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During Saturday's meeting (August 6, 2022) Beacon gathered to recognize the efforts and hard work that went into our 3rd Annual Missions Revival. Hear special singing and preaching from two of our missionaries, Brother Tim Lord and Brother Jonathan Williams. Hand In Hand With Jesus by Austin Wagner (Pastor, Resurrection BC, Cowpens, SC) It's Good For Me by Stacy Pearcy Missionary Bible School children's recognition Be A Missionary by superhero children Presentation by Stacy Pearcy, Hands Across the Nation Presentation & Recognition of Torie Lawson by Terrill & Adrianna Rose MESSAGE: "So Did He" by Tim Lord, missionary to Albania. Genesis 6:22; Proverbs 28:20 MESSAGE: "Evidences Of The Altars" by Jonathan Williams, church planter in Panama. Genesis 12:7-9; 13:1-5; II Peter 2:6-8; Genesis 14-18 A Wall of Prayer Surrounding Me by Stacy Pearcy

Intro Thanks to new Mayor patron Blaize Background (2:42) Shang-Chi created by Steve Engleheart & Jim Starlin in Special Marvel Edition #15 (Dec. 1973) Shang-Chi introduced as the son of Fu Manchu, an evil sorcerer bent on world domination - his white mother was chosen based on her genetics - Shang was raised to be an assassin and serve his father, but on his first mission to kill one of his father's rivals, he has a change of conscience, and discovers his father is the true evil Early stories largely based around defeating his father's henchmen and doing everything he can to stop him - also based heavily in racist Yellow Peril tropes Often teamed up with other martial artists, like White Tiger, Iron Fist, and Daughters of the Dragon After finally destroying his father's organization, he retired to become a fisherman, but was drawn out to assist former colleagues at MI-6 Joined the Marvel Knights, run by Daredevil, to take down the Punisher and his extrajudicial killings Joined the second iteration of Heroes for Hire during Civil War, and began a relationship with Tarantula, although it was over quickly due to her violent tendencies Joined the Secret Avengers to help track down his father, who had been resurrected again Gained spider powers during the Spider-Island event, but when he mutated into a spider, Iron Fist used his chi powers to cure him Joined other Asian heroes in the Protectors and the Agents of Atlas - together they fought Sindr, Ismenios, and other villains Later became the Supreme Commander of the Five Weapons Society, his father's old organization, but vowed to use it for good - this put him in conflict with other members of the group, but several of them allied to his cause Was temporarily the host of the Phoenix Force when it was seeking someone new, but when he refused to kill Captain America in battle, the Phoenix rejected him and left his body Tracked down his half-sister, who had left the society, and convinced her to return Issues (9:41) Dealing with having a mass murdering villain for a father No childhood outside of training (15:45) Raised thinking the Western world was horrible & out to get him (23:24) Break (33:18) Plugs for BetterHelp, Freudian Sips, and Saladin Ahmed Treatment (35:12) In-universe - Help him hone energy sensing abilities Out of universe - Address cultural differences, and meet the patient where they are without being condescending (38:16) Skit (49:14) DOC: Hello Shang-Chi, I'm Dr. Issues. SHANG-CHI: Greetings, doctor. D: I'd tell you to make yourself comfortable, but it seems you've already done that.  SC: Comfort is a luxury seldom offered, and even more rarely accepted. Forgive me if this ironically makes you uncomfortable. D: No, it's fine. We don't have a “no shirt, no shoes, no service” sign out front for a reason. This is a place for calm and peace.  SC: I am sure you mean well, and truly believe that. But sadly, Doctor, wherever I go, chaos follows me like a tail attached to a cat, and I am certain this office will be no different. D: That must be difficult to deal with.  SC: I long ago accepted my fate. My father's influence is far-reaching, and even without him, there are many who would seek to usurp the title of Master of Kung-Fu. Even as I agreed to meet with you, I pondered whether there was a chance this was a trap for a sneak attack. D: I'm certainly glad you trusted me enough to come here, for what it's worth. What made you finally agree?  SC: I spoke to some trusted associates who have been clients of yours. Their experience and faith in you was enough to convince me.  D: So now that you're here, what do you want to discuss? SC: At this point in my life, I am trying to transition my path to one of less fighting. However, as I said, so much of what I do involves martial arts that this seems impossible.  D: No forks in the road. That's one way to look at it. I'll pause on that because I see on your face that there is more to it. SC: I know that you think I am being blind to other options, but it is not as you say. I have taken service jobs. I have been a teacher of the craft. I do not wish to abandon all that I know for the sake of comfort. And still...something haunts me. Other noble heroes invite me. If I am not asked first, then I am chosen as a consequence. I am thankful that I have survived so far, and I do not fear death. But there is this pestering essence that the world does not accept me as I am. D: That's...heavy. It's rare that I'm taken aback by someone due to their eloquence. I have to admit, I got lost in it! SC: Forgive me if I am rude, but your statement itself is an example of it. D: I'm still lost. SC: You said I speak well. D: *pause* OH MY GOD I AM SO SORRY I DID THAT I'VE HAD IT DONE TO ME I AM AN IDIOT I WOULD NEVER MEAN TO DO THAT ON PURPOSE I  SC: *laughs* Your chi is genuine. But do you realize how common that is, how through no forethought, we are verbally sparring? I know that is how it will be for the rest of my life. At least, that's how I perceive it. D: Perception is reality. I won't hide my mistakes, and I'm thankful for your latitude. But that tells me your experiences have been way more hostile than a random faux pas. SC: You have quickly redeemed yourself. Yes, there are blatant examples that happen. How am I supposed to grant grace to those who don't do the same? Unfortunately, my father did me no favors. I carried a similar yoke of disdain across my shoulders for those I only knew through his eyes. I am grateful for my enlightenment so many years ago as a young man. But I feel those same shackles weighing down those around me when they see me, not knowing what to make of me, what to say, fearful or angry and not even understanding why. D: It's not your - or anyone's - singular purpose to enlighten every individual. You'll make yourself feel worse that way. Focus on the successes, be they one or one million. SC: You know, it's not just the common man. I was chosen by the Phoenix Force once. I fought Captain America. I had proven myself ...but because I showed grace, I was eliminated by Phoenix itself. Still...I would make that decision again. D: A worthwhile and rigorous process is the true path, regardless of the outcome. Thank you for reminding me of what my own Attendings taught me. But using a great thought process, even when all emotions say to ignore it, that's true mastery. SC: It is fair to say we understand one another so far.  D: Oh believe me, it's hard for me to keep my chill when someone calls me a SC: *cuts him off* Wait. D: What? SC: Something is amiss. D: I don't -  SC: Silence. *beat* Get down. *glass shatters* ASSASSIN LEADER: SHANG-CHI! THE WHITE DRAGON CALLS FOR YOUR DEATH! D: Who's the White Dragon? SC: *fighting sounds throughout* Unclear. There have been several with that name. I watched the last one die. Beheaded by my brother. It seems someone new has taken up the mantle.  D: And I thought my family was difficult to deal with… SC: *to fighters* You all fight well, but in service to a madman. There will be no shame in submitting now. I promise this. But continue to fight me, and you and your master will suffer great pain. AL: You will join us, Shang-Chi, or die. Either way, the White Dragon Clan will be victorious! SC: There is no victory in your falsehoods.  D: But there will be a huge insurance claim coming your way! AL: The doctor is of no consequence! Subdue him or kill him, it is of little matter. D: I'M OUT! SC: *more fighting sounds, tapering off* there is no need, doctor. D: You...just took down a hit squad, while conversing at the same level as your original discourse with me…*random movement sounds* AND YOU'RE FIXING THE ROOM?!!! SC: I have brought pain and despair to your office. For this, I must apologize. D: Ok, first off, if we are going to have sessions together, do not apologize for saving my life.  Second, if it weren't insulting to a man of your stature *whispers* and I could afford it *normal* I would hire you as my bodyguard on sight. SC: Or, I could teach you, in exchange for your psychiatric services. Bartering at it's finest. D: “The Way of The Issues…” I'm sold! Ending (55:47) Recommended reading: Secret Avengers & Marvel Knights Next episodes: Crystal, Emma Frost, Starfire Plugs for social References: The Simpsons “Much Apu About Nothing” - Anthony (31:14) Apple Podcasts: here Google Play: here Stitcher: here TuneIn: here iHeartRadio: here Spotify: here Twitter Facebook Patreon TeePublic Discord

Sophia Chen of MRS Bulletin interviews Tina Škorjanc, a PhD student at New York University in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, and her professor Dinesh Shetty at Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, about porphyrin–based covalent organic frameworks they developed that remove the toxic substance bromate from drinking water. Read the article in Chemical Science. TranscriptSOPHIA CHEN: Drinking water: Whether it’s out of the tap, the refrigerator, or a bottle, we expect it to be clean. Water treatment plants oblige, with a complicated sequence of filtration and purification processes. During a last purification step, the treatment plants add ozone to disinfect the water. The ozone removes odor, color, and taste, and it does this all quickly. But a potential dangerous side effect of the ozone turns harmless, naturally occurring bromine ions in the water into the toxic substance bromate. Tina Škorjanc, a PhD student at New York University in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, is working on methods to remove bromate from drinking water.TINA ŠKORJANC: It has been linked to a whole series of health conditions in humans and has been linked to cancer, which is why we think it is important to remove it.SC: Škorjanc’s team has developed a new material that can remove bromate much faster than any other existing method. TS: We really outperformed other materials which were of different classes. This list included inorganic materials, activated carbons, metal organic frameworks, a couple of other polymers, our rates really surpassed the ones reported for these other materials. SC: Dinesh Shetty, Škorjanc’s colleague and a professor at Khalifa University, also in Abu Dhabi, says that their group is the first to create a covalent organic framework specifically for bromate removal. DINESH SHETTY: Compared to normal polymers, covalent organic frameworks are ordered structures. It has defined structure, you can study exactly what is happening within this framework, you know exactly where bromate is going, how it is interacting with this material. SC: Bromate likes to stick to this material, because the material is positively charged and electrostatically attracts the negatively charged bromate. DS: If you think about other covalent organic frameworks, you have to synthesize COF first and then introduce positive charges. We are reducing one step, synthetically, if you think about it. TS: We can do our bromate adsorption experiment, take that material which has bromate on its surface and in its pores, remove those molecules by simple treatment with sodium hydroxide followed by neutralization, and we can reuse that same batch for bromate adsorption again. What’s important in the second step is the efficiency doesn’t drop. We’re still able to remove the same amount of bromate that was removed in the first cycle. SC: It’s still unclear whether this material will be economically viable for adoption by existing water treatment plants. But their work opens the door to further development of covalent organic frameworks that remove bromate. And in the meantime, their team is working to figure out how to scale up their experiment and eventually test it in a water research center in Abu Dhabi. DS: We are dealing with something which can directly impact society. If our plan works, if it becomes water purification material for bromate removal, we are helping millions all around the world. That’s real motivation for us. SC: My name is Sophia Chen from the Materials Research Society. Follow us on twitter, @MRSBulletin. Don’t miss the next episode of MRS Bulletin Materials News – subscribe now. Thank you for listening.

How do you decide when to take a huge leap in your career? What happens when your therapist thinks leaving your cushy tech job is a terrible idea—but you do it anyway? Googler-turned-comedian Sarah Cooper joins us to talk about writing satire, redefining success, and making men mad along the way. Sarah’s latest book is called How to Be Successful Without Hurting Men’s Feelings: Non-Threatening Leadership Strategies for Women, and it’s out today (we got a preview copy, and it’s so great). She also runs The Cooper Review, a wildly popular satirical blog about business culture, and in 2016, her first book, 100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings, was a bestseller. We love Sarah because she’s funny as hell, and also incredibly open about what it’s like to trade a career in tech for the sometimes lonely—but also wildly satisfying—world of comedy. > I have so many outlets to discover myself and who I really am, which is something that I think is just really important for a life, you know? To know you left everything on the table and you told every story that you wanted to tell and you let everyone know who you are—and you didn’t leave this world without telling everybody that. > > —Sarah Cooper, comedian and author of How to Be Successful Without Hurting Men’s Feelings She tells us about: Leaving a career at Google to perform standup and write satire all day What happens when people think your satire is serious How being a Jamaican immigrant taught her to observe people so she could fit in The pros and cons of being a “people-pleaser”—and how to let go of that when it stops serving you How keeping a “best self journal” helps her stay focused while working alone Also in this episode Sara and Katel talk about the big career choices they’ve made, and how they’ve built structures and support systems to make those careers work for them. Deets: Sara celebrates seven whole years without a traditional “jobby-job,” and thinks back on Cindy Gallop’s advice that working for yourself is the least risky thing you can do Katel tells us why she took a pay cut to run A Book Apart—and how she handles the lonely parts of working, well, alone We both definitely wear fancy blazers at all times > I remember being so excited to work with a much smaller team and fewer people… I was like, “oh my gosh, this is going to be so great, it’s going to be just a few people, it’s going to be really nimble.” And then I realized that most of the time it was really just going to be me working kind of by myself. And it was a lot harder than I expected because there was essentially no structure unless I made it, and it took me at least a good year to kind of figure out how I was going to work, how I was going to be productive, whether I even liked that way of working enough to keep doing it. > > — Katel on trading corporate life for running an indie publishing company Plus: Our friends at Harvest want to make sure you know about Graywolf Press and 826 National. Fuck yeah for rock ‘n’ roll, women musicians, mental health, and our fave live show in fooooorever: Courtney Barnett. Sponsors This episode of NYG is brought to you by: Shopify, a leading global commerce platform that’s building a world-class team to define the future of entrepreneurship. Visit shopify.com/careers for more. Harvest, makers of awesome software to help you track your time, manage your projects, and get paid. Try it free, then use code NOYOUGO to get 50% off your first paid month. Transcript Sara Wachter-Boettcher [Ad spot] Thanks for Harvest to being our sponsor today—and for making awesome project management and time tracking tools that I rely on to keep my business running. I think you’ll love them too. They offer all kinds of reports that help you shine a light on the health of your projects, and they make it easy to track invoices and payments. Try it free at getharvest.com, and when you sign up for a paid account, you can use the code “noyougo” to save 50% off your first month. That’s getharvest.com, offer code “noyougo.” [intro music plays for 12 seconds] SWB Hey everyone, I’m Sara! Katel LeDû And I’m Katel. SWB And you’re listening to No, You Go, the show about building satisfying careers and businesses— KL —getting free of toxic bullshit— SWB —and living your best feminist life at work. KL “How to Be Successful Without Hurting Men’s Feelings” is the title of our new favorite book, and it’s out today. It’s written by our guest, Sarah Cooper, and we are so pumped to talk with her today. Okay, along with some extremely funny, satirical advice for getting by in the workforce, Sarah gets real about why she wrote the book, and what happens when people don’t understand that it’s satire. And how she managed a massive change in her own work life, going from being a manager at Google to a full-time comedian and writer. SWB Yes, I was super interested in that, and I was hoping we could talk more about that transition piece. Because companies like Google are so designed to really keep you there in a lot of ways, right? You don’t just get fed at work, you also get dry cleaning and haircuts. KL So weird. SWB It’s super weird. [KL laughs] But they’re very—you know—once you’re in them, they can be very cushy places to be— KL Yeah. SWB —and they also oftentimes will feel like you’re doing exciting work, and you’re paid really well, and so there’s a lot of stuff that kind of keeps people there. I have a friend who recently mentioned that—you know—she’s been at Google a long time and the idea of leaving is really hard for her. So, it’s interesting to hear Sarah talk about leaving somewhere like Google to do something that was so uncertain and so risky, right? Like a career in comedy and writing? That’s such a dramatic pivot. KL Yeah, I know. It is—it’s so fascinating and I loved listening to her story. But, Sara, you’ve been working for yourself for as long as I’ve known you, but that wasn’t always the case. That hasn’t been your whole career, you made a big moving from working at a traditional—you know—jobby-job to go out on your own in 2011, right? SWB Yeah, actually October has been my seven-year working-for-myself anniversary! KL Congrats! [2:27] SWB Thank you. It has been pretty great for me. I think that it’s definitely something that has suited me. But—you know—what’s really different about it compared to somebody like Sarah is that I don’t feel like I’ve taken such massive shifts. I feel like my changes have been a little more bit by bit over time. I wasn’t in a big, fancy, fully catered office with free haircuts and massages; [KL laughs] I was working at an agency with 40 people, which means I was working a lot with clients. And so my shift from working with clients at an agency to working for myself with clients was smaller. And the kind of work was similar. But I do think that over the past seven years, I’ve made more and more of those little incremental shifts, or kind of mini-pivots or whatever you want to call them, where I do feel like at this point my work has evolved so much—both in the kinds of clients I work with, the complexity of the projects, I definitely charge more [KL laughs]—lots of—lots of good stuff. KL [laughing] Yep! SWB But also just the makeup of my days. My day is not mostly clients, it’s—maybe that’s a third of my time. And a lot of my time is spent on things like speaking at events, writing books, doing workshops and more facilitation versus sitting down and doing the work for clients. And—you know—also running this podcast, which does take a bunch of time. And maybe someday we’ll make a bunch of money. And so I feel like on the one hand, I have quote-unquote the same business I had seven years ago, and then on the other hand, on a day-to-day basis it looks really different. And my goals have changed too. That’s one of the things I think is really interesting talking to somebody like Sarah is hearing a really different perspective on leaving a traditional kind of job and moving into something else. KL Yeah, completely. And I mean to me, and I think a lot of people, the idea of going solo and leaving the perceived—you know—quote unquote safety of a traditional job, has seemed kind of scary. I mean, when you initially did that, what did that sort of first leap look like? Did you do anything specific to prepare—you know—financially, [laughs] emotionally, mentally? SWB Yeah, so—you know—I think about something Cindy Gallop said to us in her interview a couple of episodes ago where she said that in—in a lot of ways, relying on another company to take care of you is the riskiest thing you can do, and that relying on yourself, in some ways, is less risky. And I think that that was something I kind of had come to on my own back then, because I felt like the company I was at—you know—didn’t value me for the reasons that I wanted to be valued. I mean I think that they did try to value me because I was doing a lot for them and they did recognize that, but it wasn’t in the way that I wanted and it wasn’t for the kind of work I wanted necessarily. And so I felt like looking out for myself was in some ways going to be better for me. What I did, though, to prepare for leaving, I did—you know—I had some savings, which was great. At the time, one of the things that was really helpful was that my expenses were very low. My husband was in graduate school, which means that he made almost no money. He was a teaching assistant while he was in graduate school, so he had a very small stipend. So it wasn’t as if I could rely on his income, but what it did mean is that we had chosen to rent a little mini-house behind a house in a neighborhood that was affordable near the university. And so we had a low rent and we didn’t have a lot of financial commitments—we didn’t have kids, we didn’t have new cars with payments or anything like that, because we had been kind of set up to live a lifestyle that made sense for a graduate student, even though I had a real job with a substantial income. So, that made it so that the—it wasn’t that I had this huge—you know—amount of financial cushion, but it did mean that the amount of money I needed to not get evicted and to keep the lights on wasn’t that high. So, one of the things that I did was I set some goals around finances. I really wanted to—I wanted to meet or exceed the income I had been making at the agency, not just because I wanted to have the same amount of money, but also because I wanted to feel like it was a way of proving to myself and maybe to the world that what I wanted to do was a real and legitimate thing that was worth paying for, and that I didn’t have to do it on somebody else’s terms. But I also thought about, “what is the minimum amount of money that I need on a monthly basis to not have life fall apart?” And when I realized that it just wasn’t that much, I thought, you know, I can scrape that together. If things are lean here and there, I can scrape that together. And that gave me a lot of confidence, so that was helpful. The other thing that I did is I knew that the company I was leaving really relied on me and so—they were going through a time of flux also, so I knew that they could really use my help for longer. So, what I did was I proposed to them that I would contract with them for a couple of months—I think three months or so I contracted with them—and so that gave me some time to kind of wean off of having that salary. And it gave them some time to get over me leaving and to have a—you know—different plan in place. And during that time I had that consistent money coming in from them, I did more of that reaching out to people in my network. And I knew people who worked at different agencies or different companies who I had maybe worked with in the past, and so they knew that it was helpful to work with somebody like me. And none of their companies had content strategy teams at the time, and so they would often bring me in and I was like the first content strategist they’d worked with on a project [laughing]. All of them now have whole content strategy departments, so I feel like they’ve kind of gotten the memo—and I don’t want to take sole credit for that by any means, that’s something that’s sort of shifted in a lot of people’s industries in general. But I think what that was really helpful, too, was that I looked at, “who do I know who is out there working in other companies I’d like to work with who has experience and can speak to the fact that if you have somebody with this skillset working on a project, you can do much better work, you can get things done much more effectively?” [8:12] KL Yeah. That’s so smart that you did that. And just when you think about leaving something and trying something new, it’s—you know—I think you are focused on, what does that actual moment look like when I stop doing the old thing and start doing the new thing? And the smart thing is to actually do a lot of prep work before that and kind of take stock of where you’re working, who you’re working with, and figure out where those avenues can lead to, where they can develop into something for your new project and, I don’t know, I think that… you know, that’s really helpful to hear. SWB Yeah, I mean I don’t know that I was that planned about it, [laughs & KL laughs] but I definitely did try to do that. And I also—I’m trying to be, you know, pretty honest about some of the financial pieces of it. Because I talk to people who are often, you know, wanting to take a risk like this and the risks for them might look totally different. And I never want to, you know, lie about that, or make it seem like that’s not a big financial risk. I didn’t—like I said—I didn’t have this big cushion, but I did have relatively low risk at the time, and that’s not going to be true if somebody has, let’s say, small kids at home, or already has a mortgage, and all of your calculations have to look different. And I think that one of the things that I hear a lot of is this sort of idea that, “just jump in, do what you love, take the leap!” without talking about how often people who do that successfully had like—I don’t know—family money or a spouse with a high, stable income or whatever, right? All of these other things that made that possible for them. And so I just think it’s a disservice to not be honest about those things. KL Yeah, it totally is. And I’ve talked about this before—I took a pay cut when I left National Geographic to come to A Book Apart, and I wouldn’t have been able to do that if I hadn’t already been established in my career, if I hadn’t already—you know—moved up the management ladder and was making a certain salary that had allowed me to save. I was also partnered with someone who had a full-time job and who we had a little bit of a buffer, so I could do that and make a change. SWB So, what was it about that opportunity at A Book Apart that made you want it so badly you were willing to take a pay cut for it? Because working at a small company, it is riskier—you know—you said you got paid substantially less, there are not fancy offices, there are no free haircuts at A Book Apart. [10:38] KL [laughing] No, not yet. SWB What made that feel worth it for you? KL I mean, I knew it was going to be a huge opportunity and—you know—I was looking for a new challenge and that it certainly was. I knew I was going to be able to work with a whole new community of people and, you know, people doing work that I really admired and that I really wanted to be involved in. And I knew I’d be able to grow in a way that I hadn’t really been able to grow before. I was going to be able to grow my skill set, which was exciting, but also scary. SWB What do you mean? What were some of the things that you feel like you saw in that role that you were like “ooh yeah, I want to be able to do that”? KL I saw a chance to be a part of building something that was more or less kind of in its—you know—beginning phases. And that was super exciting. But there was also an opening to basically develop the role as I grew into it, and I’d never experienced that before. You know, I think I’d always gone into a job being like, “here is the list of responsibilities and this is more or less it.” It’s cut and dry. And this was an opportunity that I hadn’t had before where I was making it what it was, which was super cool. SWB So, was that ever hard though? Because I think one of the big shifts there you’re describing is going from a pretty structured environment to a really unstructured environment without, you know, having like, “here’s the boundaries of what your job is and here’s, you know, who is on your team.” And you don’t have a set of colleagues that work full-time with you, it’s like people juggling multiple kind of side gigs, and A Book Apart is often one of their side gigs. Was that hard? KL Yeah! I remember being so excited to work with a much smaller team and fewer people, because I think I was so used to working with such large teams and so many people that it felt like it was hard to really move things forward. So all of a sudden I was like, “oh my gosh, this is going to be so great, it’s going to be—you know—just a few people, it’s going to be really nimble.” And then I realized that most of the time it was really just going to be me [SWB laughs] working kind of by myself. And it was a lot harder than I expected because there was essentially no structure unless I made it, and it took me at least a good year to kind of figure out how I was going to work, how I was going to be productive, whether I even liked that way of working enough to keep doing it. And I think now it would be really hard for me to go back to a traditional office environment at least. I mean, I have a friend who has been freelancing for almost five years and they’re just realizing that it does not work for them. They need—they are realizing that they need to go to a place and do the work and then leave that place. And I very much understand that. [13:23] SWB Totally, yeah. I can relate to that feeling, but I’ve never quite sunk into it. I guess I’ve had moments where I feel like that, and then I’m like, “no, okay, I need to add some structure, I need to shift how I, you know, how I do things.” You know like people who talk about how they need to get dressed for the day or whatever before they start work? I’m not one of those people, but there are things that—you know—that I think about. I don’t do client work at nights or on the weekends. I do end up doing work at night or on the weekends, if I’m going to be honest with you. People sometimes ask me, “how do you do all the things that you do?” And I’m like, “I like to work and I don’t mind doing it in the odd hours.” But I don’t do client work then. I work on the podcast maybe. KL Right. SWB But to me, setting some of those boundaries like not doing client work and not replying to client emails late—that’s important and that’s something where I feel like it keeps it on my terms. KL Yeah, totally. It’s like you sort of—you have to have a little bit of a sense of office hours for there to be some kind of structure. Even if it’s only in your head and—because people, a lot of people don’t know that you aren’t—in a quote, unquote office every day doing that work. SWB I’m in a very fancy office at all times. [KL laughs] KL You are. SWB And I am definitely dressed up in a very fancy business outfit and I’m wearing a blazer. KL At all times. SWB At all times. KL Yeah. SWB Literally always. [KL laughs] KL I mean, I think about that idea of sort of working from wherever and at first again, how that idea was so exciting, but how it can become such a slippery slope. For example, on one hand I was able to plan and host that bachelorette weekend that we talked about a little while back because I could handle all the logistics leading up to it—you know—in and around my daily schedule. But when the weekend came, I also worked a little during that weekend because I could and I had a lot I need and want to get done. And to your point, it’s sort of like I love a lot of the work that I do and that’s—that’s okay, that’s part of my life, but I do need to remember that I want to set some boundaries. So, it’s great to have a lot of flexibility and freedom, as long as you kind of keep an eye on where the lines are. [15:30] SWB Yeah! And I let myself redraw the lines. They don’t have to be consistent all the time. But to always be thinking about “okay, I am redrawing this line right now and doing a lot of work stuff during a different—a weird time, but that might not be forever, I don’t want that being normal.” I like it though. You know, I get to do things like add a few days of vacation time when I’m taking a business trip, right? So, I go to the West Coast to go to a conference and I tack on a few days and I go see my nieces in Oregon. That’s awesome, I love being able to do that and I just have to juggle other things around it, right? I don’t have to take PTO, I don’t have to budget for it that way, I just have to juggle everything else around. I also love that I can do things like schedule appointments or run errands at like 2pm on a Tuesday and that again, I just have to be able to juggle everything else around it, which is why sometimes—you know—I do stuff in the evening that I would otherwise get done during the work day, but it means that I was able to do stuff during the work day that otherwise would be a nightmare like going to IKEA on a weekend! KL [laughing] Yes! SWB You know? And I feel like those are good tradeoffs for me, but I always want to take stock of what those things are. KL Yeah. Something Sarah mentioned was that work can be lonely. Were you lonely at first when you started this—you know—this endeavor, what you’re doing now? Or do you get lonely now ever? SWB So, I don’t tend to get lonely most of the time. Sometimes in small moments, but never in a bigger way. And I think one of the reasons for that is that I know that I’m pretty social and early on, I connected with a lot of people who were doing some of the same stuff that I did. So I remember in 2011 when I first left my job, a friend started a really small little Google group for people who were doing freelance or consultancy type work in content strategy. And it was only five or six people—eight people, I can’t remember. But that was really helpful at the beginning where I felt like “oh okay, I can chat with people who are sort of facing some of the same stuff as me or I can ask questions—what do your contracts even look like? What am I doing? What’s going on?” Very basic questions. [laughs] And that group kind of petered out—sometimes those kinds of groups peter out, but it was valuable to me in the moment. And then in 2013, I helped plan a little retreat with fifteen or twenty people running small consultancies and we came out of that and started a Slack group a little while later—I think actually a year later we turned it into a Slack group—and that’s still going and that’s—it’s a place I can bounce ideas off of, ask questions. And it’s also people I just really trust, which has been helpful. The other thing that I think has really prevented me from being lonely is that I do partner with people on projects a lot and I partner with you on a ton of stuff now, Katel. So, one thing that I’ve noticed is that I don’t work on A Book Apart and you don’t work on my client projects or come with me when I speak at conferences usually, but I feel like I have kind of a work partner where you kind of know what’s going on with my work and I know what’s going on with your work and we have enough work we’re doing together that—I don’t know—it feels like a colleague! [18:29] KL Ahhh, I love that so much! I agree, I feel the same way and it’s been such a cool thing to have developed where it’s like all of a sudden if we want to have a co-working day, we could do that. SWB Totally! Plus we get to talk to so many fucking awesome people together, which is something that I really, really love. So, why don’t we do that? KL Let’s do it. [music fades in, plays for five seconds, and fades out] Sponsor: Harvest KL [Ad spot] So, before we talk to Sarah, we’ve got to talk about something actually pretty related to her work—reading, writing, and creativity. Our friends at Harvest told us those things are super important to them, especially when it comes to making sure more diverse voices have a chance to share their ideas. So, Harvest has pledged to spend 4% of its profits each year to causes that help more people from all backgrounds read, write, and get creative. Two groups they support that you might want to check out are 826 National, which supports seven writing and tutoring centers for youth across the country, helping them write with confidence and originality. Check them out at 826national.org. And Graywolf Press, a nonprofit literary publisher that champions books from underrepresented voices. They’re at graywolfpress.org. SWB I love this so much because I think about all the incredible writers we’ve had on the show so far. Like Sarah, of course, you’re going to hear from her in just a second, or Keah Brown from last week, or Nichole Chung a few weeks ago. And then, of course, Carmen Maria Machado back in the spring—you know—her book was actually published by Graywolf Press! And I think about how—you know—the world just needs more writers like them and organizations like 826 and Graywolf are really crucial to making that happen. So I love that we’re able to spotlight them and—you know—writing and creativity are so important for everyone. So, even if you’re not going to be a capital-W writer, Harvest has noted that as a remote company with people in a lot of different time zones, they rely on written words to get things done and collaborate and that reading and writing skills make it possible for them to do that and make them successful. So, they want to support more people in gaining them and so do we. So thanks, Harvest, for caring about literacy and creativity and check out 826 National and Graywolf Press for more. [music fades in, plays for five seconds, and fades out] Interview: Sarah Cooper SWB Sarah Cooper is a comedian, writer, and self-proclaimed trash-talker based in New York City. She runs thecooperreview.com, a wildly popular satirical blog about business culture, and her first book, 100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings, was a bestseller. Now she has a new book. It’s called How to Be Successful Without Hurting Men’s Feelings and I am laugh-crying already. Sarah, welcome to No, You Go. [21:02] Sarah Cooper Thank you so much. SWB So, Sarah, we were reading your new book—Katel and I were actually just talking about it—and we really were laugh-crying. In chapter one, already I was losing it. I was reading the section where you—you started having all these illustrations of hairstyles to avoid and let me just describe this for readers who haven’t been able to read the book yet. It’s this illustration series where it’s like okay—long, flowing hair is too sexy and then there’s the hair that’s up in a bun is too boring, there’s the hair that’s too old, and then the last two are where I just lost it. It’s the one that’s like “too black”—natural hair, right? And then “way too black,” which is braids. Okay, so the book is full of illustrations like this and activities and basically advice for women to be successful, but don’t be too successful. How did you get to this place where you decided to write a satirical book of “non-threatening leadership strategies for women”? SC Well, it started as a blog post called “9 Non-Threatening Leadership Strategies for Women” and I wrote it two years ago—and it was sort of based on my experience kind of making myself more passive and trying to be more pleasing in the office and sort of getting called out on being a little too aggressive with my opinions and seeing other women get called out on the same things. And so this idea of being threatening when, in fact, we’re actually just being direct or straightforward or saying the same thing that a man would say made me think it would—it’s kind of like the perfect thing for satire where you’re trying to tell women “this is how you be less threatening,” but really the way you were going to act in the first place was already not threatening. So, that led to that first comic, which I almost didn’t publish because I have a group of friends and family that I sort of run things by before I publish anything. And I did get the feedback that this might be construed as offensive and people might take it too seriously and I might see [laughs]—I might be seen as someone who is anti-woman for giving this advice. And so, I really worked on it to try and make it as obvious as possible that it was a joke, so the advice sort of gets more silly towards the end of the post where the very last thing is “wear a mustache so that people will think you are a man and that way you won’t even have to be less threatening.” After that, I published it and it just sort of went viral in the same way that “10 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings” went viral and really hit a nerve and people still did think that I was serious and didn’t realize that I was not actually telling people to put on a fake mustache. But I think a lot of people just sort of saw themselves in a lot of the advice. And so that was kind of the initial spark of the idea for this book and I started writing a different book actually, last year—and I wasn’t going to write this book, especially after the election. I thought that there was just a sense of hopelessness that all women sort of felt and I didn’t know if there was a way to create something that would be funny, but also kind of not dismissive of how women were feeling. And so it—it did take me a little while to figure out how I could do it and I think what happened was I started to get angry and I think—you know—women started to go from sad to pissed and I think when I became pissed I was like, “you know what? This ridiculous. We have all of these rules everyone is trying to tell us to follow, they’re contradictory and we actually can’t win because no matter what we do, it’s not good enough and it’s not right.” And I think that that was especially how I felt with Hillary Clinton’s campaign. It was like she didn’t smile too much or she smiled too much or she was “too prepared,” I think was something that someone said, which just made me so livid. I was like, “wait a second. [laughs] If you’re too prepared, that’s not good enough?” So, it just got me so frustrated and so that’s when I was like, “you know what? I can make fun of this and I can kind of do it in a way that’s funny, but also kind of speak to how frustrating a lot of these rules are and this situation is and a lot of how women are feeling in the workplace in terms of how we should present ourselves when really we just want to be ourselves without being judged for all of these little things. [25:28] SWB Yes. I mean, there is so much kind of what I would say is shitty advice for women at work that is basically giving them these pointers for how to like “hey, here are some tips to suppress how you really feel all the time and act more like a man,” right? That’s kind of what they boil down to— SC Yeah. SWB —and so it’s interesting that you had that much of a problem of people not realizing what you were doing was satire. It seems very obvious to me. SC [laughs] Well, I think some women were like, “you know what? I’’—they are actually on my side without realizing that they’re on my side. I think that’s the funniest part because they’ll be like, “you shouldn’t be telling women to do this, women should just act the way that they want to act and if men are offended, then screw them.” And I’m like, “yeah, exactly, that’s the point of what I’m trying to say, [KL & SWB laugh] thank you for pointing that out.” So it’s more people not—you know—it’s more people that are kind of on my side that just kind of don’t realize that I’m not actually telling people to act like this, I’m saying that we shouldn’t be telling people to act like this and that’s kind of a running thread throughout a lot of the stuff that I do—it’s bad advice. Don’t take my advice, do the opposite of the thing that I’m telling you to do and that’s a—a lot of what this is as well. But yeah, people still take it seriously and I’ve got to laugh sometimes at that. SWB So, I’m curious—you’ve touched on this a little bit. Do you ever find yourself feeling frustrated or getting into some awkward space where you’re trying to write comedy about actual awful things that happen to real women all the time? Does that ever sort of get you down? Or does it feel like a positive outlet for you? I guess at some level it must since you [laughing] are writing a lot of comedy about it! SC [laughs] You know what? When you take something seriously and it feels kind of sacred, you are like “I don’t want to make fun of that because I really feel strongly about that” and so it did feel like a bit of a stretch and that’s why I wasn’t going to write it at first. And then especially with the harassment chapter—that chapter almost didn’t make it in there just because I—but it had to because then I was so angry about all of these things that women have to deal with. This idea that if we get harassed by someone who is a high performer and is a really incredible contributor to the company, that somehow makes it so that they can’t do anything about it because they need that person. [laughs] It’s just this idea that companies—a lot of companies—don’t seem to care about how they’re getting to their goals, they just care that they get to their goals and so they—there’s a lot of people who kind of get trampled on in that process. And so I think that what ends up happening is I’m a little scared to make fun of something or it’s a little bit too raw to make fun of it, but then the sort of frustration makes it so that I can’t help but make fun of it because I really, really need to point this out and I really—this is just something that I really want to say about it. [28:14] SWB So, I know that a lot of your work sort of stemmed from your experience in kind of a past life working at Google for a number of years, kind of working in the tech industry. You’ve said that it has given you plenty of material, and I’m wondering if we can go back to that a bit. Can you tell us a little bit about sort of both how you got started in comedy and in tech and how the two kind of intertwined? SC Yeah, it’s kind of a messy story. I always wanted to do something with performance and theatre and acting, and I kind of did it on and off while I was working. And I found stand-up because I wanted to be a better actress, and I kind of wanted to be more myself on stage and on camera. And so I decided to just get on stage at an open mic. And I drank a lot and got very drunk and got up on stage and told this story about dating and it was—it was very nerve-racking. But then I got up there and I felt very comfortable and I realized that I really liked writing for myself and I really liked being myself more than pretending to be—a character? That’s kind of—that was something that I was doing sort of in between working for Yahoo and Google and then I continued to do stand-up while I was working at Google and I would get my coworkers to come to my shows and I started to write a little bit more about what it was like to work with them and sort of making fun of the software engineers there and they—you know—loved that. They’re some of the funniest people I’ve ever met. I didn’t really realize that there was this sort of opening for satire in the corporate world before I wrote “10 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings,” which is really based on observation from sitting in meetings and—while I was supposed to be paying attention and contributing, I was making observations about what my coworkers were doing and especially the things that people were doing to make it seem like they knew what they were talking about when really most people weren’t paying attention at all. And I just always found it fascinating that certain people were seen as the smart ones. To me, almost everything is a sort of performance. And it’s also… I’m an immigrant. I was born in Jamaica. And so I think I’ve always kind of been like, “well, what’s the thing that I can do in this situation to make it look like I can fit in here and I’m part of it?” And so I was always sort of watching. And so I think a lot of it was just I really like observing all of those things and the first time I put that together was in “10 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings” and it really just resonated with people and that’s kind of what started my writing career that—as it is right now because that took off so much that I ended up leaving Google and—and writing my first book about it. [31:02] SWB Yeah, I think from that original post my favorite tip was maybe number six, which was “ask ‘will this scale?’ no matter what.” [KL laughs] SC Yeah. SWB Because, obviously, that’s the kind of thing I’ve heard a lot and it’s the kind of thing that is just said when you don’t know what else to say. And I think that that’s something that you really pinpointed so well is the way that people will sort of come up with these so called smart, insightful questions that are really just stock questions that they use to sound like they know what they’re talking about. SC Yeah. SWB Something that I want to touch on though—that you mentioned a minute ago that I think is really interesting, is you mentioned sort of being an immigrant and moving to this country from Jamaica and feeling like that gave you more of a sense of observing what other people are doing and figuring out what is the norm here. Sounds like maybe from a young age you became really attuned to needing to code switch and sort of trained yourself to always be identifying what the code is that’s happening, so you can flip on your “okay, I’m working at Google now” script and kind of blend. Is that something you feel like is a strong piece of your experience? SC That’s funny, I’ve never thought of it as code switching, I’ve always thought of it as people pleasing. [laughs] I’ve always been a huge just people pleaser, which is part of myself that I absolutely hate and I did it with—you know—sort of my parents, I did it with my friends, and I did it at work. I did it in relationships. And it took me a long time to realize that a lot of times I was doing and saying things that I didn’t actually think or feel just because I thought that’s what was wanted or needed by other people in that situation. So yeah, I mean I think that I developed that from a very young age. I have [laughs]—I have this memory of being very young, and I couldn’t read yet, and I was sitting at a breakfast table with my dad and he was reading the paper and he got to the comics section and he slides me the comics section and he says, “read this, it’s funny, you’ll laugh.” And he didn’t realize that I couldn’t read yet. And so I didn’t want to say, “Dad, I can’t read” [laughs] so [KL & SWB laugh] I looked at the comics and I just started laughing—I just started pretending to enjoy myself so that my dad would think that I was doing what he wanted me to do. And I feel like that was my earliest memory of just being like, “oh, they think that I should do this, so I’ll do this”—you know? But it took a long time for me to step outside myself and realize I don’t have to do that. I can say and do what I feel. [33:31] SWB And so I’m curious—as you were sort of starting your career working in tech and sort of going in with that people pleaser mentality, what was that experience like for you? SC Very successful, I have to say. I joined Google and was within a few years promoted to manage the team. And I did very well there, people loved working with me, [laughs] people loved having me in their meetings. You know, I think people pleasing is—it will get you to middle management. I don’t know if it will get you to be like a VP, but definitely as a woman especially, if you’re a people pleaser, I think that it can get you pretty far. The only thing is, you’re going to get something that you might not want, which is what I had. [laughs] You know, I became a manager and I was in a lot of meetings and I think that’s when I started to realize that I wasn’t being as creative as I wanted to be, so I guess it was kind of a blessing in disguise that I came to a point where I was more passionate about writing and stand-up and all the things I was doing outside of work than I was about the things I was doing at work. But I just find it fascinating how—you know—there’s so much imitation going on in the corporate world. I mean, that’s what people are doing in terms of how they figure out “well, this is how I need to get ahead, I need to—obviously this VP is talking so passionately about this product and all these features, and so I need to talk passionately about all these products and all these features.” Now, that VP might actually be feeling those things, but then the middle manager is just sort of imitating that passion. And so, I think that that to me was a lot of the things that I was doing as well. And it’s just kind of a strange situation, because they’re like, “oh, you have to be authentic—you know—you have to be really yourself,” but then a lot of it is just a performance in a lot of ways. SWB You mentioned how much of a people pleaser you always were, but it seems like almost flipping when you started writing the satirical posts because they’re fundamentally making waves. And I’m wondering if that was ever sort of a scary decision for you to make. SC It was. I mean, even as innocuous as “10 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings” was, I was so scared to post it because I didn’t want my coworkers to think I was making fun of them, because I was making fun of them. And I didn’t know if they would read it and I would ruin some relationships. So, that was really scary, but then a crazy thing happened. It came out, everybody read it, everybody loved it, they all started asking me if they could be featured in my next posts and they do this thing in a meeting and maybe that’s another trick I could put in there. And so that was kind of the first stepping stone of like “oh, this is okay!” And I will say that comedy for me definitely is sort of a defense mechanism. I can kind of hide behind the satire of it a little bit in order to say what I really feel. I feel like this is part of my growth is to say it in a satirical funny way, and then kind of get up the courage to say what I really feel and what I really think and be really committed to that. But it is really scary to put myself out there even a little bit, and even setting up a newsletter and sending out emails, and even when I had just forty people, I felt terrified to just send out my newsletter. It was just—it took a long time, but it’s been really great. You know, I think it’s been exactly what I needed in order to become more of who I am instead of this person that I think everyone wants me to be. [37:08] SWB I’m curious too, you talked about your newsletter. We mentioned at the top of the show The Cooper Review, which is the satirical blog that you run and I’m curious how and when did that get started and how did that build its audience? SC So, I posted “10 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings” on Medium at first because I didn’t have a blog. And then when it got—it was starting to get millions of views, I was like, “wait a second, I should be getting some of that traffic,” so I created thecooperreview.com about—I want to say—a month or so, or maybe six to eight weeks after that blog post came out. And then I started using the post on Medium to sort of drive people to my website and get people to sign up for my newsletter and started to grow my audience that way. SWB And so you also mentioned a lot about feeling a lot of fear about posting it and then getting a lot of positive feedback, but did you also get negative feedback? Have you received much criticism or, you know, trolls or kind of angry folks? SC Not from my coworkers, but from—yeah, random strangers. People get very angry, especially on LinkedIn [laughs] when you think that you’re trying to tell people how to—how to look smart in meetings because they take their meetings very seriously. So, I get people saying, “well, you shouldn’t—you shouldn’t try to look smart, you should just be smart” and I’m like “okay, thank you.” [SWB laughs] Yeah, so that’s kind of funny, but then I also get—you know—I wrote a post about gaslighting, which also made it to the book as well, and I got a woman who wrote to me and said that her boss did this to her and it was very painful and—and how she usually finds my things very funny, but this was just very painful for her and she didn’t appreciate it. She didn’t think it was great for me to write this. And I was very sensitive to that, so I wrote her back and said “you know, part of the reason that I write this stuff is because I want people to be more aware of it and I think that—you know—like G.I. Joe says, “knowing is half the battle.” And so when you are aware that these things are happening, then you can do something about it, then you can say, “hey, this is what’s happening. I’m not crazy, you’re making me feel like I’m crazy.” And she wrote back and it was really nice. She was like, “yeah, that is true, that is a good point. If I had known that that was what was happening at the time, that might have helped me.” So, I have situations like that, I have, I’ve gotten some hate mail about this book. It’s not even out yet, no one can read it yet, but just the title is making people upset. A man wrote and said he would definitely not be buying my book [laughs] because it was offensive to men. It’s really, really funny actually. The subject of the email is “blatant sexism.” It says, “I won’t be buying your How to Be Successful Without Hurting Men’s Feelings. If I wrote a book called ‘How to Be Successful Without Hurting Women’s Feelings,’ no publisher would touch it and I would be lambasted for writing it in the first place, even when calling it satire. What appalls me the most is not that you wrote it, but that most men will ignore the blatant sexism, uncomfortably laugh it off, and pretend it doesn’t hurt because that is somehow more manly. I’m man enough to call you out on it, Sarah Cooper. [laughs and KL and SWB laugh loudly with her] [40:13] SWB Is it too late to get that as a back cover blurb? [all laugh] SC I know, I know. It was so perfect because I just love that—I love that “oh, most men are just going to laugh it off and just—and hide their pain” and I’m like, “welcome to our world. This is what we do all the time.” So, when I first got that, I was like, “oh my god, this is—I’m offending people, I’m offending people” and then the second I sort of shared it with a few friends, they were like, “oh my gosh, this is hysterical, you have to share this with everybody.” SWB It is quite funny and it’s also it’s like oh my gosh, you couldn’t even have the title of your book about not hurting men’s feelings out [ KL laughs] without hurting this man’s feelings. SC Exactly, exactly. SWB He’s so sensitive! You know, sometimes I just think men are too sensitive. SC I think they’re too sensitive, I think they’re too emotional. [all laugh loudly] SWB Exactly, exactly. When I read your work, I feel like it comes from a perspective that I relate to a lot and obviously all of the content about—you know—being harassed at work or being looked over for promotions, all that kind of stuff, I’m like, “okay, this really resonates for somebody who’s a woman.” But I know that you have male readers and I’m curious if you get a different kind of feedback from men who read your work? SC I think there’s just a range. I mean, I think there’s men who—god bless them—they feel like men and women should be equal and so we shouldn’t treat them differently. And it’s really hard for them to just accept the fact that yeah, we would like to be treated differently, but we haven’t been. And that’s the point. The other thing that frustrates me is that—and this happens with men and women too—it’s just like, “well, why didn’t you write a book about this?” Like this guy. “Why didn’t you write a book about women’s feelings?” It’s like there’s a specific audience and there’s a specific thing I’m trying to say and I’m sorry I couldn’t write a book for everybody, but that’s not how books work, I can’t do that. And so I think that there’s men in that camp—I think there’s men in the camp of “oh this is going to be great for my—my wife, or my girlfriend, or—you know—a friend of mine who is in the working world” and they probably don’t think that—that it will help them that much and I think that that’s fine, too. Maybe some of it will sort of—I appreciate that and I obviously it will be great that they want to share it with their female friends, but I think that the men who actually say, “I want to read this, I want to know what this perspective is like”—those are the men that just—they make me so happy. I always think about after the election; my husband is a straight white man and I was really upset after the election and he said to me, “you know, Sarah, I understand this is different for you.” And that’s all he had to say. You know, all he had to say was just appreciate the fact that this is different for me than it is for him and that’s all I want men to do is just say, “hey, this is an experience.” This is an experience that we have and these are things that we have to deal with that you don’t have to deal with and yes, we appreciate that there are things you deal with that we don’t have to, but can we just talk about us just one second? So, I think those are the men that I’m hoping to get to more of and I definitely see that. I have a great—a good deal of men who really support me and really support my work and are not even remotely offended by this title and actually see how they can learn something from it too. [43:25] KL Yeah. It’s so funny hearing you say all of this and then at the end of the day, it’s still—just to underscore it—we’re really not—it’s not a lot that [laughing] men would have to do. It’s like just paying attention— SC Right. KL —and being a little more self aware and—you know—leaving that channel open. Thinking a little bit more about your career and your work as a comedian and an author, was it scary to leave the perks and stability of a giant company like Google? Is there anything that you miss from that? SC It was terrifying and it took me a long time [laughs nervously] and no—everybody was pretty sure that I was making a mistake. Even my therapist was like, “you know, you should stay there at Google.” [laughs] My family, my fiancé at the time—now husband. Because the thing is, I met my husband at work and he’d see me at work and I was happy, you know? I really liked those people and I really enjoyed being there, and Google is such a comfortable place to be. Everything you could possibly want is there. I probably took advantage of the nap pods too many times, [KL & SWB laugh] but it was great—it was great. And so the thing that I tell you I would miss the most is having a place to go and be comfortable and being around people that I just really respect and admire and make me laugh. I miss that very much because I didn’t realize how lonely writing was going to be, I didn’t realize how much I would enjoy sometimes being alone, but then really, really, really need to talk to people and—so now it just takes an extra effort that I didn’t have to do before, to talk to people and go outside and go do things and in order to get that stimulation and find that new material and all of that stuff. So, it took me a while and I was panicking for at least the first six months after I left, but I realized that it was a bigger risk not to leave than it was to stay because I could always go back. And once I told my boss I was leaving and he said I could always come back if I wanted to, that made me feel like, “okay, I can do this.” KL That’s great. I’m glad that you had that and I completely get that apprehension about making such a big change—you know—not just like this is a big career change, but this is a big change in how I operate on a day to day basis. That’s huge. So—you know—today, these days, what does a typical week look like? [45:57] SC Well, it’s kind of crazy right now because I’m in this—you know—the last four weeks before the book comes out, so it’s a lot of working with PR. But usually it’s writing, it’s working on my blog, it’s—I have contributors who write and submit things and so looking at that stuff, it’s writing new material for stand-up, it’s going to an open mic maybe in the afternoon, maybe one or two open mics in the afternoon. Maybe I’ll have a show at night. And I am meeting a lot more people, I haven’t really found collaborators that I work with regularly yet, but that is something that I want to work on. I’d love to start a podcast like you ladies! That is something I have been thinking about, but I can’t get past coming up with a name! So, I would like to do something like a podcast or more regular content because for me, I’ve realized I love having a schedule and that’s been the hardest thing for me is just to have a consistent schedule. KL Yeah, I appreciate that. Especially being in a field that is—you know—very much creative, I think people often underestimate how much it helps to have a schedule, how much it helps to have stability, however you can make that happen. So what is great about working as a full time comedian and working the way that you work right now and maybe what’s kind of harder about it? SC I think what’s great about it is kind of what I was saying before is that I have so many outlets to discover myself and who I really am, which is something that I think is just really important for a life, you know? To know you left everything on the table and you told every story that you wanted to tell and you let everyone know who you are—and you didn’t leave this world without telling everybody that. And I think that’s really important. And then using that to inspire other people and—when I get people writing me that they are starting to draw or are starting to write satire or they are doing something else, that’s really exciting for me, and I hope that I can do more of that, which is create more things to inspire more people to create things. That’s the thing that’s great about it, it’s kind of this journey for me as a person that I get to be on and I don’t have to dedicate the majority of my day to being at a job that I am not that excited about. I can devote most of my day to doing things that get me closer to who I want to be as a person. And the thing that’s hard is staying motivated and, you know, getting out of bed, not getting frustrated to the point where I just feel like I don’t want to do anything because nothing’s working. You know, it’s really hard just when there’s nobody telling you, “hey, there’s a deadline.” You make the deadlines, sometimes you just don’t want to do that thing or you just don’t feel motivated to do that thing and so it’s—I think that’s the hardest thing is finding that consistency and that motivation for me so that I can keep going without having any external people telling me what to do. [49:00] SWB Do you have any techniques that you’ve found work for you when you’re having those moments where you’re like, “well what if I just got back under the covers?” SC Yeah. I have a journal called the “Best Self Journal” and it it has kind of changed my life and if—sometimes I use it and sometimes I don’t. If I don’t use it, it’s very bad. If I use it, it changes my day. And basically what I do is the night before, I will write down every hour of how I’m going to spend the next day and doing that makes me—first of all, it makes me realize, “hey, there are—there are enough hours in the day to get done what you want to do” and also it just is this thing that I keep referring back to throughout the day to kind of stay on track. And so if I have that, it really helps me keep going because I have this plan and I can kind of follow that plan. If there’s nothing, if my day is just an open blue sky, then I will just piss it away on Twitter—and that’s—that’s what I’ll do. So, that has really helped me. SWB I love the “Best Self Journal.” I know that I’m not going to be my best self necessarily every day, [SC laughs quietly] but thinking about what would I be doing if I was really being my best version of myself in this moment is like—that sounds like a pretty cool exercise. SC Yeah. SWB Sarah, this has been really great and we are about out of time, so I have one last question for you, which is just, where can folks follow your work? SC So, my personal website is sarahcpr.com. s-a-r-a-h-c-p-r.com—c-p-r is just short for Cooper, it doesn’t mean I know CPR or anything like that. And you can see all my events on there and all my press and all that stuff. If you want to check out thecooperreview.com, that has all of the blog posts and hopefully we will return to a regular publishing schedule there as well, once we get out of the book craziness. SWB Well, that’s awesome. So, everybody, you heard her—follow Sarah and also How to Be Successful Without Hurting Men’s Feelings is going to be on sale by the time you’re listening to this. And even though I’m personally pretty okay with hurting some men’s feelings, I definitely loved it. So, pick it up! And Sarah, thank you so much for being here. SC Thank you. And the book has mustaches in the back that you can actually wear, so another reason to buy it. [laughs & KL & SWB join in] KL Perfect. [music fades in, plays for five seconds, and fades out] [51:20] Sponsor: Shopify SWB [Ad spot] Hey, it’s time for a quick career check with Shopify. This week we have Zeina Naboulsi on the line. She’s the executive assistant to Shopify’s CEO, Tobi Lütke, and she’s here to talk about the interview process. Zeina, tell us what you’ve learned! Zeina Naboulsi Well, one of the pieces of advice we constantly give to candidates is “just be yourself.” And it sounds so clichéd, but it’s true. Three years ago, when I interviewed at Shopify—or even when I recently sat down with Tobi about my new role—I just remember giving myself permission to be authentically me. This alleviated so much pressure. This is a new challenge for me, but going forward, I can look at it from a lens that’s really mine. Interviewing is nerve-wracking enough as it is. Imagine spending the whole time trying to be someone else. Just think, if you can approach an interview being your authentic self, you know that you’re going to show up on day one and every day after that as you. SWB Thanks, Zeina! That might sound hard to do, but it’s so true. And if you want to work with folks like Zeina, then you should check out Shopify. They’ve got roles in offices around the world, all at shopify.com/careers. [music fades in, plays for five seconds, and fades out] Fuck Yeah of the Week SWB Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. My fuck yeah today. It’s very important. KL Yeah? What is it? SWB Rock and roll. KL I love rock and roll! SWB I think there was a song like that… KL Was there? [laughs] SWB Probably. Okay, so specifically, tonight me and Katel are going to go and see Courtney Barnett— KL Ughh! SWB —and I just love her so much! Her album from earlier this year, “Tell Me How You Really Feel,” has been on repeat for me over and over and over again for the past few months. KL Me too, I love Courtney Barnett and I remember when she came out with the song “Avant Gardener,” which is essentially a song about her having a full-on public panic attack. And it’s such a great song, I identified with it so much. I really appreciate that she sings about anxiety [laughs] and depression and brings it into her art and she’s just so fucking good, I can not wait. SWB Yes. You know, there’s just something about her songwriting that really gets me because it’s like it’s quirky and fun, but it’s also often really open about things that are sad or difficult. And so I like that kind of juxtaposition and it feels really honest and kind of disarming, right? Because it feels like—it feels like you’re kind of really getting to know her. And so it makes me happy hearing her voice and it makes me feel like we don’t have to pretend that things are fine when they’re not, but that also, things are going to be okay and it’s okay even if you’re sad. KL Yeah. Plus I love any opportunity to hang out with you solo, obviously, but we are taking our partners with us tonight, so that’s a bonus. We’re doing a double date! And we’re so cool, we’re doing it on a school night. [laughs][54:01] SWB I totally still feel like, “oh my god, we’re going out on a school night.” I used to go to a lot of shows in my twenties—all through my twenties I went to shows constantly and I feel like the past few years, I really haven’t made it to as much as I would like. And—you know—part of it is getting older and it gets late and I get tired and I’m not going to lie, that happens and I’m okay with that. I’m actually pretty okay with that. But part of it I think has been because my work life has resulted in a lot of travel—I’m in and out of town, I’m at conferences, it’s sort of like going to a concert can sometimes feel just like a lot. And it’s also just hard to keep up with bands and when they’re going to be in town and am I going to be in town? So, I feel like that’s been less of my life than I’d like it to be, but I’m trying to kind of bring a little bit more balance back around that. So, we saw Sweet Spirit a few months ago. And then just recently me and Will, we went to go and see Liz Phair and relive some awesome nineties vibes, that was also excellent. KL I’m so sad I missed that. SWB Yeah, I felt like I was one of the youngs at the show—[KL laughs] KL Yeah. SWB —which is also a pretty interesting feeling because I don’t feel like that that often anymore. And so—I don’t know—I like that I feel like I’m kind of coming to terms with where I am in life, which is that I can’t go to everything and I’m also—I’m not going to go out for a drink with you after the show. KL No. SWB I’m going home! KL Going to bed. SWB I’m definitely going to bed. And—you know—I don’t really want to go to a festival. KL Yeah, no. Those are over for me. SWB But I still fucking love a good, live show and I am so fucking excited to be out there tonight seeing Courtney Barnett. So, fuck yeah to getting out and seeing artists you love! KL And fuck yeah to badass women musicians. SWB Fuck yeah! Well, that is it for this week’s episode of No, You Go. NYG is recorded in our home city of Philadelphia and it is produced by Steph Colbourn. Our theme music is by The Diaphone. Thanks to Sarah Cooper for being our guest today. KL Thanks for listening. And hey, if you like our show, don’t forget to subscribe and rate it wherever you listen to podcasts. Oh, and tell a friend or two. See you again next week! SWB Bye! [music fades in, plays alone for 32 seconds, and fades out]

KW: Hey guys, it’s Keri White, it’s KeriTV, and today I’m in the streets of Venice with property mogul, Sara Colón. The reason I’m highlighting her today is because she’s an incredible Business Litigation Attorney, and I want to share her with my world. So, Sara, tell us a little bit about your practice. SC: Sure! I’m a Business Litigator with the law firm of Brown, Neri, Smith & Khan. We’re located in Brentwood. KW: Yeah, right by me. SC: Yes! I’ve been doing Business Litigation for almost ten years now. One of the special things about Brown, Neri, Smith & Khan where I work is that we all have experience at big law firms, but the price tag is a lot smaller. KW: Oh, I love that! SC: So you get the experience, for a better deal. KW: Why did you choose the firm that you’re with? SC: Well I met the managing partner of that firm when I moved back to Los Angeles from New York five or six years ago, really liked working with him, decided that a big firm wasn’t the place for me—I was interested in helping smaller businesses and sole proprietors. Because you really feel a lot more of a connection when you’re working with a small business owner; you feel like you’re making a difference. KW: And there’s so many small businesses on the west side, especially with all these start-ups—there’s probably so many people that could use your help, people that have fitness companies, and tech companies, people that have social media companies…my gosh! Must be busy! SC: Yeah we’ve had clients in the entertainment industry, in the insurance industry… KW: Entertainment, insurance… SC: …real estate related clients… KW: Real estate…a lot of realtors will watch this. SC: Yeah, it’s… KW: Go sell some houses! SC: (Laughs) Our practice is very general, right? Any time there’s a business in need of any nature, we can help the client. KW: Okay. SC: Basically, our practice is centered around Federal and State Court proceedings, as well as arbitrations. We handle business disputes related to contracts, partnerships, investors; basically, anyone that needs to go to court or arbitration on a civil matter, we can help them. KW: Wow, that would help a lot in real estate with all the issues with agents and things like that. SC: Yes, we have handled many real estate disputes. I actually also have a practice in financial elder abuse, which often involves real estate transactions. KW: I’m sure. So what type of clients would be ideal for you in the area? What type of people that I work with, could I refer to you? SC: Sure! Anybody really, anyone that has a commercial dispute. So if someone was involved in a real estate transaction that went bad, we can help them. If somebody had any kind of contract in their business that there’s a dispute about, or they’re afraid that there might be a dispute about, we can advise them. KW: Helpful! Cool. What do you like most about your career? SC: I love helping people! I feel like I make a difference. KW: Yeah, I feel the same way too! (Laughs) SC: Well, I mean there’s a lot of Lawyer jokes out there in the world, but in reality, I like to say we come after the dispute. We don’t cause it, we’re just there to clean up the mess, and we help people walk through some of the toughest times in their lives. KW: I’m sure, it’s got to be pretty emotional. SC: It’s not fun to go to court, no matter who you are, so we try to be their frontline as much as possible. KW: What are some of the favorite things about what you do? SC: My job is really interesting, because I’m doing something different every day. Today I was at court this morning, then I was talking to opposing council about a joint statement that we had to submit in the afternoon, I could be researching later today, writing a brief…I get to do all sorts of things. KW: How do you have any time to go to Pilates, or go see these houses with me? SC: Good time management! KW: Great time management! We should do another segment on how you manage your time! I love that. Are you excited about getting a property in Venice? SC: Yes, I’m praying! KW: Okay, we’re going to write an offer on something! SC: Everybody pray! KW: Pray to the real estate gods, I pray to them all the time! SC: Yo hablo español. KW: What? SC: I speak Spanish. KW: Oh my God, you speak Spanish! Thanks so much for stopping by and doing this with me today! SC: Of course! KW: I’ve always wanted to be able to refer you more business. So you guys, if you have questions or want to contact Sara Colón, message me.

On June 25 the Rivals USC site, TrojanSports.com, claimed it had broken Steele’s commitment to the Trojans. The site reported Steele’s commitment as news needing to be broken as soon as possible—like a sordid scandal splashed across the front page of the New York Post. “I was pretty mad about it,” Steel said. “My thing was what if I do end up going to SC? It just kind of ruined my whole moment. I was going to drop a video and everything, and it ended up being USC.”

Adventures in Matrimony Blog and Podcast Posted and Recorded at OJs Diner ON LOCATION April 9, 2018 Greenville, SC It is truly a blessing to be in the business that I am in.  It is even more of a blessing … Continue reading → The post Adventures in Matrimony | A Truly On-the-Spot Marriage Ceremony at OJ's Diner of Greenville, South Carolina appeared first on Wedding Officiant Sonita M. Leak.

Today’s show is all about getting started: taking the steps to turn new ideas into living, breathing (and sometimes even money-making) projects. Our guest this week is the totally rad Sara Chipps—the co-founder of Girl Develop It, and now the CEO of Jewelbots, which makes smart, open-source friendship bracelets that girls can code. (We want some for all our BFFs.) > Just start with those baby steps. It’s going to take a thousand baby steps. Everyone has a good idea, right? Everyone. Ideas are worthless unless it’s something that gets made. So you know, if it’s going to take a thousand baby steps, then if you start today, you only have 999 left. But if you don’t, then it’s never going to happen. > > —Sara Chipps, CEO of Jewelbots and co-founder of Girl Develop It Here’s what we covered (and as always, you can find the full transcript below). Show notes First up, we talk about all the URLs we’ve purchased—and how sometimes, spending $5 is just what you need to take your own idea seriously. Jenn shares her love for David Allen’s _Getting Things Do_ne method (and explains how it helped us GTD for our first episode). Katel tells us why “Write Book” is maybe not the best item to put on your to-do list. Sara recounts her love for Jenn’s web series, Cook Inside the Box—where Jenn and our friend Sequoia made recipes from the sides of boxes. Sara’s favorite episode? The one about hot dogs rolled in cornflakes. Mmm hmmm. Then, we fangirl out during our interview with Sara Chipps, who not only created Jewelbots, but also co-founded Girl Develop It. We talk about: Why Sara C. has made it her mission to get more girls and women into coding. The joy of friendship bracelets—no matter how old you are. How to bounce back (and learn something!) when a bunch of kids tell you your idea sucks. Highway1, the hardware accelerator that helped Sara prepare to launch Jewelbots. The importance of finding a co-founder who gets you—like Brooke Moreland, Sara C.’s cofounder at Jewelbots. Why you don’t actually need to be good at math to be a programmer—and how our industry has done newcomers a disservice by pretending otherwise. How Girl Develop It went from a single class in New York City in 2010 to a nonprofit operating in 58 cities and serving 55,000 members (and counting) nationwide. Also in this episode: Woohoo! It’s now light out till, uh, 5:15pm here in Philly, and we can’t be happier about that. We’re already dreaming about two of Philly’s best summertime hangouts: front stoops and beer gardens. Yes, please. Being, like, a totally cool adult. No, really. Ask the kids. Sponsors This episode of NYG is brought to you by: _CodePen—a social development environment for front-end designers and developers. Build and deploy a website, show off your work, build test cases, and find inspiration. _ _WordPress—the place to build your personal blog, business site, or anything else you want on the web. WordPress helps others find you, remember you, and connect with you. _   Transcript Sara Wachter-Boettcher Today’s show is brought to you by CodePen. Ever want a place where you can write and share front-end code with others? CodePen is that place. It’s full of awesome inspiration and projects with a great community. And speaking of community, the CodePen World’s Fair is happening in May. We’ll talk more about that in a bit, but be sure to sign up for an account at codepen.io. That’s [spells out codepen.io]. [Intro music] Jenn Lukas Hey! And welcome to No, You Go, the show about being ambitious and sticking together. I’m Jenn Lukas. Katel LeDû I’m Katel LeDû. SWB And I’m Sara Wachter-Boettcher. On today’s show we’re excited to talk about getting started. We’ll discuss how we come up with new ideas and then, once we’ve got ‘em, how do we actually take them to fruition? We’re totally pumped today to talk to Sara Chipps, who has taken two of her amazing ideas, Girl Develop It and Jewelbots, and made them into reality. But first on the agenda, let’s talk about how five bucks turned into a new podcast. Getting started with just $5 [1:20] KL So a couple of weeks after we started talking about the podcast, uhhh, got an email from info@noyougoshow.com and saying that we’re paying five dollars a month for the email address and now we really have to do the podcast. And at that moment I really think it became real and like this thing was really going to be real. So we kind of wanted to start there and talk about how that happened. JL Five dollars is all it takes. Five dollars and a dream. SWB [Laughs] yeah, so I was the one who sent that email and I was like, “Well, I got a credit card! I got five dollars a month. I spend five dollars a month on a lot more dumb shit than [others laugh] email accounts.” So for me it was a really low investment to also look at it and be like, “Dude, we are going to take this seriously. And I think that that’s how most anything I’ve ever done sort of came to be—by figuring out something that was small, but really concrete. And the concreteness is what helps it feel real and feel like something that you’re seriously going to do. KL And a little skin in the game. I mean, I know it’s not much, but you know when you kind of feel like you’re putting some actual cash to it, you’re like, “All right.” [Chuckles.] SWB That’s like a whole latte I can’t buy now. KL Absolutely. JL Yeah, I think that there’s definitely been a couple nights where, you know what? Maybe I’ve had a few glasses of wine and that helped make the appeal of certain domains sound good [laughs]. I’ve been known known to buy a domain or two. SWB I can’t relate to this at all. KL No, me either [all laughing]. JL After an exciting night out. But, you know, there’s one thing, you know, you’ll be at the bar with a friend, you’ll be at the coffee shop with a friend, you’ll be at the house with a friend, and you’ll be like, “Oh I have this idea,” and you’re sorta joking around and you’re like, “You know what? Lemme—lemme just pull that trigger and buy that URL,” and the next thing you know: you’ve got a URL and you’re on your way. SWB Yeah, I’m curious, Jenn, you had Cook Inside the Box a couple years ago, this web series little episodes where you and our friend, Sequoia, would cook recipes from the sides of boxes. I loved this series so much, everybody please go Google this right now if you haven’t seen it [laughter]. So I’m curious: how did that start? JL So I do remember how that happened. Oh my god, so many years ago at Converge in South Carolina, one of my favorite conferences. I think I was with Val Head and Chris Coyier and maybe a couple of other people and we were walking to go get some food. And I was telling them about how I was eating a box of Nilla Wafers and um you know those delicious cookies? And there was a recipe on the side of a box for Nilla Wafers which didn’t make any sense to me because a Nilla Wafer is just like a cookie. You just— KL You just eat it. JL You just open up the box and eat it, right? [KL chuckles] But they had this recipe and I was like, “This is amazing.” We talked about, like, what other boxes could possible have recipes on them and then I became a little bit obsessed with figuring out [laughter] that, and I thought it was really funny. And then one day a few weeks later I was telling Sequoia about this conversation and she was like, “I would totally do that with you.” And I was like, “Really?!?” I was like, someone else— KL This is a good idea. JL —someone else is in invested in this?! That’s amazing! And then that was it. We went to the grocery store and started our user research. SWB What was the first recipe you made? JL It was the Nilla Wafers’ Nilla Yogurt Freeze, which was a mix of strawberry yogurt, frozen with Nilla wafers, and the serving size was: one [laughter]. KL Was it as delicious as it sounds? JL It really actually was. It was just a little bit sad. SWB I think my favorite episode was the one where you rolled hot dogs in ketchup and then rolled them in— JL Cornflakes! Yes, cornflakes. [5:00] SWB Yes! And baked them for…not long enough? And that was a treat. Mm hmm. JL Yeah I heard that was quite—that was when I was a vegetarian so I had an easy out of not eating that, so I avoided that one. KL Yeah, you were like, “That’s all you.” JL Yeah. But yeah, you know, all of a sudden you take this thing that just happens in casual conversation, next thing you know you’ve got a YouTube web series [laughs]. SWB You know something I always think about is that one of the challenges is anything that feels big. Like there’s a lot of steps, there’s a lot of moving parts, there’s a lot of pieces to it. And so some of the biggest stuff that I’ve needed to take all the way from end to end is book stuff. And I don’t consider myself necessarily a like typical writer, just because I think everybody has a different process. But the way I do it tends to be, like, I need to have some kind of outline that’s enough structure, enough substance to it that I can imagine it coming together. And then I have all these weird tricks to actually getting it done where it’s like I pick off the easy chapters first, so then I feel like I have something of substance, all of these different things. But I don’t know a lot about techniques or process for getting something big like that done, just sort of what I’ve cobbled together and made up. Katel, running a publishing company, do you feel like you have developed some of those tools or techniques for people to kind of tackle big things? KL I was actually just talking to an author recently who had [chuckles] told me that for the past couple of months a “to do” on her list had been “write book.” And I was like, “No!” [Laughter] “Don’t do that.” I was like, “That’s too big. You’re never going to get to check it off and that’s going to feel terrible.” So along with looking at kind of how she could break things down and sort of structure them and, just like you said, pick off some things that were a little easier. You know, get a framing set up first and kind of plug in the meatier bits. One thing that we’ve started doing is just having check-ins during the writing process and I think that’s helped a lot because it’s a bit of accountability. So folks don’t feel like they’re just off in the ether writing and writing and not knowing whether they’re going in the right direction. So I think just having some tetheredness helps a lot. JL One of my favorite books of all time is Getting Things Done by David Allen, and he’s got a really, for me, approach that really resonated well, which is, you talk about what the next step is that you have to take. And you don’t worry about, like, what’s the 20-step-ahead step? It’s, what’s the next thing I want to do for this exact thing? So if it’s something like, you know, I want to write a book. Well, I was like, “Well, what’s my next step? Maybe it’s get in touch with someone who I know, like Katel, who publishes books. So my next step is to email Katel.” Just that. Not even, like, come up with an idea, not write it, not find a publisher, it’s just write someone I know. And then the other thing that I really liked about the getting things done approach is if it’s something that it’ll take less than two minutes, to do it right away. So if I can write you an email that just says, “Hey Katel, I want to talk to you about books. Let’s grab dinner sometime this week,” and that’ll take me less than two minutes, then I’d send that email. KL Yeah, I think breaking things down to as small as possible so that you can actually start checking things off your list is—it feels better than anything. SWB You know something that you just said, Jenn, about “if it takes two minutes, just do it.” I totally noticed that when we were working on starting this podcast. So you know one night we’re sitting, talking about lots of different things we needed to do, like all these macro to-do lists, right? Like, “we need to figure out microphones,” and like themes, and guests, and schedules, and like—you know it was very, very broad. And one of the things that we knew we needed to do was start recruiting a few people who could contribute to our first episode where we wanted to have these short snippets. And Katel and I, I think, both had kind of the same reaction, like, “Okay, let’s make a list of those people and assign each of us a list of those people to contact. And then, you know, we’ll do that after this meeting,” and meanwhile Jenn is literally over there like, “Okay, I sent all my emails to my people!” [Laughter] And you know that doesn’t obviously work for everything. It works for those short things though, and I think that that really gave us some momentum, and that momentum at that particular moment was really, really important and helpful, and got us all the way here where we are today! [Laughter] JL GTD, man! KL That’s right [music fades in]. Thanks to our sponsors SWB Hey Katel, do you know what I love getting done? KL Um, nails? Snacks? SWB I mean yes, and also yes. But more than anything, I love thanking our sponsors, because I’ve realized that starting a podcast is just a lot of work. There’s so many little details to take care of and so many pieces that have to fall into place. Getting some support from wonderful sponsors has made that so much easier. One of those great sponsors is wordpress.com! WordPress is the first place I went to create our site: noyougoshow.com. It’s also how I run my personal site, sarawb.com. [10:00] Whether you’d like to build a personal blog, a business site, or both, creating your website on wordpress.com helps others find you, remember you, and connect with you. I love WordPress because it’s easy. You don’t need any special skills to create an amazing site fast. You can just pick up a template and go. But it’s also super customizable. So if you’re working with an awesome developer like our co-host Jenn, you can turn your WordPress site into pretty much anything you want. Plus they have 24/7 support and plans that start at just four dollars a month. Go to wordpress.com/noyougo to get 15 percent off your website today. That’s wordpress.com/noyougo. KL We’re also so excited to have CodePen as our sponsor. CodePen is the place to write and share code with the front-end community. You can share your code with others and explore what they’ve created by browsing all sorts of Pens. And this spring, the CodePen community is coming together in real life for the first time ever with a CodePen World’s Fair, taking place May 30th through June 1st in Chicago. Three radical days of hanging out with people who love CodePen as much as you do. Day one is an expo with art exhibits and interactive installations, day two will be amazing conference talks about front-end dev, and day three will feature fantastic workshops! Sign up at codepenworldsfair.com to hear more. That’s codepenworldsfair.com. [Interstitial music fades in and out] Interview: Sara Chipps [11:15] JL So though I’ve had a slew of my own ideas, some better than others, I’ve also been fortunate enough to be part of other projects that were the creation of others. One of these was teaching for Girl Develop It, a non-profit organization that provides affordable programs for adult women interested in learning web and software development in a judgment-free environment. I met Sara Chipps over six years ago. She co-founded GDI in New York and was looking to expand it to Philadelphia. I can’t begin to explain how flattered I was when Sara had asked me to teach the first class here in Philly, which was an intro to HTML and CSS class and, to this day, I can say that it’s been one of my favorite parts of my career. She has since embarked on new feats in robotics and wearable technology, and is the CEO of Jewelbots. I am so, so excited to have Sara here today to talk about the opportunity that she has given people to join in some of these projects with her and hear more about her current adventures! So, welcome to No, You Go, Sara! Sara Chipps Thank you so much for having me! That was the best introduction I’ve ever gotten in my life! JL [Laughs] yay! I’m fangirling here a little bit to have my friend on the show. So I’m super pumped! So, Sara, tell us about Jewelbots. SC Yeah, so Jewelbots is a project that I’ve been working on for the past almost four years. You know, I polled a lot of my male peers about how they got started in programming and how old they were, and what I heard from them is often they were, like, middle school years was apparently the prime time for people to get started programming, and often it was because of gaming or something that is traditionally masculine, which might help explain why there is such a big gender gap. So we set out to make something that was more traditionally feminine and open source. And so we met with about 200 young girls in that demographic and we talked to them about what we could build for them, what would be exciting. And what we heard from them is that their friendships and their friends are the most important thing to them at this point in time. Do you guys remember being that age? JL Oof. Yes [laughter]. SC So, yeah, so what we did was we made smart friendship bracelets. And the way they work is they detect your friends when they’re nearby and they light up when you’re together, and you can use them to send secret messages and things, and they’re also open source. So girls can program them to do all kinds of things, like go rainbow colors when all their friends are in the same place, or one girl made a metronome. They can do all kinds of animations in really cool colors, they can make games, that kind of thing. So it’s been a lot of fun. JL That’s so neat. We did, like, a beach trip a couple of years ago and we made friendship bracelets on the beach and it was the best [laughter]. SC That’s so great! JL So I don’t think that joy of friendship bracelets has faded. SC That’s so awesome. JL Knowing you from Girl Develop It and knowing a bit about Jewelbots, I think that it’s quite obvious you want to encourage women in the STEM field. For this one, would you say that you were thinking more about wearables, like were you really into that? Or were you thinking, like, “Okay, well, I’ve worked with adults. How do I get into younger girls and women getting into this?” What was your inspiration for getting this project started? SC Really it was hearing from adult women things like, “I didn’t know what an engineer was until I got to college.” And just stuff like that made us say, “Okay, when are people learning about this stuff that are getting involved in this field, and how can we make sure that that is something that they know about?” And so that’s kind of how we settled on this age group, is, you know, it’s when a lot of men are typically exposed to programming. JL Right, yeah, so you had this idea and you mentioned you know you got together with about 200 girls that gave you this feedback. How did you decide to sort of start with this? I mean it’s user research, right? How was that the next step you took? [15:00] SC So I started with an idea. So I knew I wanted to do a wearable. I knew it needed to be a bracelet just because you know if you’re doing notifications or anything like that and it’s around your neck you don’t see it, and if it’s on your—if it’s like a ring, it has to be a huge, huge ring. Yeah it’d just be like this monster. JL I would wear it probably—[laughter]. SC That’s great. So my idea was that we would make a bracelet and you could change the color based on your outfit, right? So like I wanted to wear blue today, I would make my bracelet blue. That would be like my look for the day. And I thought this was a great idea. I also thought I had remembered what it was like to be 12. So myself and a friend at ITP, which is a program here at NYU, made a prototype and brought it to schools to see what girls thought, and they were like, “That’s a dumb idea.” Well, they saw it and they’d be like, “This is cool! What is it?” And we’d tell them and they were like, “Oh, I’d never use that.” [laughs] like, “Okay, god!” [Laughter] I know, it was really rough. Because you think you remember, right? I found myself in front of classrooms, like, explaining that I was a cool adult [boisterous laughter]. Like, “I know most adults are lame, but I’m not.” And I was like, “Oh my god, I am, I really am.” [Laughter.] SWB So what did they tell you that they actually wanted to use? Like after they told you that your idea was lame, how did you get out of them some good ideas that would be things they would want to use? SC So instead of saying, like, “What’s your idea?” We asked them more about their lives and their day-to-day and the things that they enjoy using. And just every conversation went back to friendship. You know, like, they all still wear the friendship bracelets—like the ones that we used to make, either the thread ones or those like plastic lanyard type ones, and they still make those, they still wear them, sometimes they’ll wear ‘em like all the way up their arms. So one day when we had compiled some of this feedback and started talking about, “What if we made like a real friendship bracelet?” And we started talking to them about that. That’s when they started really freaking out. Like their whole faces would light up and they’d be like, “Oh my god! I would have to have that!” SWB It’s so refreshing to see people really take their user research seriously, because I think so often user research gets like straight up ignored. So I think that that’s such a huge difference and I think it also speaks to what makes this valuable for actually hitting that mission of encouraging girls to enter STEM because you know you didn’t like accept kind of a shallow answer to that and you really looked at what was going to make it meaningful and connect with them at that deeper level. SC Like we didn’t even think about this until we actually did a hardware accelerator in San Francisco called Highway1. This was my first foray into hardware and so it was a really big help getting into Highway1 where you know what they do is they kind of incubate your company and they have experts there that can help you and guide you through the design and development prototyping process. And our first I just heard some nightmare stories about like, “Here’s something that we built and we didn’t talk to anyone. And here’s how we wasted like millions of dollars for this company because we built this thing that either doesn’t work or there’s this huge error we didn’t foresee or the people just don’t want it.” And so after hearing those stories I was like, “You know what? Um we should probably go talk to some people.” That’s one thing about my job and what we do is that girls in this age group are so fun. They’re so fun. They’re so opinionated and like fierce and hilarious and independent. And so it’s definitely the best part of my job is just meeting these girls and hearing about their lives and just being so impressed. I’m like constantly impressed by girls in this age group and like the cool stuff that they’re doing. JL How did you break into that? Like, how did you get access to being able to talk to these girls and finding out what they wanted? Was it through one of the incubator programs? Was it through NYU? Was it through something else? SC So there’s a statistic like 94 percent of parents in the US want their kids to be exposed to more you know programming and programming resources. And not even 40 percent of schools have computer science programs, and what is called a computer science program in most schools is like not something that we would consider programming. One thing that this has really exposed me to is just what a huge gap there is. Like we tried to like visit the entire demographic of you know socioeconomic classes uh in this age group. So if you go to a private school they will have a computer science program taught by a programmer and if you go to most public schools they have like a typing program taught by a teacher that doesn’t know anything about programming and – if they even have that, you know, sometimes there’s like a computer for an entire classroom to share. [20:00] So what we did is we volunteered to teach some classes. We were like, “Hey, we’re programmers. We’ll teach, you know, some beginner programming classes to your students in exchange for them answering some of our questions.” So that was kind of how we got in there. And it was a pretty neat thing to be able to meet girls and talk to them. JL Yeah, that’s so smart! So you work with a co-founder, Brooke Moreland, on Jewelbots, right? How did you come together? How do you find that you’ve surrounded yourself with people to help make your vision come true? SC Brooke was—when I moved to New York—one of the first people I met. She had a company called Fashism with an ‘s-h’. It was kind of like Instagram before Instagram, where people would upload pictures of their outfits or like fashion and people would like rate their fashion. And it was really popular with teenagers. Like hugely popular. And so with her background, you know, her skillset is just really complementary to mine in the way that she has fashion and business in her background, and I’m more focused on the technology side of things. And so when I started working on this, I reached out to Brooke and was like, “What do you think?” And she’s like, “This sounds awesome.” JL And for me sometimes, I have the problem of like how do you hold an idea that’s like so precious to you and then like trust others? Or like even be brave enough to first mention the idea to someone else? SC Yeah, yeah, I had been working on it for a few months already. And it’s so funny like when you first start prototyping something, it looks like garbage. Right? Like you’re always like—and when I was first working on this I was using Arduino and things were, like, taped together and falling apart and all this stuff. And so I just kind of showed her this thing. And she’s like, “Oh this is cool!” And then you have to find people that I think are like…can see past the tape. KL [Laughs] yes. JL So once, you know, you showed Brooke the idea and she was like, “This is great.” Were you both like, “Okay, we’re going full-time on this”? How did you sort of build up to what Jewelbots is now? SC At the time it was just me and I was full-time on it. And going full-time on a side project is really hard. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without getting into Highway1, as they give you seed funding for your business. So I had already been full-time on it for a few months and then she had just left her job. So we kind of both just jumped in. JL Monetary blockers I think are tough when people have ideas. You know, do you have any advice for people that are sort of like, “Well, what do I do? I have this idea. I’m not sure how to take it to the next level.” SC Before that I had a full-time job and it took me – I had been working on it for maybe about eight months or so part-time before we got into Highway1, before I was able to quit my job, and I’ve definitely been there. You know, Girl Develop It, I always had a full-time job. And it’s really difficult and one thing I learned fairly early in is even if you make the smallest bit of progress at night—you know, like, you get home, you’re exhausted, you don’t feel like working on anything—and you just spend five minutes writing one email, right? If you can get that one email out, or do that one thing that will push things forward, you know you’ll just keep going. The place where you get lost is when there’s, like, three weeks and you didn’t work on it and you’re just procrastinating because you’re like, “I have hours and hours of work to do.” But if you just make sure to take a little time every day, or you know just a few times a week, making sure you’re spending 15 minutes, 20 minutes, you can make sure that things keep growing. JL I like that a lot. Because things can feel overwhelming. You know you take a break from something and all of a sudden there’s so much to do versus a little. So I think that makes total sense. So before Jewelbots, you know as I mentioned, I know you through GDI, Girl Develop It. Can you tell us a little bit about Girl Develop It and how that got started? SC Yeah! So we never set out to make the company that it is today which is a really awesome, big non-profit. So one thing that happens to female developers is you will meet—like someone will be like, “Oh it’s so cool that you’re like a female developer! I know another female developer. You guys should be friends.” [Laughter] And you’re always like, “I mean, thank you, but like [laughs] I have work, I have a job.” SWB And like there’s more than two of you out there. You know, like, “Oh gosh, you have to know this one other person who they happen to have the same job.” It’s like, do you say that every time you meet somebody who’s an accountant? [Laughter] “I also know an accountant!” No, you don’t. SC “Do you know them? Do you know this other accountant?” [Laughter] Yeah so when—so someone had done that to us, and it was actually fortunate because we were talking about how in our computer science classes often we felt like we were afraid to ask questions because we were afraid that, you know, sometimes you feel like you ask a stupid question, it’s something you should know. Like, people in the class are going to be like, “Oh god! Of course the girl doesn’t know this!” [Chuckles] and, like, start throwing batteries at you or something. I dunno [laughter]. JL Huh, Philadelphia style [laughter]. [25:00] SWB But that sounds frustrating, right? It’s like you feel like you can’t just hang out and focus on learning and getting the most out of your class because you have to sit down and be like, “Oh I’m also somehow like a representative for my gender here.” It’s like, that’s a lot of extra pressure and a lot of bullshit. SC It is. It is and so having both shared that experience, we were like, “Wouldn’t it be great if there was a place where you know like people could learn and they could ask every stupid question that they think of?,” you know, and not be afraid of having to know that? Because also learning as an adult…like, kids are so fine not knowing things, you know? Like, because kids: you’re not supposed to know. But as an adult, you know, it can be scary asking questions because, you know, you’re supposed to know. So we scheduled just one class, one HTML/CSS class. This is in 2010 when there wasn’t a lot of these boot camps and things like that teaching. And we didn’t know how people were going to come or if they would be into it or anything like that but it ended up selling out, you know, in the first day. And then we planned another class and another class and then people in other cities were like you know, “We want to do this. This sounds cool.” So finally you know it started growing and it kind of like grew like a weed. Like it just kind of—yeah, it was pretty wild. JL So in a lot of teaching for Girl Develop It, I know a lot of times the students they want to make a change in their career and they’re ready to try something new. Do you have advice for people that would want to start a new career, how they get started in doing that? SC Programming isn’t hard. Like, you know, we’ve done this disservice as a community to say that you have to be good at math to be a coder, or you have to be some kind of genius to be a coder, and it’s so not true unless—I mean, yeah, there are, like, people that work—there are like quants that work in finance, and they have very specialized degrees. But most, you know, development jobs where you’re doing web development, it’s not rocket science. You know, it’s not anything that the average person can’t understand if they put in the work. So I think that, first of all, don’t be daunted by it—don’t think it’s not for you or you’re not smart enough, because I promise I’ve yet to meet the person that can’t understand how to, like, do an HTML/CSS page after like you know sitting down for a bit and working to understand it. And also, you know, be ready to put in the work, because it’s definitely hard work. SWB That really brings me back around to thinking about Jewelbots and how powerful it is to bring that to girls who aren’t getting that message, right? Who are like getting far too many messages about technology being something complicated and foreign and sort of you know being kind of alienated from it already at a young age and not even knowing you know what an engineer does. I really like the idea that you’re making it feel accessible and relatable because you’re totally right, this isn’t something that normal people can’t do. It’s not just for special people. And so I’m curious, like, as Jewelbots has grown and developed like, where do you see that going? SC We’re on target.com, we’re on our own website, we’re in a lot of places and it’s grown a lot, which has been very cool. We also were in the Wired store, and I think that the way we see things going is a good question. We’re about to make some big announcements for Jewelbots and kind of ask our audience and our community what they want to see from us in the future. You know, this community has come together of young ladies and they’re building things and sharing with each other and the coolest thing I think is the tiny speaking careers that are launching because of these eight-year-olds—eight-, nine-, 10-, 11-year-olds—that are going out there giving conference talks about programming their Jewelbots, which is so adorable. Like, I cry every time. I really do. And that’s not a joke. I’m just like sitting there crying [laughs]. JL That’s so amazing! SC I know! SWB Yeah, that’s super cool. SC Yeah. But so we’ve shipped 10,000 of them now, and we’re working to figure out what’s next and what we should be working on next. So we’re about to announce some big stuff and then ask the community what they want to see from us. JL Oh I can’t wait to hear more about that. Speaking of speaking, I know that you cut back on speaking to make time for Jewelbots. How’d you come to that decision? SC I don’t know about you, but when I was younger I didn’t really travel. Like my family, like we went to Disney once and my family was very like we drove 20 hours to see family members and that was our vacations which I loved them for. Like [laughs] I’m not complaining. But getting older like being able to travel the world to give conference talks was such a cool experience because I got to see so many different places. But what I started realizing that even though it was fun and glamorous and things it was getting in the way of work, it was getting in the way of like getting things done. And so now when I do talks or when I get you know asked to do talks, I evaluate like, what will this do? Will this help the business? You know um or will this be you know a distraction? [30:00] JL That’s great and then, Sara, have you ever felt blocked or in a rut? And if so, how have you gotten out of it? SC Yeah. And that’s a really good question. Focus can be hard, because there’s just so much going on, and often you feel like you’re doing the same thing every day. I usually focus on my personal life then, or, like, what habits I can bring to my life in general that will be beneficial because often it’s not work, often it’s work affecting life, right? So if in work I need to be doing the same thing every day for a while, that means my other time I should try to do something fun. So I usually focus on adding a new habit or, you know, something in my life that can distract me from the the rut, the day-to-day. JL And then before we wrap up, do you have any final advice for anyone that’s got an idea and wants to get that idea to a product? SC What I say all the time is, just start with those baby steps. It’s going to take a thousand baby steps. Everyone has a good idea, right? Everyone. Ideas are worthless unless it’s something that gets made. So you know, if it’s going to take a thousand baby steps, then if you start today, you only have 999 left. But if you don’t, then it’s never going to happen. So it can be really daunting. You know, I look back and I can’t believe we have like a manufactured product. Like I never—it’s just insane. I never would imagine I could do something like this. But, it just took a thousand baby steps. JL I love it. Sara, thanks so much for joining us on No, You Go today. SC Yeah! [Music fades in] JL You’re so awesome! SC Thank you for having me. [Music fades out] Fuck Yeah of the Week [31:45] JL You know when you’re so excited about something that you just start going google wild and you have like one million tabs open and you can’t wait to read them all? That’s our next segment: the Fuck Yeah of the Week—where we get super excited about someone or something that we just want to google the shit out of. Katel, who’s our Fuck Yeah this week? KL I’m gonna go ahead and say it’s daylight, because this morning when I was making coffee I looked up and I realized that it’s now light out in the morning a little earlier, which is so awesome, because you know just a few weeks ago it was like dark when I was making coffee, which is just really depressing. So I’m just really excited that our days are getting a little longer and I feel like we can get a little bit more light and a little bit more time back into our lives. SWB And a little more energy, right? KL Yeah, definitely. JL I love that. I mean I know when I you know I work on sites so when I’m leaving work when it starts getting dark at four, I’m like, “Okay, well,” you know it’s hard to sort of keep in that mind set where like I’m still at work because then it feels like daytime is work— KL Yeah. JL —and nighttime is home. And so when like the day starts pushing more forward, then I’m like, “Okay, look, I still have this crossover.” It’s not such a hard line between like work and home. It’s just like, “Oh, here’s just my day.” Instead of like, “Here’s work. Here’s home.” It feels so versus each other— KL Yeah! You’re totally right. JL —when it’s day versus, you know? KL It feels like there’s a much crisper line. SWB Plus, every day is one step closer to it being summertime stoop beer season, and that is something that I look forward to saying, “Fuck yeah” to very soon. KL Me too. And beer garden weather. So, fuck yeah, daylight! [Music fades in.] SWB Fuck yeah, daylight! Outro [33:25] JL Well that’s it for this week’s episode [music fades out] of No, You Go, the show about being ambitious—and sticking together. No, You Go is recorded in our home city of Philadelphia, and our theme music is by The Diaphone. Thank you to Sara Chipps for being our guest today [music fades in]. We’ll be back next week with another episode [music ramps up to end].

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