges from, "It's your trauma," to, "Let go of how you view yourself. Your body image part... " And I'm like, "I've never once said that I don't like the way I look in sex."   [laughter]   0:58:36.5 Sarah: Everyone's pointing out these emotional things or these things that we've put on women that I'm like, "It's none of those. I'm not telling you like... Listen to me, please." So I walk in, and I sit down, and she started crying, this physical therapist, and she said, "You are the hardest client to get in my doors because everyone gives up on you."   0:59:01.7 DB: Mm-hmm. Yes. Gives up on you in the sense of they think it's something else?   0:59:09.4 Sarah: Yes.   0:59:09.6 DB: Yes.   0:59:09.9 Sarah: They think it's something else. And she said, "It is so common." She said the clients who have it the most are religious clients, which I think is ironic.   0:59:17.2 DB: That's well-studied, actually.   0:59:18.1 Sarah: Very religious people and athletes. And I was both. So she... I remember her saying, "You'll have an orgasm within a month." And I was going like, "Yeah, right."   0:59:27.8 DB: So let me pause you there before we get on to the healing, hopefully, is...   [laughter]   0:59:32.4 DB: That's what I was wanting to speak to, is in no way is this a criticism. I am so thankful for the research and the skills that trauma therapists and trauma training in general has brought to clinicians. However, what I'm seeing is an imbalance in assessment. A lot of clinicians are jumping to trauma, which isn't wrong, and trauma is still playing a part of your life.   1:00:04.3 Sarah: Totally.   1:00:07.5 DB: However, there's... Your body is made up of a bunch of more things than just trauma and just the things that you were bringing up. Everything needs to be explored, and I think that's a critical part of assessment. And I'm in a tricky spot as a male therapist who often will engage in thorough assessment. Like yes, fully recognize there's trauma. Is there potentially anything else biologically going on, emotionally going on that's disconnected from that? And that's often perceived as minimizing trauma, and it's a tricky place to be in because... Absolutely, there's trauma there, but I'm seeing a lot of what's happening, what happened to you, where your actual health concern wasn't related to the trauma, at least not the majority of it. And finally, somebody found out. You found the right person, rather, and they guided you. So do you mind sharing what the procedure was? I think I know where you're going with this.   1:01:04.1 Sarah: Yeah. So it was just pelvic floor physical therapy. So it was all internal work. So basically she inserted her fingers into my vagina and was able to release the tension. And what she said that was so profound was she said... And at this point, I have my MSW, and I'm like, "I'm a therapist. I'm gonna be a therapist. This is my passion." So I'm talking to her about all these terms, and she's like, "Yeah, don't you guys like read that book, The Body Keeps the Score, and don't you guys understand that you hold trauma in your body?" And I was like, "Yes. Actually, I do know that." And she's like, "Well, where do you think you hold it?" And I said, "Well, I don't know. Like my whole body?" She said, "In your pelvic floor." Mind blown, right? So what she did is in her assessment, she found that... And she likened it to bicep curls. She said, "Your vaginal walls have to go up and down like you would do a bicep for you to orgasm." And she said, "Yours are so tight that they can't loosen. They can't physically make that sensation happen. They can't have that... They won't.   1:02:15.0 Sarah: So we did some exercises and I had to relearn how to do certain things. I had to essentially learn how to orgasm, and that was the beginning of happiness. That was the beginning of the fairy tale, for me, it was. [chuckle] Learning, becoming one with my body, and when I say one with my body, for anyone who has a period, who has a uterus, who has a pelvic floor, that includes you man, understand what's going on with your pelvic floor. That is where you're holding your stress, where you're holding your trauma. And since then, I have been able to identify when I suck in, and I know I do it. When I am triggered or when I'm stressed, or if I'm uncomfortable or if I'm feeling vulnerable, I can suck in my muscles, and I feel it. It's like this, "Please don't look at me," and I'm sucking in. It's totally this trauma-fear response, and I can now push myself back out and to relax, and I have control of what's going on with me. And that's the first time that's ever happened. I was able to orgasm. We have a great sex life now. We've had... Since had a baby and that didn't break me. I thought that was gonna ruin me again. I wasn't afraid to have a child, and it helped bringing a child in. I used the same things that I learned in therapy, and I survived.   1:03:46.8 DB: What a story. Not a story. What a life.   1:03:51.8 Sarah: Yeah.   [laughter]   1:03:52.7 DB: My goodness, that journey. So was it... What the doctor did, did that get you to successful orgasm? Was there other things that you did to help yourself along?   1:04:03.3 Sarah: Yeah, so basically, what she would do is she would use her fingers on muscles and release them so much like you would lengthen a muscle or much like going to the gym, right? You learn how to turn your muscles on and off when you're lifting weights, and she helped me learn how to do that, then I had to learn how to breathe again. 'Cause I was breathing incorrectly, like who even knows that you can breathe incorrectly. But I was breathing in, sucking in, doing... Any time I worked out, sucking in, holding that pelvic floor in tight. I learned to masturbate. That was a big one, right, learning my body.   1:04:42.2 DB: What is the purpose of that? Just to... Was it to help heal? Or what was the purpose of masturbating?   1:04:47.9 Sarah: The purpose of that was to, A, figure out how my body worked, right? How... What feels good? Now that I know my body can react to pleasure, what feels good? We started over, basically. So... And that came from... And this is the part that blows my mind is how we expect our young people or any people to walk into a marriage not knowing their body. So I learned my body with that. I've helped my husband learn my body, so his confidence grew, my confidence grew, our intimacy was connected. For the first time, it felt like it was a partnered experience.   1:05:23.8 DB: This is important for a lot of Latter-day saints to understand. And I'm not gonna sit here and say that masturbation should be a part of everyone's life. However, when we as... Especially Latter-day saints who are clinicians make a blanket statement, which I've seen recently in social media and some pretty well-respected therapists who are LDS, say that any therapist who encourages masturbation is not in line with their faith, right? It's... Yeah, thanks for the eye roll.   [laughter]   1:06:07.1 DB: It's... The potential damage of that message is destructive to say the least. I've seen so many women who have been abused, who have had similar life experiences, and they carry that on with them because that message was communicated to them, and they feel understanding their body is breaking some eternal covenant.   1:06:40.7 Sarah: Oh. Totally.   1:06:42.8 DB: It's the only thing we see... In the medical industry that seems to be the exception within our faith, is you go to a doctor and get some drugs to help you or you do... And I hate to use that analogy because I don't even think they're the same in a sense of risks or anything like that. But masturbation is a form

In this edition of the AppleVis Extra, Dave Nason and Thomas Domville are joined by Sarah Herrlinger, Director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives at Apple; and Dean Hudson, Accessibility Evangelist at Apple. Topics covered in this podcast include a look at some of the new accessibility features coming later this year to Apple's platforms, as well as a broader look at Apple's approach to making their products accessible to as many people as possible.Full transcript of podcastPlease note, This transcript was created solely for communication access. It is not a certified legal transcript and is not entirely verbatim.Audio: An AppleVis original.Dave: Hello and welcome to the AppleVis Extra Podcast. My name is Dave Nason, and I am joined by Mr. Thomas Domville. How are you, Tom?Thomas: I'm doing great, Dave. It's good to be with you again. This is going to be a fun podcast,.Dave: Yeah, this is one of our more exciting podcasts that we get to do every now and then. We didn't do it last year, but we did it two or three years before that, and they're back. It's Sarah Herrlinger and Dean Hudson from Apple's accessibility team. Great to have them back.Thomas: I know, right. It's been a couple years, so I can't wait to see what they have to say and offer to us in terms of accessibility for this year. I'm pretty excited.Dave: Is there anything in particular that stood out for you before we jump into it?Thomas: I know everybody in the community has been talking about the new voices, especially, Eloquence. But voices, I think that's probably the biggest hit out there to date. Would you agree with that?Dave: Yeah, I think so. I think it's definitely been the biggest news of this year's cycle, so yeah. Let's see what they have to say about that. Should we go ahead and jump into it?Thomas: Yeah. Let's do it.Dave: Sarah and Dean, you are so welcome back to the AppleVis Podcast. Thanks for coming.Dean: Thank you.Sarah: Well, thank you guys very much. It's wonderful to be here.Dave: Yeah, it's been two years, I think. We missed last year, but it was great. So it's great to have you back and talking about everything that's new in the accessibility world with Apple.Dean: Wow. Two years-Sarah: Yes. I-Dean: ... that's very quick.Sarah: I know. I was just thinking the same thing. It feels like the tumultuous nature of the last two years through a wrench into everything down to even doing podcasts. So it's great to be back with you guys.Dave: Absolutely. And I'm guessing this was probably the first WWDC this year at a few years where you actually had people as well.Sarah: It was, we had a hybrid model this year, but did kick it off with the keynote and the state of the union. And some of those major things, the design awards that go on on day one were done in a way to have more people available on campus. So it was a great opportunity to reconnect with a lot of developers and share the message of accessibility.Dave: Yeah. Amazing. And there is lots to talk about in accessibility. Thomas, I think you'd agree with me here that one of the biggest stories that's happened since voiceover itself even launched, all those…

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

Are there models for livestock production that support both farmers and communities? Today, we're going to explore the complex nature of relationships between farmers and nearby communities and the impact of industrial agricultural practices, such as CAFOs, stands for concentrated animal feeding operations, on those relationships. Our guests today are policy advocate Sarah Carden with Farm Action and community organizer Monica Brooks from the Maryland State Commission for Environmental Justice and Sustainable Communities. Interview Summary   Sarah, let's begin with you. Can you tell us what is a CAFO?   Sarah: Sure. Let's begin with the USDA definition. The USDA defines a CAFO as an intensive animal feeding operation in which over 1,000 animal units are confined for over 45 days a year. When we say animal unit, we mean the equivalent of 1,000 pounds of live animal weight. So a CAFO can house anywhere from hundreds to millions of animals. CAFOs are a part of the industrial agriculture system, which is controlled largely by multinational corporations. These corporations have been able to externalize their true costs - meaning they pass their production and distribution costs onto other entities. For example, farmers raise animals for corporate integrators according to a very strict contract in which the integrator has all the power and can set the terms of the agreement to maximize their own profits. In this relationship, the farmer is responsible for financing everything that depreciates in value, buildings, manure from animals, farm equipment. Meanwhile, the integrator owns the only thing that actually appreciates in value: the animals. CAFOs include both open feed lots for cattle, as well as huge buildings with no windows where livestock and poultry are confined, often in boxes or stalls. They produce huge amounts of animal sewage. Even the smallest CAFO produces an equivalent amount of waste as 16,000 humans. CAFO waste is usually not treated to remove pathogens and emits hazardous chemicals, such as ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and methane. CAFOs destroy the air quality around them with particulate that carries disease-causing bacteria, fungus, or other pathogens. Animals frequently die in CAFOs, and their carcasses often, in large numbers, must be dealt with. Infestations of flies, rats, and other vermin are commonplace around CAFOs and, therefore, around CAFO neighbors.   So Sarah, thanks very much for that description, and I'm really happy that you address that issue of the integrators, the big agribusiness companies that control so much of the food supply chain, and so many people think the farmers are at fault for what goes on in these operations, and it's discouraging how little control they have over it in many ways and, in fact, over their own livelihoods. So it was helpful to have your description. So Monica, can you describe what it's like to live near CAFOs?   Sarah: Sure. Unfortunately, residents who have to live near CAFOs experience everything from an enormous amount of flies to ammonia in the air that can cause burning in the throat, burning in the skin, coughing, asthmatic conditions, not to mention all night and all day, you're surrounded by large tractor trailers that are going up and down your highway at all hours of the night, lights flashing through your windows. You have feathers and all kinds of things on your property, and lastly, the main thing that happens is many of these people are on well water. Their wells lose water every time a CAFO moves in next door. So I'm talking about people who have actually had to, at their own expense, redig their own wells repeatedly just to have water for their families.   So it sounds like there are a number of things that range from being, I guess what you might call a nuisance to major things that could have big influences on health. And I know there's an epidemiologist at Duke who's done some very interesting work on the health consequences of living near CAFOs, and they're really pretty significant, significant an understatement, actually. So let's talk about activity on the ground and what happens in communities. So can you talk about what happened in your community when you found out that a number of CAFOs were approved to be built and what happened?   Monica: What of the things we've discovered in these rural communities, when you have a large industry, an agricultural industry as what we have here, is the agricultural industry seems to be able to get licensed to do things that the community may not approve of but the community is not informed. We found out that 13 football-size field CAFOs were coming to a small plot of land near our home, which was actually slotted to be placed on top of what's called the Paleo Channel, which is our source of water. We're on well water. And so our county thought, "This is a good idea for us to put 13 large CAFOs with manure that's going to be coming out particulate matter, ammonia, nitrates on top of the source of water for residents." There was this very tiny blurb in the paper about it. That was it. There were no hearings. There was no information disseminated to the community at all. When we got wind of it, we came together as a community, people who never knew each other before, all different walks of life, and we had to fight this on our own. We didn't receive local support. We attended every council meeting. We spoke, we testified, we had town halls. You name it, we had it, until we received some support from some outside coalitions, Socially Responsible Agriculture Project, Food and Water Watch, and some attorneys for Earth Justice who were able to come alongside of us to give us that emphasis that we needed, and yet it took us three years in order to prevent this project from coming. We were successful and basically literally wearing down the prospective CAFO owner. However, it would've been really nice for us to have support from our legislators and our representatives, but you know what? This was a great opportunity for the citizens to show that there is power when we come together. There's power, and we can bring about change and to go for what we want and in spite of us possibly being underdogs.   So Monica, do you have any advice or guidance for other communities who might be facing this kind of pressure from the big corporate agriculture interests?   Monica: Yes, I want to encourage you to know that, first, you're not alone. Don't be afraid to speak out. Mobilize your community. Connect with your neighbors. First go to your elected officials, and do whatever you can to ensure that these CAFOs don't come to a neighborhood near you. You can do town halls. You can do protests. You can write letters. You can make all the noise in the media that you want. These kinds of things are what helped our community to become successful in fighting, but you can do it. Don't be afraid to ask for outside help. There are several organizations all across the country that help in matters just like this, and you can be victorious. You can help get laws changed. You can help to bring better air and water and quality to your neighborhood.   Monica, thanks for that, and it's really nice to know that community voices can be heard and that there are specific ways of making sure that takes place. So Sarah, back to you. Are there my models for livestock production that you believe support both farmers and communities, and would any alternative to CAFOs be able to feed enough people?   Sarah: Yes, and I'd like to echo what my colleague Dee Laninga said in a previous interview, and this is very important: "Industrial agriculture is not currently feeding the world. Smaller farms are doing that. The industrial Ag model is focused on producing feed for livestock, not food for people. It exports its meat products to wealthier countries, not to the world's hungriest."   So to answer your question about alternatives, they do exist. They have just never been given the same legislative, regulatory, and financial opportunities as big agribusiness. We need to prioritize policies and lending practices that will. So we need to deepen our local food economies, expand regional meat processing capabilities, give independent producers more pathways to the consumer. Robust local and regional food infrastructure includes things like convenient food hubs that distribute the wares of local producers, independent processing plants that serve local farmers and provide region with local sustainable healthy meat, community supported agriculture networks that provide the freshest produce from farm to nearby table, farmers who sell directly to consumers at markets, co-ops, and roadside stands, and grocery stores that recognize the fact that customers want to see the names of nearby farms in the produce, meat, and dairy sections. If industrial agriculture interests were required to internalize their costs and mitigate these risks, they would not be economically competitive with these alternatives. So if alternatives instead were prioritized in our policies, we could have a food system that not only stimulates the economy and operates within fair markets but also positively impacts health outcomes, the environment, and our social fabric.     Bios: Sarah Carden (she/her) joined Farm Action in December 2021. As Policy Advocate, she focuses her efforts on raising awareness and advocating for policies that meaningfully reform the nation's food and agriculture system. Sarah holds a B.A. in Evolutionary Biology from Harvard University. She has been working on food system reforms for over a decade and brings expertise in local food systems and distribution networks, agriculture, non-profit development, and food entrepreneurship. Sarah has also worked as an organizer on two presidential campaigns and one congressional campaign. Sarah lives with her husband and their two young children on their organic vegetable farm. Monica Brooks is a private citizen who serves on the Maryland State Commission for Environmental Justice and Sustainable Communities.  

In this episode, Marc and Sarah discuss the latest Conference of the Parties and whether the outcomes from that meeting matched our expectations, and, real talk, what we expect to happen next. This episode was recorded on Wednesday, November 10, 2021, on the 10th day of COP26.You can watch this episode on our YouTube channel, or join us live when we record new episodes on our Twitch channel — Follow us there to be notified when we go live. Links mentioned in this episode:NYT articleRolling Stones articleGreta's speech[00:00:29] Sarah: I'm trying out using my phone as a webcam because it's better in low light. So there might be, I dunno, a delay. How do I look? Am I in sync with my words?[00:00:39] Marc: There's a little bit of a delay. Yeah. And you got this cool icon on your leg. [00:00:45] Sarah: That's the app I'm using. Cause I didn't pay for it. Anyway, we are gathered here today to record another episode of the, we are climate designers podcast, the raising hell edition or series. This is about the eighth, I think, episode in this series. So we've got quite a collection recorded. We just released the second one today on our podcast. So if you'd rather listen slash watch while we are doing these live, instead of waiting for them to come out on the podcast, you can follow us on Twitch at twitch.tv/climatedesigners.And following us there should give you a notification when we go live and you can hop on and watch right there. If anyone is watching us live, please say hi in the chat. Let us know. It would be great to hear from you, let us know if you had any questions, be part of the show. That's the whole point. Today, we decided that we wanted to find out what the heck is going on with cop 26, neither Marc, nor I have been following the proceedings very closely. So we decided that we're just going to get ourselves caught up, live on stream and figure out what the heck is going on and discuss it. So it's new to us if it's new to you too, great, follow along! For those that don't know, cop 26 is conference of the parties. I believe the 26 is how many meetings they have and they meet once a year. Is that right? So they've been doing this for 26 years. [00:02:35] Marc: Maybe we should meet and other throughout the year as well. [00:02:41] Sarah: Pretty sure it's an annual thing.And this is the 26th year. And just thinking about that is just mind blowing in and of itself. We'll get into this. I am sure. But in actually in the second episode, which I mentioned that I did publish today, I was listening to it today or yesterday. And I remember that I had mentioned in that second episode my hopes and dreams, like my wildest hopes and dreams for cop 26, what could possibly come out of it.And it doesn't sound like it's going that way. They still have two more days of. Conferencing. Oh yeah. I was going to say more about what it is. It's, the conference of the parties. So it's United nations, all of the countries in the United nations. It's what came, it's what brought forth the Paris agreement.So I believe it's all of the countries involved in the Paris agreement. And it's basically delegates negotiators who get together every year to discuss what the heck they're going to do about climate. And that's why I'm. So my mind is so boggled by thinking that it's the 26th year, but when you dive into the history of all of the conference of the parties it's a long kind of exhausting series of negotiations between the countries about forming agreements and treaties and all this stuff.Leading up to the Paris agreement. There were agreements that were going to go into place before the Paris agreement. And then usually it was the United States actually that pulled out. And then if the United States wasn't in a bunch of other big polluting countries would then pull out and the whole thing would fall apart.So it's really been kind of a shit show for many years. And most of that has been the United States as well. Including Donald Trump, pulling out of the Paris agreement and then bite and putting the us back in. And it's just, it's a humongous mess. It's a big mess. But I think most of us had high hopes that this time would be different because we don't have Trump in office anymore. We have fight in who put us into the Paris agreement again and has made some pretty big claims about intentions to do something about climate. And yeah, in the second episode I had said my biggest, most wildest far-reaching dreams would be for all of these countries to come together and make an agreement. About like a whole new economy that doesn't rely on growth because the global economy right now relies on 3% growth. We've talked about this before, which means the entire world has to produce and therefore pollute more 3% more every year, which means even if we transform our entire energy system to non-fossil fuel, renewable electricity energy, and get rid of fossil fuels completely the amount of minerals and water and just deforestation to even create that much renewable infrastructure.We have to do all of that again in about 30 or 40 years. And then again, in 30 or 40 years after that, like that 3% growth requires growth and energy growth in mining growth in deforestation growth in like a whole lot of destructive stuff. Okay. What we really need to do is for those countries to come together and renegotiate, that everybody knows everybody money.At this point, the 3% growth goes towards paying back those debts. When the economy is not growing, we go into a recession and debts, don't get paid and new jobs are not created and people get unemployed and it's just bad news. And that is all by design. So what we need is a different system that aims to reach a steady state.So we can just get off of fossil fuels, meet our needs and not grow anymore, not polluted anymore. Live within the bounds that this planet is physics require of us. Anyway, that was my big hopes and dreams. So that didn't, that doesn't look like it's going to happen. So where should we start?Mark? You've read some stuff. I've read some stuff. We're going to read some stuff online and get ourselves caught up and up to speed with what the heck is going on. [00:07:14] Marc: Yeah. I have no idea where to start. We could just break down exactly what you just shared in the last few minutes, and that could be the whole podcast right there.[00:07:21] Sarah: Have you checked out any bad articles or videos or anything like that? [00:07:25] Marc: Yeah, I've been trying to get a diverse set of sources on my feed and a variety of platforms. Social, obviously there's a lot of great Instagram accounts. I follow a ton of climate newsletters. For better or worse.I try to read some of them. I can. I know you and I earlier talked about the New York times comment forward had to an update on this latest deal that happened just earlier today. Wednesday, I guess us [00:07:52] Sarah: time. Yeah. And we're recording this Wednesday, November 10th. [00:07:56] Marc: Yeah. So a few hours old that piece of news came in and I'm trying to find my notes.[00:08:02] Sarah: Yeah. Let's dive into it to guess just to educate ourselves and I don't know anyone else. Cause I like as a designer, my whole life. We're usually pretty busy with the work that we're doing. In general design is pretty demanding of your focus and attention, and you kinda have to focus and attend to the projects that you're working on.And so it's hard to also pay attention to the things that are going on in the news. Like some of the, be more hardcore environmental activists do. So I imagine that a lot of the people who might be watching or listening to this are in the same boat as you and me and mark were like, we're interested in this stuff, but it's just like the amount of time and attention that we have to put towards it is very limited.So it's hard to keep up. [00:08:54] Marc: Yeah. I'm so behind on my climate stuff this last semester, last few months. [00:09:01] Sarah: Yeah. Do you want to start with the New York times? Yeah. [00:09:04] Marc: Yeah, no. I want to go back to this deal that was released earlier today. It's basically a draft and not a deal, a draft that urges countries to revisit and strengthen in the next year.Their plans for cutting planet warming, greenhouse gas emissions, the draft also urges nations to quote, accelerate the phasing out of coal and to stop subsidizing oil and gas. That's huge. If that actually does happen, [00:09:30] Sarah: that's [00:09:30] Marc: pretty good keyword if it actually does. [00:09:34] Sarah: So where are you reading this [00:09:35] Marc: from a New York times article that we mentioned earlier and it just refreshed, just I lost my [00:09:41] Sarah: place.I love it. When that happens. So what I have on my screen from the New York times is I guess I'll just share my screen here so that we can show some visuals while we're talking.Okay. We headline says what happened at cop 26 on Wednesday, China and USA say they'll enhance climate ambition. And just the wording of that, like who comes up with these things "enhance." And I love that it's in quotes. What does that mean? [00:10:10] Marc: Do you remember? One of the first video means years ago the enhance video.That's what it feels like, every time. I see that word, I think about going back to that main video of all the different clips and movies and TV shows of let's enhance that. [00:10:24] Sarah: Can we enhance that? And it zooms in on this really blurry pixelated piece of camera footage, and then you just I don't know, click a button or something in the artificial intelligence, makes it to super cool, clear through their movie magic, [00:10:38] Marc: it's like a nod to that, let's enhance the climate ambition, but that's how [00:10:43] Sarah: I read it.It's like a joke, right? Yeah. Seriously. Yeah. Enhanced climate ambition. And then the second word there, that's a joke is ambition. Is it just me or I read ambition as not action, like aims, like wishes [00:11:00] Marc: goals.[00:11:01] Sarah: Okay. Anyway the countries vow to do more, to cut greenhouse gases in a, an agreement that commits Beijing to addressing its methane emissions. Here's what you need to know. China and the U S say, they'll do more to cut emissions this decade, the working draft calls for a faster end to coal and tells countries to stop subsidizing oil and gas.That's the part that I do, [00:11:24] Marc: Yeah. That's, like I said, if it, that actually goes through, that'll be huge. [00:11:28] Sarah: And then there's something about sticking points. I don't really know what that means. Six big automakers and dozens of countries agree to phase out gas card sales. So that's actually pretty huge too.I clicked on one of those and it said some of them, I think I do have this open some of the car makers were saying, they're going to phase out gas car sales as early as 2025 or 2030. So that's really soon. Which means you won't be able to buy a gas car, at least from that car maker. And then it said something like the US was not involved.So any US car makers did not I don't know, like pulled out of that deal [00:12:04] Marc: or something and. Transportation secretary mayor, Pete, his response was more or less. We're going to focus on our own problems [00:12:12] Sarah: here at home. [00:12:13] Marc: That fuck dude, it's such a political. Yeah. It's such a political line. It's [00:12:18] Sarah: like this one wants to focus on saving lives rather than saving the planet.What do you think we're doing [00:12:24] Marc: exactly? [00:12:26] Sarah: Where do you think that these lives [00:12:27] Marc: live? And again, our climate crisis, the changing climate knows no borders. [00:12:34] Sarah: I think that these people do not understand what it is that we're actually dealing [00:12:39] Marc: with. I think they understand. I think that there's they have interests in other places.They have people, behind the scenes, urging them, pushing them towards certain, goals or ambitions or policy. [00:12:53] Sarah: Those things are true. And if you put something in terms of focus on saving lives, rather than saving the planet as if they are mutually exclusive. Sure. Yeah. I don't think you understand the situation.[00:13:08] Marc: Yeah. Again, that's a, we can talk about that next time we jump on. [00:13:12] Sarah: Yeah. I am just like making funny faces. I don't even know if my camera's up to speed yet. I'm just like looking at that, like.[00:13:19] Marc: yeah. So I think the two big things that you and I pulled out of that bulleted list, that summary Yeah. So the draft thing about phasing out coal and to stop subsidizing or like that, I think that's a huge push now again, whether or not that actually happens who goes first who's going to lead that part of the draft that is still yet to be determined.[00:13:41] Sarah: We both see the challenge of climate change as an essential and a severe one as two major powers in the world, China and the United States. We need to take our due responsibility and work together and work with others in the spirit of cooperation to address climate change. I like that too. Because I remember it, not that long ago, during the Trump administration, particularly there was a lot of delay ism or denialism of not doing any climate action.If China's not going to do it, or vice versa. And so now it's like China and the United States are coming both coming forward together and saying, it's our responsibility to do this, blah, blah, blah, which is a completely different tone, note that they've been singing than before. So that's, I think that's a good, that's a good thing, right?Like it's [00:14:32] Marc: progress. Yeah. You can't do much without China. [00:14:35] Sarah: Yeah. And to be fair, China has done a lot in the last, I don't know, even like 10 years as far as cutting back on coal, I believe. Yeah. And a lot of that is because the pollution, the air pollution, the air quality in some of the big cities where a lot of production is happening is, visibly and you can feel, you can smell it, you can see it, you can feel it.So they have that felt experience and motivation to cut back on all that air pollution.[00:15:07] Marc: So some other things that this article pulled out that happened today. Yesterday on Tuesday, speaking of yesterday the UN researchers released a report, same article Sarah. So I'm just still sticking with us. They released a report that found that under country's current pledges to reduce emissions, the earth is on track to warm by 2.5 degrees Celsius, 4.5 Fahrenheit.So if we just stick with what we're doing now, because every country thinks they're doing the best, we hear this all the time. Like we're doing all, we can, all the other people that are the naysayers, they're like we just can't switch over to renewables tomorrow. Like we need to, the status quo.If every country just sticks to the status quo, we are in big trouble. So it coming from the UN it wasn't new news, but it was like them saying, Hey, y'all seriously real talk. So I thought that was really interesting that report. It might have all this, but it's also one of those no shit.[00:16:06] Sarah: Yeah. The,I guess what I'm asking in my head about is the tangible actions that come from these things. So I'm looking at things like the document will be used as a template to strike a deal. Okay. Still a lack of firm deadlines and enforcement mechanisms. Is it all just empty words? It's really frustrating.[00:16:30] Marc: Yeah. And it's two weeks, right? The last day is November 12th. You can do a lot in two weeks, I'm sorry, but you could do a lot in two weeks. And if by day 10, right now they have frameworks, they have a template, they have whatever it is that you just shared out. Like really, and I know this is big heady, complicated stuff, but maybe the, maybe cops should be 30 days into a whole month or just lock everyone in a, not let them out, [00:17:01] Sarah: yeah. The original Bretton woods, the agreement where the countries and it wasn't all the countries, it was just like basically the UK and the United States and maybe a couple of other European countries where they decided that they were going to focus on an economy that grows 3% to repay each other for their debts from recovering, from world war II, basically.That was all hammered out in 10.[00:17:25] Marc: So if it took 10 days to create a system that more or less has destroyed the planet or is destroying the planet, we can spend 10 days cleaning up at least 10 days, [00:17:39] Sarah: yeah, [00:17:40] Marc: I want to pause you right there. I'm seeing your screen. I have this pulled up myself. Tensions have flared over what sorts of financial aid richer countries should give poorer ones to deal with the rising damage from heat waves, floods, droughts, and storms.And while there is broad agreement that most nations aren't cutting their greenhouse gas emissions quickly, there's far less consensus about how to get deeper reductions. It's that the first sentence there really stood out for me. And I was talking to Rachel about this not to get too hippy dippy for those who don't know, I live in San Francisco.Sometimes peace, love and happiness comes out in me and I'm all about it, but so cute, zooming out. I really do feel like as much as we're talking about cutting emissions, renewable energy, all that, climate stuff at the same time, I really do believe that we need to have a conversation around just being more kind and loving to one another, because all of this is going to take massive collaboration.There's going to be a lot of sacrifice. We have to really understand how humans work. And so with that, we need to really work on ourselves and our relationships with one another. So when I read that tensions flared over was it's like, all these countries have representative from every country, the rich ones, and the poor ones are in a room.And I can only imagine kind of their body language and just, if we had some fun with this, vision, you have the poor countries, trying to beg them, please give us, some help, please, do your part in. And the more richer countries are just like, nah, bro, we're good.Like how fucked up is that? If you see someone on the street that is in need of help, in a dire situation and their life depends on it, you're going to help them. And so I feel like I'm not trying to do a broad stroke of that. We don't care for one another and we don't share love with people and all that hippy-dippy stuff.I'm just wondering, how do we bring that into these types of conversations with politicians, with corporations? At the end of the day, they're all humans too, right? [00:19:37] Sarah: It's actually less hippy-dippy than all of that. Like the example that you said, if you see somebody on the street who's suffering and you're going to want to help them in that scenario.I think implicit is that person is suffering. And that suffering is unrelated to you in any way. Like you don't know that person, you have no relationship with that person. They're a stranger. There, there are scenarios completely separate from yours, but just human to human peace, love happiness.You want to reach out and help them because you're human, they're human. And you share that we have a common struggle and all that stuff. That's the peace, love and happiness angle. But the truth of the matter is in this situation, that person that you see on the street, who's suffering is your like employee.And you have profited off of their hard work and misery and suffering for 50 years or something. And now they're at a point where they need a little bit of I don't know, they need a loan. They're coming to you for a loan to. Expand their whatever facilities or production capabilities or whatever it is to modernize their production because they're sitting there, with bare feet in the mud making, whatever it is that you, their employer has, mandated that they make.So there's actually between these countries the richer countries and the poor ones. There is a relationship there. They're not in their own little bubbles and they act as if, oh, you're struggling. That's on you, bro. I'm good. I'm gonna keep holding onto the money that I've made because I did it better than you did.And that's just the way the cookie crumbles. But no, the truth of the matter is. The countries that are poor, have been providing resources, minerals, a lot of these raw materials that have then been manufactured into goods and sold for a profit by the richer countries. Like this whole planet is connected and the economy is global.And so they're not operating in a bubble. They're not poor because they just didn't manage to do their thing. The richer countries are richer because they got a head start on industrializing their economies, and then they Put a system together in like Bretton woods and further world bank stuff where the countries that were ahead of the industrialization game made the rules and they made the rules such that everything benefited them and not the poorer countries that still need to catch up.And so it's seeing one of your employees who you've been profiting off of on the street struggling and asking you for an advance on their payday loan or whatever. And you're saying, no, that's on you, bro. But thanks for all the hard work.So I don't think it's as hippy-dippy as you you make it, it's actually pretty [00:22:56] Marc: nasty. I like that. Diving deeper into their relationship. It's that last part of that first sentence that really stood out it's the fact that they're going to be the ones being affected by the things that they're not for one didn't create and second that they are not prepared for.And for me, that is just, again, I just go back to, we also need to have the same conversations around yeah. How do we work with one another. How do we put ourselves in situations that we can empathize more and we can start to develop Yeah, more connections with people that don't look like us so that we understand where they're coming from.And we perhaps might be able to change how we view them and the rest of the world. And maybe if we get more people to snap out of this individualistic me, my tribe kind of thing. The faster we can really, address this stuff because those people could bring their specific professional skills to the conversation.Like maybe some of the delay zone that's happening is because those people just don't know how to connect to the stuff on a more personal level. And then once they do, then perhaps they can join the team. Does that make sense? Like maybe we have to start personal first before we expect them to share their skills and talents.And in this in this fight, Yeah, [00:24:18] Sarah: I think there's also a bit of the Malthusian element in all [00:24:23] Marc: of this[00:24:24] Sarah: and all this. This is the part that we put in our becoming a climate designer course. And when, basically when I see an environmentalist or a piece of climate communication saying poorer communities are going to have to deal with harsher effects from climate change, when they had much less like responsibility for creating the problem in the first case and the environmentalist or the piece of climate communication saying this means, wow, isn't that fair?In the spirit of fairness or. Our shared humanity and just like ethics and what's good and justice, we shouldn't allow that to happen. But when you look at it from a Malthusian theory, point of view, Malthus basically said, if you help the poor, you're just going to get more poor. And it's a moral failing.He was a Christian, Reverend, this was in the 1890s or whatever. And good old Christianity teaches us that. I dunno, somehow this, wasn't originally Christianity, but somehow it got twisted into something like this, where if you're poor it's because you've sinned and this is your moral punishment for your failings as a Christian or whatever which is, it's just awful. But basically what that means is if you empathize with somebody with a Malthusian point of view and you listened to that statement of the poor will feel the effects of climate change more than the rich, it sounds like more judgment being rained down upon you by God for your sins.And the the judgment of the rich is that they get to avoid some of those effects of climate change and everything is the way that it should be. And we don't need to change a thing. It is the exact opposite. Then how the environmentalist's or the climate communicators want people to take it. And so they hear that I think it's the same thing that happened during COVID.Everybody was like, oh my God, let's, deal with COVID until statistics started coming out that lower income communities and people of color were dying from COVID at higher rates than white people and affluent communities. And it was like the next week we saw Karen out on the street protesting against lockdown in America and people going to church and not masking and saying, I am protected by Jesus's blood or whatever.Like they literally thought they were immune because of. Religion or something because they were white. I just you have to try to empathize with this point of view, even though it's madness and realize that the communication that you're putting out there about oh, this is unjust. This is unfair is actually backfiring against certain people or in the minds of certain people.[00:27:40] Marc: And I think it also shows otherism. Yeah, in it's full form. [00:27:46] Sarah: That is absolutely other ism. And you know what? I still have some more research to do, but I saw something today that apparently the whole concept of race was invented by the Portuguese in the 14 hundreds to justify slavery. So like this stuff goes way back, [00:28:03] Marc: re we've talked about this.I don't want to get into it because it's a different topic, but there's a great documentary that I really need to rewatch. I saw this a few months ago and next time around, I'm going to sit and take notes. Exterminate all the brutes it's on HBO. I've told you to sign me, Sarah, just to get like a two week trial and just watch that.And we can watch other things too, but highly recommend everyone who's watching and listening to. If you have HBO max, or if you don't ,sign up for the free trial, highly recommend it. It's a, it's an amazing four-part documentary. Where Raoul Peck an amazing documentary filmmaker decades experience his latest documentary before this was, I'm not your Negro, which rave reviews.He basically goes on a quest to to go and seek out the root, the roots of racism on a global, at a global scale. I really do wish you all were able to yeah. See it and bring your thoughts and ideas to these these Twitch sessions. We'd love to hear them. I think we might be having some technical difficulties. Sarah, are you there? [00:29:10] Sarah: I'm here. Can you hear me? Can you see me? Oh, [00:29:14] Marc: okay. Your video is super slow. So I didn't know if you were trying to talk over me anyway. Yeah. So what were we talking about? Yeah the Portuguese comment that you made, Sarah, it's mentioned in that documentary and I think you're right.So it was basically made up to yeah. Create the idea that we are superior towards another, group of people that don't look like us. [00:29:37] Sarah: . One thing that I read that really struck me. I know that we're on a tangent right now, but bear with us because I think it's interesting. It was, talking about Columbus and he was an idiot, but he was what contracted by Spain, the king and queen of Spain to go and do his little thing.And his little voyage. And he landed in, I think The Bahamas and basically claimed that for Spain. So The Bahamas were then claimed as a Spanish colony and then he grabbed a bunch of indigenous people that he encountered, brought them back to the king and queen of Spain as a gift, as potential slaves, basically.And the queen of Spain clutched, her pearls or whatever, and said, these are Spanish citizens. This is disgusting. So since they had claimed The Bahamas as a colony of Spain, they no longer saw the people from that place as others. And so therefore could not be enslaved. It's just arbitrary, I don't know if the king and queen of Spain sign a deal with the king and queen of France or whatever.And now The Bahamas are not a colony of Spain. And so then they could be enslaved. I dunno, it's just, it just feels very arbitrary to me and ridiculous. Like people are, people just shut up [00:30:56] Marc: and very not to put this lightly. I know there's tons of history and unfortunately millions of people have died because of this idea, but it's also very made up.Yeah, exactly. And this goes to show that everything in life has been invented at some point in time in some form or another. And so this idea was invented, but even Hey, we should write up a draft an agreement and we both should sign it saying that these people should be, it's so if they just have the thought to make it up and do that, then we can have other things that we can make up and counter that to to invite.Yeah. I just, I go back to this often, everything in life is invented and if more and more people saw that and realize that I feel like it'll spark so many new thoughts and ideas and questions and visions of the future, because once people realize that everything that is around them, that laptop, the iPhone the idea of a job everything in life it's invented.If that's the case, then let's start imagining what's possible. Let's invent new things that, as I mentioned, just counter the old stuff. Yeah. I don't know, again, living in San Francisco, man, [00:32:09] Sarah: No, it's real. And I think it was Antoinette Carroll, who said everything that you see around you has been designed and that means that it can be redesigned.Same idea. Yeah. I want to share another thing if I may, did you have something on [00:32:23] Marc: that note though? No, I have a new topic that go ahead. [00:32:27] Sarah: I also came across this article in rolling stone. And it starts out. It's mostly about Obama's speech. People were talking a little bit about Obama's speech and it's pretty hard hitting and pretty real talk.So kudos to Jeff Goodell, whoever you are. I like what you did here. I see what you did here. And I like it. So if you go through this article, he's talking about president Obama arrived at the climate conference in Glasgow, like a spirit from another time he wore a black suit gray shirt, tie, as a crowd of star struck delegates, parted, like holy water around him.They all remembered the happy days with the Paris climate agreement in 2015, when he was the President and Donald Trump was just an orange haired has been reality TV star (he's orange skinned, by the way, yellow haired anyway). And there was for a brief moment, hope that humankind would take dramatic action on the crisis that was threatening the future of civilization.Seeing Obama walking up to the podium to give his speech was reminder of a better time, one delegate emailed me. So right here, there's he's setting up the dichotomy that I think. I don't know. I don't know if you're aware of, but I've been noticing where people who are like vote blue all the way and just like 100% Democrats.Yes. Love Obama, right? And of course Republicans hate him. But. People who are even further left than that, which confuses centrists and Republicans, because they think that the Democrat party line is the left, but environmental activists and the most of them were pretty excited about Obama when he was very first elected.And then he had the really difficult job of having to recover from the recession that he inherited and Chose Obamacare as his thing instead of climate. And, that was his legacy basically. He did take some good actions on climate, but he just didn't do what environmentalist were hoping for.And he's a really good speaker. He does really good talk. But for most of us, the actions just weren't there and we became very disillusioned on Obama and really like I've even seen some activists go to the point of when Obama gets involved. It's the whole thing is ruined because he does such a good job of putting a shiny bow on things with his talk and his words that people stop being impassioned about action, because they think that it's been taken care of because he's just that good at speaking, but not actually doing things. So anyway talks about the speech but the heart of his remarks were targeted at young climate activists. He urged them not to give up on politics. You don't have to like it, but you can't ignore it. He told them it was important to reach out to people who are skeptical about the urgency of the climate crisis. It will not be enough to simply mobilize the converted.It will not be enough to preach to the choir. He acknowledged the generational divide between himself and young activists. You were right to be frustrated folks in my generation have not done enough to deal with potential cataclysmic problem that you now stand to inherit. That's an understatement. I want you to stay angry. I want you to stay frustrated, blah, blah, blah. Gird yourself for a marathon, not a sprint.[00:35:39] Marc: Okay. A lot of what you were highlighting, some of his quotes is very much pointing the finger at the crowd is telling them to do this or like this and this. And when in reality, what really needs to happen is that he turns around and walks into these big corporate conference rooms and actually makes the people that are doing the work, destroying the planet making them change their ways.It's, that's a great example of someone who like what you said in, Obama. Sure. He sucked a lot less than a lot of other presidents, but he still had his at his shit. And it's just another example of politicians those. In and around and from DC, that just, it's all lip service, they deflect, they have the shiny object in their hand over there, so we can all look at it while on the other side of them, behind them.The work is still being done. [00:36:34] Sarah: Yeah. So I really liked this part. We're now in the post speech era of the climate crisis, where words don't matter to the people who matter. You don't want to words anymore. I actually want you to do shit. [00:36:48] Marc: Did you see Greta Thunberg'sspeech? [00:36:52] Sarah: No, but he does go into that here as well. Do you have a link to it? Is it on video somewhere? We can show it. So then he quotes some, activists about what they thought of his speech. I thought president Obama's speech was out of date, to be honest. This was the speech Obama should have given back at cop 15 in Copenhagen in 2009, a dozen years later. So back to what we were saying at the beginning, like seriously at 26 years of this shit it's too late to be vague about why we're failing.Yeah.[00:37:22] Marc: Yeah. I will say I'm interacting with a lot of millennials or no, not millennials. What are they? Zoomers zoom people. Gen Z gen Z. Hold on[00:37:33] Sarah: yeah. So this activist executive director of the sunrise movement, listening to Obama speech, I was reminded of all the broken promises made by leaders in America concerning the climate crisis.Young and marginalized communities have been betrayed again and again by leaders failing to meet the moment that we're in a climate crisis that is destroying our homes, communities, and futures. This is real like the material conditions that are happening are real. We don't need words to say that we're working on it.We don't need anyone to tell us this is a marathon, not a sprint. We need real material conditions to change. [00:38:09] Marc: Yeah. And I was just going to say, the. Young kids, they can smell bullshit a mile away. Yeah. They can call out people. They have no problem calling out people, they demand transparency.They demand authenticity. They demand people be real and authentic. And if you're not man, they can, they're like a shark when they, get a scent of blood a mile away, [00:38:32] Sarah: cause we've all been bullshitted for 20 years. I love this one just before Obama took the stage Dominca Lasota, a 19 year old Polish activists tweeted a picture of activists holding up signs that said, show us the money. Lasota wrote nice words about the climate crisis without action mean nothing. $100 billion for climate finance is still missing. Show us the money, not empty climate concern, so that persons 19, and they are very aware of what actually needs to be done.They're making real legitimate demands. Yeah, it's it's a much different story than the save the planet activists of the seventies. You know what I mean? [00:39:16] Marc: Very different. I do have that clip of Gretta pulled up. If you want to pause real quick and do that. Let's do it. I won't play the whole thing, but you'll get the gist[00:39:26] Sarah: politically. Correct. Green act, bunny hugging or blah, blah, blah. Build back better. Blah, blah, blah. Green economy. Blah-blah-blah net zero by 2050, blah, blah, blah.net zero by 2050, blah, blah, blah, net zero. Blah-blah-blah climate neutral. Blah-blah-blahthis is all we hear from our leaders. Words. That sound great, but so far has led to no action, our hopes and dreams drown in their empty words. Of course, we need constructive dialogue, but they've now had 30 years of blah-blah-blah and where has that led us? But of course we can still turn this around.It is entirely possible. It will take drastic annual emission cuts, unlike anything the world has ever seen. And as we don't have the technological solutions that alone can deliver anything close to that means we will have to change. We can no longer let the people in power decide what is politically possible or not.We can no longer let the people in power decide what hope is. Hope is not passive hope is not a blah-blah-blah hope is telling the truth. Hope is taking action and hope always comes from the people. Wasn't that kind of Obama's message. When he first ran for election was, hope and that coming from the people. Yeah. Yeah. What happened [00:40:55] Marc: to that guy? The person in the rolling stone article said, it sounded as if Obama should've made the speech back in 2009, soone, one last thing I'll bring up before we close out another little tidbit from cop 26. I don't know if you've seen this Sarah more than 500 lobbyists from over 100 fossil fuel companies are in Glasgow.Okay, your video's delayed. So I can't see if that was a sarcastic face or not. There are more obvious, there are more fossil fuel lobbyists at cup 26. Then there are delegates from Puerto Rico, Myanmar Haiti and the Philippines, Mozambique, The Bahamas, Bangladesh and Pakistan combined, and more than double the official indigenous consultancy that consultancy.See that isn't that crazy? That is wild. And last time we chatted, last time we did this, we talked about trust. [00:41:49] Sarah: Like it definitely shows who these negotiations are for. Yeah. Yeah. A little bit more quoting from the rolling stone article. That's I think related to what you're talking about. To activists in the streets what's happening in the conference center is theater. Many are asking what it'll take for people in power to wake up Gretta set an SBH, but let's be clear.They're already awake. They know exactly what they're doing. They know exactly what priceless values they're sacrificing to maintain business. As usual timber pointed out that the fossil fuel industry delegation at the Glasgow conference was bigger than the delegation of any single nation she tweeted.I don't know about you, but I sure am not comfortable with having some of the world's biggest villains influencing and dictating the fate of the world. And then it says other activists were even more cutting inside that conference of polluters. The climate criminals are hiding behind barbed wire and fences and lines of police.We're not going to accept their suicide pact. So I find that really, yeah, cutting and really telling, it's supposed to be the conference of the parties where like everybody negotiates, who's a party to this thing, but it's now being known among the activists as the conference of polluters. It's a conference of climate criminals. [00:43:21] Marc: Conference of the puppets. [00:43:23] Sarah: Yeah. Their suicide pact. And most of them, the generational divide and the age divide is really obvious where most of the people who are inside cop 26 are in their sixties.And most of the people outside marching are, like average age, 20 years old. Yeah. [00:43:43] Marc: Yeah. They're going down in a blaze of glory, they're not going to be around to see the devastation. So they're getting. Yeah they're just gonna coast until their time is up and, just say, fuck it.Sorry, fam. Yeah. [00:43:57] Sarah: So I'm no longer hanging my hopes on anything really beneficial coming from cop 26. [00:44:03] Marc: And I was talking to someone the other day about cop and, I've always said this and I've always had this train of thought even before the climate space, but I've never held my breath for anything coming out of DC or any other state Capitol, or I don't put all my eggs in that one basket.And I think there's at least in the U S a very long track record. If you do the research that shows you why you should think the same, because. Politicians are in bed with corporations. And when it's in spaces like this, where they're literally affecting the atmosphere of our planet to while extracting resources, to put more profit into their bank accounts, and they know that they're doing that, it's just crazy.And then they have the puppets who are elected, who should be working for us, but not really. They have those puppets pulling the levers and writing the policy and doing their little squiggly stuff around all these slimy other politicians to get their take on or to get theirs, they're just working for them.And so I think we really need to, this goes back to my earlier comment. I think we really need to focus on, communities and more at the local level, not to say that our local, that bumper sticker back in the day, think global act local. Yup. Yeah. Like I remember when I saw that as a kid, as a teenager, I was like, huh, that's interesting.And I never really got it until much later in life. And I was like I understood the power of that mindset of really having a worldview, doing what you can for the people around you, because if everyone thought that way and did that, then we can really talk about massive positive change.And so I really do feel like we need to work on us as individuals. We need to start understanding one another and seeing people for who they really are outside of their skin, color, political beliefs, whatever. Like we really got to get on that level because that's how change actually happens. Like we talk about drafts and agreements and deals and policies, whatever, but people.Human beings on the, or on the other end of that. And yeah, I don't know. I just, we need to focus on the world around us and if we can get more people to buy into that and show them their place in that future world, I think we really do have a shot. Of course we'd still need government too.So that's the thing, like as much as I want to put energy and focus on us to, to inspire people to, March up the streets and bang their fists on the doors of these large corporations that are polluting the planet. We also still at the same time do in fact need governments to contribute in some way they don't have to do all of it.And I don't think they should, but I really do think that we can't do this without them. So how do we do both? How do we do that while at the same, also at the same time really. Change the makeup of those people that would be attending COP that should actually be attending COP. [00:47:04] Sarah: Yeah, I think, the way that I would answer that and it's a non-answer, but it's something along the lines of building.Building not building back better, but like building better infrastructure wherever we are. And what I mean by that is maybe looking at our local community and I don't know, encouraging community gardening or growing food for each other, finding ways to distribute money or food or needs to your neighbors.You know what I mean? Finding some way to start building some kind of infrastructure in your local community, because relying on the government to take care of us is just not where it's at anymore. And whether that's volunteering for food, not bombs or, even meals on wheels. I don't know something, but like looking out for each other and. Building co-ops and building communities and designing systems where we have power as a group, as a community, instead of just staying with the status quo, like to me, it's just whatever you create, wherever you go to work, whatever you work for, make sure that it's building. Something that shifts the power from me and my family to us and our community.[00:48:19] Marc: And I'm really glad that you've used that, the food example in that, I think, on a more practical level, look at just what we're experiencing with our global supply chain, look at what's going to happen when wildfires destroyed parts of the interstate or flooding or whatever.We're really whether we like it or not, we really are going to need to do that just because, we can't rely on these, semi-trucks deliver our food, halfway or all the way across the country. Like we, we need to be at that local level because it's, shit's gonna hit the fan and we really do need to rely on each other.If we were. To survive. [00:48:54] Sarah: Yep. I think it's time to start moving into, we live in a failed state mode. And if you start, preparing for that now and getting ahead, When the shit hits the fan, as you say we have the things in place. We know where to go in case of emergency. If we need food or we need firewood to keep ourselves warm, or if we need to get out an emergency message or, think about all the stuff that the preppers, my God, I can't believe I'm saying this.Like it has been saying for years and start doing some of that stuff, start stockpiling and stop relying on the government to take care of us because they just can't respond quickly enough to the crises that are going to start happening. And when they do start happening, the government will start enacting change, but it's just going to be too slow and it's not going to save us.It's going to be reactionary instead of proactive. And so I think we all need to get proactive and start taking care of each other and start building things that work. And then when you build things that work, sometimes the government looks at that and says, oh, let's just use that and start putting money towards it.[00:50:06] Marc: Sometimes that works. Yeah. It's it's learning how to be resilient while we learn to adapt, like it's cause we're going to have to adapt, even if everything at COP happens tomorrow, all the positive things that everyone hopes for, we're still decades out.We're not going to see the effects of all the awesomeness for a good while. Yeah. [00:50:28] Sarah: It's all so much just talk and urges. And I don't know vows, there's nothing like real in it. [00:50:35] Marc: So adapting to what's to come, I think is going to be key, which is also not really part of this conversation. Yes, there's climate adaptation, books and organizations, videos, and articles and all that stuff.I definitely read them, but it's looked down upon because of people don't want to admit that they're going to be walking into this mess. I think it's, of course we all want to hope for solving it, but again, that's going to take time. So there's that like limbo state, right?There's that awkward period that we no doubt will enter and for, and we don't know how long and sooner we're in it. Yes. [00:51:09] Sarah: Yes. Like I was like I said, at the beginning, I was hinting that declaration on what comes out of cop 26. Cause this is the moment where we need like really big action and I don't see that happen.[00:51:20] Marc: Yeah. Everyone was saying that this is the time and this is the cop. If it's not this just not going [00:51:25] Sarah: to happen, like it's going to be lagging behind, is what I don't think, I don't think literally nothing is going to happen, but it's not going to happen fast enough. So we need to look out for each other now.Yeah. So I'm, mentally shifting into more of that adaptation mode, more of that build the better world on our own from the grassroots up mode, instead of demanding, like I think we still need to demand from the government, what we want from them. And we need to be very clear about what that is.I'm still very annoyed at activists who just demand climate action. I would rather, they start putting together real action plans and say, do this and this. Or we demand this, and get very specific But yeah, I think we really need to focus on taking care of each other and taking care of our basic needs.And trying to build systems mutual aid ways that we can make sure that the most, especially the most marginalized people, who are thought of as disposable by the people in power, we need to start looking out for them. So if you happen to be white, like me or white presenting, like Marc notice that is a place of privilege and use that privilege to stand up for and protect people who are marginalized and thought of as disposable by our politicians and who think that, their lives don't matter.Like it's awful. And if they're not going to do it, somebody has to we have to take care of each other.[00:53:00] Marc: Yeah, I really want to build a campfire right now and get some people together and sing kumbaya.[00:53:07] Sarah: Ah, I think that's a note to leave it on. I don't know if it's a good note, but it's a note [00:53:12] Marc: singing kumbaya. The younger listeners even know [00:53:16] Sarah: what that mean because gen Z have kumbaya. Do they have a gen Z version of kumbaya? What's that? I [00:53:21] Marc: don't even know. I love to know that [00:53:23] Sarah: gen Z listeners, please let us know what does kumbaya mean to you.If anything, [00:53:28] Marc: I'll have to ask my students, what is [00:53:31] Sarah: the gen Z equivalent of kumbaya? [00:53:34] Marc: Love it. Maybe that's our homework. Maybe we look it up [00:53:38] Sarah: so much to learn so much. All right. Thanks for hanging out, Marc. This has been real as always. All right. Talk to you later. Bye. Bye.

In this bonus episode, Areej and Sarah get together to chat about stand-out episodes, what Google did good and bad this year, and predictions for SEO in 2022. Thanks to all of our guest speakers, sponsors, and listeners - we wouldn't have the #WTSPodcast without you. Roll on Season 4 in 2022! Stand out episodes: https://wtspodcast.captivate.fm/episode/imposter-syndrome-kristie-plantiga (Kristie Plantinga) https://wtspodcast.captivate.fm/episode/the-one-where-we-discuss-creating-content-for-both-search-engines-humans-with-abby-reimer (Abby Reimer) https://wtspodcast.captivate.fm/episode/ethics-disinformation-jamie-indigo (Jamie Indigo) https://wtspodcast.captivate.fm/episode/forecasting-seo-miracle-inameti-archibong (Miracle Inameti-Archibong) https://wtspodcast.captivate.fm/episode/xml-sitemaps-michelle-race (Michelle Race) https://wtspodcast.captivate.fm/episode/large-scale-website-migrations-katherine-ong (Katherine Ong) https://wtspodcast.captivate.fm/episode/discuss-relevancy-digital-pr-beth-nunington (Beth Nunnington) https://wtspodcast.captivate.fm/episode/the-one-where-we-discuss-ecommerce-seo (Laura Brady) Shoutout to 2021 sponsors: https://www.deepcrawl.com/ (Deepcrawl) https://www.mediasesh.com/ (MediaSesh) https://thisisnovos.com/ (Novos) https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/ (Screaming Frog) https://www.wincher.com/ (Wincher) --- Episode transcript Areej: Hey everyone, welcome to today's bonus episode of the Women in Tech SEO podcast. I am super excited to be here, joined by my awesome co-host Sarah.  Hey Sarah! Sarah: Hello, this feels like we've not done this in a long time, isn't it? Areej: I know. I know. I'm really excited. I love that you bought up this idea a few weeks ago, of us doing an end-of-year bonus episode for everyone. Sarah: Yes, I thought it would be a cool idea just to do a bit of a recap and also record a podcast with you because yes, I said, it's just good to spend some time with you on the podcast. Areej: Oh yes, absolutely love that. I can't even believe it's December already, and we launched this podcast in April. I think we started talking about it in January or February, so definitely at the very beginning of the year. Sarah: Yes, definitely and we've done and dusted season three and we're going into season four and I'm just like, how? Where has that time gone? I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed myself because I don't know about you, but every time I get to speak to an amazing individual in the industry and pick their brains, it's awesome, isn't it? Areej: Yes, I completely agree. I can't believe the calibre of guests we've had throughout, we've had so some brilliant women come on board and we've just discussed all topics as well. Sarah: Yes, and I think that's key, isn't it? The number of varied topics that we've covered. I suppose that leads us into my first question, the first topic that I thought we could go into, where we discuss our standout episodes from our last seasons. Now I know this is going to be very hard, and I don't know about you, but I was going through all the episodes and I was, "How do I pick this? I just want to pick them all," but I have managed to whittle down to three. How about you? Areej: Oh yes, I found it impossible. I thought it was so difficult, to be honest. I went through a lot of them and because also, we've been listeners to some and then we've been hosts to others, which I think might make us a little bit biased as well. I'm happy to try my best and give it a go. Maybe you can start with saying one, you've absolutely loved and I can try to follow. Sarah: The first one that I picked out, was Kristie Plantinga who discussed imposter syndrome. Now, the reason why I picked this one out was that this topic was so-- it's such a passion area of mine. I think all of us, or most of us feel imposter syndrome, not just in SEO, but in work in general. It was just such a great episode because we were discussing it all and...

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.

Jamie is a technical SEO best known for taming JavaScript frameworks like Angular and React, helping websites share information with humans by improving how search engines crawl, render, and index. In this week's episode, Jamie discusses ethics and disinformation surrounding not just SEO but the internet as a whole, covering topics such as who's responsible, why it's an issue, ways to tackle these challenges and much more. We also find out what inspires Jamie, challenges she has faced as a women in the industry and what empowers her to be the brilliant women she is today. Where to find Jamie Twitter: https://twitter.com/jammer_volts LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-indigo/ Website: https://not-a-robot.com/ --- Transcript Sarah: Hello, and a very warm welcome to the Women in Tech SEO podcast, where your hosts are myself, Sarah McDowell, podcaster, and SEO content executive at Holland and Barrett. And they absolutely wonderful, Areej AbuAli, who is an SEO Consultant and founder of Women in Tech SEO. WTSPodcast is your weekly podcast for all things SEO related guest, starring brilliant women in the industry.  Hello! How are we doing? Areej: Yeah. Good. Thanks. Super excited to be here today. Sarah: Yes. It's the first one. How are you feeling about it? Areej: Yeah, I'm feeling good. I'm really excited. I'm in great company. I've got you. I've got Jamie. So looking forward to it. Sarah: Ah, there you go. You've done like a subtle little hint there about introducing our first guest on the show. So yes, we have with this for our very first Women in Tech SEO podcast, Jamie Indigo, who is a technical SEO best known for teaming unruly JavaScript frameworks like angular and react. She helps websites share information with humans by improving how search engines crawl, render and index. A very warm welcome to the show Jamie! Jamie: Thank you so much. It's an absolute pleasure to be here with two of my favorite humans, part of my favorite community. Areej: It's so good to have you, Jamie. I'm sure that a lot of people who are listening already know a lot about you and about how awesome you are, but we would love to hear a little bit about you from you. Jamie: Oh, me for me. Well, that's exciting. Well, I'm not a robot, but I speak bots and that's pretty important. Because my focus is as an SEO so niche that I don't understand how rankings work and I'm too afraid to ask, but really it's focusing on the rendering process. Everything from how Googlebot fetches content to, you know, response codes, we're giving a look at the log files and see where those resource requests are going. And when it goes into the web rendering engine, how is that executed? Where the contents available at two, we have a whole sneaky set of your eyes that no one expected to exist. The cannibalize, our world. You'd be surprised a lot of cannibals heading out there. Sarah: Wonderful, wonderful. Something we used to do with SEO SAS was with each of our guests. We do like a quick fire round of silly questions. How are you feeling about that?  Jamie: I love silly questions. Yay.  Sarah: Okay. So there's six in total and I literally just want you to like clear your mind and just answer the first answer that comes to your head.  All right, let's do this question. Number one. Can you share food? Jamie: Yes. Sarah: Something that spiky Jamie: Porcupine. Sarah: They are very spiky. Are you a tidy person?  Jamie: Absolutely not.  Sarah: Ah, they say the best creative people are untidy. I swear. I've read that somewhere. When coming in, do you stay within the lines? Jamie: Hm, no. I'm a big fan of coloring books, and that inherently involves some new lines. Sarah: And final question if it's a hot day, what drink are you craving?  Jamie: Oh, water. Sarah: Just water?  Jamie: Yeah, I want to stay hydrated. Sarah: You don't want anything in your water? Like a bit of lime or sparkling...

Have YOU heard of little c antibodies? Sarah gives us information and inspiration as she shares her story with this rare condition. She fought for the redemptive home birth of her dreams while caring for herself and taking the highest precautions for her baby. Sarah built the supportive birth team she didn't have the first time around and made birthing choices that helped her feel the most in control. Her HBAC with a nuchal hand was a whirlwind and a story we know you'll love!Additional linksThe VBAC Link on InstagramHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsMamasteFit Childbirth EducationFull transcriptNote: All transcripts are edited to correct grammar, false starts, and filler words. Julie: Welcome to The VBAC Link podcast. This is Julie and Meagan here with you today and we are really excited about our guest today. I was just reading her bio, and then I was reading a little bit about her and her births, and then I had this “Aha!” moment. I am like, “Wait a minute. Are you the one that we were talking to before you had your baby?” And she was like, “Yes, I was.”And so, we have this really fun story, kind of a little established relationship I guess, before the birth and after the birth. It is always fun to be able to talk to people that have reached out to us before they have their baby and then hear from them after they have their baby. I am so excited to hear the full story.But before I tell you what made her story stand out to me, I'm going to read a little bit of her bio that I thought was really cute. If you can hear my three-year-old in the background, she escaped from quarantine upstairs. My husband will come down soon and rescue me from her.But Sarah‘s bio is really, really cute. She said she is a working mom of two tiny humans and two not-so-tiny cats. She has a quirky sense of humor and an affinity for superhero movies. That's where I was like, “Okay.” We have got to talk about this because superhero movies-- I really love superhero movies now, but before I got married, I didn't even know the difference between Batman and Superman. Now I know and I have a very strong opinion about Batman. We won't go into that though. But I married a geek and he is all about the superheroes, and the comic books, and everything. And so, I've come to really love the superhero movies and all of those things. It's a sentimental part of my life. So that made me really happy. She's part of the American Sign Language community. Her oldest is hard of hearing, so everybody in her family is learning American Sign Language. That is really neat. When I was younger, I was obsessed with sign language. I went to a class and I had a book I was learning and teaching my brother and sister how to do all the signs and stuff like that, but I haven't done any of that for-- oh my gosh, it has been way more than 20 years which really makes me feel old to say that. But anyway, the part of her story that-- actually, before we do that, should we do a Review of the Week, Meagan?Review of the WeekMeagan: Sure. Sure.Julie: Yeah. Let's do a Review of the Week and then we will talk about the part of her story that made me excited. Yeah, go ahead.Meagan: OK. This is from Jacqueline Lee and she was on Instagram. She said, “Just found you and will be keeping you. Hoping to VBAC with our second babe whenever they come along. I would love to share my stories when that time comes. I have been listening to your podcast and love how informative and diverse they are. Our first was born in Paraguay when we were teaching. She was breech and so I had a C-section. Hoping for a vertex baby to be able to have a VBAC, but I did labor with our first until an 8. It was a wild story full of funny cultural differences and language barriers.”I love that. I remember when she wrote us that we were like, “Oh, you're so sweet. Can we put you on our review?” And she was like, “Yes, please do.” We are so excited that she was able to share her review and we hope that when the time comes, she will be able to rock her VBAC and have an amazing story and then hopefully, one day, be on the podcast as well.Julie: That's awesome. I am excited. It just makes me happy when people come full circle and share they were listening to the podcast and then share their stories on the podcast. That is fun because we have been doing this VBAC Link thing for-- oh my gosh, it will be three years in May. It's really fun because when we first started out, I was literally stalking hashtags on Instagram to find people who had a VBAC to share their stories on the podcast. Now we have way more submissions than we can even record. And to have people who started out with us before they even got pregnant and listening to the podcast, and taking our courses, and sharing their story, it all is just really exciting to me.Sarah's storyJulie: All right. Let me tell you. This is the thing that you have all been waiting for. I know you have been holding your breath for the last few minutes just waiting to see what could possibly get me so excited about her story. And it's little c antibodies. If you don't know what that means, you are not the only one because Sarah reached out to us on Instagram Messenger, I think it was, asking if we had heard of any VBAC stories or VBAC information about how to VBAC with little c antibodies and Maegan and I were like, “What are little c antibodies?”Meagan: Yeah. I remember because I thought, “Isn't there a big C?”Julie: Yeah. Big C and little c. Meagan: But I've only heard of big.Julie: And we are like, “Is that a capital? Is that like a capitalized? What is a big C? What is a little c?” So we dug in and we found some research on it. It's really an interesting thing because it's not something that you hear about very often, but we are going to learn a lot about it in this episode. And before I go any more into telling how excited I am to hear the story, we should probably actually hear the story. So Sarah, why don't you go ahead and share your stories with us?Sarah: Hello. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. So obviously, being a VBAC mom, I had a first child that was born via Cesarean. She was supposed to be a birth center baby and I was just having all kinds of trouble with back labor and not being able to cope with everything. I don't think I did as well preparing for her birth and it was a lot. I felt very overwhelmed and I think my husband was doing the best he could, but looking back, I keep saying, I really wish I would've had some doula support there. I think that's one of my biggest regrets. I actually ended up transferring to the birth center about halfway through my pregnancy because I knew I wanted something that was a little bit less hospital-y. Hospitals make me nervous and it's just kind of how I am. Unfortunately, I did make that call. I think it was one of those 2:00 a.m., overwhelmed, not dilating any, and then going to the hospital. It was a lot.So I labored pretty much all day. I got an epidural and then I didn't have a very great supportive doctor. He just came in and he was like, “Oh, this is what we are going to do” and “Oh, I broke your water by the way. It already happened.” So just not a lot of consent. Things like that that I know now that I want and need as a mom, and as a mom in labor for sure. Once it came down to it, I think I pushed for about three hours and the doctor was like, “Well, baby is stuck. We are going to do a C-section now.” I didn't get a whole lot of information about what that meant or what that would mean for me moving forward. It was just kind of happening in that moment.I even remember the anesthesiologist. God bless her. She was amazing. She was the only person that was walking me through what was going on, helping me stay calm, and she goes, “Well, the doc is going to put some pressure to make sure you are numb.” And the doc goes, “Oh, I've already started cutting.” So like I said, I just didn't have a really great experience with my first being born. And then on top of that coming home, I didn't know how to care for myself postpartum. We had a lot of family stuff going on so I didn't have any family support, and then I ended up developing both postpartum anxiety and postpartum depression that went undiagnosed for probably about three months before I realized that I needed to start reaching out and getting help.As a result of that, I started looking around-- so that was about five years ago. I started looking around to the birth community as a whole to see what information was out there. I found out what a VBAC was and that's how I found you guys. It was just in the process of finding out what my resources were. Moving forward to the start of the pandemic last year. I found out I was pregnant and then a few days after that, my work went to remote, so I was working from home in my first trimester with a four-year-old. It was nonsense. It was about as fun as it sounds. I always say, “I love my kid and I love my job, but I do not like it when they go together.”So I knew I wanted to find a different kind of provider. I started looking around in my area and I found a midwife that would support a home birth. One of my first questions to her was, “Do you support VBACs?” She said, “Absolutely.” And she said it just like that. “Absolutely.” We had a wonderful conversation just talking me through how many VBACs she has been a part of through the years. A lot of my first visits were on the phone and everything was weird and everybody was working remote. I told her I was concerned because I had a couple of miscarriages and she was like, “No problem. We can be proactive and let's monitor your blood levels.” During one of those first rounds of bloodwork, we found out about the little c antibodies. I almost immediately called her and I am like, “What is this? Does this mean I can't have my home birth? Am I going to have to go back to the hospital?” Honestly, I was kind of freaking out and she said, “Listen. Let me do some homework and we are going to see what that means.”She decided that we wanted to make sure we were checking on this very well. So I drove-- I am down in Fort Myers. I drove up to Tampa General and that is about a 3-3.5 hour drive and I talked to a specialist. So she is a geneticist. I don't know. She does stuff with blood work. So I sat down with this lady and she is going through it. The best way that I can describe what she was trying to tell me is, “Your blood cells have different facets on them kind of like a diamond. It's similar to the Rh. Normally when we hear about blood stuff and a pregnant mama, it is that Rh factor. So that, we have heard of. That is fine, but this is a different part of that same cell, but a different facet.”It was very confusing to be quite honest. But she explained that when they test my blood, they are looking for those antibodies because my husband has an antigen. So he has got something on one of his blood cells that my blood cells don't like and as a result, my body creates these antibodies to try to attack it and the really crazy thing is it's almost exclusive to VBAC moms or second-time moms, but more commonly VBAC moms because when they were doing the incision, some of baby's blood, some of my blood may have crossed over and that would cause my body to start reacting even way back five years ago when my first daughter was born. It was crazy. Just the thought that that's been in my body this whole time and I didn't know about it. So that was kind of cool but kind of scary.She said that the levels that they found were very low. And it's just-- you know, “you have got a very low level of this kind of antibody that is freaking out on your baby, so we are going to keep an eye on it and as your pregnancy progresses, if it starts to rise, if that level starts to get more concentrated in your blood, then we are going to have to have a deeper discussion about getting baby out sooner and maybe not going to full-term. Are we going to have to have baby before 40 weeks? I don't know. We will keep an eye on it.” That sort of thing.So every time I went to a visit with my midwife, we had to do a blood draw. It was annoying, but ultimately, throughout my entire pregnancy, that level never changed for me. So thankfully it wasn't anything that I had to really do anything about, but it was always that little worry in the back of my mind. It was just frustrating because I had such an uneventful pregnancy before and I just wanted that again especially in the middle of a pandemic. Everything is freaking out in the world, why can't I just have an easy pregnancy? Then, we go in for the midway through ultrasound. I went back up to Tampa General. My wife here recommended it because she always says, “If there's anything to find, they're really good. They are going to be the ones to catch it.” Tampa General is one of the best hospitals in the state and their maternal-fetal medicine is top-notch, so I felt good about going up there. I've got family up there anyway, so we just made a visit out of it. While we were there for the ultrasound, obviously, I have to go in by myself because COVID. And so, my poor husband is out in the parking lot with the one bar of Wi-Fi signal trying to do a Zoom meeting with me to be able to see or hear anything. He's got a few minutes to see or talk to me and then they had a rule about how we can't record and we can't have the phone or a video through the whole visit. It was kind of crazy.So for the most part, I am in there by myself. I am trying to communicate with my husband on a weird connection and it was frustrating. But anyway, so during the first 20-week ultrasound, they go, “Well, we are looking and we are not seeing that other kidney on baby,” and I go, “Okay.” The doctor was very reassuring and he said, “Well, it could be in a weird spot. It could be that we are just not seeing it because baby is in a weird position, so we are going to have you come back in a month.” I was, again, just frustrated because we are in this crazy thing and just-- really? Why me? Why my baby? Why all the stuff? So we made plans to come back in a month. But I definitely know at that point I needed two things. Number one, I needed to check in with my mental health counselor. She specializes in mom stuff, birth-related things, mom-related things. She is awesome. And so, I was able to talk to her and talk through some of the things that were going on. And then number two, I knew that I needed a doula. Why on earth I waited so long, I have no idea, but I did find my doula around the 20-week mark. She was able to start checking in with me every week because I knew that if I was going into a birth that potentially had any kind of complications, I needed all the support that I could get. I followed up with them as much as I could as much as I needed to and tried to identify in myself if I felt like I was stressing out too much or if I was letting things overtake my mind too much just to know to check in with my doula, check in with my counselor, and I think that made a big difference trying to manage things throughout pregnancy. We even got a plan in place so if we did have to transfer to a hospital, having a backpack that I could keep in my closet. We talked about, “If it is in your closet, you don't even have to look at it, but that piece in the back of your mind that knows it is there will feel good about that and you won't be so stressed.” I am very glad that I did that. It really helped and I was able to have that calm reassurance. So as I am going through, I get to the end of pregnancy. We are still monitoring this little c blood thing, and we still can't find a kidney on baby, and on top of that, now I am measuring ahead. At 36 weeks, I was measuring around 42 or 43 weeks, so I went on a low-carb, low-sugar diet. It may have been before 36 weeks. It felt like a lifetime of no sugar and no carbs. When you're pregnant, all you want is pizza and you can't have it and props to all the mamas that do have gestational diabetes because that is so hard and thankfully, I didn't have gestational diabetes. I just had to eat like I did. Baby kept growing and growing and growing, and we were worried that if baby was going to be too big if there was going to be a sugar thing on top of everything else, that could be a problem. We wanted to make sure that the fluid levels in my uterus were good because that could mean that the kidney is working or not working depending upon what's going on there. So my midwife and I really started having some conversations about, “Do we want to go past that due date?” Legally, it's maybe measuring a certain size, like in the state of Florida if the baby is too big, she is not able to do a home birth for me. So I was freaking out, calling my therapist, doing all of the things. I spent the week of Thanksgiving in acupuncture, pumping, doing my Spinning Babies®, walking the curb, doing the whole list of things. I must have spent at least a good hour of my pregnancy upside down on my couch, I think.Meagan: Oh my gosh. How much did the baby have to measure up before they disqualified you? Do you remember?Sarah: I don't remember. I want to say it was 10 pounds.Meagan: Wow.Sarah: But I think that's if they measured on an ultrasound and she tries to do as few ultrasounds as she can because she very firmly believes your body is not going to make a baby that is too big for you, you know?Meagan: Yeah, Mhmm.Sarah: She supported me as much as she could, but because we had to monitor all of these other things, it was like, “Oh great. Now, we are finding out too much.”Meagan: I know, yeah.Sarah: Yeah. So Thanksgiving, we are doing all the things. That put me at 39 weeks. We had talked about doing the famous midwives brew. I took that on, I think it was Monday night of that first week after Thanksgiving and I started having contractions, getting all excited, and then everything completely fizzled out. I was like, “No!” But at least my body was doing something which felt good because before, with my older daughter, we went two weeks beyond. Nothing was happening. I thought I was going to be pregnant forever. You know, all that stuff. So I was like, “All right. Well, at least my body is gearing up for something.” Later that week, I started noticing I was leaking a little bit and I wasn't, you know, is it pee? Is it amniotic fluid? The world may never know, but thankfully, my midwife has a way to find out with that little stick thing. And so, she was like, “Check the stick. See if it is amniotic fluid. We talked about doing a lift and tuck. Apparently, in addition to everything else, I have a weird-shaped uterus that has a forward tilt which is probably why my first daughter was in such a terrible position, and I had back labor because she wasn't able to move into a good position. But I know that now. So one more chiropractor visit, one more visit to the acupuncturist, and the midwife said, “Let's see what is going on, but if you have more leaking, let me know.” That was Thursday. Yeah. So Thursday, I had my visit with my midwife. We talked about all of that and then that night, I had a little bit more leaking and she said, “Okay. Is it a little? Is it a lot?” I was like, “It is just a little.” And she goes, “Okay. We are going to have you try the brew one more time. Definitely call me because now that we have confirmed that your waters have started rupturing, we are on a time clock in terms of having the best chance for a VBAC. We don't want to have a long leak and drain out all the fluid, and then get you into a bad spot where baby can't maneuver.” So we did our last-minute chores, made sure my daughter had a bag packed. I went to bed as soon as I could. That night, around 11:30 or so, I woke up with contractions. I'm excited, trying to stay calm, use the bathroom, got my heating pad out. I was trying really hard to hold off on all of my pain management stuff just because before, I didn't have anything and now I didn't want to waste it all at the very beginning because I had a 30-hour labor the first time around and that's what I was gearing up for. My brain was telling me, “You are going to have a 30-hour labor. It's going to be long. Hold off as long as you can.” So I went back to sleep and I woke up a few hours later, around 2:00, and I felt a pop and a gush. My water definitely had broken. That was weird because I didn't have that the first time. Like I said, the doctor broke my water the first time around. So I was like, “All right. I've got to clean this up.” I'm trying to let my husband sleep and be quiet, but I am stumbling around because I'm having contractions and it is dark. I'm tripping on things. And so, I get to the bathroom and I'm trying to get settled, and then I'm like, “Oh yeah, the lift and tuck.” So I am having to lift on my belly and tuck my pelvis through every contraction. Normally, I think they recommend that you have someone else do that. It is very uncomfortable. It hurts, but I knew after those conversations with my midwife after talking to my chiropractor, they were like, “This is going to be what you need to do to help.” So I had that in mind and I felt the minute she shifted, the second that she shifted into position. It was crazy. I am like, “Okay. Now we are going.” It was around that time that things really picked up and I yelled out to my husband, I am like, “Get up.” And so, he wakes up and he was fumbling around in the dark. I think he knocked something over. But he calls the doula and she was like, “All right. I am on my way.”And then, he called the midwife. Because my contractions were not, I think-- what is the formula? It is 4-1-1. So four minutes apart, one minute long, one minute-- I don't remember. Whatever her thing was. It wasn't quite to that point. She said, “Keep me posted, but we are going to observe her for a little longer and keep me posted. I've got my stuff ready. I can be on my way.” She's on standby. So he is coming over and he's like, “All right. You have to get out of the bathroom,” because our bathroom is this narrow tunnel. There is a wall on one side and I think I'm stuck on the other side. It's just long, so no one could have gone behind me really well or anything. He was like, “You have got to get out of here,” and I was like, “I don't want to.” So he is trying to push me out of the bathroom a little bit and I was able to crawl out in between contractions. I made it to the foot of our bed and I just camped out there. I was like, “This is as far as I can make it.” He was like, “You're fine.”So then, my doula arrived. At this point, I have no clue what the actual timeline is, but I know she got there pretty quickly, my doula did. She starts helping put up the birth pool and get the hose set up. She's checking on me and he's checking on me. I remember she came in and she's doing hip compressions and I'm trying to move around a little bit. I think mostly I was on all fours and I was just swaying my hips. I tried getting up where my forearms were resting on the bed and I am like, “Nope. I can't do that.”I just was doing my best to keep on keeping on and using that low breath, or the low “ahhhh”-- the voice thing that they tell you to do. That was super helpful because just doing that, I knew-- and after taking, because I took three classes all in all. I did The VBAC Link course, I did another one with Mamastefit. She was on here at some point, I think, last year and she was talking about the physiology of birth. Her class is really good.Meagan: Mhmm. We love Gina. We love her.Julie: Yes. We love her.Sarah: Gina, her stuff is really good. Anybody who wants to know the physiology of what your body is doing, her course really nails that. And then, I did another course in-person with my doula service. Theirs was Birthing From Within based. She talked about the vocalizations, and movements, and things like that, but one of the things that really stuck with me was contractions are going to be a minute. It's not going to be five minutes. It's not going to be ten minutes. You can get through a minute. You can do that. We practiced holding the ice in your hand for a minute. Being able to practice that and having it in my head was so realistic. I think it really helped me mentally as I'm in the moment trying to go through. I remember I was trying so hard to talk to my doula because I don't think I wanted her-- she was rubbing my back or something and I don't even think I could tell her, “I don't like that.” I was so in the zone. At one point, I did manage to tell her, “I feel like pushing.” I was so scared because, with my daughter, my oldest, I felt like pushing, but I was not anywhere near ready to push which apparently, again, was a sign of being in the wrong position. I was scared that that was happening again.She said, “Okay. Well, where is the midwife? Hubby was like, “She told me to follow up and that was an hour ago.” So we call the midwife, she's on the phone, and then in the middle of that phone call, I go, “I think there is something in between my legs.” Tara, my doula, Tara comes over and she goes, “Yep. There is baby's head.”Julie: Oh my gosh!Meagan: Oh my heck!Sarah: Yeah.Julie: What?!Sarah: And so, I am like, “Okay.” She puts the midwife on speakerphone. My midwife is literally in her van coming my way and she goes, “Okay, so what is Sarah doing? What position is she in? What do you see?” And so, my doula takes over as the unofficial person in charge. I remember my husband telling me later, he was like, “I wanted to catch the baby, but Tara said ‘No.'”Meagan: Oh really?Sarah: Because she has been to several births. She ended up-- I think two weeks before that, one of the other moms that she supported, the same thing happened where the baby was born before the same midwife got there, so she caught that baby too.Meagan: Oh my gosh.Julie: Oh my gosh.Sarah: She is amazing. I love her. She's just an amazing person and she took over so well. But she comes over and my husband at least thought to turn on his camera on his phone so we have this very dark video, but she coached me through it. I hear my midwife on the phone going, “All right. She can push.” And so then, Tara's like, “Well, push, push, push, push and my baby shot out like a little torpedo. She was so fast. Her hand was up by her face, so I had an unassisted VBAC, HBAC because I was at home, with a nuchal hand. I just roared her out like a fierce lion mama. It was great. I remember the first thing I said was, “I eff-ing did it.”Julie: That is awesome. Sarah: The feeling of such relief after so much worry, and so much planning, and so much, just all of it coming to fruition in this weird moment at 5:30 in the morning and my poor midwife wasn't even there. There she was. I turned around and I started to look at her and I go, “Wait. What is it? It's a girl!” And so, I got to be the one this time to say that she was a girl and that was so important to me, but I didn't know it was until that moment. You know?Julie: Yeah. Aww.Meagan: I love it.Sarah: Yeah. After that, they tried to get me up on the bed and we are trying to get my placenta out. It kind of got stuck. So my midwife is trying to tell my doula, “All right. Give her some traction. Let's try nipple stimulation. What's going on here?” I was losing a lot of blood. It was probably 45 minutes later, so I had lost a significant amount of blood. I have a couple of pictures of me and baby and I am looking pasty in those pictures. When my midwife got there, she started going to work really quickly and she had her team. It was like a whirlwind of people doing stuff. It was awesome. I know at one point they were trying to figure out where they could hang an IV bag and I'm like, “There is a hanger right there and there's a flashlight behind the TV.” Like, I am directing things that are happening in my house. How I was so with it, I have no idea. They quickly decided that I needed some more support than they could give just because of how much time had passed, so they did end up calling an ambulance which, prior to all of the prep work that I had done with my therapist, I will tell you that that very well would have given me some major anxiety attack before. But I was able to roll with it. EMS got me up, got me downstairs, got me outside. They asked me questions. I somehow remembered my husband‘s telephone number at some point during all of that which I don't think I know that right now. So the fact that I knew that after I had lost half my blood volume was kind of a miracle. The hospital did have to go in and manually remove my placenta which was awful. I think that was worse than giving birth. I remember in all of that, I looked over at a nurse and I said, “I need you to tell me what's going on because that's going to keep me calm.” The fact that I was with it enough to be able to ask for that was pretty cool, but the fact that I knew that I needed that, again, because of all the prep work that I had done with my therapist mentally and emotionally. Knowing that I had somebody that could walk me through what was going on just helped so incredibly much. They got me patched up. They got some blood in me and I was able to tell them, “Hey, I have this little c thing. You might want to know about that when you are matching my blood type.” The doctor was able to verify all of that with my medical records and make sure that I got the most specified blood for my needs to help me get back up to speed. So that was really cool because I knew that having that information and being able to provide that to the doctor on a whim, I know that made a difference in me being able to recover quickly because it was just going to help. You know? Whether it made a huge difference physically to me, I don't know, but I think mentally it was like, “I am empowered and I have information about my body and about myself.” That was cool.So, second-degree tear. Three units of blood. I stayed at the hospital for a few days. But she came like a little whirlwind and she is the coolest kid let me tell ya.Homebirth midwivesJulie: I love that so much. There are so many things I want to highlight in your story besides the cool little c antibody educational piece. But I want to speak a little bit about home birth because people are afraid of home birth. It's definitely not for everybody, but there's a misunderstanding that midwives don't have as much medical knowledge and there's a higher chance that your baby will die, or you will die, or hemorrhage like in your case, right? You were hemorrhaging and I just want you to know that as a doula, and it sounds like your midwife and doula did the same thing, but as a doula, I have seen home birth transfers. These midwives that have attended hundreds and hundreds, and sometimes thousands of home births, are very in tune, and very on point, and very, very particular about all of the details around birth. It was really funny because when you were telling your story with the nuchal hand and then after birth, you were losing a lot of blood and they called the ambulance and everything, I attended a birth just like that, except the midwife got there before the baby was born, a couple of years ago. It wasn't even two or three minutes after the baby was born, the midwife was like, “Let's get EMS on the phone.” She was putting pressure inside and outside of the mom's uterus to stop the bleeding and then the ambulance got there. I was arranging for her son to go another way and then her husband was arranging things. It was just so seamless, and the midwife was so calm, and we transferred care. It was the same thing. The doctor had to go inside and manually remove the placenta, and then she had to have two D&Cs, actually two more in the coming weeks to get the rest of her placenta out. I guess the best way to describe it from my point of view is beautiful chaos. It was an emergency, but man, this midwife was just so skilled and trained. They don't take chances. They are highly educated. They have, depending on if they are a CPM, a Certified Professional Midwife, or a licensed midwife, and you can be both in some states, they carry the same drugs like Methergine and Pitocin to stop bleeding. They carry antibiotics to administer if you are GBS positive. They have IV fluids that they can do. They are so trained and skilled that if an emergency happens, they are going to be able to transfer your care to the hospital. They're going to know the things that they need to do to help you before you get to the hospital. Guess what else? There's this really cool system, I forget what the acronym is, but as a student midwife, I am familiar with all these things. But there's this information database where midwives can share their information with the hospital they are transferring to while they are en route to the hospital. They're on the phone with the hospital so that when you get there, the hospital is ready to receive you and they don't have to ask any questions. They just pick up where the homebirth midwife left off. I think that's just something that people don't really realize happens. They think, “Oh my gosh. If there is an emergency, we are going to die when we're at home.” Granted, in extremely rare cases, things like that do happen just like they happen in the hospital, but at no higher rate as far as maternal and infant death goes. So I think that's really important to note. I wanted to spotlight that because, well, nobody wants a home birth transfer whether before or after the baby is born. When there are emergencies these homebirth midwives are amazing. They are amazing.Sarah: Yes. That was something that I had talked to her in-depth about before because I had such anxiety with the hospital. I remember at one point, I think it was when she came for my home check-up visit at however far along in the pregnancy and I said, “Hey. I am really nervous about if we have to transfer to the hospital, but I know that if I need to, I trust you on that. I am not going to ask to go to the hospital,” because I had asked when I was at the birth center with my oldest daughter. I transferred because I wanted to because I was having trouble and I wanted an epidural. So I wanted to make it clear to her to say, “If I'm going to transfer it is because I know that you need me to transfer.” I am putting that trust in her and she said all the same things that you just said. She was like, “Well, we have this and we have that, but if we need to transfer, I have that on speed dial,” kind of thing. I am sure no matter what state you're in, there are all kinds of rules and regulations and whatnot, but just being able to trust your provider whether it is a home birth midwife or a doctor in a hospital. If you can trust the person that you are literally placing your life in their hands to have them make sure that you are okay, I think that's key too.Julie: Yeah. I agree. I think most importantly is birthing with a provider In a location where you feel comfortable with and having the trust in them and having conversations like that with your midwife or your doctor whether you are in or out of the hospital. I think that those are all important conversations. Meagan, you have just been letting me ramble on over here. Do you want to jump in?Meagan: No. I am in agreeance with everything. Something for me is like, I really wanted a home birth, but my husband didn't feel comfortable with the idea of home birth. I think that can be a hard thing too. The mom feels comfortable birthing at one place, but the partner doesn't feel comfortable with them birthing at the other place. I think, sometimes, that can make it a hard situation, right? And so, I just loved so much that you didn't-- one, that you didn't have to feel that way, but even with my situation, in the end, we really just came down to it. I gave him all the education and facts on it and he was like, “Oh okay. Yeah. I think that would be fine.” And then after we had a VBAC, I had a similar situation. We didn't find my blood.Sarah: Hmm.Meagan: Yeah. Neither externally nor internally, weirdly enough. But I lost half of my body's blood after my birth. I passed out a couple of times. It was really interesting.Sarah: It's a weird feeling.Meagan: It is a really strange feeling. I remember waking up, I am like, “Why am I on the floor again?” And everyone is like, “Well, it's because you passed out again.” But even after all of that is said and done, my husband was like, “You know, if we are having another one,” which we are not, “I wouldn't do it any other way and we would totally do it at home.” And so, it is just so interesting to see how that experience changed his perspective on where we birth, you know? So, I don't know. I just love that you had an educated doula and that you had the midwife on the phone. I loved all of it. And you know what? I actually don't think I knew that Cesarean moms were at higher risk for the c.Sarah: I think it's just because there's a higher chance of the blood passing through into-- cross-contamination they said.Meagan: Yeah, which totally makes sense.Sarah: Yeah. It can totally happen with a vaginal delivery as well if there is a tear or something like that, but it's a lot more common for a—Meagan: -- a Cesarean.Sarah: Not that it is common, to begin with, let's be real. I have a weird blood thing to go with my weird unicorn kid that only has one kidney, and my other weird unicorn kid that can't hear well, and my husband who has weird blood. So, yeah. We're a family of unicorns.Julie: Unique. You're not weird. You're unique. I like it.Sarah: Unicorns. I have two girls. There are unicorns everywhere.Julie: Oh yes. Yes, yes, yes.Sarah: Everywhere.Meagan: I love it.Julie: That is amazing. Well, wow. We are so grateful that you shared your story with us today. It was so fun to come full circle from our admin texting us. She was like, “Have you heard of little c?” I was like, “A little c? Is that like Big C?” But like, being kind of sarcastic because sometimes we hear some crazy things and she was like, “No, really. Little C antibodies?” And Meagan was like, “I've heard of Big C.” I was major impressed with Meagan because I hadn't even heard of that. And so, it was just so fun to have that conversation in our memory and then have you come on the podcast and share. Yeah. It was just really neat to have you. Thank you so much.Meagan: Yes.Sarah: Definitely. Hopefully, if there's another mom out there that has something like that, she'll feel less alone.Julie: Yes. We are putting it in our title so that if anyone searches for it, they will find it.Sarah: There we go. Perfect.ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Head over to thevbaclink.com/share and submit your story. For all things VBAC, including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Julie and Meagan's bios, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

We are very excited to welcome you to the launch episode of the Women In Tech SEO Podcast! During this WTS Podcast episode, your hosts, Areej AbuAli (founder of Women In Tech SEO & SEO Consultant) & Sarah McDowell (podcaster and SEO content executive at Holland & Barrett) discuss why they are launching the podcast and the rebrand of SEO SAS, what they are hoping to achieve and the importance of not reinventing the wheel. We also get to know the hosts with a quickfire round of questions and a feature, explain how you can get involved with the podcast and the importance of learning. Hope you enjoy! Where to find WTS Podcast: Twitter: @techseowomenpod Website: https://www.womenintechseo.com/podcast/ --- Transcript Sarah: Hello, and a very warm welcome to the Women in Tech SEO podcast and very excitedly, this is our very first launch episode. So welcome along! Your hosts are myself, Sarah McDowell, podcaster, self-confessed SEO geek, who works at Holland and Barrett as a SEO content executive. Areej: And I'm here as well. I'm Areej AbuAli, I'm the founder of Women in Tech SEO, which is a support network and community for women in the tech SEO field and I'm an SEO consultant. Excited to be kicking this off with you, Sarah! Sarah: Do you want to know a little secret? Areej: Yeah, go for it. Sarah: I was like a little kid yesterday and I couldn't sleep because of today. Areej: Honestly. I'm so excited to be doing this. I knew this has been on my to do list for like over a year, so I cannot believe we're finally recording the launch episode. Sarah: I know it's crazy. It's crazy. And I think you have seamlessly led us in to sort of talking about why we're launching this podcast. Areej: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think from my end, like this is, it feels like the podcast for all things, SEO, guest starring women in our industry. Every week, we will invite brilliant women to come on board. We're going to delve into specific topics and learn from their stories, knowledge, and experience. But you know, with all awesome things from your end SEO SAS, I think it would be amazing for everyone to hear more about the story of why we're doing this together from you. Sarah: Yes, right. Well, should I get my best storytelling, voice? Yes, so some people might recognise my voice or my name because I previously hosted the SEO SAS Podcast. Basically that podcast was going on for two years, so quite a long time and my cohost Hannah stepped down. She had too much on her plate. And when she stepped down, it got me thinking because SEO SAS was always like a me and Hannah thing. And I had to do some thinking about "What's my next step?" And it just so happened that during this thinking time you reached out to me and the rest is sort of history, wasn't it? Because like you said, you've always wanted to do a podcast. And I think you saw the message about Hannah stepping down, sort of prompted you to ask me and reach out because obviously you were on a previous SEO SAS podcast episode and that's how we first met. And yeah, I had a massive smile on my face and it was quite funny actually, because being really honest, you were a bit nervous weren't you like asking, but it's crazy, isn't it? Because as soon as you asked me, I was like straight to my sister. I was like, Oh my God, this has happened! So, yes, I think this is it explained or do I need to go into more detail there? Areej: No, I was a guest on SEO SAS, and it was one of my very first podcasts to be on. And you and Hannah were just awesome. It was really, really, really fun to be on it. And so for me, when I thought about "Okay, I'd love to do a WTSPodcast", I always thought about you and Hannah, and the way you hosted your podcast and how inclusive it was and how accessible it was for everyone and how you made everyone feel really, really welcome. So when I saw the message that you were thinking about what you want to do next, if you are potentially thinking about...

My name is Sarah Chapman. I’ve been married for almost 20 years to my husband, Trent, together we have 5 children and live in Lehi, Utah. I am an author of two books, “MindStrength for Women” and “Underneath it all.....You’re Naked” Both of these books were written after a very hard period of time in life. One was about my physical journey to coming back to myself and the other is my sexuality journey of overcoming my judgment about sex to becoming more curious. I went about teaching women about sexual health for 2 years and mainly surrounding the female sexual response cycle. I taught women that you can’t find freedom in your understanding of your sexuality until you have overcome the deep rooted beliefs about sex. I found my own freedom from it that is why I wrote a book about it. Now my focus is on creating a community of women where we come together weekly to share the physical, mental and sexual aspects of our lives and have meaningful discussions with a workbook followed by an exercise class. Because movement creates emotion. You can find me: Instagram : @mindstrength.for.women MindStrength for Women Facebook Group Email: sarah@mindstrengthmentor.com   Full Transcript:  00:00 Narrator: Welcome to Improving Intimacy, a podcast to help single and married, Latter-Day Saints strengthen their family connections and marriages. Daniel A. Burgess is the host of Improving Intimacy, Daniel is a Marriage and Family Therapist, father, husband, and author. Here's Daniel on this episode of Improving Intimacy.   [music]   00:28 Daniel: Welcome to another episode of Improving Intimacy. On today’s episode we have Sarah Chapman, who is an author; and we’re excited to review her book with her today and kinda learn her journey to getting to this book. Sarah, welcome to the show.   00:44 Sarah: Thank you for having me, Daniel. I appreciate this, it’s really exciting.   00:48 Daniel: I’m very excited. As someone who’s writing a book, I also 1) kinda selfishly learn your journey, (mine’s been a very difficult one). And, so I may get a little selfish in my inquiries here--but more importantly, I’m curious to hear more about you. Who are you as a wife, as a person, as a mother? Tell us a little about yourself and what got you to this point.   01:12 Sarah: Sure, love to. So, I (we), Trent and I, my husband and I, will be going on 19 years of marriage this September. I have 5 children, I currently live in Utah. We lived in California for a time, actually, in San Diego area actually. Miss that place, for sure. But, yeah, I first basically grew up in an LDS home and I grew up in a family with 8 children, and I’m 6th of the 8. [...] In our home we didn’t talk about anything remotely close to our bodies. We were very surface type of family. We didn’t really talk about hard things. I wouldn’t say that we were an authentic family. But, at the same time, I did feel loved by my parents and I felt that they were providing me with a really great education, secularly as well as spiritually. And so, I didn’t feel like I was necessarily neglected in the way I was thinking.    02:29 Sarah: However, growing up as a teenager in the 90s, I’d run around with some friends who were sexually active and seeing the naive young teenager that I was, I kinda looked at them and viewed them as people who were naughty girls, right? And so, I remember church lessons here and there. It wasn’t very often, but I do remember those specific metaphors that were shared. I actually did get the “chewed up piece of gum” kind of analogy, which maybe a lot of your audience here might have gotten.   03:10 Daniel: Oh…(sarcastically) excellent. Yeah.   03:13 Sarah: You know? And then I also just really created a lot of...I would just look at the word sex and just immediately think that it was just this dirty thing. However, there was also this other part of me that was being told that it was this sacred thing, and you don’t talk about it, right? And so I was just kinda like this....back and forth in my head about like, “what is this?” Sure, I had boyfriends in high school and I do remember getting close a couple times where I feel like my body was in a state of arousal. Obviously I didn’t know what it was, because I didn’t know my body then. But looking back, I’m like, “Oh, that’s what that tingling sensation was when I was getting close to that boy, oh! Okay, right.”    04:06 Sarah: I can say that now, but at the time, as a teenager, I didn’t at all. And I never (like when I would shower and stuff), like I would just hurry and shower really quick and then get out. I never wanted to self-pleasure or anything, at all. I didn’t even know my body. And so, come the time of marriage, the night before I’m to be married, my mom thinks it’s a great time to talk about sex. She pulls me aside and she basically asked me, “You’re gonna have sex tomorrow night, right?” and I was like, “well, I guess…”. I mean, I kinda remember my teenage years back in high school telling me that a penis goes inside a vagina, but then I was like...I plugged my ears like “I don’t wanna hear this, I don’t wanna hear this!” I just kinda ignored what they were gonna tell me. I knew just that fact: that a penis goes into a vagina and that was it. My mom was like, “Well, here’s a book. Go ahead and read this book.” And it was the book from...is it called, Between Husband and Wife by Lamb? Dr. Lamb?   05:14 Daniel: Oh yeah, oh yeah. 05:15 Sarah: Yeah, it was that book. And I was like, “Mom, I don’t have time to read this book.” And she’s like, “Well, you’ll eventually refer back to it.” And that was it. That was my sex talk from my mom. I was just basically thrown into the fire the night of my wedding. It was very traumatic. Very long, exhausting night as any honeymooners would imagine, who had never had sex before, trying to figure things out, trying to figure out our bodies. Anyways, it was just a mess. And I called my mom the next day, just in tears, like, “I just got married and this just happened to me.” I didn’t go into detail with her because we don’t...we don’t talk about details or anything like that. But I really wanted to, like, it was like this cry for help. Like, “why didn’t you tell me these things? Why didn’t you help me to understand how my body works in this way? That it’s supposed to be designed for this?” Anyway. That’s just kinda the cycle that happened for I’d say the first 16 years of my marriage. That was the only thing we really fought about in our marriage, was sex. It wasn’t money or anything, it was always about sex.   06:42 Daniel: You mean, the issues were always about sex? 06:45 Sarah: The issues, yeah. 06:46 Daniel: Okay. 06:47 Sarah: Yeah, thank you. Yeah. The issues around sex. He would always try to approach me and help to try to fix me, right? Because of course he wanted a decent experience, too. But, at the same time, I was looking at him like, “Oh...this is all you want. You just want my body.” And that was it. I viewed myself as this tool for him.   07:09 Daniel: So let me pause you right there. What you just stated was big! It was huge. So, you viewed yourself as a tool for him to get satisfied, is that what you’re saying? 07:22 Sarah: Exactly, yeah.   07:24 Daniel: And that was because of…   07:25 Sarah: You know, because I never...I never wanted to receive that pleasure for myself. Because I once again thought it was like...I thought I was a bad girl if I did that, right? So, even when I did have an orgasm, I’d immediately feel guilty every single time afterwards because of this shame that I’d created in my head about me having pleasure. So then, I viewed him as, “oh, he’s just using my body, and sex is for him, and orgasm is something that he just needs all the time.” 08:03 Daniel: I wanna explore that a little bit, if you’re okay with it. I know you bring it up in indirect ways, in fact, in your book Underneath it All... and I apologize to the audience, I didn’t mention the name of your book, Underneath it All...You’re Naked. I love that title by the way, I think it’s excellent.   08:18 Sarah: Thank you   08:19 Daniel: And your subtitle is “shedding light on misconceptions about sex from a Christian wife to Christian women.” But what you said right there was, you couldn’t allow yourself to experience pleasure. If you’re okay with that, let’s explore that a little bit more. You’re not the first to say this on my podcast and I hear it a lot from clients. What did it mean to you to experience pleasure? You’re married now, you knew clearly beforehand that (or, atleast, your value system says that) before marriage, I’m not gonna experience this. You’re saying: you jump in the shower, you get out as fast as you can because you didn’t want to self-stimulate or do anything wrong.   08:56 Sarah: Yep   08:57 Daniel: So now you’re married. What was the barrier for you in allowing yourself to experience that joy?   09:08 Sarah: Well, I think you’re basically asking what kinda shifted that focus for me? 09:16 Daniel: Well, what continued? A lot of men will get into relationships, they know they’re not supposed to pleasure before marriage but now they’re in marriage and they’re willing to let it all go--kinda the dynamic you just explained with you and your husband.   09:28 Sarah: Yeah.   09:29 Daniel: But, what prevented you, I guess...maybe, is it a shift? I guess that’s the question I’m asking you is, is it a shift? Or, it seemed more like though, you carried this perspective: “I’m not allowed to have sexual pleasure even in marriage.” Which seems incongruent with the thoughts and beliefs you had before marriage. What was the barrier to...I mean, you saw your husband having pleasure, did that peak your interest and say, “How can I have that pleasure?” or was it this continued, “I can’t have this. It’s too shameful, it’s too hurtful.” 10:04 Sarah: No, it was definitely too hurtful to me. I would just, lay there. I always like to say I’d lay there like a dead fish, maybe you’ve heard that term before. I would just allow him to just do whatever he wanted to my body. You know? And I was really good at faking orgasm. It was definitely something just to get him off me as soon as I could, right? Because I just felt dirty the whole time, when he was on me. It’s amazing how much conditioning that I had created in my head, and this belief that really ate away at my soul. To know that this shame enveloped my whole body and created a wedge in my marriage to where I looked at him as somebody that just used me. You know?    11:10 Daniel: So, I’m really curious. What took you from that experience to what you say on page 56? It’s this idea of being able to embrace very differently. Practice patience, self-compassion, and have a sense of humor about it. That seems like a complete 180 shift.    11:29 Sarah: Yeah. 11:30 Daniel: What was the journey you had from what you’re experiencing, that “pleasure is painful and icky” to this wonderful perspective of even having a sense of humor about it? What led you there?   11:41 Sarah: Well, not an overnight thing. I’ll just say that right now. [laughs] It definitely was, you know, I had this moment--this wake-up call. Sixteen years in, I was fed up. Basically telling myself over and over and over, “Sarah why can’t you figure this out? Why is this so hard for you? Why can’t you just get over this? Why do you look at sex in this perspective?” Just this why, why why. I finally had this moment of surrender. I didn’t talk to anybody, Daniel. I suffered in silence for years. I didn’t talk to my sisters, definitely not my mom, right? Not even my girlfriends, nobody. 12:30 Daniel: That’s what we’re taught. We’re taught to not even talk to our loved one’s about it, even our spouse.   12:34 Sarah: Exactly, exactly. And of course, then Trent would ask, my husband would ask me, “what is it you want?” And I’m like, “well, I don’t know what i want.” I’ve never allowed myself to have conversations and talk about it. He would just ask me question after question to open my mind and see the possibility and then I’d shut him down all the time, right? It was just this constant battle. So finally, it was just this one day, I called Suzanne, right? I refer to her in my book a lot. She was this woman who I met randomly in Guatemala of all places. I just look back and I’m like, it was by divine design that I would meet her that summer of 2017 so that she could open my eyes.   13:20 Daniel: I actually love what you said about Suzanne, is that she started her journey because of romance novels. I like that.   13:29 Sarah: Yeah. I’m not a big romance novel kind of girl but you know, some people are. Anyway we got to talking. We literally...our airbnbs were literally across from each other. I didn’t know Spanish, she didn’t know Spanish, it was a Sunday afternoon, we had nothing else to do--so we got to know each other. And we literally...like, she just opened up to me. We talked about our sex lives, and this ws the very first time I was like, this is a really fun conversation! It was the first time I actually looked at it with clear eyes to see the potential in me and the hope. Because she had already kinda gone through her own little journey, because she was basically me. She gave me hope to look at it with a different set of eyes. I went from a place of--this is where I talk a lot about, in my book--this view of going from a judgement place to being more curious. She allowed me, she gave me permission. It’s interesting how as women, we need permission, you know? 14:44 Daniel: What I’m curious though, is, what was it about Suzanne that allowed you to open up? you have been fighting this for so many years.   14:52 Sarah: Yeah.   14:53 Daniel: What prevented you from putting up another barrier? “Nope, I’m not talking about that, that’s betraying my husband, that’s betraying myself…”   14:57 Sarah: That’s true.   14:58 Daniel: What was it about her that allowed you to open up?    15:03 Sarah: Good question.   15:04 Daniel: I think that’s the biggest thing with women is finding that opportunity and how, because they get into this same place where “I can’t talk about this and I won’t talk about it and I don’t care how familiar I am with you”--so what was it about her>   15:15 Sarah: Yeah. Well, one of the things that I had been studying and learning about...I love Brené Brown, and at that point in my life I’d really been learning vulnerability and authenticity. When she just started talking to me and exposing herself to me, I was .... she gave me permission to therefore share my things, right? There’s power when you can start a conversation and be like, “I’m messed up.” You know? “Here’s all these parts of me that I don’t understand, can you help me kinda walk through this?”    15:53 Sarah: And that’s what she was for me, you know? And I think that’s what really created that safe place for me. She was like my safe place, because we could relate on so many levels, right? And I think when there’s vulnerability and authenticity in any friendship or relationship, there’s definitely power behind that--to be able to know, “hey, I’m not alone. We can do this together.” And I feel like that’s kinda what I’ve been doing now...you know, here’s my mess and I’m creating it into a message and helping other women to understand “you’re not alone. You’re not broken. There’s hope for you.” And I think that’s what's beautiful about this. And that’s what made that shift for me, is to allow myself to just open up, receive the information from this trusted (well, quick-trusted friend, right? I’d just met her) and just share all of me with her. It was quite an experience, that was for sure.   17:00 Daniel: So it sounds like Brené Brown gave you that courage,    17:04 Sarah: Yeah, exactly.   17:04 Daniel: that platform, or, not platform, kinda that foundation that it’s okay to be vulnerable here. But what I think is important for the audience to be aware of is, you’re still really new in your journey. This was very recently. So, you went to, on that trip back in, if I remember right, 2017? 17:20 Sarah: 2017, yeah. 17:21 Daniel: So you’re only like, three years into this. 17:25 Sarah: Yeah. 17:25 Daniel: That is phenomenal! You cranked out a book in sharing your journey. That’s...   17:31 Sarah: Yeah. 17:32 Daniel: So, emotionally, what is that like for you right now? So, kinda step away from the book and this narrative. You really are, in the context of people who are learning themselves, you’re really at the beginning of this journey. So, emotionally, what are you going through right now?   17:52 Sarah: Emotionally, I mean, you know what? I started it...I just consumed as much information as I could. I finally got to this place where I could..   18:06 Daniel: Do you feel like you’re a lot more confident? Or do you feel like you still have a lot of insecurities or vulnerabilities around it? Where do you feel like you’re at? 18:15 Sarah: I totally feel confident in my sexuality now, and that I can say that--I wouldn’t say 100%, for sure--I’m still learning and growing and I think that’s what’s great about understanding your sexuality because it’s going to always evolve and change because there’s just more things we’re gonna find out about ourselves. But, oh man, just to think about where I’ve...even just two years ago...to where I am now, and being able to have emotional connection with my husband, and him understanding how me, as a woman, how I work. And, you know, he takes the time to emotionally connect with me before even getting into the bedroom, you know? And understanding how my body needs to go through this sexual response cycle, which, I talk about that in my book. There’s a lot of therapists out there that talk about the different sexual response cycles that we go through, right? 19:20 Daniel: Exactly. 19:21 Sarah: And just, understanding that.   19:22 Daniel: So you gave yourself permission to get here so that you can help your husband understand your body because in the past, you know, he’s asking what you want, and as you said, you’re there as a dead fish. Just, finish it out. 19:33Sarah: Yeah. 19:34 Daniel: That, I think, is critical. Like I posted in our Improving Intimacy group today this idea of, especially with women, “okay, I’ve given myself permission, now it’s scary.” Was it scary to give yourself permission? Were you afraid of what you discovered? 19:50 Sarah: Oh, yeah! Yeah. So, of course, we’re going to have those fears. It’s part of our human nature, especially when we’ve created so much judgement and shame around it. There’s going to be fear that comes up. And there’s definitely going to be things that we might come across we don’t quite understand, or we definitely judge really quickly, right?    20:18 Sarah: Masturbation being one of them for me. That was a huge, like...I didn’t want to enter that specific subject until I felt comfortable in my body first, and learning the anatomy of my body first, before I could venture into that. So I feel like it’s a series of stepping stones. You kinda have to evolve into and work into. As I started reading all these books, that’s kind of what happened after I met with Suzanne, she gave me a couple books to read--and from there, I just took off. I was like, thirsting for knowledge for the first time in sex. Once I’d read one book, I went to the next book, and then I went to the next book. Just reading so much content that I could get my hands on. It was this, like, basically cry for help and just learning on my couch from all different kinds of therapists and sex experts and human sexuality professors and so many things, and I just was like, “oh my gosh! I’m finally in a place where I can receive this!” And yes, there’s gonna be content out there, once again, that we just kinda have to like, pick and choose, I don’t know, what resonates with you? 21:39 Daniel: I think that’s...I wanna ask you about that.    21:43 Sarah: Sure.   21:44 Daniel: But before I do, I really appreciate you addressing, briefly, in your book, about masturbation. You give a context for it, the history behind it, the fears around it. 21:51 Sarah: Yeah. 21:52 Daniel: What was that journey for you? You’re addressing that fear, you’re realizing, “okay, I need to understand myself.” Some wives feel like, “okay, I do need to figure out my body, but I will not do it without my husband present.    22:05 Sarah: Yeah.    22:06 Daniel: What was it like for you? Did you find that it was more valuable to do it alone so that you could do it without pressure? Or was it important for you to explore that with your spouse? 22:15 Sarah: So, in the beginning, I chose to explore with my husband. And it’s still a work in progress, Daniel [laughs], it’s still kinda like...I’m not fully 100% like going off by myself all the time, you know what I mean? But at the same time, like, it’s kinda going back to this stepping stone thing. I start with my husband to understand, and know, and feel comfortable, and then [...] it’s still just something that I know, I KNOW--that’s the crazy part, I KNOW--that it’s beneficial for me to know what feels good and what doesn’t, you know?    22:56 Daniel: Absolutely.   22:57 Sarah: But then, the shame just creeps in. And I remember this one specific time, I was like, “okay, Sarah.” I was seriously coaching myself! “Okay, Sarah, we can do this. We can do this!” You know? 23:11 Daniel: And you’re talking about when you’re masturbating, you’re trying to... 23:14 Sarah: Yeah!   23:14 Daniel: ...to get into the headspace.   23:15 Sarah: Like, I’ll go and I’ll coach myself and like, I’ll breathe and everything. A really great book, Slow Sex, was really powerful for me, by the way. 23:24 Daniel: Okay, excellent. Excellent book.   23:25 Sarah: Just the breathing, and… yeah.   23:26 Daniel: I think a lot of...so, we’re speaking to an LDS audience or a Christian-based audience. Sometimes, that book isn’t received very well. She talks about a lot of--   23:37 Sarah: Yeah   23:38 Daniel: So, the audience--it’s an excellent book. Excellent book. It does venture into some concepts and ideas that I think are extremely helpful, but be aware, it is not a warning, but just be aware--you're not going out and getting, you know, an LDS book about how to understand your own sexuality. It’s a very raw and in-depth book. Excellent.   24:00 Sarah: Yeah. 24:01 Daniel: So, I think that’s, so that kinda leads me into my second question, or where we left off before I asked this question. There’s so many resources out there. Often, when people try to explore this route, they stay, you know they kind of follow that insecurity be staying on a very safe path of resources. I don’t wanna name any books, I don’t want anybody to feel like they’re being judged around it, but--   24:27 Sarah: Sure.   24:28 Daniel: How did you, for example, Emily Nagoski, that’s not an LDS author. How did you determine which books were good for you? Whether it’s Jennifer Finlayson-Fife, or Natasha [breaks off]   24:39 Sarah: Uh huh.   24:40 Daniel: What was your internal compass to decide, “this is helpful, this is good in my pursuit of my own sexuality, but being within the framework of my faith?” 24:51 Sarah: Sure. The thing is, when you go on Amazon, there’s going to be all kinds of reviews from all over, right? Of course I would read the reviews, that’s what most people do when they go searching for a book. but also, of course, having my friend Suzanne of course had already read a few. So I kinda had an understanding... 25:14 Daniel: [laughs]   25:15 Sarah: ...from some of the things, right? so then there’s also...I did go and actually look them up, not just about their book but just them as a person. I did some research on who they are and like, what are they teaching, what are they, like, out there, like, what’s their message, kind of thing. And so then I felt more comfortable to kinda open up and seek. And of course, I’d go to my city library, right? And go to the sexuality section and I’d just camp out and just kinda peruse books that way. That’s also helpful ‘cause it’s free. It’s not like I’m going to buy a book. But, there’s so many [pauses] there’s amazing people out there doing amazing things, and I just…   26:09 Daniel: So I guess, let me push a little on this, is--for example, with Slow Sex, what kept you from reading that and saying, “whoa. This is way outside of my value system.” 26:17 Sarah: [laughs]   26:18 Daniel: “I shouldn’t be reading this.” And we’re talking about, just three years ago, you’re Sarah who’s just now recognizing all the rigidity around your sexual understanding and lack of understanding with your sexuality.   26:31 Sarah: Yeah.   26:32 Daniel: What kept you from throwing that book aside and saying, “this is horrible”?   26:39 Sarah: Well, I know this sounds really simple, but what I kept coming back to all the time, Daniel, was “Sarah, quit judging it. Be more curious.” 26:50 Daniel: Not simple at all. That is beautiful.   26:54 Sarah: You know, that’s it. That’s all...and that’s what I had to tell myself all the time. “Sarah, you’re looking at oral sex and you’re judging it. How can I be more curious about how it can apply to me and my relationship in my intimate relationship with my husband?” Like, what does that look like, you know? And so [laughs] it really is simple. But it is so profound to me, and it’s carried me the last three years. And that’s why I really hone-in on it in my book. Waking up women to understand, “quit judging it so much,”   27:34 Daniel: Absolutely love it.   27:34 Sarah: “and look at it from a place of curiosity.”   27:35 Daniel: And I think you see that journey as you go through this, like, starting in...what chapter is this? Page 100 or so. You start talking about loving yourself from the inside out. And you do a full inventory: “what do I lack? What am I insecure about?” (I’m putting some of my own words to this, but…) you take the individual through this process and I think that’s key. absolutely key. So, yes, the answer is simple, but boy, the process can be painful. That’s something that I actually warn my clients when I do this similar type of self-inventory. I have them often review themselves: where did they start--I like the word you used, stop judging it, and just learn from it. And I have people start to do this, is “stop judging your body, in fact, look at yourself. You think you have a fat tummy, who told you that? Who defined that for you?”   28:28 Sarah: Exactly.   28:29 Daniel: “Who took away your agency to keep you from actually looking at yourself in the way you should? Who defined it?” And they’ll go through this emotional process, “oh my goodness, that first boy I dated, he made fun of me or he poked me in the tummy and ever since then, I’ve been insecure. I’m not gonna let that dude take away from my agency. I’m gonna choose how to view my body.” And you kinda do a similar thing here.   28:53 Sarah: Yeah. 28:54 Daniel: Tell us a little more about that.   28:55 Sarah: Yeah, so, this is actually my second book. [laughs] I wrote a book 5 years ago called, MindStrength for Women. And it was all about just loving ourselves and overcoming this idea that we’re not enough and we're not good enough, not smart enough, and all these things, right? Of course I, at that time, I did like, I’d learned a lot about myself. And so the crazy part to all that whole story was, I felt amazing and went through a physical change, emotional change, and all these other things, but I kept sex hidden up in the corner, you know? Like in this closet, you know? So when I actually brought sex in, into the light, right? Now I felt like I’d become this whole person, and then like, a wholly unique being.    29:54 Sarah: And I talk about this term called “sexy confidence” in my book, and how as women, it’s not so much about our body or anything of that nature. It’s about, how do we walk into a room, and how do we make people feel? What kind of energy are we bringing into the room? Is this a loving environment? And this is where I kinda had to do this with my husband, too. Because, when you’re in the bedroom, as women, we start to...like, if we even put on a piece of lingerie or something, we start to immediately judge our body that it’s not looking so amazing.    30:35 Sarah: And I talk about, when I’m with women and stuff, I talk about this idea of like, you know, there’s this...we as women get into serious judgement, but when we can come from learning to love ourselves from the way God sees us (because obviously that’s important), that we can be able to be at one with our husbands, even. And not focus so much on the belly fat that’s hanging out when we’re trying to get on top of him, you know? And just like, how we can emotionally connect instead of looking at our bodies and judging every nook and cranny that we don’t like, kind of thing.   31:25 Daniel: Love that.  Now, you jumped into something later on, about how women need novelty. I thought this was interesting. I believe it. I’m one who likes to shatter myths out there. But the prevailing thought is, men need novelty. Women want consistency. Tell me more about this.    31:45 Sarah: Yeah. 31:46 Daniel: I think this is fascinating. I don't think anybody else is addressing it, and I’ve read a lot of books, so tell me a little about your discovery there.   31:56 Sarah: Yeah. Well, I think [...] I do believe women, we do need novelty. We just don’t think we need it [laughs]. I don’t know if that makes sense. We do love,   32:11 Daniel: Yes   32:12 Sarah: we like change. I don’t like the same position every time, I mean, anybody else? I mean, once I actually, was the--I mean, yes, I did missionary position for years, trust me, I know. But now that I’ve educated myself and I’ve found other ways to, you know, “quote, unquote” “sized up the bedroom” I actually do thrive on change in the bedroom. It keeps the spark alive and it creates more novelty, you know? 32:43 Daniel: Well, I think that’s important,   32:45 Sarah: Yeah   32:46 Daniel: because I think a lot of men get criticized because they want something new and that’s scary for their partners, but I--   32:51 Sarah: Yeah   32:52 Daniel: You’re realizing, part of the problem is you wanted it to be changed up, you wanted it exciting, you wanted it novel. And I think that’s part of the discovery for a lot of women in discovering their desire is, “wow, I’m realizing I’m not as vanilla as I thought I was.” 33:07 Sarah: Yeah. 33:08 Daniel: “Where will this end?” Were you concerned with that? Did you feel you were gonna go into desires and passions and things that were forbidden for you? What was that experience like for you? 33:19 Sarah: Yeah. Well, of course in the beginning--because, you know, my shame was still enveloped around me in certain points where it would rise up, you know? But then I’d have to open my eyes, like, “Sarah, quit judging it again!” You know? But at the same time, I realized how we can add just more experiences that we haven’t had necessarily before, in like, the safety of our own couple relationship.   33:55 Daniel: Just going back to the concept of not judging it and allow it to flow naturally.    34:01 Sarah: Yeah.   34:02 Daniel: As Emily Nagoski says, don’t put on the brakes. Just... 34:05 Sarah: Yeah, the brakes. I love that analogy, too. Oh my gosh, shes...yeah. Don’t put on the brakes, keep the accelerator going, because, you know. Sometimes, you don’t know if you’re even going to like it. So, quit judging that you’re not going to like it before you even start it, right? And allow yourself to receive. Okay, that’s another thing. Oh my gosh. As women, we give, give, give all day long, to everybody and everything. All the time. Right? So when I was like, “Sarah, you deserve to receive. You get to receive pleasure, you get to receive these different avenues of novelty, and this is okay for you.” Like, once again, I [laughs] I’ve had to coach myself. I do thisl ike, mental inventory in my head before I have sex with my husband. Like, “Sarah, we can do this. It’s fine. This is something that we’ve talked about, we’ve had discussions about this, we feel comfortable that this is something we want to choose to do and explore, and let’s be open to that.” So, yeah. I'm really good at coaching myself now. 35:19 Daniel: Yeah, it sounds like it. Sounds like you’ve come a long way in just three years. I like the other concept you’ve shared about sex drives, desire level. The differences aren’t the problem. Share with the audience what you meant by that.   35:35 Sarah: Differences aren’t the problem. We label ourselves when we first get married [laughs]. Now, like, you know as I’ve learned, not all men are higher desire partners, okay? Right? 35:49 Daniel: Not at all, right. 35:50 Sarah: Right. And so, we are really quick to label who’s higher, who’s lower, you know? And we, there’s a …. do you want me to quote books in here? 36:05 Daniel: Absolutely! Tell your story. Yep. 36:08 Sarah: Okay. One of the books, Passion Paradox, have you heard of that book? 36:13 Daniel: Actually, no, I haven’t read nor have I heard of it.   36:16 Sarah: Okay, I’m trying to think of the author right now, but it was...it’s like, an old book. It was like....it’s old. But anyway, there’s this...he talks about this whole idea of passion. Because, sometimes like, as women, we label ourselves as lower desire, say that we are, right? And we view the partner as the higher desire. But there’s different ways of expressing and showing passion to each other. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be just like a sexual thing. Sometimes, in different seasons of our lives, we kinda ebb and flow, and you know, go from one extreme to another or something. And I think this whole idea that we put labels is unfortunate, because I chose to give myself that label for all those years, and I clung on to it. And I would just view my husband, like, “you just want sex all the time. And I’m just gonna sit here, and just kinda vent to you that I don’t wanna have it, because I’ve already labelled myself that I don’t want it.”   37:30 Daniel: As opposed to learning how to meet the needs of each other.   37:33 Sarah: Yeah, yeah. 37:34 Daniel: I think that theme is so important throughout your book. I refer to it as breaking the culture of sexual silence, and I love that you hit on it throughout the entirety of your book. Especially, I believe, in chapter 14 talking about it. Even if I don’t know a lot about it, talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about everything you know about sex, and become comfortable with it. That is so important. As you learned early on with your mom, and with other friends, you couldn’t talk about it. And that is one of the biggest desire killers and barriers to education. So, learning how to break that culture of silence around sexuality, even when you don’t know fully what you’re talking about, start to share. That’s what we do. As kids, we talk about things we don’t know, and then parents correct us. People inform us. You go into it non-judgmentally, again, another thing that you carry throughout the book. Absolutely wonderful. You want to tell us a little bit about how you...what that was like for you as you realized you’re in this process, you’re learning. What were some of the fears, hesitations, or positive experiences you had with sharing freely your knowledge?   38:45 Sarah: Ok, so, you know I’m reading all these books, right? And consuming everything that I could. And I just, I remember always just like walking out, like, in public, you know, in Target or wherever, and seeing all these women. And I”m like, “oh. If they only knew. oh if they only knew.” Right? [laughs] and there’s a point where…’cause I truly believe I’ve obviously come to a place where I--and you’ve seen this in my book--I’m a realist. Like, I really share the dark sides of me, and my hang-ups and everything, and I’m okay with it. I've come to a place where I don’t have this fear of judgement of what other people might think of me, because I’ve realized that the more I share, the more respect I get from people. And so, as I was reading all these things, and I’m going out into public and I see all these women, and I’m just wondering, “I wonder if she’s like...if she was like me.” Because I’m now, not. I don’t really...it’s hard for me, sometimes, to even take myself back, even three years ago, to where I was. Because I’m so much more happier now. But sometimes i have to take myself there so that I can be, you know, relatable, to other women, right? So, of course in our LDS culture, [laughs] I have definitely … I’ve lost friendships. I’ll be honest.   40:18 Daniel: What do you mean? I think I know what you’re talking about there, because I’ve experience the same, but share with the audience what that means. Just because you’re being passionate and open about sexuality, you lost friends? 40:28 Sarah: Yeah. 40:29 Daniel: What happened there? 40:30 Sarah: Yeah, so...just in small conversations, or I might have written like a post or something on facebook about a book that I was reading. And then it just rubs somebody the wrong way, you know? And I've actually had a few friends who’ve vocally come and told me that they don’t agree with what I’m talking about and learning about. And that’s fine. It was of course hard to hear, ‘cause it’s like a blow. It’s like this form of rejection that you don’t want to ever experience in your life. But at the same time, there was like, 30+ women behind me saying “thank you. I learned so much from you,” you know? And so, it’s just our human nature to cling-on to those one or two people that give you that negative comment, right? But it definitely propelled me to keep sharing, because I know how my life has changed because of it. And my marriage has changed because of it. And I can’t deny it.    41:43 Sarah: So as I’ve opened up about it, and talked to people within my neighborhood or community, like I just know that I am making strides with people. I actually, just yesterday, I had a friend who had finally come around. I’ve been talking to her for like, since I started reading books, and just recently she was like, “Sarah, I think I’m ready.” You know? And you just have to kinda wait for those people to come around, and they will, eventually. And they’ll realize just how powerful this can be, when they can open and be more curious to see what their life can be like if they chose to look at it with a different perspective.    42:34 Daniel: Absolutely.   42:35 Sarah: So yeah. 42:35 Daniel: In other words, you’re not pushing your narrative. 42:36 Sarah: No.   42:38 Daniel: People know what you know.   42:38 Sarah: No, yeah. 42:40 Daniel: Because, you’re open about it. And you’re waiting for them to come and seek you out. 42:43 Sarah: Yeah. 42:44 Daniel: That’s excellent. 42:45 Sarah: Exactly. yeah, just kinda wait for them and whenever they’re ready, I’ll be there with open arms to teach them and to guide them through their own experience. The crazy part is [laughs] I have no desire to be a sex therapist like yourself, or you know, go and be a professor or anything of that nature. I just love learning about it. I feel like, I don’t know, I guess people can kind of resonate more with a girl off the street I guess first, and then I can guide them to therapists or whoever else they need help with, right? Because I obviously don’t have all the tools, but I’m their starting point, you know? And that’s what I love about me being open about it, is that I can be their starting point and then they can move from there to seek more professional help if they need it, you know? 43:41 Daniel: Absolutely. What a wonderful theme that you’ve carried out through the book. I think it’s been wonderfully done, I think you’ve communicated well. Are there...as we wrap up here, is there anything else about the book or your experiences that you feel is important for the audience to know about you, and your journey, or maybe possibly the journey that they’re going through? 44:02 Sarah: Oh yeah, I mean, as you [...] just, the book, in and of itself, it just breaks down so many things. You know, out there in our audience, you  might have someone who feels like they are broken, right? Or, they feel like, that there’s no hope in their marriage. We didn’t even touch on porn, that’s a whole-nother enchilada in and of itself…   44:28 Daniel: So, I… hold off on that, because I--   44:31 Sarah: [laughs]   44:31 Daniel: I love that you refer to porn the way you did in your book, as a compulsion, as a temptation, as a potential device in a marriage or [pauses] divisiveness in a marriage.    44:45 Sarah: Yeah.   44:46 Daniel: And I love the language that you used in there, and I would be interested in exploring that a little more, if you’d like. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about it, and why you included it? 44:56 Sarah: Yeah. Well, obviously from personal experience, it was not me, it was my husband’s, right? I think it’s just, he actually, it was the [....]  I remember the day, and I’m sure a lot of men and women here can remember the day that their spouse came to them with this news, right? Or they found out in some other way, right? That’ll be a day that you won’t ever forget.    45:24 Sarah: But, that day, he came and approached me, and it was during this time that I had finished writing my first book. And I was, like I said before, I was in a really good place, and just felt pretty good about life because I was working on myself. And I think that’s what’s key here, in this chapter particularly, is, whether man or woman, right? Really focus on, what are you doing in the relationship? What can you do to better yourself, to become a better version of yourself? And that’s kinda where i was at that point, luckily.    46:01 Sarah: And that’s when Trent felt comfortable to actually approach me and tell me about his porn addiction. Because, you know, he had these fears that I would leave him and all these things, right? Like everybody might have. And he came, and he told me, and it was just this, you know, gut-wrenching kind of feeling. And the first question that came into my mind, “what’s wrong with me? Why does he feel like he has to do this? I can’t believe he’s done this. He’s this amazing man, how did porn get a hold of him?” Kind of thing. And so, back then, I was doing a lot of video journaling, and so after he told me, I just was like, “kay, just hold on a second, I need to go into my closet and kinda think about this.”    46:48 Sarah: So, I went to my closet and for ten minutes I just kind of, just like, talked to myself. Like, just basically went through, in my head, what I’d just heard. And, it’s interesting, I still have this video and I treasure it, but...so you’ll notice (well, you won’t notice, because you’re not watching it), but in the first five minutes, I’m just like, processing, like, “why him? Why me?” Everything right? This pity party. And then, the last five minutes, I just kinda make this shift. It was God telling me, “Sarah, he’s a son of God.” And that’s all I heard. That’s all I heard, and I knew that I needed to walk with him in this journey.    47:34 Sarah: I was not to fix him, because I can’t fix him, right? But I can walk with him to, you know, figure out how to help him navigate, you know, and how to get the help that he needed kind of stuff. And so, that was [...] once again, it’s a simple thing, but that was the one thing that really carried me through that experience. Just recognizing that he’s a son of God and together we can work through the porn addiction, and we can come out on top. And we definitely have. And it’s been an incredible experience. But there’s definitely been pain. It hasn’t been easy. But, there’s definitely a light at the end of the tunnel.   48:22 Daniel: A lot of people are listening, saying, “okay, yeah, you just shared he just dumped this big thing on you.” And if I remember right, you even equate pornography to adultery, or cheating, on the relationship, am I remembering correctly? 48:39 Sarah: Yeah. 48:39 Daniel: That’s a very big view to have. One that, generally, is very divisive in a relationship. And you also refer to it as an addiction. And if anybody’s been in my group, they know how sensitive I am about that terminology.    48:54 Sarah: Yeah.   48:54 Daniel: You actually went and learned a lot from Cameron Staley, 48:58: Oh, man. 48:59 Daniel: about mindfulness, which is not an addiction approach, it’s a very mindful approach. 49:03Sarah: Yeah. 49:03 Daniel: Which is very much in harmony with the theme of your book: non-judgemental, non-rigid around these things but being more mindful and self-aware. 49:15 Sarah: Self-awareness is huge, yeah. 49:17 Daniel: And I think that led you to this [...] because usually, the concepts of addiction don’t lead you into the direction that you’re talking about, in fact, it leads you in a very opposite direction. But I love that mindfulness, and fortunately, meeting up with Cameron, or whatever you learned from him, it led you to this idea.   49:34 Sarah: Yeah. 49:35 Daniel: One of the concepts that you shared there was, and I’m gonna put it in my terminology: “I don’t view sex as a punishment or reward, I view it as communcation.” And you talk about there, “yes, it’s not your fault, and you as the wife, you’re not responsible for his behavior. However, why are you punishing him by not giving him sex? Is that your because of your insecurity?” I realize I’m butchering your words, I’m putting in mine.   49:59 Sarah: Yeah. 50:00 Daniel: And correct me if I’m misrepresenting your train of thought there. But, you're saying, “embrace them. Don’t withhold sex because of mabye, your insecurities.”   50:09 Sarah: Yep, that’s the worst thing you could do, is to withhold it.   50:10 Daniel: Absolutely, absolutely. Although, giving them sex, you shouldn’t have this expecation: now, he’s gonna be safe, you know? In fact, I think you pointed that out, if I remember right. 50:20 Sarah: Yes, I did. 50:21 Daniel: You said somethinglike, “okay, I’m gonna give him all”--because some women do that--”I’m gonna give him all the sex he needs so he avoids it.”   50:26 Sarah: Then he won’t even go look, yeah.   50:27 Daniel: And that’s a reward or punishment approach, as opposed to communication and connecting.   50:33 Sarah: Yes. 50:33 Daniel: And so, ironically, taking that other approach of withholding or giving too much, is very much objectification, and divisive in the relationship. It’s not connected. And so I love that you embrace that idea, of “it’s not my responsibility, but I’m not going to miss this opportunity to connect with my partner. Because I view porn in this context”--whatever it is-- “I’m not going to let that get in my way of connecting with my partner.” I thought that was beautiful.   51:02 Sarah: Yeah, just finding that middle ground. I mean, I remember coming home and asking anything I could about porn. Because, I had no idea what that world was like. None. And so, it blew my mind to see, like, wow. I really don’t know anything! But at the same time, like, let’s come together and have conversations to see, like, how we can navigate this new normal. Come to a middle ground to connect. I mean, we uh, this could be a whole-nother podcast. That definitely, that experience...I mean, it didn’t take me on my sex journey, because I found out about this, probably like 5 years ago.    51:51 Daniel: You mean, his use of porn? 51:54 Sarah: Yes, his use of porn. And so, there were still a couple years in between there where I was just trying to like, you know, I’d have [...] our communication was better, it wasn’t the best as it is now, but we were definitely communicating. And I wasn't that one that was like, you know, denying him and like, that kind of thing. Because, I was kind of understanding how, you know, I needed to create this middle ground to see how we can evolve into something better. And so then, when I finally accepted like, “okay, I need to work on my sexuality,” then that took us to a whole-nother level. And he’s been amazing and [pauses], yeah. He doesn’t have those compulsions anymore and even if he does, he comes and talks to me about it, you know? And so, we’ve created a very healthy relationship in regards to porn.    52:52 Daniel: Sarah, that is wonderful. I would actually really love having you on again, at a future time, to talk about that.    52:58 Sarah: Yeah. 53:00 Daniel: Again, the book is Underneath it All...You’re Naked. Wonderful theme throughout the book. I think you did an amazing job with it, and I think the audience would really benefit from it. Thank you so much for coming on.   53:11 Sarah: Thank you. Aw, yeah, it’s been a pleasure. I appreciate you letting me have an opportunity to share my story. 53:18 Daniel: Thank you.   53:18 Sarah: It’s always something I like to talk about [laughs].   53:20 Daniel: Oh, clearly, 53:21 Sarah: It changed my life. Like, literally changed my life.   53:24 Daniel: Yeah. Your journey has been--   53:25 Sarah: Saved me. 53:26 Daniel: amazing. Thank you so much, Sarah. 53:28 Sarah: You’re welcome. [music]  

Today’s episode is vulnerable, raw, and beautifully courageous. In the first of a two-part episode series, we meet Lexus. Lexus shares the trauma of her first birth which ended in a crash Cesarean. She walks us through her anxiety, shock, the negligence of the hospital staff, and how she was stripped of the first birth experience she had envisioned. Lexus is currently pregnant with her second baby and is preparing for a VBAC. She shows us how she is finding healing even before her redemptive birth outcome. We can’t wait for Lexus to come back and share her second birth story! We wish birth trauma didn’t exist. We wish we could wave a magic wand and make it all disappear. But here at The VBAC Link, we also know how resilient you are. We see what you overcome. We know what victories you are capable of. We love you and continue to be inspired by you, Women of Strength. Trigger Warning: We know that unfortunately, many of our listeners can relate to the trauma Lexus shares. This episode may bring up unresolved feelings from a previous birth. Please give yourself grace and use discretion when listening. *Additional links* How to VBAC: The Ultimate Preparation Course for Parents ( https://www.thevbaclink.com/product/how-to-vbac/ ) Alexis Joy Center for Perinatal Mental Health ( https://www.ahn.org/services/womens-health/behavioral-health/alexis-joy-dachille-center-for-perinatal-mental-health ) *Episode sponsor* This episode is sponsored by our signature course, How to VBAC: The Ultimate Preparation Course for Parents ( https://www.thevbaclink.com/product/how-to-vbac/ ). It is the most comprehensive VBAC preparation course in the world, perfectly packaged in an online, self-paced, video course. Together, Meagan and Julie have helped over 800 parents get the birth that they wanted, and we are ready to help you too. Head over to thevbaclink.com ( http://www.thevbaclink.com/ ) to find out more and sign up today. --------------------- Sponsorship inquiries --------------------- Interested in sponsoring a The VBAC Link podcast? Find out more information here at advertisecast.com/TheVBACLink ( https://www.advertisecast.com/TheVBACLink ) or email us at info@thevbaclink.com. *************** Full transcript *************** Note: All transcripts are edited to correct grammar and to eliminate false starts and filler words. --------------- Trigger Warning --------------- *Meagan:* Hey everyone, this is Meagan. I wanted to drop a little trigger warning here for this awesome episode. This episode is about sharing birth trauma and how to process it leading up to this person‘s VBAC. We just wanted to let you know it may be traumatic listening to it and bring up past fears or feelings that you may have had from your previous birth. Dive right in though, she gets really raw and emotional and shares what she does to work through her trauma. *Meagan:* Hello, hello. It is Wednesday and we have another amazing podcast episode for you today. This is The VBAC Link podcast and you are with Meagan, myself, and our assistant, Sarah, today instead of Julie. Sarah, we are so excited that you are with us. *Sarah:* Oh, I am so excited to be here. *Meagan:* I am going to totally tattletale on Julie. She is normally by the book, on time, total scheduler, like awesome. I am the one that is scatterbrained. When we scheduled today’s podcast, she forgot she had a prior commitment. She is actually getting her teeth drilled right now, so probably not having as much fun as us. Poor Julie. Send her some love over there at the dentist. But we are excited today to be recording with our friend, Lexus. Today’s episode is going to be a little bit different than some of our other episodes. As you know if you have been listening with us, we tend to share VBAC or CBAC stories. Today, Lexus is going to be sharing her C-section story and she is actually pregnant right now, due this year, and hasn’t had her VBAC yet, but is preparing for her VBAC. And so, we want to share her story today and what she is doing to prepare for her VBAC. But of course, before we dive into her awesome story, we want to turn the time over to Sarah to share one of our awesome reviews from one of our listeners. ------------------ Review of the Week ------------------ *Sarah:* Yes. I have a review from Danielle Clady. She left the review on our Google ( https://www.google.com/search?ei=ozgxYJqoJIfRtQax3YXoDw&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EAMyDQguEMcBEK8BECcQkwIyBAgjECcyBAgjECcyAggAOgoILhDHARCvARAnOgQILhBDOgQIABBDOgsILhCxAxDHARCjAjoGCAAQChBDOggIABCxAxCDAToFCAAQkQI6CAguEMcBEK8BOgUILhCxAzoCCC46BAguEAo6BAgAEAo6BwguELEDEAo6BwgAELEDEAo6CgguELEDEIMBEAo6BggAEBYQHjoICAAQFhAKEB5QzQlY6xNg4xVoAHAAeACAAaACiAG4GJIBBjAuMi4xMZgBAKABAaoBB2d3cy13aXo&iflsig=AINFCbYAAAAAYDFGs1lVZcYTMVC-aeCFO5jPQXGeMjqd&oq=the+vbac+link&q=the+vbac+link&sclient=gws-wiz&source=hp&sxsrf=ALeKk018l3wot3SRHx_Z6JByVp-nGdje2Q%3A1613838499654&uact=5&ved=0ahUKEwjahfnz8PjuAhWHaM0KHbFuAf0Q4dUDCAk ) podcast, which is exciting because we don’t get very many reviews on our Google podcast. She says, “I have been listening to this podcast for MONTHS while I drive for work as I prepare for my VBAC in July.  I recommend it to all expecting moms (including first-time moms) because I WISH I knew about it before my first birth. The podcast is the reason I have hired a doula. Fingers crossed restrictions are lifted and she can come to the hospital!” So exciting. It doesn’t say when. Let’s see, July. So she would’ve had her baby already because she left this review in May. *Meagan* : In May, okay. So if you are listening still, write us and let us know how your birth went. We always love to know the follow-ups. Maybe we should be like Julie and stalk her in our community to see if she is in there and has posted. *Sarah* : Yes. *Meagan:* Do you know what? I love that she said that she recommends it to all first-time moms. That is something that I think is awesome about this podcast. It really isn’t just targeted to people wanting to VBAC. It really is something that all birthers can listen to because we are learning in each episode ways to avoid Cesarean, ways to advocate for ourselves, education pieces on how to help our bodies be ready. It is just so awesome. So if you are someone or if you know someone who is pregnant, or expecting, or wanting to start trying, definitely send them this podcast because we would love to reach all the moms out there and help them achieve the birth of their dreams. *Sarah:* Oh, 100%. I recommend this podcast to everyone I know regardless of if they are first-time moms or if they have already had a baby and didn’t have a Cesarean because there is something in every episode that someone can relate to in their birth. --------------- Episode sponsor --------------- *Julie:* Do you want a VBAC but don’t know where to start? It’s easy to feel like we need to figure it all out on our own. That’s what we used to do, and it was the loneliest and most ineffective thing we have ever done. That’s why Meagan and I created our signature course, How to VBAC: The Ultimate Preparation Course for Parents ( https://www.thevbaclink.com/product/how-to-vbac/ ) , that you can find at thevbaclink.com ( http://thevbaclink.com/ ). It is the most comprehensive VBAC preparation course in the world, perfectly packaged in an online, self-paced, video course. Together, Meagan and I have helped over 800 parents get the birth that they wanted, and we are ready to help you too. Head on over to thevbaclink.com ( http://thevbaclink.com/ ) to find out more and sign up today. That’s thevbaclink.com ( http://thevbaclink.com/ ). See you there. ------------ Lexus’ story ------------ *Meagan:* Okay, we are so excited to dive into this episode. I definitely think that there is going to be some emotion in this because as I have been reading through Lexus‘ story, there were some hard points in her labor, and her journey, and her birth. We are excited for her to share them and to share the tips on how we can better prepare for the next birth. Lexus, we would like to turn the time over to you. *Lexus:* Hi. Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited. This is my very first podcast, so I am super eager, and yeah, like you said, pretty nervous about the emotions that might come up, but I am embracing them because that is part of the journey as well. *Meagan:* Yes. *Lexus:* Yeah, so I can just get started. Back in April, I was 40 weeks and 6 days pregnant with my son, Theodore. We were getting ready to go in. It was my induction day. It was a Monday. I went into the hospital at 8:00 a.m. My husband and I were like two kids going to the candy shop. We were so excited. We were smiling from ear to ear. We really just had no idea how fast things can change and flip. I definitely think-- see? The emotions have started already. I am sorry. I definitely think it is something that going forward, instead of saying that, “This is my plan.” I am having a lot of, “These are my goals,” for the next birth. That has really helped put it into perspective that things can go not according to plan. *Meagan:* Definitely. That’s such a great point. We talk about birth plans and stuff. I have over the years steered my clients away from calling it a birth plan or having a “plan” because we know things can change. And so, if we can know our preferences and try to achieve all of our goals in the process, sometimes if they do change, then that plan doesn’t seem to have failed. *Lexus* : Absolutely. Yeah. That was the biggest part for me. So, yeah. We went in and we started the very long and really difficult process of induction. When they first told me about going in for my induction, I really wasn’t anticipating everything that was going to happen. The first thing that they did when I got in there was the initial height, weight, etc. But then we had a doctor come in and say, “We are going to do the Foley catheter on you.” I really wasn’t thinking, but looking back on it in hindsight, that for me was so-- I mean, it was scary. It was painful. I never want to scare women or moms from the process because it is so different for everyone. But I think there is something to be said that when it comes to forcing your body to do something that it’s not yet ready to do, that can take a toll. It truly does. I first got the Foley catheter and instantly as soon as it was placed, the doctors were taking off their gloves and the nurse was trying to fix the monitor and put it back on my son’s heartbeat. She couldn’t get it onto his heart. She couldn’t find it. The doctors were about to just walk out of the room and leave and the nurse said, “Aren’t you guys going to stay here for a minute?” She was moving it around and I really wasn’t even thinking that it was a big deal in the moment, because I just kept thinking, “Oh, he flipped around. He is a super active baby in there. He’s always kicking. He is always moving.” And then, I started to see the doctors look more and more at the monitor and look more, not-- I honestly wouldn’t say concerned. It just looked like they were almost studying it. All of a sudden, she was moving it around and they call a Condition O and the bells start going off. My husband and I were sitting there like, “Well, we don’t really know what a Condition O is.” We were just kind of, you know, “They arere trying to find it. They needed some backup, whatever.” And then all of a sudden, 20 to 30 people come rushing into the room and they are telling me to get on my side, get on the other side, get on my hands and knees, get up and they threw an oxygen mask at me. That’s when I really knew, “Oh my goodness. Something is seriously wrong.” I just remember being on my hands and knees and thinking to myself, “I can’t support myself. My arms are shaking. My legs are shaking. I can’t support myself. I can’t do it.” I remember looking around the room, looking for someone that could be my focal point. My husband is great but he was just as scared. We had a swarm of people in the room and he was pushed to the back so other people can do what they have to do. That for us was a very heavy, emotional moment. I start crying. I start panicking. You know, shaking. It was really heavy. All of a sudden, I don’t know how, but the heartbeat of my son came back on and it was perfect. Looking back and when I asked, they had said that only two or three minutes had passed, but it felt like hours of that panic and not being able to comprehend what had happened in such a short amount of time. And so, they said, “His heart rate is back. It’s stabilized. He is great.” I rested myself back on the bed and I am still shaking. I am still-- you know, I was in shock. I was traumatized in that moment right there. They come in again and they say, “Wow. We know that was super scary. We just want to explain to you that was a Condition O. We were getting you prepped to go in for an emergency C-section. We had to get your son out right in that minute. It was serious.” We started to just look at each other and look around like, “Oh my gosh. How is this happening? What is happening?” And so they said, “Your anxiety caused your son to go into distress in that moment.” I remember going, “Oh my gosh. I haven’t even given birth yet and I’m already messing up.” Being told that your anxiety is causing your son to go into distress, I mean, how can you process that? Where is the evidence behind this? Where is-- you know? How can you blame that moment on me and on the nervousness I was feeling when it just didn’t make sense to me? I just remember sitting there and being told this but feeling still so numb from everything that had happened the last five minutes or however long it had been in that time. *Meagan* : You know, that is interesting too because your anxiety-- I mean, anxiety in general. I would have anxiety in that moment. That anxiety, you may have been anxious going into the situation, but then the anxiousness was created by what was happening. That is very interesting. I am sorry. I am sorry that you were blamed. *Lexus:* Yeah. That is exactly what it was. It felt like in that moment there wasn’t really an explanation for what had happened, so it was trying to placate or say, “Well, this is what caused it. It won’t happen again if we just keep this in line, etc.” That was definitely something that had already set me up for the feelings of going, “Oh my gosh. What is going on?” They told us over and over, “It was a fluke. There is absolutely no reason it should happen again. It was an incredibly rare circumstance that it would happen.” They suggested getting the epidural so that if something did happen, I could be awake for my C-section, but there was absolutely no reason to suspect that it would happen. I initially had said I didn’t want the epidural going into it just because it scared me-- the risks and the procedure of getting it scared me in general. It was a scary process to think about. But I said, “Okay, yeah. That is something that I need to do so that I can get the most out of this experience and I can be there for the birth of my son.” I signed all of the waivers and all of the information. They came in and they started to put the epidural in. As soon as it was placed, I knew something was wrong. I remember saying almost instantly, “Only half of me is going numb.” They kept saying, “Well, you have to lay on your other side because the epidural and the medication works by gravity.” I’ve done a lot of research since that time and I know that is not correct at all. Epidurals don’t work via gravity. They had kept telling me, “You have to lay on that side. Keep pushing the button. Keep medicating. Keep switching, but stay on that side if it is still not getting the medication.” So I said, “Okay. We will try it.” I kept laboring. Over the course of the next 10 hours that I labored, I requested, from my memory, four times for a provider to come in and check the placement of the epidural because I still didn’t think that it was correct. My husband remembers more-- more times that I asked, that is, and I remember four very vividly saying, “Something is not right. I have been on my left side this entire time. Something is going on.” Over the course of 10 hours, not a single person from the anesthesiology team came to check on the placement of my epidural. I briefly had providers come in. I shared my concern and it was, “All right, we will pass that along.” When the nurse came in, I said, “Listen, please. Can someone have someone come in and check the epidural? It is not right.” They said, “Well, are you pushing the button?” I said, “Yes. I am pushing the button.” They just said, “All right. We will go let them know. We will send someone in.” So, 10 hours passed. It is insane to think that 10 hours passed and I wasn’t properly-- the epidural was just in my back and not being monitored. They are supposed to be monitored. They are supposed to be checked for placement. When changeovers in staffing happen, there should be someone in there checking it and no one came. And so, I labored. The Foley catheter came out when-- jeez, I think I was 5 centimeters dilated? I can’t remember specifically. That’s when they said, “Okay, we will start the Pitocin. We will keep you going.” I continued to laboring. I believe it was about 9:30 at night that they had said to me, “All right. We are going to check you again.” I was 9 centimeters. I remember looking at my husband and being like, “Oh my gosh. We did it. We are almost there. I am doing great. We are doing great. Everything is great. Nothing scary is happening again. We are doing a good job.” They said, “All right. We are going to have someone come in. We will break your waters and--” Sorry. This is when it starts getting really heavy. “We will--” I’m sorry. “We will have someone come in and we will break your waters. We think that everything will start happening very quickly and you are going to meet your baby soon.” I remember the doctors left and I remember looking at my husband and saying, “We did it. We are here. We are going to see him soon.” We even talked about and joked like, “Where can we set up our phone in the room so that we can record everything and get everything on video so that we can watch it back and we can remember this forever?” I remember saying, “We’ve got to call in my OB. We have to call her. We have to tell her that I made it to 9 centimeters and I did it and we are ready.” And then everything starts to get very heavy to look back and to sort through those memories. My OB came in. She was like, “Oh my gosh, you are doing awesome. You are doing so well. You progressed so fast. Normally first labors can go longer, you are doing great.” My waters had already been ruptured by that point. And so, we were just taking in the moment. All of a sudden, my contractions were really, really close together. But I thought, “Well, I am 9 centimeters. That means I am probably just getting to 10 and I will be ready to go.” And then, those bells that I know I will hear for the rest of my life started going off again. This time my husband and I knew that there were going to be a lot of people coming in, but that it was a fluke and that everything was going to be fine in the next minute. I remember hearing over the loudspeaker, “Condition O. Labor and Delivery Room 11. Condition O.” Everyone came in and then they said, “Her contractions are too close. We have to stop the Pitocin.” And so, they stopped administering the Pitocin. They gave me medication to stop the contractions, but they were too strong. I was contracting about every two minutes at that point and they said, “The baby is in distress. We need to fill her sac up with water again so that he has room.” I remember just feeling like, all of these people were coming at me and pushing these things inside of me. I was just going, “What do I do? What do I do?” just sitting there and it wasn’t working. I don’t know if the water wasn’t retaining or what happened and so then they said, “We still can’t get him on the monitor. We need to attach a monitor to his head.” And so, they were grabbing a monitor and they were trying to attach it to his head. I just kept thinking to myself, “Please, please, please just find the heartbeat. Please, just-- everything is fine. He is going to be fine. Everything is okay.” They kept saying, “Get on your side. On the other side. Get on your hands and knees. Get up. Move.” I remember trying so hard to get myself moving as fast as I could, but I had the epidural and at nine months pregnant, I was a bigger girl. It was hard to get up in that moment and as fast as they wanted me to. I was trying to move, trying to listen to their requests and instructions as much as I could, as fast as I could, but I just felt like I wasn’t able to move fast enough. I remember they said, “Let’s get back on your back.” My OB looked at me and she said, “Lexus, I am so sorry. We are going to bring you right now. We have got to make sure he is okay. We are going to bring you in for a C-section now.” I remember saying, “No. No. That’s not how this was supposed to go. That is not what we had planned. This is not anything that we had planned for.” I just kept saying, “No. No.” I looked up at the new anesthesiologist who was in there and I said, “My epidural hasn’t been working. There’s something wrong with my epidural. I don’t know what’s going on, but only one half of me is numb.” He said, “Oh, we will fix that,” and he pushed another dose of medication. They unhooked me and I looked at my husband and I said, “Please, please come be with me,” because I was so afraid that he wasn’t going to be in the room with me. They were wheeling me down the halls and I just remember seeing again, “Condition O, Labor and Delivery Room 1”1 on the signs in the hallway and hearing the bells. They get me to the delivery room and a doctor I hadn’t met came up to me and said, “I am going to take care of your baby. I am going to make sure your baby is okay.” In that moment, I said, “I am going to die. I am dying. I know I am dying. I am never going to meet my son and my husband needs to be here. I don’t know where he is.” The last time I had seen him, he was putting on his scrubs and he was excited and he said, “I am going to be right there. They’re coming back for me.” And so, they wheeled me into the operating room and I remember some of the nurses were almost frustrated with me because they said, “Get up and get yourself on the bed.” I remember going, “How?” Do you know? How was I supposed to transfer myself over to their table with an epidural being nine months pregnant and being in a lying position, transfer myself over to another bed? *Meagan:* They actually thought you could move to the other bed by yourself? *Lexus:* Yes. Yes. *Meagan:* That’s wild. *Lexus* : Yes. They just said, “Get up and climb over.” I was like, “How? How can I do this?” I just remembered thinking, “How?” like again, “How am I supposed to do this?” And so, by the time that I finally got help to be moved over, I kept saying, “Where is Bo? I need Bo.” Bo is my husband. I kept saying, “I need Bo. Where is Bo?” I’m sorry. They kept saying, “He is on his way. We are going to get him. We just have to get you set up.” They put up the blue sheet and I looked at one of the nurses and I said, “Please, don’t let my baby die. Please, don’t let my baby die.” I remember they pushed more medication through the IV and they were poking my sides. They poked my right side and asked if I felt it and I said, “No.” And then, they poked my left side and asked if I felt it and I said, “Yes.” They said other things I don’t even remember and then they tried it again. They poked my right side. I didn’t feel anything. They poked my left side. I still felt it. And then they said, “All right,” and took something. I just remember it being so sharp. They pushed on my abdomen and they said, “Do you feel this?” I said, “Yes.” They said, “That’s it. Put her under.” I remember going, “What?” Like, not knowing what that even meant, and then a mask was over my face and that was it. That was the last thing that I heard and experienced in that moment. *Meagan:* And had Bo made it back in there, yet? No? *Lexus:* No. Nope. He was still waiting to be brought back. He was still in the room, waiting. I’m sorry. And so, my son was delivered a very, very healthy baby. Thank God. He was 8 pounds, 2 ounces. He was born at 10:28, but these are all things that I have had to be told about my son because I wasn’t there. I wasn’t. Physically I was there, but I was asleep. I wasn’t taking in those moments. I didn’t hear his cry. I didn’t experience anything like that. Instead, I woke up two hours after he was born and I was still so groggy and under the medication and disoriented that I couldn’t open my eyes, but I just kept hearing him crying. And so, instinctually, laying in the bed, and this is something that I will have with me until the day that I die. I was laying there and screaming for help because I couldn’t move my legs and get up to go get my baby. I couldn’t see him because I was so disoriented. I couldn’t open my eyes and look around to see what was going on. I just kept screaming for help. I hear my husband and my mom saying, “Everything is okay. He is okay. He is perfect. He is here. And, look. He is here. Open your eyes. He is right here.” And finally, when I could open my eyes, I remember being-- the first time that I could hold him and just looking at him, I was just so not present and still so confused. I can’t even think of an emotion that I felt other than just confusion. This is one of the beautiful things about that instinctual motherhood where I had had that C-section and I had just had a massive incision on my abdomen, but as soon as they placed him in my arms, I just started rocking back-and-forth. I remember my mom saying, “Lexus, you have got to stop. You have a huge incision on your stomach. You’ve got to stop. You’re going to hurt yourself.” But I just remember that instinctual needing to sway with him and needing to rock him and calm him down. So that was for me, something that was beautiful in that moment I guess I would say, just feeling like as soon as I had him, I could move. I could sway and I could be in touch with that part of me I was having that identity of being a mom. But there were still a lot of pieces that I wasn’t understanding or wasn’t picking up. I kept having to ask my husband, “You were there, right? You saw everything, right? You got to cut his umbilical cord, right?” At the time, he was like, “Yeah, I was there. It was crazy. It was so amazing. Such an experience.” And then, I felt good because I felt like that was one thing I had done right. I had advocated for myself to say, “My husband needs to be here. Where is Bo? Bo needs to be here.” It wasn’t until later-- I think I had asked him like 10 more times, he finally said, “Honey, I am so sorry. I didn’t want to tell you this in the moment because I didn’t want to upset you more. But, I couldn’t be there and the nurses came back to tell me that I had a baby boy and that everything was okay.” He said, “That was it. That was all my experience of that was.” And so, of course, the timing just added up to be the perfect storm. We were in the elevator moving to the maternity side of the hospital. I had just found this out and I was sobbing. Oh my goodness, I was so sad and just feeling like the one thing I thought I did right, I didn’t do right. I just robbed my husband of this experience. It was his first experience becoming a dad and I robbed him of that. So when we get to the maternity side though, what they see is a woman hysterically sobbing and the nurses say overtop to my husband, “Watch out for her, Dad. She is at a greater risk for postpartum depression. It will start with her not eating or not sleeping.” I just remember laying there and being like, “Am I not here right now?” *Sarah:* Are you kidding me? *Lexus:* Just say this over me like I was just a body. *Meagan:* “Watch out for her, Dad?” *Lexus:* Yeah. *Meagan* : Ugh, ugh. I have no words. *Lexus* : Yeah. I just remember looking at my husband and looking back at the nurse and going, “What? What?” You know, just not even being able to fully process it. And so, that was the extent of my birth experience with Teddy. Trauma is definitely a difficult thing because it has the ability to block out certain parts and then have it pop up at random moments. That was pretty much the key parts that I wanted to reiterate and talk about because throughout my time studying, and researching, and trying to learn more, and understand this through and through, I have heard of a lot of women talking about epidural issues, misplacements, asking for help and not getting it, and you know? That was something for me that I thought, “How is this happening?” How are so many women being ignored and not being listened to when they say and advocate for themselves in a very vulnerable, raw moment of giving birth, “Hey, this isn’t right.” They are not being taken seriously. Going forward planning for this VBAC, I have honestly done so, so much to educate myself, to grow in ways that I didn’t know were possible. I saw a provider’s mental health program professional that specialized in perinatal mental health and that was the most healing and therapeutic process that I could have ever-- I truly am so blessed to have found them, to have used them as a resource, and to go through so much treatment with them and grow. I graduated from my birth trauma course— cognitive processing therapy. I couldn’t believe how impactful and how meaningful the entire therapy was and how much it really-- for lack of a better phrase, it lit a fire under me to learn to advocate and then to talk about it. I filed a grievance with the hospital. That was part of my process that I decided was what I needed to do within my CPT. I filed a grievance. I had the grievance meeting with them and I said, “Listen. This isn’t right. What happened to me is not right and I can almost guarantee you that it is happening to other women.” For a moment, it even crossed my mind like, “Do I need to contact an attorney? Do I need to reach out to someone?” But it became that aspect of, if I were to contact an attorney, if I were to reach out for some type of medical negligence or medical malpractice, etc., I would be handed a piece of paper that said, “We will give you X amount if you don’t talk about this again and if you don’t tell anyone what happened.” I sat there for a minute and just went, “Nothing is going to come from this. Being silenced is going to do nothing.” *Meagan:* Oh my gosh. *Lexus* : That was with my consulting with many different professionals. It wasn’t anything directly from the hospital that said, “We’ll give you an NDA.” It was really looking at, how are medical malpractice suits handled? It is notoriously with, “We will give you some money if you just don’t talk about it again.” And so, I decided to take the route of talking about it, and researching, and telling my story because it happened to me. I know it happened to me and I know what is happening to other women. The only thing that will change from that moment or I guess I should say really, nothing is going to change what happened during my birth. But talking about it, and advocating, and pushing for trauma-informed care, and pushing for trauma-informed clinicians, and looking at the policies and how they are either being applied or not really just has been the best and most therapeutic way of moving forward from this. *Meagan:* Wow. Wow. What a heavy experience you have had so far. *Lexus:* Yeah. It was absolutely everything I never anticipated ever happening for sure. That has definitely led into why I am using a lot of goals for this pregnancy. A goal of mine is for a VBAC and to reach that goal. I am putting in the steps of studying, asking my doctor what their rate of VBAC is, reaching out to other moms, listening to podcasts, and really trying to take it all in, asking about hospital policies how they go about VBACs, how they go about emergencies, Condition O’s, really trying to educate myself and put as much information in my pocket as I can so that in that moment, it is almost muscle memory to know these things, and to push for them, and advocate for them, so I am not scrambling at the last minute. *Meagan:* Definitely. So, provider-wise now, what have you done to find the provider that is right for you now? *Lexus* : So actually, I am still going there. *Meagan* : Or have you found one? *Lexus* : It’s going to sound strange enough. I am still with the same provider that I was with for the birth of my son. *Meagan:* Oh really? *Lexus:* Yes. You know, my provider is incredible and I firmly believe that had they been there the entire duration of my labor experience, things would have absolutely been different. My provider listens, cares, knows me and has been there. I definitely think that things would have been different, but it also goes to say that there is a really strong trauma bond there. This was the provider that was there during those moments where everything went from 0 to 100, and performed the C-section, and made sure my husband got to at least meet my son and be included in the process as much as possible. So, it’s definitely something that I am still really working on. Is this a bond that-- I know it’s a trauma bond, but is it anything that is going to-- basically, I would be delivering in the same hospital. *Meagan* : Yeah, I was going to say that the place itself could be a trigger. *Lexus:* Absolutely. Absolutely. That’s something that I am really working on moving forward. That goes partly with my research and asking, talking to doctors, reading about doctors. “What are you doing to be trauma-informed? What education are you still pursuing to make sure that you are up-to-date on birth trauma and moving forward with the process of delivering another baby given such a heavy, heavy trauma that was experienced the first time?” And so, it’s a process. It’s really-- it’s still working and I am still trying to navigate everything and go through the motions of it all. Trauma has a very, very difficult way of manifesting itself with the trauma bond. It’s interesting, and it’s sad, and it’s heavy, and it’s emotional, and it’s all of these things. It’s a learning process and so, I am still reaching out. I am still in touch with my amazing psychologist and birth trauma therapist and working through all of these things trying to figure out what is the best course of action moving forward. But, yeah. It is a process. I have some time, thankfully. *Meagan:* Yeah, yes. You’ve got a few months. *Lexus:* Yeah. *Meagan:* I am so proud of you for doing all of this and working through this. It is a really hard experience to want to touch and go back on, you know? To reflect back on. I think a lot of the time we as human beings, we process our trauma by avoiding it. *Lexus:* Yes. *Meagan:* And pushing it away, and compressing it down, and you are bringing it back to light, and even walking through the same doors to fight through this trauma. And so, yeah. Kudos for sure to you. Wow. Thank you so much for sharing that story. I’m so sorry that you had to go through all of that. It definitely sounds like you were mistreated. It’s not fair and it’s not right. I hope that this next experience is very different and uplifting and healing in itself. What other tips, before we wrap up, would you feel that parents out there need to know that maybe have gone through trauma similar, or maybe you haven’t even had trauma, or haven’t even had a baby yet to avoid trauma? Or recognizing if your-- is it even possible to recognize if you are going to a traumatic state in the moment? I actually don’t know the answer to that. *Lexus:* Yeah, no. I think it’s definitely something that hindsight is always going to be 20/20. Hindsight is always going to show you in those moments when my arms are trembling and I couldn’t process what was going on, I was in a state of shock. I was going through that trauma. Moving forward, speaking to people that have not experienced trauma in any type of way or haven’t experienced it is just, have grace with yourself for not recognizing it in that moment because it is hard. When you are going through a traumatic experience, there are so many other things going on that it’s almost impossible to be able to say, “I think I am being traumatized right now.” So moving forward, if you find yourself not experiencing trauma and then all of a sudden you are in treatment for trauma or etc., just to have grace with yourself for not recognizing it in that moment. I am going to school for counseling psychology. I’m going to school for all of these things. I have been in school for years for this and I still-- in that moment, I had no idea what was going on or what was happening with me. So, it just is looking at-- be patient. Give yourself the grace moving forward and then really trying to figure out how to process it. I guess that’s my tip for having experienced birth trauma. I am very, very grateful for the resource that I had at my fingertips being here in Pittsburgh. The Alexis Joy clinic, absolutely. The Alexis Joy Center for Perinatal Mental Health ( https://www.ahn.org/services/womens-health/behavioral-health/alexis-joy-dachille-center-for-perinatal-mental-health ) is the full title. I am so, very blessed to have had professionals in perinatal mental health and professionals that have dedicated their careers to learning about birth trauma, experiences during birth, working through all of the emotions that really-- I knew I was in the right place as soon as I started seeing someone. It was exactly where I needed to be, but unfortunately, it is hard to find centers like that nationwide. Do you know what I mean? In America, we are definitely behind. We are not up-to-date on perinatal mental health. It is flabbergasting to me that we aren’t up-to-date on this and we aren’t as educated, but that is also why I talk. That is why I advocate because more people need to be specialized in this and know how to handle it properly and in a therapeutic manner. So, I think that would be my biggest tip going forward and to also encourage partners to seek out care and to seek out trauma counseling or perinatal resources for partners as well, because they are going through something at the same time as you are. It is different, yes. It is different being the person laying there and the person standing over there, but all the while it is still very-- trauma can impact and does impact everyone in different ways. So, just encouraging families and parents to reach out to specialized providers to do some research on where they can go and knowing that there is a resource for them, knowing that there is always and will be a place that they can go and get the help that they need. *Meagan:* I love it. Thank you so much for sharing that. I know that your words will inspire and empower people out there who are, like I said, maybe facing trauma, or wanting to avoid trauma, and wanting to know how to work through these avenues. So, thank you so much again for sharing your story. We hope to make this a two-segment episode, the second one being your second birth. We would love to share that, so definitely keep us posted. We are sending you all the love and luck for this next birth. *Lexus:* Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to find therapeutic healing in any and all ways that I can, and for listening. It means so much to me. *Meagan:* Absolutely. ------- Closing ------- Would you like to be a guest on the podcast? Head over to thevbaclink.com/share ( http://www.thevbaclink.com/share ) and submit your story. For all things VBAC, including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Julie and Meagan’s bios, head over to thevbaclink.com ( http://www.thevbaclink.com ). Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link. 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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.

John: So Sarah, you're an English teacher, right?Sarah: That's right.John: You must have taught in many countries before.Sarah: Yeah, I did. I taught in the USA, in Taiwan, China, South Korea, Japan and Ecuador.John: Oh, Ecuador.Sarah: Yeah.John: So you must be able to speak Spanish very well.Sarah: I think so. I studied really hard, and then when I lived in Ecuador, I spent a lot of time talking to people.John: Did you teach Spanish, too?Sarah: No, I didn't. When I lived in Ecuador actually, I volunteered for the United Nations.John: Wow.Sarah: And I taught families and they were being relocated to Canada because they were fleeing the drug wars of Colombia.John: Wow.Sarah: So I felt very badly for these families but they had a really bright future. So that was good. But then one week, I had a family, a couple of families and they were being relocated to Sweden.John: Oh.Sarah: And I said, "I can't teach them Swedish." And the UN said, "Well, maybe just teach them English." So I thought, they're going to Sweden, they don't need to learn English right now. And my friend at the time – she's Norwegian, and we were living together. And every day, she helped me to learn a little bit of Swedish. Just enough for one class so that I could teach these families…John: Wait, wait.Sarah: …some Swedish.John: You were teaching Swedish language?Sarah: Yes.John: You are an English speaker.Sarah: Yes.John: You lived in Ecuador.Sarah: Yes.John: And a Norwegian person taught you Swedish.Sarah: Yes.John: So you could teach Swedish to people from Ecuador.Sarah: From Colombia, currently living in Ecuador.John: So they could move to Sweden.Sarah: Yes.John: And you did this as a volunteer.Sarah: Yeah. I wanted to help people. So I moved to Ecuador and I got a volunteer job with the United Nations to help teach people but I never thought I would be teaching Swedish.John: Wow.Sarah: Yeah. It was a lot of fun.John: I would like to try that someday, too.Sarah: You can do it.

John: So I was wondering about disciplining kids in public. You have kids, right?Sarah: Yeah. I have two kids. I have a three-year old and a one-year old.John: Are they ever naughty when you're out in public?Sarah: Yes. They are naughty out in public. And I think that you shouldn't discipline your children in front of other people. So if I'm out in public and my three-year old starts to be naughty and she's crying because she wants a toy from the store or something, I will pick her up and I take her somewhere quiet until she's calm. Like I might take her to the family bathroom or a quiet hallway, so she can stop crying and stop making noise.John: I see. So you wouldn't just give her the toy she wants.Sarah: No. I don't think you should do that sort of thing to make your child be quiet, just give them something until they are quiet because then they'll be bad more in the future. If they know they can cry and scream, and mom and dad will give them what they want, they'll just be worse and worse.John: Oh, I see. They'll learn that it's okay. They can get what they want by crying.Sarah: Yeah.John: But don't you think you'll – won't you lose more time if you have to take your kids to some quiet place to calm down?Sarah: Yeah. You lose time but I think it's worth it because I think of the future and the time I'll save by making sure that my child is better behaved in the future. And the other thing too is I'm always trying to think about other people. So I don't want other people to have to listen to my child scream and cry. And I also don't want them to see me talking sternly to her because they'll maybe be annoyed or feel uncomfortable. And maybe my child will scream more because she can feel that. So I try to go somewhere quiet.John: Oh, I see.Sarah: Sometimes that's impossible though. Sometimes, if you're on the plane or on a train, you can't go anywhere or do anything. You have to stay in your seat.John: What if you're on an airplane, then do you give your child whatever they are crying for as soon as possible?Sarah: Yes, I do. I try to plan ahead and I think, okay, I need to have enough toys. I need to have lots of snacks, lots of fun things so that I prevent them from becoming naughty or crying or screaming. But sometimes, you can't help it. And if you're child or baby starts to be loud at that point, I will. I'll give them candy or food or toy, whatever they want.John: Oh, I get it. So I think you're saying, you think there might be a different reason why kids become naughty. Besides what they want…Sarah: Yeah.John: For example, they're hungry or bored.Sarah: Yeah. I think a lot of the times, children are naughty because maybe they're tired or they're hungry, or they want to play and stretch their legs but they can't because they're on the plane or they're in a stroller at the.John: So instead of waiting for bad behavior and then doing some discipline like yelling at your kids or grabbing their arms, maybe it's better to prevent bad behavior by making sure the kids sleep enough and don't get bored.Sarah: Yeah. That's what I'm saying. And, you know, my kids are young. Just three and one. So a one-year old can't really be naughty. They're just a baby. So if they need something, I give them food or what they need. But a three-year old, they can throw a tantrum. And so, they can be very naughty.John: A tantrum?Sarah: Yeah. When they scream and maybe they fall down on the floor, and they kick their legs. Sometimes they try to hit you. It's really bad. But I think all two-and-three-year-old children sometimes they do them.John: Oh, I've heard of that. It's called the.Sarah: Yes. But it also lasts into three.John: Well, it sounds like you're a good parent.Sarah: Oh, I try.

John: So I was wondering about disciplining kids in public. You have kids, right?Sarah: Yeah. I have two kids. I have a three-year old and a one-year old.John: Are they ever naughty when you're out in public?Sarah: Yes. They are naughty out in public. And I think that you shouldn't discipline your children in front of other people. So if I'm out in public and my three-year old starts to be naughty and she's crying because she wants a toy from the store or something, I will pick her up and I take her somewhere quiet until she's calm. Like I might take her to the family bathroom or a quiet hallway, so she can stop crying and stop making noise.John: I see. So you wouldn't just give her the toy she wants.Sarah: No. I don't think you should do that sort of thing to make your child be quiet, just give them something until they are quiet because then they'll be bad more in the future. If they know they can cry and scream, and mom and dad will give them what they want, they'll just be worse and worse.John: Oh, I see. They'll learn that it's okay. They can get what they want by crying.Sarah: Yeah.John: But don't you think you'll – won't you lose more time if you have to take your kids to some quiet place to calm down?Sarah: Yeah. You lose time but I think it's worth it because I think of the future and the time I'll save by making sure that my child is better behaved in the future. And the other thing too is I'm always trying to think about other people. So I don't want other people to have to listen to my child scream and cry. And I also don't want them to see me talking sternly to her because they'll maybe be annoyed or feel uncomfortable. And maybe my child will scream more because she can feel that. So I try to go somewhere quiet.John: Oh, I see.Sarah: Sometimes that's impossible though. Sometimes, if you're on the plane or on a train, you can't go anywhere or do anything. You have to stay in your seat.John: What if you're on an airplane, then do you give your child whatever they are crying for as soon as possible?Sarah: Yes, I do. I try to plan ahead and I think, okay, I need to have enough toys. I need to have lots of snacks, lots of fun things so that I prevent them from becoming naughty or crying or screaming. But sometimes, you can't help it. And if you're child or baby starts to be loud at that point, I will. I'll give them candy or food or toy, whatever they want.John: Oh, I get it. So I think you're saying, you think there might be a different reason why kids become naughty. Besides what they want…Sarah: Yeah.John: For example, they're hungry or bored.Sarah: Yeah. I think a lot of the times, children are naughty because maybe they're tired or they're hungry, or they want to play and stretch their legs but they can't because they're on the plane or they're in a stroller at the.John: So instead of waiting for bad behavior and then doing some discipline like yelling at your kids or grabbing their arms, maybe it's better to prevent bad behavior by making sure the kids sleep enough and don't get bored.Sarah: Yeah. That's what I'm saying. And, you know, my kids are young. Just three and one. So a one-year old can't really be naughty. They're just a baby. So if they need something, I give them food or what they need. But a three-year old, they can throw a tantrum. And so, they can be very naughty.John: A tantrum?Sarah: Yeah. When they scream and maybe they fall down on the floor, and they kick their legs. Sometimes they try to hit you. It's really bad. But I think all two-and-three-year-old children sometimes they do them.John: Oh, I've heard of that. It's called the.Sarah: Yes. But it also lasts into three.John: Well, it sounds like you're a good parent.Sarah: Oh, I try.

John: So I was wondering about disciplining kids in public. You have kids, right?Sarah: Yeah. I have two kids. I have a three-year old and a one-year old.John: Are they ever naughty when you're out in public?Sarah: Yes. They are naughty out in public. And I think that you shouldn't discipline your children in front of other people. So if I'm out in public and my three-year old starts to be naughty and she's crying because she wants a toy from the store or something, I will pick her up and I take her somewhere quiet until she's calm. Like I might take her to the family bathroom or a quiet hallway, so she can stop crying and stop making noise.John: I see. So you wouldn't just give her the toy she wants.Sarah: No. I don't think you should do that sort of thing to make your child be quiet, just give them something until they are quiet because then they'll be bad more in the future. If they know they can cry and scream, and mom and dad will give them what they want, they'll just be worse and worse.John: Oh, I see. They'll learn that it's okay. They can get what they want by crying.Sarah: Yeah.John: But don't you think you'll – won't you lose more time if you have to take your kids to some quiet place to calm down?Sarah: Yeah. You lose time but I think it's worth it because I think of the future and the time I'll save by making sure that my child is better behaved in the future. And the other thing too is I'm always trying to think about other people. So I don't want other people to have to listen to my child scream and cry. And I also don't want them to see me talking sternly to her because they'll maybe be annoyed or feel uncomfortable. And maybe my child will scream more because she can feel that. So I try to go somewhere quiet.John: Oh, I see.Sarah: Sometimes that's impossible though. Sometimes, if you're on the plane or on a train, you can't go anywhere or do anything. You have to stay in your seat.John: What if you're on an airplane, then do you give your child whatever they are crying for as soon as possible?Sarah: Yes, I do. I try to plan ahead and I think, okay, I need to have enough toys. I need to have lots of snacks, lots of fun things so that I prevent them from becoming naughty or crying or screaming. But sometimes, you can't help it. And if you're child or baby starts to be loud at that point, I will. I'll give them candy or food or toy, whatever they want.John: Oh, I get it. So I think you're saying, you think there might be a different reason why kids become naughty. Besides what they want…Sarah: Yeah.John: For example, they're hungry or bored.Sarah: Yeah. I think a lot of the times, children are naughty because maybe they're tired or they're hungry, or they want to play and stretch their legs but they can't because they're on the plane or they're in a stroller at the.John: So instead of waiting for bad behavior and then doing some discipline like yelling at your kids or grabbing their arms, maybe it's better to prevent bad behavior by making sure the kids sleep enough and don't get bored.Sarah: Yeah. That's what I'm saying. And, you know, my kids are young. Just three and one. So a one-year old can't really be naughty. They're just a baby. So if they need something, I give them food or what they need. But a three-year old, they can throw a tantrum. And so, they can be very naughty.John: A tantrum?Sarah: Yeah. When they scream and maybe they fall down on the floor, and they kick their legs. Sometimes they try to hit you. It's really bad. But I think all two-and-three-year-old children sometimes they do them.John: Oh, I've heard of that. It's called the.Sarah: Yes. But it also lasts into three.John: Well, it sounds like you're a good parent.Sarah: Oh, I try.

John: So we've been talking about women's roles in society. And are you a stay-at-home momor a working mom?Sarah: Well, I guess I'm both. Right now, I'm on maternity leave and I'm on month six of maternity leave.John: What does that mean?Sarah: So maternity leave is when you have a job but then you become pregnant or you're going to have a baby, maybe adopt, too. So you're going to have a baby, and so you take time off of work to stay home with the new baby.John: Oh, I see. Do you still get paid?Sarah: I do. I get about half of my wage. So I do still get paid and I'm very grateful for that. So I've been at home with the new baby for six months. And I'm going to go back to work next month.John: Oh. What will happen with the baby?Sarah: So I have two kids actually. I have a toddler and a baby. And both of them will go to daycare during the day.John: I see.Sarah: So I signed up for the daycare before the baby was even born. It's really hard to find good daycare that you can afford, that's near your house. So you have to start planning before the baby is even born if you're the type of person who wants to go back to work.John: I see. I don't think many men worry about getting good daycare for their children…Sarah: No.John: When they think about their jobs.Sarah: No. Even when there's a family, and the mother and father both work, still it's the mother that has to do everything with the kids, usually. Usually, the mom has to for example, get the bag ready for the kids to take to daycare. They have to arrange the daycare. They have – the daycare has the mother's phone number, usually.And so, the mom has to do a lot of extra work even though mom and dad both have full time jobs.John: I see. Are you saying that things should be different?Sarah: Yes. I think things should be different. I'm so lucky my husband agrees with me. And my husband, he drops the kids off at daycare and he picks them up and he does the laundry and the dishes. And it helps me to be – and it helps me focus on my career so that I can stay late at work if I need to. I can go to an extra meeting on a weekend. And it makes me feel more fulfilled that it's not my husband's job that comes first.A lot of times women make less money than men and they put their job second to their husband. And it's not equal, and it's not fair. And so, I think that people should work on making things more equal.John: Well, I agree with you.Sarah: Thank you.

John: So we've been talking about women's roles in society. And are you a stay-at-home momor a working mom?Sarah: Well, I guess I'm both. Right now, I'm on maternity leave and I'm on month six of maternity leave.John: What does that mean?Sarah: So maternity leave is when you have a job but then you become pregnant or you're going to have a baby, maybe adopt, too. So you're going to have a baby, and so you take time off of work to stay home with the new baby.John: Oh, I see. Do you still get paid?Sarah: I do. I get about half of my wage. So I do still get paid and I'm very grateful for that. So I've been at home with the new baby for six months. And I'm going to go back to work next month.John: Oh. What will happen with the baby?Sarah: So I have two kids actually. I have a toddler and a baby. And both of them will go to daycare during the day.John: I see.Sarah: So I signed up for the daycare before the baby was even born. It's really hard to find good daycare that you can afford, that's near your house. So you have to start planning before the baby is even born if you're the type of person who wants to go back to work.John: I see. I don't think many men worry about getting good daycare for their children…Sarah: No.John: When they think about their jobs.Sarah: No. Even when there's a family, and the mother and father both work, still it's the mother that has to do everything with the kids, usually. Usually, the mom has to for example, get the bag ready for the kids to take to daycare. They have to arrange the daycare. They have – the daycare has the mother's phone number, usually.And so, the mom has to do a lot of extra work even though mom and dad both have full time jobs.John: I see. Are you saying that things should be different?Sarah: Yes. I think things should be different. I'm so lucky my husband agrees with me. And my husband, he drops the kids off at daycare and he picks them up and he does the laundry and the dishes. And it helps me to be – and it helps me focus on my career so that I can stay late at work if I need to. I can go to an extra meeting on a weekend. And it makes me feel more fulfilled that it's not my husband's job that comes first.A lot of times women make less money than men and they put their job second to their husband. And it's not equal, and it's not fair. And so, I think that people should work on making things more equal.John: Well, I agree with you.Sarah: Thank you.

John: So we've been talking about women's roles in society. And are you a stay-at-home momor a working mom?Sarah: Well, I guess I'm both. Right now, I'm on maternity leave and I'm on month six of maternity leave.John: What does that mean?Sarah: So maternity leave is when you have a job but then you become pregnant or you're going to have a baby, maybe adopt, too. So you're going to have a baby, and so you take time off of work to stay home with the new baby.John: Oh, I see. Do you still get paid?Sarah: I do. I get about half of my wage. So I do still get paid and I'm very grateful for that. So I've been at home with the new baby for six months. And I'm going to go back to work next month.John: Oh. What will happen with the baby?Sarah: So I have two kids actually. I have a toddler and a baby. And both of them will go to daycare during the day.John: I see.Sarah: So I signed up for the daycare before the baby was even born. It's really hard to find good daycare that you can afford, that's near your house. So you have to start planning before the baby is even born if you're the type of person who wants to go back to work.John: I see. I don't think many men worry about getting good daycare for their children…Sarah: No.John: When they think about their jobs.Sarah: No. Even when there's a family, and the mother and father both work, still it's the mother that has to do everything with the kids, usually. Usually, the mom has to for example, get the bag ready for the kids to take to daycare. They have to arrange the daycare. They have – the daycare has the mother's phone number, usually.And so, the mom has to do a lot of extra work even though mom and dad both have full time jobs.John: I see. Are you saying that things should be different?Sarah: Yes. I think things should be different. I'm so lucky my husband agrees with me. And my husband, he drops the kids off at daycare and he picks them up and he does the laundry and the dishes. And it helps me to be – and it helps me focus on my career so that I can stay late at work if I need to. I can go to an extra meeting on a weekend. And it makes me feel more fulfilled that it's not my husband's job that comes first.A lot of times women make less money than men and they put their job second to their husband. And it's not equal, and it's not fair. And so, I think that people should work on making things more equal.John: Well, I agree with you.Sarah: Thank you.

Todd: So Sarah, let's talk about sleep. How many hours of sleep do you usually get every night?Sarah: Usually, at least eight. It depends on how late I stay up but usually about eight hours, I try to get every night.Todd: And you are pretty consistent, like even on the weekends, you get eight hours.Sarah: Yes. Even on the weekends. Sleep is very important for me to feel normal and energetic.Todd: Now, do you need an alarm clock to wake you up or you just wake up naturally everyday?Sarah: I definitely have to have an alarm clock. Even though I wake up very easily, I don't wake up at a routine time easily. So I usually set two alarms and that will usually get me up.Todd: Oh wow. I actually have this kind of weird mental ability. I thought that everybody can do this but I found out it's not the case, but I can wake up exactly at the minute I want, any time. So like, if I have to get up at 5:43, before I go to bed, I can say, "Okay. Get up at 5:43." And I'll wake up at 5:43, exactly.Sarah: That's amazing.Todd: Yeah. I don't know how – I guess your brain just can keep time. When I tell people this, sometimes they think, "Oh come on, that's not true." But really, ever since I was a kid I could just tell myself what time I want to wake up and I'll wake up exactly at that time.Sarah: That's really quite amazing. I wish it was that way for me, but it's not.Todd: Yeah. You know what's weird – because I don't use alarm clocks. And I can't – like an alarm clock – the idea actually, I can't have a deep sleep if I know that it's going to ring and wake up, like it's going to jolt. To me an alarm clock is like somebody throwing cold water on you, you know. So yeah, I don't use alarm clocks at all.Sarah: Yeah. I'm always paranoid about being late so that's why I set two just in case like one doesn't go off. But I can sleep anytime of the day. Like it really doesn't matter what type of day, it's very easy for me to fall asleep for as long as whenever. So that's why I have to have an alarm clock because I could sleep 12 or 14 hours and not wake up.Todd: Wow. That's like you do like sleep.Sarah: Yeah.Todd: So do you take naps?Sarah: No, because then I feel really like groggy and really like irritable if I take naps because I just want to sleep longer than that amount of time. So I don't take naps.Todd: Like can you sleep with the light on?Sarah: Yes.Todd: Really?Sarah: Yes.Todd: Yeah, I can't. Actually, that's why I always wake up so early. As soon the light comes through the window, I wake up. I can't sleep if it's not dark.Sarah: I can sleep in any situation; light, noise, sitting up. It doesn't matter. I can sleep.Todd: Oh wow. So you're a deep sleeper.Sarah: Yeah.Todd: I'm so jealous. Like just a little bit of noise or a little bit of light and I can't sleep. And actually, I probably only get an average six hours a night. But I do sometimes take naps.Sarah: Oh okay. How long do you usually nap for?Todd: Usually an hour. I found out if I go over an hour then that's the danger zone because then if you sleep like two or three hours, then you wake up and you're just groggy for the whole day. Like you can't – it's like you've been drugged, you know. So yeah. Forty-five-minute nap is about it.Sarah: Yeah. When you were a child, did your parents make you take naps?Todd: They did. And oddly enough, when I was a kid though, I couldn't sleep, like, you would cry, "I don't want to take a nap" you know. And you'd be like you conk out. But yeah, I do remember.Do you remember having to take naps in school?Sarah: I didn't go to school actually. I was homeschooled.Todd: Oh really.Sarah: I remember taking naps when I was really little but beyond that and like school-age, I never had to.Todd: Oh wow. Anyway, all these talks are making me tired. I think I'm ready for a nap.Sarah: Sounds good.

Todd: So Sarah, let's talk about sleep. How many hours of sleep do you usually get every night?Sarah: Usually, at least eight. It depends on how late I stay up but usually about eight hours, I try to get every night.Todd: And you are pretty consistent, like even on the weekends, you get eight hours.Sarah: Yes. Even on the weekends. Sleep is very important for me to feel normal and energetic.Todd: Now, do you need an alarm clock to wake you up or you just wake up naturally everyday?Sarah: I definitely have to have an alarm clock. Even though I wake up very easily, I don't wake up at a routine time easily. So I usually set two alarms and that will usually get me up.Todd: Oh wow. I actually have this kind of weird mental ability. I thought that everybody can do this but I found out it's not the case, but I can wake up exactly at the minute I want, any time. So like, if I have to get up at 5:43, before I go to bed, I can say, "Okay. Get up at 5:43." And I'll wake up at 5:43, exactly.Sarah: That's amazing.Todd: Yeah. I don't know how – I guess your brain just can keep time. When I tell people this, sometimes they think, "Oh come on, that's not true." But really, ever since I was a kid I could just tell myself what time I want to wake up and I'll wake up exactly at that time.Sarah: That's really quite amazing. I wish it was that way for me, but it's not.Todd: Yeah. You know what's weird – because I don't use alarm clocks. And I can't – like an alarm clock – the idea actually, I can't have a deep sleep if I know that it's going to ring and wake up, like it's going to jolt. To me an alarm clock is like somebody throwing cold water on you, you know. So yeah, I don't use alarm clocks at all.Sarah: Yeah. I'm always paranoid about being late so that's why I set two just in case like one doesn't go off. But I can sleep anytime of the day. Like it really doesn't matter what type of day, it's very easy for me to fall asleep for as long as whenever. So that's why I have to have an alarm clock because I could sleep 12 or 14 hours and not wake up.Todd: Wow. That's like you do like sleep.Sarah: Yeah.Todd: So do you take naps?Sarah: No, because then I feel really like groggy and really like irritable if I take naps because I just want to sleep longer than that amount of time. So I don't take naps.Todd: Like can you sleep with the light on?Sarah: Yes.Todd: Really?Sarah: Yes.Todd: Yeah, I can't. Actually, that's why I always wake up so early. As soon the light comes through the window, I wake up. I can't sleep if it's not dark.Sarah: I can sleep in any situation; light, noise, sitting up. It doesn't matter. I can sleep.Todd: Oh wow. So you're a deep sleeper.Sarah: Yeah.Todd: I'm so jealous. Like just a little bit of noise or a little bit of light and I can't sleep. And actually, I probably only get an average six hours a night. But I do sometimes take naps.Sarah: Oh okay. How long do you usually nap for?Todd: Usually an hour. I found out if I go over an hour then that's the danger zone because then if you sleep like two or three hours, then you wake up and you're just groggy for the whole day. Like you can't – it's like you've been drugged, you know. So yeah. Forty-five-minute nap is about it.Sarah: Yeah. When you were a child, did your parents make you take naps?Todd: They did. And oddly enough, when I was a kid though, I couldn't sleep, like, you would cry, "I don't want to take a nap" you know. And you'd be like you conk out. But yeah, I do remember.Do you remember having to take naps in school?Sarah: I didn't go to school actually. I was homeschooled.Todd: Oh really.Sarah: I remember taking naps when I was really little but beyond that and like school-age, I never had to.Todd: Oh wow. Anyway, all these talks are making me tired. I think I'm ready for a nap.Sarah: Sounds good.

Todd: So Sarah, let's talk about sleep. How many hours of sleep do you usually get every night?Sarah: Usually, at least eight. It depends on how late I stay up but usually about eight hours, I try to get every night.Todd: And you are pretty consistent, like even on the weekends, you get eight hours.Sarah: Yes. Even on the weekends. Sleep is very important for me to feel normal and energetic.Todd: Now, do you need an alarm clock to wake you up or you just wake up naturally everyday?Sarah: I definitely have to have an alarm clock. Even though I wake up very easily, I don't wake up at a routine time easily. So I usually set two alarms and that will usually get me up.Todd: Oh wow. I actually have this kind of weird mental ability. I thought that everybody can do this but I found out it's not the case, but I can wake up exactly at the minute I want, any time. So like, if I have to get up at 5:43, before I go to bed, I can say, "Okay. Get up at 5:43." And I'll wake up at 5:43, exactly.Sarah: That's amazing.Todd: Yeah. I don't know how – I guess your brain just can keep time. When I tell people this, sometimes they think, "Oh come on, that's not true." But really, ever since I was a kid I could just tell myself what time I want to wake up and I'll wake up exactly at that time.Sarah: That's really quite amazing. I wish it was that way for me, but it's not.Todd: Yeah. You know what's weird – because I don't use alarm clocks. And I can't – like an alarm clock – the idea actually, I can't have a deep sleep if I know that it's going to ring and wake up, like it's going to jolt. To me an alarm clock is like somebody throwing cold water on you, you know. So yeah, I don't use alarm clocks at all.Sarah: Yeah. I'm always paranoid about being late so that's why I set two just in case like one doesn't go off. But I can sleep anytime of the day. Like it really doesn't matter what type of day, it's very easy for me to fall asleep for as long as whenever. So that's why I have to have an alarm clock because I could sleep 12 or 14 hours and not wake up.Todd: Wow. That's like you do like sleep.Sarah: Yeah.Todd: So do you take naps?Sarah: No, because then I feel really like groggy and really like irritable if I take naps because I just want to sleep longer than that amount of time. So I don't take naps.Todd: Like can you sleep with the light on?Sarah: Yes.Todd: Really?Sarah: Yes.Todd: Yeah, I can't. Actually, that's why I always wake up so early. As soon the light comes through the window, I wake up. I can't sleep if it's not dark.Sarah: I can sleep in any situation; light, noise, sitting up. It doesn't matter. I can sleep.Todd: Oh wow. So you're a deep sleeper.Sarah: Yeah.Todd: I'm so jealous. Like just a little bit of noise or a little bit of light and I can't sleep. And actually, I probably only get an average six hours a night. But I do sometimes take naps.Sarah: Oh okay. How long do you usually nap for?Todd: Usually an hour. I found out if I go over an hour then that's the danger zone because then if you sleep like two or three hours, then you wake up and you're just groggy for the whole day. Like you can't – it's like you've been drugged, you know. So yeah. Forty-five-minute nap is about it.Sarah: Yeah. When you were a child, did your parents make you take naps?Todd: They did. And oddly enough, when I was a kid though, I couldn't sleep, like, you would cry, "I don't want to take a nap" you know. And you'd be like you conk out. But yeah, I do remember.Do you remember having to take naps in school?Sarah: I didn't go to school actually. I was homeschooled.Todd: Oh really.Sarah: I remember taking naps when I was really little but beyond that and like school-age, I never had to.Todd: Oh wow. Anyway, all these talks are making me tired. I think I'm ready for a nap.Sarah: Sounds good.

Todd: Okay. So Sarah, I see you eat soup every day at work. Why are you eating soup every day?Sarah: That's because I love to cook soup.Todd: So you make the soup?Sarah: Yes, it's very easy to make.Todd: So you cook it and then you just bring it to work everyday?Sarah: Yeah. I just make a lot on Monday and then I bring it to work everyday of the week.Todd: Oh nice. So how do you make the soup? What's your secret?Sarah: Well, I like to cook very easy. So I buy meat that's already cut up, usually, chicken and then some rice, usually brown rice and then I buy some vegetables. So after I bought the ingredients, I chop them up and I put them all together in water until boils and add some seasoning.Todd: Okay. So you say the water boils, so as soon as the water boils that's when you put in all the ingredients?Sarah: Yes, that's right.Todd: So you don't put in the ingredients before the water boils.Sarah: No. I guess, it's just easier for the water to be hot because then the vegetables and the meat cook a little faster.Todd: So how do you give the soup flavoring?Sarah: I usually add salt and pepper, maybe some garlic. And depending on the type of soup, either maybe some soy sauce or lemon juice.Todd: Okay. Do you put in the flavoring after you put in the ingredients or before you put in the ingredients?Sarah: Maybe after but usually, right about all at the same time.Todd: Okay.Sarah: So I just put everything in at one time.Todd: And then after you cook the soup, do you put the soup in the refrigerator? Do you let it sit outside?Sarah: I usually eat some right then, and I also put it in containers for the week. But I let it sit in the containers out on the counter for a while for it to cool before I put in the refrigerator.Todd: All right. And so, you don't put it in the refrigerator until it is cool?Sarah: Until it's about room temperature.Todd: Okay, nice. And then how do you heat it up? Do you heat it up in a pot or do you heat it up in the microwave?Sarah: In the microwave. It's the easiest.Todd: Yeah. Nice. So you make enough for five meals?Sarah: Maybe, sometimes. If I think I will get tired of eating it during the week then maybe I'll just make enough for three or four meals. But if it's some kind that I think is really delicious and I know I want to eat it everyday, then I'll make a lot.Todd: Well, if that happens, when you make the soup, you can make it for six or seven and give me a bowl.Sarah: Okay. I'll do that next time.Todd: Oh great. Thanks.

Todd: Okay. So Sarah, I see you eat soup every day at work. Why are you eating soup every day?Sarah: That's because I love to cook soup.Todd: So you make the soup?Sarah: Yes, it's very easy to make.Todd: So you cook it and then you just bring it to work everyday?Sarah: Yeah. I just make a lot on Monday and then I bring it to work everyday of the week.Todd: Oh nice. So how do you make the soup? What's your secret?Sarah: Well, I like to cook very easy. So I buy meat that's already cut up, usually, chicken and then some rice, usually brown rice and then I buy some vegetables. So after I bought the ingredients, I chop them up and I put them all together in water until boils and add some seasoning.Todd: Okay. So you say the water boils, so as soon as the water boils that's when you put in all the ingredients?Sarah: Yes, that's right.Todd: So you don't put in the ingredients before the water boils.Sarah: No. I guess, it's just easier for the water to be hot because then the vegetables and the meat cook a little faster.Todd: So how do you give the soup flavoring?Sarah: I usually add salt and pepper, maybe some garlic. And depending on the type of soup, either maybe some soy sauce or lemon juice.Todd: Okay. Do you put in the flavoring after you put in the ingredients or before you put in the ingredients?Sarah: Maybe after but usually, right about all at the same time.Todd: Okay.Sarah: So I just put everything in at one time.Todd: And then after you cook the soup, do you put the soup in the refrigerator? Do you let it sit outside?Sarah: I usually eat some right then, and I also put it in containers for the week. But I let it sit in the containers out on the counter for a while for it to cool before I put in the refrigerator.Todd: All right. And so, you don't put it in the refrigerator until it is cool?Sarah: Until it's about room temperature.Todd: Okay, nice. And then how do you heat it up? Do you heat it up in a pot or do you heat it up in the microwave?Sarah: In the microwave. It's the easiest.Todd: Yeah. Nice. So you make enough for five meals?Sarah: Maybe, sometimes. If I think I will get tired of eating it during the week then maybe I'll just make enough for three or four meals. But if it's some kind that I think is really delicious and I know I want to eat it everyday, then I'll make a lot.Todd: Well, if that happens, when you make the soup, you can make it for six or seven and give me a bowl.Sarah: Okay. I'll do that next time.Todd: Oh great. Thanks.

Todd: Okay. So Sarah, I see you eat soup every day at work. Why are you eating soup every day?Sarah: That's because I love to cook soup.Todd: So you make the soup?Sarah: Yes, it's very easy to make.Todd: So you cook it and then you just bring it to work everyday?Sarah: Yeah. I just make a lot on Monday and then I bring it to work everyday of the week.Todd: Oh nice. So how do you make the soup? What's your secret?Sarah: Well, I like to cook very easy. So I buy meat that's already cut up, usually, chicken and then some rice, usually brown rice and then I buy some vegetables. So after I bought the ingredients, I chop them up and I put them all together in water until boils and add some seasoning.Todd: Okay. So you say the water boils, so as soon as the water boils that's when you put in all the ingredients?Sarah: Yes, that's right.Todd: So you don't put in the ingredients before the water boils.Sarah: No. I guess, it's just easier for the water to be hot because then the vegetables and the meat cook a little faster.Todd: So how do you give the soup flavoring?Sarah: I usually add salt and pepper, maybe some garlic. And depending on the type of soup, either maybe some soy sauce or lemon juice.Todd: Okay. Do you put in the flavoring after you put in the ingredients or before you put in the ingredients?Sarah: Maybe after but usually, right about all at the same time.Todd: Okay.Sarah: So I just put everything in at one time.Todd: And then after you cook the soup, do you put the soup in the refrigerator? Do you let it sit outside?Sarah: I usually eat some right then, and I also put it in containers for the week. But I let it sit in the containers out on the counter for a while for it to cool before I put in the refrigerator.Todd: All right. And so, you don't put it in the refrigerator until it is cool?Sarah: Until it's about room temperature.Todd: Okay, nice. And then how do you heat it up? Do you heat it up in a pot or do you heat it up in the microwave?Sarah: In the microwave. It's the easiest.Todd: Yeah. Nice. So you make enough for five meals?Sarah: Maybe, sometimes. If I think I will get tired of eating it during the week then maybe I'll just make enough for three or four meals. But if it's some kind that I think is really delicious and I know I want to eat it everyday, then I'll make a lot.Todd: Well, if that happens, when you make the soup, you can make it for six or seven and give me a bowl.Sarah: Okay. I'll do that next time.Todd: Oh great. Thanks.

Sarah: So now that there's so much technology to be able to read things, do you still read things the old fashion way like newspapers, magazines, real books?Peter: Right, right. Oh, good question. I think it depends. I've stopped buying magazines and newspapers, definitely. I always access that online because it's so easy and convenient and you can read different newspapers from different countries all over the world and it's really easy to access. So I've stopped buying any of those kinds of things, magazines too. But with books I sometimes ... I sometimes still buy books that I would really like to have and like to keep. I used to collect books but I've stopped doing that too unless I really, really like the book and want it as a keepsake. Yes, and my habits of reading I guess have also changed. I use my phone to access most of the newspapers and magazines or use my iPad to do that. Yeah, it's really convenient. What about you, did you change your reading habits with changes in technology?Sarah: Yes, I definitely did. Not because I wanted to, I still like the aspect of having a real book but because I move so much, and internationally it's just not pratical to bring all your books with you, so much weight.Peter: I agree.Sarah: So I have a Kindle but I found since I got an iTouch that I tend to read all of my books from there because I always have it with me and it's light and it's portable and it holds like so many books.Peter: Yeah, I know, it's so convenient, you can just take everything with you, your whole library.Sarah: It really is.Peter: Yeah. So tell me about the iTouch. I've actually never used one but it seems to me that it's really small. Can you actually read on it and use it easily?Sarah: Yeah, well it's just like the same size as an iPhone but you can change the text size on it so if you wanted the text larger you can.Peter: Okay.Sarah: But it really doesn't bother me if the text is small because I have really good eyesight, so.Peter: Some people swear by the Kindle, so you mentioned that you used one before, why did you stop using that?Sarah: It's a little heavier, a little bigger, a little heavier and so I tend not to carry it with me all the time so therefore I don't always have it with me. If I'm in my apartment I use the Kindle but if I'm out or on the bus or something like that then I'll just use my iTouch.Peter: Yeah because it's very pocket-size really, isn't it?Sarah: Yes, same size as a phone, so very convenient.Peter: How about audiobooks, do you listen to any audiobooks?Sarah: Not really audiobooks but definitely audio, like language series so sort of like audiobooks. So when I'm trying to learn a language I listen to those a lot.Peter: Oh, okay. Yeah, I like listening to audiobooks when I'm driving somewhere especially because they make long journeys go quicker. I guess when I'm traveling on the train or airplane then I like to read and then I often like to read on paper. It's funny, I think with the glare of the screen sometimes makes my eyes really tired when I have to read using my iPhone or tablet or something then. But yeah, most of the time it's fun to take everything along and see what you can read and enjoy different things I guess.Sarah: What's the latest audiobook that you've listened to?Peter: I think I've listened to a series of comedy sketches. That's always funny because it keeps you awake while you're driving. And yeah, it's just a selection of comedy sketches and it's really entertaining. But that's the latest one I've listened to. I think before that I listened to, I think it was some kind of heavy ... some heavy linguistic topic that I was ... some book that I was interested in so yeah. And you?Sarah: I have never tried the audiobook and I'm interested.Peter: You should, it's quite fun. Yeah, yeah.Sarah: Yeah.

Sarah: So now that there's so much technology to be able to read things, do you still read things the old fashion way like newspapers, magazines, real books?Peter: Right, right. Oh, good question. I think it depends. I've stopped buying magazines and newspapers, definitely. I always access that online because it's so easy and convenient and you can read different newspapers from different countries all over the world and it's really easy to access. So I've stopped buying any of those kinds of things, magazines too. But with books I sometimes ... I sometimes still buy books that I would really like to have and like to keep. I used to collect books but I've stopped doing that too unless I really, really like the book and want it as a keepsake. Yes, and my habits of reading I guess have also changed. I use my phone to access most of the newspapers and magazines or use my iPad to do that. Yeah, it's really convenient. What about you, did you change your reading habits with changes in technology?Sarah: Yes, I definitely did. Not because I wanted to, I still like the aspect of having a real book but because I move so much, and internationally it's just not pratical to bring all your books with you, so much weight.Peter: I agree.Sarah: So I have a Kindle but I found since I got an iTouch that I tend to read all of my books from there because I always have it with me and it's light and it's portable and it holds like so many books.Peter: Yeah, I know, it's so convenient, you can just take everything with you, your whole library.Sarah: It really is.Peter: Yeah. So tell me about the iTouch. I've actually never used one but it seems to me that it's really small. Can you actually read on it and use it easily?Sarah: Yeah, well it's just like the same size as an iPhone but you can change the text size on it so if you wanted the text larger you can.Peter: Okay.Sarah: But it really doesn't bother me if the text is small because I have really good eyesight, so.Peter: Some people swear by the Kindle, so you mentioned that you used one before, why did you stop using that?Sarah: It's a little heavier, a little bigger, a little heavier and so I tend not to carry it with me all the time so therefore I don't always have it with me. If I'm in my apartment I use the Kindle but if I'm out or on the bus or something like that then I'll just use my iTouch.Peter: Yeah because it's very pocket-size really, isn't it?Sarah: Yes, same size as a phone, so very convenient.Peter: How about audiobooks, do you listen to any audiobooks?Sarah: Not really audiobooks but definitely audio, like language series so sort of like audiobooks. So when I'm trying to learn a language I listen to those a lot.Peter: Oh, okay. Yeah, I like listening to audiobooks when I'm driving somewhere especially because they make long journeys go quicker. I guess when I'm traveling on the train or airplane then I like to read and then I often like to read on paper. It's funny, I think with the glare of the screen sometimes makes my eyes really tired when I have to read using my iPhone or tablet or something then. But yeah, most of the time it's fun to take everything along and see what you can read and enjoy different things I guess.Sarah: What's the latest audiobook that you've listened to?Peter: I think I've listened to a series of comedy sketches. That's always funny because it keeps you awake while you're driving. And yeah, it's just a selection of comedy sketches and it's really entertaining. But that's the latest one I've listened to. I think before that I listened to, I think it was some kind of heavy ... some heavy linguistic topic that I was ... some book that I was interested in so yeah. And you?Sarah: I have never tried the audiobook and I'm interested.Peter: You should, it's quite fun. Yeah, yeah.Sarah: Yeah.

Sarah: So now that there's so much technology to be able to read things, do you still read things the old fashion way like newspapers, magazines, real books?Peter: Right, right. Oh, good question. I think it depends. I've stopped buying magazines and newspapers, definitely. I always access that online because it's so easy and convenient and you can read different newspapers from different countries all over the world and it's really easy to access. So I've stopped buying any of those kinds of things, magazines too. But with books I sometimes ... I sometimes still buy books that I would really like to have and like to keep. I used to collect books but I've stopped doing that too unless I really, really like the book and want it as a keepsake. Yes, and my habits of reading I guess have also changed. I use my phone to access most of the newspapers and magazines or use my iPad to do that. Yeah, it's really convenient. What about you, did you change your reading habits with changes in technology?Sarah: Yes, I definitely did. Not because I wanted to, I still like the aspect of having a real book but because I move so much, and internationally it's just not pratical to bring all your books with you, so much weight.Peter: I agree.Sarah: So I have a Kindle but I found since I got an iTouch that I tend to read all of my books from there because I always have it with me and it's light and it's portable and it holds like so many books.Peter: Yeah, I know, it's so convenient, you can just take everything with you, your whole library.Sarah: It really is.Peter: Yeah. So tell me about the iTouch. I've actually never used one but it seems to me that it's really small. Can you actually read on it and use it easily?Sarah: Yeah, well it's just like the same size as an iPhone but you can change the text size on it so if you wanted the text larger you can.Peter: Okay.Sarah: But it really doesn't bother me if the text is small because I have really good eyesight, so.Peter: Some people swear by the Kindle, so you mentioned that you used one before, why did you stop using that?Sarah: It's a little heavier, a little bigger, a little heavier and so I tend not to carry it with me all the time so therefore I don't always have it with me. If I'm in my apartment I use the Kindle but if I'm out or on the bus or something like that then I'll just use my iTouch.Peter: Yeah because it's very pocket-size really, isn't it?Sarah: Yes, same size as a phone, so very convenient.Peter: How about audiobooks, do you listen to any audiobooks?Sarah: Not really audiobooks but definitely audio, like language series so sort of like audiobooks. So when I'm trying to learn a language I listen to those a lot.Peter: Oh, okay. Yeah, I like listening to audiobooks when I'm driving somewhere especially because they make long journeys go quicker. I guess when I'm traveling on the train or airplane then I like to read and then I often like to read on paper. It's funny, I think with the glare of the screen sometimes makes my eyes really tired when I have to read using my iPhone or tablet or something then. But yeah, most of the time it's fun to take everything along and see what you can read and enjoy different things I guess.Sarah: What's the latest audiobook that you've listened to?Peter: I think I've listened to a series of comedy sketches. That's always funny because it keeps you awake while you're driving. And yeah, it's just a selection of comedy sketches and it's really entertaining. But that's the latest one I've listened to. I think before that I listened to, I think it was some kind of heavy ... some heavy linguistic topic that I was ... some book that I was interested in so yeah. And you?Sarah: I have never tried the audiobook and I'm interested.Peter: You should, it's quite fun. Yeah, yeah.Sarah: Yeah.

》》》》》》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.

》》》》》》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《《《《《《Peter: So Sarah you told me earlier that you've been home-schooled, it sounds really interesting, I've never met somebody who's been home-schooled, so could you tell me a little bit more about your experience with it?Sarah: Yes, absolutely. Well, I'm the youngest of four children, so I was the last one to come up being home-schooled. But my father decided to home-school us as soon as it became legal in our state. And for me, it was a very different experience than my older siblings. I think when they were younger my father did more of the formal teaching, like at all once, like lecture style. But by the time I came along, he didn't do that anymore. So my learning predominantly came from books. And I remember even as young as second grades, like doing all of my work by myself. One of my favorite aspects of it, when I was like in second and third grade, is I could do all of my work on Monday and then have the rest of the week to play, didn't have to do any work.Peter: Wow! That sounds really nice. How come your parents decided to home school, what was important for them?Sarah: My older sister had a lot of problems in school and they were in the principal's office like every day. And so that's initially what made them start thinking about it. And from there they made the decision and so all the rest of us were home-schooled after that.Peter: Wow! That's fascinating. Tell me, the fact that you were home-schooled, did that make any difference in terms of making friends with other people in the neighborhood or were there other families that home-schooled children too that you could be friends with?Sarah: Yes, there were some families that we were close friends with, that we vacationed with and did everything with growing up. For me, personally, the social aspect wasn't huge because I'm more of an introvert. So I like to be alone more than my other siblings. But we were all very involved in different things, my brother in many sports and my sister and I in ballet and I played in an orchestra, and I took piano and violin and sang in a girl's chorus. So I was around other children my own age all the time.Peter: Right. Yeah, it sounds pretty busy actually.Sarah: Yeah.Peter: So could you tell me, what's a typical day in home-schooling, what does it work like? What does it look like?Sarah: It's pretty much just self-study. So I guess what most people envision as like homework at the end of the day, that's just your school day, is just working through different books, different activities, so mainly textbooks. It's very different now though. People who are home-schooled now, there is all sorts of groups and like online and videos and different things. But because I was home-schooled in the 80s, it looked very different than it does now.Peter: Okay. So how did your father ... did he work as well and did he work and home-school you or was that his main thing, to home-school you?Sarah: My father owns a radio station and he has a manager for that radio station, so that allows him to not have to be down there very often. But when he did he would just take us with him to work, and so we'd do our work wherever he was.Peter: Wow, that's pretty cool!Sarah: Yeah.Peter: And all four kids would do their homework and go through their textbooks by themselves, things like that?Sarah: Yes, we were all very self-motivated, so.

》》》》》》一键领取入口《《《《《《Peter: So Sarah you told me earlier that you've been home-schooled, it sounds really interesting, I've never met somebody who's been home-schooled, so could you tell me a little bit more about your experience with it?Sarah: Yes, absolutely. Well, I'm the youngest of four children, so I was the last one to come up being home-schooled. But my father decided to home-school us as soon as it became legal in our state. And for me, it was a very different experience than my older siblings. I think when they were younger my father did more of the formal teaching, like at all once, like lecture style. But by the time I came along, he didn't do that anymore. So my learning predominantly came from books. And I remember even as young as second grades, like doing all of my work by myself. One of my favorite aspects of it, when I was like in second and third grade, is I could do all of my work on Monday and then have the rest of the week to play, didn't have to do any work.Peter: Wow! That sounds really nice. How come your parents decided to home school, what was important for them?Sarah: My older sister had a lot of problems in school and they were in the principal's office like every day. And so that's initially what made them start thinking about it. And from there they made the decision and so all the rest of us were home-schooled after that.Peter: Wow! That's fascinating. Tell me, the fact that you were home-schooled, did that make any difference in terms of making friends with other people in the neighborhood or were there other families that home-schooled children too that you could be friends with?Sarah: Yes, there were some families that we were close friends with, that we vacationed with and did everything with growing up. For me, personally, the social aspect wasn't huge because I'm more of an introvert. So I like to be alone more than my other siblings. But we were all very involved in different things, my brother in many sports and my sister and I in ballet and I played in an orchestra, and I took piano and violin and sang in a girl's chorus. So I was around other children my own age all the time.Peter: Right. Yeah, it sounds pretty busy actually.Sarah: Yeah.Peter: So could you tell me, what's a typical day in home-schooling, what does it work like? What does it look like?Sarah: It's pretty much just self-study. So I guess what most people envision as like homework at the end of the day, that's just your school day, is just working through different books, different activities, so mainly textbooks. It's very different now though. People who are home-schooled now, there is all sorts of groups and like online and videos and different things. But because I was home-schooled in the 80s, it looked very different than it does now.Peter: Okay. So how did your father ... did he work as well and did he work and home-school you or was that his main thing, to home-school you?Sarah: My father owns a radio station and he has a manager for that radio station, so that allows him to not have to be down there very often. But when he did he would just take us with him to work, and so we'd do our work wherever he was.Peter: Wow, that's pretty cool!Sarah: Yeah.Peter: And all four kids would do their homework and go through their textbooks by themselves, things like that?Sarah: Yes, we were all very self-motivated, so.

》》》》》》一键领取入口《《《《《《Peter: So Sarah you told me earlier that you've been home-schooled, it sounds really interesting, I've never met somebody who's been home-schooled, so could you tell me a little bit more about your experience with it?Sarah: Yes, absolutely. Well, I'm the youngest of four children, so I was the last one to come up being home-schooled. But my father decided to home-school us as soon as it became legal in our state. And for me, it was a very different experience than my older siblings. I think when they were younger my father did more of the formal teaching, like at all once, like lecture style. But by the time I came along, he didn't do that anymore. So my learning predominantly came from books. And I remember even as young as second grades, like doing all of my work by myself. One of my favorite aspects of it, when I was like in second and third grade, is I could do all of my work on Monday and then have the rest of the week to play, didn't have to do any work.Peter: Wow! That sounds really nice. How come your parents decided to home school, what was important for them?Sarah: My older sister had a lot of problems in school and they were in the principal's office like every day. And so that's initially what made them start thinking about it. And from there they made the decision and so all the rest of us were home-schooled after that.Peter: Wow! That's fascinating. Tell me, the fact that you were home-schooled, did that make any difference in terms of making friends with other people in the neighborhood or were there other families that home-schooled children too that you could be friends with?Sarah: Yes, there were some families that we were close friends with, that we vacationed with and did everything with growing up. For me, personally, the social aspect wasn't huge because I'm more of an introvert. So I like to be alone more than my other siblings. But we were all very involved in different things, my brother in many sports and my sister and I in ballet and I played in an orchestra, and I took piano and violin and sang in a girl's chorus. So I was around other children my own age all the time.Peter: Right. Yeah, it sounds pretty busy actually.Sarah: Yeah.Peter: So could you tell me, what's a typical day in home-schooling, what does it work like? What does it look like?Sarah: It's pretty much just self-study. So I guess what most people envision as like homework at the end of the day, that's just your school day, is just working through different books, different activities, so mainly textbooks. It's very different now though. People who are home-schooled now, there is all sorts of groups and like online and videos and different things. But because I was home-schooled in the 80s, it looked very different than it does now.Peter: Okay. So how did your father ... did he work as well and did he work and home-school you or was that his main thing, to home-school you?Sarah: My father owns a radio station and he has a manager for that radio station, so that allows him to not have to be down there very often. But when he did he would just take us with him to work, and so we'd do our work wherever he was.Peter: Wow, that's pretty cool!Sarah: Yeah.Peter: And all four kids would do their homework and go through their textbooks by themselves, things like that?Sarah: Yes, we were all very self-motivated, so.

Not many people trade in both a successful finance career and the chance to get a Harvard diploma for the opportunity to launch a business. But that’s what Sarah Paiji Yoo did. And when she found success and sold her first company, she knew that she could never satisfy that entrepreneurial itch by doing anything but building another company. Sarah went on to co-found a start-up studio and helped launch a number of other companies, including M.Gemi and Rockets of Awesome, but she craved more. Ultimately, she wanted to dig into something that served a deeper purpose.  Today, Sarah is a co-founder of Blueland, a consumer products company on a mission to eliminate single-use plastic packaging. The way Sarah and her team are accomplishing that mission has started with creating a new way to develop and use cleaning products and has included a stop along the way in the Shark Tank, where Mr. Wonderful himself, Kevin O’Leary, bought into the company.  On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Sarah sheds light on common mistakes that young entrepreneurs make when they are starting out, as well as shares the secrets for avoiding those mistakes. Plus, she explains what the holy grail metric is for judging the health of your company.  3 Takeaways: In the early days when you only have one or two products that consumers buy, it’s easy to keep track of how people get funneled through. As you begin to expand your product offerings, measuring acquisition behavior and retention becomes more important in being able to judge the health of the company and the new products brought to market.  The importance of focusing on product-market fit can’t be overstated. Often, young companies and their founders get caught in the trap of trying to please investors or race to profitability through clever marketing or other shortcuts. The only way to achieve meaningful, sustained success is to know you have product-market fit from the get-go, and then optimizing your strategy from there.   You can still do something even if you don’t have all the pieces to the puzzle. Even though an idea seems simple, there are always going to be complications to work through. Being tenacious and having grit are the keys to being able to see you vision through to completion. For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length. --- Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce --- Transcript: Stephanie: Hey, everyone. This is Stephanie Postles, your host of Up Next in Commerce. Today we have Sarah Paiji Yoo on the show, the co-founder and CEO at Blueland. Sarah, how are you? Sarah: I'm great, how are you, Stephanie? Stephanie: Doing well. And you're calling in from New York, right? Sarah: Yeah. Good, old New York City. Stephanie: Yeah, how's New York life right now? Sarah: New York life, it certainly feels ... It's funny, because I feel like in the beginning, we definitely were the hotspot of coronavirus. But now it feels like one of the safer places to be, given the high immunity. So, it's good. I think it's a little unfortunate that summer now, it's my favorite season in New York, so, it's unfortunate that we're still, for the most part, having to stay at home. But I think we got in our groove and it has definitely given at least my family the opportunity to force ourselves to find other ways to explore nature right outside New York City. Stephanie: So, I'd love to dive a bit into your background before we get into Blueland. Because I read some interesting things about you about having some Ecommerce companies in the past and dropping out of Harvard MBA program and I'd love to hear a bit about your journey of how you got to where you are today. Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. So, I guess if I were to start way back, I started my career actually pretty traditionally in finance and consulting. Certainly early in my career I actually had no aspirations to be an entrepreneur. I always consider myself relatively risk-averve so it is interesting to see how life unfolds. But yeah, I started my career very traditionally after those stints in consulting and finance, which I actually wouldn't trade for the world. I really appreciate the experiences and the skillsets that I picked up and the frameworks it gave me to really think about the world and business. Sarah: But after those stints I decided to go back to Harvard for business school, to really, most of all to be able to have the time to step back and reflect on what it was that I wanted to do next. Because I think my early experiences, if anything, taught me that I wasn't a lifer in terms of professional services, I really wanted to be more in the driver's seat and wanted to be at a company versus advising the company. And so, yeah, I made the decision to go to business school. And when I got to business school it was a really interesting time because there had been, right before I came, a series of female founders that had started very impressive companies, GuildCrew, Birchbox, Rent the Runway, LearnVest, Katrina who started Stitch Fix with just one year ahead of me in business school. Sarah: And that was extremely inspiring for me just to see a set of women who were young and had a very similar background or set of experience as myself and see them so quote, unquote, early in their career, setting out to build their own business. And I decided that given business school ... You can make what you want of business school but it doesn't have to be particularly rigorous. And so, I had more time on my hands than I did previously what I was working in, so I decided to really use that time and try to start a business while I was in business school. And a few months in I ended up starting work on my first startup, which was Snapette, which was a mobile shopping app that helps consumers find products and stores around them. Sarah: I was really excited about everything that I was seeing around smartphones and the mobile space. And this was still pretty early on. So, this was almost 10 years ago, pre Instagram days, if you can imagine a world before Instagram. Stephanie: Tough world to start in. Sarah: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, that's the first business I decided to start while in school. I ended up raising a round of venture capital that summer between my first and what was supposed to be my second year of business school. And so made ... it was actually a very easy decision, to drop out of Harvard and continue to just work on Snapette. And I ended up scaling that business for the next about three and a half years to a small team, about 20 people. And then we ended up selling that business to one of the world's largest stock search engines at the time, called PriceGrabber. Again, almost four years in. And- Stephanie: That's amazing. What was the process like, selling the company? Did you actively go about selling your company or were you approached? Or how did that look? I heard a good quote the other day that companies don't just get acquired, you actually need to actively go and sell your company if you want it to be sold sometimes. Sarah: It's interesting because I've also heard the opposite. Stephanie: Oh, interesting. Sarah: Which I can related to both [inaudible 00:05:48]. I was actually worried with the phrase, but we were lucky in terms of we received an inbound. Stephanie: Oh, nice. Sarah: That tipped us off to, "Oh, this might actually be a good time to sell. And the context of that period was, I started Snapette at a time when Mary Meeker and a lot of these industry experts were saying, "Oh, mobile's going to be the future. People are going to spend more time on their phones than on their desktop," and that seemed inconceivable, the early days as she was saying that. And when we sold, that's when we were seeing about 30% of site traffic, to many of the major sites coming from mobile instead of desktop. So, it still hadn't flipped yet. Sarah: But it definitely felt like it was coming. And so, yeah, we had an inbound from a traditional, online, non-mobile player. And that kick started me to reach out to a few more folks in the space that had a similar profile, because if we were going to engage in these conversations I thought, "Let's run a robust process," because obviously competition can always help drive a better outcome. And so that's what I did. And ended up not really engaging a bank or anything. That's where my former finance experience definitely did come in handy because I did have experience buying and selling companies and so I understood ad a high level what that process looked like. And so, yeah, we were able to quarter back that process in-house and get a few offers and ultimately find an acquirer for our business. Stephanie: That's amazing. So, at that point you got the itch to start another company? You're like, "This is great. I'm going for round two." Sarah: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Exactly, exactly. So, initially we had ... Not initially. We had a one year lockup with the parent company. And so our whole team moved over. And it was interesting, I think initially I was extremely excited about the prospect of being part of a much larger organization, that had much higher revenues and much larger budget. And I didn't expect how quickly ... I feel like day one, post-acquisition all of a sudden, the speed at which we were running, everything came to a halt. And all of a sudden my calendar was full of just meetings with lots of people back to back. Sarah: And I think it was hard. I think it was hard going from also this small, mobile startup where Apple would make an announcement about the newest feature and then I would get together with my team and our engineers and really think about like, "Oh, how can we integrate this? How can really use this to push our product forward?" And in a larger organization, completely understandably you have much longer product roadmaps, you need to justify why a change that you want to make is going to add more value to the company than some much larger initiatives that maybe underway. Sarah: And we were dealing with 18 month, plus product roadmaps, which to me at the time felt like, "Oh my god, if I have to wait 18 months to start working on some of these things, I'm going to be dead." So, it was an interesting contrast for me. And so, I certainly, definitely developed that itch to go back out and start something again. And I think also as a first time founder with Snapette, I had made so many mistakes along the way. And I was just dying to do it again but be better the next time around. Stephanie: So, then where did you go after that [crosstalk 00:09:35]? Sarah: Yeah, so after that, it's interesting, because I think ... my career, my life had been so linear til pre Snapette. But I think that startup journey really showed me both the joys and the benefits of just being being open to what life may bring and that really just reaffirming the Steve Jobs quote, "If you can't connect the dots forward, only looking back." And so, at that point I knew I wanted to get back into early stage company building. I wasn't proactively looking for my next business or the next idea, but I ended up reconnecting with a former acquaintance in the Ecomm space, Ben Fischman, who had also sold his startup, Rue La La, which was one of the first flash sale sites here in the U.S. Sarah: And he had sold his company right around the same time I sold Snapette. And he was exploring the idea of raising a fund and to start a series of new businesses. So, it wouldn't be a venture capital fund, but it would be more like a startup studio. And the thesis that we both share was that, at this point it was 2013, we believed that it was still very early innings in terms of direct-to-consumer. So, at that point Warby Parker was our, in way, that preeminent example of direct-to-consumer. But it was our belief that we would continue to see whole categories move direct-to-consumer, and many of which we've seen now come into fruition. I remember at that point thinking about, "Oh, we're going to see everything from shoes to socks to tampons to vitamins, etc. Everything is going to develop a new brand and find more efficient ways to directly reach and communicate with consumers." Sarah: And so, yeah, he was like, "You should come do this with me." And at that point, again, I didn't have a specific idea in mind. I knew that I wanted to be back in the company building stage. I loved the tech and direct-to-consumer space. And so, yeah, I jumped onboard with him and was a founding member and partner of that team. And so, that startup studio was called LAUNCH, or is called LAUNCH, it's still around today. And the goal was to then launch one new business per year, which is what we ended up doing. So, over the next four years we launched M.Gemi in our first year, Rockets of Awesome. M.Gemi is a direct-to-consumer footwear business. And then we launches Rockets of Awesome the second year, which is a direct-to-consumer subscription kids apparel business. And then we launched Follain, which is a clean beauty retailer. And in the last year that I was with LAUNCH, LAUNCH Trade, which is a direct-to-consumer coffee marketplace. Stephanie: Very cool. How did those individual companies do? Sarah: The individual companies have all been doing great. They're still around today, very proud of how far they've come. But it was definitely a crazy time. Certainly in a period where we've seen over funding and collapses, you know many important DTC businesses I think very proud to say that all those businesses are in great shape and still around today. Stephanie: Yeah, that sounds really fun. Chaotic and crazy but fun. Were there any universal truths that you learned? Even though the companies sound very different that you were launching there, was there anything that you found a best practice and then you could apply it to future businesses? Sarah: Yeah, I think the biggest takeaway, probably from launching multiple businesses is just the importance of focus and the importance especially of focus on product market that in early days I think it's very easy, especially when you are venture backed, either with access to capital or with this immense pressure to grow quickly, to grow into the valuations that you may have raised that it can be easy to fall into the trap to shift a lot of your focus to marketing and growing. But ultimately the best marketing is an amazing product or service that drives strong retention, strong word of mouth. Sarah: And any marketing spend that you deploy is going to be so much more efficient and effective if you don't have a leaky bucket. And I think that's one that is certainly harder, especially in this world where we celebrate large fundings and also companies growing very quickly. And I just think there's so much value, especially early days of almost staying smaller so that especially the founders can really focus entirely on product-market fit and making all the tweaks necessary to really optimize the product, service or offering. Stephanie: Yeah, I completely agree about that. How did you all go about finding or knowing when you had product-market fit? Were you like, "This is the one, let's move forward."? Sarah: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's hard to draw that line in the sand, for sure. I think an important metric or area of metrics to look at certainly are around retention and repeat. Because ultimately there is a lot of focus, especially in D2C, on acquisition. And whether it's customer acquisition cost or cost per acquired customer, ultimately, that doesn't give you the full picture. That just tells you that you were able to have a clever ad and maybe you have attracted someone to make that first purchase. But it's certainly a lot cheaper to have your customer purchase again and repeat with you than having to go out into the market and pay for a brand new customer. And so, we've always been extremely focused on the retention metrics as a leading indicator to help the business. Stephanie: Yeah. yeah, that's great. So, then, at what point were you at LAUNCH where you were, once again, "It's time for me to move on, do my own thing again."? Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. So, I had a crazy journey and it was an amazing ride. I learned a ton about launching new business, having to do that back to back. But I think after my fourth year, after the fourth business, I developed a deep seated desire to do something that was a little more personally meaningful. I think for so many years simply the challenge and excitement of bringing a new brand or product to market that had never existed before was enough for me and it was incredibly energizing. And I still love that aspect of it. But at that point I was looking to build something beyond selling more shoes or beauty products. Sarah: And I think that also was heavily influenced by my becoming a new mom around that time. So, it's not coincidence that the number of years I've been working on Blueland is about the same number of years as my son's age. Stephanie: Yeah, it's funny how all of a sudden, same with me, you get interested in what's organic and what's actually natural and- Sarah: Hard to miss it. Stephanie: Yeah, it's something I never paid attention to that much until having kids. Sarah: Yeah, no, exactly, exactly, exactly. And I think you also start questioning how you're spending your time. You have very limited time, and thinking once you have children and a family it highlights more clearly for you the trade offs between work and rest of life. And I think, I was very open to how I would feel on the other side of motherhood. I was very open to maybe I wasn't going to want to work at all. Maybe I was going to be so obsessed with my child that I was going to want to spend every waking moment with him, which would also have been a fine outcome. But interestingly, after having my son, for me, I realized that I still really did love working. I loved my work a lot but I think I just needed to find more meaning in it if it was going to take up so many hours of my day and taking away from my child. Stephanie: Cool. So, then, what was the first step when it came to ... what really led you to creating Blueland? Was there an aha moment, was there something ... Tell me a little bit about what Blueland is maybe first and then how you came up with the idea. Sarah: Yeah. So, Blueland is a consumer products company, we are on a mission to eliminate single use plastic packaging. And we are starting with cleaning products. And so, the first set of products that we launched, when we launched about a year ago were a set of cleaning sprays and hand soap. And what was really unique about our products was that instead of selling you a bottle of liquid, these products are traditionally about 90% water, we've shrunk these products down to these tablets that are about the size of a quarter so that instead of buying a new plastic bottle every time, instead of paying for all this water which you already have at home, you can use one of our beautiful, reusable bottles and simply fill them up with warm water, drop in one of our tablets and it starts to bubble on its own, there's no shaking or stirring or weird chemistry required. And at the end of a few minutes, you have a full bottle of hand soap or cleaning spray. Stephanie: Yeah, that's cool. Sarah: And our cleaning sprays include a multi-surface cleaner, glass and mirror and a bathroom cleaner. Stephanie: Yeah, it remind me of a Alka-Seltzer, where you drop it in and then all of a sudden you have this big big bottle of cleaning solution. Sarah: Exactly, exactly, exactly. And we stared there because we found that it was very intuitive for people even though it was something that had never been done before, it was brand new to market, it was something that people could see and quickly understand like, "Oh, that makes sense. That water and the tablet can make a bottle cleaner." And so, yeah, those are the products we started with. Happy to say last month we released our newest category which is the dish category. So, we launched a dish soap and dishwasher tablets. And in a similar vein, these products were created as part of a reusable, refillable system. So, upfront we sell you a permanent, forever container that you can refill with our refills that come packaged in paper based compostable packaging instead of plastic. Sarah: And so, our dish soap is actually a powder. But it's used very similarly to liquid, to the extent that you just sprinkle it directly onto your sponge, you add water and then you get a nice, rich foam. And yeah, our dishwasher tablets are naked, to the extent that they don't come individually wrapped in that plastic film that you'll find, with most all dishwasher packs. Stephanie: I've never really thought about, "Where does that film go? Does it just go down the drain? Sarah: Yeah. So, it's unfortunate because it- Stephanie: That's sad. Sarah: Yeah, it is sad. It is sad. Because I think the assumption for a lot of people, understandably, is that because it dissolves, that it just goes away. But unfortunately, because it is a synthetic petroleum based plastic film, the plastic molecules do still remain and enter our water systems and majority of it is then ultimately released into the oceans, rivers and anything else. Stephanie: So, when building this company, I read that you had reached out to over 50 manufacturers who all turned you down. And I wanted to hear- Sarah: Oh my goodness. Stephanie: I wanted to hear that story a bit, because I think most people maybe after 10 woudlve been like, "Well, it's not possible." Or, "We can't find how to contain these tablets." Or, "No one knows how to do it." Tell me a bit about what was that process like when starting to build the products out and trying to find people to partner with to make them? Sarah: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I think a big piece of being a entrepreneur, it's not rocket science, it's just being tenacious and having grit and not taking no for an answer and not assuming that because it's never been done, that means that it can't be done. And so, yeah, I think when we initially came up with this idea for Blueland, it was a crazy idea. And we had a lot of questions from people like, "Well, if it's so easy, why hasn't it been done?" And we're like, "Well, somebody has to be the first." Sarah: And so, yeah, initially, the natural place to start was to reach out to manufacturers, because typically, whether it's in the food space or the cleaning space or in the beauty space, a lot of these spaces are fashion. A company usually works with a contract manufacturer to actually make their products. And so, first choice was finding someone with the existing infrastructure that could just make this for us. Not surprising, in retrospect, hindsight's always 20/20, that no one could do this for us. We were reaching out to cleaning products manufacturers who were creating these products as liquids, and they were pretty much telling us how, "We don't know how to deal with solids, like we don't even have tableting machinery. And in fact, many of the ingredients that we buy for our liquid products actually come in liquid form. And so not even sure how we would then transform that into a dry product." Stephanie: But did you have an ingredient list? Were you like, "This is what I want in it?" Because that [crosstalk] seems hard to me of like, how would I make a multi-surface cleaner? Sarah: Exactly, exactly. So, in the beginning it's just this huge chicken or egg problem. So, we reached out to many manufacturers. And at that point it became also just less so in terms of ... we didn't necessarily think we were going to find an end-all, be-all solution with one of these calls but our hope was that we were going to get enough smart people in the space, who had been in the space for decades to talk to us in each of these conversations, we were going to glean a little bit more information. And if they couldn't do it, they would potentially know someone else who could. Whether it was a scientist ... because a lot of these contract manufacturers also work with contractor chemists, et cetera, they might know of an ingredient that they heard of that would be able to help us do this and so it really was just our form of Googling around, when Google could only get us so far on these niche topics that no one had a reason to read up about online. Sarah: But yeah, I think it became apparent through these conversations that someone was going to be able do just do this for us and everyone was recommending that we would need to come to them with a formula. And at that point felt like we hit another wall because my co-founder and I, we didn't have any chemists in our direct network. We had no idea where to even begin. We were both business people. And so, we, after asking our network, not really finding any leads to any reputable chemists, certainly no chemists with a cleaning products background, we just turned to LinkedIn. Stephanie: Ooh. Sarah: That was just a natural place to turn to, to be able to search for experts based on their experiences and at that point ended up going down another, very long rabbit hole of collecting ... We still have that spreadsheet today of hundreds of names of chemists that we found on LinkedIn and wrote up what their background was and ranked them and then just started reaching out to them, just [inaudible] reaching out to them on LinkedIn and just trying to get as many people as we could on the phone with us, like we were doing with the manufacturers. Stephanie: Did you get a good response rate from people or was it slow? Sarah: It was definitely slow. In LinkedIn there's all these limitations of if you're not connected, they may not readily see your message, also turns out a lot of chemists aren't actively checking their LinkedIn or messages. We also were just two random people that were messaging about this crazy idea that most recipients on the other side probably had like, "I don't know how to do what they want to do," or, "This idea seems crazy," or, "Why are they soliciting me for a job? Why would I leave my big company, well paid job to go do this?" Sarah: So yeah, I think suffice to say response rate wasn't great. But to some extent, it also was a numbers game, which is why we did reach out to so many people. And we were able to get a good number of people also just to get on the phone with us. And there definitely were a set of folks that we're so thankful to that were inspired by our mission and the audacity of at least the vision, and were willing to chat to see if they could be helpful. And that is ultimately also how we found our incredible head of R&D, Syed, it was through LinkedIn. Sarah: He was formerly at method, which is one of the world's largest non-toxic cleaning products companies. And prior to that, he had the perfect background because prior to cleaning products he was actually working in nutritional supplements. So, vitamins. So, he also had that hard, tabled-like form factor experience. Stephanie: That's amazing. So, how many tablets are you selling today? And how much plastic is it removing from the environment if someone chooses that versus a normal alternative? Sarah: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. For us today, I forget the latest numbers. But we've sold tablets in the millions- Stephanie: Wow. Sarah: ... at this point, which is exciting because that means that our impact has also certainly been in the millions of plastic bottles eliminated. I think people are always surprised to hear that five billion plastic cleaning bottles are discarded each year, because there is so much focus on the water bottles and the coffee cups and the straws. Rightly so, because those numbers are even larger. But people are always surprised to hear how much of ian impact you can do by also just swapping out your cleaning products to a reusable solution. Stephanie: Yeah, yeah. That's amazing. Nice work. So, I'm guessing there has to be some kind of convincing and education factor that had to go on because a lot of customers at first, they all worry about maybe the anti-microbial factor and everyone's probably ... at least when I think about it I'm like, "Just throw some Lysol on it or bleach or something, that'll clean up anything." How do you go about convincing people that your product has the same benefits and even though it's natural, it'll still work? What does that education piece look like? Sarah: Yeah. So, that education piece is obviously so important and has become even more important during this period of time and COVID where people are very focused at keeping germs, bacterias and viruses at bay. We received, especially in March and April, that was the number one question that we were getting, especially around hand soap, actually. Where people were asking if our hand soap was antibacterial, whether our hand soap would kill COVID. And there we were very direct with the answer that ultimately, no, our hand soap is not antibacterial, it's not disinfecting, we cannot make the claim that it kills COVID. But it was an educational moment for us because at that point we could start the conversation with consumers that also are rooted in many studies that suggest that antibacterial soaps might actually be doing more harm than good, as well as if you look at the FDA, they've made official statements that say, "Regular, non-antibacterial soap is effective for the removal of bacteria and viruses," and that hand washing with plain, non-antibacterial soap is a great way to prevent the contraction and spread of illnesses. Sarah: And so, I think most people that hear that get it, and it will even link them to the FDA site on proper hand washing techniques and just to just reassure people this, "By no means are we looking to mislead or brainwash," but that it's just more the education of, you know, many times I think there's this perception you need a certain set of ingredients to get a certain job done. But- Stephanie: It's part of the marketing behind that too, for people who do have the antimicrobial stuff in it, they're pushing it so hard, "You need this," when I've read the same research about you actually don't really need that and you can still have very clean hands afterwards. Sarah: Yeah, yeah. Exactly, exactly, exactly. And so, it's been nice. It's been a nice period where we can also provide that education, because we are staunch supporters of non-toxic formulations. And so, any opportunity that we have to speak more to the efficacy of non-toxic products as well is always, we think, a good thing, not just for us but for the broader industry and for people on the planet. Stephanie: Yeah. So, how do you get people to find you? I'm thinking, if I'm going to the grocery store, that's maybe where I'll pick up a cleaning product when I run out or something. Are you in retail or were you planning on going into retail before COVID or are you staying strictly B to C? Or how are you thinking about that? Because it seems like it'd be hard to bring people over to buying online when maybe they've never thought to do that unless it's through maybe Amazon Prime or something, I don't know. Sarah: Yeah, yeah. No, it's definitely one of the larger areas of friction that we recognize. To the extent that it's interesting when you think about it from a direct-to-consumer perspective or context because I definitely went into this eyes wide open, as to this is a category that's going to be harder to convince people to go to a separate, online destination to buy the products. Because in my past, I've been in shoes, I've been in apparel, I've been in beauty, and for all of those, especially something like shoes or swimwear, I would argue it's easier to convince someone for a one-off special purchase, like glasses, to go to a separate destination. Sarah: But to your point, with the cleaning products, this is a product that even early surveys have found that over 80% of people would prefer to just purchase these either in brick and mortar stores or just as part of the shopping that they're doing regularly anyways, whether it's weekly or biweekly grocery shopping, whether it's all on Amazon or at their local Target or Walmart. And I think that because of that, retail will definitely have to be an important part of our future. At the moment we are still a most all direct-to-consumer business. We have a handful of retailers that we sell through but still pretty minimal like we're with Goop or with West Elm, we're with Nordstrom. But I think- Stephanie: Those are some pretty good names. Sarah: Yeah. Those are definitely great names, but those are more I think we still view brand enhancing names and not necessarily the place where people are going to every week to traditionally buy these products. But I think it all comes back to focus and we also always knew that direct-to-consumer was going to be an important component of launching the brand. I think there's so many benefits, especially from a brand building and story telling perspective and explaining the mission and as a new brand to market just explaining who we are. And it's certainly an efficient enough channel to be able to get to early adopters and a set of consumers. But we do believe that if we are going to truly maximize our environmental impact and reach as many households as we can, then absolutely, we do need to, at one point, go into retail, physical retail and traditional retail. Stephanie: Cool, so, how do you get in front of the early adopters that you just mentioned? What kind of digital channels are you exploring? How are you doing your marketing? How are you finding customers and bringing them back? Sarah: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Instagram has been an invaluable channel for us, especially on the organic side. I think we've had great success there. So, we've been live for probably just about a year now, we have over 170,000 followers on Instagram, all of it organic. We haven't really done any paid influence or promotion or anything. And I think it's really helped that because our mission is so integrated into our product offering, we are a mission driven company but that could mean different things for different companies. And for some companies that means it's a donation that they're making or a philanthropy in addition to whatever their core product or service is. And for us, our mission is just 100% integrated into the products that we sell. And that's given us the ability to, on social speak across a range of topics and speak more broadly about climate change and plastic pollution and tips on how we can each do our part. Sarah: And it's been so exciting to see how much that's resonated with the community on instagram and how quickly we've grown and it certainly is one of our largest channels. So, it's exciting to see that organic is something that that can work for a direct-to-consumer brand. Stephanie: Yeah, especially if you have that. Sustainability is a hot topic right now and like you said, if you're able to lean into those groups and people and tags and stuff, that opens up a whole new market where maybe other DTC companies who are just trying to sell their product and create brand new content, very different. So, it seems like that'd be a very helpful way to get new customers and access to an audience that maybe you wouldn't get access to otherwise if you weren't building a sustainable product. Sarah: Definitely, definitely, definitely. And it's also been a really great amplifier for word of mouth. I think we're fortunate that we have a product that people feel more inclined to share. So, everyday we get hundreds of people story-ing our products and their unboxings. And I think that's being driven by two things. One is just the mission I think that gives people a real reason or additional reason to want to share our product with their friends, because also saving the planet is something that we have to do together and they understand that the more they can raise awareness for things that help this planet, to their friends and community, the better place we'll all be in. But also, our products are very visual and experiential. The process of making the solutions, dropping the tablet, showing the tablets dissolved. Sarah: I was very worried, before we launched Blueland that that would be one of the largest hurdles to our success because undoubtedly it is more work for a consumer than just going out and picking up a bottle of solution. But I think it's hugely benefited us, especially in a world with video, Instagram stories, et cetera. Stephanie: So, when you're thinking of the health of Blueland, as you're building it, what kind of metrics are you looking at? Specifically maybe around your website and how to know if you're really doing well? Sarah: Yeah, it's definitely starting to get a lot more complicated now that we have so many more products. I think early days it was a lot simpler ... I would say early days it was a lot more straightforward given ... I think over 90% of our new customers were coming in through the same kit. They were all purchasing our four piece kit. And because it that initial basket was pretty uniform, it was much easier to track those cohorts over time and understand both acquisition behavior and success as well as retention behavior and success. I think now, as we look at our business, there's a lot more granularity. We've layered in more fragrances, we have at this point I think six different kit permutations that you could opt into. Sarah: There isn't a clear kit that all new customers opt into. We also have many people that are adding refill packs now to their kits and their first purchase, which changes the way we have to think about repeat curves and retention because a customer, if they're loading up a dozen multi-surface cleaning tablets in their first purchase, that's actually a great thing for business. It drives higher AOP, it's certainly also better for the environment because we're only shipping that package to them once and they may not need another package from us for a year, at least on the multi-surface cleaner side. But as you can imagine, we then need to look at our data in a much more nuanced way and cut in so many more different ways to really understand what is happening. But yeah, largely we are very focused on customer acquisition cost, the conversion on our site at every part of the funnel and then repeat basket size based on original basket size and channel. Stephanie: Yeah, that makes sense. So, is there any best practices when all of a sudden you have a lot more data to work with and you're trying to actually see trends and parse out the noise. Is there anything that ... I'm assuming with your finance background, you're probably already very good at data. I also have a finance background and how long I had to be in sheets and looking at numbers all day was crazy. But, you do learn how to actually parse through large data sets. Like, what are some best practices that you say worked when it came to expanding your product catalog and actually trying to find trends and things to pay attention to? Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. I think the main thing is making sure that you're being thoughtful about the tests that you set up and setting them up in a way where the data will be valuable and also just taking into account what you're in or how much volume you're getting and so not trying to test too much all at one time. Because I think, and I bring up testing because sometimes it's hard to look at just the organic data that you're getting and make a determination as to what the value drivers are. So, for example, a question that we're trying to solve at the moment is that, are there better kits for people to start on? Do we have a preference as to, is the customer going to be more likely to stay with this? Is the customer more valuable if they buy into kit one very kit four? Sarah: And it's hard to look at the data that you have without setting up a clean test because there maybe other factors that have driven certain consumers to a kit one versus a kit four, that would then make their retention characteristics different. So, to do a very clean test, you would want ideally place randomize and drop off a set of consumers to either kit one or kit four and then see if those two cohorts perform differently over time. Sarah: But it's just making sure that we're being really thoughtful with the test, making sure that there's not other confounding variables that we're introducing, like for example making sure we're using the same ad creative to drop people off on kit one versus kit four, taking into account, again, how much traffic we expect to drive, how quickly that test will wrap up. Because certainly you could think, "Well, we're going to do this test for kit one through seven and do seven kits that we're landing on." But it may also just take forever to get any type of answer of statistical significance if we're dividing up our volume in that way. Sarah: Yeah, so things like that. But certainly something that we're thinking a lot about and is certainly far from straightforward. Stephanie: Yeah, tough problems to solve but I'm sure very informative and helpful for the future. So, I know we don't have too much longer but I did want to ask, we've been on a Shark Tank kick lately, we've been a couple of companies who've been on Shark Tank before you as well, and I wanted to hear- Sarah: Awesome. Stephanie: ... very high level, doesn't have to be a really long story, but how the experience was for you and how you dealt with the increase demand and your inventory and everything that came after being on the show? Sarah: Yeah, yeah, yeah. What a wild experience. It's always actually been facetious, half serious dream of mine to go on shark tank. So, it was really exciting. I think we over prepared every step of the way, which was right in terms of I don't say that negatively. But everything from leading up into the pitch, to making sure that we were ready from a site perspective. Our team still says today that we've never been so prepared for anything outside of Shark Tank. Stephanie: That's amazing. Sarah: So, it's something that we always point to, even with our new product launches or other things that we're trying to do. Because especially in startup world, you're rushing, it's never ... And we always point to, "Look how well Shark Tank went, because we spent the time, we were organized, we put the time in and it definitely pays off." Stephanie: What kind of things did you prepare? If you were to look back and say, "These two things were the best things that we did to prepare? Or what were some of the levers there that you were working on? Sarah: Yeah, yeah, definitely. So, I think before filming on that side, it really was all hands on deck, full team for that week leading up to our Shark Tank filming we pretty much focused on Shark Tank. Especially Syed, our head of R&D and myself were going to go into the tank. But even the rest of the team, we were required probably at least twice a day, for about an hour and a half each, so about three hours a day, whole team would be on just grilling us every which way, with the hardest questions they could throw, with the most inappropriate questions they could throw at us. Stephanie: That's fun. Sarah: It's fun. And it was, in the beginning it definitely was incredibly embarrassing because it was so hard. You're just like ... But after that, it really did prepare us for anything that could come our way in the tank. So, that was great. Including lots of, they just threw lots of mental math at us, which if anything, I don't know if they got us better at mental math that it got me better controlling my facial expression when I didn't know something. Stephanie: Yeah, or just delaying the response so long they forget what they asked, maybe? Sarah: Exactly, exactly, exactly. So, that was very valuable. And then from a site perspective, we really did everything we could possibly do to make sure that the site didn't come down. We spoke with a lot of other companies who had aired on Shark Tank to get their tips for what to do, and that was really helpful. Like the guys at Plated had a landing page ready. Because their site did go down. And so, they were very thankful that they did have a landing page ready to capture email addresses. And they were able to capture a ton of email addresses that way and then email the people when they were back up and running. So, we did that. Someone, another company had a really great idea to swap out all the videos or gifs we had running through the site. So, anything that was heavy that takes up a lot of speed or memory and just pairing back to replace all the videos on our site with images. Again, just to lighten up the site as much as we can. Stephanie: Cool. Yeah, that definitely seems like some good due diligence. And you guys ended up getting a deal, right? Sarah: Yeah. We ended up getting a deal with Kevin O'Leary, who has been fantastic and really supportive and shockingly accessible. Stephanie: I was going to ask that, do you actually get time with him and is he actually helpful? Sarah: Yeah, yeah. We get a lot of- Stephanie: Give me all the gossip. Sarah: Yeah. We get a lot. Early days, I was like, "Is this too much time? I have other things to do." But we probably speak by phone or text once every two weeks or so. And definitely- Stephanie: Wow. Sarah: Yeah, yeah, and [crosstalk 00:52:50]- Stephanie: That's way more than I actually thought. Sarah: Yeah. Yeah, in early stage I feel like I was talking to him multiple times a week, especially right coming off of Shark Tank when we had a lot of opportunities and he brought us onto QVC the week after Shark Tank aired. Stephanie: Oh, nice. Sarah: We've done multiple press interviews on TV together. It's been great. It's been really great. Stephanie: That's really cool. Yeah, thanks for sharing that story. So, now we're running out of time. Is there anything you wanted to cover before we jump into a quick lightning round? Sarah: No. I think we covered a lot of ground. Stephanie: All right. Cool, well, let's jump into the lightning round brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud, this is where I will ask you a question and you have a minute or less to answer with whatever comes to mind. Sarah: Okay, great. Stephanie: Are you ready, Sarah? Sarah: Yes, let's do it. Stephanie: All right. I'm going to start with the hardest question first because you've been in the industry for a while and I feel like you'll have a good answer to this, what one thing will the ... Oh, let me rephrase that. What one thing will have the biggest impact on Ecommerce in the next year? Sarah: Ooh, in the next year. Oh, that one's harder. In the next year ... I would say packaging. It's a non-traditional answer. But I do feel like we're seeing the tides are shifting. I've just started to receive my first set of Amazon packages that for once are coming in paper based envelopes instead of plastic based envelopes. And I think that's going to send a great signal to the industry of, "We need to be a lot more thoughtful about with all this Ecommerce comes an incredible amount of packaging waste and consumers are becoming so much more knowledgeable and mindful about the waste that they're creating." And I think we'll start demanding this stuff of companies. Stephanie: Love that answer. What's up next on your reading list? Sarah: What's up next on my reading list? So, I've been incredibly inspired by the Black Lives movement, Black Lives Matter movement. And so, I have picked up a ton of books in that process. And my next one actually, by my bed right now is White Rage. Stephanie: Nice. And have you started it yet? Sarah: I have not started it yet. Stephanie: Cool, we'll have to circle back and let me know what you think of it. Sarah: Yes. Stephanie: If you were to build another company, which I feel like you will probably be doing in your lifetime, what would that next company be? Sarah: Oh, geez. That's so hard, that's so hard. that's so hard because I love the company I'm building at the moment. I always tell my co-founder that I don't think I'd want to sell this business because I don't know what I would work on next. It's just an incredible mix of product development, science and really doing things that I believe will make a huge difference in the world, as well as just educating people in areas outside of our products, which has been incredibly gratifying, just being able to talk about ... Email's probably a couple times a month and certainly social posts multiple times a week where we're just talking about things that have nothing to do with our products but just ways that you could cut out single use plastic from your day to day life. I do think that if I do move on past Blueland, it certainly is going to be something around the space as well in terms of where- Stephanie: Sustainability. Sarah: Sustainability, exactly, sustainability and climate change. Stephanie: Cool. It would seem sad to throw away all the knowledge. I've heard that quite often where a lot of times founders will just get eager to move onto the next thing and they don't always properly value all the knowledge they built up either from their current company they're at or what industry they're in. And so, yeah, that seems great. Sarah: Totally. Stephanie: What's up next on your Netflix queue? Sarah: So, next up on our Netflix queue is season two of The Politician. I know I'm a few weeks late, but I've actually heard that ... my husband and I loved season one and we heard season two there's actually a lot of focus on plastic pollution and there's actually a character who's really leading the charge on eliminating plastic from her and other day to day lifestyles, so, it'll be interesting to see their spin on that. Stephanie: Yeah. No, that sounds cool. Yeah, there's also a series, I don't know if you've heard of it, it's with Zac Efron, which at first I was like, "No, how is he going to do a series on big problems and sustainability and things like that?" It's actually quite interesting. They ... Sarah: Oh. Stephanie: I'm trying to think what it's called. Maybe producer, Hilary can look that up for me and put it in our notes here. But yeah, he went through, first he visited Iceland and was showing there all of the renewable energy that they generate for Iceland. And then episode two was talking about water and it went into France's water system and how they purify it in a much better way than a lot of places in the U.S. do it, so, another one to just put on your radar. But I don't know the name of it, I just know Zac Efron's hosting it. Sarah: No, that's great. I haven't seen him in anything since High School Musical so I'm actually- Stephanie: I know. Sarah: ... excited to see him all grown up. Stephanie: I know, when I saw him on there I was a little bit confused. I was like, "Wait, what?" And then I was like, "Okay, yeah. You're doing a good job. This is cool." Oh, let's see, Hillary put it in there. Down to Earth with Zac Efron. Pretty good one, very interesting. Sarah: Great. Great, great, great. I'm going to add that to my queue. Stephanie: All right. And then the last one that I've recently started asking, what is the number one tool or app or technology that you use day to day that's most helpful to you or that you either learn the most from or that you loved the most? Sarah: Yeah. It's got to be Instagram. I wish I had a more creative answer but ... Stephanie: No, I love Instagram. Sarah: ... I learn so much from others and from incredible resources and I think most recently I think the Black Lives Matter movement has been an eyeopening one for me in so many ways and I think in so many ways that we're trying to even as a company make sure that we are sustaining that moment, but really have been grateful for that platform as a source of education. Stephanie: Yeah, yeah, completely agree. All right, Sarah, well, it's been so much fun talking to you about this. Where can people find out more about you and Blueland? Sarah: Yeah, so, people can check out our products and learn more about our products at blueland.com. You can also follow us along @blueland. And I also post lifestyle tips frequently to my personal account, @spaiji. That's S-P-A-I-J-I. Stephanie: Awesome. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show and we will definitely be following along in your journey. Sarah: Amazing. Thank you so much for having me.