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Let's talk about summer camp! Specifically non-diabetes sleepaway camp. We have a great roundtable to tackle a subject that can seem pretty scary but Stacey thinks is one of the best things she's ever done for her son. Joining Stacey are  Shelby Hughes who live with type 1 and has sent her daughter with T1D to diabetes camp and regular camp, and April Blackwell, an adult with type 1. April went to Space Camp as a kid - no surprise if you remember our previous episode with her. April works in Mission Control at NASA. Previous episode on camp here This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. Check out Stacey's book: The World's Worst Diabetes Mom! Join the Diabetes Connections Facebook Group! Sign up for our newsletter here ----- Use this link to get one free download and one free month of Audible, available to Diabetes Connections listeners! ----- Get the App and listen to Diabetes Connections wherever you go! Click here for iPhone      Click here for Android Episode Transcription (beta) Stacey Simms  0:00 Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dario health. Manage your blood glucose levels increase your possibilities by Gvoke Hypopen the first premixed auto injector for very low blood sugar, and by Dexcom help make knowledge your superpower with the Dexcom G6 CGM system.   Announcer  0:23 This is Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms.   Stacey Simms  0:29 This week, let's talk about summer camp specifically non diabetes. sleepaway camp, we have a great round table to tackle a subject that can seem pretty scary, but it's honestly one of the best things I've ever done for my son. And my guests who went themselves agree.   April Blackwell  0:46 It sort of put that independence on me to you know, take care and manage my diabetes on my own. And I think that was a big step for me personally, just because I wanted to be like everyone else and have sleep overs and go to camp and stuff. So it was a big motivator for me.   Stacey Simms  1:02 That is April Blackwell, an adult who lives with type one talking about her summer camp experience. You'll also hear from Shelby Hughes. She lives with type one and sent her daughter with T1D to diabetes camp and regular camp. Plus, you'll hear from me, I've sent Benny to month long, regular sleepaway camp for many years. This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. Welcome to another week of the show. I am so glad to have you along. I am always excited to have you here. But I this is one of my favorite topics. I love talking about camp. I think camp is so important for kids and for parents. If you're a longtime listener, you know that if you're new, Hi, I'm your host, Stacey Simms, and we aim to educate and inspire about diabetes with a focus on people who use insulin. So what's the big deal about camp, I really feel that going away from your parents, even if it's just for a couple of nights. And usually it's for at least a week, that's what we're going to focus on here is week long or longer camp programs, gives kids a gift, a gift of independence of confidence, a little bit of responsibility, diabetes or not. You learn who you are, when you're not with your home friends, your school friends and your family. You can try different things you can you know, invent different personalities, you can give yourself a nickname, I went to camp with a kid who had a completely different name at camp. And it's a huge tradition in my family, I went to the same summer camp for a little while as my dad, if that gives you any indication, my kids didn't go there. Because we we moved that was a northeast thing. And my kids are both gone to camp, of course in the southeast where we live. But I'm such a proponent of camp. And the flip side of that is, it's so great for the parents, because you have to know who you are when your kids aren't around. I know that seems weird, especially for diabetes moms and some dads. But we get so caught up in our kids, that when you are able to turn the Dexcom share off for a week or longer. It's liberating in a way that I think is incredibly valuable. Is it scary? Oh yeah, I worry every day, especially when he's not at diabetes camp. So we'll get to it. I do want to bring up a couple of quick points. Before we get started. I'm going to try to get a blog post out about this this week. Sometime. I'm a little behind on things. But I'm hoping to put that out because we cover a lot of issues in this Roundtable. But one thing we didn't really mention is the question of when is my kid ready to go to regular camp. This varies kid to kid various camp to camp. I think that if your child is able to check his or her own blood sugar, you know, with a meter not just looking at a CGM, because cgms can fail. And they do need to know how to check their blood sugar. If your child can administer insulin with his or her pump, if your child can change a pump, inset, and do all these things with supervision, I don't expect you know, eight 9, 10 year olds, 11 12, 13 year olds even depending on the kid to be able to do all these things perfectly. If they can do all that with some supervision, then I think you're at a good starting point. And the other question is of the camp itself. Are they willing to learn? Do you feel comfortable with the staff their medical or not, and their knowledge? You know, if you're sending a 14 year old to scout camp, you might feel comfortable that the scout leader knows how to administer glucagon and could call 911. If you're sending an eight year old, you may want to have a camp with more medical knowledge so they can recognize highs and lows and help with giving shots if needed. You know, that kind of thing. It all depends on many, many different factors. But these are important questions to ask yourself. We're going to go through with a round table I'm going to come back after with a couple of things that I think we missed that I want to make sure to mention. But first Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Gvoke Hypopen and you know that low blood sugar feels horrible. You can get shaky and sweaty or even feel like you're going to pass out. There are a lot of symptoms and they can be different for everyone. I'm so glad we have a different option to treat very low blood sugar Gvoke Hypopen is the first auto injector to treat very low blood sugar. Gvoke Hypopen  is pre mixed and ready to go with no visible needle. Before Gvoke people needed to go through a lot of steps to get glucagon treatments ready to be used. This made emergency situations even more challenging and stressful. This is so much better. I'm grateful we have it on hand. Find out more go to Diabetes connections.com and click on the Gvoke logo. g evoke shouldn't be used in patients with pheochromocytoma or insulinoma visit Gvoke glucagon dot com slash risk.   My guests this week love camp just as much as I do. Shelby Hughes lives with type one herself. Her daughter Caroline was diagnosed at age seven. She is now 11. She's the youngest of Shelby's three children. And Caroline went to diabetes camp and a regular camp and you will hear all about that. April Blackwell joins me as well. She lives with type 1 diabetes. She was diagnosed as a kid and she went to space camp and was then a counselor at Space Camp. Now you probably recognize April's name. We've talked to her before. And, gosh, I'm always all starstruck talking to her. She works at NASA. She has her dream job she says of flying the International Space Station for mission control. So she was kind enough, right that she was kind enough to come on and talk to me about camp this week, which was just absolutely amazing. So April, thank you so much for that. But I think her perspective is really valuable. And I hope you enjoy this whole conversation. So I am really pleased to welcome Shelby Hughes and April plaque. Well, we are going to talk about camp. Ladies, thank you so much for being here.   Shelby Huges  6:51 Thank you for having us.   Stacey Simms  6:53 I think we are all in agreement here that camp is cool camp is, great campus really good for kids. And for parents. So she'll be telling me about your, you know, when you decided to send your child to camp, how old she was, what kind of Camp it was, how long.   Shelby Hughes  7:08 So the first year that Caroline went to camp was before she was diagnosed diabetes. And I know it seems early, but the camp where my older two children had gone was you know, not a lengthy stay camp is about five nights, six days, and it was a church camp. But it was within, you know, reasonable driving distance from our house. And they offered a starter camp, the year that Caroline finished first grade. And it was a maybe a four night five day situation. So we sent her to that. And she had such a great experience. And so that just was on our radar like she was I just feel like camp is super important for all kids. So you know, we wanted to get her started as early as possible.   Stacey Simms  8:02 When she was then diagnosed with type one, did you hesitate sending her back.   Shelby Hughes  8:06 Now, um, I think she she was diagnosed in the middle of her second grade year. And the only hesitation was I was worried that the camp wouldn't accommodate her and would say no, she can't come we can't deal with that. So that was our only issue. And when we got in touch with the camp director, and she said no problem. You know, we'll we'll work it out. We were We were all ready to go.   Stacey Simms  8:33 Wow, that's great. All right, and we'll get into the details of what we had to we all have to do for those accommodations. And for us as parents to be able to just be able to sleep through the night ourselves when our kids are at camp. April. Tell me a little bit about your camp experience. How old were you when you went to camp? And did you have type one at the time already?   April Blackwell  8:54 Yeah, so I I have always with my nerdy persona, but I did go one summer I did a back to back space camp in California when that was still open. And the next week I went to diabetes, to very like different, you know, scenarios for a person with diabetes. And this was only about a year or so after my diagnosis. So I was still doing injections. I didn't have any basically no technology at all back in the dark ages. So I think in some ways that helps maybe because my parents weren't used to getting, you know, share data all day long. And so it sort of put that independence on me to you know, take care and manage my diabetes on my own. And I think that was a big step for me personally, just because I wanted to be like everyone else and have sleep overs and go to camp and stuff. So it was a big motivator for me to take my diabetes. He's on myself.   Stacey Simms  10:01 And I'm sorry, did you say how old you were when you went to that camp?   April Blackwell  10:04 I think I was like around 12 or 13.   Stacey Simms  10:07 Okay. Did you go back to diabetes camp? Did you go back to regular camp?   April Blackwell  10:13 I, I never went back to those two camps. Actually, I did some other like church camps and stuff. But my summers just seem to get really busy. So it was hard to fit in those other camps.   Stacey Simms  10:25 Yeah, that's the tough age. When she gets to be about 14. I think there's so much going on. Right? It's hard. And our camp experience, which I've shared before is that my daughter, like you, Shelby, my daughter went to this camp, my older child is three years older than Benny, and had a great time and would come home every summer and say, I can't wait for you to go. And I'd be like, there's no way he's going. And we were very fortunate, in my opinion, because it helped me, I don't know about Benny, but he was going to diabetes camp. And he was able to go when he was seven. So he went for a week to diabetes camp. And then the next summer, he went to diabetes camp for a week, and then his regular camp for two weeks. And I say we were lucky because it got me used to the idea of him being away understanding what needed to be done, even. And we'll get into this later, even adjusting basil rates for activity and things like that. But he went for two weeks when he was eight. We did not have share yet because it wasn't even around. And he just had his deck. No Did you have a Dexcom that first year he did not have a Dexcom that first year it was fingerstick only. And then the next year he had share he had Dexcom no share. And that next year at age nine, he went for a month and he has gone for a month every year since except for COVID. And this year, the camp is going to Israel for a month. That's the age group where they go to Israel. So we are dealing with a totally different in my opinion environment. To him, it's the same thing. But that's a different episode. So that's our summer camp experience. And it has been it has not been perfect Far from it. But it has been I think one of the seminal experiences of his childhood, and is certainly influenced him in a great way and given him a lot of confidence and independence. given me a lot of sleepless nights. Alright, Shelby, let me start with you, when your daughter was was going back to camp she was they were familiar with her, they knew what were some things that you talked to them about, to kind of get things, you know, set her up for success. Was there anything that you did at the time or learned since that made it a little easier for her and for the staff.   Shelby Hughes  12:28 So um, one of the things, they did have a full time nurse, which was great. And the nurse was very willing to be trained on all things pump related and CGM related. And she at the time had the Medtronic 670 g, which automatically adjusts her basil rate, as long as she's an auto mode. So I figured that would make things a little easier than people wouldn't have to be fooling with our pump, adjusting rates and whatnot. And also, I got, the director got me in touch with the cafeteria staff with the head of the dining hall. And she was fantastic. She sent me a list of everything that they were going to be serving every meal for the entire time. So that gave me the opportunity to, you know, give them some carb counts. So they were very willing to work with me in terms of, you know, figuring out what she was going to eat and and what the carb counts were.   Stacey Simms  13:34 April, I know, it was kind of a different time, as you said, you went you say no technology, but you had shots and you had your meter, which is tech. Did anybody help you? I mean, at 12, you probably were okay. But I would always assume that there might be a little supervision or kind of over the shoulder. Are you doing all right? Do you remember how it was handled? What you did?   Right back to April answering that question. But first Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dario. And over the years, I find we manage diabetes better when we're thinking less about all the stuff of diabetes tasks. And that's why I love partnering with people who take the load off on things like ordering supplies, so I can really focus on Benny, the Daario diabetes success plan is all about you. All the strips and lancets you need delivered to your door, one on one coaching so you can meet your milestones, weekly insights into your trends with suggestions for you on how to succeed, get the diabetes management plan that works with you and for you. Dario is published Studies demonstrate high impact clinical results, find out more go to my dario.com forward slash Diabetes Connections. Now back to April answering my question of what her camp did to kind of help keep her on track.   April Blackwell  14:49 Yes, so this is actually something I think is really great about space camp. To the point that it inspired me to become a counselor while I was in college, but they're just You know, a very, they have everything planned out and under control as you would maybe expect space camp to have. So we had if you're familiar with Star Trek, we had a sick bay. That was it was just part of the camp experience. And even though Space Camp isn't necessarily geared towards kids with health conditions, it became just a seamless part of the whole camp experience. So, you know, every before every meal, the whole group would just swing by sickbay. And anyone who needed to take meds or like me check my blood sugar, take a shot, we just go into like they Well, everyone else was playing kickball or something, you know, for a few minutes. And it, it was awesome, because it didn't make you feel singled out at all. And it was just part of the whole camp experience. So I think that's a really great feeling as a kid. And it allows you to have that moment with the nurse or doctor to have sort of a one on one conversation about any sort of dosing Delta's that you should incorporate for upcoming activities.   Stacey Simms  16:11 She'll be did your kiddo have a similar experience like that? Did they do anything?   Shelby Hughes  16:16 That was kind of the same thing. There were other kids that took meds before meals, and they would kind of divert to the nurse's clinic. And she would, I think, I don't think she would take her insulin before meals that I think that the nurse would check her blood sugar, make sure her you know, everything was good with their pump. And then after, after dinner, I think she would, she would head by there and the nurse would would help her figure out how much to put in her pump.   Stacey Simms  16:48 It was really reassuring to me, I remember starting to kind of plan this in January of the year he when when he went in, you know, July or August or whenever it was, and calling the medical people and saying how are we going to do this, you know, at eight years old, I need eyes on him to make sure that he's changing his pump site to make sure that his insulin cartridge is full, you know, trust but verify you're very independent, good kid, but still eight years old, you know, you're not gonna let him walk around camp by himself all the time doing everything. So she laughed and said, Oh, that whole cabin goes gets medication. That age, you know, and you forget that there are other kids with issues go into camp. And what we we didn't have to work it out at all. Because that cabin and not everybody, but you know, a bunch of the kids in that cabin would get in a golf cart. This is a very large camp, get on a golf cart, and go up to the infirmary, which I'm going to suggest which should be Star Trek themed as sick. But they would go to the infirmary every night. And so when he was eight, that very first year, what we decided was, he'd go up with them every night, and they would physically look at the pump, and make sure that it was an animist pump. So had a battery, no charge, but they would check the battery, they would check that it had insulin, at least for the night, that his pump site, you know, they kind of kept track was changed every three days or whatever. And it just made me feel better that they had eyes on him. And it made them feel better, as well, something we added in the next couple of years, as I realized that, frankly, they weren't on top of the site changes as much as I thought they would be because they trusted Benny, who's a very wonderful kid, but isn't going to change his instead of three days, unless somebody is reminding him, let's face it. So what we did was at meals at most camps, they have meds in the dining hall, because a lot of kids have to take medications with food, at least at our camp to have a table. So I said, Why don't you just bring the inset every three days and pretend it's like an antibiotic or an ADHD medication, like write it down. And then every three days here, let's watch you change it. And he loved it because he truly had did not have to think about it at all. And that really helped once we started incorporating it more as a regular kind of medication thing. It made a lot more sense for everybody. And it took us I don't want to say three years before we thought about one of the things that I always like to think about is I want to make it easy on the camp. And I'm curious April, if your parents I know it's kind of a different time or whatever. It wasn't that long ago. Did your parents talk to them ahead of time or try to figure out ways to make it easier on them or do any education of the staff?   April Blackwell  19:18 Yeah, definitely. I know they were in contact with the the nurses group at their at Space Camp, before we even signed up to go to camp to make sure it was something feasible because you need to get your hopes up about going into camp and then you know have to do a detour. So that was really important and also our our endocrinologists, our pediatric and it was so good with this stuff. So they had you know, these resource papers to be able to give to the nurses topics to talk about while you're there checking in how to like set up all your supplies and have backup supplies and So I, I know my parents use those resources and share those resources with the nurses. They're at Space Camp.   Stacey Simms  20:08 You know, I meant to ask, one of the things that I get asked a lot is how does your child carry supplies around camp? I'd be curious to know, April and again, I'll start with you. How did you do it? obviously different technology. Did you carry stuff everywhere you went? Did you have a central location.   April Blackwell  20:25 So the space camp in California was pretty small. So we, we had everything centrally located at the nurse's station. When I was a counselor at Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama. It was a bigger facility. And the part that I was actually a counselor at was a little ways away from where the nurse's station was. So if we had any kids with issues that would potentially need immediate attention, we just carried like a little backpack with us and had their supplies with us all the time. Sometimes we'd be out in the woods or swimming or you know, doing some other activities. So we just like every counselor carried a little backpack and we had our own stuff, but also our our camper stuff in there, too.   Stacey Simms  21:12 Yeah, that's great. How about you Shelby? Did your daughter carry stuff?   Shelby Hughes  21:15 She did. She had a little like a little sling back, you know, backpack where she just kept water and glucose tablets. She didn't carry major things like sight changes or insulin. That was all in the nurse's station. But yeah, just just emergency things.   Stacey Simms  21:37 We sent Benny with a Camelback, you know, the kind of backpack that you have water in. And that worked out well, for a couple years. Then he was like, yeah, forget it, just taking the sling bag. He liked to have inserts. Because the pool for a while was notorious. We did find some stuff that worked. Everybody's skin is different. And this is not an endorsement and it's not a paid endorsement. But I will endorse a state put medical patches has been the only thing that works for him. And like I said, everybody's skin is different. But for a long time he carried in sets just because the pool was such a pain for him. But also, you have to have reasonable expectations. I know you all are wonderful and your children are super responsible. But Benny got Viggo. He's gonna like best camper or over silly awards, at the end in their cabin. And he got like most likely to leave your bag everywhere. And they were always bringing him his bag. You know, it's just ridiculous. But as he got older, he got better at that. And you know, you do have to have your stuff with you. And now I don't know, it seems like everybody, all these teenagers carry bags, diabetes or not. They always have stuff with them, even the guy so it's not a big deal anymore. As much as I'm interested in your experience, too, as a counselor, what kind of things do you think set a camper up for success? And listen, when I'm talking about success, I don't mean that their blood sugar is 95 the whole time they're a camp, right? You're gonna go up, you're gonna go down, you're gonna have wonky numbers. But I mean, like they're able to have a good time with minimal interruptions. They're able to leave with confidence. Is there anything that kind of goes through your mind, as I say those things? Yeah, I   April Blackwell  23:09 think preparation is key. And not just logistically the supplies and the directions for the nurse. But actually practicing being away from your parents or whoever helps you manage your diabetes for some shorter period of time. And probably very dependent on the kid too. But just maybe spending the night at grandma's house or friend's house for a night or two, and seeing how everything works and how it goes. And it's also, I think, a little preparation for the parents. Because in my experience as a counselor, you know, even though I had diabetes, and I did have a couple campers that had diabetes, as well, you know, their parents would stay in a hotel that was close to site, even though most campers flew there to go to space camp, but their parents would stay in a hotel, they would check on him every night or at some time during the day. You know, they may even give them injections or boluses. They had one who sort of like pre loaded their kid before bed with a bunch of pudding. Because they always went low overnight, which to me sounds like maybe we should change some other settings. But that's not my call to make so right. You know, as counselors, we we need to just respect the wishes of the parents I think is really important. And so, I don't know if you know, having that practice beforehand, for both both sides of it, the camper and the parents, I think is a good idea beforehand.   Stacey Simms  24:47 Yeah, man, it's gonna be hard to do nothing and then go to a week or two weeks away if your kids never been out of the house or you shouldn't say it like that if your kids never spent an overnight somewhere. That's a great bit of advice. Shelby Any thoughts? I mean, is a bunch of questions there. But, you know, kind of to set up for success. Was there anything that you've learned over those years that your daughter was at this camp?   Shelby Hughes  25:09 Um, you know, I didn't think about it. But yeah, I think having them spend the night out before you, you know, shut them off for a week or more is good. Unfortunately, we had had some opportunities for Caroline to have sleep overs preceding the camp experience, so that that was good. And they weren't perfect. But you know, I think the goal is just to stay alive. And we're good.   Stacey Simms  25:39 We have a similar sense of humor to Shelby and I. So I know, I know, you have a sense of humor to April. It's just right. I mean, you know, we hate to be blunt, but you know that that's what everybody's scared of. Right? When you're sending your child off, and they they are fine, they are fine. They are   Shelby Hughes  25:57 now looking looking at CGM data after she came back from Camp, and I was horrified to see that she was, you know, running high throughout the night, we figured out later it was they were giving her like those Lara bars, Richard 25 carbs, you know, before bed, so, of course, she was running high all night, but you know, it was fine. She she had a good time, and she was alive. And that was what that was what mattered.   Stacey Simms  26:31 And I think this is a really good time to talk about expectations. Right? And, and what what are your goals for your child with diabetes going to a regular camp, and I'll kind of take an opportunity to speak on that, you know, if your goal is going to be that your child stay in a very tight range, you're going to set yourself up for disappointment most of the time. Now, some kids are rock stars, and for whatever reason, you know, they're they're able to do this, some camps are going to help you with that. But I always tell parents, you know, camp is not the time to worry about that. Incredible a one see that you're going to run and post on social media, but you shouldn't be doing anyway. Campus, the time for your child to learn about themselves, to stretch the limits, to push to make mistakes, to to figure out who they are when they're not at home. And the flip side of that is for you to figure out who the heck you are without your kids around. It is a gift and a full month. And I'm not an endocrinologist. So ask your doctor a full month at a slightly higher time in range right or slightly, excuse me slightly lower time and range a slightly higher blood sugar average, balanced with the incredible life experience that your kid is going to get is worth it. It's not you know, we're not talking about kids running at 300 for a month, if that's happening, you need to adjust things you need to I'll talk about checking in and things like that. But I know I'm in a bit of a soapbox here. But I really believe that giving Benny the opportunity to make mistakes and to learn at camp. And you know, I'll be I'll be very open because I know people tiptoe around this. You know, his agencies throughout his whole life have been fine. Sometimes they've been great. They've been amazing. Sometimes they've been minor. But a camp has average blood sugar was usually and this is over seven or eight years, anywhere between like 150 and 200. Sometimes I think one year is he came home and it was like 220. And that's when we realized we also need to make some changes, the hormones were insane. And we need to pour like gallons of insulin on him. Some of you heard that and are calling Child Protective Services. Right? You think I'm the worst? I am the world's worst diabetes. Mom. Some of you heard that and say, Oh my God, that's doable. I can I can live with that. You've got to figure this out. Because if you think you're going to send you if you think you're going to send your child to diabetes camp, and they're going to be 83 the whole time. They're there. You are in for disappointment. All right. I'll get off the soapbox. April. I saw you nodding. I'm not a terrible parent. Right?   April Blackwell  29:07 Absolutely. And my kids aren't quite old enough to send to camp yet there are only two and five. Oh, gosh, I'm not quite to the center camp age yet. But you know, they have spent nights away at grandma and grandpa's house before so even even though they don't have diabetes, you know, the worry still creeps in and, you know, making sure there's instructions or you know, times was really important to me for my first hit. And now with a second I'm like, whatever, you know, just have fun. Like, hopefully they get a nap in there at some point. Yes. So I imagine with diabetes, it's still very, you know, maybe amped up a little bit just because there are, you know, real consequences eventually for for numbers. But, you know, I think that's important to realize and kind of pull back that You know, when you're looking at how much a kid can gain from a camp experience, you just you can't put a number, even a blood sugar number on that. So as long as they're safe and healthy, I think it's an absolutely necessary experience.   Unknown Speaker  30:17 Wow. How about you, Shelby?   Shelby Hughes  30:21 Well, I was going to talk to the fact that at diabetes camp, which she also went to that same summer, that first year she went to non diabetes camp, she probably her her blood sugar was probably a lot higher at diabetes camp, because they're, they're more, I guess, more cautious about them being too low. So she told me, they would check her blood sugar and say, Oh, you're 150 here have a snack.   Unknown Speaker  30:51 Same thing.   Shelby Hughes  30:53 And we really we joke about that now, like, she'll say, Oh, I'm at 150. I should have a snack. But I can't remember the question. What am   Stacey Simms  31:02 Oh, that's okay. Um, and I think that's a good just quickly, I think this is really good to talk about context. Right? Because 150 at diabetes camp, have a snack. Makes sense. There are dozens of kids there. They are doing lots of activities. They are trying to keep everybody safe. They probably you know, at the time, I know every campus kind of trying to keep up here. Nobody's monitoring everybody's CGM. Right, so it's totally different setup. But when you're at home, 150 have a snack is funny. Because you know, she doesn't need it. Right. The question was the balance of running a little higher and being okay with that at camp?   Shelby Hughes  31:40 Oh, absolutely. You know, I think camp is, I guess, because I went to summer camp for a month, every year when I was a kid from the time I was nine till I was 15. And it shaped who I am today, I would not be the same person. If I had not had overnight camp experience. And I see my kids friends that don't go away to camp. And now they're 18. And they're state date. Some of them struggle with going away to college. And I feel like if they've gone to summer camp, they might be doing a little bit better. So I guess that's, I'm a, I'm a huge fan of sleepaway camp, you know, no matter what. So I agree, running a little bit higher to have that life experience is definitely worth it.   Stacey Simms  32:34 One thing I want to make sure to mention, I talked about this towards the beginning of our little roundtable here, and I wanted to circle back to it was adjusting basal rates, because when your diabetes camp, you know, they'll send you home with the form of we adjusted everything. Usually they knock the kid down 10 to 15% less basil, because it's so active. But by the time diabetes camp was over, Benny usually was getting 25% less insulin because they were so active. And it's really hilly, and they do lots of swimming, and there's hiking all this stuff. So what we would do is use that as a baseline for, you know, regular camp, I loved it, because it was like a great test for that week. And then he'd go for the month, we found regular this regular camp to be even more intense than diabetes camp. So we were always adjusting. And one of the things we did we put in place in the second year and going forward was, I would check in three days after he was there. They would call me if there was anything to deal with before that, they would call me three days in. And then every Sunday, we would have a check in. And usually the check in was like I need deodorant or stamp serve is ridiculous. It was never It was almost never about diabetes. But it was a good way for me to check in and say Do we need to adjust basil? Is everything going? Okay, how our supplies looking? That kind of stuff. So I know that she'll be your daughter was at Camp a little bit less time. But did you talk to them about when to call you or checking in on anything like that?   Shelby Hughes  33:58 The first year she went, we didn't have any scheduled check ins. It was such a short period of time, but the nurse was really, really great and would text me and just say, you know, everything's looking good. She changed her site today. And, you know, just just a brief, you know, let let mom know that things are things are okay. We didn't, you know, we didn't really have the need to do any formal. Any. And there were no times that we really needed to make adjustments because the the time there was so short.   Stacey Simms  34:29 April, I want to ask you about that kind of as a counselor on the other end, because you would be the one getting the phone call. I'm not gonna ask you as you said, You've got to listen to what the parents want. So I'm not asking to make a judgment call here. But what was helpful that the parents that some parents did that you would recommend, was there anything that they did that you'd say yes, that's a good one.   April Blackwell  34:51 I think preparing beforehand and being ready to talk to the counselor. I know every camp is a little different and how we did it at base camp was each team would have two counselors. So like a morning and afternoon, evening, and having a face to face with the person who's going to be next to your kid for eight or nine hours a day or more, I think is really important. And you know, it also kind of calibrates the counselor with how serious this could be, things to watch out for, because they may not be that familiar with it. You know, when when to call the nurse, because even that may be a little bit foreign. If you're not familiar, maybe specific signs your child has for going low or going high or times to check on them. I think that face to face time is really important if you're if you're able to do it. So I know my parents did that with my counselor. When I went to space camp, I remember them sitting down and talking to her face to face. And I did it with several of my campers as well. So I think it's really important.   Stacey Simms  35:59 That is that's really good. One of the things that I also like to talk about is there are very few non negotiables for me, when I send Benny to camp or my daughter for that matter, but I do have one. And this is the kind of thing where I tell the camp upfront look, you know, things are gonna happen. diabetes can be wonky. Usually Benny can troubleshoot you don't have to call me. And like most camps, they're gonna call you for kids running a fever, or you know, anything happens. anything out of the ordinary. But my non negotiable has always been if he throws up more than once in 24 hours, they must call me because more than Lowe's overnight, which I know most people are terrified. I'm not that worried about Lowe's overnight. You know, it's it's rare that those are actually emergencies. And Benny always sleeps at camp with a, you know, a drink by his side or glucose tabs by his side, which I should have mentioned up front. This is I'm getting off topic here. But one of the best things we did for both my kids was we found these next two bunk shelves. They're like fabric shelves or you know, bunk bed shelves. There's all sorts of different kinds of just, you bring them to camping and shove them into the bed. And then they had a little shelf next to them. So when Benny goes on sleep overs, I don't even think he does anymore. He's 16. And it's a different world for him. But when he was younger, he always had a Gatorade next time it's sleep over. So if you woke up and felt weird, our rule is drink the Gatorade, then check your blood sugar. And that's not how we do it at home. It's like the 150 have a snack. I would never say drink 25 carbs before he checked your blood sugar. But at a sleepaway camp, just do it and check and we can figure it out later. And he does the same thing at camp. But I'm worried about highs, I worried about dehydration, I worried about them not really knowing if he was high, because nobody was following him on Dexcom. They looked at his blood sugar when he was younger. So I was terrified of decay and things like that. Never happened never got close. But that was my one non negotiable. And that'll be my non negotiable for this summer, too. Do you all have anything like that? April, I'll start with you. You know,   April Blackwell  38:02 I don't know that my parents ever did just because I didn't physically have any symptoms like that outside the camp. And I think that really dictated what they discussed with the nurse and the counselors there. So I know that I did carry glucose tablets, those like really gross square ones that are in like, packaging. I don't even know if they have those anymore. But I remember sticking those in my I even got special shorts for when I went to space camp that were like cargo shorts. So they had extra pockets for the Yeah, but I don't remember them saying any specific symptoms like that. To the staff there.   Stacey Simms  38:43 Did and I should have asked you this earlier. Did anybody have to supervise you? I mean, at 12? You were probably independent enough, but I'm just curious, do you remember if anybody like watched you do injections or your meter over your shoulder or anything like that?   April Blackwell  38:57 I just checked my blood sugar at the nurse's station. So the nurse or sickbay? The nurse always did. You know, look at the number I assume she you know, processed that and and thought about the injection I was giving if it made sense. But no, I don't remember anyone supervising me really close? Yeah,   Stacey Simms  39:20 I think that's just kid age, you know, appropriate different stuff. You know, I don't think anybody really watches Benny anymore. But when he was eight, the I know, they looked over his shoulder. They didn't know what they were looking for. You know, I tried to give as much education as I could. But yeah, that's   April Blackwell  39:35 a good distinction, actually. Because, you know, at Space Camp when I was a counselor, we had kids from age seven all the way to 18. And you've definitely treated each age group differently and looked for different things. And it was even a different sort of mindset for the counselors. You know, if you were a counselor for the younger age group, you usually just work with the younger age group. And it was different set of counselors that worked with older age groups. So yeah, you kind of just get you trained yourself on what seven and eight year olds need from a counselor, which is more like a mothering thing than what 17 and 18 year olds?   Stacey Simms  40:14 I mean, at that age, you're still like, are you using soap in the shower? Like, you know, there's all sorts of different things that poor counselors have to do shall be saved, you have to have a non negotiable or anything like that. Um,   Shelby Hughes  40:26 you know, it's funny, because I got, I think, kind of a set of directions from you before I sent Caroline to camp that you had, you gave me like a draft of what you had given to Ben? Oh, yeah. And so I can't remember if there was anything in there that was you know, about vomiting. Okay, so I must have had that in there. But I don't remember, particularly going over that with the nurse or with the counselor. Just because it's, it's honestly, it's not ever we've not ever had an issue. vomiting is never caused any kind of a of a problem for us. So, and back then I was still new. So I really probably wasn't even on my radar. Yeah, let now there there were no non negotiables. But now thinking back maybe there should have been fun. You know,   Stacey Simms  41:22 I think it's all a question too, of trusting the medical staff and you had already had kids go through that. So like I said, they're going to call they called me, you know, for my daughter hit her head on the side of the pool. They call you for the he's got a rash they call generally, they're going to call you for those things. And we've where I got a knock wood or something Benny's never had even large ketones maybe once or twice in 14 years, he's never had vomiting associated with dehydration or things like that. Knock on wood. We've never had that problem. But for some reason that stuck in my mind is something like, Uh huh. This is going to be the thing that happens at camp. And you know, I am I'm kind of Cavalier and I make jokes, and I worry a lot. Right? You, you can't help it, you still send them. But and I think that's just a mom thing. I mean, April, your kids are too little for camp, and they don't have diabetes. But you've got to worry a little when you send people to grandma's house. That's just mom stuff.   April Blackwell  42:21 Exactly. Yep. Absolutely.   Stacey Simms  42:23 Yeah. And mentioning the the forums, Shelby, I forgot that I did that, you know, I have these like, they're nothing. It's nothing that you can download. It's nothing formal. Shelby and I have known each other a long time. So I just sent her my stuff. But one thing that was very helpful if your endo is on board with this, we typed up kind of an action plan. And I'll look at it and make a note at the end of this episode, or in the show notes. It wasn't super detailed. It was kind of more if this, then that, like Benny will do this. And we hope you'll support with that or like really insets to the med table or go into sick beta, check your blood sugar, those kinds of things are written out. And then we had our endo sign it. Now, my endo, God love him will pretty much sign anything I give him at this point, right? I mean, it's been 14 years, he knows we're okay. I'm not going to give him anything crazy. He would tell me if he thought it was off base. But this was fantastic. Because the magic words are always my doctor says. And if the camp sees that the endo has signed off on this plan. Not only are they going to probably follow it more closely, they're going to be much more reassured. Because a medical professional has looked at it. So I found that to be I forgot all about that Shelby, thanks for bringing that up. I found that to be really good. And I did that my kids went to day camp to and Benny went to you know, regular day camp. And that was super helpful for them. And we're actually doing to get in for Israel. You know, and my endo will Cyrus endo will sign off on it. So that's pretty good.   April Blackwell  43:50 I was just gonna say I think using your endo as a resource can be really helpful because if it's a local camp, they may have other kids in the in the practice that are going or have gone and have tips for interacting with the staff there. You know, the internet is also a great place to look up some Reddit forums on certain camps and see what's going on. And, you know, there's other diabetes specific forums to ask questions about specific camps and if you are able to talk to a parent that is sent a kid to a specific camp i think that's that's worth a lot, actually. Because Yeah, inside scoop, so   Stacey Simms  44:30 definitely. And it's funny with our camp we had there were two kids who are already at that camp during the current time with type one and one of them did not want anyone else to know. He, I think that's a very tough way to go. We respected it. My daughter knew she was her age at the older group, and we respected it and nobody, you know, did anything. But I think that to me, I would be extremely uncomfortable sending my child to camp with him wanting to keep his diabetes a secret from as many people as possible, because you never know who is going to need to help. And another one of my, I would call it a non negotiable but I think a kid who's going to sleepaway camp who's got type one should know how to check his or her own blood sugar using a meter. Because things happen, even if you're Dexcom, you know, all over 24 seven, gotta know how to do your meter, got to know how to use your pump, gotta know how to change your own insets even if there's help there. And and I think you have to be a kid who's gonna raise your hand and ask for help. And that's something that you can teach. But you've also got to know your kid will do. And I see everybody nodding Shelby, was that something that you either you knew your kid would do? Or you had you thought about that?   Shelby Hughes  45:44 Well, Caroline's pretty responsible. I mean, I'm not gonna say 100% compliant, you know, she still forgets to bolus and she's, you know, she's 11 now, and she's independent at school. And still, she'll forget to balls for lunch, and, you know, whatever. But I felt like she was responsible enough to do those things. She, she, she knew how to check her blood sugar. I taught her how to change her sights. She doesn't probably her biggest issue is asking for help, because she does not want to seem different. And she doesn't want to call attention to herself. She just choose a shy kid. She does not like calling attention to herself about anything, including diabetes. But I think that if she really needed help, she would speak up.   April Blackwell  46:38 You know, I don't have a kid with diabetes myself. So it's a little bit hard for me to say, but I think it would be something great to tell the counselor when you meet with them, and just say, hey, like, they're not gonna tell you when they need help. I know, I actually experienced that myself. I remember actually, the moment we pulled up to diabetes camp and got off the bus and there was like a, everyone check their blood sugar moment, and my blood sugar was in the 40s. Just because I was like, so overwhelmed about going to camp with all these diabetics that I had never been around that many people a day. And she was like, do you feel low? And I was like, Yeah. Like, it was just, it was like, almost out of body experience. So camp itself can kind of maybe mask those, you know, symptoms or times when someone would feel comfortable speaking up, just being overwhelmed at being at camp and being excited about it could change a little bit. So it's it's something good to bring up with the counselor. I think   Stacey Simms  47:41 I do, too. We also had the counselors kind of check on him every night. And it wasn't Benny is your diabetes. Okay, what's going on? like we talked about it so that he would just say, Benny, are you okay? Like, Benny? Are you set? And what that meant was? Is your pump charged? Does your pump have insulin in it? Is your blood sugar? Like, are you feeling okay? Do you need me for anything? And so it didn't become this big conversation every night. But I still felt and I you know, again, I see you guys know, I say all the time about Benny, he's a great kid, and he's doing really well. But you know, he forgets he's staying down. He will wake up at two in the morning. Oh, my pumps, no charge, you know, things like that. So to set him up for success, we really felt like having the counselors involved, but not overly, you know, in his face about diabetes was very helpful. I don't know what really went on. This is my fantasy of what I think happened to camp I'm not sure because they tell me these things happen. But you know, Ben, he's gonna turn 25 and write his own book and it's gonna be like, nothing happened the way you thought I shouldn't say that. Like, that's terrible to put in people's   Unknown Speaker  48:42 but I do have you know, I   Stacey Simms  48:43 have my doubts that my perfect systems are executed perfectly.   Shelby Hughes  48:49 Alright, before I let you all go, is there anything you want to say any good stuff about camp anything we missed? You know, nothing, nothing earth shattering but after two years of regular camp, and two years of diabetes camp, and then of course last year, there were no pants. She was we before COVID she had made the decision that she only wanted to go to diabetes camp. I think and I and I we respected that. You know, she and I asked her why and she said I just don't like being the only one there with diabetes. So of course this summer now you know, everything's up in the air. The the one camp that we are looking at is now going to a modified sleepaway. Maybe I don't even know so I think we're just gonna skip camps all together this year, too, which is so unfortunate because she's getting to be the age where she won't want to get a camp when she's older anyway, but that's it. She just she she prefers diabetes camp now because she's not singled out. Cool.   Stacey Simms  49:57 April, any last words?   April Blackwell  50:00 I would just say one thing to watch out for is even if a camp generically allows or supports people at type 1 diabetes to come, there may be certain activities that are still restricted. I know at Space Camp, for instance, the older kids were allowed to go scuba diving in our underwater astronaut trainer. But that was not allowed if you had type 1 diabetes. So I guess, you know, think about kind of the activities that are going to happen at camp. And that's going to somehow negatively affect your your T one DS sort of mental state on that, because I think it would have for me, you know, being that singled out, not just check your blood sugar, but you can't do this activity. So be sure to think about that. And then the other thing is just, probably your kid's gonna be fine. And if they run into any problems, it's probably not even diabetes related. It's like, you know, they have a problem with this friend, or, you know, they're homesick or they're missing their dog or something. So keep that in mind that there's a lot more to kids than diabetes.   Stacey Simms  51:08 Wow. And you know, that's such a great point about the scuba, because there usually is an alternative. For big time adventure stuff. There isn't always so it's good to check. But I'll give another example. Two years ago, gosh, I can't believe how much time has gone by the big activity for Benny's age group at this camp included like this cave thing. And I don't know why it was cave swimming. I don't remember. But it was tiny spaces. And the way they described it like I wanted to, I wanted to throw up just because forget diabetes. I was so claustrophobic thinking about it. But my daughter had done it. Because she went to this camp. And we talked about it. And I was super uncomfortable. Like I let him do anything. But like holy cow, if you get stuck in a cave, like Oh, just type one. You know, they were they didn't say anything to me. I we didn't get that forward. I even asked them I asked Benny. And he was like mom, no way. I just sounds like a hassle for everybody. And he just didn't like the idea of it. So we really dodged that bullet. But there was an alternative program for any kid who didn't want to do it. Because it's it really was kind of scary sounding. And so that was great. But if you were you know, and the alternative program wasn't playing cards in the, you know, inside, it was doing another outside fun activity. But that's a great idea to check because there are there are going to sometimes be limitations, especially at camps that do not cater to people with type one who don't have all the facilities and all the knowledge. And we have to learn sometimes that there's there's going to have to be an alternative. There's going to have to be an adjustment that we in our children have to make. Does it stink? Yeah. But sometimes I think it's the price you pay for an overall wonderful life lesson and experience. Later, ladies, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate your time to share your experiences. It was so great. And I shall be I hope camp. Hope diabetes camp happens. or different things, you know, go this summer, but but keep us posted.   Shelby Hughes  52:59 All right. Thanks for having me.   Unknown Speaker  53:01 Oh my gosh, thank you all. Alright, thanks, Stacy.   Stacey Simms  53:10 Lots more to share. I'm going to talk about food, carb counting glucagon training, and share and follow at sleepaway camp. In just a moment. I want to add a couple of things to the end of this episode. But first Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dexcom. And one of the most common questions I get is about helping children become more independent. These transitional times are tricky elementary to middle middle to high school. I mean, you know what I mean? Using the Dexcom really makes a big difference. For us. It is not all about sharing follow, although that is very helpful. Think about how much easier it is for a middle schooler to just look at their Dexcom rather than do four to five finger sticks at school, or for a second grader to just show their care team the number before Jim. At one point Benny was up to 10 finger sticks a day and not having to do that makes his management a lot easier for him. It's a lot easier to spot the trends and use the technology to give your kids more independence. Find out more at Diabetes connections.com and click on the Dexcom logo.   Little bit more about camp and some tips and tricks that we learned along the way. Shelby mentioned the menu. I did this as well, I got the menu from Camp. And most camps know what they're serving every single day or they have you know, very even if they don't have a strict menu, they know the foods that they will be serving. So go ahead and ask for that. I broke it all down. I made a calendar is like a stamp that I laminated it, but let me close enough. I think they use it for the first year or two. But Benny found it was much easier to just guesstimate on carbs. I mean, he's that kind of kid. They were comfortable with him doing it. And one of the things that we started doing because honestly most camps serve very high carb foods. Think about what camp foods are going to be for kids, right you're you're serving them. food to sometimes hundreds of kids, some of these camps are very big. So it's gonna be quick and cheaper and full of carbs. So what I had him start doing was as soon as you walk into the dining hall, give yourself 25 carbs, you know, you're getting 25 carbs, and then do the rest after. And that really helped him at least get started. So he wasn't going that much higher than he would have, you know, after a big breakfast or things like that. That was very helpful. It is never going to be an exact science at these camps. Some places will have a helper. I know some parents have been very lucky. And they have a counselor who will sit or you know, a staff member who will swing by Ben, he hated that the first year, he had to show them what he was eating. And I didn't think about how difficult that would be, especially for a kid who likes to eat, and is on the bigger side. He got some blowback. And that was actually not a great decision that we made. I'm not sure I would do that again. You know, if you wanted second helpings, a lot of times he got an eyebrow raised at him. Luckily, he's a pretty confident cool kid. We talked about it, he shook it off, and he ate what he wanted to, but, but we had some blowback on that, that I had to discuss with them at at the end of the summer. We learned they learned it was it was a good experience all around. But just a heads up that those kind of things can happen. glucagon training. This is another non negotiable. I didn't mention it. But I think this is really important. The newer glucagons, Baqsimi, Gvoke Hypopen that I talked about, make this much easier. But I did the red box training, you know, those of you who were diagnosed, gosh, it's really only a year or two that those products have been out. So those of you diagnosed two, three years ago, know what I mean, you take the red box out, and you have to teach everybody how to swirl don't shake, you know how to inject that needle. It's much easier now. But I think it's important to talk to the camp about who would who would administer that. And we decided it would not be his counselor. The counselors in the cabin are all connected to the infirmary. And somebody is on call 24 seven, so they would walkie talkie. And what we decided was if they felt felt they needed it, they would call the infirmary to come down. And they could be there in less than five minutes. I mean, it was really something that we felt good about. I think with vaccine me now and hypo Penn, whichever you choose, I would be fine with a counselor doing it. I just figured with the red box stuff. Everybody messes that up. I mean, so many studies show that most people even more trained, don't do it correctly. So I kind of stopped training people on it, which is why I legitimately Yes, it's a commercial. But I'm so glad to have alternatives. Because it's not safe not to train people on that and never had to use it. But that's another non negotiable. And let's just talk for a minute about share and follow. Sometimes the decision is made for you on this because there's no Wi Fi or cell signal at camp. Benny's camp is in the middle, we call it the middle of the middle of nowhere. Wi Fi service is terrible cell service is pretty much non existent. Another carrier has a better luck there. You know Verizon is okay. But we have at&t that sort of thing. The first year he went to camp, he didn't even have Dexcom. As I mentioned, the next year he didn't have share. So by the time he was going back to camp for the third year, I was like, I'm not gonna use shared camp, it wasn't even a concern. It wasn't even a thought. And I get a lot of parents who look at me like I'm absolutely bananas for not sharing. So here's what I have to say about that. I actually think it's better overall, if you can let your child go to camp without the share and follow. Now, you've got to talk to the counselors about the beeping, you know, Benny had his receiver, always next to him in bed. And what that means if he's beeping overnight, right, if he's low, and it's urgent, low goes off, they've got to make sure he's okay. But they're in a cabin together. They don't need to remote monitor him. They're in the same room with him. So they're gonna hear that beeping. So I always felt okay about that. And then we use the T slim pump. So the CGM is right on the pump. So you don't need the receiver anymore. But I did a talk about camp earlier this year. And I had a mom and I didn't I don't think about this, because we don't use Omnipod. She said, I have to use the phone. We don't have a receiver. Our camp has a policy, no screens, no screens, even a phone is a screen. So I immediately was thinking how is she going to do this. And I think I would rather have my child who is used to using Dexcom. Use the technology, you don't have to take the Dexcom away, right. So use the phone as the receiver because the Bluetooth will still work, haven't put it on airplane mode or whatever. But the Bluetooth will still work in the phone, the alarms will still go off, talk to the camp about, hey, she's not playing games, they're not taking photos, make sure your kid is following the rules. If you don't have a receiver, and the phone is all you've got, I think that that is better and more realistic than expecting a child who's used a Dexcom either since day one, or for a couple of years to go back to finger sticks. You're just not going to get the results that you want. I mean, let's be real. As I said in that commercial, I just said you know you're not going to do the middle schoolers not going to do the finger sticks if they've got the Dexcom Why would they do So those kind of accommodations can really help. But in terms of the parents following along, here's the question, if the camp lets you do this, and you think it's vitally important, you guys have to set up a plan with camp. If it's 2am, and the low alarm goes off, Who are you calling? What are you doing? Right? Who are you alerting, they already know, they're already on it. And if you want to double check, pay, that's your prerogative as a parent, if the camp agrees to it. You just have to have a plan. I would not know who to call, I guess I would call the infirmary. And I couldn't call the cabin, you have to kind of figure out those things. And I know we're getting really long. But just one more quick thing. I have seen this happen at our local diabetes camp. If your child uses non FDA approved technology, you nightscout folks know what I'm talking about you openaps people, I see you out there, you have to have a conversation with the diabetes camp, about whether they will be allowed to use it. Now, this is years old of this conversation. So most diabetes camps have settled it. I talked to a mom who loops with Omni pod, which is not FDA approved right now about what to disclose to her regular summer camp. Isn't that an interesting question? It's not FDA approved. But she's sending them there with the loop. Because it's better, she gets better control, then the Omnipod by itself. So, you know, my advice was to kind of explain it to them, you'd have to go into all the details about you know, big red flashing light, this is FDA, this is not FDA approved, blah, blah, blah. But I thought that was a really interesting question. Maybe we'll put that in our survey this week. Or I'll ask in the Facebook group, you know, how much do you disclose to people who don't really understand and don't need to really understand, you know, she she needs to know that if the Reilly link craps out or gets wet, you know, that kind of thing at camp, she has to have a plan B. And I think that's fine. But man, you know, the Do It Yourself crowd is fantastic. You know, I love you. But when you've got people who have liability issues because they're taking care of your kids, I'd be interested in hearing some of those stories and how you've done it and maneuvered and made everybody comfortable. Okay, well, thanks for sticking around. thank you as always to my editor John Bukenas from  audio editing solutions. Thank you for listening. We've got a classic episode coming up in just a couple of days. Advice for taking diabetes, to Disney to Disney World and Disneyland because those vacations are unlike many others, and they're very expensive. So how do you do it? We'll talk about it. I'm Stacey Simms. I'll see you back here in just a couple of days. Until then, be kind to yourself.   Announcer 1:02:42 Diabetes Connections is a production of Stacey Simms Media.   Benny  1:02:46 All Rights Reserved all wrongs avenged.  

Forever causing reactions in baking science, chemical leavening systems are essential to a number of baked goods. Typically made up of a food-grade base, a leavening acid, and an inert filler like starch, they must be blended at just the right ratio into your formula for success. Here to dive into the science of chemical leavening systems and how to navigate baking with them is your BAKED in Science host, Mark Foerke. Joining him are April Welsh, R&D manager, and Laurie Borden, culinary scientist, with Nutriati. Nutriati is an ingredient technology company that specializes in plant-based protein flours and products made from chickpeas, making them an ideal choice for gluten-free products. So April and Laurie spend quite a bit of time working with chemical leaveners—a key ingredient in formulas without gluten to help to trap and hold yeast. Properly balancing leavening systems and getting the desired rise out cakes, breads and cookies can be tricky. Mark, April and Laurie discuss their experiences baking, testing, troubleshooting and formulating. A few topics covered are: — Tools to check your leavening system after baking — Baking powder vs. acids and sodium bicarbonate — Other ingredients in your formula that affect leavening — Finding the right ratio — Use in dry mixes and troubleshooting “tunneling” — Uncommon chemical leaveners For more help formulating with chemical leaveners, check out our page covering usage and reaction rates for common bases and acids: https://bakerpedia.com/processes/chemical-leavening-formulation/ And keep an eye out for part two of our chemical leavening conversations!

So April fool's joke byother nature was lingering so I got cozy with some coffee and I guess people outside got cozy with the law. Lol I was wired on caffeine tripping about credit one being too much of a catfish Capital one card. Like they are real sketchy. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Want to be published in 2021 - in the Bare Books Indie Flash Fiction Anthology?As regular listeners will know, Bare Books Podcast introduces indie authors to their readers.  It’s all about the writing. We love that we get to amplify and highlight Indie authors and their work. We meet and talk to authors that paint their written words a very different colour through conversation. And as wonderful as all this is, and it is.. we want to do more.  So April and I got our heads together and made it so…Starting in January, a new competition for a new year lets try and keep those writing resolutions for 2021.Bare Books Podcast presents Indi Flash Fiction.It’s a fortnightly flash fiction writing competition, of between 500 and 1000 words, not one word longer, based on our writing promptsWe will give out the writing prompts and their deadlines in a moment, so be ready with your pen and paper.It’s free to enter.The winners will have their story recorded and broadcast on the podcast in full. Either narrated by yourself if you’re brave enough, or by either April or Myself, it’s your choice. We will publish a link to any of your author information in the show notes.We will also include the winners in a Bare Books Indie Flash Fiction Anthology to be published later in 2021. Really looking forward to seeing you all in print there. January Sales - deadline 30/12/20Just sick of it - deadline 13/01/21It’s complicated - deadline 27/01/21Come on, open the door - deadline 10/02/21Locked - deadline 24/02/21Never thought I’d curse the day - deadline 10/03/21Why are you blushing? - deadline 24/03/21Don’t be embarrassed, it’s normal - deadline 07/04/21Under the bed - deadline 21/04/21   

Welcome back to another episode of the crazy mind of George and today's is going to be a doozy. So ladies strap in to listen to this one, man, get ready to be put in your place. I have two of the most powerful women that I know in the world of digital media marketing, running companies, leading from the heart. First being moms, superheroes, super women. I don't know how they do it. I'm going to humbly sit by and take a lot of lessons today, but we're going to have some awesome conversations about story relationships, community, and how to best do that. So without further ado, I would love to welcome my two friends to the show. So Melanie and April, thank you for being here.  I know we're all going to talk over each other and it's just part of the fun. I think it would happen even in person, Melanie and I have done that to each other. We just start yelling at each other. It's all love. It's all love.It's all love. And  I'm into my first cup of coffee, so my energy will get greater and greater as we go because these 3:00 AM workouts are kicking my butt. And they're good. And let it be an integrity. I wake up at three 30. I get to the gym at three 45, but it's still got a three in it. So I call it 3:00 AM.See, as long as you guys say it counts, I'm good. I'm going to literally be teeing up conversations for me to get permission slips all day I'm like they said it was okay. They said it was okay. They said it was okay. So here's what I want to do. I love asking questions right out of the gate. And I'm going to put you both on the spot really quick and April, you're going to go first. So right before we started today, we were talking about,  April, you're coming up on like your five year anniversary of like when you launched your community, when you get into this. So my question for you is looking back over the last five years or even your entire career, what is the biggest mistake you've ever made in business? And what did you learn?April:   Well, probably two things I would say in sort of mistakes. One is kind of more broad scoped and the other, one's probably a little bit more tactical. But the broad scope one is feeling, and I still make this mistake to this day. So I'm still learning after 25 years of being an entrepreneur. But I would say the biggest mistake is just trying to rush the process.I'm a very impatient person when it comes to my own success and I get really. You know, like in a hurry, like why can't this happen? Like, go ahead and make this, you know, it's big visions, I'm a visionary. And I see these things that I know creating, and I want them to happen tomorrow. And I've been no way for 25 years, my entire career, you know, just knowing that there's a longer road in front of me, but wanting to constantly shorten the path.And I need to remember, and hopefully this will be, you know, helpful for others. If you're feeling that way. To really just enjoy the journey. You know, I teach around storytelling and so that's kind of the beauty of storytelling is enjoying the journey. And then you have the story to tell, but if we're rushing it all the time, which I tend to do in my own life, then you miss the story.You miss the lessons, right? So that's kind of the broad scope. One is I still to this day, catch myself doing that. And I constantly have to reign myself back in and just remind myself to enjoy the journey and pay attention to the stories, because those are the things that I need to learn so that I can go and share those with my audience.The more tactical thing that I would say that I've really learned. And this one I'm clear on, I wish I had hired help sooner. The faster, you can get some assistance and help in your business, even if it's putting your children to work for you, you know, or your neighbor, your babysitter, which is what I, how I started.I literally employed my babysitter first., and then just eventually have worked my way up to some employees. Now that has been crucial to free me up. To go and create and do more things actually create and do the things that I genuinely love doing and less of the things that totally bog me down. So if I could give a piece of advice to anyone, truly, no matter where you are, whether you're starting, you know, where I was five years ago, starting a brand new thing, or you've been at it for a while.You're kind of always going to tell yourself you can't afford it, you know, but you really can't not afford it. Getting help in your business. And that could be hiring coaches and mentors, and it can also be just hiring staff for virtual assistants, whatever it may be.  George: Totally. Yeah. Well, I think, I think, and we'll unpack that a little bit more once I asked Melanie, but I think, you know, it's what you said is you can't afford not.Not too, right? It's the, it's the trap, right? It's that stagnation that happens when we get there and by the way, for everybody listening and listen, I'm not a financial guy. I have one, but tax write offs, depending on what state you live in, you can employ your kids. I'd look it up. Google is your amazing friend. Check out those write-offs because there's nothing like putting family, child labor into a fact and teaching them lessons as we do it.  Like, but it's all love. It's all love. All right, Melanie,  you got the gap. You got the break, you know, what's coming. And I actually can't wait to hear yours, Melanie.So Melanie, when you think back. And just for everybody to give a little context, I'm going to let them share their story of like, how they've got into this and where they are. But Melanie came from a soul sucking industry into a heart centered industry. And so I am sure there are some lessons that came from being an out. I was talking about her being an attorney by the way, to now being where she is now. But Melanie, I would love to hear from you. And like when you look back, like, what do you think one of your biggest mistakes was? And what lessons did you learn? What do you carry forward with it now? Yep.  Melanine: This is not going to surprise you at all George cause you know me well, but the number one thing, I think if I could change things and I do believe like everything unfolds the way it should be, but they're self limiting beliefs.And let me just expand on that a little bit. you know, you, you grow up thinking you have of these character traits. And in fact, I was just talking to someone about this yesterday, cause I don't identify myself as a creative and she sort of stopped me in my tracks and said, Oh my God. Let me tell you 50 ways. You're creative, right? So you jump into these labels and those labels can create a lot of doubt and you start thinking, or at least for me, you start thinking I'm not good at this. I don't have a background in this. I don't have a degree in this. And what am I doing in the commerciall food industry as the former corporate and securities attorney.I mean, there's just, there's a lot to unpack there. But those beliefs in those doubts, really, it may still do it. I have not perfected this. They get in my way. And that doubt such a killer, right? I mean, it's such a, it slows you down and mindset is everything and a business, especially as an entrepreneur, because you get tested every single day. You know, one of my mentors in this industry says working in the food business is like getting slapped in the face and then hugged every day. And you're just hoping for more hugs than slaps. And that could be, I mean, that's so true, right. But if you don't have your head on straight and if you can't like look through all those doubts and go, you know what I was the corporate securities attorney. And now I own a food company. Like if I can do this, I can do anything. And so can you and I speak to a lot of women because our customers are primarily women and, you know they really identify with that belief, that fear of, Oh, but this is what I went to school to do. And this was my path.And you got to get out of that. And this is coming from someone who's super risk adverse, which by the way, doesn't go hand in hand with being an entrepreneur. But that's what they teach you as a lawyer is to spot risk and avoid them. So that those beliefs, you know, those doubts, those restrictions that I've put on myself, It really, it takes a lot to get there through them, but once you do, and once you build that, you have those little wins that build the confidence that you get.I mean you can always things start snowballing as George likes to say that you get momentum and then you get that confidence and it grows, but anybody who's experiencing that self doubt or. I don't have the training that allows me to do X. I mean, I'm just a perfect example of why you should just throw that belief out the window.George: So I and Melanie, and just for context guys Melanie and me and her husband and, and our, our families are friends. We're business partners. We know each other really well. So it's kind of really easy for me to pry the lid off of this one. And Melanie, I've had some deep, deep talks about this, cause both of us share a lot of.Similarities when it comes to mindset, but I think what's really important, Melanie. And I just remember this distinction. You talk about that doubt in your brain and like how it's there. I think there was also a big point. You and I had a conversation where we both acknowledge and accept that it never goes away. We just become aware of it. So now I know, like, you know, we're in the middle of, you know, craziness in the world and we're doing it. And I know there's times that thing creeps in. So how do you handle it now? Like how do you become aware of it? How do you mitigate it? What do you do to put into practice or shift it the other way? Like, I was just kind of love to hear your process.  Melanie: Absolutely. And I think if you don't shift it, it is the slippery slope of just going downhill.  So that doubt creeps in all the damn time. I mean, I think that any entrepreneur would tell you that, but for me, the awareness was step one. Right. And George and I, we did have really in depth comments.I think I actually cried, which I never cry. Like but just really figuring out where some of these and unpacking where these limited limiting beliefs came from was pretty powerful for me. So you gotta do that work. I think it's not only recognizing them. It's figuring out why they're there.For me personally, I had some, I had a lot of experiences, a kid is being picked on by other girls and bullied, and I don't think I realized the effect that had on my life. And the limiting beliefs that caused and all the confidence issues. And so really unpacking that and going, Oh crap. Now I see why I've developed the propensity to feel X or Y or do Z.And so when  it comes up, I pause and it is really that moment where I pause and I go, this is that ego or that belief, and it's popping up. And I take some really deep breaths and it sounds corny, but it is just a way for me to reset. Cause if I don't do that, it will just keep crumbling in, you know, I'm someone who I can get really anxious about finances, which by the way, if you own a startup or any kind of business like that, obviously all the damn time.So if I don't take that moment to just stop and pause and like, be aware and then go, okay this is coming up. I know it's coming up and now I get to pivot. And then I just think about something really freaking positive. And for me, like I'm a dancer, so it might be like a dance choreograph going through my mind.Literally, that sounds cheesy, but I have to switch it up to be able to turn it off and then I can just kind of plug through my day. Now I do a lot though, too, to work with this. I met, I exercise all the time.  I'm just now starting to focus on breath, actually your recommendation on the book I'm currently reading. And I think all that goes into it. It's not just something you can do. Like, Hey, we'll just recognize that limiting belief and then stop it. It takes practice. Yeah. But I think if you don't practice, then you'll sabotage yourself or at least that's my experience.  George: Yeah, no, I love it. And just the book that she's referencing, by the way, it's called Breath by James nester. If you've done breath work, or if you wonder about a lot of the stuff in the world I highly recommend reading this book. It kind of blew my mind on how much we have de evolved as humans from, inappropriate breathing, not chewing foods the right way and the effect that it has on our physiology, which then affects our performance. It's  mind blowing. And just, if everybody wants to try this cause Melanie's in my mastermind and we do breath work a lot, you know, like intra-nasal breathing things like this, but I thought that was enough. Now when I do two workouts a day, I literally. Cover my mouth or keep my mouth shut the entire time.And I challenge every, I try to go for a 45 minute walk and breathe through nothing but your nose and have some tissues for like the first five minutes. Cause you're going to detox some stuff out, but it's really powerful, like what it does to your body inside. And so before I get into anything deep on your pass, I have a question for both of you, because I think it's really prevalent and. Idon't know and April, I think it probably comes up in storytelling a lot. So you build community through the power of story. And then Melanie, you use your story to empower women to take action. But I think there's this, and I don't know, I'm not a woman, obviously. So I'm leaning into you guys on this one.I think it's really easy just to accept that, like women tell stories and they want to be emotional and they want to put it out there where like, Guys don't right. And I see this all the time. I see this all the time. Cause like I'm not going to be authentic. And then we just have like this expectation, but I want to know from you guys, when you're going through your journey is when you're in your stories and you know that these stories share and they inspire and they empower, how do you walk that line of like, is this intimate or is this authentic? Like, does this belong out there or does this belong in here? And it's kind of like that barometer, like how do you guys dictate? Like what gets shared to the world? Is it going to be positive impact? And so April, I kind of love to hear your thought process on this one, because I think it's prevalent across the board, but I would love to hear from your perspective.  April: Yeah, that's such a great question because I actually think that women still struggle with this. Quite honestly, even though we are more prone to storytelling and we're probably more prone to kind of sharing our stories with each other versus men, to your point, they still, we still have this filter that we run everything through of what are other people going to think. You know, what, if I'm not enough?What if my story doesn't matter? What if it doesn't have an impact or what if I scare the crap out of somebody that tell them they'll my truth. You know, so I think that we still have this really huge filter that women and this is really what I try and love to do at light Beamers is try to help women walk through that filter and get on the other side of it so they can share their story very boldly and brightly and in a positive way. For me I have found that I know when I'm hitting the story, either for someone else or even myself, when there's emotions. And when there's real vulnerability and Bernay Brown, you know, of course talks about vulnerability at length and with great brilliance.And I, you know, couldn't agree more that when we are tapping into that thing into our stomach, that just makes us feel so, you know, fearful of what are others going to think, or what if this is too much or what if it's not enough. And all of those, what ifs, those are really like powerful things to pay attention to.And that vulnerability is usually a signal that you're tapping into your truth and that truth should be shared. It's not too much, it's not sharing, things that are not appropriate. It's sharing honesty, your truth your real power or what the light that I'm, you know, think that our stories hold, I just had a call with a client who kind of like she's a podcaster and she has an episode coming out literally tomorrow. And two days ago after she finished recording it, she gets on SOS with me. And she's like, I am freaking out because I just shared some stuff on this recording and I don't know what to do.I think I need to erase it or delete it. And I was like, don't you dare because what you're feeling right now, Well, once you release this on Wednesday and you turn around and see the reaction it's going to get from your audience there, you're going to draw so many people closer to you because once you share your truth, it gives someone else permission, or at least takes a step towards sharing their own.And so it's just, it's the thing that builds us up in community. It's the thing that connects us. And so it's vulnerability that real pit in your stomach that. This makes me so nervous, but here's the real barometer. Ask yourself if not sharing it is an option, right? Are you going to feel suffocated and silenced and muzzled? And like, Oh my gosh, like a raging tiger in a cage.If you do not share that story. And the answer is, yes, you really know that's the story that needs to be shared.  George: I love it. I love it. Yeah. I have a, I want to unpack that, but now, I want to hear your thoughts on this one as well. And just to be clear, like I'm not saying that men and women do it differently, but we, in my experience looking, and I'm sure you guys can see this the way in which it's approached, like storytelling, doing marketing, like for whatever reason, it's seen different and there's different expectations. And I feel like the playing field needs to be leveled. It needs to be human.  Not, you know, man woman masculine, feminine, boom. Like it just needs to be human. Like story is everything and our voice and our story is what creates possibility for other people. And so, yeah. So Melanie, I would love to hear your thoughts on this one, because you are doing an amazing job of sharing your story and you unpack it piece by piece, but how do you feel about this?Melanie: Well I come from a really weird perspective because, cause I, you know, and I'm not trying to label myself, I've always been and described as a pretty unemotional at least outwardly woman. I mean, I was career woman at a big law firm and you know, any of showing any emotion and work just gets kind of beaten out of you. Like, you know, don't ever let them see you cry was the advice I got on day one. and I went through two pregnancies at that law firm. And I remember like crawling under my desk because like the hormones are asking, you know, acting up, but I'm like, I got release. I can't let anybody see me. And so after several years of that, you start hardening  and I really have experienced that.And I think the issue with that is it made me a little bit less relatable to a lot of other women because I'm not emotional. You know, my husband always tells me like, God, your emails are really direct. You're going to offend people. And I'm like, Oh, my God. I'm not trying to be offensive. I'm just kinda like that. Get to the point, you know, give me the facts. Cause that's what I, that's what I learned. I've always been very driven and come from a family that really pushed, you know, make good grades and be very driven and get to the top. And so it has taken the last couple of years when I, for the first time experienced personal development work and emotional IQ.And I really, I didn't have much, and it very eye opening for me to be like, Holy crap. I actually don't have any problems sharing my story, but it is, it's usually very fashionable, so it's not in a way that people can relate to. So I remember George went one of, maybe one of the first times it was at your mastermind. When I had talked about some of my experiences at it as a child and you either turned to me or Zeke, I can't remember Zeke told me, or you did. And you were like, Oh my God, look at how she says that there's no emotion to it. It's just like very factual. And that landed, you know, I'm like, Because I want to be relatable because of my story to help other women. and they can see how Jgenuinely passionate and I am about powering other women and making sure nobody's left out and inclusivity and propping other women up. I mean, that is really what I stand for. So if that isn't not coming across, like that's doing myself disservice, cause I am so passionate about it.So I think for me, I've had to take some steps to try to like, peel back the layers and put the wedge in cause some cracks and come out a little bit and it's taken some work. It's taken some really hard emotional work and I'm still doing it, but I'm committed to it because I do want to be related relatable and feel that people see me as being authentic rather than just like, you know she's not really feeling it. So is it real or what is she talking about? So I'm a working progress, I guess.  George: Yeah. Well, I think we all are right. I think that's the point of all of this. I know April is going to be like, that's power of story, document the process.  I love it. And the thing I'll say Melanie is, I don't think, I think there's a difference between being direct and being disconnected. Like I love the directness, like emotionally grounded, connected people are direct. I mean, you know, my wife, I love how direct she is most of the time, except for when I'm off the rocker and it like cuts through my soul and I have to let go whimper in the corner and I'm like, Oh, I'm such a bad little boy. And that had nothing to do with it, but I have to go work through that now. And then I go to the gym at 3:30 in the morning to get it out. I smashed weights to get rid of it. And so when, when you think about this for both of you, what I love and you both kind of tapped on this, right? I think and April, when you were talking about this, like really checking in and getting your story, when you get that pit in your stomach and you have that.I think that's the difference between sharing your authentic voice and creating a voice. And I think what we see a whole lot of now is we see a whole lot of check boxes when it comes to marketing and business, right? Like I'm supposed to say this, I'm supposed to post this. It's supposed to look that way.And on paper, the recipe looks like it would succeed and we all get the phone calls. It's not working. Nobody's responding. And so what are some of your gauges April? Like, how do you feel when you get into story? Like I said, a couple of years ago, and I think I live this way. I'm like life happens in the messy details, so fuck it. I'm sharing it and that's just what it is at this point for me. And that's been kind of my therapy, but there's also been times on the other side where I'm like, okay, I can't do it unless it looks  this way or this way. Cause everybody's doing it this way. And so how do you navigate that April? Like how do you look at like what to share when to share how to be like you versus like what world wants or what are your thoughts on that? When it comes to putting it out into the world?  April: Well, I think for marketing and branding, right? Which a large part of this audience is probably interested in that topic. There's definitely a piece of you that wants to show up on brand and on message and polished and the things that were taught and is attractive. And I believe we also can share that behind the scenes, pull the curtain back and be real. And so I don't think I don't really subscribe to a philosophy. It needs to be all one way or another. I believe in some sort of balance. Sort of teach a formula to my clients about  T I C S and I'm like, look just create content and share with your audience stories that can teach andinspire connect and sell or think of sharing instead of selling and selling makes you nervous.And so if you show as the branding person, the expert in your field, you can teach, you can share high value and share the brand message and then you're inspirational and you're connecting content and posts and emails and marketing can be more of like behind the curtain. Like, look, I'm just going to share with you April instead of like light Beamers.I'm just going to be who I am today and share with you and maybe share some of my fears. Share with you something that I'm experiencing right now that feels like a failure. Something that isn't as pretty and can be in the messy middle. It's not really polished and ready for that brand statement and it's going to go out on the website. But it can still be part of who I am. I am. And so I think it's important. This is just what I subscribed to. I think it's important that not only like brands and solo preneurs and entrepreneurs and small businesses, but I would really love to see larger corporations and organizations doing this more.There are a few out there that I think do it really well, but I still think by and large our culture in this country subscribes to the former. Like we've got to be buttoned up and polished and we can't really show our cracks because if we show our cracks, no one will trust us and want to hire us. I'm thinking it's really the opposite. If you went to show your cracks and show that you're human, they're going to fall in love with you even more and they don't even care what your prices are at that point. They're going to choose you over the RSP,they just got in the mail. We write our email, whatever. So I just. I wish we could. And Hey, it's good. It's a sign that I can be around for a while. Teaching what I teach, because there's plenty of people that still need to learn.  George: Not when we're doing an April, we're doing it. We don't have to wish we're doing it. And just for everybody wondering RFP is request for proposal. Just we're throwing around like corporate lingo over here. Nobody's going to start dropping like contract names. I just happen to know some of them. So yeah, no, I think I absolutely love that. And when I think about it, I agree by the way, there's very few big brands and things that I see, like put the human in marketing. But at the end of the day what I think most people forget, like sales is a transference of energy, right? Which means in order for a sale to happen, it has to be human to human, which therefore marketing is just a human being, showing up authentically to attract another human being. And then that's what allows the possibility for it to happen.And yeah, I think. I think too. And Melanie, I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Cause you've evolved so much when it comes from like business, like you literally went from basically they told you be a man in a man's world as a woman, and I'm like, Hey, all of you go shove that shit down your fucking throat, quite frankly. And I'll kick you in the shins, right? Like that's part of the problem with your toxic masculinity. Bullshit. I'm sorry, that's another podcast Stephanos and I'll do it later.  it's coming, but when, what, when you think about that you were in that world and he, like, you have this voice, you have this, like, you're a mother, you're a powerful woman.You want to empower other women and you transition out and you came from the old boys club and then you had to kind of transition over and it's been a process I'm sure. How have you felt on that, because what I love about you that I see from the area outside is that you're not afraid. Sometimes you tell me you are, but I don't really believe you.You're not afraid to like, document your journey and go through that growth process. So how has it been for you versus like in the beginning when you were like, I'm, non-emotional, don't cry, don't be here to like, Hey, here's who I am piece by piece, I'm working towards it. Like, how does it feel? Does it feel different? Is it inspiring to you? Are you getting into that momentum? I would love to hear your thoughts on that.  Melanine: Yeah, it's been liberating for me. Just to go back where  when I was interviewing to work at the, this big law firm, which was a great job, I'm not bashing the law firm, but I remember. Being like, Oh God, I have to put on my resume that I studied abroad. And I was actually scared to do that because I was like, Oh, they're not gonna want to see that they're going to want to see like total dedication student government law review all this stuff. And then when I got there, as it turned out, most of my conversations in that interview, cause you interviewed with 10 people when you're going to a big law firm was about that period of time.And most of them said to me, God, I wish I would have done that. I was so concerned about what my resume looked like. I wish it would have done that. And look, that didn't flip me right then. I mean, there were still so worried about telling people you got pregnant. I remember I was so scared to just tell people it really it is an old boys club.It's still the case, even though. Things are evolving and it's been better. And I had some really strong female mentors at that firm for the most part. It's a good old boys club. It was in Texas. It was very conservative. So anyhow  you see a lot of that. So when I stepped out of that and dove head first into this.I was like, I'm going to become the anti-corporate  no more pantyhose. I'm not wearing a suit. We are going to have fun every day. A lot of our marketing is  cheeky and sassy. Cause I could never be that way at the law firm. I had to be very serious and professional. I'm still professional but I have to have fun. Otherwise, why am I doing this? So I think. For me, one of the first things we did, it was really spend a lot of time identifying our core values. Our number one core value is empowering women. Like every, everything that I post, I look to our list and go, does it meet one of these and it's not like I'm checking it and really worried about it.But my most recent example I'll give you, cause this is totally fitting here is. There was this, or may still be going on this Facebook challenge for women, you had to be invited by another woman to post a picture of yourself. And it was this women's empowerment, social media thing. And  I mean, talk about when you talked about ticks, I thought you meant like those triggers.I was like, what about all the women who don't get an invite? And I was pissed and I had to like, Step back and go, okay, I have to write a post about this because I am feeling very emotional about it and it's strong. And when that happens, I really do want to write about it because that's important for me in my growth process.But I also realize that the feelings I had were the antithesis of the reason for the post. it was supposed to be women's empowerment. And I really had this struggle of  am I going to be seen as this person who's bashing, what's supposed to be a great thing because I have this issue with the fact that it doesn't apply to all women.And ultimately, I just, couldn't not say anything like you were saying April. I had to say something about it.  I wrote an invitation to everybody in the world to post that. Cause I was like, you don't even invite, I don't want you to be sitting at home, waiting for an invite and feel like. You're not included.And so for me, it's, those things are very powerful and it's therapeutic for me to write that go through the process of writing the post that I did and actually put it out there and how it's going to be received. But I am my brand and  not everybody's going to love me, but what was interesting about that experience is I had about 10 women text me personally and say, Oh my God, I read your posts. I felt the same way. I just didn't want to post about it. There is so much power in that, like these women off the hook and there's nothing wrong with not saying anything, but how cool that there were people out there who related to me. So that is kind of, you know, I wish there was more of a formula.George: This is why I'm so stoked to have both of you, like leadership is an active role. There's no passive leadership, right? Like we are either,  evolving or we're dying. We're either progressing or regressing. And so Melanie, I love that. The formula is to show up and you said something. And what I loved about what you said is you were like, there was a point where I was like, I just have to fucking say something, right? Like that is leadership. Like that is authenticity.  And knowing, and the second part that you see said, and I don't care whether you're a man listening as a woman, listening to this, a business, an entrepreneur. Just starting or all the way up. You can never, and I mean, you can never turn down the volume of your voice and expect a positive result ever. It is a guaranteed success for failure. And so Melanie, I'm fucking proud of you. And I saw that post by the way, and I read it, but it actually like, I'll give you a perfect example.And I think both of you will appreciate this. Like we're in a car. There they are. It's all right, we got dogs. We got kids. We don't edit any of this out. This is unscripted. I told you guys, you don't want to get plugged into my real brain, but this is a little of the craziness that happens in there.Melanie knows more than anybody. We've had some tears. We've had like some brother and sister, like I fucking lie. Hey, love you. It's amazing. But this morning, I was sitting here and I meditated this morning. And like, we're talking about a lot of stuff. We're talking about authenticity. We're talking about our voice. We're talking about how to show up in the world, how to make a difference in people's lives, how to empower women, how to empower men. And this morning I was triggered as shit. Like I was triggered. I went to the gym, I got the workout out. I'm sitting here and I made the mistake of logging in Instagram before I did my journaling.And I see some state of the world and somebody responded to me and they're like, don't send me all this stuff. It's bullshit. And I was like, okay, got it. And then I was like, Oh, and my brain was running on, like, you can't be a leader with blinders. You can't pretend it doesn't exist. Oh, you have to. And like every part of me, and I mean, every part of me wanted to write this post and be like, you need to do this and you need to do this and you need to do this. And then like, I really sat with it and I was like, I need to do this. I need to do this. And I ended up writing a post about where I get to change in leadership, where I get to go deeper, where I get to go into the dark and where I get to explore those different things.And I think it's really powerful for everybody listening this to be as connected to yourself as possible and start to understand and learn your barometer. Like what that thing is.  I wrote an email about this. I think Melanie you read it? We have two choices. We can either be a thermostat or a thermometer.And our job is to be a thermometer. Because the thermostat just tells you what's happening, it posts out. It's a part of the problem. It's like, Oh, it's cold. Oh, it's hot, but it can't do anything about it. But a thermostat like, Oh, it's cold. Let me turn it up a little bit. Oh, it's hot. Let me turn it down a little bit.And I think it's really powerful. So Melanie, I'm proud of you for posting that and for writing that ending in that do you, either of you ever find it challenging? Like when you're. Like Melanie, for example, like you were triggered in April, you help people uncover parts of their story and you teach storytelling.Do you guys ever find it challenging when you get that, like pit in your stomach or something you want to share to like put it out there? Like, how does it feel? Do you just. You're like, I dunno, April, if you're like me, you're like, screw it. I feel it I'm shipping it. And Melanie like gets to a point where she's just boiling over and she's like, absolutely not.And I know Melanie like yells at herself too. I love it. It's like, but like, what's the hardest part I'd like, would love to know like what the hardest part is about like sharing your story or breaking through or sharing some of those things April. Like what's the hardest part for you in that. And then how do you overcome it? Because I know there's a lot of people myself included that still to this day, I write a post and I'm like, I can't, I just, I just can't write. And then like, I do this funny thing where I'll literally hit post and I'll run away and workout for two hours. I'll turn my phone off. I won't do anything. And my gauge is if I come back and I don't have any text messages, it was a good post. If I have a, are you okay? What the fuck did you just post to my, Oh, I should probably go read that again, but I would love to know your thoughts on that April.  April: You know, it's funny. I spent a good portion, really the first half or frontload of my career interviewing people. And so my job was to be a bystander and emotionless similar to an attorney apparently.To be emotionless and just be a vehicle with that story could be shared. And so I spent so much time and energy pouring into other people's stories. When I started building my business and especially using social media and, building my brand, so to speak online, it was really funny to me that I was like, Oh, I actually have to start sharing my story now. No one's ever interviewed me to find out how this works for me. And that has been such an interesting thing because suddenly I could more deeply relate to my own clients now who I've been like, Oh shit, what's the big deal. Come on. These are the things that matter, like let's do it, right. Like I just think let's just, it's out there.Let's, it's, you know, I know the magic that the story holds for other people, and I've always been focused on the audience what they're going to get out of it and what it can do for the person who shares that story. but when I actually had to start doing this myself and really tapping into my own vulnerability, It was hard as hell and it still is.Something that even though on a so-called storytelling expert or that I do this, and I've been doing this for 25 years, plus doesn't mean I'm immune that I just get a free pass and that it's really easy. And so it's those same things we've been talking about when I get that pit in my stomach.When I feel that vulnerability, when I feel my emotion.I have to examine it. And I just, I try to say, is this useful? I have a motto that when we share our stories, we shine a light. And I just think to myself, if I share this, would it be helpful for someone else? And if I can kind of run it through that barometer, then that's my free pass to share.Even when I don't have it all figured out, it might be a little messy. It makes me extremely nervous and so that has given me free given me freedom to share my story more, even though I'm still applying my own technique to myself, to pull out my own stories, to share if I can run it through and say, Hey, this is at least what's coming up for me right now.You know, maybe if I share this one, other person would benefit from it. And if so, then I just give myself full permission to share. There are still pieces of my story that I'm struggling with. There are pieces of my story that I've never shared. I mean, I've shared with. You know, confidant and my husband and people in my family close friends, but I have not made those known publicly. And, you know, I'm keeping like a little running tab, like, okay. You know, one day April, you've got to, you've got to get up the nerve to share those stories because I've already run them through the barometer. And I know that they actually would benefit someone else.But it takes guts. So share your story. And it takes bravery. I did a whole symposium this last year with women and it was all about stepping into your brave and we have to step into our brave to share these moments in our life that feels so scary. It feels scary to share what we're really thinking inside. So some days I went at that and some of them I'm still working on.George: I'd say that you always win, by the way, just so you know, and I don't, you said something you're like, Oh, I'm keeping a tally because I haven't shared. But then, because it requires me to be brave. You're already fucking brave. Stop. Stop. Yeah. Come over there and kick you in the shin. Like you're already brave stop. I was like, that was literally like the longest stretch hose. Most passive, like put yourself down. I'm like, no, you're such a powerful person. I do have a question about that though. When you said shared, it helps somebody else, do you ever share, because it just helps you like your journey, your post and your process.  Melaniel: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's probably the second part of what I would say about when you share your stories. You shine a light that light shines for someone else and little secret sauce, it's shines  for you, the brightest, right? It shines for you the brightest. And so then like, Our stories are healing that's why sharing the story can be the most healing thing that you could ever do for yourself, regardless of what it does for someone else, because you will get such clarity and peace.Andyou said something earlier about when you were sharing your story and learning to kind of break free of your life of the attorney and being, you know such, you know, never share your story, never let them see you cry and sweat. And you used a word that you used to describe it, which was liberating.And that is really such a freeing feeling to feel liberated. And so we can get liberated from our own chains that years of storytelling has been holding over us from things in our childhood, things that we've experienced relationships that we've had. If we can break those chains free. Then that's, what's waiting for you on the other side of sharing that story, right? So yeah, it can be about your audience and yes, it can grow your brand and yes, it can help you bring in money to your business. And yes, it can help you do all those things, but more importantly, more than anything else, it will show you what you're capable of and how powerful you are. Just because you owned that story. You learned to harness the power of your own story. At that point, instead of letting the story have power over you.George: That's stuff, that's the mic drop moment when you take it out of your brain and put it into the world, it neutralizes the charge. So, yeah. And it's something we all talk about. We all have stories. And April, I think you nailed something that. Is so it's like this broken paradigm in the world of life. Like not even business and entrepreneurship life that like, somehow there's a finish line, right? Like, Oh, I shared my story. It's gone. Or I won the race so I can sit on the couch and be a fat ass for the rest of my life. Like, no, like I think I referenced this a lot. Cause Joseph Campbell obviously put this in the hero's journey. And I think everybody misses the fact that after you slay the dragon, there's still another step. And they missed that one where you have to go back and teach the village. And then when you're done, another journey starts and the dragon gets bigger.  Melanie: It's a new level of next devil, right? I mean, you're right. It's like you break through to one layer and then guess what? There's a whole another storyline waiting on you that you've got to go in and break through that one too. So it's a never ending process, but it's a good process because that's part of personal development and growth.  Melanie: Totally. So Melanie, I have a question for you. So now that you're on the other side of this, right? When you're went from vampires to like, heart-centered like giving life, right? Like we'll pick our analogy.What was the hardest part, because I know there's a whole lot of people here that are listening that hear this, like I have a brand, but I've never shared my story. Or I am sharing that story. The one that everybody wants to hear.  So, Melanie, what I would love to hear from you is like, what was the hardest part for you?And then how did you step through that? Because obviously it wasn't an overnight thing where you're like, okay, I went from lawyer to, I'm going to run a CPG food company. And like you have those values. And just because you define the values, doesn't mean like every day you're like, I'm going to go dance on camera today. I'm going to go on Instagram. I remember when we met, I was like, yo, goon camera,  go. And I think I challenged him, like, go live if ever do for 30 days or we're not going to be friends. I make these like completely empty threats all the time. Cause I don't really know how else to make them, but I was like, just do it.So what was the hardest part for you? And then now that you've shared your story and you're documenting your process, like, how has it changed your thinking on like how you show up in the world and how you show up on social?  Melanie: Yeah. I mean, honestly, and this may be, this is going to sound very simple, but the hardest part for me was allowing me to be myself.I mean, I had this thought that I needed to portray this image of a leader and that meant professional and serious. ThenI knew I was getting away. I knew I didn't have to wear a suit anymore, but I just had this belief that people gonna buy my product if I'm really myself and are they going to think I'm serious? All of these  questions were going around in my head. And so it took a while to migrate over to I can be totally fine. Making a total ass out of myself on any. Social media posts, or even though it still scares me to go on and basically live. I don't know why. I mean, I can talk in front of a room.No problem. But you put a phone with really could be no one on the other end in the, , it starts and I'm like, ah, I'm. So it's funny how that works, but it was really just giving me permission. Like it's okay. It's okay to be myself and. What I was finding as the more and more I would do that. And I would be authentic and I would share things.It's kind of like when you're a teacher and you're in the room and someone's afraid to ask a question, but it turns out 10 other people have that question. I mean, same thing. I would start posting about things that were personal and people would actually engage with me like, Oh, I'm really having that issue.  How did you combat it? And I realized that this stereotype of a leader that I had learned and had been sort of ingrained in my mind for so long maybe isn't wrong, but it just wasn't me. It just wasn't me. So when I was not offensive or when I was trying too hard or when I was not being myself, which by the way is how I felt my entire career at the law firm. I just didn't feel like I'm right then I didn't really feel satisfied. I mean, I didn't feel fulfilled and  for me, I get grounded every day and my mission of helping other women. But if I am not being authentic, it almost, it's like a can't. I can't achieve that balance where I feel like I'm making progress and really honoring what's important to me.So I would say. That would be the hardest thing. I mean, it's, it goes back to those limiting beliefs, like get out of your own way. Like who cares if you look like an ass or, you know, for me I'm such a perfectionist, like if I've words misspelled it post healthcare. So it's really just been dealing with that. I bet, I guess.  Geroge: Yeah. Oh whatever we want to call it. I mean, we could put labels on all of this all day, right? Like the unattachment being the final goal of all of this before I forget, by the way, guys, I'm loving this conversation so much. I normally tell people where to find you in the beginning of the episode.So I'm just going to seed it now, cause we're not done, but April, would you mind sharing for everybody the best place to find you to learn more about storytelling, how to get into your world and community? Yes, I'm pretty easy to find mine my brand is light Beamers.. And I have a community on campus, Facebook, a private Facebook group called the light Beamers community. And that's probably the best easiest, and it's freebest place, easiest place to join me and just start learning some of the things that I teach in there. Plus it's all about community. Because I'm really big on getting more women to share their stories. And so I've just created a platform for them to have a safe place to do it.You know, like it's scary to do this for the first time, if you've never shared your story before. And we have a lot of examples in our world of being attacked and criticized for our words. And the light Beamers community is a place where you can come and never be criticized or attacked. For exploring the power of your own voice. So I would say join there first and yeah. If you want to learn more about what I do and what to offer, you can go to light beamers.com.  George: I'll say this too, the worst place to be as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, as a human is in an echo chamber alone, nobody in their corner. So the more places that you can find yourself aligned with the mission, like Benjamin Hardy talks about this and personalities and permanent, right?Like you have to envision who you want to be. If you want to be that person that wants to share your story, be around people that shared their story. If you want to be that. $10 million business owner be around people that have built it, been there or are there. And so you are future pacing yourself to get there.So go check out April's group and then Melanie, let's talk about it. Where does everybody find you?  Melanie:  Also you can find me on social mainly Facebook and Instagram and it's Empact bars,  EMPACT bars. And then I also have a private Facebook group for women only, sorry, dudes, just for us, which is out there, women. And then you can find me@impactbars.com. If you're interested in our products, we've got, we're a natural snack food company for women, but we're mission based. So my passion is helping women. And a variety of ways.  George: just full disclosure. I am a partner in that company and if you don't go support, Empact bars, I'm not going to support you. There's one of those empty threats again.but I will sayI'm so for those of follow me, I'm doing at high speed daddy, one of our other companies, I'm doing this 75 hard challenge that Andy Frisella put together, Melanie is in the middle of two. What day are you on Melanie? 14 14. I think I'm on day 36 today.And so for everybody, what is that? It's two 45 minute workout today. It's 10 pages of reading a progress picture every day, a gallon of water, and thenno cheat meals and no alcohol basically as the whole thing. And so I'm dialing in my macros and I've never paid attention before, but I'm actually just trying to get into this.And it's almost impossible because I'm an adult, I'm an adult. Addict to condiments, right? Like Manet's number one, olive oil number two, creamy Buffalo sauce number three. And I realized I was knocking down like 300 grams of fat a day and they're healthy fats, but when I'm eating those with carbs,  I have a lot of energy, but not really anything else moves on the scale. My body, my pants tend to get a little bit bigger. And so I've been playing hang with it, but we made it this new product and God, I don't even remember when I had it for the first time, but we have this trimmed down shake at impact and it is a cinnamon sugar dream donut in your mouth, especially when you make it right.So for everybody listening, I want you to go get this trimmed out. Shake, go to EMPACTBARS.COM We have bars too, but this shake will change your life. Get get the powder two scoops with 12 ounces of macadamia nut milk, and a banana with some ice cubes. Absolutely mind blowing. You're welcome. I'm just, you can thank me in advance. You're welcome. Go get it. That's it. Okay. We'll get back to the interview now. Thanks. Delicious. Yeah. Well, April, we'll send you some, I mean I literally what I love about Zek and Melanie and they don't admit that they're addicts yet. But they are the biggest sugar and sweet addicts I've ever met. They just pretend not to be because they make healthy products that tastes like things you should not be able to eat. Like that's the best way for me to describe them. I'm just waiting for them to come out of the closet. They're like, all right, guys, we ate 84 donuts a day for 12 months to figure out how to make this flavor.Because every single product is like chocolate date night and peanut butter party in your blah. And I'm like, how do you even do this? And I just get to be the guy that gives marketing advice. So. I dunno, I have the easy job I get to eat it, drink it. Maleny. You can own that. You're a sugar addict. It's okay.  Melanie: I'm totally a sugar addict so much so that we created a sugar detox plan. It's like, Oh my God, it's ironically, it's zero sugar. But like, Oh my God, you put a cookie in front of me and I cannot resist. So that is why all this challenge that George was talking about. You get to design your own nutrition plan, which is one thing I love about it, because if it were no sugar, there's no way out, huh? Doing no meat, which as you know, a West Texas born girl who grew up on chicken fried steak, it's pretty hard. I've never gone this long without me ever in my life. But I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm just giving it a whirl and I'm going to see what it does, but, um, but it's been interesting, but I couldn't do no sugar.George: No way. I don't think, I don't think any human should, I don't. I think we have too much sugar in the world, but like, I think you have to have that amount that like the level of happiness. We've got to live a little bit here. So choose the cleanest one. You can and have some fun with it.So we've been talking a lot about like sharing our story, authenticity, vulnerability, but I have a question for both of you. If you could change anything about the current state of the market, as an entrepreneur, as a woman, entrepreneur, as a storyteller social media, like when you look at the world that we live in and all three of us work online, we have social profiles, we all have this. If you could change anything in that space, April, what would you change and why?  April: I would changed  the, just the nonstop pounding of mixed messages that we get and that we are overwhelmed by. and I'm kind of raising both hands over here because I suffer from it. And I also know that I'm also sending signals out there.So I struggle with that because I know I'm out there trying to get my message heard and I'm out there playing the game and I'm also on the receiving end and everyone else also trying to do that, so I wish, or we could come up with a way that we could filter our news feeds in a way that those names out there they're like Facebook and Instagram don't get to control because of money. That we get to control because that's really who we want to be here. I'm just in out balance, so I'm trying to figure out how to be a voice in this space and taking up space with someone else and being really cognizant of time and energy that someone is spending with me consuming my content, making sure that. I try to give as much value as possible because I understand they're also being pounded. So I don't know how to fix that. I'd love for you to share George, your mind of George on that one how we can really true beat the algorithm. I know it's with relationships, that's what you teach. And that's what I totally subscribed to. And I just have to keep reminding myself to just follow that, just to follow that path that keeps sharing my story. To encourage other women and the people in my life, the community that keep sharing their stories and that at the end of the day, it'll beat the funnel or algorithm out there. And to, again, going back to the very first lesson I shared with you at the beginning of this recording, which is just to remember to enjoy the journey. Because again, I want to like 10 X everything by tomorrow because that's just my human nature. And I kind, I'm sure everyone else, a lot of people feel that way. Why can't we just have it by tomorrow? Why can't the funnels and everything to be working.  George: Can you could get and read an entire book in one minute, since your own story, you wouldn't read any books. There's no journey in that process. And I remember at the beginning, you're like, Oh, I'm impatient. Like I want it now. I think personally that the solution to that is twofold. Number one is that. Us as the influencers, as the leaders, as the entrepreneurs, as the storytellers, we have to have tight containers and consistency. Cause I think   on our patr I think it's an equal 50/50. We contribute to the problem by being loose and bowing to the rules of the game that we think we have to play.And then on the receiving end is people thinking that over consumption is going to somehow give them  more and more when an actuality it gives  less and less. And so the way that I think about it, right. You know, shopping Malls aren't gonna exist in a couple of months. But when I think about like, when I was like 16 years old, I used to walk by the mall and they would always have that teriyaki chicken sample on the toothpicks. And I would walk by 45 times and never grabbed one. Then I would grab one. I always knew it was there though. I could smell it. I knew it was there. I would see it. There were times I wanted to eat at times that I didn't times I took four samples. Didn't buy any food and times I bought a sample and bought the entree and like, that's the best way that I can describe digital marketing. And like how it should be. When we talk about your story. It's about being consistent and congruent, what you hit, right? Consistent and congruent playing the long game. And then from the consumer side, respecting the customer journey that all of us go through buying cycles different. We go through emotional cycles, life cycles, financial cycles, relationship cycles, and all of those have implications on the way in which we consume, create and grow.And so it has to be on both sides. And so on the consumer side, We also as, because we're all consumers, you guys consume my content. I consume yours. I eat a whole shit ton of empact bars in that shake. Like I consume, but we all on both sides of the coin have to be intentional about how we do it.And we all have to have that container of like you can sit here all day, listen to this podcast. You can listen to every podcast that we've ever put out. It's not going to change anything in your business. Not whatsoever. It's going to change your brain. And most likely it's going to hurt your business, increase the reactants to changing because now you feel even more fricking stuck.  And so I think that it's understanding that we're responsible on all sides to lead by example. And the one thing  that I sad over and over again is that everybody has to understand that the only reason the game is still played, the way that it is because everybody accepted the fucking rules.This is not a dictatorship. We make the rules based on how we play the game every day. And so that's why I challenge everybody to play the game and be where you want to be and go on one platform. If you want to go on one and not on the other seven, right? Write an email every day. If you want to, or write one a week, I don't give a shit, just pick one and being consistent so that we can grow and you can grow. You can create those relationships and move forward. And so, yeah, that's, I think about this one a lot. I really. I mean, I. I reflect on this. It's probably one of the biggest questions I ask. And like, obviously we teach relationships,beat algorithms. But that all comes from us getting plugged into ourselves.Because relationships only work if you know who you are who your team is, you know, who your customers are and in burst on that one. So,that's a really good one. And I love that too. And I think it's really important to be self aware.  April what you said is you're like I send mixed I'm impatient, like. You're not any of those things. Those are things that you have in the moment. They're not who you are, but it's the awareness of those that allow you to shift them. And that's really the secret sauce here. So Melanie, I'm going to, I'm going to X the conversation over to you. I'm going to toss it over to you with the same question. Like when you think about maybe it's your role in this world, an Empact bars, or maybe it's you and your journey, or maybe because you and I live in the CPG world where really shooting relationships. People take, they want everything upfront. It's all transactional. If you don't have money, you don't exist. Like if you look at this world of entrepreneurship, like in any part of it, what is one big thing that like you would change or want to see done differently?  Melanie: Yeah. I think one thing I've noticed recently, and even with myself is of course there's a lot of fear and there's a lot of negative feelings right now people are unsettled, unclear what the future holds and they're scared. And. I've seen a lot of people just become paralyzed and have made the decision that like, I'm not gonna do anything. I'm just gonna wait it out. I'm gonna live in inaction for a while. And I actually think that's the worst thing we can do right now.Like rather than letting this situation and environment define me I'm choosing to define,, take control of this situation and to find it myself. So look it was not hard for me when this first hit, I have three young kids. I would add a new business. I'm trying to do virtual schooling, which is a total crap shoot when you have young kids and one of my kids is too. I mean, it was laughable what we were trying to do every day in the house with three kids at home and a business. And. It was very easy for me to get stuck and I'm not out of it. It's been tough. I mean our business, every just like every other business we've had to pivot. And, but, but what I've done is really I have done so many things to not let this define me.I'm like, you want to give me a 75 hard challenge that's going to kick my ass. I'll take it. you want to throw a new business idea at me. I'll do it. I'm experimenting with breath, work and new kinds of meditation. And it's really interesting cause for someone who personal development, it was just not on my radar until about two years ago.  I just didn't understand it. I didn't like the word self help book. I still don't love that word. It's a bad description for what they do, but you know, I was defined by my environment and so I can relate to people who are, but I think inaction is the worst thing we can do right now. I think waiting it out.Like I understand the people are in tough situations and I mean, Everybody's situation is unique, but for me, I'm going to do everything I can, if anything, just to help me financially, but also with my mindset. So I'm not, you know, the statistics on depression right now and alcoholism are growing every day and like, I don't want, I don't want to be there and I'm committed to not letting that happen to me.So it may look really weird what I attempt to do. I mean, I may do some crazy shit just to get through this, but for me, at least I'm taking the steps to take control of it. And so if I could have anything changed and I'm certainly not trying to be judgmental on anybody, but it's just taking that action, join a challenge, like work towards something, be inspired. I mean, I think you right now, though, less and less of that is falling in our laps and we have to make it happen ourselves. Totally. And that's fine. That's what I think it would be.  George: This is my podcast. Nobody's fucking coming to save you. Nobody. And like, I mean that with love, right? Like I even looked at the beginning of this when this happened. And I was like, Oh, we'll be fine. Oh, we'll be fine.And now I'm two companies down and. Almost six figures a month lost revenue. I'm like, Oh shit. Okay, cool. And then if I look back and here's the thing, I look back, I'm like, what could I have done differently? And I'm like, Oh, I could have done this. I could have done this. I could have done this. I'm like, great. I couldn't do it then, but I can do it today. And like, that's the path forward?  Like Stefano says thisone of my business partners who coaches men and. He's like, you know, we ask all the time, like, how can I better serve? How can I better help? And the answer is always, you have to deepen your practice to deepen your service, right? Like you have to go in, there's a lot of opportunity here. There's a lot of loss. There's a lot of pain. And there has been for a long time in entrepreneurship which by the way, I think is one of the.The silver linings in this is that it's putting a magnifying glass on like how unsupported small businesses are, how tilted in the favor of big business and power control and everything is, and now it's really coming o

What goes into planning a world class product launch marketing strategy? This week on the Inbound Success podcast, Foursquare Senior Product Marketing Manager Naike Romain shares the process she has used at companies like Wistia, Localytics, HubSpot and Foursquare to successfully pull off major new product launches. From why so many marketing conferences lack diverse audiences, to the lack of diverse options when it comes to stock photography, the importance of precision in how language is used, and how the way we write job descriptions can inhibit our ability to recruit diverse teams, Chere and Kathleen cover a variety of topics that influence diversity not only in the people who work in marketing, but in the marketing campaigns and assets they develop. Check out the full episode to hear more about Naike's process and learn how you can apply it to the development of your own product launch marketing strategy. Resources from this episode: Connect with Naike Romain on LinkedIn Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the inbound success podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Naike Romain, who is the senior product marketing manager at Foursquare. Welcome Naike. Naike (00:29): Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited. Kathleen (00:32): I am really excited to have you here because first of all, you have such an interesting career as a marketer. You've worked at a lot of different companies that that are, you know, from, from HubSpot to Foursquare. And you've really kind of dug deep into product management and, or marketing rather, I should say. And we're going to talk about something that I am really interested in at the moment. So selfishly as the host, I get to do these things and steer the topics in a direction that, that helps me with some things I'm working on and that topic is product launches. But before we get into that, can you tell a little bit about yourself and your career and how you wound up where you are now? And then of course, I think most people know Foursquare, but just in case they don't, maybe you could give a quick update on that. Naike (01:18): Sure. So I'm going to give you the really abbreviated version of how I got here, because it's a long story as my LinkedIn page will tell you. But essentially I started off working in tech support and little by little figured out that my niche or the things that I, what I've liked a lot about working at software companies had to do with understanding how products got developed, but also being able to flex them creative strengths and ability and product marketing seem like they're really a really good fit for those skills or those passions. And so from, I went from tech support to account management and then really decided to make a swing at becoming a product marketer. And so I got my first product marketing role at Wistia where I was the first product marketer they'd ever hired. And it was my first product marketing job.  Kathleen (02:12): Wow. Yeah, no pressure there. Naike (02:14): Yeah. it was a steep learning curve on all around, and I'm excited to talk a little bit about that. And then made my way from there to Localytics. And then HubSpot and now Foursquare, and for folks who are unfamiliar or forgot Foursquare, it started out as like they invented the check-in. So if you remember, a couple years ago, like 10 years ago, when everybody was checking in to different locations, lots of restaurants and places it was like sort of a social app where folks would engage with their friends a little bit, know where they were and sort of keep track of their comings and goings and all these really interesting places. I work on the B2B side of the business where we focus on we've focused on business use cases for location data. So for the folks who are interested in supporting their marketing with another layer of context, like they use location information to do so. So that can go into measuring the effective effectiveness of your ads on, on people coming to in store visits, or if you want to develop applications that are, that require location context. So if somebody is calling for an Uber and they type in the name of a venue, that's calling on Foursquare's API to support that. Kathleen (03:34): Oh, that's so interesting. I will confess, I did not know that that is the space that Foursquare was in these days. Because I was a huge Foursquare user back when it was the check in tool. And I can't remember what they called it, but like I was the, what was it? The King or... Naike (03:53): The mayor. Kathleen (03:55): Thank you. I was the mayor of several locations and my house, fun fact, to this day I live on a road called state street and we I have four kids and we also sponsor a midshipman from the U S Naval Academy, which for people who aren't familiar with the service Academy is basically that just means that you sort of like unofficially adopt these kids who are going to school there for the four years, they're there and you give them a place to go and crash when they have free time. Kathleen (04:20): Cause they don't have a lot of it. And so on any given weekend, we have like eight people laying around our house, watching movies, eating food, playing video games. What have you. So it's totally, and we have two dogs and eight chickens. So it's crazy here. It's very chaotic. And so we live on state street, we have this chaotic situation. And so our, our location on Foursquare was called state of chaos. And to this day, that, to this day, that term like has lived on in, in other ways that, that we use in all started with Foursquare. So fantastic. I love that. That is my, my little four square story. So, so we, you and I talked and, and I know, you know, I was really excited to chat with you because you have been involved in so many different product launches and that's something that I am deeply involved in planning for at the moment. And you know, I, I've always done demand gen marketing, but not necessarily like, like traditional product marketing. And so I would love it if you could just maybe walk me through when you know, you're going to have a new release. How do you think about product launches and how do you kind of mentally organize yourself and plan out a strategy for those things? Big question. I know, start wherever you want. Naike (05:43): Sure. I mean, I think that one of the early things that I figured out needed to be done with sort of work for myself was organizing launches in terms of expected outcome or impact. So I would be thinking about launches in terms of, is it an awareness launch. Is this a revenue launch? Is this a retention launch? And sometimes it's a combination of all those things and you just need to prioritize them. But I try to at best court categorize is this is this for awareness retention or revenue. From there, I would then try to think about what, what strategies or what tactics we needed to do to support these overarching awareness goals. So, I'd start by just drafting out a list of like, what awareness things do we need or what retention things do we need, or what revenue goals do we need to hit for this launch. Naike (06:28): And then I would go about identifying what tactics we need to work on to get there. The key to this though before taking, before I say anything else is, is really alignment. And so my best, my best guess at what these goals were means nothing if it's not in line with what the product leadership or executive stakeholders think about the launch, and I've made the mistake of launching ahead with a plan to be told, Hey, I thought we were going to be going much bigger than this, or that's not exactly what I had in mind. And so I think before we even say like, Hey, this is how I was start get, I do start with those buckets and then start to try to come up with goals. But alignment is critical, especially at the very beginning. Kathleen (07:14): I love that you brought that up. I agree with that. And, and, and I would love it if you could maybe talk me through how you get that alignment and who needs to be involved in those conversations. Naike (07:27): That's, it's really hard. I think that the more folks you invite in the more likely you are to be making decisions driven by consensus, and that's a hard thing to try to resist, but it's important that you do it. So getting folks to make decisions. I personally think that if it's a big launch, you need all the way up to the CEO. But I'll say that the, if there's an executive sponsor for your launch, like a product leader somebody on the C level, those are the folks that you need to agree that the launch is going to take, you know, it's going to be aligned on budget and aligned on goals. And then typically they'll let you decide on tactics yourself, but making sure that, you know, we, we hope to reach X many people or we expect to see X percent increase in growth in this product or adoption to increase by this much. Naike (08:21): Like those are the things that you really need to get get executive visibility on. It makes sure that they agree. And then before moving forward, and for me, what that's look like is a series of feedback loops. So essentially I would go so far in a plan and say, okay, let me start with your schools. And then come back and say, are these goals like what you were thinking? Let's talk about this. Okay. Now I'm going to go a little bit farther. And all right, now I don't think I want to do a video shoot. I want to have some blog posts I want to do press, are, are these the tactics that you thought you were thinking, or should we have an, should we go bigger with this and, and go back and get that feedback? And then I can then go rally internally and present the plan to folks and get inputs and start working. Naike (09:05): But the other, the other thing that I learned is that you shouldn't go all the way to the end of all of that, and then try to get, and then try to get executive or stakeholder feedback one, because it's hard to get their attention for that long. It's easier if you can do it in small bites and say, okay, we've already committed to this. Now I'm just going to take it a step further and get some more input and then work, which feels like it feels like a roundabout way of doing things, but it's really, it's in my opinion, the most effective way. If you can to like, say, I'm going to just go so far, get this feedback and then take it a little further. Because I have done the thing where I've developed an entire plan and sent it out, it's going to ask for feedback and people have been like, sure. Naike (09:43): Yeah. Okay. And then didn't really fully read the document or weren't fully present in a meeting and didn't really catch on to everything. And so this is another product marketing thing. You can fall victim to the executive swoop and poop easily. This is something that that it's not a knock on executives. Of course, it's just, it's more to say that they have a ton on their plates. Their attention is limited. You really need to be the owner of these outcomes. And so making sure that you're actually getting engagement and you're, they're engaged in what you're telling them and that they understood what you said and are onboard do that. If you can, if doing it in smaller bites is easier than that's the best, just the best way to go. Kathleen (10:27): Now I have a bunch of questions about this, I guess the first one is let's, let's actually rewind to what I would think of as sort of the beginning, which is some of the strategic decisions that need to be made in order for you to even begin to do things like set goals. And I was having a conversation about this with somebody recently, like how do you, where does ownership for strategic decisions around things like we have this new product? Are we going to keep it under the same brand name? Are we going to totally spin it off? Are we going to keep it on our website or create another microsite? You know, like those strategic decisions, is it going to be, is it going to be freemium or is it, are we going to go out right away and try to sell it? You know, where do those decisions get made? Naike (11:19): I think it's a little bit of a gray area. A lot of, I think that it usually comes from the top, but with the input of marketing leaders, product marketing and product to help sort out where, how we'll be best positioned in the market. So a product marketer might have some input there for sure. And should feel comfortable. I would hope to make some recommendations in terms of how does this set us up in the market? What are our competitors look like in this space and how can we best position ourselves? Is that as a new brand or does it hurt us to start something fresh? Yeah. so I say that that starts with like operations and execs and with the input of marketing leaders, product leaders product marketing. Kathleen (12:00): That makes sense. And then you talked about goal setting, so you have your three categories of launches and you identify what bucket it falls into and then you work on setting goals. I imagine that once you've been in a product marketing role for a while at a particular company, that gets easier because you have some historical data, but talk me through how you go about goal setting. If you're either new to a role, or like you talked about at Wistia, you were the first product marketer. So like, what do you do in those cases where you're kind of creating this out of whole cloth? Naike (12:36): You guess there's not really a science to it, essentially. I would be, I would take whatever data we had about the product and look at the things that we're trying to influence and make a best guess. So if this is a product, if we were looking at a product update that was for retention, for instance, and we know that this is addressing a problem that our customers have had for a little while, the number I would look at is like support tickets and say, okay, we've had, you know, six complaints about this every single month for the last six months. I want to see that there's a market decrease in complaints about this issue once you've released this product and just go from there. So I'm, you know, you, sometimes you have to get unconventional. That's not like customer support. Tickets is not a typical marketing metric, but you have to, you have to measure what you can otherwise. Naike (13:28): It'll be hard to say what you've actually accomplished. And so making sure it's a, it's a sig-, the support tickets is a signal that folks actually learned about the update that they've leveraged it, it tells it, it tells you a lot. And so you make your best guess and say, okay, I'm going to assume that this is going to lead to a reduction in support tickets, or we, our blog sees X amount of traffic per month. I'm going to make an assumption that we're going to see maybe a 10 to 15% increase and just aim for it. If you don't, if you fall shy, that's okay. Measure it and continue to grow on it for the next one. Kathleen (14:01): Yeah. And, and do you have any kind of personal rule of thumb for how many different goals you set? Naike (14:08): I try to, I try to limit them, but I think that they're, I try to, I don't have like a, I don't have a rule of them. I look at the bucket and then I put a couple of metrics under them, maybe, maybe four or five, just things to keep an eye out for at the beginning. It's not a disaster if you don't hit them, it's just a way to keep track of like, okay, this is where we started. Let's see where we can get, let's try to do some benchmarking while we're at it. Kathleen (14:36): And talk to me about timelines. Like, you know, how much time is enough time to plan a launch. And I'm sure the answer is, it depends, but I would love to know like what it depends on and Naike (14:47): Sure. Yeah, I you're Def you're right. It totally, I think that being embedded with the product team and working really closely with them helps a lot with that. So if you're sitting, if you're, you don't ever want to be in a position where our product team is sort of tossing a finished product over to you, and then you have to start, ideally you're aligned really closely with them. So you can start to see the formation of the product. You can start to envision and learn a little bit about timelines from being close from, from that point, that's when you should start to develop things like you shouldn't be developing positioning after the thing is built, you should be in the room thinking about it, figuring out how it fits into the market and contributing those perspectives along the way. So as you approach launch, and you need to get consensus on goals and you need to rally the rest of the cross functional marketing team to support by creating content or developing assets, things like that. You need to, then that part in it's honest own, like getting the message out takes a couple of weeks, like a week or so, and then you need to stay on top of it to through completion. So I think, you know, the optimal time is like six weeks, six weeks from, we have consensus on goals. We have we're all on board with the positioning and the narrative, and now we have time to execute and test everything before we release. That would be my ideal if I could always get six weeks. Kathleen (16:11): Yeah. And and how much time do you generally need for like, what happens before that six weeks that planning that, that, you know, coming up with the goals? Naike (16:23): Well it takes me probably like a couple of days. It takes the team, probably it probably takes maybe two weeks with all the back and forth. And it, and it also depends on the size of the launch. If it's just like a feature release, you don't need to go through all of this. You're not necessarily repositioning or introducing anything, ground shaking. But for something big two weeks or more to hire it out, all the kinks about what this about how this changes the positioning of the company, or do we need to make sure that we're in alignment with the rest of our brands and the goals for the business for the year? Kathleen (16:58): Yeah, that makes sense. So you, you go through that planning process, you get your consensus on the goals, and then it's time to really start rolling up your sleeves. Can you talk me through, do you have any kind of a framework, a planning framework or, or taxonomy of like the types of assets that you generally create for product launches? How do you approach that? Naike (17:21): What I, what I have is sort of like a menu there's just like a list of all different types of things that we could potentially create. And the list gets shorter depending on the tier of the launch. So for a tier one, you have lists of like maybe 50 things and you don't have to do every single one, but there's a lot that goes into that. And so you want to make sure that you have all your bases covered and as a way to make sure that you're not inventing to do you have an easy, easily referenceable list of things. So obviously with a tier one launch they're going to want a webpage. You're going to want maybe swag or you're going to want to do internal comms, a really strong internal comms campaign and make sure the entire company is ready to support it for like a tier three where you're just, you know, you're announcing something to customers. You want to make sure that you have your docs updated. You send an email, you maybe have some messaging, and that could be the extent of it. So I use this list to sort of just as like a, as a, as a reference to say, okay, did we do all that we could to get the word out? Are we supporting this to the best of our ability? Kathleen (18:34): And then one of the things I I'm always interested in is how do you time things when it really comes down to like, this product is ready to go? What is your thinking around, you know, when do you publicly let people know something's available? Because I feel like there's this tension between wanting to drive anticipation and excitement and interest ahead of the launch, but then also this, you know, the, the fear, especially in the tech or the software world of like, well, we don't want to let the cat out of the bag too soon cause somebody could scoop us. So how do you, how do you approach that? Naike (19:13): I think that that two things one is that it's really important internally that we separate product readiness from launch readiness. They're not the same thing. They don't need to perfectly match each other. You shouldn't be, you know, holding a bag, waiting for product to say this is ready and then running off to tell the market about it. It's OK to let something be ready. Use the time between that. You can use the gap between product readiness and launch readiness for betas, for feedback. There's a lot that can be done in that time. We don't have to immediately run to let's go tell the market. And the way, the way that I think about it is making sure that we're ready when everybody and ready, everybody internally is ready to support. So if the support team's not ready, then the marketing is not ready. If the sales team's not ready, then the marketing's not ready. We haven't done all the things that we need to do internally to make sure that we're aligned. And you don't want to see the launch fail because you invite hundreds of thousands of people to try something and then you're not ready to support it. And that falls on product marketing's plate as well. Kathleen (20:22): Yeah. so tell me a little bit about some of the more successful product launches that you've been involved in. I'd love to just hear examples of times when you felt like it really went well. Naike (20:36): Sure. so one of my all time favorite launches that I got to work on was for a 360 video product at Wistia. So we did, we developed this proprietary way to support hosting 360 videos and measuring where folks interact with the video, if they look left or right, or, or scroll, you can track that. And so this was this really unique thing that I'd never in a one, it's something that I'd never seen before myself, but also the market I'm sure had, was not ready for something like a lot of people were not using 360 video yet. So it was an opportunity to do something really unique. And in thinking about this launch, we were developing this demo so that folks could try it out on the webpage. We did a number of really unique things. Naike (21:28): So one would be was this demo. So anybody could go to the webpage and test out to play a video, look at it and then watch as the tracking developed alongside your movement. That was really cool. Separately, I in trying to understand the subject better joined, joined a friend at a 360 video and VR a meetup. And so I went to the meetup to see, like, what are people in this space like talking about? Is it, are they thinking about it as video? Like where do we fit into this landscape? And I ended up meeting the organizers and I was like, you know, what, if we hosted an, a meetup, what if that, like, could that be cool? And they were like, huh, well maybe we typically already have our venues, but I convinced them. And so we got to host ahead of the launch. Naike (22:12): We hosted the VR meetup at our office and we got to bring the community into the space and got to see all the really awesome things people were doing with, I mean, beyond just like the demos of all the cool VR stuff we did, we did some presentations, we presented our product with, to them and got some really cool feedback on to see what folks in the space for doing. And then at launch, it felt like we were really well primed. So we had, we invited, we invited the community in, we had been developing this really interesting demos. So folks who, who wouldn't necessarily be in the loop, got it. When you interact with the demo, you immediately at the sense of like, Oh, I see what they're doing here because it's novel. And then we released the regular launch assets and that was really cool. We also partnered really well with our customers who are doing 360 video. So we had a lot of follow on content about how folks were leveraging it to give folks context. And that was really, that was really awesome and really special. Kathleen (23:10): Yeah, no, that, that brings me to another question, which is around content. I mean, I think there's a delicate dance of, you know, you, you want to, when you have these launches ready to go, you want to have enough content, all ready, ready, so that not only can you support people who are interested in the product, but you can generate interest like almost this full funnel strategy. But then I would think you also want to kind of tee some content in advance. Maybe that doesn't mention the product, but that talks to the pain points that it's solving that begins to build an audience for it. So can you talk me through how you think about that? Naike (23:46): Sure. I think that it's part of the planning when I do a big cross-functional meeting and I say, okay, this is the thing that we're releasing. I invite the cross functional teams, the content teams. So the folks who are working on content currently. So talk to me about what they think makes sense. So I try not to lead with, we need six blog posts and we need a webpage and please just like deliver all this stuff. I try to invite conversation about what they think would work best. What's already on their schedule. How can we tailor some of the things that they were thinking about to support the launch? And so we look at the calendar together, we talk about what the dependencies might be for developing content related to this launch. And then I dig in with them. So if they're like, okay, I think we can fit in three posts before launch, and then we can slot in these others. Naike (24:35): I'm like, great. What do I, how do I help deliver on that? And sort of take a production role I'm like doing, do you need time with an engineer? Do you need time with product, like doing me to like bring in some other domain experts so that you have what you need to create this. And that's typically how it's worked really well. I think that if you, if I were to come in top down and say like, Hey, I, what I see is like over the course of six weeks, we need six blog posts. So deliberate. You're not gonna make any friends and people weren't hugging to be excited about the launch. And that's not what you want. So inviting folks to share their expertise with you and let them and let you know, like, Hey, I've seen other companies do this really cool thing. Do you think we could try it this way? I'm all ears. I want to hear that because I can't pretend to be the, you know, the master of blog content or other types of interactive ways we could, we could get in touch with our prospects and customers. Kathleen (25:25): Yeah. I feel like that's a lesson for marketers in general and not even just product product marketers is, is the attitude that you go in with. You're so much more well-served if you think about the other parts of the company as your customer as opposed to, you know, them needing to give you things like, I need a blog, I need this, I need that. You know, I, it's more like, how can I help you? How can I make this easier for you? That is such an important little mind shift, a mindset shift that makes a massive difference anywhere in marketing that you work. Naike (25:59): Totally, totally agree. Kathleen (26:01): So what are some things that you wish you knew when you started out in product marketing? Naike (26:07): Woo. Everything, all the things I feel like if there is a product marketing mistake I've made it. But I think really, I wish I wish somebody had told me that the, I think the key of being a good product marketer is being curious about the product. I think I knew that inherently, but when you get busy when you get sales asking for things and you have launches on your plate, it's easy to sort of distance yourself from what's going on and focus on making sure that you're delivering. And because you're a marketer, there are actual tangible assets that people expect from you. But your job is to really remain curious and remain close to the product don't ever get too far away from it. And what are some ways you do that that means like going to standups and asking questions and asking people to explain things to you. Naike (27:01): I'm fairly new in my role in Foursquare. And after I do the regular, one-on-ones where I meet everybody on the marketing team and I meet sort of execs. I do the same with a CS and engineers. And I'm like, can you explain this to me? Like, how does this, how did these things work together? How does this make us different? What would you change? I want to know those things from the people who interact with the product every day. I want to know why the thing that they're working on, like, why is it important? Not just like what they're doing, but like, why does it matter? And continue to, that's how you build those relationships. That's how you continue to stay close and understand that, you know, it's hard to predict product work. It's really hard to, it's hard to predict when something's going to be ready, but when you have those relationships, you can go in and say, okay, so we thought this would be ready two weeks ago, what's changed. Naike (27:50): And you, and you don't have to have that conversation from like, I'm coming down on you, places like you're my friend. We, I understand how, what it takes to build this product. I want to understand what we need to do to help you to launch it. So having those relations and trips and remaining curious and remaining close is like critical. And I think that there have been times in my career where I've just been like, I have to get this, this one pager out. I need to develop this specific, this pitch deck, blah, blah, blah. And well, that stuff's important. It's not going to be as good if you don't have those close, you don't have that closeness and that curiosity. Kathleen (28:07): Yeah, absolutely. Any advice for product marketers out there when it comes to product launches, anythings that you think are really critical for them to do or keep in mind? Naike (28:35): This is probably more of like a personal thing than like a task thing, but I think keeping a cool head things are going to go wrong. Things are going to slip. That's normal and it should not be taken super personally. It should not be taken really hard. The reality is, like I mentioned before, it's really hard to predict product stuff. And so you may find yourself already on launch day and something happens and you're not able to like, there's a bug that prevents you from going from everything, from being shipping out. Or you have folks waiting for your, you have, you have press, that's waiting to be published and you have to tell everybody to wait, it's worth it to do that. Calmly. It's worth it to not freak out for your own wellbeing, but also for everyone else. It's your job as the person in the middle to clear the fog to make, to make sure that things are being communicated well, but also keep a cool head. I think you'll be better for it. And the, and everybody else around you will be too, cause I've definitely made the mistake of freaking out and setting things off in the wrong setting, off, sending out the wrong tone. And so keep a cool head because are going to go wrong and that's okay. You'll make them better. You'll communicate clearly and you'll get the launch out. Kathleen (29:47): You just actually raised another question in my head, which is communication cadence. Cause you talked about communication. So do you have a certain cadence that you maintain of like, how often do you give updates? Who do they go to? You know, are those updates by email, by video, do you hold a meeting? What does that look like for you while while preparing for launch? Naike (30:06): I typically do a biweekly depending on how much lead time there is. So if we are, you know, we're way ahead of lodge, maybe like every two weeks I touched base with the cross functional group, that's working on it to talk to them about where things are and how we're like, if there are contingencies, if you know, design is waiting on copy, what's happening with copy so we can support getting things, you know, through the pipeline. And then as we get closer, we'll do a one week meeting with that same cross functional team, just more of a status update. I know those are the worst kinds of meetings, but they actually really do help as a forcing function to make sure that everybody is getting the things that they need and catch any red flags if things are falling behind. Naike (30:52): So I'll do a weekly meeting and then day of launch, I like to do an internal only company meeting that says, Hey, these are the things that we're releasing today. This is why they're so important or so excited. And these are all the people who worked on it to give a big kudos to the folks who supported it and have been putting in long hours for the last six weeks or so, trying to get these assets out the door and then obviously including tweet, copy, or social copy for folks internally to support the launch in that email. Kathleen (31:22): That's a great point. You know, how do you, how do you mobilize the team to do its part in gaining momentum around the launch? I feel like Wistia is like the masters at this because I remember, I can't remember what it was they did, but there were there just their use of video throughout the whole team was unbelievable. But how do you approach that? I mean, you've worked at a couple of different companies, not everybody's Wistia, so Naike (31:46): Right. I mean, yeah. So I think the easiest thing to do is just make it easy. So in those emails I would send out like copy that folks could remix on their own and images that they could include and people would happily take exactly what I wrote or change it up and they would heed the call it's asked. So it's one important to just ask them to do that. A lot of companies don't and then it just, you don't get that sort of surround sound effect when the company launches and there's like 20 people all talking about it, you get that from your employees being engaged and sharing. So you want to encourage them to do that and you can tell them, Oh, I mean, that suggests nicely. And then beyond that other companies that I've worked at do like internal contests that's for the most social clicks and shares or tools that actually support these types of internal campaigns. So like what tools for example, Oh my goodness. I'm going to forget the name.  Kathleen (32:40): Sorry. I know I totally put you on the spot there. Naike (32:42): There is, there are tools that do the sort of internal like, I don't want to call it gamification, but essentially it like contests inside your company. So you, they like share the posts that they've posted. And then in the tool keeps track of the volume of visits or shares or clicks, and then you could reward the person or people who got the most, so it encourages those types. And so if you offer something cool, people will be more likely to engage lots of teams that I've worked on, have a little celebration there's in the office. So the entire company is invited to like celebrate the release of this thing. You get to celebrate your coworkers. And also just again, bringing that awareness. And at that time you can also encourage folks to participate by sharing on social or other places. Kathleen (33:29): That's great. I love that idea and getting the whole company involved and excited and kind of building momentum for that. Well, all right. We're going to change gears here. And I'm in very interested to know what you're going to say in response to my first of my two questions I ask everybody the first one is, and I'm going to give you a little bit of a twist. So the first question is I always ask people, is there a particular company or individual that's really like setting the standard for what it means to do inbound marketing? Well, right now, and the twist I'm going to give you is you cannot answer with any company that you've ever worked for because it's too easy to say, HubSpot or Wistia or any of these. So you have to pick a company you have not been employed by. Naike (34:14): Okay. Then my answer is, and I've been thinking about this, is Zendesk. I think they do really great inbound marketing. They have these really beautiful blogs it's you can tell that it's really well cared for, curated, and they almost have like a lifestyle brand for like, for folks who work in support. So it's not just like, these are our products and these are the ongoings of our company, but they also really care about they also really care about the community and they create content specific for that community. And it's really fantastic. So I really love if you go to their blog, it's really multiple blogs. They're fantastic. And they look great. And I can imagine being, if I were to support that this would be the place that I want to hang out for sure. Kathleen (35:01): Oh, I definitely need to go look at that. We're a Zendesk customer, but I haven't looked really closely at their blog. So I will be looking at it as soon as I get off with you. Question number two is that most marketers I talk to say their biggest pain point is just keeping up with everything that's changing in the world of digital marketing. It's so much. So how do you stay educated? How do you keep up with all the changes? Naike (35:29): Goodness, I think what I, what I, I really rely on LinkedIn surprisingly have a lot of connections that are super, super active. I'm not super active there, but I do have a lot of connection that are super active and talk a lot about what they're what they're finding interesting and what their resources are. And I follow a lot of that. I also, with regards to product marketing in particular, I like Pragmatic. Pragmatic Marketing is obviously, like the they're, they're really experts in the space. So I look at them. I also follow April Dunford really closely. Kathleen (35:53): I have to get her on this podcast. Naike (36:01): Oh my goodness. I would love that. She's fantastic. And I read her book and I think I saw her at a conference in Toronto a couple of years ago and I was just stunned. I was like, this woman just gets it. She knows. She just, she's just on top of it for sure. And really impressive to like hear her speak, but also just like really smart. And I, so I follow her really closely when she has something to say, I like definitely pay attention and listen. Kathleen (36:35): Yeah. I heard her speak at HubSpot's inbound conference and was blown away and she talked about positioning and it was, it was amazing talk. And then since then I've followed her really closely on Twitter, because like you say, every time she proverbially opens her mouth, like great stuff comes out. So April, if you're listening, come on and be a guest. And I would be remiss if I did not give a shout out right now to Mark Amigone and Nick Salvatoriello, who both suggested Naike as a guest because they had worked with her at HubSpot. And so if you're listening, I always end the podcast by saying, let me know if you know, any other kick ass inbound marketers. And I really mean it because this is how I find guests. So it's a lot of it is word of mouth. So if you, so thank you, Nick and Mark for the recommendation so much. And thank you Naike for coming on. Naike (37:20): This was great. Kathleen (37:22): If you are listening and you learn something new, which I mean, I definitely did. Please consider heading to Apple podcasts and leaving the podcast a five star review. I would love it and it would help us get found by other listeners. And as I said, if you know somebody else doing great inbound marketing work, please really do tweet me at @workmommywork, because I really would love to interview them. That's it for this week. Thank you so much, Naike. Naike (38:04): Thank you. Have a great day.

Dr. Friday 0:00 Good day. I’m Dr. Friday president of Dr. Friday Tax and Financial Firm. To get more info go to www.drfriday.com. This is a one minute moment. Remember SEPS/IRA’s, these you can put money into and you can still save tax for the past year. So if you have maybe a small amount due and you’re saying wait, “I’d rather pay into my retirement versus pay Uncle Sam,” maybe you should consider an IRA. If you’re self-employed, maybe contribute center putting more into your set. It is deferring the money for later but you know what, I’d rather grow my money then give it to Uncle Sam so that’s a choice you have to make though because you have to have the money to do it. So April 15, and will be or April 16/15th will be the last day for filing your IRA. If you need help, call me at 615-367-0819. Announcer 0:52 You can catch the Dr. Friday Call-in show live every Saturday afternoon from 2 pm to 3 pm right here on 99.7 WTN.

Aerospace engineer April Blackwell works at NASA’s Mission Control. She dreamed of being an astronaut but her type 1 diabetes diagnosis at age 11 changed everything. Since that day, though, she has found ways to break down barriers and pursue her love of space. Check out Stacey's new book: The World's Worst Diabetes Mom! April calls herself a "rule-questioner" and shares where asking those questions got her. She and Stacey talk about everything from family – she has two young children – to what it’s like to work as part of history in the space program. Join the Diabetes Connections Facebook Group! In Tell Me Something Good, a milestone for a tween with T1D – and her whole family gets in on the celebration. Sign up for our newsletter here This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. Use this link to get one free download and one free month of Audible, available to Diabetes Connections listeners! Get the App and listen to Diabetes Connections wherever you go! Click here for iPhone      Click here for Android Episode transcription (Note: this is a rough transcription of the show. Please excuse spelling/grammar/punctuation errors) Stacey Simms 0:01 Diabetes Connections is brought to you by One Drop created for people with diabetes by people who have diabetes. By Real Good Foods real food you feel good about eating, and by Dexcom take control of your diabetes and live life to the fullest with Dexcom. This week, aerospace engineer April Blackwell works at NASA's mission control. She always wanted to be an astronaut, but she was diagnosed with type one at age 11. And that changed everything. But since that day, she's found ways to break down barriers and pursue her love of space. April shares where asking those questions got her and we talked about everything from family - she has two young children - to what it's like to work as a part of history in the space program in Tell me something good a milestone for a tween with type one, and the whole family gets in on the celebration. This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your healthcare provider. Stacey Simms 1:32 Welcome to our first full show of 2020 Happy New Year everybody. Hope your year is off to a great start if you're new to diabetes connections, welcome. I'm your host Stacey Simms. We aim to educate and inspire about type one diabetes by sharing stories of connection. My son was diagnosed 13 years ago, just before he turned two. He's now a freshman in high school. He's 15 years old. My husband has type two diabetes I don't have diabetes, but I have a background in broadcasting and local radio and TV news. And that is how you get the podcast. As you have heard, if you are a longtime listener, some new things this year, we have some new sponsors. I dropped a minisode, a short episode last week. We're going to be doing those every week. So you get the full episode, which is something like this where it's an interview and we have some segments and then you'll have that minisode and planning for every week right now. We'll see how it goes. Which is a much shorter episode just me on one topic. And please follow along on social media because we're doing more new stuff this year. On the Tell me something good segment which has become really popular in the show. We're putting that out on social media every week, making sure you're following on Instagram. I am Stacey Simms on Instagram, there's only the one account on Facebook, Diabetes Connections the Group, although I do post everything on our page, but you know how Facebook is sometimes they are just obnoxious and don't show you everything you want to see. Something else I'm trying in the new year is transcription. I am putting in the show transcription of every episode. On the episode homepage. You can go to diabetes dash connections dot come, and you scroll down. Make sure you look at the current episode, click on that. And in the show notes will be the transcription of the interview and hopefully the whole episode as well. as well. Something new we're trying we'll see how people like it will see how you respond if it's popular and people use it will keep doing it. I have had a lot of requests for the transcripts over the four and a half years of the show and as Technology is better and better. It's been a lot easier to get that done. Done. Maybe I'll do it behind the scenes minisode One of these days and tell you about all the changes that we've gone through and some of the technology as podcasting really grows, how things have changed, but I know you're here to talk about April and NASA and how she got involved in the space program. It's such a great story. My talk with April Blackwell in just a moment, but first Diabetes Connections is brought to you by One Drop. One Drop is diabetes management for the 21st century. One Drop was designed by people with diabetes. For people with diabetes. One Drops glucose meter looks nothing like a medical device. It is sleek, compact, is sleek, compact and seamlessly integrates with the award winning One Drop mobile app, sync all your other health apps to One Drop to keep track of the big picture and easily see health trends and with a One Drops of script You get unlimited test strips and lancets delivered right to your door. Every One Drop plan also includes access to your own certified diabetes coach. If you have questions you don't feel like waiting for your next doctor visit. Your personal coach is always there to help. I am so excited to have One Drop on board. Their program is amazing. Check them out, go to diabetes dash connections calm and click on the One Drop logo to learn more. My guest this week is not someone who takes the answer No, and accepts it and goes away quietly. April Blackwell grew up dreaming of the space program. As you'll hear, she watched out for NASA news. Like most of us watched Saturday morning cartoons when we were kids. But a diagnosis of T1D in sixth grade grounded her astronaut dreams. But how did you decide to carry on anyway? You know what did you have to do? To get where she is at mission control. her blog name and her Skype handle are nerdy April, and you'll hear me ask about that. But I gotta tell you, when you talk to someone on Skype, which is how I do a lot of these interviews, the the avatar, the logo, whatever you want to call it, of their name, or their face is on the screen. So the whole time I was talking to her, it said nerdy April on the screen, which really made me smile, all right here, which really made me smile on the screen, which really just made me smile, and I did have to ask her about it. Her story, though, is it's a story of grit, of asking questions and refusing to give up. Here's my conversation with mission controls. April Blackwell. Stacey Simms 0:03 April, thanks for joining me. I'm sure you're really busy. And I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. How are you? April Blackwell I'm doing wonderful. How are you? Stacey Simms I'm great. And I'm excited to be talking to you. I have lots and lots of questions. But I have to start with, with your name online and on Skype as we're talking nerdy April. Did you reclaim that nerdy title? April Blackwell 0:27 Oh, I am a I'm a proud nerd. I think all nerds who are truly nerds are proud of it. So it actually started though, because the my blog title started as Nerdy April's Space Adventures. And if you take that as an acronym, like, you know, everything NASA related, it spells out NASA so it kind of was a little bit of a play on words and acronyms there, but it kind of turned into just Nerdy April and that's how I've been rolling lately. Stacey Simms 0:59 Okay, So I want to ask you at the blog, I want to ask you about NASA, but let's start at the beginning. You knew that you wanted to be involved in science and in space from a very early age, right? April Blackwell 1:13 Yeah, I was only about five or six years old. I was in a kindergarten and my dad actually, he is an aircraft mechanic. And so there's a little connection there. But he also is just a deep lover of the space program. And he grew up in the Apollo days, sort of that romanticized moon landings and everything and he was just an amateur but it and his love for the space program just really captured me. And so that's kind of where that all was inspired from. Stacey Simms 1:45 What were you doing, though, at age five? I mean, when you were with your dad, looking at stars were you watching launches? April Blackwell 1:52 We weren't watching launches. I grew up in Arizona, so it's pretty far away. Florida, where most of the launches happened. Well, Stacey Simms 1:58 (laughs) I was thinking about on TV. April Blackwell 2:00 Yeah, yeah, I definitely watch some on TV we did have a very rudimentary telescope. So we would go out and mostly look at the moon since that was it a big target we could watch. It didn't have a tracker or anything on it. So it was all manual. And it required some fine tuning by dad before I could look through it. We built model rockets together and launched those later on. I went to sort of local science camp during the summer, and started getting excited about computers and everything that had to do with science. So robots and engineering type problem solving. And so it just stayed with me my whole life. Stacey Simms 2:45 Wow. So when you were diagnosed, not too many years later, you were 11. What happened? were you hoping to actually be an astronaut at that time? April Blackwell 2:55 Yeah, so I i think that was always the pointy end of the spear for was to be an astronaut. And, you know, that's when you watch TV and everything those, those are the people that you see. And so that was always kind of my final goal. When I was diagnosed at 11, it took a little bit of time for me to realize that, you know, astronaut was going to be more difficult now that I had type one diabetes. And some of that sort of came into focus later in my life. But at 11 it was kind of just heartbreaking. You know, I was watching launches and getting excited about space, but then knowing that that probably would never be a reality for me. Stacey Simms 3:41 So at age 11, you know, I guess you have many choices, but you can say to yourself, well, that's that I've got to find something else and be devastated or too bad. Or I'm going to move forward and do this some way somehow. Did that decision happened for you? immediately. Did it take some time for you to continue to love science the way you did? April Blackwell 4:01 It definitely took some time. And I guess I'll just touch on the fact that I think being diagnosed with diabetes at 11. Well, in the first place, there's no great time to be diagnosed with diabetes. But I think being diagnosed at 11, it sort of puts you on this really fast trajectory towards adulthood. Because you want to maintain your independence as much as you can. My parents implemented it, such that I had to be able to give myself shots and test my own blood sugar before I could spend the night at a friend's house, for instance. And so that was a big motivator for me. And I think, you know, maybe I always had a little bit of an inclination towards being a little older than what my physical age was. You can ask my mom I used to wake up early on Saturday mornings, to watch the news, not cartoons, just in the hopes that I might see you know, some information about NASA. But I think, you know, sort of that catalysts of putting me on a trajectory towards adulthood helped steer sort of my ideas about what I wanted to be in the future. And while I knew I could never be, or probably could never be an astronaut, space was so exciting to me and talking about rockets talking about, you know, low Earth orbit and traveling 17,500 miles an hour, five miles per second, thinking about these huge engines that need to take astronauts and supplies up to space, I just couldn't get it out of my blood out of my brain. And so I decided that even if I couldn't be an astronaut, I would love to work in the space program in some capacity. And that sort of led me to looking at an aerospace engineering degree. Stacey Simms 5:54 All right, let's go back for a second about your parents in the transition at age 11. What was your diagnosis story like, were you very sick for very long? I mean, I know we kind of sometimes we talk about it like and then you you didn't have diabetes and then you did and then life went on. Can you kind of fill us in on on how you found out? April Blackwell 6:13 Yeah. So it was, I guess nothing extremely remarkable about it, but maybe that's why I should tell it is because, you know, there is this sort of the normal warning signs that everyone comes up or comes up against. And so it was kind of in the Christmas time frame, December timeframe. I just got a cold. And then, you know, my grandparents were in town for the holidays, and we usually would stay up late playing cards, and you know, eating Christmas candy, and I just, I couldn't I just physically couldn't I was extremely fatigued. And then when I started getting up multiple times during the night to go to the bathroom, you know, my mom bless her heart, thought that I was probably suffering from a urinary tract infection. And her old wives tales, of course, told her that we needed to treat this with the cranberries. Unknown Speaker 7:14 Of course, April Blackwell 7:15 yeah, so. So we hit up the cranberry juice pretty hard for a little while, and it just wasn't getting better. And so we started going to the pediatricians office. And it took almost a week of daily pediatrician visits. I, I joke to that I could just pee on command, because every time I would show up there, they would tell me to, you know, get a urine sample. So it sort of became this joke. And then I was finally diagnosed on December 30. And they told us that we needed to head over to the children's hospital right away straight from the pediatrician’s office. We had no idea what diabetes was about at all. I absolutely had zero idea. I don't think my parents really understood it at all. They were just scared. And so we had we went over to the Children's Hospital, but unfortunately it was a sort of a skeleton crew because it was the holidays and New Year's and stuff. So they told us to just go home. And it turned out that my old pediatrician, he actually lived next door to us. And so he came over for a couple days to help give me some insulin shots and test my blood sugar. While we still had no idea what you know, was to come more shots every single day and blood sugar tests every single day. So it was definitely a steep learning curve as I think most diagnosis stories are. Stacey Simms 8:41 Yeah, it can just take so much time to get the diagnosis. I get so frustrated by that. But you know, at least they got it before it was even more devastating. Fast forward a few more years, you have kept your interest in space as you said, What did you wind up studying in college or did you go you know what, where did your path lead you to continue after high school. Right back to April answering that question in just a moment, but first, diabetes connections. is brought to you by real good foods. Have you tried them yet? high protein, low carb, grain free, gluten free. They have so many delicious products from breakfast sandwiches to pizza. The stuffed chicken is delicious, the little poppers that they make are just excellent. You know, it's really nice to have something convenient when you're not in the mood to cook or if you're a 15 year old boy, you know you're starving and you need something to get you between the half an hour before dinner. So Ben evil just get a little personal pizzas and heated up. We're really big fans of really good foods. I'm thrilled to have them back on the podcast for the new year. The new year and I'm excited to try some of the new products they have out right now. And I'm excited to try some of the new products they have out right now. We will be bringing you some taste tests as we go forward. But find out more and go to their store but find out more, go to diabetes dash connections dot com and click on the real good foods logo. now back to April talking about what happened after high school. Let's go now back to April and I'm asking her about what happened after high school How did she get to where she is now April Blackwell 9:01 Yeah, so I was very fortunate to get a full ride scholarship in state in Arizona, and because of my grades, so I went to Arizona State University and studied aerospace engineering. And then once I got out, I kind of hit a little bit of a roadblock because there was a period of time in the aerospace industry that the space shuttle was looking at being retired. And so the the future of NASA was a little bit unclear as to what was going to happen. So a lot of companies and related industry sort of put put a hold on hiring right around that time. Which was unfortunate but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise because I ended up getting a job working with the army of all things in Huntsville, Alabama. So I moved across the country. Free to work in a triple wide trailer we like to call it in Huntsville, Alabama, which just sounds so glamorous. Unknown Speaker 10:10 Oh yeah, the stars all end up there. April Blackwell 10:14 But it turned out to be a really great experience. So Stacey Simms 10:17 did I also see somewhere where you were testing helicopters? April Blackwell 10:22 Yeah. So that's what I was doing for the army. And it was really awesome. It wasn't it wasn't quite space. But it was a really great way to get my feet wet on just what it means to be an engineer and what kind of engineering I personally like because there's so many different avenues you can go with that degree. So I got to fly on experimental helicopters and boss test pilots around which was really fun. The group I was in actually was really tight knit and it I'd say even more so than my group at NASA Now. And part of that, I think is because, you know, you had to fill out paperwork that said, who in your group would go tell your spouse or your significant other that there had been an accident. And so we really counted on each other to to watch out for each other. And all of them absolutely supported me with my diabetes. You know, my flight suit had specific pockets with snacks and blood testers and stuff. And so we always kind of joked, like, oh, if you need a snack, April always has one in her left lower leg pocket or whatever. Stacey Simms 11:42 Let me just jump in and ask. So when I said you were flying helicopters, I was gonna ask you how the heck did you get clearance to do that as a person with diabetes, but it was as a passenger? April Blackwell 11:53 Correct. Yeah. So I flew on them not actually physically flying them, but it did still require FAA medical clearance which took about six, six months to get all of the paperwork in and get clearance to finally fly on the helicopter. Stacey Simms 12:10 so that's what I wanted to ask you about. Can you talk a little bit about doing this because it's it sounds so exciting and I know so many young people who want to serve in the military or want to fly and Yep, we've just got, you know, the, in the United States, FAA says now you can be a commercial pilot with type one. So progress there. But right, what do you need to do, you know, as we're going to talk about your path going forward, to kind of accomplish what you've done. You've mentioned medical screenings, things like that. You there's just a lot is there a lot of paperwork and exams? I April Blackwell 12:44 Yes, I will tell you it's a little bit of a black box. Even now with the FAA ‘s new guidance. That type ones can apply for these waivers for class two and class one medicals. It's not clear to me how many type ones they've actually accepted into those medical clearance buckets. That data is never published. And, in fact, the process to get a medical for me, like I said, took about six months. And it was really me going to an FAA Doctor who said, Hey, I can't clear you because you have type one diabetes, I can check you for all the other stuff, but that's going to require some special paperwork. So he sent in his recommendation, of course, I had to get letters and agency readings from my endocrinologist. Initially, the paperwork I started with about a year's worth of data. I sent that in and it took about three back and forth between me and basically a blackbox doctor in Washington DC at the FAA to finally get the amount of paperwork they wanted. And to be honest, I just got frustrated with The process and so I called my mom and dad back in Arizona, and I said, Hey, can you just run down to the Children's Hospital and literally make copies of every single piece of paperwork that they have, since my diagnosis? Back then it was all paper, not, you know, digital, it was literally copies of these pieces of paper, you know, probably a three inch thick, you know, stack of papers, and I literally sent that into the FAA and I said, this is all the data that I have from my diagnosis, you know, X number of years ago, and I have nothing else to give you, basically, and they finally said, Okay, okay, that's that's enough. And they granted me clearance for one year. But it was it was a frustrating process and I haven't tried to get another one. You know, since moving to Houston because I do all of my medical clearance now through the NASA doctor so I can talk with them directly. There's an actual face to face, but the FAA doctors are a little bit of an enigma I guess. Stacey Simms 15:06 So I guess the lesson there if a parent is listening or if an adult with type one is listening is be persistent. April Blackwell 15:13 Yes. If it's something that you really want, you know, you're going to find a way to overcome it and do it. And I just, I just always say, never give up and be a rule questioner because there are a lot of rules that are based on old data and old diabetes technology and management techniques. So it's worth asking the question, because a lot of these doctors especially, you know, if you think military doctors and FAA doctors, they deal with really, almost perfect human specimens, if you will. And so they're just, they just don't have the knowledge of you know, what is going on in the diabetes sphere these days? Stacey Simms 15:54 What an interesting thought, Yeah, why would they know because everybody is like GI Joe walking in. Unknown Speaker 16:00 Yeah, exactly. Stacey Simms 16:02 That's a really interesting thought. Okay, so you're, you're, you're in these experimental helicopters, you're following your career. You're in a triple wide in Huntsville. How’d you get to Mission Control? April Blackwell 16:16 Yeah, it's a great question. Um, I will say just before I leave the helicopters for a minute there in Huntsville, you know, I had this opportunity to sort of push a lot of barriers that type one diabetics came up with against because the military doesn't allow type ones, you know, that were previously diagnosed at least right now. And so I got to go through the altitude chamber, the helicopter dunker trainer, which is basically two days of being drowned alive. And I went through the parachute course. And all of these required talking with doctors and just explaining the situation to them because they literally don't deal with type 1 diabetic patients, because that's a disqualification right off the bat. And all of them were super receptive, super open to it. My military friends supported me going and talking to them and coming up with plans. So you know, we would come up with a plan, like we're going to leave your pump on till we get to this pressure, and then we're going to take it off and leave it outside of the altitude chamber, you know, and that's going to be 15 minutes. So make sure your blood sugar is at least 130 at that time, or whatever it is, you know, but it was a really great way to sort of break down those barriers. And I even included a two week course at the Naval Test Pilot School, in Pax river, Maryland. So that was a really kind of culmination of all these, you know, sort of barriers that I had overcome and a way to, you know, sort of solidify that I was on the right path. Stacey Simms 17:54 That's fantastic. Wow. And that's great to have that support from the people around you. I love to hear that. April Blackwell 18:00 Yeah, they were really great. Stacey Simms 18:02 You get, you get dunked, that sounds so enjoyable. I mean, I know you and I, it sounds like we have very similar personalities and enjoy a lot of the same activities (laughs) April Blackwell 18:11 Bananas. Unknown Speaker 18:14 Tell me about what led you then to your position at NASA? April Blackwell 18:17 Yeah. So from my my helicopter job, I was doing a lot of traveling around two weeks every month I was gone. And for a newly married person, it was just a little bit hard on the family so started looking for, you know, some other opportunities and found these jobs pop up in Mission Control. And I had absolutely no inkling that I would even get called to interview for them. But it turned into, you know, this flight test experience that I had, working on the helicopter as well. Well, it sounds completely different, actually was a lot of the same skill set that they look for in flight control. rollers. And so that sort of, you know, allowed that door to be open to get an interview at NASA. And of course, I ended up falling in love with it. I mean, it was job working at the home of manned spaceflight and now crude spaceflight with women, you know, joining in and getting to work in such a historic building like Mission Control. And you know, I'm even going there tonight I'm working this evening, that evening surf to fly the International Space Station. So it's, it's just really a dream come true. YOUAREHERE Stacey Simms 19:33 Okay. I have chills as you're talking about controlling the International Space Station. The the setup, I just want to take a moment because I think we all do know what Mission Control and flight control you know, what it looks like and what you do, but and correct me if I'm wrong here, but what we're talking about is what we see in all those movies. Right. When you know when they say Houston, we have a problem your Houston I mean, you were that big room, right? Yes. The diagram was all the guys in the white short sleeve t shirts and the glasses from the movies that we've seen all these years. That's Mission Control. April Blackwell 20:07 Exactly a skinny tie and a pocket protector. We don't smoke anymore and missing control. Yeah, but if you get in the elevator it's in, it's in the same building so that the room for instance, if you've seen the movie, Apollo 13, the room that that movie was based on is actually just one floor up from our current International Space Station control room. And so when you get in the elevators, I always joke it's sort of this aroma of like 1960s cigarettes and coffee mixed together. But that's just the way missing control smells and it's, it's hard to describe. Stacey Simms 20:47 Alright, so when you're going to work tonight, and you know, controlling the International Space Station, tell us what that really means. I mean, do you mind breaking it down a little bit? What are you going to be doing? I mean, in Yeah, I understand. April Blackwell 21:00 Absolutely. It's not that hard. So basically, you know, we sit at a big console that has several computers, we monitor a lot of telemetry data coming down from the space station all the time. And it uses a satellite constellation to make sure that we can get our data even when they're on the other side of the world. So we look at that data, we make decisions based on that data. If we see any anomalies, we may send commands up to the vehicle. And then on certain days or nights, you know, there may be a big event like a docking or undocking, maybe a spacewalk. And on those days, you know, it's our job is even a little bit more critical because we'll be sending lots of commands and making sure that the space station is performing. Its absolute best to make sure we don't have any anomalies where maybe there's another vehicle really close by, so Stacey Simms 22:00 Have you ever had an experience that was kind of frightening is the right word, but you know, where, where someone or or a mission was in jeopardy. April Blackwell 22:13 Um, I've had a few kind of small anomalies happen. I haven't been on console for anything very major. But that doesn't mean that major things haven't happened. This was, you know, hasn't lined up with my console shifts. But it's interesting because even when when stuff happens when you aren't on console, you sort of have this adrenaline because you know what that person sitting in the seat is feeling, you know, the whole lead up to being a flight controller. It's not like you're hired and the next day here on console, we call it almost a second master's degree. So you have about two years of training. About a year, a little over a year of that is sort of bookwork so you're learning a lot of information about that. The system we control, and you're taking oral examinations. And then the next piece of it is simulation. So we actually simulate, you know, really bad days, days that are worse than any any days, we've actually seen real time. And this is all to prepare you for that prioritization skill of being a flight controller and being able to work through stress. stressful situation. So we always joke that, you know, one small anomaly in the real room feels like 5050 anomalies, you know, in the simulation room, and that's just how we have to train ourselves to be able to cope with that stress. Wow. Stacey Simms 23:44 What is the best part of it for you? Is it walking into that building? Is it knowing that you know that elevator is there and you're part of all that history? Is it just you know, logging in for the day I'm curious what you know what gets you still very excited about this? Because obviously You are? April Blackwell 24:02 Yeah, so I'd say there's kind of two pieces of it, there's sort of a physical, almost just, you know, like chemical response, when you cross the threshold into Mission Control, you know, you have to swipe your badge like five times, you know, to get in the building, and then get in the room and all this stuff. So when you cross that threshold, it really is like, you're just leaving all your other problems and everything else that you've thought about that day, outside, because you need to focus. And you need to bring your best self, you know, in here, because there are literally at least six humans on board that are counting on you to take care of them and take care of their spaceship. And then as you sit down, we have what we call big boards and the friends so they're like these big projection screens and we're always getting video down from the space station, usually in about six channels. And we call it the windowless room with the best view because the view is just incredible. I mean We now have these HD cameras on board. And as you're flying my favorite place to fly over the sort of the Mediterranean Sea, and just the colors juxtapose there with like the desert sand and Africa, it's, it's just incredible. And without actually being an astronaut, I feel like it's close to being the next best thing. And then the second part is sort of what you were talking about the history, you know, in this in that very building just one floor up is where the controller sat when we landed on the moon. And they worked through problems real time, you know, to tell the astronauts what to do. And these were people that had computers with much less computing power than our iPhones today. And they were very young. If you look at any of the documentaries and everything, these were like 20 something kids fresh out of college, you know, space, there wasn't as much history then. So it's hard to you know, lead your whole life thinking you're going to be working in space. It's like something you just thrust upon you basically. And they were able to overcome all of that and be able to land man on the moon. It just, it still blows my mind today, even when I walk in that building. Wow, Stacey Simms 26:17 that's amazing. So does Type One Diabetes on your job? Do you mind telling us a little bit about your routine? Because there's some very long shifts, lots of pressure, you know, you can't exactly take a lot of breaks, I would assume. Can you talk a little bit about how you manage it? April Blackwell 26:32 Yeah. Um, so I mentioned before that we're constantly monitoring telemetry from the space station. And as type one diabetics, we're kind of used to that already. Actually, we constantly monitor telemetry coming from our own bodies. I use a CGM. So I set that in a prominent place. And it is just become part of my scan pattern. I scan all of the data that I'm looking at Looking for anomalies. And then I also glanced over at my CGM, and just make sure that I'm trending the way I want to be trending. And generally on console, I'll keep my blood sugar a little bit higher. So try to avoid going below about 120 or so just because I know if at any moment something could hit, basically. And so, you know, I don't want to have that rush of adrenaline drop me really low. So I try to keep it a little bit higher. I always have snacks in the control room, we're allowed to eat, you know, as you mentioned, they are long Fest, so you usually have a meal that you eat while you're there. And then all of the flight directors also know that I have type one, that's not a requirement or anything, but I think as a member of their team, it's important that they know that's something that I'm also monitoring and so it may require that I you know, step out for a quick two minutes to go grab a snack or, you know, do a little Check or change the site even I've had to do that at work. And so I think just being really candid and open and and, you know, open to answering any questions that they have is really important in sort of these high stress jobs like this. Stacey Simms 28:19 And a while back, I interviewed Ernie Prato, who also works at NASA and also lives with type one. And I know you know each other. Unknown Speaker 28:27 I don't, this is gonna sound so weird. So I just kind of a mom question. So I'm sorry for asking it. But like, do you guys see each other at work? Do you check in with each other? I mean, I know not everybody with type one. Diabetes has to be friends. But the mom and me is kind of hoping that you support each other. April Blackwell 28:44 Yeah, so it's funny that you mentioned Ernie because we sort of have this unofficial Johnson Space Center Type One Diabetes club and Ernie actually sits in Completely different building off site. He sits over at the airport now. So I don't see him daily, but we have sort of instant messaging capability and so will frequently talk on there. And we have another friend who actually works in the search and rescue area. So he's doing a lot of cool things with the military in order to get our astronauts safely home after they land. And so it's really fun we all meet and you know, you think we would like talk about space and stuff because that's what we do. But we always end up just talking about our diabetes and what devices were using which ones are you know, giving us trouble which ones were low on supplies for, if anyone's tried to like, you know, come up with engineer way to make something work better or whatever. So it's really fun to sort of have that outlet and especially at work with kind of like minded people. Unknown Speaker 30:01 I'm glad I asked Stacey Simms 30:05 what do you think would be next for you? Do you have other goals within what you're doing now? I mean, what you're doing now is so exciting. And I would assume you would want to do this forever. But are there other things that you would like to accomplish that you're working on? April Blackwell 30:18 Oh, that's a loaded question. There's so many things. Right now, I think my focus is just to you know, be the best engineer I can at work. And then I also have two little kids. So I Unknown Speaker 30:33 yes, I want April Blackwell 30:35 a three and a half and a one and a half year old. So they are taking a lot of my energy right now. And I think that's totally fine. That's, that's the season I'm in and so I want to be able to enjoy that. And so I think as far as my career goes, and everything, I definitely still have that astronaut dream out there. And I think there are opening up some new ways To be able to make that happen, and if not for me, then definitely the next generation of diabetics or maybe, you know, if we come up with a cure, then the non diabetics. But I'm really excited to see where that goes. And then I, I think, also just kind of spreading this message that you know, even if you perceive that there's a something that could hold you back as a type one diabetic, make sure that you are asking questions because it may not always be a hard know, and you sort of need to figure out what it is that is really keeping you from doing those things. Stacey Simms 31:36 I don't want to get too personal, but I know a lot of listeners will be interested. You know, when you have type one. There are a lot of concerns about having children. I mean, less so today, but you have to do so much work, it seems to me, you know, was it? Gosh, you seem like such a disciplined person anyway. And again, I don't want to pry but healthy pregnancies you did okay. You said you had a CGM. Do you mind sharing a little bit about that? Yeah, April Blackwell 32:01 um, so I actually don't get this question very often, I think because everyone's so focused on the NASA and space scope, but I'm really happy to share it because I think it is important. It's not something that a lot of women talk about. So, yes, I had two kids, three and a half and a one and a half, one and a half year old now. The first was a girl and everything went really, really well. I was induced, and that was sort of just my ob was being a little cautious with having diabetes and making sure I didn't go too long. And so I was induced, which turned into like a 40 plus hour labor, which was unfortunate. But everything turned out just fine. And she has a lot of attitude now. So something worked there. My son, so he's just about 18 months now, a little bit different flavor of pregnancy. As weird as that sounds. He had a lot of fluid around him while I was pregnant. So I gained a lot more weight. And I was just generally uncomfortable because I felt like my stomach was literally just gonna like burst open, it was so, so stretched out. And he ended up being a C section baby and he was over nine pounds. And that was again early induced about 38 weeks, so to completely different pregnancies. I had good control through both and you know, all of the non stress tested all of that when we're going well, and it just turned into a little bit of a different labor situation with my son so but I have two awesome Healthy Kids now and they do take a lot of my energy It's interesting because you know, my daughter being three and a half, she understands I have these sort of extra devices hooked to me. Console, she, she knows the word diabetes, she knows the word pump, she knows that sometimes I eat her applesauce pouch when I'm low and we're at the playground. Because that has happened before. Sure. And my son is still you know, he's just, he isn't quite to the point of communicating those feelings yet. So he'll touch my site, and I'll tell him No, you know, but it's just interesting seeing how they react to it. And I think in a way it will hopefully make them more empathetic to you know, friends or people in the future that they come across and this is just a normal part of life. And you know, everyone has something they're dealing with, I think, you know, Type One Diabetes happens to be mine, but everyone has something and so keeping an open mind and judging people based on devices or things that they see right off the bat I think is really important. Stacey Simms 35:07 Do you mind if I ask what devices you use? But pumping CGM? April Blackwell 35:11 Sure I use the tandem. x to polymer and sex sex. com g sex ctm. So I get that data right on the pump, which was really nice. Yeah, I like both of them's though. I'm a big fan. Before Stacey Simms 35:30 I let you go, you know, this is kind of a tough question for you to answer. But your mom and dad, you were 11 when you were diagnosed, you shared this love of space and science with your father. Your you have an incredible career. You have two children, they must have been worried during the pregnancy. You know, have you had a conversation with them about Wow, did you ever think after that diagnosis where I would be today? April Blackwell 35:55 Oh man, we've had a lot of conversation about this. Yeah, it's it's very cyclical. I think for us, you know, when I was growing up, I would definitely have months where I was not literally diabetes high, but just high on life and really excited and full of energy. And then I definitely had points where I was really low and upset that I had diabetes. You know, the one person that I knew that really wanted to be an astronaut, and literally couldn't because of this disease, you know, somehow I was chosen to have this disease, of course. So I went through all those emotions and those feelings and my parents were always there. They always supported my dream. And they really stressed to me the importance of working hard. And I will tell you, engineering is hard work. And it is hard to get through engineering school, even if you're really passionate about it. And so that support was priceless. I know my mom, you know, see Susan emotional person. And I think she was sometimes afraid that I wouldn't be able to sort of realize some of these dreams. And it's so great. Now, you know, I'm in my early 30s and I have my dream job. And I send her picture hers, you know, for Mission Control probably every week, just because I think it's really cool. And, you know, seeing her and the being able to decipher that, hey, like, we made it together. It's not it's not just me. I mean, they did so much to help me and my poor Mom, you know, she's, she's not the most most into space, but she like dragged herself to those space museums that me and my dad wanted to go to Oh, man. Sometimes she would be doing her crocheting over in the corner. So bless her heart. She was such a trooper. through all of that, but I think it's really important now to, for her to see, you know, these moments in my life. And now she gets to share those with other people that she meets that, you know, maybe they've just had a diagnosis like this, or they know someone going through an issue that's, you know, putting up some barriers and she can say like, hey, look like we got through it. It's totally doable. I think that's the key, it's doable, and it's going to be tough. But if you want something, you need to just go for it, and it'll absolutely work out. So we've just sort of on and off had those conversations, you know, let's see, I've had diabetes for 20 years now. So the last 20 years, I would say there's been conversations like that throughout the whole time. Wow. Stacey Simms 38:48 Well, that that's great. I'm so glad that you've had this conversation with your parents, you know, as a as a mom have a son who is figuring out what he wants to do, you know, and we don't want diabetes to hold him back. Don't mind saying I find your story incredibly inspirational. So April, thank you so much for joining me. And, you know, I'll be following you on Instagram and elsewhere and looking for those pictures of Mission Control and everything. Thanks for joining me April Blackwell 39:13 absolutely anytime. Stacey Simms so much more about April at diabetes dash connections come and I'm going to talk about her had a really emotional reaction to something. I'll share that in just a moment but first… Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dexcom. And you know when you have a toddler diagnosed with type one like we did, you hear rumblings for a long time about the team years, but when it hit us at full force a little early, I was so glad we had Dexcom early. I was so glad we had Dexcom Benny's insulin needs started going way up around age 11. And frankly, they continue to go up and told, I think they started topping out about age 14 really just late last year. And you know, those hormones, swings, everything we had to do all the adjustments we've made. I cannot imagine managing diabetes during this crazy time. Without the Dexcom continuous glucose monitoring system. We can react more quickly to highs and lows, see trends adjust insulin doses with advice from our endo. I know using the Dexcom g six has really helped improve Benny's A1C and overall health. If your glucose alerts and readings from the G6 do not match symptoms or expectations, use a blood glucose meter to make diabetes treatment decisions. To learn more just go to diabetes dash connections calm and click on the Dexcom logo before I move on from April Blackwell, in her terrific story, I just want to share one more thing. So when I, when I talked to all the guests, I always grab pictures of them, right? You see that on social media, when we put the episodes out or at the episode homepage, there's usually a picture of a product or the person or you know, the crux of what we're talking about. And often they email me photos, but sometimes I scroll through just to kind of see which one I'd want. Then I can say, Hey, can I grab that one picture or whatever. So I was doing that with April. And I came across, and I'll see if I can get her permission to share this in the Facebook group. She has a picture of herself dressed as an astronaut. And that picture is from about and that picture is from, you know, she was diagnosed, she was diagnosed at the end of December. So it's Halloween. I mean, it's just really a couple of weeks before she was diagnosed and seeing her as a little girl, knowing what she wanted to do, and knowing where she is now. And just I guess I could have been sad about it because I got very emotional. And I guess the reaction could have been, oh, it's too bad that you didn't get to be that astronaut but my reaction Was this? I mean, I really got emotional, it's kind of embarrassing. Was this, this swell of admiration, I'm not sure I'd be that strong, whether I was 11 years old or, you know, an adult, to be able to turn that situation into what she has been able to do with it. You know, and as she mentioned with Ernie Prado, who also works at NASA, and you don't have to be a you know, an aerospace engineer, to just kind of overcome what type one throws at you. And I think that's what happened when I saw that photo. I just thought, gosh, you're all of you.. All of you just have to be strong. You know, even if you don't feel strong, you kind of have to be you kind of have to be and yes, parents too, but it's a different kind of strong for us, right. That's a that's a different story altogether. So I'll see if April will let me post the photo and I wonder if you'll have the same reaction that I did. Foot boy What a great story and I can't wait to follow along with her. It's nerdy April I'll link it up in the show notes on her Instagram account on her Instagram account all right time for Tell me something good brought to you by our friends at real good foods. And this one is real good foods. And I know it's a podcast and I shouldn't be saying things like you got to see the picture. But you got to see the picture. And I will post it in the Facebook group. I will be posting it later this week on Instagram as we start posting the Tell me something good stuff. But Amanda lovely. posted a photo of her kids celebrating what they call their last Lantus party. And she says the reason they were having a party, Annika, who is her daughter with type one is 10. It burns right Lantus burns a lot of people if you're not familiar, this is a long acting insulin. This is a commonly used long acting insulin. And Amanda said that Anika isn't a fan. This was a big moment. The picture shows as they're having their last Lantus party, Anika with two of her siblings in party hats. party hats, so it's Nina and chi and they are hugging her and everybody looks like they're having a It looks like a birthday party. I mean, it's really cute. And apparently Malin, who is five but not in the photo was also wearing a party hat. party hat and the dog was as well but not pictured Amanda, you got to send us a picture of the dog. But they were really excited and supporting their sister, which is why this is the Tell me something good. Not so much about the pump start although I'm sure she appreciated that and that's fun too. But, too, but it's always just so nice to see a family kind of get behind each other, right? I mean, gotta have that kind of support. And I will say that if Lantus burns, you or your child know that there are long acting alternatives, not just switching to an insulin pump. And by the way, Amanda make sure you save some of that long acting just in case you have pump issues, right? You know, you never want to have no long acting on hand, just in case talk to your endo. But if you're having an issue with Lantus, ask about switching, there are other long acting's out there that don't burn as much and that work differently, but that's definitely an endo level decision. Do you have a Tell me something good story. It can be anything from a diversity a milestone of a last Lantus party. We have lots of fun stuff to share. And I love telling your good stories. You can always email me Stacey at diabetes dash connections. com or post in the Facebook group message me, you know, send a carrier pigeon, whatever works for you. We will be sharing these pretty far and wide this year. And I'd love to hear your story. With the time shifting nature of podcasting, as I've mentioned before, you know, sometimes and recording before things are happening that I want to talk about, and then they'll the show airs afterwards. And all of that to say, a lot of you've been following along with Benny, who has been on crutches for six weeks. And as I am taping this, he is hopefully getting the word in the next couple of days that he can be off crutches, and maybe start some physical therapy. So next week, I hope to tell you a little bit more about that. And we're also going to the endo, which is a really good time for me to interview Benny because we're alone in the car and we're in the same space for once because that kid is so busy, I don't even see him half the time. But I'm going to try to talk to him about control IQ in the last year and lots of things changes he's made. Control IQ and things that have gone on since we've last talked we've made some other changes. And you know, he's just a different kid than he was even a year ago which is kind of breaking my heart and kind of fantastic but Boy, it's been it's been a big year for him. I don't know about you. But when my kids went from middle school to high school, it wasn't it wasn't just a different school. It was like a different life. High School is very different. The schedule is different. The work is different. And I remember with my daughter, who is now a freshman in college, and as you're listening is going back to school next week to do her second semester there. It just flies by it goes by so quickly. So I'm trying to hang on for dear life. And hopefully Benny will will talk to me talk to you, and we'll get him on the show as well. Tons of events coming up. I'm not even going to run down the list. I will ask you though, to go to the community page at diabetes dash connections calm. You can see where we've been where we're going. I've got a kind of a de facto book tour, because I am the world's worst diabetes mom, which is taking me on the road right now but two events a month. You can see them on the community page and see if I'm coming to your town. And if not, and you'd like me to come speak or tape a podcast or whatever. Just let me know. Just let me know. Next week, just let me know. Alright, later this week we have our second minisode. This one's going to be all about sleep overs. What worked for us, I had some questions about that. And I'm answering them. So we're gonna be talking about sleep overs. That episode will air on Thursday, January 9, and then our next regular interview episode will be next Tuesday. Thank you, Tuesday. It's gonna take me a little time to fall into the rhythm of this, but I think it's gonna be a lot of fun. Let me know what you think. As always, the show is here for you. Thanks, as always, to my editor, John Bukenas from audio editing solutions, and thank you so much for listening. I'm Stacey Simms, and I'll see you back here on Thursday. Transcribed by otter.ai

LIVE on the Sport Physiotherapy Canada Facebook Page, I welcome Dr. Emma Stokes on the show to discuss leadership.  Dr. Emma Stokes BSc (Physio), MSc (research), MSc Mgmt, Phd is the president of World Confederation of Physical Therapy. In this episode, we discuss: -Dr. Stokes’ journey to becoming the President of the WCPT -Takeaways from the World Confederation for Physical Therapy Congress -Constructive feedback and the 360 review -How to grow your professional network and the two up, two down and two sideways rule -And so much more! Resources: Third World Congress of Sports Physical Therapy Emma Stokes Twitter World Confederation for Physical Therapy Website WCPT Facebook WCPT Twitter WCPT Instagram For more information on Emma: Emma is the head of the newly established Department of Physiotherapy & Rehabilitation Science at Qatar University. She has worked in education for almost 25 years and is on leave from Trinity College Dublin where she is an associate professor and Fellow. Her research and teaching focus on professional practice issues for the profession. She has taught and lectured in over 40 countries around the world. In 2015, she was elected to serve as President of the World Confederation for Physical Therapy. She was re-elected for a further four years in 2019. She has experience as a member and chair of boards in Ireland and internationally in a diversity of settings including education, health, research and regulation.   Read the full transcript below: Karen Litzy:                   00:01                Hey everybody, welcome to another interview for the Third World Congress on sports physical therapy, which is happening in Vancouver October 4th and fifth of 2019 and we've been interviewing a lot of the speakers and today we're really excited and honored to have Dr. Emma Stokes who will be in Vancouver with us. So Dr. Stokes, thank you so much for coming on. Emma Stokes:               00:29                Oh, thank you so much for the opportunity to chat with you again, Karen. It's always a pleasure. Karen Litzy:                   00:34                I know, I know I just saw you in Switzerland and we'll talk about that in a little bit, but before we get into all of that, just in case, there are some people who are maybe not familiar with you, which may be, there are, I don't know, but can you tell us a little bit more about yourself? Emma Stokes:               00:55                Yes, of course. Well, I'm an Irish physiotherapist and I'm sitting in Trinity College in Dublin, where I have the privilege of spending a lot of my professional life. So I qualified as a physiotherapist in 1990 and let's just fast forward to eight years after I qualified, I went to my first international meeting and you know, I tell this story wherever I go in the world, which is, you know, I went to that meeting and I came home. And in that moment, in those days I really recognized that I wanted to be part of the international physiotherapy community. You know, a lot of people ask me that question. They say, well, you know, how do we become part of that? And you know, honestly then I didn't know what that meant or looked like or felt like or anything like that. But as I tell the story and we can come back to this later on, you know, I decided I was going to make myself indispensable. Emma Stokes:               01:45                So I volunteered for every conceivable opportunity that arose, including within the ISCP, which is the Irish side of charter physiotherapists. And in 2015 I was elected to serve as the president of WCPT the world confederation for physical therapy, the global physiotherapy organization of which the IFSPT, which is the International Federation of Sports Physical Therapy, is a subgroup of which the Canadian physiotherapy association is a member organization. And of course of which sports physiotherapy at Canada is a division of the CPA. So we're all connected in this big family and I got to serve as the president for four years. And then last year I decided that I would seek a second term as the president of WCPT. And there was an election in May and I was reelected, here I am, I'm very, very happy to am honored to be serving a second term as president of WCPT. And it's been a long journey and I'm happy to answer any specific questions about that as I always am. Because you know, I think not because I want to talk about myself, but because I think sometimes people look at you and they say, how'd you get there? And I'm happy to share that journey because I think that's a really important question. When you see someone in a position that you want to be in, then you need ask them how do they get there? Karen Litzy:                   03:01                Yeah. So let's talk about that. So you volunteered for everything and anything you could get your hands on it sounds like, and I'm sure that helped get your foot in the door and, open things, a crack here and there. So when did you first decide to be an elected official? Emma Stokes:               03:23                I think physiotherapists are nervous about the volunteering thing and the idea that, oh gosh, it would be terrible to volunteer if you had an end game and you know, 30 odd years ago to be 30 years since I graduated next year as a PT, you know, I don't think we had the whole, I don't know the word networking even existed in the way it does now, but I loved getting involved and things. So I was very involved with the Harriers and athletics club here and lives in trinity and I reckon I spent more time with them than I did and my physiotherapy program. I just loved getting involved and you know, when you're a junior physiotherapist or in your, the early stages of your career in the day job, you know, and you'd know this Karen, right? Emma Stokes:               04:08                You don't always have the opportunity to do the things that you want to do because you're maybe limited sometimes in the organization that you're working in. And in fairness, I worked in St James's Hospital in Dublin and there were no limitations placed on me when I started to get momentum, but it took me a few years to get some momentum. So I became a member of the Irish society and I went to a meeting. They needed a member on a committee and that's where it started. And you know, I was on a committee and then I was on another committee and then in 1996 when I was working in trinity, one of my friends whose office was across the Carto said to me, we're stuck for someone on the international affairs committee. Would you volunteer? And I think I suggest more because I was sort of trying to help her out. Emma Stokes:               04:51                Than I wanted to necessarily do international affairs. And then, you know, it started, I just, I knew then the global physiotherapy was where my, I think maybe I was struggling to find my place in the Irish physiotherapy world or maybe the clinical physiotherapy world rather than the Irish. You see that everywhere, the clinical physiotherapy world. And so when I started to do some international work, so I got involved with my first international research consortium and I started to volunteer and so the first international meeting that I went to was 20 years ago. In 1999 and no one paid me to get there. I paid for myself to get there. I was presenting some of my phd research and I had gotten to know, Brenda Meyers, I'd met her once or twice and I emailed her, I said to her, look, I'm here. Emma Stokes:               05:42                Do you need to volunteer? And I was a teller at the general meeting of WCPT I helped count votes. Now you might not think that that's super important which it is. In the governance meeting of WCPT, I counted the votes in 1999 and then clearly I could count and I stayed involved with European level. And in 2003 the meeting was in Barcelona and I asked you about some time, the Irish societies delegation. But I was there with some of my phd students at that stage and some of my own research. And I went to the general meeting and Brenda said to me, well you would you like to be the chair of the credentialing committee? And that's what I did. So in that, that was the time when you presented your credentials in within paper, you brought your paperwork to the meeting and there was something really elegant about that process. And now we do it electronically and it's a little different. And plus I got to meet the presidents of every member organization and WCPT at that meeting. And then I finally got elected to actually the board of WCPT in 2006 and that was a chance I didn't expect to get elected. I was only running to signal my interest for four years later. But I got elected and I guess the rest is history. Karen Litzy:                   07:01                Great. And I think the big moral of the story here is that no one's an overnight success. It's not like you one day said, I'm going to run for president of WCPT and got elected, you have to put the time in and pound the pavement, if you will, in order to kind of work your way up. And I think in the days now of social media and everything happening, having to happen immediately. Yeah, it's hard. So what advice would you give to someone who maybe doesn't have the patience these days to put the work in? Emma Stokes:               07:35                Yeah. So first of all, I think you have to enjoy the journey. So, you know, I never knew it was a journey in many ways. I guess at some point I knew it was a journey. And I think one of the things, because I've done a lot of reading around leadership and, I think what I've been fascinated about is this notion that just because you try once for perhaps an elected position and you're not elected doesn't mean that you walk away. So that in 2006 now, I don't know would I have walked away. I don't know that I did because I actually think I would've because I think what happened was in 2006 I had no expectation of being elected. But my plan then was to say, look, I'm interested. I know that's going to be another four years before I'm elected. Emma Stokes:               08:26                Or I could be elected. And I don't mind if I'm not elected this time. So I was elected and that was pretty amazing. And interestingly in 2011 and it was suggested to me by a number of people that I should run for president. And I decided not to because I wasn't ready now cause that's another conversation which is about when are we ever ready. But I think I'm very objective about my abilities. And so I had sort of decided that I didn't feel ready in 2011 to be elected as the president but by 2015 given what I had done between 2011 and 2015 I knew that I had the experience, I had the capabilities to be a very effective president from the point of view, I think at least I felt I had given the organization the best shot in terms of the experience that I had gathered. Emma Stokes:               09:33                So I had done a graduate business degree. I had done a lot of governance courses. I had been the chair of the board of charity and I just felt, I suppose I felt from a self efficacy perspective and we talked about this, about our patients all the time. I felt confident going in that not withstanding what needed to be done, I was confident that I was able to definitely demonstrate that I had the experience to be the chair of the board of a charity based in the United Kingdom, which is what WCPT is from a governance perspective. But also that I felt that I had enough experience to at least give a fairly good shot of being the president of the global organization. And there are two quite distinct parts of the road. Karen Litzy:                   10:21                Well, and that leads me to my next question is as president of WCPT and for maybe the people listening, if maybe one day that's on their list, can you give a quick rundown of the roles and responsibilities of that position? Emma Stokes:               10:35                Yes. And Look, you know, I think let's just use the sort of a nice kind of balanced scorecard approach to this. So to me, when I ran, when I sought to be elected as president in 2015, I said I would look in, I would look out, I will look to the future. And then I had a little small part of the balance scorecard, which is you know, that quadrant system which was about inspiring. And in a way they map onto the two I think quite distinct aspects of the presidency, which is that you are the chair of the board of an organization and a company that's based in the United Kingdom and that brings governance, legal, fiduciary responsibilities. But you were also the president of a global organization. You are the leader in some ways the first among equals. But nevertheless you are in a leadership role. Emma Stokes:               11:21                And my perspective on that is my job is to bring people together in the global community and that's whether it's the physiotherapy part of the global community or the wider collaborative part of the global health rehabilitation community. So looking in was about ensuring that the organization with working with the board and staff and our volunteers was its best version of itself. Looking out was to start looking at who we working with internationally and what are the international organizations that we're working with. Looking into the future is about leadership. It's about creating the next generation of leaders in physiotherapy. And then the other space was about inspiring. And I suppose for me in the four years, I'm sharing something with you that I have probably not shared with very many people. So in my narrative and the work that I do with an amazing coach is around how do you walk with the dreamers and I've given a few talks that talk about what with dreamers, but it's about that idea of how do you inspire people to do something different, to get involved, to be involved in a different way, to just grow. Emma Stokes:               12:30                I guess just to enable us to sort of amplify everything that we do. And I suppose for me that's very, very, it's an intangible, right? It's that sense of how do you measure that when it's very hard to measure it? Right? And you know, now in the next four years, that hasn't changed. So we're still looking. So I believe we need to still look in, we need to still look out. We just need to look out in a bigger, better way. We need to look to the future. And I feel that commitment from me over the next few years is really important in terms of what are we talking about in terms of sustainability, the next generation of leaders, the future of organizations that are just in their beginning part of the journey. And My blog, which just was posted yesterday, is about, I suppose that other quadrant, now I'm talking about the moon landing projects. Emma Stokes:               13:21                So it's 50 years since, you know, since the first Americans landed on the moon. But I think that 1961 speech that JFK gave about this idea of what, asking ourselves the question about what we should be doing, not because it's easy, but because it's hard to me, you know I’ve got four years, you know, I'll be president for four years and then I go on and I just do a different part of my life. So if I had one thing that I want to do, it's about, we could be asking ourselves the question as an organization and as a community. What should we do because it's hard. What should we do, because it's right. And, we have to ask ourselves the hard questions. And those things are nuanced and they're just this dissonance in them and they're not easy and they're not going to be done in the four years. Emma Stokes:               14:14                So what are the big projects, what does that decade going to look like? And if you look at who they have two big projects that are focused on 2020, 30, which is, you know, it's almost a decade away. And I think we as a global community and as a global organization needs to be thinking about what are we doing to help answer those questions. So I guess, yeah, does that answer the question? Karen Litzy:                   14:52                That's the role and responsibilities in a very large nutshell, a balanced score card and nice framework. Cool. Yeah. No, that's great. Thank you for sharing all of that. And you know, I did feel that sense of global community and working together and learning and open-mindedness, I guess would be a good way to describe the WCPT meeting in Geneva, which was a couple of months ago.  I definitely did feel that global community. And I think, you know, social media has its pros and cons and we can talk about that forever. But one of the pros is that it does certainly bring people together from all parts of the globe. And so I really felt, a lot of comradery and felt like I quote unquote, Knew people even who live in Africa or they're in Nepal or Europe or even just across the United States. I really enjoyed WCPT. I thought that there were some, I mean obviously I didn't go to every session cause it's impossible. Well I went to some really great sessions that did bring up some uncomfortable questions and kind of pushed my boundaries a little bit. So I really enjoyed that. But what were your biggest takeaways? Obviously, again, not that you could be in everything everywhere all the time, but what were a couple of maybe maybe two of your biggest takeaways if you can whittle it down? Emma Stokes:               16:34                Oh Gosh. Two really, okay. But let's, let's start with the opening ceremony. So you know, it, the opening ceremony to the board. So we work with the board and the staff work really closely together around that type of event. So the board does not get involved in, you know, what color is the curtain, but we do make a decision about the venue because the venue has a cost implication. So, you know, so do we go for a big room where everyone is together or do we go for a smaller room where there's some breakout sessions? And I think what was really interesting was we had a series of conversations around that and we finally resolved in them, I guess April, of the year before the congress. So April, 2018 but the decision was, nope, we are going into a big space where everyone is together on it. And it meant that, and you will recall this, it meant that everyone had to walk. Emma Stokes:               17:29                It was a short walk from the venue of the opening ceremony to the welcome reception and not happening. It wasn't raining so, and so I don't know that anyone ever understood the amount of forwards and backwards and trade offs on cost and logistics and the walk and everything like that. But, when we made that decision, the decision was, we are a global organization and our strategic imperative is that we are a community where every physiotherapist feels connected to the engaged. Therefore, when we have an opening ceremony, everyone is in the room. And to me that probably has been one of the most powerful memories of my WCPT life is that moment when everyone is in the room and I have experienced it in the audience, but boy experiencing it on the stage, looking out that audience is, you know, I'm never gonna forget that, that that's a memory that I'm gonna have for the rest of my life was that I never imagined, I forgot. Emma Stokes:               18:31                I didn't think that it would in my mind, you know, we're all gonna walk along. It's gonna be 15 minutes. I dunno if you remember this, but it was that snake of people. And it was perfect because you had international physiotherapists rambling on, and they had to walk slowly, right? Because it was enforced because we weren't going anywhere in a hurry when there was, you know, 4,000 as we wove our way along to the opening center to the welcome reception. And to me, I think it was a visual and a physical and representation of who we are, which is that community of people that are connected better because we are connected. So that to me was, it can only go downhill from there. Emma Stokes:               19:29                Right. Cause I was just like, it was fabulous. So in terms of specific content, and I completely love the diversity and inclusion session, and I think that was, you know, that was a focused symposium. It was peer reviewed. It was submitted. It was an amazing team of fabulous physiotherapists from all over the world and a stellar audience. And to me that was, you know, that was both literally and symbolically immensely powerful in terms of what it is that we're doing as a community. And in the closing ceremony I said, you know, I felt that the three themes that came together were diversity, inclusion and humanity. And that's not to take away from the content, the science, the practice content, the clinical content. I'm not taking away from that, but I think what we've started to do is bring us up. Emma Stokes:               20:20                We have started to lift our eyes as a global community. And now more than ever, we need to do that because of the stuff that is happening in all worlds. So, you know, we just need to raise the level of our conversation. Of course everyone needs science and they need evidence informed clinical practice, we need humanity in our conversations. And if we're not doing it as a global community, then I don't know who else should be doing this. And to me, the diversity and inclusion session was babied us. We had an amazing session on education talking about the education framework policy piece. But you know what I think really emerged from the congress was on a big shout out to anyone in education is we need to revive our educators network. We need a global community of educators that are having conversations with one another. Emma Stokes:               21:21                We need to do it. Whatever we can do. I think the other session that that I loved was the advanced practice one because that's a big conversation and it's a big conversation that spans not just high income countries but low, low middle income countries. It's it, you know, if we look to ensuring that we'd have universal health coverage, then you know, the World Health Organization is talking about this billion level of health workforce shortage and we are a solution. We're a solution in so many ways and we need to start having those conversations around how are we the solution. And one of the ways that we are solution is around advanced practice. And then I guess the other one that I just loved, and I'm really sorry that so many people were actually turned away from the door with us doing this. And we went on, we would talk about this was the one that starts to take that editorial from editorial to action. Emma Stokes:               22:13                Then you know, the stellar mines that were involved in that. You know, so Peter O'Sullivan and Jeremy Lewis spoke the editorial, you know, Karim, who was the editor was going to facilitate that session but couldn't because he had other commitments. But he was at Congress, which was amazing. So what we had was we had to have the insurance. We had the physicians, we have physiotherapists from the low middle income countries in that room. And I think what's brilliant is, but you know, there's a, you know, I wouldn't, I'd love to suggest that I was writing it, but I'm not, I'm just, you know, I'm sort of sitting you know, I'm there in the background saying, Hey, look, the bread lines are out there. Emma Stokes:               23:01                You do your work. So we're going to have a nice, I hope, a nice publication around that. But, this is one of the moon landing projects, right? If we want to have this paradigm shift, what does WCPT need to be doing in terms of what does the global community need to be doing? But what can we facilitate around this? This is another moon landing project. What does that look like? You know, how do we change the way and we ensure that the delivery of rehabilitation and physiotherapy is the best version of itself. Karen Litzy:                   23:46                It was a definitely a very popular session. Peter O'Sullivan was like, I'm sorry, I didn't know it was going to be that many people there. But it looked really great. I was watching from, I was going to another session, to see my friend, Christina present her research, but it was good to follow along with all of the tweets in the social media from there. And I was interacting and after Boris was like, so what did you think? Did you like the session? I was like, I wasn't in it. And he was like, what? But I thought you were there cause you were tweeting. I'm like, well I can keep up. Emma Stokes:               24:20                Yeah, yeah. And you know, I think one of the things that, so we are, we are a learning journey, you know, and there was a tradeoff, right? So, yeah, I think Peter and Jeremy were really keen to get a very, very interactive session because there was data that needed to be developed from this, you know, so the data being gathered as a result within this session, which is a very interactive, you know, session. And I think that's really important. You go for a smaller room with very interactive session of course, or you go for a big space with 500 people in it and close, you lose a granularity in terms of detail. Plus the editorial was only published in June, you know, less than a year before the meeting. Emma Stokes:               25:18                The other thing, right, you're not planning for years cause I mean it wasn't four years. And so that's where you're trying to do the responsiveness piece, which is, you know, a hot editorial, which was big on big ideas, you know, so, you know, the conversation then well it's of course that's the choice of the editorial, which is big ideas. Now let's just talk about enactment. What does that look like in term, well, A, can it work beyond high income countries, but B, what does it look like in terms of the next steps? So it is, so, you know, I acknowledge that was a big challenge and there was a lot of people who were very disappointed, but it wasn't a keynote session. It was around from editorial to acting what needed to be a granular session. We should talk about, you know, how do we keep that conversation going? And that's where I think things at the meeting that the conference in Vancouver a year later then congress the year after that starts to allow us to start a plan for those conversations to move forward. Karen Litzy:                   26:20                Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's a good thing to hopefully bring to, Vancouver and allow people to see, well, what did come out of that WCPT and then how can we expand on that. Excellent. Good. Okay. So let's shift gears quickly. And you kind of alluded to your research earlier and that you were started your research in the 90s. And I know that a lot of your research centers around leadership. So can you talk a little bit about your research, number one and then number two, how does that research kind of guide you in your day to day function within your job? Emma Stokes:               27:24                Yeah, initially my research was very clinically based research. And then in 2010 I made a decision. So first one, let's put it out there I'm not a researcher, right? So I'm not going to be anyone ever with a high heat index. That does not give me joy in my life. My joy is around amplifying other people's research, which is why, you know, my joy is around saying that editorial was amazing. Now let's see how we can get it to the next steps. But nevertheless, I am an academic and therefore it's really important that my research informs my teaching. You know, we are resected at institutions both here in Trinity, but also where I'm working now at counter university. And so it's really important that when we teach, we Emma Stokes:               27:56                are teaching, our research informs our teaching. So in 2010 I had an amazing opportunity to take a sabbatical. I finished my graduate business degree. I'd suddenly discovered that you can actually learn about leadership. And I had suddenly thought, hey, you know what? Let's look the what's happening in physiotherapy research and leadership. Answer nothing at all. And, you know, then you ask yourself the question, well that's fine. You know, do we need to be doing research in leadership physiotherapy? And the answer is actually, interestingly we do because we know obviously more and more about leadership is that leadership is context specific. So it's very contextually informed. It's also very contingent around, you know, what you do on a day to day basis. But increasingly the conversation around leadership and healthcare is leadership is not a role. Emma Stokes:               28:45                It's a mindset, right? You lead from the edges. A loy about transformational leadership? It's moving from the transactional nature to the transformational. And so that's what I was doing. If you think about it, my practice in Physiotherapy was around, you know, working with organizations in either leadership roles or being part of other people who were leading projects and you know, being in the followership role or the participant road. And so I made probably, what's a career changing decision, which is that I actually stopped doing physical research. I said, okay, my research was around professional practice issues. I will research what I practice and my practices is physiotherapy. So I worked on that year with Tracy Barry around direct access and we did it globally. We're now looking at sort of processing the results of, you know, a really interesting survey around advanced practice and the building survey around that. Emma Stokes:               29:38                And you know, so now I'm not that, I'm not the doer, I'm the person that’s part of a team and the next generation of fantastic researchers are doing the research. So I want to give a big shout out to Andrews Tollway is doing amazing work on the advanced practice survey and also Emer Maganon, who was done, you know, she was my phd student on my post-talk and she's done a huge amount of research around leadership. And I've had the privilege of being along for the ride, which is fabulous. And that's what you get to do as a phd supervisors. So that's wonderful. And so the research has been around leadership, physiotherapy. We've worked around with the global community around some of the research that's happening and there's very little in physiotherapy and that's a shame. But actually what's interesting is there's more and more and that's good. And there's a huge Canon of research around leadership in nursing and for doctors, their providence is different. And so I don't think we should underestimate doing a lot of really good research around understanding the physiotherapy perspective and understanding and enacting leadership because I think that helps us start to understand where we might have some weaknesses or some behaviors where we're reluctant to get involved. And I suppose that for me is around how do we have those conversations, both from a research perspective but also from a day to day practice perspective. Karen Litzy:                   30:59                Right. And then you kind of answered the question of how does it affect your day to day leadership abilities. And I think you just answered that because you're finding your weaknesses as a whole within the profession and I'm sure that can make you a little more introspective to see if you're either contributing to those or hoping to overcome them. Emma Stokes:               31:18                Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think you're absolutely right. I did a really interesting thing of just before I finished my first term as president, and I don't know if that, if you've done this or if anyone has, but I did it at 360. Emma Stokes:               31:32                So I had 11 people do the leadership practices inventory. So I did this and then 11 observers did this and then four people did in depth interviews. Oh, let me tell ya, so first of all, I'm indebted to the 11 people who participated and who gave up their time to do the Leadership Practices inventory about me, but also the four people who did in-depth interviews and they were, you know, so there were people within and external to the global physiotherapy community and Oh gee, that was interesting. You know, that was a, I learned a lot about myself, you know, and you know, and interesting I’ve done a reflection beforehand, sort of predicting what they might say and there were no surprises. There was a lot of reinforcements and you know, so I obviously, you know, you do the thing right, the 80 20 thing, which is they focused on the 20% of stuff that you're not best at. Emma Stokes:               32:27                And of course I had focused on that. So there was no surprises. But nevertheless it is saluatory to hear people say it about you and you know, and so on a cross, you know, so this wasn't, or three people, this was 11 people saying similar things about me and I've just spent two weeks with my family, Eh, like way more time with my family that I'm spending a long time. And I'm like, Oh yeah, I see where that comes from. Oh, how interesting. So I've done a 360 with my colleagues and I've spent two weeks with my family and yeah. Yeah, you know, I get it a lot of your niece that is seven and nine. They're saying, I think we should buy a to do list notebook. And I'm like, what do you think? I need one. Emma Stokes:               33:09                Oh, yeah, you definitely need to do this, that book. I'm like, okay. All right. So there's seven and nine and they're seeing that list already, you know? So it's fascinating. So I think you get, I think for me it's about where did the data points come from? I'm ensuring that you get them from people who will tell you the truth in a trusting, positive way. And so I do the research and then I do the granular stuff, which is hard, but yeah. But you have to do it if you are committed to being the best version of yourself in the service of the role that you're in. Karen Litzy:                   33:47                Yeah, yeah. And in the service of others. Emma Stokes:               33:50                Yeah. Am I going to get any better? I'm not sure. Am I any more patient? Am I better at listening? Am I going to be any better as I'm pressing the pause button? I don't know, but I'm going to try. Maybe try anyway. Karen Litzy:                   34:08                You know, I think the good thing is that you're now aware of some of these and I don't think they're faults. But you're aware of that side of your personality. Emma Stokes:               34:22                Yeah. And I think maybe it's not that I wasn't aware of it, it's more that it was reinforced about the impact that it has on people. If you'd ask me, honestly, did I find out anything with the 360 that I didn't know about myself? The answer is no. But has it made me face up to it and acknowledge its impact on others? Yes. And am I taking responsibility for trying to be a better version of myself. Yeah, sure I am. Cause you don't do this without taking it on to the next phase of the journey. Right? Karen Litzy:                   34:54                Yeah. You don't just read it and say, okay. Yup. Nope. Yeah. Great. Cool. Well thank you for that. I'm going to look into that. So, you know, we're talking about WCPT and all of these international organizations and you do a lot of traveling and meeting all the different people. So you have a very wide network. So what are your top tips for physio therapists who are trying to build their professional network? Emma Stokes:               35:28                Two Up, two down, two sideways. And we've talked about this before, I think, which this is not my rule. I got it from, and a really good friend of mine who got it from someone else, a colleague of his, and the idea that networking is really natural to some people. Like they just, they're good at, right? Yes. But for a lot of people it's not. So, so I think the first thing is that you do two up two down two sideways route. And I think what's really interesting is when you say it out loud, you can start to use it. And in that way. So, and two up, two down, two sideways is, and so you're at a meeting and you want to be two people who are ahead of you in their journey. Emma Stokes:               36:09                So, you get ready, you identify them in advance or you don't, you just happened to meet them. But, for a lot of people it's about working and saying, okay, these are two people that I want to meet. And you're prepared and you don't randomly want to bump into them, but you have an ask of them maybe or not. Maybe you just want to connect with them because you admire the work that they'd done. And two sideways is two people that you want to connect with who are your peers, right? So two people that you've met on Twitter that you say, okay, I want to meet that person in person, I want to see that person. And then two down or two people who are ahead of you, the behind you in the journey. So students and you know, phd student, you know, so if you're a little ahead of them in the journey, who are they? Emma Stokes:               36:53                You know, and you know, who can you help along the way? So it's really interesting is I think it's a great rule. So you're at a meeting, who are your two up, two down, two sideways. I love it. And really interesting is if you know the rule and the person you're talking to knows the rule, it's great fun. So I was at a meeting where a physiotherapist came up to me and said, have you done your two down? So I had talked about this in the next year, a few months before rounds, and he'd come up and he said, have you done your two down yet? I'm like, sorry. He said, have you done your two down? I said, no, I haven't. He said, can I be one of them? Oh, that's so cool. And I said sure you can how can I help you? And so we ended up having a conversation and I was able to do some stuff for him that was fantastic. Emma Stokes:               37:38                And I thought, hey, you know, that's great. So, I think it's fantastic. So plan for your two up two down two sideways or be ready for your two up two down two sideways. And you know, I still do that. I mean I still think about hooking you. Who are the two people in the world that are going to be helpful for WCPT, who do I need to interact with, you know, and I don't necessarily always know who they are now, but it's in that moment I'm like, okay, I've got my card ready, let me tell you who I am. Do you think I could connect with you about this conversation or this presentation that you made? And so the other thing then is about looking around the room. And I think this is both as someone who wants to network, but also someone who's potentially in a situation where you could open circle. Emma Stokes:               38:24                So it's about physically looking through was a great piece of advice that I got. When circles are closed. So if it's me and one of the person I'm wearing a huddle, that's very hard for someone to come into. And sometimes that's okay because sometimes you are having a meeting and you don't necessarily, you need to have a conversation. But also sometimes it's about how do we keep that circle open to welcome someone in or if you see someone on the periphery to bring them in. Yep. So, so it's about the physicality of the space so that, you know, so sometimes it's about being polite and saying, look, oh, are you having a meeting? Or if sometimes people are having meetings, right? They are genuinely saying, look, we're actually having a conversation. But sometimes it's about looking around the room where you see the open spaces and coming in and saying, oh, hello, I'm so and so knowing that that that circle is open to have someone come in. Yeah. But also I think as people who are in spaces, recognizing if you see someone out of the corner of your eye might be hovering, have the generosity Emma Stokes:               39:29                to bring them in and say, oh, hey, did you want to join us? Well, and sometimes, so for me, a lot of the time what I do is I bring someone in because I know they want to connect with someone and I say, okay, you guys are connected. I'm going to go and I'm going to move on. Karen Litzy:                   39:44                Yeah. I feel like Karim Khan is the king of that, by the way. Oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Oh, did you want me to come with me? This is exactly, yeah, exactly. Absolutely. He is the king of connecting people like that at different conferences. He's done that for me so many times and I don't know how. I'm always like, what can I do for this man? Because I feel like he's done so much and he's so good. And I love the two up, two down, two sideways. I'm going to remember that when I go to Vancouver. It's a great room. You know, and maybe we need to produce a little card to up to that, like a dance card. Oh that's a good idea. Maybe we can do that for sports congress. Oh I'm definitely doing that. Oh that's such a good idea. Emma Stokes:               40:37                And then maybe one of the sponsors or one of the, you know, cause they could have a little piece of the sponsorship piece at the back. Karen Litzy:                                           Yeah, absolutely. Well I know that, you know, Chris is listening in on this, so I'm trying to shout out to a sponsor. And then if you really want people to kind of get into it, you can kind of fill it out with the person's name and then handed in and win a prize at the end. And I love the bringing someone in and when we were in Switzerland, Christina Lee that I was with and you know, we had met in Copenhagen at Sports Congress and decided that it all stayed together at WCPT and you know, you're just walking around and she gave me a compliment that no one's ever given me before, but it's might've been one of the best compliments I've ever received. Karen Litzy:                   41:52                And she's like, you know, you are so good at making sure people are involved in conversations. Like you're so good at bringing people in and you're so good if someone's not saying anything of, you know, making sure there's space for them. She's like, that is, she's like I'm learning from that. Emma Stokes:               42:10                That's fantastic. And it is a great gift of yours because you are so present in the moment when we're having conversations. So you're very sensitized I think to the people in the room or the space that we're in. So you do connect people in a way that is fantastic and it's a huge gift. And I think the fact that you don't even know is that you're doing it means that's a great gift for you. Yeah, I think sometimes, and that's, you know, that is wonderful. So you have, you know, you've internalized that it's probably just a natural part of who you are. And I think for other people it might not be intuitive, but it's a great thing to remember. The other thing to remember is the 20 second rule or the two minute rule, but we have the rule, which is, you know, we meet people all over the world. Some people meet people around the world. You're never necessarily going to remember everyone's name. So I have a rule, which is if I'm standing chatting to someone and the person I'm with who knows me, we haven't been introduced within 30 seconds. The cue is introduce yourself because either A I’ve forgotten cause I'm so taken up in the conversation. It's not beyond the bounds belief, you know, happens very regularly. Or secondly, I've had that moment where I'm suddenly thinking, Emma Stokes:               43:28                I don't know that I remember this person's name or I'm not sure enough that I remember their full name. Emma Stokes:               43:35                So just introduce yourself, so if you're with me and we're in a conversation, you would always do it right. You'll say, Oh hey, I'm Karen, she's introduced me. That's fine. But, but it's also, it's a very polite way of getting over that moment of she's forgotten.  She's taken up with a conversation or she hasn't done it because she's only thinking I'm having a panic. I remember exactly where I met the person. Yeah. I remember their name. And you know, sometimes I put my hand on them. But I can usually remember exactly where I've met the person. Karen Litzy:                   44:11                Yeah. I'm good at faces. And sometimes like if I'm with some, like a friend of mine and I see someone, I'm like, oh my gosh, I know this person, I know this about them, this about them. But I don't know their names. So when we go up, we'll start chatting and then I want you to introduce and then I want you to introduce yourself. So I'll prep this, the person I'm with, I'm like, I might know their backstory, I've read them know, but I can't think of their name. Emma Stokes:               44:32                So you know, do the 30 second rule, which is when you're with a friend who hasn't introduced, you just introduce yourself. Karen Litzy:                   44:38                Perfect. All right, so let's talk about Third World Congress. What are you going to be speaking on? Emma Stokes:               44:45                Well there you go, on leadership and you know, you know, how fabulous is that? I'm so excited about being there, you know, I'm just, I'm so honored to be invited because I was invited a couple of years ago and, you know, I wasn't necessarily going to be the president of WCPT again. Right. So, and I said to them, you know, what's really nice that you've invited me but you know what, it's great. We just invite you anyway because we want you to talk about leadership. And he would have been the president and that's great. So, I'm thrilled that I was invited to be that. I'm super excited about that. I'm back as the president of the world physiotherapy and, you know, I just, I guess, you know, I love the sports physiotherapy world. Emma Stokes:               45:27                You know, I've never practiced as a sports physiotherapist and it's not my field of expertise, but I have learned so much simply by sitting in the rooms of amazing congresses. And I've learned so much that just simply by Osmosis, that every now and then I say something and I think I sound like I know what I'm talking about. Actually. I'm fairly confident that I do, but how do I know? And then I realize, okay, what I've sat through five keynotes lectures from the stellar people in the field. And it's not that I'm an expert, but I can actually at least point people to the references. So, you know, I think there is so much to be gained from a global community of practice and knowledge coming together and you know, the sports physiotherapy world is incredible and I am so excited and Vancouver is beautiful and the Canadian physiotherapy is fabulous, So bring it on. Karen Litzy:                   46:26                Awesome. Well I know, I am excited to go in to learn and you know, there's breakout sessions. I don't know which one to go to because they all sound really great. I don't know what you think, but I think they all sound like it's an amazing program. Emma Stokes:               46:40                Absolutely. It's fantastic. And I think, you know, you know, I get the joy. So I suppose my joy is my privilege and my joy is that I get to dip in and out of so many sessions. And because you know, in a way I am taking different lessons away from Congress. It's like this. So I'm taking away the thought leadership lessons I watched, you know, I want to sit in on the leadership stuff, I want to sit on the policy stuff. But you know, if you're practicing day to day working with people in the sports world, there the richness of the programming is like, where do you start to choose, you know, how do you decide what you're going to go to, to take away, to inform your day to day practice? Karen Litzy:                   47:18                Agreed. I think it's going to be great. And again, just for people listening, you're obviously on the Facebook page, so hopefully you can see the banner on top that says October 4th and in Vancouver the Third World Congress of sports physical therapy. But I guess this is going to be on my podcast as well. So Emma, where can people find out more about you? Emma Stokes:               47:40                Oh, so, well, like they want to find any more out, more about us I think actually look at, so WCPT.org is our websites. Have a look at the website because we are going through a major both rebranding, you know, redesign of the website. So it's going to look super different. I think we're going to have some interesting information about our rebranding by October and about the rebranding of the product. You know, the kind of, the idea of what do we call ourselves as a global community and started to merge the space. I'm committing to blogging once a month, which I've failed dismally at, but I am now committing, so just put the first blog out there and yeah, so follow us on social media, like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and then look at our webpage but also look at our subgroups obviously because, the world sports congress is being co hosted by the Canadian Division of sports PT and the International Federation sports physical therapy and that's the WCPT subgroups. So all joined up. So yeah, look at the website and I see the early bird is opened on until the end of August for Congress in Vancouver in October. Karen Litzy:                   48:55                Yes. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for taking the time out and coming onto as a pleasure. Emma Stokes:               49:00                It's my pleasure as always, and thank you for the opportunity and I will see you in Vancouver. Karen Litzy:                   49:04                I will see you then. Thanks everybody. Have a great day.     Thanks for listening and subscribing to the podcast! Make sure to connect with me on twitter, instagram  and facebook to stay updated on all of the latest!  Show your support for the show by leaving a rating and review on iTunes!

"Where are you in relation to what you're trying to manifest?" David Thomas Wright helps spiritual and creative entrepreneurs to manifest their big vision and recognize their divine worth. David and I talk about developing intuition to enhance your manifesting journey, the interplay of intuition and intentions, the Law of Attraction. If you have questions about whether the impulse to relocate is part of a higher calling for you … David has lived this experience of following his intuition to a new city and manifesting a new life for himself. GUEST LINKS - DAVID THOMAS WRIGHT Intuitive Icons Maverick Manifesting Group HOST LINKS - SLADE ROBERSONSlade's Books & Courses Get an intuitive reading with Slade Automatic Intuition FACEBOOK GROUPShift Your Spirits Community BECOME A PATRONpatreon.com/shiftyourspirits Edit your pledge on Patreon TRANSCRIPT Slade: Texting back and forth, messaging on Facebook about my love life or whatever and it kind of came up. The thing that really struck me was, I've thought about doing shows on... I think it's called astrocartography and location-based purpose and feeling this sense of, I've got to move somewhere cool. I mean, we've all experienced that at some point in our life. Over the years, this is something that clients bring in readings all the time, are these questions about feeling like they need to move somewhere and that a better life is waiting for them somewhere else. On the one hand, I do believe that in some cases, if you manifest everything else that you possibly want and need, it probably won't matter where you are. Like if I took you where you are right now and you said, "I'm unhappy. I don't have anyone." If I suddenly gave you this wonderful job working from home, and then you randomly met the love of your life living two blocks away, suddenly you don't want to leave. David: Absolutely. Slade: Yeah. David: It changes everything. Slade: But you kind of lived this idea of following an impulse to move somewhere specific and begin a new life. So I want you to take me back to where you were before all that happened, and tell me about how this manifestation journey to another place unfolded for you. David: Sure. So I've always felt that obviously places are about people. So being drawn to a place would have some sort of "knock on" effect where you're being drawn to the right people and the right circumstances. But I was looking for something in my life and I was looking for a sense of home. Because I didn't really have, and hadn't had that sense of home and belonging for a long, long time. When I was in my early 20s, I studied in London, and had to come back home because it was so expensive to live there and was still looking for work. I went through a phase in my life where I thought it was about going back to London or this dream, or this aspiration to go back to London, and that was the kind of measurement of my wellbeing or not. Over time, it seemed to kind of disappear. That intention or that need to return to London just wasn't there anymore. And I was actually living here in Lincolnshire and I went on holiday for the first time to Edinburgh, Scotland. Now there is a bit of a backstory and I don't know whether I told you this but I was first working with clients and giving psychic, intuitive readings. I was probably about 17, 18, and I used to sense what was Scottish guide or a Scottish influence which I felt was to do with his ancestry. Not past lives but some sort of remembrance. And it would come in and sometimes I would see this and it's going to sound a little cheesy, but a little bit like what we see now in Outlander. So that kind of Scottish chieftan and the kind of full Highlander regalia. Quite hot really. And that's what I got from this guide and again it just kind of fizzled out in the early 20s. And then there was a point in my life when I was looking for a sense of home and belonging, and this Scottish feeling, whatever that means, this kind of pull towards Scotland came in again. And I noticed that when I opened up to give readings, and I knew that it wasn't about the clients. It was just something that was slipping into that vibration because I was open to channel. I thought, okay, well the last time I thought about this, I was kind of early 20s. Now I'm sort of mid-30s. It's been a journey. I looked back at my old journals from the time and I kept writing "the royal road the royal road" over and over again. I also wrote the word "Bute". And hand on heart, whether it's subconscious or not, this is before the age of Google, or before I had access to Google, I thought Butes was in Cornwall but that's Bude. So Bute is an Isle which I've visited now since, and that was kind of in my freestyling automatic writing journalling in my early 20s and also "the royal road". Now, short story, I think "the royal road" is the Royal Mile, which is the main historical high street, if you like, in Edinburgh. So I kept being drawn to Scotland, and specifically, Edinburgh. I went with my partner at the time and it was like falling in love. So if anyone has been to Edinburgh, it is a beautiful city aesthetically. Amazing architecture, a lot of heritage. You're near the sea. There's a castle on volcanic rock. It's like Game of Thrones. But then you kind of have your high street and everything you would want from a major city. I was just wowed by it. It felt like falling in love with a person. It was a completely magnetic pull. I did visit a couple of times afterwards and on one visit, I went to a past life regression expert because I was like, what is this all about, this draw? I now feel that it isn't necessarily about a past life as it is about ancestry. I've tried to trace the ancestry but what came up for me eventually was, well why does it matter? Does it have to be quantified or qualified with, it's an ancestral thing or it's a past life thing. Maybe this just speaks to now. So I thought, okay, this has always been here in some way. One point that I do want to make is, I don't know how you feel about this Slade, but there's quite a small divide between what we would call an intuitive hunch and spontaneous manifestation. I guess I'll explain that a bit more later, but what I manifested here, some might say it was destiny or fate, as in: you got the prompts intuitively when you were in your early 20s and then you followed those prompts and you were meant to live here and so it was always gonna happen. It could have been fated or predicted. Yes, to an extent. But I actually began to use manifesting processes for the first time in my life, to make sure that I would move and have the opportunity to move to Edinburgh. Because as soon as I went there, I got tingles now talking about it, it was like being in love. There was a calm. It wasn't just about desire or longing and a strong need to start again and have a new life. Which I did need. I think sometimes when it's intuitive, there's like a calm underneath because you know the pieces are going to come together one way or the other. I know, of course, that people would say you can goalset your way to relocating. Yeah, absolutely. And some of my friends are coaches in the more conventional perspective and they sometimes struggle with what we would call the woo-woo scale of energy manifesting all the time _____ But the way this unfolded is I couldn't have strategized my way to Edinburgh. I could've literally but it would taken a long time or it wouldn't have happened in this way at the right time. Because I made a friend, completely out of the blue, via Instagram, and that made it possible for me to move and stay with him for a few months while I got myself together. I guess I'm skipping a little bit forward in time. Talking about my process, which might be useful to others if you wanted to try this. Whether it's a business dream, whether it's a passion project, whether it's about relocation, I really like to help people with a big vision, and I think a lot of that has come from my own journey moving to Edinburgh. So what I did was put images around me at home in Lincolnshire of Edinburgh. You know the castle. And also, more kind of not just the touristy stuff but kind of more earthy and grounded images and associations with the city. Because I'm thinking, I'm not always going to be hanging around the castle or going to tourist attractions. Sometimes I'm gonna just be going to the local shop. So I found images online which kind of represented an earthier side of the city as if I'm living there, not just being a tourist. I also put sort of post-it notes around my house and they were supposed to be subliminal. I think the subliminal approach works because the idea of reaffirming can be quite forceful and therefore quite tense experience, and the desire to reinforce something through constant affirmations is fear-based. And I think there's a tension underneath that which could actually push an experience away from you. So what I try to do was to take a more subliminal approach with post-it notes, with these postcard images I had around. I think I had a vision board. Also, one of the most effective things I find is to record an audio of what you are experiencing in the present tense as if you have it now. These are the principles that are kind of well known to people who are listening, but it worked for me. Hearing it in my own voice and just having it in the background as I'm walking down the street or as I'm falling asleep I think made a huge difference to my energy and to my ability to just expect this outcome. Not hope, because I think hope is obviously a wonderful emotion, but I think when you really begin to rock and roll with the manifesting, it's about an inevitability sort of feeling. It's an intuitive inevitability. It's kind of like, I don't want this and I'm not hoping for it because that's a pull. But I'm sort of expecting it and I kind of know. And so the stuff that could not be strategized, for example, chance meetings as I said at the beginning. It's all about people more than it is about places. Financially, I wasn't in a super abundant place. So having the opportunity to just stay with someone for three months was hugely helpful to get me on my feet and to get me in the city. And that friend of mine has got quite an insistent character, and he is, I don't know if he'd agree with this, but I see him as more confident than me. He's a performer for a living. So I see him as having all this confidence and he gave me, I think, on more than one occasion, a bit of a push and like, just do this. Do you know what I mean? Let's just get on with it and you can stay with me for a few months. That was hugely helpful. Also what gave me the incentive to move forward. This is where I think it gets quite juicy. The manifesting stuff for me isn't just about identifying something that you want. I also think that you choose something. For me, it was a city and everything that I believed I would experience there, including having some not so good days and expecting it to not be like a paradise but being alive and being real. It's almost like lassoing your energy to something, like a cowboy. For me, it was a city. I think sometimes when we're attracted to things in that way, it's a focal point. And then you can train your energy and vibration, yes to manifest the outcome where I'm living in that physical city, but also it's like a reference point to up-vibe, or to scale up your vibe, whatever way you want to put it so that you become a vibrational match for what you want. But also that you release anything that does not serve you in the meantime. Because as soon as I set this intention in a real way and look at manifesting, I actually attracted what was a quite tumultuous love affair, sort of fling, sort of dark night of the soul experience. I think that it made my own experience like a living hell. That sounds like an exaggeration but... Slade: Wait a minute. Tell us a little bit about what that was. David: Yup. Okay. Slade: That sounded way too juicy. David: Yeah it's so juicy. You're gonna get more juiced. So this was about me trying to, or being able to, release myself from any mindsets which was preventing me from allowing, accepting, attracting, manifesting the outcome. So when I do talk to people about my manifesting, it's not like I'm saying, "Buckle up, it's going to be a rough ride", because it doesn't have to be at all. But I think that to really get what you want, because manifesting is about feelings. It isn't about physical stuff. Yes you do manifest the physical experience, but you're able to inhabit it in the way that you asked for. Because your mindset has changed. For example, going back to love and romance, a lot of people ask me about manifesting love, and I don't think that they just want someone to validate them and say, "Wow, you're really gorgeous and sexy and I want to spend my life with you. In their own experience, they want to feel comfortable themselves and to be able to receive that and enjoy that and feel good about that. So, I don't know if you've had this experience, but a lot of readers will get asked, what is someone else thinking about me? Or, what is my love interest thinking about me? And in the end, the manifesting stuff is so powerful because it is about how you perceive that situation. Because if you can't feel comfortable with it, then you could have the guy under your window serenading you but you might not feel the way you want it to feel. So when you do manifestation and you're saying to the Universe, "I want this", it isn't just about... I think what the Universe hears is not only you want to live in this postal code, this zip code. It's hearing, you want to have a certain emotional experience. So what we're going to do is to organize everything to enable that to happen. So yeah, you get to live in the postal code / zip code, or, and, you get feel the way that you want to feel. A part of that was, in my journey, I developed a really magnetic, but at times toxic, connection with someone. I wasn't looking for that necessarily. I wasn't really looking for a long term partnership because I'd recently left a relationship. But it is something that pushed all of my buttons. I'm not really keen on the conversation that I hear a lot of, which is empath versus narcissist, and kind of putting people into boxes in that way. If I identify as an empath, let's just say that a lot of stuff happened which would be a struggle for anyone, but particularly an empath who is, like myself, a bit emotional, intuitive, empathic machine. What it brought about was, it prompted me to think about, what do you really want? Because it's part of this experience. There was an invitation to an extent. I don't know if the invitation was to build a life with that person. But it was, are you going to stick around and commit to this relationship or connection, whatever we call that, and therefore commit more to the city that you're living in right now, or do you want something else entirely. And it could have been quite tempting to say, "Actually, I want to stay because what I'm really looking for is the right kind of partnership and this could be it. So I'll just stay here then." What I found in that experience is that my needs weren't met so that was a bit of a wake up call. But also, as that played out, and it was at times confusing and upsetting and a little bit hellish for me, which would've been to do with my own mindset stuff. I'm not into blame around that or why didn't this person do this differently, but it sort of highlighted to me that it would be quite difficult now to find what I am looking for in this small city. And it'd already been difficult to find the kind of work that I wanted or of course nowadays we can be on the internet and we can be international, etc. And it was, when I say ____, I mean that in a good way. It was a real indicator that it is time to go, David. It really is time to move on. Because my associations with... I couldn't not think about memories and triggering negative experiences from this romantic encounter that I'd had, or relationship. I was thinking about it in my home. I was walking about in a small city and I'm thinking, am I going to bump into that person? It's painful when I do see that person and it was kind of like, no, this is a sign that it is time to get out of Dodge. There were a few peak experiences and coincidences, or synchronicities, with that person and in that experience where it was kind of like, Ohmygod, this is becoming more and more uncomfortable. I feel something is prompting me and pushing me to make a choice about the future and really move on. So the opportunities were there for going back to Edinburgh, which is where I wanted to move to. The opportunities were there to move, arguably before. But something happened in me where I just let go. You know when you sometimes seek advice from other people, even those people who care for you or intuitive. Intuitive friends of mine and psychic friends of mine who've kind of given their take on things and my journey. It's always going to look easy for them because they're not living it. But they were correct. It was that, they were telling me that all the pieces were there but there was something in me that had to shift to claim it, and to be able to move forward. And something had to happen which kind of pushed me. Now I don't think any external force made that happen to me because I don't really believe in that as such. And I certainly don't have any feelings for that person, because it seems like a long, long time ago now or the experience that I had. But there is an unconscious aspects to manifesting as well. And a lot of the processes that we see talked about are, they're quite conscious mind. Repeat enough information. It's very cognitive, it's very on the surface. But I also believe that manifesting can happen on a subconscious level because what I did, I believe I created also that difficult experience and attracted it and entertained it because I knew it would push me to the limit. It would push me to making a choice and work through some blocks which I may not have done otherwise. I am a procrastinator. I don't know if that's a Virgo thing, but I am a champion procrastinator. That's what led me to look at coaching, because I was looking for something that would take me out of my procrastination and sort of galvanize me a little bit. So I think I manifested the difficult circumstances to prompt myself to actually make that move. I guess the moral of the story is: manifestation, it isn't just about bricks and mortar or, you know, zip codes. It is about what you feel a place would represent, if we're talking about relocation. Ultimately it's about people, and that became true. Because I had a lot of ideas and intentions about what Edinburgh was going to represent. I wasn't ____ sort of like fairyland, where all your dreams come true and it's perfect all the time. Because I knew it would be a real home, and as people, we have, day to day, different experiences. Sometimes we're happy, sometimes we're sad. I framed these ideas about what it was going to represent. And I actually moved to Edinburgh a couple years ago. It was April the 1st and I think that is quite significant because that is April Fool's day of course. It makes me think of the Fool in the tarot. Slade: Yeah. David: Which is the first stage of the journey and it's a leap of faith and being "foolish" and going against the grain and going against limiting beliefs and just going for that. So I've always felt that was significant. And I gave away most of my stuff. I gave it to charity shops or I sold it or I just got rid of it. And so when I moved out to Edinburgh to stay with my friend, I had probably two large suitcases with me on the train. That was it. So I'm sitting on the train and spirit are talking to me. And maybe this is an experience that other people have had. I can hear spirit very well when I am travelling, especially if I'm not having to do anything. I actually haven't driven a car for years and years, funny enough, but I did qualify to drive. But when I'm sitting on my own, on a train or something like that, because you're kind of in between two realities, you're between two spaces, and quite often there's not a lot to do. You're just looking out the window and that has always prompted amazing ideas, such as, it makes me think about J.K. Rowling when she had the whole idea for the plotline of Harry Potter came to her on a train. I can understand. Slade: Yeah! David: I understand that. Funny enough, she wrote Harry Potter in Edinburgh. I love her. Slade: I do too. David: Yeah, big fan. So, I think it is a special energy, to be between states in that way. Literally, I guess, sometimes. So I hear spirit really clearly. And I would also say is a tip if you want to manifest or intend, this in between space, this liminal space when you're travelling, is a good place to do it. But anyway, they're chatting to me. "So what you going here for then?" And I'm like, well you know, because you prompted me, or you were part of this conversation or this creation process. "So what are your intention then?" And I'm kind of talking about this big lofty stuff. They're like, "Okay, yeah, cool, but really what did you want to find?" "Well I want to find a partner. I want to find a husband." They're like, "Okay, we're getting to it now." That's the nitty gritty. This is how I talk to spirit. That's how they talk to me. It's very like friends over coffee. So it is about career opportunities, and it is about beautiful architecture. But it's also about, let's find a life partner. Let's find that lovely partner/husband/etc. And they said, "Okay then. So be it. As you intend it, it's there." And they said, "Why don't you just drop another wish into the well. Why don't you just give us something else and nothing is big or lofty as the life partner or the career dream. Why don't you just drop something in there." I'm like, "You know what? I've always wanted to sail or learn to sail or be on boats or spend time on the water. And it's not been this burning passion since I was a kid. It's just something that I've always been really curious about." And they're like, "Okay, cool." So I dropped that in the wishing well kind of thing. So April the 1st I move there. Then I began looking for friends on a dating app. The magic of dating apps we know can be very powerful. So I met my partner Joe on the 26th of April and that was it. So him arriving took 26 days and it was a feeling of complete certainty from the very beginning. From the first time I met him in person. I can't claim to be super intuitive about talking to him before that point because I just thought he looked quite sexy, that was it. Maybe that was necessary, do you know what I mean? Instead of having these lofty intuitive insights about this picture of this guy. He looks hot. I'm gonna meet him. I think that's a good enough prompt, don't you? Slade: Well yeah, because, let's just state for the record here, because obviously I've recorded a bunch of stuff about relationship things and men and all that. David: That was genius, Slade. Slade: Thank you! The one thing I've gotten a lot of questions about or messages about and I just need to put it out there because it's honestly never come up before. All of the intuition in the world kind of goes out the window when you're dealing with this kind of attraction. I think people beat themselves up a lot, just the average muggle beats themselves up for not having better intuition about someone they're romantically involved with. Like you said, the first impulse is a kind of sexual attraction. That sort of throws you into your lizard brain anyway and... But for whatever reason, and oddly enough, I remember hearing another psychic, TV psychic, talk about this one time and her whole philosophy was we learn about ourselves through people and through these relationships, especially these very serious challenging relationships. There would be no lessons for us. There would be no opportunity to grow through these people if we kind of could predict everything about it, or knew at a glance this person's story. David: Yes. Slade: Now I might have that kind of complete feeling about other people, but yeah, just for the record, when it's potentially, like you said, your future husband, you're probably not gonna get all that much information. David: And actually, you are completely right. And I would say, my ability to intuit for myself, not about men necessarily, but other choices that I make or other life aspects, that has probably developed in the last few years. And I think it's because of this manifesting work I've been doing. And I would make that separate to, obviously intuitive work that I've done for other people. So I've been able to be intuitive for others in some capacity since I was about 12. The ability to intuit for myself, how it's manifesting, however, a lot of people talk about intuition in the context of caution and that's what I don't quite get. My intuition has always, and how it relates to manifesting, like two sides to the same coin, has always been about, I feel intuitively drawn to Edinburgh, for example, and I intuitively know that this is going to fall into place. And I want to say, that's got nothing to do with my work as a psychic or whatever word that you want to use. So if anyone is listening to this, it's not about being intuitive to the level that you can do that for others or do that professionally. This does apply to everybody. It would, of course, apply very much to empathic people or people who are naturally more intuitive. But what I find interesting is, there are some people who hone intuition and then they think they need to veer off into these realms of using that for people, some sort of vocation or profession. And actually, we don't. And there are a lot of intuitives who are professionals who, when they are trained, never get told, "Hey, you know what? These intuitive insights, you can use this to empower yourself without going straight into a service role for others. I like to help people with that because my intuition I sense in relation to manifesting and attracting what I want isn't anything to do with the process that happens when I support other people. It's completely different because... I call it an intuitive yes feeling, and it's something I like to help people develop because people, as I was saying, people talk about intuition in the realms of caution, and I don't really get that. Because we could call that instinct and as you said, that's lizard brain. That is, there's a car coming, or something that we see animals do when they intuitively know there's an earthquake. I get that. Without getting lost in the semantics of it, maybe we call that instinct or animal instinct or lizard brain instinct. Intuition is, for me, it's a warm "yes" feeling, which tells you where you are in relation to your intentions and what you're trying to manifest. So if I'm thinking, do I go to that party? It's like, yeah. So going back to finding my partner on a dating app, the sexy curiosity was enough. Because it wasn't about me reading him as a psychic to find out something that might be "wrong". I'm doing air quotes. You can probably see me. That's not the approach. It was - something resonates about this. I didn't feel I had the energy for... Not that I didn't have the energy for a life partnership to appear, but I certainly didn't have the energy for a big lofty experience, which would make me analyze. And like the Virgo I am, make me think it all to death, because I'd just been through that painful experience that we talked about earlier. So actually, sometimes, it is intuitive, or it is the right thing to say, "He looks hot. I might hang out with him." And so, that's what I needed. In order to manifest it, I didn't need to think, I wonder if he's Capricorn or whatever, or am I looking for evidence of narcissistic traits or is he kind to animals and things like that. It's nothing to do with that. It's just, let's be open. Like the Fool in the tarot again, let's be open, let's be playful. Because that is the, what's the word, that is what the soul does. So for me, intuition and how that relates to manifestation isn't about fear, and it isn't, "Oh, my intuition is telling me not to go to that party". "My intuition doesn't tell me good vibes about her." My feeling around intuition, maybe it's a different word I should be using, is that I've set an intention and the Universe is telling me where I am in relation to it by the vibes that I'm getting. What that means is, if I'm tuning in to the soul, I've never been fully comfortable with that word, I don't know why, but I guess you know what I mean. The soul isn't afraid. The soul self just wants to expand. It wants to explore and it's playful. I often think about babies who swim when you take them to the first swimming class because they don't have a fear of water and that reminds me of the energy that we come into this earthly experience with. It's just like, I want to explore and I'm here to expand and I don't feel I'm not entitled to anything. I feel worthy. I feel that everything is possible. I'm not scared about what Abraham Hicks would call the contrast in life and the possible difficult experiences. I'm not scared of that at all. I came here for the variety. I really, really believe that. So when I make an intuitive choice, sometimes it will be about something. I'm sure it was intuitive for me to have that big dramatic hot fling that I had before I left Lincolnshire. That was intuitive because someone could say to me, you should have trusted your intuition, because there would have been signs that this was not a great experience for you. But my intuition led me to what I needed to experience to make my choice to lead me to my manifestation. It was all intuition and coming from that soul perspective, my soul wasn't scared of that. It was, we need to do this to work through some stuff. Let's be the Fool in the tarot. Let's dive in. Let's take a leap of faith. Let's know that nothing can really hurt us if we are in our power. And so I came to Edinburgh with that mindset, and it was like, I don't have a fixed expectation. I was in no way looking for a life partner or husband. I dropped my intention into the wishing well but it certainly wasn't high on my list of priorities. And that's why I feel I manifested this quite quickly because I didn't have a whole story around it. I wasn't thinking, ohmygod there's a piece missing here unless there's a husband. That was not my thinking at all. It was playfulness. And like I said, he looks hot. That's enough. And that is why I think it worked. Also because he's a muggle. That helps. The contrast helps for me enormously. And going back to the sailing thing that I put into my wishing well when I was talking to spirit. The first date was in a coffee shop. Second date was spending time together. And probably, was it like 10 days after we met, I went to a party which was his brother's and bride-to-be. It was an engagement party and we went obviously via car but then we went on a boat. Because he is an experienced sailor. So his family, they were brought up with that. He actually took his brother's boat to travel to the location of where this party was. So as part of that, for about 30 seconds, I actually handled the boat really badly, really, really badly. Like, what the hell are you doing? But, there we go. And it was just, I think the moral of the story is, when you are easy about these things, they can manifest more quickly. And it was because I wasn't there hunting for a husband. I was probably thinking, god, I don't want any kind of stress because I've just been through a stressful experience in this aspect of my life. But I was also expecting things to be easy. And in some way, I didn't have expectation either way. When I said, yeah, let's spend time in a boat, that was so easy that there was no resistance. There was no block. And then it appeared in my experience. And that's the key to it. And I think that when it comes to big visions, big visions can be a career dream, it can be a relocation or it can be a passion project. But that there is a way you have to feel easy about it so that the manifestation has less resistance to work with. That is hard sometimes when we lasso, like the cowboy, we're lassoing to a big outcome straight away. And what I would say, if anybody is trying to play with manifesting, because it is like play. The most joyful aspects, ohmygod the Universe is talking back to me. That's my favourite part. It's not like, okay, well, I've got a partner now. Or I'm living here now. That's not what it's about for me. It was about the journey. It was about, I am living in a co-creative universe and it is a delight and it's making me laugh and I'm kind of in awe because all these signs and synchronicities are talking back to me. That is the buzz for me. You are right in as much as, I could have created these experiences in an entirely different city. But somewhere, intuition whatever, prompted me from my early 20s and came back in again and said, Will it be Scotland or in other words, before you came to this life, you set forth some intentions about what you want to have and enjoy, and what you wanted that to feel like. Spirit's feedback is, "that looks Scotland-shaped" or "you could easily experience these sensations in Scotland". It could happen in other cities and with all due respect to my partner, my lovely partner, it could happen with other people, but that... the prompts were, "this looks Scotland-shaped to us" or "it's kind of Edinburgh-shaped". Feelings that you want to experience and the vibration, if you like. It is very much in the shape of this person or ___. So that was the prompt, if that makes sense. It's all about feelings, and I've stopped looking for physical evidence as knowing that manifesting works in this machine-like way. When I first explored the idea of manifesting and magic and creating something, a lot of that came through my exploring in my teens of Wicca, witchcraft magic, which is still a big part of me, an earthly spirituality, a big part of me. There was a lot of literature I read at the time which was like recipe books and it was like, for this outcome, you'll need a certain coloured candle and do it this moon phase and it was all about paraphernalia and it wasn't telling me what I needed to do in my own energy to create that experience. Some of what I read, and of course, this is not a comment on Wicca and witchcraft as a whole. Of course not. I'm sure we've all read those books where it is about manipulating some way, and there's some secret and it's about finding this gemstone and this herb and then you'll get this outcome. Whereas for me, whether you want a guy, a car, or a house, or a relocation, you're wanting a set of feelings and feeling experiences and the Universe knows how to fill in the gaps and deliver that to you. When someone says, I want to feel this way in my love life, it might not be their most current or problematic partner who's going to be able to give them that experience. So there is that openness to, okay, if I just keep open, and know that the Universe has heard my intention, then it will try to fill in the blanks. I mean, in all my time as a reader, makes me sound 108, but in all my time as a reader, I've never heard Spirit say, you can have this, I mean, to the client, you can have this but you can't have that. Or people ask about time frame and it's kind of like, you can manifest this in three months but you can't manifest this in three days. I've never heard that. And I've also never heard Spirit talk in a cautionary way, going back to that topic of caution, you should do this or you can't have that or that's not possible. They're not interested in doing that. They're interested, I think, in helping us to connect with our self worth and the reality that we are powerful creators and we are here to create and manifest and that should be playful and it should be joyful. And then to help us work through any blocks, mindset blocks, energy blocks, whatever that's preventing that from happening more ___. That's it. That's what it's all about. Slade: So tell us a little bit about how this wisdom impacts the work that you do right now. Talk to me. Because I know as I'm listening to it, I'm thinking, well what would he have to say about this experience that I have going on over here. So I know there's a lot of other people listening thinking, Ooo, I would love to get his input on what I'm trying to manifest. So tell us a little bit about how you work. David: So the manifesting approach is obviously a passion of mine. It came from not necessarily enjoying certain books although I do, and resources from other teachers on this subject. My first awareness of whether we call it the Law of Attraction or manifesting or conscious creation, was from being a teenager and giving readings and working with... Or it was not being able to work with the premises that people... I mean ideas people have around what readings were. So somebody was saying to me, what is my fate? I'm kind of thinking, I don't know whether I can see that. Why can't I see that? And that's not how it looks to me. And I've realized after reading energy and looking at what was going on with people's lives, I wanted to help them with their relationship to that, and their own empowerment. And to let them know that part of the process. Because the common questions... I know we've got choices about how we present our work if we are intuitives. A lot of the questions were, what is going to happen to me and what is in the stars? And I was thinking, I don't know whether I can read it this way. And I don't work in that way now obviously. But it was, there's something else going on here where, if I can tune that person back in their power, that they can create this outcome and then they don't need a forecast. So that was my first kind of lightbulb moment. I feel that I can hear what your intuition would tell you if you could hear it and you didn't have to worry about or you weren't worrying about your shopping list and you haven't just had a really triggering argument with your boss. Or your conditioning from childhood wasn't making you freak out right now because that is the experience for most of us. We're kind of carrying that. And so what I feel I do is I cut through that. One way to frame it is, okay, Spirit Guides, or your Spirit Guides, are giving me this information and that is one way to interpret what's going on within a reading. But I actually think, no this is what the client would do if they weren't inhibited by the things that so many of us are going through life. So if I could turn down the volume on your negative self talk, and let's identify and work through this conditioning that you have gathered in your life. You would see your own worth more clearly and you would see your own ability to create your outcome more clearly. And so the way that I work is, where are you in relation to what you are trying to manifest. Slade: Tell us where we can go to find you online if we want to get a reading with you. David: So you can find me on Facebook. The website is still in development, but on Facebook it is Intuitive Icons with David Thomas Wright, my brand name, and all the information is there. But you can drop me a line via Facebook page and we can get a conversation going. Any questions you might have, you can ask. I also have a Facebook group, which is The Maverick Manifesting group with David Thomas Wright. The url for that would be https://www.facebook.com/groups/dtwcommunity/ Slade: Awesome. This was a great conversation, David. Thank you for coming on and talking to me. David: Thank you! Thanks for having me.

So April came and went and boy oh boy did it leave behind some stuff to talk about. We tackle the big releases of the month as well as some smaller little nuggets of movie pleasure and dive the deepest we ever have into Television based delights.

So April’s podcast is going to be something different than the usual. Instead of doing the typical game club and random segment 2, we’re going to do a special, potentially twice-yearly Very Special Episode that we’re calling Gameography. What is Gameography, you ask? Well, we recorded a very special bonus mini-podcast to try to explain our thinking. I’ll let that speak for itself.If you’d rather read than listen, I don’t blame you, so here’s the scoop: very early in Abnormal Mapping’s planning stages, I came to Jackson with the idea that every once in a while we’d do an episode that was devoted to the entire career of a specific game-maker. We’d collect all the games they put out, link to them on the blog, play through them all, and then have a very deep dive into someone’s career making games. That is, in essence, what we’re doing in Gameography. Self-explanatory, right?The reason why is a little more complicated. You see, I started writing heavily for the internet talking about movies (and still maintain a dusty but beloved movie blog), where the concept of authorial voice is really strong. People are very quick to assign all sorts of meaning and weight to a director or a screenwriter, creating a broad sense that all their works are of a piece, and that studying that authorial voice is worthwhile in better understanding both the works and the creator. This is called Auteur Theory, and has been around a long time.The strange thing is that you rarely see this sort of thing applied to games, especially in the hobbiest/amateur game making space. We often play games in a contextual vacuum, something that’s linked to us in a browser or on a curated web page, with only the dimmest awareness of who created the game and what other games they might have made, especially in a space where the games can be radically different, released in many different ways, and presented to different platforms. Bringing it all together under one roof for consideration is something we’re keen on doing, and thus Gameography is born!Which brings us to who this first one is going to be about! We have a short list of game makers we really want to dig into, but the obvious choice was someone we both knew about and who had made games we had both enjoyed. The obvious answer was Christine Love. We talk briefly about why Christine Love in the accompanying short podcast, but in realize you only need to play her games to understand why. So I leave you here with the full list of games, including links on where to find them, in the order in which they were released. Go nuts, and we’ll be playing along too, and we’ll be back at the end of April to talk about them!Gameography: Christine LoveCell Phone Love LetterHeart of FireSketchbook: Schoolgirls in Love and Other Assorted HeartbreakDigital: A Love Storydon’t take it personally, babe, it just ain’t your storyAnalogue: A Hate StoryDiving DeeperEven Cowgirls BleedMagical Maiden MadisonHate Plus