Podcasts about so anna

Anna is so excited about the world re-opening, but after reading some recent news stories, she's afraid we might have all forgotten how to act properly in public!  (:30) Are you the kind of person who's prone to road rage?  Don't worry, it's not your fault, science says it may be genetic!  (4:30) People love taking their dogs everywhere, but there is a limit!  If you are taking your dog into THIS, that's all I need to know about you!  (8:26) When you check out someone out, what do you look for?  Anna and Raven talk about what they're looking for in a partner, and the surprising amount of time people spend checking each other out (12:14) Raven had a BBQ over the weekend, and he feel's like he did a bad job making the burgers.  So Anna is gonna give him a shot at redemption live on the air!  (19:06) Is there something in your car that you don't let anyone touch?  Anna is very protective over something in her car, and Raven can't believe she drives around like this!  (30:04) Would you be ok with your spouse giving you an allowance?  Nick and Kate are having this exact debate, but you might be surprised who you end up siding with!  (36:24) Michael thinks he's got what it takes to beat Raven in pop culture trivia!  Can he end Raven's winning streak early and win $200? (44:15)

After watching Phil Mickelson win a major at age 50, Raven is convinced that old guys can do it all!  So he immediately challenged the youngest member of the team, Producer Sean, to a game of mini-golf! Do you wash your clothes after you buy them?  Anna and Raven couldn't agree so they called Dr. Sharon Nachman to help them figure it out! If you have bumper stickers covering the back of your car, Raven knows exactly what type of person you are and that's all he needs to know about you! Anna had a scary night at the ER last night!  Everything is ok, but it looks like her life as a parent just got a little more complicated! What gross thing does your significant other do?  Anna and Raven's respective spouses talk about their nasty habits on the air! A school in Florida is in trouble for the way it offensively (but hilariously) photoshopped some of their female students yearbook photos.  So Anna and Raven asked Producers' Jon and Sean to see if they could do a better job with their own yearbook photos! Reena and James are moving into a new place, and Reena wants to hang up some pictures that her ex-boyfriend painted.  James is not a fan of it!  Whose side are you on? Raven is on a roll and the jackpot is now $1,600!  Does Melissa have what it takes to beat him at pop culture trivia and win all that money?

Happy National Teacher Appreciation Day! Our teachers have a lot to deal with on a daily basis, SO Anna and Raven are giving them a chance to vent.  Teachers are calling in their craziest interactions with parents, and you won't believe what they have to deal with! One teacher even got challenged to a fist fight in the parking lot, and the only thing that stopped it was the student remembering one small detail!Image Source: Getty Images

It's National Star Wars Day, May the 4th be with you!  Anna isn't much of a Star Wars fan, but Raven and Producer Jon are obsessed, so Anna is giving them 1 minute to talk about it.  Just. One. Minute. (:30) When Jeff Bezos and Mackenzie Scott got divorced, it was the most expensive break-up of all time!  But Anna and Raven just heard about another separation happening that could beat it, and the amount of money involved is staggering!  (2:46) If a friend helps you move, it's polite to buy them food and drinks afterwards, but if that friend shows up to help you move and they're already half in the bag, that's all I need to know about them!  (5:31) Happy National Teacher Appreciation Day!  Our teachers have a lot to deal with on a daily basis, SO Anna and Raven are giving them a chance to vent.  Teachers are calling in their craziest interactions with parents, and you won't believe what they have to deal with!  One teacher even got challenged to a fist fight in the parking lot, and the only thing that stopped it was the student remembering one small detail!  (9:11) Cinco De Mayo is this Wednesday, and it's time to starting preparing for a Mexican Feast!  Food Network's Chef Plum talks to Anna and Raven about how to make the perfect margarita!  First things first, don't use a store bought mix.  Making your own mix is easier than you think, and Plum is gonna show you how!  (22:58) Do you have a big decision to make today?  Honestly, it doesn't have to be that big.  Anna's trying to figure out if she should go to a friend's parent's wake, or just send flowers.  Raven is trying to find a good crib for his dog while the little guy recovers from leg surgery!  One caller is trying to figure out whether they should even bother going in to work today, and Anna and Raven are eager to share their thoughts on this!  (26:28) Couples Court: Steve's parents are very strict and have a dress code for whenever their children/grandchildren go to visit them. Steve and his wife, Joanna's, sons hate going to their grandparent's house because of it. Steve's father insists that the children wear dress slacks, dress shoes, and button-down shirts for Sunday dinners at their home. Joanna is she sick of fighting with the kids every week, she wants Steve to talk to his parents about getting rid of this ridiculous dress or they stop going. He says that his parents have financially supported them for years, the kids must suck it up. It's respect. Whose side are you on?  (33:46) Raven had a surprise loss yesterday and the jackpot is back to $100.  Can Linda beat him today and start his first ever LOSING streak!?  (41:53)

Do you ever shut down your laptop?  According to one article, there's two types of people; those who shut their laptop down daily, and those who never do.  And it turns out, both of them are doing it wrong… (:30) Every Friday, Raven's wife Alicia calls in to the show and gives Raven a grade based on how good a husband he's been that week!  This week, the sprinkler system at their house has been running at incorrect times, messing up Alicia's shower/chores schedule.  Raven says it's the lawn guy's fault, but Alicia has another suspect…(3:11) Delivery people must have a busy job, but if you leave something labeled “fragile” outside, in the middle of a storm, that's all I need to know about you! (7:02) What do you do to escape from the daily stress of life?  Some people read, some exercise, some watch movies, but Raven likes to mow the lawn!  One caller does something fun and creative, and he even tries to get other people to do it with him!  (10:34) Can you be “just friends” with someone of your preferred sex?  Steve Harvey said in an interview that there is no way men and women can have a real platonic relationship, someone will always want something more!  So Anna and Raven decided to ask their respective spouses what they thought!  Raven's wife Alicia certainly had some strong opinions on the subject! (18:07) What did you do this week to earn your Margarita? Every Friday, Anna gets together with her two friends for happy hour, and talks about all the ways her kids drove her crazy this week! One mama needs a margarita after dealing with her ADULT son's shenanigans!  (28:14) Justice has prevailed!  Lady Gaga's dogs have been found, and the thieves who shot the poor dogs' caretaker have been caught!  But it wasn't just the thieves who got arrested, and when Anna heard who else got implicated she was overjoyed!  (30:31) Couples Court: Amelia and John have been dating since high school and even though they're not engaged yet, she thinks they should have a joint bank account. They live together and obviously marriage is next, but he thinks that they shouldn't combine their finances until they're officially married. She thinks that's ridiculous since they're constantly Venmo-ing each other money for household expenses. What's the harm in having one joint account for house payments? Whose side are you on? (34:04) Raven has a bit of a winning streak going right now but Jerry think's he's got what it takes to end it!  Can he beat Raven in pop culture trivia and win the $300 jackpot? (40:27)

So Anna’s pregnant and we finally let you in on a secret recording from early March where we discussed e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g first trimester; from knowing when you’re ‘ready’ to start trying, the two week wait, nausea, tiredness, THE HORMONES who to tell and when - you get the gist.PEAK OF THE WEEK ANNA: Veg In One Bed by Huw Edwards - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Veg-One-Bed-Abundance-Raised/dp/0241376521/ref=asc_df_0241376521/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=310977283160&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=4587169911301303077&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9045812&hvtargid=pla-651188427330&psc=1&th=1&psc=1 TOP OF THE BOX LILY: Promising Young Woman (Sky Movies)------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Submit your questions at https://www.facebook.com/groups/athomewithlilyandanna/ Find us at @lilypebbles and @theannaedit See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Johnson and Johnson vaccine scare has raised questions with some people about the safety of the vaccines. So Anna and Raven brought in an expert, infectious disease expert Dr. Rajeev Fernando, who has some insight into the controversy.Image Source: Getty Images

What do you consider to be “on time”?  Raven is the kind of person who shows up 15 minutes early for everything, and expects you to show up at least 5 minutes early!  But it turns out that other countries have a very different idea of what qualifies as “late”.  It's a good thing Raven doesn't live in the Middle East…  (:30) Every Friday, Raven's wife Alicia calls in to the show  and gives Raven a grade on how good of a husband he was that week!  Raven has been doing a lot of complaining about his wife this week.  A lot of that complaining was on the air too!  Find out how it affects his grade in the podcast!  (4:15) What's craziest thing you've ever seen at a funeral?  The world is watching Prince Harry this week to see if any drama happens at his grandfather's funeral.  But even the epic Oprah interview couldn't match the insanity that went down between two sisters at their mother's funeral!  (8:09) Have you ever heard of busking?  That's the technical term for being a street performer.  Anna had never heard this term before, and she definitely didn't realize how much money some street performers make!  (18:03) The Johnson and Johnson vaccine scare has raised questions with some people about the safety of the vaccines.  So Anna and Raven brought in an expert, infectious disease expert Dr. Rajeev Fernando, who has some insight into the controversy.  (21:54) Living next to the highway can be noisy, but if you call the town and demand that they do THIS to make it more quiet, that's all I need to know about you!  (25:25) What did you do this week to earn your Margarita? Every Friday, Anna gets together with her two friends for happy hour, and talks about all the ways her kids drove her crazy this week!  One caller had to stay up all night because of something that happened with her son and after everything she went through, she definitely deserves a margarita!  (28:07) Couples Court: Dominque and Mark bought a new house and Dominque wants to borrow from their 401K to buy new furniture and to fix some things. Because of Covid, you don't have to pay a tax penalty, so she thinks it's the perfect time. He says that money is just for retirement, and they shouldn't touch it. What if there's an emergency in the future and they need it? Whose side are you on?  (35:01) Elizabeth thinks she's got what it takes to win $2900!  Can she beat Raven in pop culture trivia, or will the jackpot go all the way up to 3K?  (43:17)

Are you good with babies? Raven is a dog person, and dogs tend to love him, but small children are a little more undecided. They either love him or hate him! So Anna decided to conduct an experiment and have babies call into the show. But Raven wasn't prepared for the ultimate test; speaking to Anna's temperamental two-year old!

What would you do if 1.2 MILLION dollars suddenly appeared in your bank account?  Would you report it and make sure it got back to whoever accidentally sent it to you?  Or would you do what this police dispatcher did yesterday?  (00:30) Do you have a great idea for an invention?  Anna and Raven have a whole bunch of ideas, and they think it's gonna make them a lot of money!  Brian Fried is the founder and CEO of InventorSmart.com, and he's got some tips to help you turn your idea into the next big thing!  (4:03) What if there was one drink that could do it all!?  Prevent hangovers, boost your mood, prevent cancer, all of it!  Anna and Raven have discovered it, and it's probably in your fridge right now!  (11:35) It's nice to have fun in the workplace every once in a while, but if you do THIS every time you throw something away, that's all I need to know about you!  (14:56) What's your roadside treasure?  Have you ever found something on the side of the road that you took home with you?  Raven almost took home an old arcade game he saw on the side of the road, but one caller found something that got her $2000!  (18:34) Are you good with babies?  Raven is a dog person, and dogs tend to love him, but small children are a little more undecided.  They either love him or hate him!  So Anna decided to conduct an experiment and have babies call into the show.  But Raven wasn't prepared for the ultimate test; speaking to Anna's temperamental two-year old!  (28:47) Couples Court: Brett and Jessica are going on vacation for a week and leaving their 16- and 19-year-old children at home. Jessica wants to hire a babysitter to come stay at their house. Brett says that's ridiculous, they're old enough, plus they just need to threaten them about behavior and trust them. Mom says the investment of $600 for the sitter is worth the peace of mind especially since a couple years ago their older son threw a party that ended with the police officers at their house. Whose side are you on?  (39:02) Raven is on a roll and the jackpot is up to $2700!  Does Megan have what it takes to beat him at pop culture trivia and claim the prize?  (46:47)

How's your capacity feeling these days? Getting a lot done? Or, like me, have you been hitting that pandemic wall hard? Over the last few weeks, I've been exploring the idea of maintenance mode in business, and today I want to shift from exploring the IDEA of maintenance mode into more tactical applications. If YOU wanted to move your business into maintenance mode, or you wanted to focus on scaling, how would you DO that? How would you prepare for maintenance mode? In all of my conversations with other business owners who have made this shift, there has consistently been a first step that they had to address.Capacity.Either the business's capacity or their own capacity as the owner. Each business owner ran up against a wall (sometimes repeatedly) and came to the realization that the way they HAD been working wasn't the way they wanted to CONTINUE working.They had to make changes to increase their capacity. Sometimes, that meant changing a business model to a more sustainable one. Sometimes it meant creating a capacity limit to protect their energy or just stepping back from the work for months at a time. Sometimes it just meant examining the work they did and figuring out how to make it more efficient. That's the path that today’s guest, Anna Wolf, took. Anna is the CEO and owner of SuperScript Marketing, a content marketing agency for financial brands. She runs a team of marketers, scattered throughout the world, who create content for financial companies and who provide customized services for each client.When Anna ran up against her capacity ceiling, she decided that she loved the work she was doing and didn't really want to change the way that she was working. But that something still had to change.So Anna turned to systems. Listen to the full episode to hear: How Anna thinks about capacity and figuring out what the real capacity is in her businesses About some of the projects that Anna built to expand her business’s capacity without fundamentally changing what she was already doing to deliver quality services What impact these systems and processes have had on her business or on her own capacity as the owner And how Anna has learned that there needs to be a balance between seeking answers externally and follow your gut, even if that means risking making mistakes Learn more about Anna Wolf: SuperScript Financial Marketing Agency  LinkedIn @annawolf Learn more about Susan: Scalespark Dollars + Decisions Roundtable Twitter @ScaleSpark LinkedIn @thesusanboles

Everybody loves bananas, but they rot so quickly! So Anna and Raven did some research, and found some unorthodox ways to help your bananas last longer! Seriously, it sounds weird, but these really work.Image Source: Getty Images

How often do you check your bank account?  Is it every day?  A new study says that 36% of Americans check their account balance every day, and Anna thinks that's a bit excessive!  But then again, she never checks her account balance, she has a special method of knowing when she's spent too much….(00:32) Having a bad day?  Don't worry, Anna and Raven are here to remind you that someone on Twitter is having a worse day than you!  Anna read one tweet about a person who said “Hi” to everybody in her neighborhood, before realizing she had forgotten one crucial thing!  (3:06) Animal encounters can sometimes be scary, but if you do THIS to an apex predator, that's all I need to know about you!  (6:53) Not every “Walk of Shame” involves alcohol and bad decisions.  Anna held up the line at a grocery store, waiting for her coupon to work, and she could feel the frustration from everybody behind her!  Walking past them afterwards was definitely a Walk of Shame.  One caller had a chance to audition for American Idol, but her audition ended in an epic walk of shame!  (10:50) Everybody loves bananas, but they rot so quickly!  So Anna and Raven did some research, and found some unorthodox ways to help your bananas last longer!  Seriously, it sounds weird, but these really work.  (17:27) March Gladness continues, and it's time for the Final Four!  Today's matchup is between two Journeymen of Joy; Losing Weight Without Trying vs. Hitting All Green Lights When You're Driving!  Find out who wins in the podcast and vote online or call in to vote for tomorrow's match-up! (21:01) What gross thing does your kid eat?  Anna's toddler has been surviving off a steady diet of hot dogs, chocolate chip muffins, and literally nothing else! But one caller's kid eats a combination of food that Anna and Raven had never even heard of before!  (25:43) Jeremy and Jennifer are divorced, and she has an accepted offer to buy a house on his street.  It's about six houses down from his.  He's not happy, why would she want to live so close to him?! She thinks he should be appreciative; it'll be so great for their three kids! She has agreed to see what the audience has to say to prove he's being a jerk.  She's not looking to spy on him, just make it easier for the kids, plus, she loves the house! Whose side are you on?  (36:01) Kirsten thinks she's got what it takes to beat Raven in pop culture trivia!  Can she take him down and claim the $2100 jackpot?  (43:15)

In this episode, Anna shares about how exactly does intuition work, how does it communicate with us and how can we know for sure if we have an Intuition. Since, it’s very easy to fall into the trap of wishful thinking and fearful thinking, she also taps into understanding the different between perceiving something and when we just think something because we want it to be that way. Ego always wants what it wants right now, without any obstacles. Although, sometimes we will actually get what we want and our intuition will simply be a confirmation of that. Anna also guides us to trust our Intuition. I remember getting on a call with Anna two days ago where we were just catching up on our regular calls, and one of things she mentioned in that call was around ‘Acceptance’ – and the insight into ‘It is what it is’. Now, when everything in one's life is going well – the acceptance process becomes easier but when things get really difficult and nothing seems to be right – ‘Accepting things exactly the way they are’ becomes a hundred times harder. So Anna also gives some incredible insights into what we can do in that phase. She believes that there is no right or wrong Intuition. That's a mis-conception. There's simply Intuition. What she says is that we all have an intuition that is constantly guiding us every moment - it's about listening to it and simply being present. This is by far one of the most interesting episodes and I would love for you all to tune in and listen to some introspective thoughts on this topic. Finally, Anna shares some techniques or ways we can rely on to work around our Intuition and some practices that we can immediately start incorporating in our day to day routine. From North Carolina to London, our bond just keeps getting stronger. I’m grateful and blessed to have her on my show once again and have her emphasise on the importance of understanding and recognising our Intuition.  You can  book a free breakthrough session with Anna - https://calendly.com/annanyeste/breakthrough-session?month=2020-08;  Follow Anna Nyeste (Self-Care Coach) on Instagram: https://instagram.com/annaqnyeste;  Contact her on: anna.q.nyeste@gmail.com To know more about my work (Raina Jain) – Psychologist, Happiness Coach and a Podcaster   1. Website: https://thehappinessprojectstudio.com/   2. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raina-jain-73b615a5/   3. Email: rainajain1102@gmail.com / happinessproject1102@gmail.com   4. Instagram: happiness_project1102 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thehappinessproject/message

Self care and self compassion is a major focus for us this year, but sometimes that's easier said than done. With all the hype around 'New Year New You' we actually wanted to get ahead of the game and we finished 2020 stronger and healthier than we have been in years and that's only because we were able to put into place support systems to help us succeed. We both undertook a 10-week health and fitness program through Best10, custom made for each of us, and with instant access through messenger to talk to a coach when we were struggling with making a healthy decision or motivation. Anna's spilling all our secrets today on what worked for us, and giving you the chance to get 15% off with the code Achievher15, in her chat with Kate Grove, the co-founder of personalized nutrition and fitness program Best10. They provide you with customized workouts and meal plans, and the essential part of on-call support you'll get from their team. That a plan, accountability and support the entire time. Thats a game changer. The Best10 approach is based on partnership (something we love at Achievher). You're assigned your own coach who keeps you moving forward and makes sure you're well prepared, educated and energised, giving you the confidence to achieve your personal goals. So Anna's plan was completely different to Chloes, and yours will be too. See more at www.best10.app --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Ever had one of those weeks when you’re convinced you’ve been good? You’re sure you nailed your Syns allowance and checked those Healthy Extras. So you can’t understand why at the end of the week you’ve maintained… Yep, we've been there! So Anna and Clare are back with a quiz for you - can you spot the hidden syns in Mrs Ivy Been-So-Good's food diary? Here's a link to the 'Hidden Syns' feature we're talking about on the LifeLine Online site (only available to current members): https://member.slimmingworld.co.uk/features/hidden-syns Presented by Clare Freeman and Anna Mangan.  Produced by ASFB Productions.  Slimming World Podcast is sponsored by Slimming World. Please note: The info we share is based on our personal weight loss experiences. Always check with your consultant or a health professional when following a weight loss plan.

Ever had one of those weeks when you’re convinced you’ve been good? You’re sure you nailed your Syns allowance and checked those Healthy Extras. So you can’t understand why at the end of the week you’ve maintained… Yep, we've been there! So Anna and Clare are back with a quiz for you - can you spot the hidden syns in Mrs Ivy Been-So-Good's food diary? Here's a link to the 'Hidden Syns' feature we're talking about on the LifeLine Online site (only available to current members): https://member.slimmingworld.co.uk/features/hidden-syns Presented by Clare Freeman and Anna Mangan.  Produced by ASFB Productions.  Slimming World Podcast is sponsored by Slimming World. Please note: The info we share is based on our personal weight loss experiences. Always check with your consultant or a health professional when following a weight loss plan.

Anna Hendricks' website introduction says it all, " My cakes and pastries are botanically-inspired, hand-crafted of the finest seasonal ingredients and decorated with Natural Flourishes". This business is a collision between a florist and a baker and a sculptor. Of course, even with these works of art, COVID has had an impact, specifically wedding business. With large gatherings not allowed, weddings have been postponed - and so have wedding cakes. So Anna has pivoted her Sweetheart St. John's, Portland business. She had to ask herself how she connected and got customers in the beginning. She knew how to bake incredible edibles, but didn't know any marketing techniques. So she went back to her roots - pastries - but a new way to deliver. She now has a CSA-type model, delivering pastries to homes in the Portland area and is making it through the summer, and through the lockdown. "Masoni and Marshall the meaningful Marketplace" with your hosts Sarah Masoni and Sarah Marshall We record the "the Meaningful Marketplace" inside NedSpace in the Bigfoot Podcast Studio in beautiful downtown Portland. Audio engineer, mixer and podcast editor is Allon Beausoleil Show logo was designed by Anton Kimball of Kimball Design Website was designed by Cameron Grimes Production assistant is Chelsea Lancaster 10% of gross revenue at Startup Radio Network goes to support women entrepreneurs in developing countries thru kiva.org/lender/markgrimes Listen to the "Masoni and Marshall the meaningful marketplace" live on-air every Friday at 9:00am pacific time on Startup Radio Network at startupradionetwork.com

James: Hey, audience. This is James Kandasamy. Welcome to Achieve Wealth through Value Add Real Estate Investing Podcast. Today, I have Anna Kelley from Central Pennsylvania, who owns around 175 units, around $16 million in worth until now. And you know, I should have invested passively in 900 units. And she's also under contract on around 200 units right now. Hey, Anna, welcome to the show. Anna: Thank you so much for having me. Good to see you, James. James: Good to see you too. And, I mean, for those who do not know, we also have a YouTube channel that shows all our interviews. And you can catch up with us on iTunes or Stitcher or YouTube or Spotify so go and do that. I'm actually in one of my property here in San Antonio so trying to do it from my office. And Anna, are you in your office or where are you right now? Anna: I'm in my home. I'm not actually in my office. James: Yes. Good. Good, we work from home, I guess, right. Anna: Yes. James: So Anna, why don't you tell our audience about yourself? Anna: Sure. So I started out in real estate about 20 years ago, just kind of dabbling in real estate. And I started out doing some property flips and some single-family rentals. And then I slowly started moving up to small multi-unit properties, like four-unit apartment buildings, 10 unit apartment buildings. And I recently last May retired from my full-time career, I worked for AIG for 20 years. And I really built my real estate portfolio up on the side, part-time for all of those years. So busy mom, have four children. And I just went full time. And now I'm focused on and have been focusing on for a while much larger apartment building assets. James: Got it. So let's go back to the beginning. I mean, you work at AIG, which is a big insurance firm. And can you just quickly tell us what was your role? Anna: Sure. So at AIG, I had various different roles. I did internal management, consulting, product development, and then I moved into a role that was very compliance heavy. We worked with private placement hedge funds wrapped in an insurance product. So we worked on SEC audits and filings, reviews of PBMs and hedge funds and things of that nature. James: Got it, so it looks like you have some PPM level syndication experience, even at your workplace, I guess, is that right? Anna: Definitely, we worked with alternative investments for about 17 of the 20 years that I worked there. James: So you work there for 20 years and when did you start to real estate venture? Anna: Why I'd say, you know, I dabbled, I bought some, you know, singles and I bought a flip. And then 12 years ago, when I moved from Texas to Central Pennsylvania to start my husband's chiropractic business, we were looking for properties to lease for his office space. And we found that it was very difficult to do that. But they had a lot of buildings that came with tenants, you know. Older buildings on Main Street that had been converted to businesses on the first floor, most of them had residential rental space on the top floors. And so we bought a building and inherited tenants. We had three tenants with his commercial space. James: Okay. Anna: And then that kind of threw me into the idea of having tenants and having a little extra cash to cover the mortgage. And then at that same time, James, we sold a house in Houston that we lived in, liquidated everything, we had to come here and start a business. And so I knew it wasn't very wise for me to buy another home right away. And AIG let me work from home on a very temporary trial basis to see how it worked out. So I bought a four-unit apartment building for us to live in. So we downsize significantly and house hacked, basically, to make sure that our business expenses, you know, for the space and our housing expenses were covered if I happen to lose my job, you know, 12 years ago when we started out. So that got me into starting to think about and invest in residential real estate. James: Got it. So you basically, you did not like had an ah-ah moment, I need to go tomorrow and buy real estate. You were actually thrown into it? Anna: Well, I'll say this before I went to work for AIG. I was in private banking, I was a Financial Relationship Manager for Bank of America. And so I handled the top 10% of the wealth in our bank, both small businesses and individuals. And what I found is that many of them owned real estate and had accumulated their wealth in real estate or were already investing in real estate. So in my young 20s, I was very interested in real estate thought that it was something lucrative that one day I'd like to own, but I really didn't start thinking too much about it until I had my first child in 2003. And all the flip houses shows, you know, we're coming on and I thought, oh, I can flip a couple of houses and be home with my child. And so I dabbled in flipping before the rental real estate. But my move here is what kind of gave me the impetus to think about rentals more quickly. James: Got it. So, I mean, I never had a woman guest until now. So you are the first one. And I'm very -- Anna: Oh, thank you. James: We have a lot of listeners that are listening everywhere and I'm sure a lot of them are women. So I'm trying to get from a woman’s perspective, on how could they start like what GF started, right? I mean, your husband is working and you are working too. Like, I would say what do you think could be the secret formula, or they're just the formula on how can any woman start while they are in your own position? Anna: Sure, you know, there are different ways to starting, a lot of it James truly does depend on the personality of the person, your family dynamic. You know, how much support you have for watching your children? What other income sources you have, you know, when you're starting out? And how much basically time and money that you have available to get started? So, you know, people that have very, very limited time might have the significant cash flow or they might, their spouse might make enough money that they could really get started more passively. And that's where maybe they want to start investing in other apartments syndications or getting invested as a passive partner maybe joint venturing with someone that has experienced you know, buying and managing either a single or a small multi or a larger and then just investing with money. And learning how to review the financials and review the operations each month and each quarter. Just to kind of get yourself familiar with what it's like to own and manage an asset might be a good way to get started. For someone like me, that doesn't have any cash and really wants to get invested by investing time, you have a lot more opportunity to really educate yourself through reading books and through podcasts. And going to meetup groups to learn what it takes to ask actively, evaluate deals, find them and hire people to update them and improve the values and put a renter in or you can start learning the skills yourself. You know, my husband and I when we started out, he did a lot of the maintenance and I painted every unit. And I called flooring contractors and you know, designed kitchens and help paint cabinets. I mean, we did everything actively because we started out, we had liquidated all of our, you know assets and started out with quite a bit of debt to start a business and we're running that. So we really didn't have a lot of money. So we invest at the time. So there are many ways to get started. But I'd say definitely align yourself with other people that already know what they're doing, attend some meetup groups, listen to podcasts. And then just decide whether you want to be active or passive for your first one or two until you kind of learn what you like, what your personality works well with and kind of what works within your family dynamic. James: Got it. So who convinced who between you and your husband? Did he convince you to, hey let's go and do, spend time and rehab this real estate or did you convince him or how did you? I'm trying to understand how did the discussion happen? Because a lot of people are struggling, I mean could be struggling, right? How do I convince my spouse especially from a woman to the husband side? Usually, the husband can convince the wife, right? But you are the one who's active right now real estate, how did that work out? Anna: Yes. So it's one of those things when we talk about the personality of the individual. When you're married, there are two people involved in your decisions. And my husband and I, from the beginning, have always looked at our finances and our lives as a partnership. But we kind of has our roles in reverse. I mean, he's a doctor, he's a chiropractor, he went to school for a long time. He's very smart. But he's very hands-on and a people person, he doesn't like the finances, he's not financially minded. He's not the kind that wants to be an entrepreneur and grow a big business, like he's content, just having a small practice, and letting me handle all of the finances. So because I had a background in finance and understanding investments, I pretty much have always handled our investments. And when we decided for him to start the business, I kind of took over the operations and learned how to, you know, run a chiropractic business and set up insurance and all that kind of stuff while he was the doctor and saw the patients. And so when it came to real estate, I said, listen, we're starting out with a lot of debt after paying off all of the school that it's just not financially wise for us to do anything other than buying something so we have tenants helping to pay the rent. So it was easy initially to get Vincent to buy his practice and our building, just to be financially wise and not going into more debt. But growing that beyond that was definitely me as the driver, he was busy with this practice. He did not like to do maintenance, but he learned to do it and liked the fact that once we did rehab units, they were worth a lot more and we had a lot more cash and could keep buying them. But I've been told multiple times, slow down, pull off the brakes, we have enough units, why do you want to keep growing? And I am like because I'm passionate about it. And I'm passionate about the wealth that it can create. So I've been kind of the driver. And he's been very supportive and very hands-on for the 70 units that we self manage in our area. But definitely likes that I'm now buying much larger assets where I'm asset managing and he's not involved day to day in the management and maintenance of the properties. James: He must be very happy now. Anna: Very happy, yes. James: Yes, we started with 45 units. And my wife used to be sitting there whenever we were missing our property manager in the beginning, I mean, she was sitting there doing things and I didn't do maintenance. But, I used to be with her and trying to buy this and buy that and make sure you know the contractors are lined up. And it's a lot of work, but it involves teamwork. And yes, we are two different people, we have to learn how to work with each other. Anna: For sure. James: That's good. And so you started with 70 units, with the chiropractic real estate, right? I mean, is it like a commercial center? Anna: It is. It's a commercial mixed-use building. So there's a commercial space that his business lease's from my business. And it had three tenants, three, you know, residential renters and four garages to that property. James: Got it. So you got some kind of tax benefit, I guess because the [inaudible11:44] is leasing from the owner itself, I guess, right? Anna: Yes. James: So get some write off there, good. And how did you, I mean, so after that and then what was the next acquisition that you did? Anna: So James, as many people were affected by the 2008-2009 economic crash. Imagine working for AIG at the time and AIG, you know, coming in and having one of the largest insurance liabilities of any other provider in the country between mortgage insurance and credit default swaps. And I worked for them. So I had already, I had been working for them for a year on a work from home basis. And we thought we were going to be laid off, my stock went from 1-o-1 a share to 43 cents a share. My retirement funds were almost just destroyed. They were destroyed. I lost about two thirds within a week. And I decided, oh man, I'm going to lose my job. My husband has a brand new business with hundreds of thousands of dollars in startup debt and I'm the sole income. So what are we going to do? And the only thing I could think to do right away was to borrow from my 401k, about $50,000 that I had left that I could borrow and buy another four-unit because I thought at least if I buy another 4 unit, I'll have another, you know, $1200 to $1500 dollars a month of cash coming in. And that's in the asset, that is solid and stable that I won't lose any more in the stock market, no matter what happens. So that was my next acquisition. Again, it wasn't really thinking about oh, this isn't a phenomenal investment. It was, what can we do to survive? And I know that cash flow is a good thing. And that residential real estate will not go down in value significantly compared to the stock market. James: Got it. So after that four-unit, what did you buy the next one? Anna: Another four units. James: Okay, and when did you start with the 70 units where you self manage? Anna: Okay, so what we did, we self-managed, again, initially just out of necessity, not having a lot of extra cash, thinking our finances were not super stable because I was the sole breadwinner at that point. My husband's income was nice, you know in six figures gross, but it was covering expenses. And so we just we're continuing to find ways that we could cash flow and make the most cash and be willing to put in the time to do it ourselves and learn at the time. And so we kept buying a couple of single-family homes that we bought as foreclosures, renovated them and instead of selling them as a flip, we did a cash-out refi, we kept them as rentals, we took the proceeds to buy another and another. And then we did the same thing with small four-unit apartment buildings. So four-unit apartment buildings were kind of my niche and the sweet spot for several years chains. Because there were in a smaller area, I'd say maybe a tertiary market right outside of Hershey. And there's not a lot of apartment complex supply, no big complexes, but there's a lot of demand for housing. And so most of the rental real estate here were four-unit apartment buildings that had been built that way or converted, you know, couple decades ago. And there weren't a lot of big buyers buying those four-unit building. So they'd sit for a while. So I kind of I saw a niche where I could buy properties without having a lot of competition. And I could basically treat them like a larger commercial asset, but on a, you know, on a four-unit scale instead of a five or six-unit scale. And so I kind of honed my skill in updating those units, managing those units, raising the values, cashing out repeating. And then decided, okay, now it's time, once I built up, you know, a strong six-figure passive, you know, net rental real estate portfolio, then I decided, now I can retire and I can scale and start going after much larger assets. And so that's what I did. James: Okay, got it. So when was the first time that you acquired a much larger than four-unit property? Which year was that? Anna: Okay, so in 2018, I had basically created a five-year plan James in 2013, that by 2018, I wanted a $5 million portfolio, you know, about $150,000, at least in passive income, and then I would retire and start going for a bigger one. So I'm my goal in four years in 2017. And then just started kind of working my way into, you know, saving six months of salary and expenses for all my buildings and starting to look for larger deals. So I found the first larger deal for me, it was a 73 unit apartment building, right outside of Hershey, Pennsylvania, that I found off the market and I [inaudible16:20] on that with two other owners. That was a six and a half million dollar purchase 73 unit. And we closed on that in 2018. James: Got it. So how did you manage your time? I mean, your husband is working, and you are doing this fourplex, fourplex, fourplex and your four kids. And you give some tips for people who are in a similar situation and how can they manage and be as successful as you are? Anna: You know, I think really the key to my success has just been resilience and grit and determination. I worked truly, most people say oh, rental real estates passive. But I like to say and I totally believe James, that passive income is built on the blood, sweat and tears of active income. And it takes years of active, sometimes to build up the financial wherewithal that you can truly become totally passive. So between my husband's business and my work, and my rental real estate, I truly worked 70 to 80 hours a week over the last 10 years, in order to be able to get to where I am. My four children are all involved in sports, pretty competitive sports. So we have sports every morning, we have sports after school every day. And most days, it's seven days a week, you know, multiple tournaments on a Saturday and on a Sunday. So every waking moment when the kids went to school before I started work, I did real estate. My lunch breaks, I did real estate. My vacation days, five out of six weeks a year, I did real estate, you know, evenings between when the kids got home and I worked, it was real estate. And after nine when the kids were in bed, I often stayed up till midnight to get things done. So it was very time-consuming. But I'm very, very grateful that I stuck with it and did it. And it was just a matter of utilizing every day, I didn't watch TV, we didn't have cable, I didn't go do a lot of recreational things, I really, you know, not nose to the grindstone just focused on building the portfolio so that I could retire and spend more time with my kids. James: Yes, it's really hard work, I can really appreciate what you've gone through. Because I was working and my wife was like running around in the beginning. I mean, I only stopped working after we had like, 340 units. Now we have like, 1300, it's a lot of work, right. So based on what you're saying, it can be done. It's just like not, please don't give excuses, right? Anna: Exactly. I'm here to tell you, you know, if I can do it, working full time, running my husband's business, four kids and doing it, you know, anybody can do it if you just have grit and determination. So you make the time for what's important to you. And I knew that it was important to me to be able to work myself out of my job. And especially with AIG, you know, a couple of years ago, they said, we really are going to sell our unit, and we need to all be prepared to figure something else out in terms of career. So that kind of drove me to have executed my plan in a certain period of time. And now you know, that I'm retired, I'm still very, very busy. But I have the freedom to control my time, you know, to do what I enjoy and go after larger deals where I'm not having to be quite so involved in the day to day. James: Yes Can you define what is grit and determination in your mind? Anna: Sure, so grit is the ability to stick with something, no matter what comes, no matter what obstacles without basically, you know, melting into a wallflower. And just keep ongoing. And, you know, there's been a lot of studies done on what makes people successful. And you know, some kids were tracked from high school, through college, through their professional lives and they were really surprised that the top students like the valedictorian, the [inaudible20:04] rarely ended up actually being the most successful people in their professional lives. It was usually the people that went through a lot of hardships, and just kept going and push through and got creative and figured a way through and around every obstacle and became stronger and more confident, and determined. And those are the people that ended up the most successful. So I just I think it's an extra drive and extra determination and a willingness to keep pushing through no matter what and to not give up on your goals. James: Yes, so look, I mean, I always tell my listeners and whoever talked to me that it's always, you know, whether you want to be successful, or whether you like to be successful, whether you required to be successful so, I mean, if you have been this successful, you must have that, I really need, I really required to be successful. I mean, is that true statement that you came to that way? Anna: I think so. I grew up with very, in very humble means. And I always knew that I wanted to create a different type of lifestyle and a different financial future for my kids and I was just determined to do it. So I've always been driven, I've always taken on challenges. You know, my first job at Bank of America, I won the number one ranked Financial Relationship Manager in Texas and Employee of the Year awards at multiple jobs, my first couple of years. Because I've always had, that I'm going to be the best, I'm going to succeed, I'm going to achieve and do whatever it takes attitude. So I think part of that was ingrained in me from a young age. James: Yes, I think it's important, I mean, just the personality itself and the drive to be successful and the requirement; I mean, because your husband and your AIG was going downhill and you must be successful otherwise, your family, it may not be in a good place, in terms of financial. So that's really good. So describe to me, what was your toughest day in a one day when you have like four kids and all going to all these classes and schools and all that? Have any time where you think that, oh, my God, this is just too much for me as a mom and as a real estate sponsor? And can you describe that feeling and experience? Anna: Yes, I just actually, you know, Facebook is kind of a mixed bag of whether you like it, or whether you don't. But I like the Facebook memories that kind of pop up and remind you of something. And I had something pop up this last week, about a three day in the life of a real estate investor that works full time and has four kids. And I looked back and thought, well, I don't know how I survived it. But back in February of 2018, I believe it was, I had a call that there was mould in the basement and that they were smelling mould. So they opened it up and there was a lot, well, you know, I'm thinking it's probably like a dripping water heater or something we walked in and there was literally like six inches of goopy mould hanging from every rafter of every space in the basement of a three-unit apartment building with the ground floor, a dirt floor. And when we opened it up, I mean, it was just really bad. And what had happened was a hot water heater, pressure relief valve had failed in the basement, nobody seemed to notice nobody called us. The person in hindsight said, you know, I thought my hot water pressure was kind of low and not as hot. And I should have called you well, within about a six week period, six to eight weeks, somewhere in there, our entire three in an apartment building was just covered in mould. And inside all the units, I had to meet the tenants, it was snowing and really bad weather. And I had to call, you know, restoration companies and re-home all my tenants and get all of this stuff out of the property. Right after that, we had another property where a roof blew off in another big storm. And we're handling the kids and multiple other small things were going wrong, we had a couple of frozen pipes because it was a winter that the ground was just frozen for so many days. So we're dealing with frozen pipes, re-homing tenants, working full time, insurance, the tenants all wanted to sue me because there was mould and their kids were sick and going to the hospital. And my kids were just young and very needy. And it was like a two or three week period where I thought I'm done, I can't do this anymore. It's not worth it. It's too hard. And I kind of had a little pity party for a few weeks and said, okay, I need to take a break. I'm not buying anything else. And I took about a three-month break where I didn't buy anything else. And I just kind of took care of those issues. And then, you know, said I need some breather time, we went to the beach. And after I got back from the beach, I'm like, okay, I'm refreshed. It's behind us now that I've handled that period can do anything and just kept going. James: It's crazy the amount of pressure and tense moment that you have during that kind of things with family and issues with the deal. So I want to ask one last question before we go into the details of some of the deals that you have done here. So why do you do what you do? I mean, you don't have to do this right now. Right? Anna: So a couple of things, James, I'm really passionate about real estate, I'm really passionate about wealth building. And there is nothing like real estate to build wealth. You know, I started out teaching clients about mutual funds and stocks and bonds and how they can make you know, eight to 10% returns on their money if you time everything right. And realize that it takes money to be invested in the stock market. It's volatile and it's risky. And really, people can go from nothing to multi-millionaire in a couple of years of investing in real estate if they do it the right way. And so I've just seen the real power in that. You know we went from literally negative $750,000 net worth when we started my husband's business to a several million dollar net worth and just a few years of really aggressively buying rental real estate. And so it changes lives. And I want people to know, especially women, that that you can change your financial family trajectory, not just for today, but for future generations. And also we're providing really good housing to people. So you know, I grew up in government housing, my mom was a single mom, she was a property manager for a government housing apartment complex. And I know what it's like to grow up in an apartment and we didn't have the best amenities. You know, all my friends were wealthy, and I lived in a little apartment complex. And I've worked with inner-city kids who live literally in shacks with dirt floors in the middle of Houston, Texas. And to be able to empower people and say, your life can be different. And I can show you the financial tools to take better steps and to know better so that you can create generational wealth for yourself. And it just empowers me, it drives me to keep doing it, not just for my own wealth accumulation, but to help other people to learn that they can do the same. James: Yes, that's very interesting. I mean, what you say this, anybody can do this, right? And I know a lot of people are listening to you, there will be some people who think, yes, I can do it too. Then there's another group of people, they're going to give reasons, oh, Anna has this, Anna has that, that's why she's successful. So if you are the one who's giving reasons, I know you want to stop that, because indefinitely, you can make money in real estate, especially millions of dollars, if you really work hard. And if you really, really want it, a lot of them just do not want to do the work. They really don't want the success, they just want to continue with their life and just go ahead and do whatever they've been doing and let the life takes wherever it takes them. Anna: Yes and I think part of that James, for so many years, you see these teams, these shows reality TV, and people convince you that it's easy money that you can do it, that you can be successful. There's coaching programs and gurus that you know, charging five, ten, twenty thousand dollars to sign up and learn how to do real estate. And they promise you that if you follow these three steps, you're going to be independently wealthy in a year or two. And I think when reality hits people, and they start investing, and they start to see how hard it actually can be on a day to day basis until you build up that experience and that wealth, they just give up and they feel like failures because they've been sold an unrealistic expectation of getting rich quick in real estate, when it's really the long game. You know, you're playing a long game, it takes sometimes longer than it should you know, some people get lucky or find the right network and connections and very quickly can build wealth. But for most people, it's slow and methodical growth. And it's just people need to realize that it's not easy, but it's not that complicated if they just stick with it. James: Yes. And they are people who did one real estate and failed badly. And they gave up on real estate. So there other people that you know, yes, one time fail doesn't mean anything we could, we would have failed many times, I guess. Right, so. Anna: Sure. I lost money on my first flip. And I was convinced I'd never do another one. And yes, I changed my mind quickly. And I've done a few but rental real estate is really where the wealth build up comes. James: Yes, yes, in my single-family days, I do like 11 rentals, but I was also doing two flips. And I regret doing flips, because I made like, 40,000 on one flip and I buy a loss and $1,000 on another flip. And that thousand dollars feel very painful. Anna: Yes James: Because you shouldn't be losing money in real estate, but it really taught me a lot of things on how I didn't do it right in terms of the flip. But just because somebody did one and they fail, doesn't mean the whole real estate is a scam. Right? Anna: Absolutely. James: Definitely make millions of dollars in real estate, especially if you're living in the US. Anna: Yes, yes. James: It's a country where it allows anybody to grow, there is no limit is just you. Right? Anna: Absolutely. James: So no reasons, right? So if you give reasons, that's you so that's the only thing. So let's go to some of the deals that you have been done. And you so you are buying fourplex, fourplex, fourplex. And you started [inaudible30:21] on the 70 units and you self manage and you go into the syndication, why are you going into syndication now? Anna: So, I think some of it comes back to the time and the money, that spectrum of do I have more time or do I have more money? When I got started, I didn't have money and I could have said I didn't have time, but I made time. So it was a heavy, heavy time investment. As I built wealth and as I built more cash flow, it just made more sense for me to be able to scale larger with other partners and to be able to be an asset manager, operator, rather than the property manager or the maintenance person. So I've gotten to a point in my life where even though I've retired from my job, I really want my evenings to be free with my children and just to be wife and mom in the evenings and just spend a certain number of hours a day doing real estate. And so I got to a place where I had to say, you know, how can I really scale if I'm still self-managing many, many more units, it's going to take me a lot longer of full time effort, even though I don't have a job. And I wasn't really willing to sacrifice any more years with my children working more than 40 hours a week. And so I wanted to control my time and continue to scale. So I figured I needed to start working with other people, utilizing other people's time and other people's money. And the larger multifamily allows you to do that because you can afford full-time property management, full-time maintenance staff and really become more of an asset manager and business plan executer than you are an individual who self-managing your own properties. James: Yes, business plan executer, that's the operator definition, I would say. Anna: Yes. James: How do you define operator slash active asset manager in your mind? Anna: Sure. So an operator is basically the person responsible for operating that asset soup to nuts and executing your business plan. So it's generally, you're just general partners. And there will be either all the general partners will be involved in the asset management or overseeing the business plan and making sure that your plan for that particular property is being executed the right way. So for example, if we're buying a value add property, like the 73 unit that we did and the others that I go after, it's a property that is usually poorly managed, its expenses are not being managed well, the rents are below market, and perhaps the units need to be updated in order to maximize the rents so that you can then increase the value of that property. So as an asset manager and operator, I'm working with our property management company or a property manager and with our contractors to make sure that you know, when units come available, we turn those units quickly, we update them on time and on budget, we raise the rents, we get the new tenants in there. So that we can execute our plan to raise the values before we sell or refi. And we work with the property managers to make sure that they're cutting the expenses in the way that we planned, that they're monitoring the expenses, monitoring the rents, making sure rents are being collected, and you're just basically overseeing soup to nuts, all of the things that are supposed to happen to make your asset more valuable. James: Got it, do you think there's a certain advantage of being a local asset manager? Anna: I would say yes, in that really bad, unforeseen, unexpected things happen, like mould damage, or like when blowing roofs off or a hurricane, you can be at that asset very, very quickly. And you can also stop in and visit with your property manager, your property management company on a monthly basis, bimonthly basis and just say, hey, let's walk the ground, show me what you're doing. And there's just never anything as valuable as actually being on the ground and seeing it. However, in today's world, where we have the technology, we have zoom, we have our phones, where we can take pictures, and we can walk around, it's pretty easy to do things virtually as well. So while the operator in me that's always had, you know, my boots on the ground, and always been able to see kind of likes the control of being able to be at a property within an hour. It's not necessary, if you trust your team and have a good team that's boots on the ground, and can just go to your asset maybe once or twice a year. So I haven't really done it from afar. I'm asset managing my first property that we have under contract right now, two properties in Atlanta. And so I'll be sharing asset management responsibilities there. And that'll give me a little better feel for how much easier or harder it is to do from afar. James Got it. Got it. So let's come back to value add. So all the deals that you're buying a presume are value add, right? Anna: Yes. James: I mean, you're adding some things to the operation, either the income or the expense, right? So what do you think is the most valuable value add in your mind? Anna: So I really like Class A to B areas and an older building because your area you can't change, a lot of syndicators go after class C area, workforce housing and older buildings. And so you're struggling not only to bring the asset up to today's standards but also with a tenant pool who may suffer more heavily if we head into a recession or they may be more susceptible to losing jobs and not being able to pay rent. Where when you're in a nicer area where there's really good school districts and people want to live, there's a lot of good employers and a lot of good shopping and things around, you're always going to have people that want to move into that area because it offers the best lifestyle for those people. And so if you can find an older asset, you know, you're not struggling with the area to keep your units filled. It's just a matter of now offering an asset that people want to live in while they are in that area. So I'm really a value add investor, not doing like full major repositions, taking units in a C class area, that's 40% bacon and trying to fill them up. I like stable assets in a stable area that just needs some updating and operational efficiency in order to bring them up to today's standards. James: Good, that's very interesting. I never heard that from anyone else. Because the strategy is for you to look for the good area, but look for older buildings and try to improve from those older buildings, I guess. Anna: Yes. James: Okay. Interesting. But what about the like interior rehabs and do you do any like rehabs on the inside? And do you think is there any specific rehab that you think is more valuable than others? Anna: Sure, you know, it's really market-driven James's I know that you know, but for your listeners, every market demand something different. So where some parts of the country in order to get you to $1100 a month rent might demand granite countertops, and they might want really nice luxury vinyl plank flooring, other areas like tile, and they don't like granite, they like maybe stone countertops, and other areas to get that much, you might be competing with a $3,000 a month luxury apartment that would have granite and vinyl plank and maybe 1000 would get you carpet and a nice floor-laminate. So you've really got to look at what does your particular market demand and not just assume that every rehab has to be a cookie-cutter that looks the same. So what I do is I look at what is the competing market? What is the complex is offering to get that top rent that they're getting today? And I kind of secret shop those complexes or go on their website and see what those units look like. So for the 73 unit, for example, our property was a 1985 vintage when we bought it in 2018. So it was a little bit older, had a lot of original oak cabinets, plain commercial grade carpet, old looking vinyl. And basically we went in and we just changed up the flooring to vinyl plank flooring in the main living areas with carpet in the bedrooms. And the reason we did carpet in the bedrooms is because it's really cold in the northeast. And so a lot of people don't like solid flooring in their bedrooms. So we kind of save a little bit of money on doing carpet in the bedrooms and vinyl plank elsewhere. And we replace some countertops and updated old cream-coloured appliances to stainless steel, or very nice white depending on the unit. And then we painted the apartments, a soft, grayish color kind of more on the gray side. But the flooring has kind of had some greys and browns that go well with everything. And really for just a couple thousand dollars in new flooring and paint and some countertops and appliances, we were able to raise the rents $200 a unit. So it was a significant increase in rents because when we bought the property, not only were the units kind of dated, but the owners had not raised rents on several other tenants for several years. And so the property right next door to ours was asking 175 to 225 more a unit with the exact same floor plans as we had. So it was a great property because we didn't have to do a whole lot in order to bump those rents and achieve that big increase in value. James: Got it. So I want to go a bit more detail on how did you choose your rehab plan because you said you did countertops, you did stainless steel and a few other things there. But it's for example, how did you choose? Why did you want to install stainless steel appliances? Can you give some education on how did you go to that process, say I want to do stainless than black appliances? Anna: Well, and again, this is we've kind of left appliances, we've kind of played with it a little bit because we had so much room to bump the rents. And we looked at what is next door offering? They're the biggest competitor. So next door had certain units where they offered a premium package with stainless steel appliances. But the standard package didn't, it had white appliances. So we said for the first couple that comes available, let's do the vinyl plank, let's paint them. And if there's a cream color, for example, one unit had a cream color stove and a white refrigerator and cream color, you know stove and we said let's keep the brand new white refrigerator. And let's just put in a white dishwasher, a white stove and see if we can get the rent that we want without going stainless. So we did that on a few. And we had a huge waiting list of people that wanted those apartments, they couldn't care less about the stainless steel and so we didn't do it. So you know initially we thought we were going to go all stainless but people, we've been achieving the rent bumps we want without having to do stainless. And so we haven't done it at this point. James: Got it. Yeah, that's how you and I think that's a good strategy to look at the base on where you didn't want to overspend versus how much rent bump you need, right, because -- Anna: Yes. Sorry, go ahead. James: No, I mean, somebody can use that extra money for something else. Anna: Exactly. And the other thing, you know, because I focused primarily in my general area, I know the market like the back of my hand. So the buildings that we bought the 73 unit and the subsequent 31 unit that we just brought too, they're basically my direct competition. So I know what tenants are looking for, I'm already offering it in my town. And basically within a 30-mile radius, we know this is what the market demands, this is how much room we can get for it. And so while people think, oh, I need to do all these fancy bells and whistles, you really just need to look at what your competition is doing it over, improve it to the level that you're going to get the top rent, but don't over-improve it to the point here that you're spending needless cap backs, that aren't going to get you that much of an incremental rent bump. James: Got it, sounds really awesome man. Let's go back to the slightly more personal side. Is there a proud moment in your real estate career that you are really, really proud of, one moment? Anna: One moment, I think, on my 73 unit, sitting down with my JV partner and his partner that he had partnered with stuff, and really being able to convince him that this was an amazing asset to invest in. And he agreed to fund my first large syndication deal. So I was just really proud that I was able to build up the financial knowledge and build up the confidence and the track record from what I had done on a smaller scale that investors would trust me to take their investment and really manage an asset well for them. James: That's where you broke out from the four units to more than 70 units, which is a big achievement, I guess, right? Anna: Yes. And I think that and the day that I retired, when I was able to retire from a job where I worked with accredited investors to be able to say, you know what, I'm retiring, I've replaced my income, I've more than doubled it, I'm now an accredited investor. And I don't ever have to work for someone else, again, I think is probably one of the best moments of my life. James: Yes, that's really important. Can you name like three or five advice that you want to give for newbies who want to walk along your path? Anna: Sure, I'd say educate yourself as much as you can, you know, listen to these great podcasts and just learn from people that have already done it because you learn the things not to do and you learn that the good habits to do to kind of make yourself an excellent investor. So really commit to your education, podcast, read some books and attend some local investor meetup groups so that you can align yourself with other investors. So one is education. One is networking and alignment. And you'll get some continual growth and continue education just from learning from people that are in your network that are already doing what you want to do. I would say also start really looking at yourself and what your goals really are. So like you said early in the podcast, many people think they want to be a real estate investor. But when they discover how hard it is to do so, they kind of back off and maybe flounder for a while. And all of us can do that if we really don't know why we're doing something. So look at yourself, ask yourself what you really want in life. And why do you think real estate can get you there and then back into how much time and money am I willing to commit to my real estate investing venture. And if you don't have a lot of time, you've got to commit yourself to find money or finding other people's money or working with other people. And if you have a lot of time and not money or I think vice versa, then you need to really be willing to put in that time. And so look at your why; look at your time and your money and start figuring out how best to utilize every moment of time that you have, every moment of cash you have and other people's time and money so that you can start to scale as quickly as possible. James: Awesome, awesome. So Anna, why don't you tell our listeners how to get hold of you? Anna: Sure. So I'm on Facebook as Anna ReiMom Kelley. And I have a Facebook group called Creating Real Estate Wealth that lasts with Anna ReiMom, where we talk about real estate and really creating wealth and kind of the good, bad and the ugly of all the different asset classes. And you can email me at info@reimom.com. James: Well, Anna, thanks for coming into the show and providing tons of value. Anna, you gave a lot of very good perspective from how you juggle your role between being a mom and being a wife and trying to grow the business and I think our listeners would absolutely get tons of value out of this. And as I say there's no reason not to be successful in anything that you do and real estate is just a tool. You can be successful in anything but you can be successful if you really put your heart into it. If you really, really want it you will be successful. I mean, if you give reasons, there are tons of reasons you can give not to do something. Anna: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me, James. It's been my pleasure. James: Thank you, Anna, bye. Anna: Bye.

Laura Stevens:  Hello, and welcome to the Government Digital Service podcast. My name is Laura Stevens and I’m a writer here at GDS. Today we’re going to be speaking about the work of the International Design in Government community. This community has grown rapidly since its inception 2 years ago, and now has 1,500 members from 66 countries and 6 continents.   The group brings together designers and design minded people working anywhere in the world to share best practice, host events and tackle common obstacles. And this summer, they held their first international event in the USA and Scotland.   So let's hear from 2 people directly involved in the community, Kara Kane and Martin Jordan. So please can you introduce yourself and tell me about your role here at GDS.   Kara Kane: Hi, I’m Kara Kane. I’m the Community Lead for User-Centred Design at GDS. So I work on growing user-centered design capability and as well, understanding and awareness of user-centered design across UK government. And I also manage the International Design in Government community.   Laura Stevens: So you’re quite busy.   Kara Kane: Yes.    Laura Stevens And Martin?   Martin Jordan: Yeah. I’m Martin Jordan, Head of Service Design here at GDS. And this means shaping what good service design looks like across government. It means helping government increase its service design capability through recruiting, training and as well, mentoring. And then yeah, building a strong service design community across government and well now as well, internationally.    Laura Stevens: And could you describe the community to me for somebody who has never heard about it before?   Kara Kane: So the community is just a group of people that are all working on similar things in government. So we have a shared purpose around making better government services. And it’s just, as you said in the intro, it’s extremely diverse and extremely international so it’s grown really quickly and as we’ve started kind of running the community in different ways, so we have online channels, we do monthly calls, we’ve now started doing events. So doing, through doing these different formats, we’ve been able to help people meet each other and helping people meet each other face-to-face.   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Kara Kane: Which then helps the online stuff and helps that make it easier because people are more willing to reach out to someone if they’ve met them in person.    Laura Stevens: And you mention you’ve got countries from all the continents apart from Antartica.    Kara Kane: Yes.   Martin Jordan: Yeah. I think there are no designers there.   Laura Stevens: Yeah. I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon.  Ok so, I thought to show how diverse the community is as we mentioned earlier, I’d ask you a few questions about some of the different 66 countries you’ve got involved.   Martin Jordan: Oh gosh.   Laura Stevens: So do you know who your most northerly member is?   Kara Kane: Think it might be Iceland…?   Martin Jordan: Oh yeah, probably.   Kara Kane: We might have people in Reykjavik…?   Laura Stevens: Kara, you are correct.   Kara Kane: Yes!   Martin Jordan: I thought of Helsinki but yes, yeah, that makes more sense, yeah.   Laura Stevens: And then we, who is your most southerly member?   Martin Jordan: So it’s, it’s probably New Zealand. Because there are people, there are people in Wellington.   Laura Stevens: Yes! Martin, you got that right.    Don’t doubt your guess.   And then you have, out of the members, you have both the largest country in the world by area and the second smallest, do you know what those 2 countries are?   Martin Jordan: So one might be Russia. And the second one, I have no idea.   Laura Stevens: OK, you got Russia, so Kara, can you do the second, the second smallest country in the world by area?   Kara Kane: It might be Monaco..?   Laura Stevens: Yes! Well done.   So, and then the final one, just to showcase this diverse group, you have a country that’s a member, that is made up of more than 200 islands.   Kara Kane: I was ready for this one. I did some pre-work. So I know that this is Palau.    Laura Stevens: Well done! So this shows how, even amongst these diverse groups, there’s lots of shared traits with design in government.    Was there a particular catalyst for this International Design in Government group? How did it start?   Martin Jordan: So our former boss Lou Downe, at that time Director for Design, and the UK government, they like to blog. And they wrote a blog post I think in February 2017. And they referenced the D-5 countries.   Laura Stevens: Could you explain the D-5?   Martin Jordan: Yeah. So the D-5 countries were kind of like very digital countries that came together I think around 2011 or so. That included the UK, Estonia, Israel, New Zealand and South Korea. And there’s an ongoing conversation and a regular monthly call around design around government. And there was a special edition on design.   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Martin Jordan: That we did do in early 2017. And Lou basically wrote a blog post and said like, well we’re having this great community of designers in the UK government, but there’s probably like more stuff to do as well on a global scale, because we very likely have common issues.    We all kind of like, design services that are somewhat similar. Policies might be different, laws might be different but overall, there are a lot of like, similarities. So we might be able to like, scale co-authored patterns, we might be looking at like, how to embed user-centred culture in government.   Kara Kane: Yes.    Martin Jordan: All of those things. So they wrote a blog post and then we were like, ‘ok, what does it actually mean?’.   Kara Kane: We had a form at the end of the blog post for people to let us know if they were interested in joining whatever this thing would be.    Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Kara Kane: So I went away and took that list of people, and kind of started developing the community. So we just invited all of those people to a Google group and then went from there.   Laura Stevens: And it grew really rapidly. Like I’ve got here in the first 10 months, it grew to 250 people from 37 countries. What sort of like challenges did you face when you were growing it at that sort of scale quickly?   Kara Kane: I think with any community, starting it is, is just difficult to start kind of forming relationships and to start getting the conversation going. So as a Community Manager, it was really about trying to get to know people in the community, trying to start introducing people, trying to just, like I would just have calls with people to find out what they’re working on to get to know them a little bit.    And then we started running these monthly calls, which were a way to, to kind of start sharing work in a different way. But again that took a while for the focus to turn away from GDS in to, to be a focus on sharing internationally. So not just us kind of telling, but us learning as well from, from other people.    Laura Stevens: And do you find there are a lot of shared things? ‘Cause obvio--, the countries we mentioned earlier, they’ve got hugely different geographies, populations, all different. But are you finding there’s, they are these shared obstacles that designers face in government and what, what would some of them be?   Martin Jordan: So in some places, there might not be a designer there at all but like a design minded person who’s doing it in some way.   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Martin Jordan: So they ask like, how do you, how do you make the first business case for the first designer, and then we might be able to like, share like some of, some of the arguments and also there are a lot of, a lot of good stories out there so we try to like, give them good examples that they can kind of like, go to their, their seniors and like, advocate with these stories.   Laura Stevens: Yeah.    Martin Jordan: That is quite, quite, quite, quite powerful.   Kara Kane: Then following on from that, if you think about things like immigration, like that runs across…   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Kara Kane: ...every, everywhere. So there’s a lot that we can, can learn from the similarities and differences of how, of how we run services related to immigration or employment or benefits.    Laura Stevens: And is it quite a lot of physical meetups or is it more sort of interaction online? You mentioned earlier there’s Google groups, Slack. So how does that, how do you all communicate with each other in the community?   Kara Kane: When it first started it was all online.    Laura Stevens: Uh huh.   Kara Kane: And because it’s an international community and, from the beginning it was really widespread in terms of representation geographically, it was hard to kind of think about you know what’s, what’s something we could do to get people to meet face to face. And I think the monthly calls were a way to do that. Because we were using Zoom, so it was the first way to like, show my face…   Laura Stevens: Yeah.    Kara Kane: ...to the community. And to, for Martin and Lou, when we were all on these calls, and meeting people. But then from there, I think, when I first joined GDS, Martin always wanted to do a conference.   So we were always looking for a reason to run a conference. And then the international community seemed like that was the next natural step, was to get people together face to face.   Laura Stevens:  So yeah. You had your first official conference in London, 2018. Can you talk a bit about that and how you went about getting everybody here from all these different countries, who was able to attend with that?   Martin Jordan: Yeah. So we had a tiny budget to actually make this happen. We didn’t spend much, much money on that. And we kind of relied on kind of, everyone paying for their own flight tickets…   Kara Kane: So when we, when we decided to run an international conference, we really wanted to involve the community in what it would look like. So we started sending surveys and emails out to the community to say, ‘what do you want this to be? Do you want to even come? What kind of format do you want it to be? Where should it be? What time of the year?’ So we kind of used the community to figure out what it should look like.   And then from there, started to shape the agenda.    Laura Stevens: What was the atmosphere like on the day?   Kara Kane: It was exciting.   Martin Jordan: I think people were like, super excited to see each other.    Laura Stevens: Yeah,   Martin Jordan: Because apart from like, interacting via Slack and as well as seeing each other in the monthly calls, people started following each other on Twitter, and there was quite an exchange there.    As well, some people met at other international conferences. So whenever there was kind of a design or service design conference, they were like, like almost like, you how they were like literally like asking like, ‘who else is there?’ I was in Helsinki at some point in winter when it was freezing and I was like, ‘Hey, Finnish government folks, shall we meet for tea?’ and they were like, ‘yeah!’.   So like, you were, yeah. I think it was a really really great atmosphere and for, for the conference, for the 2 days, we tried to have representatives from all continents.    So we tried to like, yeah, have a, have a good representation of of of regions. And then we had workshops on the second day. And for those workshops we really basically asked everyone in the UK government who can kind of like, host a workshop, run a workshop.    Laura Stevens: What came out of that in terms of saying that people were more connected and did any like working groups come out of it?    Martin Jordan: So the Finns, the folks in (the) Finnish government, started kind of like, a local community that gets together every, every month. And literally today, the Finns, as well the Estonians, run a joint workshop meetup together. So we actually started to, regionally we started connecting, connecting people with each other.   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Martin Jordan: They’re now doing things, which is amazing to see. Yeah.   Kara Kane: I think another thing that came out of it is, so at the very end of the conference, we kind of asked people ‘do you want this to happen again?’, ‘do you want there to be another conference?’.   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Kara Kane: And people were like, ‘yeah!’. And there’s people, in the community, who are willing to kind of, take on the responsibility to do something. So that was really, really exciting.    But I think, yeah the other thing was just, we’ve had people tell us that they know feel more confident to reach out to people. Like they’ve met people face to face, or at least they saw them at the conference, so now they feel like they can reach out to them.    People are using tools and methods that they learned in some of the workshops. They’re continuing to, to work on the things, if they, if they presented at the, at the  conference, they’re continuing to work on those, on those things that they were presenting about. Whether it was a workshop format or a kind of, yeah, a different way of thinking. So that’s really exciting.    Martin Jordan: Some countries even like, started translating some of the tools they’re using into English to make it more accessible for other community members, which is amazing to see.   Laura Stevens: What, I was also going to ask about that. Because obviously running an international community, you have the time zones and the language, do you, how do you get round those things?   Martin Jordan: Yeah.   Kara Kane: Time zones are really difficult for the monthly calls. In the very beginning, we tried to run, I don’t know why I thought this was a good idea but I was like, we’ll just do the call twice and obviously that did not work. And obviously that’s a ton of work.    So what we started was just to, just to move the times around.    Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Kara Kane: So it’s not like always run a call at the same time. We’re always trying to, to kind of, engage with different people. So we’ll run calls after work, later in the evening so that the Australians and the Kiwis can join.    Martin Jordan: But not too early in the morning.   Kara Kane: Yeah, not too early in the morning. Happy to, happy to do things after work but not before (laughter from everyone).   Laura Stevens: And the languages, are all the calls run in English?   Kara Kane and Martin Jordan (same time): Yeah.   Kara Kane: We haven’t, we haven’t encountered any issues with, with language. But I think you know, going forward we’re trying to be as, as inclusive as we can. We’re trying to reach as many kind of countries working in this space as we can. So that might be something that we have to think about in the future.    Martin Jordan: Yeah we were really impressed to hear recently that at a conference in Taiwan, a government conference, they had subtitles in 12 different languages to reflect like, all the people attending. And we still have no idea how, how to make that work but this kind of like, the level of ambition.    So at the most recent conference in Edinburgh, there was live subtitling in English and we’re looking into like, technologies to make it as inclusive as possible.   Laura Stevens: And that leads me nicely on. Because you mentioned earlier that this, the last event in 2018, led directly to the 2019 events. And this is the first time that the events have gone global. So could you talk through those, what’s happened so far this year?   Kara Kane: The first thing that we did this year was collaborate with Code for America. Code for America is a non-profit in the United States and they work on reforming government nationally. So they work really closely with state and local level government. They do really amazing work, and they run a summit, they run a yearly summit called ‘Code for America Summit’. And our idea was to bring the international community to the summit. So what we did was run a one-day international design in government day…   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Kara Kane: ...before the Code for America Summit. So that was in Oakland in May of this year. And yeah, it was a real collaboration between between our 2 organisations. And to really bring the community to the US and reach people there that we’re not reaching, you’d think that the US would have a really strong design in government community, but they don’t yet. It’s still kind of nascent and forming. So it was really exciting to kind of, try and get all of those people in the room. Which they found really really valuable just to meet people like them, working on the same types of problems and challenges.   Laura Stevens: Is that because of like, the vast geography of America or is, and the federal...or is that?   Martin Jordan: The latter as well.    Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Martin Jordan: Yeah, totally. Totally.   And of course again like, there’s a lot of stuff that they can share. And then they can share kind of like, their recipes to how to solve a certain thing with other people.   Laura Stevens: Well, and that sharing tool--like I noticed New Zealand picked up the GOV.UK Design System and...   Martin Jordan: Yes.   This was amazing to see. Yeah, they kind of like took that and kind of made it theirs. Like restyling it, taking a few things in and out.   Laura Stevens: And was that facilitated by the community?   Martin Jordan: Well to some degree. So we have those monthly calls with themes, and the most popular ones were around design systems. So we actually had to, to repeat this theme so we had it in 2018 and did it in 2019 again because there’s so much interest.   And I think this was by far the most popular call we had, with more than 100 people joining.   Laura Stevens: Oh wow. Ok so...   Martin Jordan: And partially it was like a group of people in one room like, counting as 1 right.   Laura Stevens: Oh ok.    Kara Kane: Yeah. It was our biggest call ever. I was just completely shocked to see over a 100 people online joining us on Zoom.   Laura Stevens: Is it quite tricky to manage that as sort of, or does, is everyone quite respectful when somebody’s talking, everyone else will be muted. Is that, how is that to manage?   Kara Kane: Yeah. We have to set some, some ground, ground rules at the beginning to say, ‘everyone please go on mute’. And like yeah, there’s kind of there’s rules around, around how to ask questions. So there’s a chat function which is really easy to use, so you can write your question in the chat.   And then if you feel comfortable enough to go off mute and ask your question during the time for questions, then you can do that. Or I just read through the questions and try and help facilitate, facilitate that.    Martin Jordan: And there’s always recordings as well. So people can go back. So when they join the community later, they’re able to like, watch these previous calls or recordings of those, and once in a while, when people like, raise a question on Slack or on the mailing list, we’re like look, this was already covered, like have a look and they’re so thankful to like, find these resources.   Laura Stevens: And if we can go back to the America, the conference in America. Was the community involved with organising that like it was with the one in London, or was that is that a slightly different way it was organised?   Martin Jordan: Yeah.    Kara Kane: We reached out to some of the North American community members.   Laura Stevens: And who would they be?   Kara Kane: So we had people at Nava [Nava Public Benefit Corporation] in the United States, we had people at the Canadian Digital Service, people at the United States Digital Service, the USDS.   Martin Jordan: Veteran Services.   Kara Kane: So we kind of came up with 3 different kind of themes, which were around getting leadership buy-in for user-centered design, designing services for and with everyone and building design capacity and capability.   Martin Jordan: This was kind of like, although it was called International Design in government day, it was more kind of like, North American design in government.   Laura Stevens: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. With that regionalised context?   Martin Jordan: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.   Laura Stevens: And how did it feel on the day? Did it feel similar to the one you felt, you did in London, or was it different?   Martin Jordan: I mean I was so impressed.   Kara Kane: It was a lot of people that we hadn’t met before from the community, or people that were new to the community. It was people that maybe hadn’t all been in the same room before.   Laura Stevens and Martin Jordan (same time): Yeah.    Kara Kane: As in designers working in government kind of talking about things and realising, ‘oh my gosh, I’m not the only person...’    Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Kara Kane: ...that has these really frustrating things’. Or that has you know, learning about a success of someone like you just feel, you could feel how proud people were. And that was amazing.   Laura Stevens: And do you think that sort of, like talking, you were talking there about that sort of emotional support that the community provides, and that sense of ‘oh no, you’re not alone’. And obviously there’s very practical outcomes like you can use the same user research or you can use parts of the design system, but do you think that emotional support is quite a big part of why people get involved in the community?   Martin Jordan: Absolutely. This is..   Kara Kane: Yeah. Definitely.    Martin Jordan: This is, such a, such a strong, strong point. And yeah, I think, I think we see this as well in the Slack conversations. Like people asking questions and getting then a response from from somewhere, from another part of the world, is, is really reassuring.    Laura Stevens: And we should talk about your second conference as well in Scotland this year. So what happened there?   Kara Kane: So when I mentioned at the conference in London, when we had the hands up, well one of the hands was Anna Henderson, who is a Service Designer in Scottish government, in the Office of the Chief Designer. So Anna and her team got in touch with us and said, ‘hey, like we’re really serious, like we really want to do this, like we’re going to get budget, like everyone is, everyone is excited’. They had you know, from their team level up to their minister, ministerial level, was really excited about running an international conference.   So Martin and I were like, amazing, let’s do this!    Laura Stevens: Great!   Kara Kane: Yeah. Why wouldn’t we do this?    So this was the first time that we were kind of running an event, or this is the first time that we were kind of handing over the responsibility of running a conference to someone else.   Laura Stevens: So you didn’t do the agenda or…?   Kara Kane: So we really kind of stepped back. And our role was to kind of, advise and share what we had learned from running the conference in London.   Kara Kane: Yeah. So it was really shaped around the values of Scottish government, which is a lot about inclusion and participation. So the theme of the conference was participation involving citizens in the design of government and public services. And they had really amazing talks from the community, they had things on inclusive recruitment, they had things on doing international research, they had things on working with policy colleagues, and there was a fantastic keynote by Dr. Sally Witcher, who’s the Chief Executive of Inclusion Scotland.    And I think the whole atmosphere of the conference as well was really also encompassing their values. So as Martin said, they had captioning for all of the keynotes and all of the breakouts. So every single room that you went into, there was live captioning available to you. And for all of the keynotes on the main stage, we also had British Sign Language interpreters.   Laura Stevens: And is this something you’d want to carry forward now having seen it done in action?   Kara Kane: Yeah, I think as Martin said, with trying to figure out like, how can we use technology, and these kind of new technologies that are available, around live transcription and live translation. Like how can we use those better because that’s just, that would be just so amazing to be able to help people feel more involved if they can understand the content better.   Laura Stevens: And we can also look forward as well to the, your final is, your final international event of the year.    Kara Kane: And biggest.    Laura Stevens: And biggest in Rotterdam. And so yeah, can, Martin, can you tell me a bit about that?   Martin Jordan: Yeah, yeah. So yeah, as I said it will be the biggest conference we’ve had so far. So the Dutch government is leading on that. So the, my Dutch is really bad but the Gebruiker Centraal community, so which means like users first.    Laura Stevens: Yes.   Martin Jordan: Which is a community in the Dutch government that is around I think, for a few years now. So they had local events and as well conferences there for a while. And now they’re kind of like, opening up and embracing and welcoming all the international visitors. So they’re aiming although, we’re aiming for like 800 people...   Laura Stevens: Wow.   Martin Jordan: ...that will come together for like a full three days in Rotterdam in like mid-November this year, so 18th until 20th. And there will be workshops again, because we try to like not only in all of the conferences, not only have people talking at you, but you can actually participate and interact with people. So there’s always a lot of time for like, networking and workshopping things.   At the same time as well, kind of like open, other open formats, panel discussions. So all of that is going to happen. And again, there’s been like call for participations, we have been creating a kind of like, advisory board, again an international advisory board. Where people from different continents kind of like help shape as well, the content.    We’re still on an ongoing basis like asking for more content, because there will be so many people so we need a lot of content as well.    Laura Stevens: So you’re doing a call out now live to…   Martin Jordan: Yes!    Laura Stevens: So how if you, how do you put something forward, how do I go to this conference?   Martin Jordan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you can go to ‘international.gov-design.com’. There you find all of the events that have happened already, and the one that’s happening next.    Laura Stevens: And are you hoping this will, you mentioned for like the American one was a bit more localised to North America. Are you hoping this will have a more global outlook because it’s just a bigger conference?   Martin Jordan: The other day, I was listening to a talk from the Italians and I feel like everybody is kind of innovating in another pocket. So at the beginning some people were like, ‘oh GDS is so far ahead’, but like, we are ahead in some regards. In other regards like, other governments are totally leading. So there’s a lot of stuff we can learn from each other.   Laura Stevens: Is there an example you can think of, maybe from that conference that you were like, ‘oh, they’re doing so much better, we can learn from them’.    Martin Jordan: So the design system that was created by the US folks and as well the design system created by, by the Australians, contains like various components that we might not have had.   So there has been, after one of the calls, like kind of like, an immediate exchange of code...   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Martin Jordan: ...which was like, wow. We were like, ‘oh this is a component we do not have here’. So that people…   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Martin Jordan: ...just share code literally, just…   Laura Stevens: Straight away.   Martin Jordan: Yeah. Which is quite amazing, amazing to see. Yeah.   Laura Stevens: And in terms of obviously, you’ve had a really significant growth over these past few years, in terms of where you want to the community to go, is there any plans you’ve got for 2020, in terms of maybe, targeting different countries or growing it further or in a different direction. What would be your take on that?   Kara Kane: In terms of the events, we’re intrigued to see how we can continue running those, and how we can continue having the community take ownership of those events. So we have been in, we’ve had people contact us from 3 different countries saying that they’re interested in running a conference. So we are in talks.   Laura Stevens: Watch this space.    Kara Kane: Watch this space.   So we’re trying to think about you know, how many events should we do a year, and what should those events look like, and how big should they be. So we’re working on a bit of a conference playbook…   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Kara Kane: ...at the moment, that we can share with people who want to run a conference, to really help them be able to do it.    So in general for the community, going forward, we want it be, we want it to continue to be a place that is supportive for people working in this environment and in this space. We want to continue bringing people together, we want to continue seeing things like the Finns and the Estonians kind of working together and running events together.    And you know, people working on similar service areas coming together to share and learn from each other. But we really you know, in the future, want to get to a point where we’re, as Martin said around the design system example, like how can we share interaction and service design patterns.   Martin Jordan: Yeah.   Kara Kane: There’s so much kind of possibility for that. So how can the community facilitate that and what does that look like and is it possible, and at what level can we get to, and how can we keep you know, stealing from each other.   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Kara Kane: Stealing code, stealing ideas and just you know, really learning from what everyone else is doing. So it’s really about kind of, maximising share and re-use, which is the theme of the November conference.   Martin Jordan: Exactly, yes.   Laura Stevens: And so if, how would I join this community if I’ve been listening to this, wherever I am in the world, how would I join?   Martin Jordan: So we have quite a few blog posts on the design in government blog, that is one of the GDS blogs.    There you have a dedicated international category, and whatever international blog post you read, at the bottom there are all the links to join the Google group. And then you’re part of the community.   Kara Kane: So once you apply to join the Google group, and join the community, then you’re sent a welcome email. Which kind of tells you about the Slack channels, it tells you about the recordings of the monthly calls, it tells you about the events that are coming up. So you can immediately find out what’s going on and how to get involved.    Laura Stevens: And tell me about applying. Who exactly can join the group?   Kara Kane: So it’s open to people that are working embedded in government, working in user-centered design. So you could be a designer, a user researcher, some working in accessibility, anyone who’s interested in design, and you have to be interested in talking about those things, from any government in the world, is welcome to join.   Laura Stevens: And I don’t know if we could round off with maybe some tips that you, on how to set up your own community, if this is something, if there’s some quick fire tips that you’ve found over learning this community. Sort of, how do you scale, how do you keep momentum going and what tools do you need.   Is there anything you’d want to add those?   Kara Kane: I think the first thing is using platforms that people are already on.    Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Kara Kane: So…   Laura Stevens: Don’t reinvent the wheel.    Kara Kane: Don’t reinvent the wheel. Please.   Just people use Slack, so use Slack.    Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Kara Kane: People use email, so use Google groups. It makes it so much easier if you make it hard for people to actually get to the platform where the conversation is happening, you’re already putting up a barrier to your community.   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Kara Kane: So make it really easy, easy to access once you’re part of the community. And easy to, easy to respond and join conversations.   Martin Jordan: And if there are events happening, whether they’re kind of like online calls or like physical meetups with talks, like if you can, try to record stuff. So if there is like material you can share, because people will either kind of like, join communities later. Yeah, do that.    Or as well be not able to attend, and if you can then share the materials so they can still consume it in their own time, it’s really beneficial.   Kara Kane: Yeah and I think, building on that, is just having different formats. So not just having a Google group or a Slack group, where it can be really really scary to ask a question or share something.    Having things like monthly calls where you’re kind of, inviting people in to present, inviting people to consume information in a different way, having face to face events where people can network and meet people in a different way. Just having different options for people to feel engaged in the community.    Laura Stevens: So different formats, use the tools people are already on and record what you do.   Kara Kane: Yes.   Martin Jordan: Yeah.   Laura Stevens: Three excellent tips.   Kara Kane: And help introduce people.    Laura Stevens: And is that sort of, facilitating..?   Kara Kane: As a Community Manager.    Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Kara Kane: It’s really, especially in the beginning, is just help facilitate relationship building.    Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Arrange lots of cups of coffee.   Kara Kane: Yeah.   Laura Stevens: So thank you to both Kara and Martin today for telling us about their experience in running the international design in government community. So thank you for coming on.   Kara Kane: Thank you!   Martin Jordan: Thank you.   Thank you to both Kara and Martin today for telling us about their experience in running the international design in government community.    You can listen to all the episodes of the Government Digital Service podcast on Apple Music, Spotify and all other major podcast platforms. And you can read the transcripts on Podbean.    Thank you both again very much.

NO. This is NOT a movie review! LOL Marissa reports on the REAL LIFE story of Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia. Her life, mysterious disappearance, and eventual death are discussed. Anna proves that she's a bad Russian because she knows nothing of Anastasia NOR has seen the cartoon movie. Then Anna discussed the REAL LIFE (allegedly) of the Men in Black. M-I-B-M-I-B. Anna reviews the top reports of Men in Black sightings and discussed who/what the could potentially be. Somehow MARISSA never saw the movie!SO Anna needs to watch Anastasia and Marissa needs to watch the Men in Black (only the first movie, obvi). ___Facebook: @BWDWKpodcastTwitter: @BWDWKpodcastInstagram: @butwhatdoweknowpodcastEmail: @butwhatdoweknowpod@gmail.com___On Instagram...Cover art: @ohsamitMusic: @cliff_albert

One of the biggest mistakes we witness people make in relationship is the decision, conscious or unconscious, to rein in some of their own desires or dreams because it triggers their partner, because they think it’ll cause too much of a stir, or because of they convince themselves they “should”. See if you can relate to any of these examples from people we’ve been coaching recently. Anna thinks there is something wrong with her because she doesn’t want to marry and have children with the man she has been dating for ten months. After all, he’s a good guy, loyal and responsible (in stark contrast to her ex). He really wants to marry her and make a new life together. So Anna is trying to talk herself out of her feelings of doubt and lack of desire to marry, in order to make him happy and because it just makes logical sense to marry this nice guy. Anthony damps down his desire for sex in several ways: By not acknowledging his need for it in the moment; by trying to talk to himself out of wanting it by minimizing its importance (“It’s not that big of deal, anyway. I’m fine without it”); by not initiating sex or touch with his partner; by backing off at the first sign of discomfort or refusal; and by routinely putting his partner’s needs ahead of his own. Finally, Robert, who is in the throes of divorce and is discovering that he doesn’t know what he wants anymore. He has gone along with his wife’s desires and demands for some 30 years and has totally lost touch with his feelings, desires and dreams. During their marriage it simply became second nature to let her desires be their desires, and whenever he did want something different from her, to just let it slide, because “it was easier that way”. In each of these three examples, you could make the case that they are just being generous – they want their partner to have what they want and need. You could say they are being flexible, because they’re not attached to having things their own way. We could posit that they are peacemakers who value harmony more than getting what they want. We could even call them super spiritual in the sense that “The Great Way is easy for those who have no preferences”. Just today, we read a great article [https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/how-to-have-a-long-lasting-relationship] that states the most important ingredient of a lasting relationship is generosity. We don’t disagree, generosity is essential. However, in the three examples above, our friends are not being generous. Let me qualify that. I’m not suggesting that they are not generous and flexible people, or that they don’t want their partners to have everything they need, or that they’re not spiritual or understanding people. I know for a fact that they are these things, too. The problem here is that what masks as generosity or flexibility in reality is much more avoidance of “trouble”, fear of rejection, lack of power to stand up for oneself, or flat-out laziness. There’s always a long-term price to pay for the short-term gain of “not making trouble” by letting your own desires go. Whenever anyone damps down their own feelings or shuts off their own desires to avoid upset or conflict in relationship, whenever they don't stay engaged and go for what they want and create win/wins that enliven both partners, they set themselves up for breakdown; ultimately risking the stability of their relationship. No one can remain disconnected from themselves and their feelings and their passions for a prolonged period of time without the potential consequence of wanting to break free from their imprisoned experience in relationship in an attempt to “find themselves” again. In other words, negating your own desires and dreams over time creates resentment. This is tricky stuff, no doubt. Who can’t relate to wanting something that you know might trigger your partner, so you go, “Whatever, it really isn’t that important”? You let it slide and don’t speak up about what it was you really wanted. And for a while, it’s totally fine. Until it isn’t. Like Robert, who inadvertently did this with everything, by his own admission. Where they went on holidays, when they took holidays, or not; who they visited, for how long; what color to paint the house, what school to send their kids to, you name it. Her preference became their preference. For the longest time, this system worked fine. Only now, as they’re divorcing, he’s resentful in retrospect that he always got “steamrolled”. In our coaching, he had a profound realization. He went along with her desires because “it was easier”. In doing so, he believed he did her a favor by not causing a stir and thus keeping the peace in the house. He believed he was being easy-going and flexible, and that she’d love him more for it. What actually happened? She lost respect for him, and he lost respect for himself. Plus, he totally lost touch with what he actually wanted about pretty much every aspect of life. To be blunt, he “chickened out” on his own dreams. I offered him this image. From her point of view, his “going-alongness” made her feel alone. It’s like, every time she’d offer up an idea, instead of a sparring partner, he showed up as an amorphous blob, without any distinct boundaries or edges, like a bowl of jelly. In partnership, it produces safety and connection when a partner can put her hand on the other and feel some substance instead of “jelly”. Flexibility and easy-goingness are great qualities and can absolutely support harmony and easy flow. Always yielding like a jellyfish, however, produces loneliness and resentment. Generosity is indeed an absolutely crucial part of a successful, loving relationship. Self-sacrifice to the extent of not getting what you need is something else entirely. The article we quoted above included this important detail: “Giving until it hurts or trying to buy affection does not develop a healthy relationship ... It does not take the place of caring for yourself or expecting your partner to do his or her part.” It’s easy to get mad at your partner when you don’t get what you want. It’s tempting for Anne to get mad at her boyfriend for pushing the marriage agenda. It seems logical for Anthony to get mad at his partner for not being more into sex. (On a side note, there are many ways to communicate directly to your partner about situations where you want seemingly different things. That is outside the scope of this article.) Here, we want to offer you the opportunity to look inwards, specifically at where you let go of your own desires, for whatever reason, when in actuality it was important to you. Look at where, like Robert, you let it happen that you don’t get what you want. Where you let it be ok, even though it’s not really ok with you, to not get your needs met. We encourage you to ask yourself questions like:   Where am I not going for what I want? Where am I settling? Where am I holding myself back from my own passionate aliveness? Where do I “forget” what I want and need, in the interest of peacemaking, taking care of my partner, or someone else’s desires? What am I afraid would happen if I stood up for what I want and need? The upside here is for you to find your own clarity about what you want, and the power and worthiness to stand up for what you want as well as what your partner wants. Optimally, you’re saying (and this is part of our definition of a successful relationship or marriage), “I deserve to have what I want, and so do you. I want you to have your needs met, and I want that for me, too. I’m not going to sacrifice my needs to satisfy yours, or yours to satisfy mine. We are both going to get what we want. If we don’t know how to accomplish that, we’ll learn. But we’re not giving up on both of us being satisfied”. You might even consider that you owe it, not only to yourself, but to your relationship, and to your children (if you have children), to listen to the whispers of your dreams and desires, lest you end up resentful that someone didn’t give you everything you wanted. So take the risk. Go for what you want, for what makes your heart sing. Work it out with your partner, so you both get to fly. If you don't know how to do that by yourself, learn. Get help. And don’t back off from what you want. :-) Sonika & Christian   PS. If you’re curious about the kind of coaching we offer, use our contact form here to get in touch with us.

  This story is about travelling the world, interviewing lots of men (everyone from porn stars to famous author John Grey), and going on a magical Ayahuasca journey. And at the end of this episode I'll share with you the best mushroom you can use to make your own magical brew in your home in case you don't happen to have Ayahuasca growing on your doorstep. What you will learn an easy way to start travelling the world and working from anywhere three things about men that not everyone may realize how to make a tasty brew at home that isn't Ayahuasca, but is pretty darn magical all the same At the end of this episode I'll share with you the best mushroom you can use to make your own magical brew in your home in case you don't happen to have Ayahuasca growing on your doorstep. Our guest, Anna Rova I am very excited to be joined here today by Anna Rova, who is a fellow podcaster, writer and entrepreneur. And among other cool things, Anna has some very interesting insights on relationships. She has interviewed all kinds of people about this topic, from porn stars to John Gray who is the author of the bestseller Men Are from Mars, Women Are From Venus. Anna has also done lots of other magical things, including Ayahuasca which she'll talk about a bit later. So Anna welcome to the Clean Food, Dirty Stories podcast! I'm really excited to have you here today! Anna: Thanks for having me! I'm so excited too! Beginning to travel the world with a one-way ticket Me: Now I know that you basically travel the world writing and doing other amazing things, and I would really love for us to start by having you tell everybody how you came to become a digital nomad. Anna: OK, well that's an easy subject to start with. I became a digital nomad about 2 years ago. Last year around May I started travelling full time, and I was in Malaysia working for a company called MindValley who make personal growth products. I did online marketing there and I got exposed to the digital nomads out there and one day I was like "Oh my God, I don't need to be in an office, I can be anywhere and do my work". So I was over my Malaysia chapter and I booked a one-way ticket to Bangkok. I had a friend there, I went to a wedding there. And then after a week in Bangkok I booked a ticket to an island, got an apartment, taught myself how to ride a scooter and that was it! And the rest is history! It's such a journey, I've travelled all over the world, I've lived in more than 15 countries in the last 2 years. Just ask me what you want to know more about! When in doubt, teach yourself Me: I love how you taught yourself how to ride a scooter, I mean, was that just trial and error? Did you just fall off and then get back on? Anna: I think that was the scariest shit ever in my life because overall I think I had that summer 3 accidents on the motorbike and that's unavoidable. When I was renting an apartment, I had to get around. And for anyone who's been to Thailand, besides Bangkok, the only way to get around is by motorbike. I was scared to death to ride it, I didn't have a driver's license and I thought "I suppose I'm just gonna do it!" But I learned how to balance it in the right way, and that's it. So I went on the street and in the first 3 minutes I realized I was gonna be out of gas, and I was like 'shit what am I gonna do' and you know, I just did it. In 2 months I was pretty much like a pro. I loved it, I loved the freedom of going wherever I wanted. An easy way to transition from full-time work to digital nomad Me: At that point were you writing articles? Anna: Well no, I have an interesting story because for me it wasn't like quitting everything and then doing my business. It was good because this transition from having a full-time job in an office to a digital nomad lifestyle with remote work can be a really hard one. I think a lot of people aren't prepared, they think it's easy. But I negotiated to basically start working remotely for the same company. I had a full-time job and I didn't need to be in an office, so that was for about half a year so it really helped me to have stability for the first 6 months, somebody out there waiting for me to show up and do my work. The rest was so unstable, you didn't know what's going to happen tomorrow, where you'd be, it was crazy. So that was great and I wasn't ready yet to jump into my full-on entrepreneurship journey. But I actually found another job with a company that's in the same industry and I signed a contract for another year to work full-time remotely doing online marketing which was great. I negotiated like a double salary and it was awesome! Another one-way ticket...to Colombia I booked my one-way ticket to Colombia and you know, Latin America was a continent that was always in my dreams. But after a year I came back to this feeling that I'm an entrepreneur, you know? I need to do my own thing, I have so much in me to write, to say, to discover the world, to teach. So I quit the job this January just 3 months ago and I went on this 90-day Wanderova journey and I thought I'm just gonna write about it, and it was incredible! In two months of writing on Medium I got to top writer in Travel, top writer in Relationships, I got published by a publication, I'm building my own business, I coached a couple of people. Becoming a relationship expert Me: So then that was my next question actually, because we'll link to Medium in the show notes and then people can read about the posts that you were writing when you were travelling. But I'm curious to know how you then started to write about relationships and how you got to interview porn stars and John Gray? Talk about a mixture! Anna: So actually that project, my expertise in relationships started way before I became a digital nomad. This is also a sign for me when I look back I realize that I was always entrepreneurial. I just didn't fully realize it consciously. From MindValley to John Gray While I had my full-time job in Malaysia, some of you might know that MindValley is such a creative, entrepreneurial place. And I started my podcast in 2014. At that time I had just broke up with my boyfriend. We were almost engaged and all of that but I said I don't want that. I didn't know anything about relationships but I was into podcasting and I just said "I'm going to start my own podcast where I'm going to interview men about relationships to figure it all out". And you know, it was such a journey, I did the project for two years. In these two years I got a chance to interview 43 amazing men all about women and relationships. I asked them all kinds of questions, and yes I interviewed John Gray. He wrote 17 books on relationships and you know, he's a famous writer and speaker, men go to their cave and whatever. I was shocked myself when he decided to say yes and have an interview with me. Enter the porn star I interviewed porn stars. It's actually a funny story because after my interview with a porn star, his name was I think John Logan. A couple of weeks later I was doing my self satisfaction moment in bed and then I saw the guy in a porn video in like a threesome and I was like "Oh my God I can't watch this! I interviewed him on my podcast!" But yeah, I interviewed all kinds of men from all kinds of nationalities, all kinds of walks of life. And I just asked them what do they find attractive in a woman and all of that. Me: And what kind of things came out? What are some of the common things that men seem to say about what makes women attractive? Anna: Oh this is such a huge subject! Me: Maybe two or three little things. Anna: I actually learned a lot, not only from them, but I read a lot, I researched the subject. And I became a totally different woman. It was a journey to discover men, but at the same time it was more of a journey of discovering myself and what I think about men, what I think about relationships, what I think about women. The first thing Anna learned about men A lot of shit came up that were limiting beliefs, patterns from my childhood, whatever. So one of the things that I love to tell everyone, and women especially, is that we have this notion that men are something based on what we've seen in our life. But I absolutely believe 100% in the good of men: I love men, I love their masculinity, their polarity. And I started appreciating men. I realized what they have to go through to even talk to a woman, you know? Like I never thought about it. Men go through their puberty and they just start Googling things and talking to other men about how to get women. We as women, I mean I don't want to generalize but a lot of women are so bitchy to men and so down on men and "oh they just want to get into my pants" and I just went inside and realized who they're raised by and how they're going through all of this process. First I'd say that I just got to understand and appreciate men, which was my mission. I realized that it's a journey for all of us. Anna's biggest learning The other thing that I realized is that I dug deep and this is all about patterns and limiting beliefs that come from my family and my childhood and my culture and what I've seen. And I realized that I was attracting all of these emotionally unavailable men because I myself was emotionally unavailable. So my second tip and my biggest learning is that our partners or the men that we attract as women are a direct reflection of us. If we attract someone that doesn't call us back or whatever, that means that we ourselves are unavailable. And it's really hard to realize cause you're like "But I want love! I want a relationship!" But you're just not ready. That's what I tell all of my girlfriends when they ask me. If you're attracting super needy men there's a lot of deep, deep work in there. So that's the second thing. The third thing: we're working with broken tools And the third thing I'd say is that I just realized I never saw growing up a healthy model of how relationships should be. I come from a small Eastern European country, my mother passed away when I was 8 years old, and my dad after that remarried a couple of times. Well, once he remarried, but there were many women in his life and there was a stepmother, there was an evil bitch there, I mean I have a crazy story. Basically I just didn't see healthy relationships where men loved their women, women loved their men and they had healthy relationships where they're partners. They're not like "Oh my God, you're my other half" and like "Save me" and "Heal all my wounds". I guess one of the biggest realizations was that I just realized that our modern notion of love and relationships is completely broken. We just expect the other person to come in and "Make me happy, heal my wounds". It just doesn't work. A healthy relationship today, and still travelling! Today I'm engaged to my man, but I always make sure that this is me, and my shit is like my shit and I need to work on me constantly. Even when I'm getting married. I'm like "this is his own shit, this is my shit". We're together in this, and we're choosing each other every day and you know, we're not dependent on each other emotionally. At least I hope we're not. Me: You know, I like that phrase 'choosing each other every day', that's really quite cool. Yeah. Anna: Yeah. So I believe that really helped me and you know, I just became emotionally independent and that's how I met my man currently and that's how he proposed 9 months after we met. We're having a wedding in Moldova in my country and it's so beautiful and flowery but there was a lot of work behind it. I went through a lot of stuff. So that's the story. Anna's Ayahuasca journey Me: So when I was reading your blog and the stories of your travels, I just zeroed in on your Ayahuasca story. I was like "I have got to read this!" because I've always wanted to try it and I haven't had the opportunity yet and I know that I will. But for the benefit of anyone listening that doesn't know anything about it, can you just tell us really briefly like what it is, and also how you came to be taking it and what happened? What Ayahuasca is Anna: Ayahuasca is very common among travellers because full-time travellers have a certain character, they're adventurous, so they often know about Ayahuasca. But people who don't travel that much, they're like 'what the hell is that'. So Ayahuasca is something that I heard about a couple of years ago that somebody did it, and it was such an amazing experience. Life-transformation and whatever. I thought "I've gotta do it, I've got to have it on my bucket list!" Me: Cause it's a herb, right? You take it as a tea? Anna: Yeah, so what it is...There's a lot of controversy out there. Scientists have done research and experiments on what ayahuasca does and its effects. But basically it's a herb, it's a medicinal plant that's found in the Amazon so in the Brazilian part in Peru. How you use Ayahuasca...the right way It's mostly in Peru, people go there to have this experience. Ayahuasca's a psychedelic plant. But the difference between all the psychedelic drugs out there, MDMA etc, I mean I haven't done any of that by the way. They call Ayahuasca a medicinal plant and a life transformation experience because it's a shamanic ceremony. So it's not like you go into a club and eat a plant or a mushroom. There's a ceremony, there's a shaman who guides people through. It's a very serious experience, it's an adventure. You've got to be ready to do it and there are so many positive stories around it. People are realizing their life purpose or whatever. And there are also bad stories around it, that people have horrible experiences. What they say that ayahuasca does is that if you look at the research it's actually used as a treatment for drug addicts for example, and people who are lost and want to see but they can't see. So it affects some parts of your brain that are responsible for emotional memories. What Ayahuasca can show you That's why it's healing. It's a healing experience in a way. They say that ayahuasca will show you what you need to see. So I wrote this post, there are two parts. One of them is where you count down... Me: That's the one I read. I haven't read part 2 and I was like "What happens?" Anna: Yes I describe how I felt before, and I was like pushing away the fear and then 48 hours before, an hour before...I was really scared because I didn't know what the hell was gonna happen. What Ayahuasca does So basically it's a liquid tea, they call it Ayahuasca tea. You drink it and maybe in like 20 minutes it starts coming to you. And then basically after that you fall into a state of deep dream and you start seeing psychedelic things for like 5 hours. Me: Wow! 5 hours! Anna: Yes, it's really intense. Me: But you don't see the time go by, I would imagine, right? Anna: Yes, it's totally, well not out of body, I wouldn't know how to describe it. Me: Well it's like when we dream, we're in a completely different state of consciousness, right? And so time doesn't have the same meaning. Anna: Exactly, yeah. And I was aware of what was happening but I was deeply into it. I put it all out there in part 2 for readers to read, but every experience is different. Our group had a really good experience. We did it during the day. We were in a very safe environment which is very important. But I've heard stories of not having a great experience, so it really depends where you are in life, how ready you are, and how much of a control freak you are. A lot of people who didn't have a good experience tried to control it. And you just can't do that. You've gotta work on just letting it go, letting it do its job and all that. Anna's main takeaway from her Ayahuasca journey I'm really happy I did it. It still has its effects on me up until today and I think it always will. I plan to do it again and I'm actually still processing it. I'm really glad I did it. It was powerful. Me: What was the main thing that it gave to you? I mean, if you had to pick one thing, what would that be? Anna: Well I think it's two things. First of all, there's a feeling of oneness. Oneness with the world, with nature, with people. And at the end of it you just feel bliss. Our shaman explained that when you do Ayahuasca, you're at a very high rate of vibration which is actually the human natural state of vibration. I totally believe that we are here to enjoy life. We are here to be happy and to be on that really high vibration. I just felt this feeling of oneness. I felt like whatever I have to do at home, like "Oh I have to do a podcast?" Whatever I have to do, it doesn't really matter. It's like humans we complicate it so much. I felt that before through travelling, but this was a really intense feeling. On top of that... The second thing is that I just look at life as a game. It's all a game! Me: Yes! Totally! Anna: We just complicate things so much but if you just let things flow and be in the game, nobody knows what the fuck they're doing anyway! Me: I tell myself that a lot. I do! It's a game! It was like today because you know, for me, I'm super excited because you're like my first podcast guest, right? Yay! Anna: Yay! Me: And so you know this morning, of course you get a bit nervous. Because I'm using different technology for the first time and all that, and I'm like "You know what? So what!" It's a game as you say, and we're having fun and learning and exploring. Where to find out more about Anna So you've done so many cool things and I know you have a lot to share with listeners. Where do people go if they want to find out more and read about you and read more about your journey? Anna's writings Anna: Well first of all I send everybody to Medium. So if they go to www.Medium.com/@wanderova, this is my profile and I'm writing everything there. I'd say there are three different topics I write about which are travel, relationships and life. But travel not in the sense that I'm not a travel blogger. I don't write about 'ten things to do here and here', I don't care about that. I mostly write about personal growth and self development and my thoughts. My angry thoughts...and so if they like what they're reading I also love to send people to wanderova.com. It's my website and you can sign up to get updates and whenever I create something I'll just send you an email telling you how things are and just sharing my thoughts and stuff. I'm building a business and a lot of things are coming up. But I'd say that, yeah, read my Medium stuff and if you like it then go and subscribe at wanderova.com and we'll have a conversation about life and purpose and travels, yeah. Anna's podcast Me: And your podcast as well, that can be found where? Anna: Well, as I said the podcast isn't active yet but people can listen to it. My previous website is meninsideshow.com or they can find the actual episodes on SoundCloud and type 'meninsideshow' and you can listen to all these different interviews with men. There's a lot of deep, cool stuff because men get very vulnerable. That's what I realized, they're not like robotic machines that don't have feelings. They've been taught to have this image but their world is as intense and as deep as ours. It's just a different polarity but it's powerful. Me: Super! So I'll link to all of those in the show notes for people. Anna, thank you so, so much. I really love your stories. And I for one am definitely going to listen to those podcast episodes. A super mushroom for your own magical brew Now I did mention at the beginning of this episode that I'd share with you what mushroom you can use to make your own magical brew at home. Now I can't promise you it will take you on a magical journey, but it's a great coffee substitute. The mushroom is reishi. Now before you freak out and think where the hell am I gonna get reishi, you can easily get it on Amazon. Benefits of reishi mushroom Reishi mushroom not only makes a great drink, but it's an adaptogen. What that means is that it helps us deal with stress. So super important, right? Reishi also helps keep your blood sugar stable, and it's great for both your immune system and your lymph system. On top of that, reishi is said to be able to help defend against tumor growth, improve liver function, balance your hormones as well as help fight diabetes, allergies and asthma. So you really want to be getting yourself some reishi. I'll link to a very informative article in the show notes as well if you want to get more in-depth scientific knowledge about reishi. How to use reishi mushroom As to how you use it, well, if you've got pieces of reishi, you brew them. You make a tea. If you've got the powder, you just tip the powder into your blender with some warm water. Then you blend your reishi brew with cacao powder and a handful of cashews for a super delicious mocha. Or you can make my coffee substitute which I'll link to in the show notes. So I hope you've enjoyed our tales of magical journeys and brews! And if you try some reishi (or ayahuasca, for that matter), let me know in the comments! Have YOU got a story to share? If you've got a crazy, true story to share - with or without magic mushrooms! - and you'd like to know what food could have saved the day in your situation), I'd love to hear from you! Got a question, or a comment? Got a question, or a comment? Pop a note below in the comments, that would be awesome. You can also subscribe to the podcast to listen 'on the go' in iTunes, Stitcher or Tunein. I hope you have an amazing day. Thank you so much for being here with me to share in my Clean Food, Dirty Stories. Bye for now! RESOURCES Anna's podcast: https://soundcloud.com/maninside-show Anna's blog: https://medium.com/@wanderova My recipe using reishi mushrooms: https://rockingrawchef.com/five-more-superfoods-and-a-coffee-substitute-you-wouldnt-believe/   Anna RovaAnna Rova is an online marketer, lover of life and a yogi who is living the dream working and traveling the world. Originally from Moldova, Anna has lived in over 15 countries including Malaysia, Columbia and Mexico. She continues to travel as a digital nomad.

Hello gentle listeners, we have some things to talk about with you. Firstly, last night Donald Trump was voted the president of the United States. We understand not all of our listeners live in the United States, but we feel this is a world issue and I hope our listeners in other countries will know this is not our president. Anna and I as women who live in the United States feel a bit lost and like we are thought of as something to control. We are here to say we are not. No people are able to be controlled and we stand with all of the LGBTQ community, every person of color, any Muslim American, any female, and just any person feeling like they are not vauled. We are here to tell you that you are vauled and this is our special segment for you. So Anna and I, our Buffy babes, and friends wanted to say that we love you and we ask you to hang in there and keep on being you. The sound quality on this may be a little off on this one because we wanted to get this our right away for you, babes. So thank you and we love you and we are here for you. #iamher http://www.upswingadvocates.org/ Upswing Advocates provides individualized, affordable, accessible services that support and strengthen the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer, Intersex and Asexual (LGBTQIA) community across Chicago and beyond.

No Bouncy this week because he’s off playing at being a roving reported at the Eurogamer Expo. So Anna joins Kev and Steve, fresh from her podcast debut on Bits & PCs at the weekend.