Podcasts about so elizabeth

Speaker 1: Everyone's favorite radio station is W I, I F M stands for what's in it for me. And so you're only going to pursue a goal probably that you really want  Speaker 2: Raising the water levels of leadership in the Tri-Cities of Eastern Washington, the Tri-Cities influencer podcast. Welcome to the TC podcast. We're local leadership and self-leadership expert Paul Casey interviews, local CEOs, entrepreneurs, and nonprofit executives to hear how they lean themselves and their teams. So we can all benefit from your wisdom. Here's your host, Paul Casey growing forward services, individuals and teams, breakthrough success.  Speaker 3: It's a great day to grow forward. Thanks for joining me for today's episode with Elizabeth Barnes. She is the executive director of the children's reading foundation of the mid-Columbia. And I asked her for something funny about herself, and she said the word avocado, tell us more about that, Elizabeth.  Speaker 4: So I'm kind of embarrassed about this when my husband and I were actually like brainstorming about, what's a quirky thing about you that people can relate about. And I was like, you know what? You are, I am kind of obsessed with avocados. And I know it's such a millennial thing, but you know, like avocados, I eat one or two a day and I have to tell you, Costco has the best office. I like to create like small little paintings. My mom got me off a couple of socks for Christmas, and I might currently searching on Etsy for a giant avocado painting to hang over my dining room table,  Speaker 3: A little bit of an obsession, a little bit.  Speaker 4: My husband told me that people were going to probably start buying me all the condo, like figurines and stuff after this. And I'm just, oh gosh,  Speaker 3: Probably. Yeah. I had, you know, bald Eagles when I used to be a school principal years ago, it was bald Eagles, and I got all those gifts. So that's, what's coming your way. It's coming. I can't wait, but we'll dive in. After checking in with our Tri-City influencer sponsor, it's easy to delay answering uncomfortable questions. Like what happens to my assets and my loved ones when I die. So it's no surprise that nearly 50% of Americans don't have a will and even fewer have an estate plan, many disabled clients worry that they don't have enough assets to set up an estate plan, but there are important options available to ensure that you have a voice in your medical and financial decision-making. Even if your health takes a turn for the worst estate planning gives you a voice when your health deteriorates or after you're gone. Marin Miller bam attorney at law is currently providing free consultations to find out more about estate planning or to book an appointment. Call Marin at (206) 485-4066 or visit Salem that's S a L U s-law.com today. Thank you for your support of leadership development in the Tri-Cities welcome Elizabeth. I was privileged to meet you. You reminded me early 2020. I was speaking for the Columbia basin Sherm, the HR organization here locally, and you were there. So  Speaker 4: That was, yeah. And you and I ended up connecting because you were speaking about your international experience. And I just moved back to the trace of his, after being gone for 13 or 14 years, doing all international work. And so I came up and introduced myself, wanting to find out what happening internationally. And so, yeah,  Speaker 3: It was good stuff. Very good. Okay. Good stuff. And then you've got like young professional of the year or something, right? Well, you got one of those tough things in the journal business. Yeah. And the connect magazine recently got  Speaker 4: Like the young, well, it was executive spotlight. It was of, it was pretty exciting to get, they actually came in and did photographs at my house with me and my son doing, you know, school. Yeah. It was very  Speaker 3: Cool. It was really cool. Thank you. Well, so that our tries to the influencers can get to know you tell us about what your organization does and what you spend 80% of your day doing.  Speaker 4: Yeah. So the children's reading foundation of the mid-Columbia was actually founded right here in the Tri-Cities about 25 years ago. It was collection of teachers and principals and parents all got together and they really identified that education literacy education was the key to future success of our community. And so they started the children's reading foundation, which is now a national organization. The mid-Columbia is our local chapter right here in the Tri-City. So we serve Benton and Franklin county. Our mission is to encourage and educate families about their important role in raising a reader and preparing their child for kindergarten w also to support schools and ensuring the students read on grade level by the end of third grade, and to facilitate community involvement in helping young readers be successful. So this past year during COVID, we have really been working in the community and showing that we're getting as many educational resources and tools as we can. We I'm so proud of my team. We have actually distributed over 40,000 books to Ben or Franklin county to students, to children and families had been Franklin county. And yeah, I mean, if you've heard the saying read 20 minutes a day with a child, that's us, that's the children's reading foundation. So if you've heard that slogan, then you know who we are. And so, yeah, it's a, it's an incredible organization. I'm so proud to be the, you know, the head of this organization. It's, it's just wonderful,  Speaker 3: Like literally in your email address, right? Yeah. 20 minutes@retwentyminutes.com. Yeah. It's just so  Speaker 4: Important. How do I spend 80% of my day? So I spend 80% of my day making connections with the community to really spread our mission and raising funds for our programming. It's that's really, that is my job. So it's like, how can we, how can we grow? How can we develop? How can we ensure that we are meeting the community's needs? And how can we make sure that we have funding to support that support our mission. And then the other 20% is just managed my incredible team. We're a small little team, but they're awesome. I just, they're just so wonderful.  Speaker 3: And why do you love to do what you do besides my incredible team, but I've just been ranked.  Speaker 4: I really love what I do because I'm really friendly, do believe in our mission. Our non-profit is one of the few that actually provides preventative instead of reactionary measures to help ensure our community grows and thrives. Most nonprofits in our community are reactionary. Okay. We have students that are dropping out of high school. What do we do? And instead of that, we say early childhood education, access to books for children at birth through third grade, that's preventative. That actually changes an entire community. So that's why I'm so passionate about what we do is because we are so preventative, we are ensuring that we are saving our community before anything ever happens. It's just, that  Speaker 3: Is so true. And it's good. You pointed that out. I was in leadership Tri-Cities and I remember the day, well, there's a couple of days where it talked about the community and most of the services and the Tri-Cities were reactionary. It's like, okay, so now that there's a problem, we're going to get funding to this. And you are one of the few organizations that's on the front end. Yeah.  Speaker 4: You know, literacy really is the key to success. Children who are able to read on grade level by the end of third grade are more likely to graduate from high school, go on to college, be more financially stable and be healthy members of rewire of our community, you know? And so why not, you know, why not support that kind of organization  Speaker 3: Prevention? Yeah. So Elizabeth, outside your organization who helps you be successful, do you have any mentors, other people in your network?  Speaker 4: Yeah, so that's really, that's really tricky. So we moved here like six or eight months before COVID hit. And so it was such a tough time. Right. I had big plans. I attended a lot of networking events before COVID, but you know, it's, it's difficult to make those connections and those relationships. And so I don't, I don't really have outside of my board. I don't really have a lot of mentors or like a lot of connections here in the Tri-Cities yet outside of, you know, LinkedIn and maybe it's so hard, but yeah, it's yeah. So, but I have a lot of, I have some really incredible women who have guided and led me in the past. I've been in leadership for 15 years now and I have some incredible, really powerful women who have taken me under their wing and guided me and supported me. And so I've reached out to them or bills last year and just asked for guidance and support. And we're in different fields. Now I was in education in the past. So they're still, you know, they're still leading their schools and, and there, you know, they're gigantic, huge schools and I'm running the small little non-profit, so we're kind of indifferent different fields, but you know, they've still been very, very happy to support me. And it's been, it's been nice.  Speaker 3: Yeah. You're an educator at me too. So leaders have growth mindsets. How are you constantly evolving as a leader what's in your own professional development plan?  Speaker 4: So I had big plans for this last, for this year. Right. And of course, like everything had changed, but so my professional developed plan for this year for the 20, 20, 20, 21 has really been ensuring that our brand name gets out there when people hear read 20 minutes, or when they hear the children who need foundation of Maine Columbia, they understand like, oh, I know what that is like, oh, that started here. Oh, okay. They give us books; they provide educational resources. You know, they're here to support families and really ensure that that brand name is connected. We've been here for 25 years. And when I say the children, we need foundation of the children's Winnie foundation. I didn't have to say make Columbia. They're like, what's, that is that the child development center is that, that place over there off the highway. I literally had that last week.  Speaker 4: And I was like, no, no, we support them. We provide ready for kindergarten with that. But now that that's not us. And so really trying to really trying to get our name out there. And the other thing is really to expand my grant writing because we don't have a lot of opportunities to be on the community to make those connections and to, you know, look for sponsors. I've really turned to grant writing this past year. I, I found that grant writing one is very cathartic, right? Like you sit behind a computer, you talk about your incredible organization and you ask people with lots of money Coca-Cola please give me $40,000 to be able to do ready for kindergarten for, you know, communities and Prosser and it's, you know, like that kind of thing. And so you're like, okay, so they have the money, it's an incredible program.  Speaker 4: And I get to share about this incredible program. And so to be able to, to do that, it feels very achievable, right? Like it's something that can be like, and I did this, this, and I did this. And at this moment in time where like, everything is so like, can I even leave my house today? Like as a grocery store, I'm going to be open, you know, still a year later, it's something that's actually very achievable that I can check off my to-do list. I've written 45 breaths this year. He's like, you know, that kind of thing. I'm like, yes, it has been a successful gear and, and it has been successful. You know, the people are very generous. Grant makers are very generous. And I think COVID, you know, has really highlighted the importance of our mission. You know, literacy is when schools closed and libraries closed and you know, so many, so many children and families stuck at home that our mission has become more important than ever. And so grant makers have seen that and it hadn't have given us a lot of money. It's been a very successful year for us. That's great. A lot of wins to celebrate.  Speaker 3: So how do you avoid burnout and negativity? How do you feed your mental, emotional health and wellness on a regular basis? Being an executive director.  Speaker 4: All right. So there's a couple of things. So I have my little COVID pod. Everybody has them, but I have my little, my little COVID pod. It's my family and my parents who live here and, and then like another little family and we all follow hand COVID guidelines, which we've been doing for like a year now. And surprisingly, we haven't killed each other. It's like, you know, it's just like, how are we still friends? But, you know, so we, we do, we do like large family dinners every week where we all get together every Friday evening and we just hang out and have fun. You know, I just, I really make sure that they're, that we have quality time, and we don't talk about work. And you know, like I don't, I, I choose in the past as an educator, you hang out with other teachers, you hang out with other educators and you spend most of least in my experience, you spend most of your time talking about work. Yeah. And so, which is so annoying, I'm like, come on, we're, we're intelligent, smart.  Speaker 3: We're holistic. We have more people. We have more of a life. Yeah. Well, let's, let's  Speaker 4: Just talk about other things. And so I really worked at not talking about work. And so, yeah. So there's that. And then I go on a lot of walks. I'm all about like, I just, I'm not a runner. I've never been a runner, but I really enjoy walking. And so I generally find like a loop that works. I'm like, okay, so this loop is like a mile long. Okay. So I'm going to go on three of these loops today and I've gotten in my steps and I feel good. And it really does help, like bring down the stress. And then I listened to a lot of audio books. Like I am a, I'm a poor sleeper. And so helps me, like, de-stress at night I can put an audio book and listen to a book and it just helps me like shut off the cool work brain and then last but not least a good top cocktail and how stance party helps ease the stress. That's you know, my husband and I are we really miss going out dancing. And so we have quite a few dance parties  Speaker 3: In our house. A little tick talk for you. All right. No, no, no, no, no, no. It's not that we're not, we're not fancy dancers. No, none of it was choreographed. Yeah. How do you go about getting things done? My, my guess is you're an achiever because you were an educator. That's what I picked up on. Cause there's endorphins that, you know, go through you when you cross something off a list. So how do you organize yourself? Get a little granular with them. All right.  Speaker 4: So I'm all about my to-do lists, but specifically Google calendar and task list. So I love the Google suite because everything is interconnected. So I have my email. So when you emailed me asking, if I could be on your show, I will add that to my task list. And then when I have time, I will get to it. I have I, and then I add a little due date onto my calendar by when I have to have it done. And then, you know, and then I, I have this, I have some of the questions that you sent me. I have an, an, a document, which I attached to my to-do list, which is also connected to my calendar. So I don't lose it and it's all there. And then when I'm done, when we're done here, I'm gonna check it off my list. And I'm going to feel great about myself today. I have achieved something, you know, and in, in, in an organization like this, where achievement is, it's not an everyday thing. You know, if you get a grant, like if you get an email about a grant and I got $5,000, right? Yes. That's an achievement for the day, but you don't get a lot of you don't get a lot of daily wins. And so having that task list of likes, yes, I accomplished that. I call it keeps you motivated. It keeps you going.  Speaker 3: It does. Yeah. Does well before we head to our next question on looking at the bigger picture, a shout out to our sponsor, located in the Parkway, you'll find motivation, new friends and your new coworking space at fuse. Whether you're a student just starting out or a seasoned professional, come discover all the reasons to love co-working at fuse come co-work at fuse for free on Fridays in February, enjoy free coffee or tea, WIFI printing conference rooms, and more, and bring a friend. If you use this, where individuals and small teams come together in a thoughtfully designed resource, rich environment to get work done and grow their ideas. Comprised of professionals from varying disciplines and backgrounds. Fuse is built for hardworking, fun, loving humans. Learn more about us@fusespc.com or stop by seven to three, the Parkway in Richland, Washington. So Elizabeth, easy to get trapped into simply reacting to crises and leadership. How do you specifically step back, take a look at the bigger picture of what the organization is doing and maybe even in your own life? Yeah. You  Speaker 4: Know, it's a little hard, it's hard to, especially this past year where so much has had to be reactionary, as things are constantly changing day to day, right. It's, it's been really hard not to just be reactionary, reactionary, reactionary. And do you actually take that step back and say, okay, what are we actually trying to accomplish this year? And so for me, when COVID hit and we were like, okay, what are we doing? I took a, like a, I think it was even, it wasn't even a full day. I think it was just like, you know, a good six hours of freaked out and just like, no, I was like, okay, now let's get together as a team virtually because our office is at an elementary school in Kennewick. And so we had to shut down, like everything we should have. Like, I literally hauled by printer out under my arms and like, you know,  Speaker 3: A little small desk at a home base. Cause I'd never seen it. So  Speaker 4: Homebase has been my house for the last year, but we do, we have a, we have a couple of portables over at canyon elementary school in clinic. Yeah. So, which we've been solely caught getting back into, which has been nice, but yeah. So had a freak out and then said, okay, what can we, what can we still do? All right. We can, we can pit it, our programs that we have, there's the word of the year, by the way. Sorry. I used, I'm really not going to say, you know, like it's the, it's the, I know. So how can we transition from being in-person? So we ha we had in-person tutoring in elementary schools, and then we also have our early childhood education program ready for kindergarten, which was also in person. So I got with my program directors was about community outreach operations manager and said, okay, what can we actually do?  Speaker 4: And so we, in my incredible team, again, we're able to take what we were doing, which everything was in person and say, we're going to do it virtually. And we did, like, it was, we closed down on Tuesday and we were doing the virtual program on Monday. I mean, it was like that. And so, yeah, actually phenomenal. And my operation like operations and community programs, cause it's the same position because we're small. What, how can we ensure that we're still getting books in the hands of families? If we can't be on the community, if our volunteers, a lot of our volunteers are seniors and it's like, they couldn't be on the community. How could we still get books out into the community? And so we said, okay, let's partner with organizations that are handing out food and clothing, like second harvest, for example, or communities in schools and other organizations like that. The boys, girls club, who were saying, you know what, we're still gonna, we can provide food and clothing to these families. So we said, books, literacy is just as important second to food. [inaudible] Thank you might as well. And so how can we, how can we ensure that, you know, we're saying that literacy is also an essential need and so partnering with them and saying, okay, you're already out there. Can we give you the books? Can you distribute them for us? Our, can we come up instead of a table and be behind you in passing, you know, books through windows and things like that. And so doing a lot of drive-through events, but really partnering with those community organizations that are already out there. And so that's, we really,  Speaker 3: Did you have those partnerships prior? Or did you go after them? Once COVID hit?  Speaker 4: It sounded like the boys and girls club and the way we've always provided books to them for like their afterschool program and Karen like that, but communities and schools and not really, and that's become a really big partner for us. We've also partnered with Cooper cupboard out of WSU. Who's providing like, they have a whole like food and food and clothing closet out there. And we said, okay, can we also get books out to your families? And so they partnered with us and second harvest as also like one of our big ones that were out there probably once a month or so partnering with them. And a lot of partnerships, it's a lot, it's a lot. I think we, we ended up having something like 23 different community partnerships this past year with new ones that we hadn't had in the past, but which was new for us, you know, which was, yeah. But our organization is so old. It's hard to tell like maybe in the past we had had those, those partnerships, but you know, transition happens a new leader come and go. And so, you know, it's good to, it's good to breathe new life.  Speaker 3: Necessity's the mother of invention or, or connection, I guess. So it has a board that you have to change your strategic plan. Cause you probably have a strategic plan every one or two years. Did you have to go, all right, this is back burner. This is back burner. Here's some new stuff.  Speaker 4: Oh, so interestingly enough, the board and I were crafting the strategic plan at the time, of course, because they had just ended their strategic plan. The executive, the previous executive director had just exited. And so they're like, okay, we'll wait to craft the new strategic plan with the new executive director. So I come on board, we had been working on it for a couple months and then COVID hit and everybody kind of for about three or four months, just kind of like disappeared into their own little bubble of panic. And so every, and so right. And so a  Speaker 3: Little bubble of panic and I quit quickly on that one hashtag  Speaker 4: That's what it felt like everybody including myself, right? Like if I'm not serving my, if I'm not doing exactly, if I'm not being reactionary exactly to what I need to do right now, I'm just like focusing on my family and trying not to look at the numbers and freak out about swapping in this country. And so, yeah. And so our strategic plan got put on hold. So we're, we're finishing up this month. Long story short, we're finishing up this month, which is good because I think like, because we are, things are starting to open up, schools are starting to open up, you know, the community is, is getting back on its feet, that this is a good time for us to look ahead the next three years and say, where are we going? What do we want to do? What, what have we done? That's really worked successfully this past year.  Speaker 4: And the hybrid model, as everybody is saying, the hybrid model really is the future. You know? And so we are going to end up keeping a lot of the things that we did in those partnerships that we've created and the model of reaching families, the families that really want to reach those low-income families, those really needy families, the families that actually need educational resources and tools and not just yeah, those families. And so the model that we have at the moment is really serving those families. And so we really do want to continue in the same thing.  Speaker 3: How do you best lead organizational change, knowing how hard it is for most people in change and your organization has been here, like you said, for a long time. So you probably came in, you took the job and it's like, alright, you looked around, you probably assess the situation I'm putting COVID aside just for a moment. Right. And so what's your view on that leading change.  Speaker 4: Okay. So I have a view and then I have what happened with this job, which are interesting. Okay. So, you know, from my view to best organizational change, you have a clear vision of where you want to go, right? You set up step-by-step goals and getting there, you empower your staff to run with their ideas, to get there. You support your team. When they feel at a loss, you utilize the experience and knowledge of your board and you make the connections to bring in funding and change. Then you celebrate every step. Wow. That's all easy because that was your textbook answer. You know, like those are the steps in real life. You know, walking into an organization that's been around for 25 years. Organizational change can be very difficult, but this is the way we've always done it. This is how we've always done. This is how the previous executive director did it.  Speaker 4: And the one before them, and this is how we do it. And so I have to say, COVID saved my life for this, like for this, or for actually being able to create organizational change within this organization in a fast way, in a very speedy way, COVID made it, it had to happen. And so it was, it became, you know, necessity, the mother, the mother of necessity. Right? And, and so we were able to make those changes, which might have taken three years in a year. You know, like we, we knew that we wanted to take things more hybrid to take it less out of. I'll give you a great example. So like our ready for kindergarten program in the past, we had a workshop that were set up in elementary schools. We took our, we loved our laptops. We took all of the supplies over there.  Speaker 4: Parents would sign up, they would show up, we would have childcare. Parents would attend. They would sit in this class. It was very spoon-fed to the parents. They would leave, they would get a box of resources and they would go home. Right. And that was, we would do that three times a year. And we had, we had good success, but we, but my, my program director was like, well, what if we, what if we could do something where like, they could learn it at home. And they have the, you know, they were doing like online education, you know, online learning is really becoming trendy, but it just wasn't the model. Right. And I'm sure it would have eventually become the model in the future, but it became, she was the driving force to make it the model during COVID. She said, okay, I have all these ideas.  Speaker 4: She worked with a national organization and they created it and we've had astronomical success. Like more, more parents are participating our community in this program than I've ever had never participated because they can do it at any time. Right. Especially, we always really wanted to get parents who had newborns to two-year-olds. Right. That's really like the early, early age. And that's always been the age that's been impossible to get. Right? Like the numbers were always terribly low and this year they've been higher than ever because parents can do it at any time. Right. They're at home, they're nursing, they're feeding, it's 2:00 AM the baby's crying that can't sleep, whatever. They can just sit on their phone and do this program and get that early child education to ensure that their child is successful. And so it's been great. It's been absolutely, absolutely fantastic to be able to do that quick transition, but what have happened, but it's going to take them a lot longer.  Speaker 3: You did get blessed with that, but it's not all bad. Yeah. Yeah. With change. Wow. So ready for kindergarten. I know about the program. Some of our listeners may not get, can you do a quick 30 seconds on it?  Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely. And I'll tell you about team read as well, which is our other, our big program. So ready for kindergarten is an early childhood education program. We provide three classes a year and we provide all the tools and resources to ensure that the parents are the teachers at home because a lot of children are at home with their parents all day with a parent or a caregiver all day. And we know even if you're not, but the parent is the first teacher of every child. And so ready for provides those resources and tools to the parent to ensure that they have the knowledge and background, to be able to ensure that their child is ready on the first day of kindergarten. We S there are a lot of children in the Tri-Cities who start that first day of kindergarten, two or three years behind their peers.  Speaker 4: So if they're starting at the age of a two-year-old at five, how long is it going to take them to catch up? Maybe never. I don't want to be, I don't want to be a pest, but like, you know, like they're always behind. They're always behind. And then that's, that's not fair to them. And that's, and that's and no fault to parents in the Tri-Cities, right? Like parents, no fault to parents anywhere. Right. It's parents, every parent wants the best for their kid. No parent is like, I to hope my kid fails, you know, like,  Speaker 3: No,  Speaker 4: Trust me. Like, no, I'm a, I'm a mom, no parent wants that. And so, you know, this is just providing that early childhood educational background for parents. So that way they can ensure their kid is successful. Yeah. It's, it's a phenomenal program. And then we also have team read, which is a tutoring program where we provide tutoring for children who are behind moving for, for first through third grade. And that's in the elementary schools in the past, we've actually had tutors from the community, volunteer tutors, come in and provide them. One-on-one tutoring for 30 minutes a week to, to children who are behind this year. We have changed it. I'm not going to use the P word. We have changed it so that children are, the parents are actually getting the tutoring resources to be able to provide that one-on-one tutoring, that targeted one-on-one tutoring for their kids at home. So the teacher evaluates the student, they said the child is at this reading level. And then here are all the resources. So we provide all the like level tutoring resources for the parent to be able to provide that one-on-one instruction at home for the kids.  Speaker 3: Okay, great, great community resources. Wow. So one of the most difficult tasks of a leader is when you must have a difficult conversation with a team member, how do you bolster the courage to do that?  Speaker 4: So this was a really hard thing for me initially. You know, I was really young getting into leadership. I got my first principal's job when I was 29. And I was the leader of, you know, managing some teachers that were long in the tooth, you know, like in their fifties and sixties had been there forever, who were just like, how dare you leave me? And I had to have those. I had to have some difficult conversations, especially bringing in, you know, new educational theory. And they're like, but I've been doing this for 30 years. What do you know kid? And I'm like, this is what we're doing. And so having to have those long conversations and I used to be a crier like where I would get like, so emotional, you know, like freaking out like panic, like shaking. And I'm like, don't cry, don't cry.  Speaker 4: And so I took this great class from this author. Her name is Jennifer Abrams. She's an educational her, she has a background in education, and it was, it's all about having hard conversations. And she takes you to those steps. You don't have a clear idea of what you want to communicate before you go into the conversation, like already have it in your head, be clear and concise. Like you don't, don't apologize for the fact that you're having this conversation. Like you don't own it. It's not, you lay out the facts had documentation to back up your meeting, practice beforehand, out loud. You can actually hear the words coming out of your mouth. You're not like, you know, you might have practiced them in your head, but actually say them out loud before you go in, take a second person with you, a board member or another leader in your organization. If you're afraid, you won't be able to get through it. And then she said, this is my favorite part. She was like, if you're going to cry, clench, just like collect your booty and the whole back of tears and it'll hold it and then share what you need to share. And I'm like, okay. And I have to tell your work. I haven't cried through a single meeting.  Speaker 3: Wow. That's a very practical tip.  Speaker 4: I know. I just loved it. It was so great. No one has ever shared that.  Speaker 3: That's awesome. Well, finally, what advice would you give to new leaders or anyone who wants to keep growing and gaining more influence?  Speaker 4: I have to say like take every opportunity to get out into the community, to meet new people and to really share your vision for your organization. You know, a lot of leaders are passionate. A lot of new leaders are passionate about their organization, but when they might, they might be too passionate and not listen. That's the one thing, right? Like, you know, you're, you're super passionate, but you don't actually listen to what other people are saying. You're just so worried about getting your words out, so, you know, share your vision, but then also take the time to sit back and listen to what other people are saying. Keep current, make yourself a professional development plan. As we talked, like, what is your professional development plan makes you actually have one be looking to the future? What am I, what am I, what am I struggling in?  Speaker 4: What do I need to work on? And then reflection, reflection is key to growth. You know, did you make a mistake? Did you get, you know, did, did the board sit you down and say, Hey, this is an issue. Okay, it's an issue reflect, how can I, how can I own this? It is my fault. What did I do? How can I fix it? So a way, you know, so I can learn from the future and really just, you know, it's, it's what that reflection is key and owning your mistakes, not being like, well, is that my it's not my fault. You know, they just hate me. They're just out to get me. Well, even if, so, even if that's true, you did hurt someone's feelings. So how can you own that? How can you take it on, how can you move forward and how can you move forward? Not just let it hold you back.  Speaker 3: Good stuff, good stuff. Well, how can our listeners best connect with you and also connect to the programs? All of  Speaker 4: Our events can be found on our website on Instagram and Facebook, which is@retwentyminutes.com.  Speaker 3: Well, thank you again, Elizabeth, for all you do to make the Tri-Cities a great place and keep leading. Well, let me wrap up our podcast today with a leadership resource to recommend it's growing forward service training. I would love to come into your organization, maybe do a lunch and learn, or a couple hours workshop that will help build the leadership skills of your team. So you can resource me@paulcasey.org, and we'll customize something that will fit your schedule and your budget, and sort of beef back up professional development for your, for your people this year. Again, this is Paul Casey. I want to thank my guest Elizabeth Barnes from the children's reading foundation of the mid-Columbia for being here today on the Tri-Cities influencer podcast, we want to thank our TCI sponsors and invite you to support them. We appreciate you making this possible so we can collaborate to help inspire leaders in our community. Finally, one more leadership tidbit for the road to help you make a difference in your circle of influence. It's the great Stephen Covey. He said, listen with the intent to understand not the intent to reply until next time kgs keep growing forward.  Speaker 2: Thank you to our listeners for tuning in to today's show. Paul Casey is on a mission to add value to leaders by providing practical tools and strategies that reduce stress in their lives and on their teams so that they can enjoy life and leadership and experience their desired results. If you'd like more help from Paul and your leadership development, connect with him@growingforwardatpaulcasey.org for a consultation that can help you move past your current challenges and create a strategy for growing your life or your team forward. Paul would also like to help you restore your sanity to your crazy schedule and getting your priorities done every day by offering you is free. Control my calendar checklist, go to WWE dot, take back my calendar.com for that productivity tool or open a text message 2 7 2 0 0 0, and type the word grown  Speaker 3: Tri-Cities influencer podcast was recorded at fuse SPC by Bill Wagner.

Functional Medicine Health Coach Sets Out to Inspire Women Over 40 with Elizabeth Di Cristofano Are you suffering from burnout? Are the long hours getting to be too much for you? Getting sick more often. It can happen to anyone and it can have a devastating toll on your health. We have to take care of our bodies to perform at the highest levels. Eating right, plenty of sleep, plenty of water, breathing properly, and of course exercise. About Elizabeth As a Functional Medicine Certified Health Coach, Elizabeth sets out to inspire women, specifically women over 40, to take back their life and vitality by getting to the root cause of their overall health. Health and wellness has been in Elizabeth’s world for the last decade and has evolved as soon as she turned 40. Elizabeth’s career was mainly in the apparel corporate world, working for companies including a New York designer brand and a Fortune 500 company. A career that was not sustainable and in the midst of her starting her own health journey she experienced burnout. Taking on a mind/body approach, Elizabeth started incorporating optimal nutrition, meditation, journaling, daily workouts and movement and practicing setting boundaries all in which helps her thrive in everyday life.  But that was not always the case in her life. She battled an eating disorder when she was 15 which showed back up again recently and is just now in recovery. Elizabeth started building her own business in her forties and offers her services as a Health Coach to help high achieving and high performing entrepreneur female 40-60 years old who needs to operate at peak state in order to meet the high demands of corporate, family and social life - an area in which she is really familiar with. She is a host of an alternative health and wellness podcast called The Root Of Our Health, which ties in with her mission of changing behaviors by empowering entrepreneurial women in their 40’s and beyond to know their self worth! Even her message at the end of every podcast episode is “You are worth it” Her motto she lives by is love, laughter and to live la dolce vita! www.elizabethdicristofano.com The Root of Our Health Podcast www.feedingfatty.com Full Transcript Below Terry - Feeding Fatty (00:03): Okay. Roy - Feeding Fatty - Functional Medicine Health Coach Sets Out to Inspire Women Over 40 (00:03): Hello and welcome to another episode of feeding fatty. This is Roy. So we are a, the podcast that we are chronically in my journey through getting healthy. Terry is my support mechanism, of course, but you know, the challenges that we go through eating better, making sure that we are eating right, not cutting out, uh, some of our nutrients and things that we need, but also getting in that exercise zone and, uh, really sticking to it. It's been one of our issues as you know, we do good for a while and then fall off the track. But we also like to bring, uh, professionals to the show to talk about different issues that sometimes we don't know what we don't know, but sometimes we also may need a helping hand. And so today is no different. We have an awesome guest and Terry I'll let you introduce Elizabeth. Terry - Feeding Fatty (00:49): Yes. Thank you. As a functional medicine certified health coach, Elizabeth DeCristofano sets out to inspire women, especially women over 40 to take back their life and vitality by getting to the root cause of their overall health. Health and wellness has been an Elizabeth's world for the last decade and has evolved as soon as she turned 40 Elisabeth's career was mainly in the apparel world, working for companies, including a New York designer brand and a fortune 500 company, a career that was not sustainable and had that bit in the midst of her starting her own health journey. She experienced burnout taking on a mind body approach. Elizabeth started incorporating optimal nutrition, meditation, journaling, daily workouts, and movement and practicing setting boundaries. All of which helps her thrive in everyday life. Elizabeth, thank you so much for coming on the show. There's so much to cover here, um, but we really appreciate you coming on and talking about your story and, um, your journey to help women over 40. Elizabeth (01:59): Thank you for having me on this is going to be great. I'm excited. So, Terry - Feeding Fatty (02:03): So you were in the corporate world and, um, did you have a specific health issue or many health issues? W how did, how did that steer you toward being an S uh, functional medicine, health coach? Elizabeth (02:19): Yes. Um, so the burnout actually took place, I want to say about five or six years ago. And that was when I was in the corporate 500, um, company. And it was at the same time, I was actually starting my own health journey, meaning, um, I was understanding more of the, you know, nutrition, like whole foods. Uh, I did actually the whole 30 starting that out, uh, took on, you know, uh, workouts or a workout regimen that actually worked for me. So when I started that journey and started seeing some great results, I got a promotion and that promotion to longer hours. Um, and it was only because I worked with overseas. So you had to be on very early and you had to be on at night when they are up. So it was literally probably, you know, like 18 hour days and, you know, it just all in one. Elizabeth (03:19): And then obviously, um, the work itself kind of got to me and I, um, I experienced, so what it was was just never ending, trying to climb, trying to, you know, like get my head above the water. Yeah, exactly. Getting nowhere. And I was crying a lot. I was sick. I was, I wasn't working out anymore. I wasn't eating. Right. And, um, I decided after, I think it was a year, um, in that promotion, I decided to walk away. Um, and I decided to kind of take some time off and it was then, um, you know, it was, I, it was actually, you know, going through that kind of taking the time off I knew, and I got into meditation, I think at that point. So doing that mind body after the fact, um, really helped because, you know, I, I'm still in that corporate world now. Elizabeth (04:21): I'm still I'm back into it. Um, and, but I understanding how to manage that stress a little bit. So only recently, um, I say that with a caveat and it was two years ago, so it was 41. Um, I, you know, my job right now is not that stressful, but I put a lot of stress on myself trying to be trying to achieve. Right. Right. So I'm like 40, I'm like, alright, I need to do something I'm going to do, you know, kind of be that achieving person. So I'm a high achiever. And when that was happening, I guess I just didn't understand how to manage that stress at the time. So I was, you know, I was getting very irritable. I was bloated. I was, um, fatigued in the afternoon. So the fatigueness really set in and I was coffee, like drinking coffee, like the two or three cups. Elizabeth (05:24): And that was, I was trying to like stay awake and, um, the sleep I think was okay, but I think it was more or less like, you know, always trying to be on always trying to do stuff. And I thought to myself, I can't have paramedic pause right now. This is, I'm not, I mean, I could, but I don't think I do and get just before the appointment. So when I went through that and he talked to me, like I was a person and like the language and everything, it just felt right. And so then we did some tests. It, it showed that I had a lot of toxicity. My B my B uh, vitamin BS were low. Uh, at the time I thought doing the cart, um, the carnivore diet was the thing. So I'm like, okay, let me do the carnivore diet to see if this helps prior to that. Elizabeth (06:17): And no, I'm actually predisposed to, um, uh, cardiovascular disease. So, uh, you know, cholesterol, my LDL was high. And, uh, it was just, you know, all of that, seeing all of that just like spoke to me. And it was like a ha moment. So he put me on a regimen and I went through, um, you know, like, I think it was a month of detox and it, it worked. So, you know, I changed my diet. I thought it was supposed to be all keto, low carb can't do well on carbs. Well, this was a detox. So I did, I was able to, you know, have carbs on it and just the digestion, it was like, I wasn't digesting food. So I had digestion problems and all of that went away. So I was like, ah, ha there's something to this. And, um, then fast forward, a little bit to about a year ago, I, uh, was, uh, you know, kind of bringing in for my job. Elizabeth (07:20): I was kind of like the wellness coach there, there, the wellness coordinator should say, so I was bringing in kind of, um, you know, teachers or lunch and learn, you know, people to come in from lunch and learns and everything like that. So I was talking to somebody and they said, well, you'd be a great teacher, or you'd be a great health coach. And I'm like, ah, ha. So I decided to embark on that journey of going into functional medicine, health coaching, and just recently graduated, uh, about a month ago. So I am here on this journey trying to help others, uh, just, you know, kind of avoid what I had to go through. Wow. Roy - Feeding Fatty - Functional Medicine Health Coach Sets Out to Inspire Women Over 40 (08:01): Yeah. And that it's, I think as a coach, it's a benefit to the, um, to the people you're helping because you've actually been through that. And so you have that experience. So that, that always speaks to me. But the, um, also the, you know, well, we always say we're not doctors and you need to check with your healthcare professionals and we kind of go through all of that. You know, one thing that we have noticed is that it seems that in the traditional medicine, it's basically a, Oh, you got a problem. I've got a pill for you and not really well, you know, and I think the other thing that you said that was poignant was that you talked to your functional medicine doctor for over an hour. Uh, my, uh, experience traditional medicine that that's you, if you're lucky, if you went in 10 times, if you would get to talk to them for an hour in aggregate. So, you know, really taking that time to sit down and understand what is going on to try to address that, you know, that underlying issue. Elizabeth (09:03): Right. And that's the, that's the key to that root cause root cause. Roy - Feeding Fatty - Functional Medicine Health Coach Sets Out to Inspire Women Over 40 (09:08): And we've talked a lot too. We, uh, we actually, uh, did a taping with the guests yesterday and we've had, uh, uh, Dr. Mike, one of our very first guests that came on the show. They, uh, they talk about, you know, food as medicine. And so I think that we, we kind of have to take that approach, especially the older we get that, you know, we need to eat things that are going to be good for us functionally. And, um, you know, sometimes these, uh, we've talked, we talked a lot about this too, is that we, you know, we got us a, um, uh, an app, so we could put food in because you would be surprised when you start cutting this out or this. And even when we thought we were eating good, there were so many micro nutrients that we were missing out on. It is amazing. And especially when you get older, like me, you know, those things will start affecting you more by not having those, you know, your eyes, your ears, digestion, brain health. That's another one that we've talked about as well. Terry - Feeding Fatty (10:11): Well, I want to point out that he said, he's that, he's the one getting older, not us Elizabeth (10:16): [inaudible]. Terry - Feeding Fatty (10:25): Yeah. So, um, so stress and burnout for women all over the board, as far as age it happens. And, and we just get so caught up in everything that, uh, you know, our health, you don't realize what it's doing to your health, as far as just everything that's going on in your life, the kids, the, um, work that just trying to say yes to everything we don't say no, you know, we just kind of keep going, Roy - Feeding Fatty - Functional Medicine Health Coach Sets Out to Inspire Women Over 40 (10:58): Well, I'll put a plug in for you ladies that, uh, you know, cause I Elizabeth (11:05): Know I just, you Roy - Feeding Fatty - Functional Medicine Health Coach Sets Out to Inspire Women Over 40 (11:06): Know, I used to, um, uh, we used to work a lot in the senior living industry, more on the business side than, than the care side. But what, what we always found was that the, um, usually the daughter-in-law was the one tasked with taking care of, you know, the husband's parents. And so I, I guess I will just say is that it seems that, you know, you have a career, you have the kids, you may actually have parents. If you're in that sandwich generation, there's just a lot going on. And you know, I'm very thankful, uh, for Terry every day, because it's just, you know, our kids are older and gone, but she holds us together by getting everything done. And I know it's a lot of stress for her. Elizabeth (11:47): Yeah. And I, and I will say, yes, you know, kudos to not only, you know, it is because we take it on, you know, it is because I think that's what we we're caretakers. Right? No we're caretaker. And so when the generations now are not only caretakers, but now we're entrepreneurs. So now we're taking on the role of, you know, again being high, achieving being the, be the role model of, of, you know, I guess, you know, bringing home the bacon. Right. But, um, it's not just that though. I think being everything I think we, we take that badge of honor to be that wonderful. Yeah. Now I will say a caveat to that though. Things are shifting a little, I've noticed that husbands are starting to take the role of the, you know, the, um, at home dad, you know, uh, it's not, it's not widely, you know, there yet, you know, there's not a lot of men who do take that role, but, um, and I, you know, honestly I have my husband help in with whatever I need help as well. Yeah. Like roles have shifted since I took on taken on this health coaching and this podcast. Yeah. Um, I don't claim that much anymore. So I said, can you help me clean? You know, whereas a NASA thing you have to delegate. Yeah. No, we have to be able to understand that it's okay to say no, because we can't do it. Roy - Feeding Fatty - Functional Medicine Health Coach Sets Out to Inspire Women Over 40 (13:28): Yeah. It's not a sign of weakness. And I think that we, you know, men and women alike, we get into that, that are the other thing is the guilt. And we feel like it's selfishness, but you know, it's something I've been working on for a long time because I've read that, you know, as long as it's not hurting other people, it is not selfish for us to take care of us. And I was going to say that kind of gets back to, even if you want to be somebody that takes on everything, if you don't take care of yourself, you're going to end up not being able to take care of anybody. And so, you know, we kind of have to take that approach that we've gotta be healthy and happy in order to be able to take care of somebody else. Elizabeth (14:10): Right. And it's like the it's like that. And I think I hear it a lot. It's like that airplane level right now. So you put the mask on yourself before you put the mask on, you know, the loved ones. Yeah. There's a reason for that because you know, you're no good if you're, you know, burnt out or if you're laid up or, you know, or if you're sick, you're no good to other people right. Or debt, but you know, it, it, it happened stress is actually kill people. Right. You know, so, yeah. Roy - Feeding Fatty - Functional Medicine Health Coach Sets Out to Inspire Women Over 40 (14:41): So what are some things that you do to, you know, when you, I think, cause another thing, you know, these, a lot of this stuff ties together. You have to be very self-aware to find yourself getting into that spot. And, uh, you know, we were kind of joking about, uh, we had some equipment failure a couple nights ago and you know, I, I could feel myself getting, you know, anxious and excited about trying to solve it and the problems that he caused. And I just, you know, made the comment to Terry that, um, it's going to be rough for a few minutes here. Let me just work through this. But you know, when you, you have to be self-aware to realize that you're getting to that spot so you can do, you know, help yourself. So what are some things that you recommend that we can do, you know, when we feel that stress building? Elizabeth (15:26): Sure. Um, I first want to say stress is not all bad. So we got to get that out of our head. So with stress and then there's chronic stress. So the good stress obviously is, you know, you're preparing for a speech or, you know, you're giving a talk or, you know, something, you know, stressful that's happening. That's like an acute stress, right? So that stress you want because it kind of gets your adrenaline going and it gets you excited. But that chronic stress is when it's kind of the overwhelm, it's the, you know, I'm not getting out of anything and it's just, you know, keep piling on, keep piling on. Yeah. The first thing that you have to do, and I agree with you, right, is that you have to be mindful of that stress of it coming on, because if you're not mindful, it takes control over you. Elizabeth (16:19): Now, the first thing you have to do once you're mindful of that is breathe. I mean, that's, it, it sounds so simple, but just imagine just, you know, when you're stressed out, when you were stressed out on Wednesday, where was your heart or would your breathing shallow or even going to pop? Exactly. So that's what happened is that you stop, your breathing gets shallow because your heart rates going and you're just not. So when you don't breathe, you don't get enough oxygen. Should you change your mind to think clearly? So your amygdala is that fight or flight, you know, going on. And so the first thing you need to do is breathe. And what I'm talking about is not just like breathe that shallow, breathe, read your, you know, from the diet, from the stomach. So read through there and do that maybe four times and just that deep breathing. Yeah. And that'll come and get you back because you're in sympathetic nervous system. That's where you don't want to be. Um, so the parasympathetic is that calming state. So when you breathe that gets you back in there and then you're able to, Oh, okay. Think through what's going on. Um, so that's, you know, that's the first and foremost, the second thing is, um, you know, unless you guys want to talk, you know, you know, what's your take on that? No, I think it's, uh, it's interesting because, Roy - Feeding Fatty - Functional Medicine Health Coach Sets Out to Inspire Women Over 40 (17:50): Um, I've done a little bit of yoga. I'm not a Yogi master quite yet, but you know, that's one thing I kind of learned through listening and watching is that we would be really surprised to understand all of our functions, that, that breathing can help and control and being mindful of the breathing too. But, um, I used to have a sign that hung over my desk that, you know, had things that I wanted to do that day, you know, like break a sweat, uh, drink my water, get my sleep. But I had breathed on there and people used to laugh and say, he got to tell yourself to breathe. And I'm like, yeah, I really do, because it's not only stress, but sometimes it's intensity. And where I learned this was, I used to do some martial arts and, um, the sensei guy would walk by and he'd be tapped me on the shoulder and say, it's okay, take a breath. And then we went to a, uh, painting paint, you know, where they have the instructor at the front of the class, 20 people out there. And we're all telling, you know, she's telling us what brush and what color and we're, you know, going through the emotions. And she walked by and told me the same thing she walked by and she said, it's perfectly okay to breathe while you do this. And so anyway, that kind of cued me into the fact that when I get intense about something, I quit breathing. Terry - Feeding Fatty (19:10): Yeah. I definitely quit breathing. You're you're pretty good about noticing though. I mean, you, you might have a couple of hours and, and, and then you're, then you realize, Hey, you just come back down to earth and, and I hold it all. I can't even get to the point to where I can notice it. I mean, Roy's like, look me in the eyes. It's okay. Breathe. And I'm like, it's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, go ahead. Elizabeth (19:43): Yeah, no, I was just going to say, so if you want, I can go into a little bit more of, um, you know, what to do to combat this. Is that okay? Awesome. Okay. So the second thing is, um, along with breathing is, um, take a time out, um, meditating, you know, it kind of goes hand in hand really, but not really. So meditating is really being in the present moment because a lot of times when you're stressed out, you're either thinking about the past, um, or you're thinking about the future, you're worrying about the future. So being in the present moment kind of again, calms you down. Yeah. So, and I'm not saying that you have to like, you know, do go get a pillow and say, you know, you can actually do all that. You can actually do it, you know, at your desk at your, you know, wherever you're at. And just kind of like, alright, I gotta be in the moment, you know, um, w you know, stare at something, look at something, look at, you know, uh, I don't know anything in your, in front of you, and if you're outside, that's even better, but, you know, it's, it's just mainly getting into that present mode. Roy - Feeding Fatty - Functional Medicine Health Coach Sets Out to Inspire Women Over 40 (20:55): Yeah. And I think, uh, for me being in the moment too, it's, uh, sometimes okay. If you're, if, if you're working through a stressful situation, sometimes it's snowballed. So the longer you sat there, the more it builds, the more it builds. And so, you know, like the other night, what I was trying to do is just say, okay, I'm going to sit down and work on this for a minute, but then I'd be getting like, okay, let's take the dogs outside and walk around. It was night. So we couldn't go for a walk, but had it been in a, you know, on a day like today with some sunshine, if I would take a 15 minute walk, it seems to really clear my head and put me back to where I can start thinking clearly again, I love taking a walk that just really does. That is kind of my, uh, I guess that is my meditation where I can breathe and think about other things, look at the beautiful surroundings that, you know, and maybe even that kind of goes to, uh, gratitude. Maybe I can start practicing that little gratitude, like, you know what, look at all these beautiful things that we have, whatever this problem is, we'll solve it. It's going to pass just, you know, you just got to figure out the way through. Elizabeth (22:03): Yeah. That's beautiful. And that's exactly it like getting out and outside, in nature, out in vitamin D and that is meditation because you're literally appreciating what God has given us. Right. You're appreciating that though, the problems that you have rather tragic or not is small compared to, you know, what's out there. So it's kind of appreciation gratitude. Yes. All of that is, is key to managing it. Roy - Feeding Fatty - Functional Medicine Health Coach Sets Out to Inspire Women Over 40 (22:37): Yeah. And that's what kinda makes you, Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. Terry - Feeding Fatty (22:40): Oh, I was just going to say, yeah, you just kind of have to check yourself and if you can see that you are just one mind, you are not the focus of all, everything you are not really. I mean, you know, well, except for you, that's right. You know what I mean? I mean, just everything you are one piece. Yeah. You know, Roy - Feeding Fatty - Functional Medicine Health Coach Sets Out to Inspire Women Over 40 (23:07): Also too, I think what makes me kind of feel silly and very selfish when you get away from it, as you like. Okay. Um, I'm kind of bent out of shape about this piece of equipment here, but there are people that are struggling with life and death and health issues, and there's so much more out there that I should be feeling lucky that this piece of equipment is my only real problem with that. Terry - Feeding Fatty (23:31): The things that are working and just be grateful, be gratitude right there. Just thinking more positively focusing on that. Roy - Feeding Fatty - Functional Medicine Health Coach Sets Out to Inspire Women Over 40 (23:40): Yeah. And sorry, I'm going to interject one more thing because that's, you know, that's something that, uh, you, I had talked to, uh, my priest is an awesome guy. And so I had talked with father Darrell. This has been a while ago, but one thing he always told me is that, um, our mind is like a grinder. And so it's always grinding constantly 24 seven. And so, uh, but we have control over what it grinds. And so, um, trying to replace those negative thoughts with the gratitude and the positive, I feel like that's what kind of shortens up that cycle of stress and despair and kind of moves you back over into reality basically is that, you know what, this probably isn't as bad as you were making it out to be just a few minutes ago. Elizabeth (24:27): Yes. Yeah. That is key. Yes. Yeah, exactly. That, Roy - Feeding Fatty - Functional Medicine Health Coach Sets Out to Inspire Women Over 40 (24:32): Because we typically, you know, we ended up being what I think we can end up making things go the way that we think it, as long as we're in that despair, and this is bad, it's unsolvable, or it's going to be hard, then it, it makes it more complicated to where maybe we turn something into that that really wasn't where if we can step away and say, you know, what, if I can't solve it, I can find somebody that can then all of a sudden we're on that positive path to actually trying to fix the problem. And you're delegating, Elizabeth (25:03): Delegated everything. Everything is, figureoutable the, a lady Marie Forleo, um, to wrote that book and it is true. Everything is figureoutable, you know, um, and yeah, it's, it's, it's the stories that we tell in our mind and their stories. They're, they're just made up stories and we're, again, the peanut app future that we don't even know what's going to happen. Right. So it is like, again, going back to that present moment, okay. How can I figure this out? You know, this is a problem that needs to be solved. Everything needs to be solved. So yeah, that is definitely, um, Roy - Feeding Fatty - Functional Medicine Health Coach Sets Out to Inspire Women Over 40 (25:40): So let's touch on a minute, if you can. I don't mean to put you on the spot, but like stress eating. So, okay. Sometimes, you know, cause I have to admit that's one of my triggers. It'd be like, okay, I'm getting up from here and I'm gonna, you know, if I, if we had any, it'd be like eat some ice cream and chips or, you know, eat that feel good food and it, I guess it releases the happy endorphin. So you kind of get over your problem. But anyway, let's talk about that stress eating factor. Elizabeth (26:07): Yes. Yeah. Um, you know, full disclosure here. I, uh, you know, unfortunately I had to put down my cat last week, almost two weeks ago. Oh. So, and she's 15 years and four months old. So it was hard. It was hard. So, um, I know first and foremost, the whole emotion, emotional eating because that night I, you know, my husband and I were like, you gotta get, we gotta get something. So he got a pizza, I got some chocolate lava cake because I it's just that, you know, that feel good, the comfort food, the, you know, drowning, your feelings, your trauma, you know, the stress in the something. Um, so it happens. It definitely happens. And what, what you do at the moment is you understand, obviously that it's happening because again, we're going back to them blindfold like, Oh yes. You know, I knew what I was getting was not great for me, but it was okay because the next day I would be fine. Elizabeth (27:17): So what ends up happening though, with a lot of people is that chronic stress, they chronic eat, you know, it's, it's, it's that comfort. It's that fast? You know, I need chips. I need, you know, I can't do this now I need this, I need that. And it's, it's the salt, the sweet it's the sugary, you know, it's all that where we're just like grabbed our grab and not thinking, yes. So that's why I started out with you gotta be mindful. You have to be, you know, breathe. So this way you can understand what you are doing. Um, and then, you know, there are certain foods that are great for stress and yes, you know, I will say dark chocolate as well. Um, dark chocolate, you know, obviously you want to get a little bit higher, um, in the, you know, cocoa, which is 75% or more. Elizabeth (28:10): Um, so you don't have that sugar, but the sugars, the salt, all of that is actually does more damage than good because of what you're, what you're doing is, um, well, there's two things that's happening. First of all, when you're stressed out, you don't want to eat, right. So you're, you're in that fight or flight. So that blood, that the blood that usually goes to your digestion is that now going to your arms and legs, because it is saying for you, you want to flee, you want to fight or flight or fight or flight. And it's when you're in parasympathetic stage obviously are digesting well and everything else, right. But you're, you're holding onto your gut and you're holding onto their digestion and it's, and you don't even want to eat. Or you're just thinking of that, you know, fast food, your digestion that is not going to work properly. Elizabeth (29:10): So even if you don't think you're stressed out and you're not product stressed, but you've had that digestive issue, that's not good because you're not getting that essential nutrients, even when you're trying to eat that healthy food. Now why I bring the gut in and the digestion is for the 80% of your immune system relies in your gut. So that is why when you're a chronic stress, um, you get sick faster. And with this COVID, you want that immunity to be like a hundred percent and then stop. So you want to boost that, that is where that, that eating the digestion and all of that comes into play. So probiotics, prebiotics, um, you know, prebiotic food can be, um, flax seeds, pumpkin seeds, um, I think garlic, stuff like that. Um, you know, those are previous prebiotic foods that you want to introduce as well as probiotics. So you can kind of get that digestion going here. So yeah, it is, it is hard though. It's in the moment when you, when you just want something quick and fast and easy and sugary and, you know, fried whatever it is. But getting to the understanding that it's only a one time, and then tomorrow I'm going to be, you know, doing something better for myself. That's when that's, when you have that, you manage that stress. Terry - Feeding Fatty (30:38): Yeah. Yeah. W you know, some, sometimes we have trouble with that. It's like, if we go off track, as far as eating, if we go off track, you know, once or twice during a week, it's hard to get back into, you know, it's like, okay, well today's today. We finally get to today's today. Tomorrow's another day. And then the next day, the same thing, it's like, Oh, we can't get back on track. It's so hard to do that. Um, I guess, I guess it just boils down to what you were talking about earlier. It just, the breathing being able to be present and all encompassing without adding more stress. Um, and just being able to break out of that cycle. Elizabeth (31:33): Yeah. And you know, it doesn't have to be all at once. Like, you know, for example, if you chronically, you know, emotionally eat every meal, just maybe one meal to a nutritional meal or something that helps your, you know, just baby steps. It doesn't have to because when you do it, you know, and we tend to do things full force, right. When you, right. But that adds more stress onto you because you're thinking that, well, you know, either there's two things you're thinking, well, that didn't work. So I might as well just go back to what I was doing. Or it's like, it's too stressful that you're, you know, cheap, you know, either, you know, dieting or counting calories or all that you don't want to do that. You just want that one good nutrition, you know? And then how do you feel after that? Elizabeth (32:29): You got to ask yourself, how do you, how does that, how do I feel after this? Does it make me energized? Does it, does it make me, um, you know, think better? So how did that, because food is medicine, right? You said that before food is medicine. So whether it's poisoning you or it's helping you, that is, that is your choice. Right. So it's like, okay, well maybe let's just change out this breakfast to be a nutritional protein shake if I'm in a, you know, in a hurry. Yeah. Right. That's good. It starts your day off it. Right. And then, you know, maybe if you change your mind during lunch, you know, dinner meet, you have a nutritional breakfast. Roy - Feeding Fatty - Functional Medicine Health Coach Sets Out to Inspire Women Over 40 (33:12): Yeah. Yeah. And that's, uh, I think you brought up a point about, uh, I will say I'm guilty is that we want to change too much. We want to change everything all at one time. And sometimes it can just be way too much for not only our mind, but for our body. We just can't, you know, because it's like, okay, well, we're going to cut all these calories down and we're going to go out and start exercising or, you know, running and doing crazy stuff like that. So now he's crazy now. Elizabeth (33:43): Bad. Exactly. Crazy. Yes. It's bad for your system. Roy - Feeding Fatty - Functional Medicine Health Coach Sets Out to Inspire Women Over 40 (33:47): Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's interesting that you say, you know, when you put it that way about we're, you know, we're either poisoning our body or we're being healthy because I'm not sure if, um, when we talked last week, we had a conversation with somebody that was telling us that the incident of these cancers arising in younger people is outpacing that of the baby boomers. And so, yeah. And anyway, yeah, basically it's in the food, the consumption, the consumption habits and everything that, you know, our younger people and, you know, we're, we're as guilty because we're on the run. And, you know, we used to, that's been one nice thing about not being out and running around as much as we are not in the fast food lines, but it's always, you know, we're running behind, you got to go through here, it's getting late, we need something, do this, do that. Roy - Feeding Fatty - Functional Medicine Health Coach Sets Out to Inspire Women Over 40 (34:43): And it just ends up making bad decisions. And so I will say that us being at home more, we have been more mindful of, you know, we're cooking just about every meal. I think, you know, we're probably lucky if we eat one meal out a week and we try to be mindful about that, but, um, it's just stopping to make those choices and make good choices. It takes time because, you know, when we do a full cook, it's a little bit more time in the kitchen, but you're right. When we eat a healthy meal, it's like, well, I'm not weighed down. I don't feel these feelings. You know, we were talking this morning about, uh, you know, sleeping good. That's another trigger of mine that we might can touch on for just a minute is, um, yeah. I tend to make very bad decisions when, uh, ha when I'm sleep deprived, I guess, you know, cause I feel like I need to eat more to boost my energy up instead of listening to my body and just saying at night, instead of at 10, o'clock thinking I need to get a snack so I can do one more thing. Roy - Feeding Fatty - Functional Medicine Health Coach Sets Out to Inspire Women Over 40 (35:44): Just go to bed, go to bed and wake up and do it tomorrow. Say that tonight, Elizabeth (35:51): There you go. That's your accountability partner. Right? Terry - Feeding Fatty (35:56): He he'll continue to say, yeah, Terry so great. She's mum. She's, she's my, my, uh, sidekick and helped me on my journey. Yeah. I'm going to go to bed Elizabeth (36:09): Terry. Now, do you have that problem too? Or Terry - Feeding Fatty (36:13): I, I really like I'd look forward to going to bed, but I fight the sleep. I don't know if it's, because when you're conditioned as a baby, it's like, no, I don't want to go to sleep. I'm going to miss something, you know, it's but it's like, I like to go to bed and I like to have downtime, but I'm trying not to get caught up with my cell phone. I'm trying to read more. So it will make me naturally tired and, and, you know, detox from all the blue lights and all of that. So I can get to a restful state. So my sleep isn't always great sleep, but, um, you know, I like to get into bed. Roy - Feeding Fatty - Functional Medicine Health Coach Sets Out to Inspire Women Over 40 (36:58): She knows when to call it quits. And I will say that that is her herself disciplined is she's like, I've had enough. Um, we need to go lay down. Okay. Let me, I'm thinking I've got five more things I think I can squeeze in. And I'm the worst. I know that I'm the worst about trying to do too much, but I was just sitting here thinking that it's, it's not stress. Mine happens to be because I enjoy what I do. And, um, so that can be a detriment just as bad as hating what you do, loving what you can do because, um, you know, it's always like, Oh, I just had this ideal or we can make this a little better. Let's try this. And so, uh, Terry - Feeding Fatty (37:38): You know, it's not your thing. No, Roy - Feeding Fatty - Functional Medicine Health Coach Sets Out to Inspire Women Over 40 (37:40): But constantly thinking about, you know, how can we improve this? Or, or there's some analysis that I'm thinking about and here's a better way anyway. So Elizabeth (37:51): Yeah, no, I totally completely understand. Yeah, because I'm actually going through the same thing. So I worked full time. Um, like I said before, and so what I'm doing on the side is I'm doing either the podcast or, you know, trying to do something for health coaching, you know, stuff like that. So it's literally eating up my nights and weekends. Um, so however I will say, and it's gotten a little, it's got a little off track recently, but I religiously like at nine 30, probably if anything, 10 o'clock shut down everything, no matter what. And I take, um, magnesium and, um, for me, I take a progesterone. So it's, it's very calming at night, especially magnesium. So you want to, um, interior, you, you kind of alluded to this, to where you kind of wind it down. Right. So, you know, reading is great because you're, it's great for, you know, morning and night, but at night you're kind of tired your eyes. Elizabeth (39:00): You want your eyes to be a little bit tired, right? No blue lights, so no phone. And if you have your phone, obviously, you know, do that, uh, change the blue light to yellow. So it's like nighttime. Um, and it's just, yeah, it's shutting your brain off because yeah. You can go to bed and all of a sudden you're laying there and you're just thinking and thinking, you're thinking. But the other thing that I'm going to add to that is journaling. So journaling is another thing too, where when you have that brain going, I'm writing it down, it's getting it out. It's like therapy, it's getting it out of your brain onto paper. And then tomorrow morning, the next morning you could read it and then you know that thing. But when you get it out of your system, it's just, it, you know, then it leaves just for a peaceful rest. Elizabeth (39:52): Now the number of sleep, the number of hours, you know, they say you have to get seven to eight hours of sleep. Yes you do. But seven to eight hours of good sleep. Yeah. So the quality is a little bit more important than the quantity at this point. So if you're getting up every hour on the hour, that's not good if you're tossing and turning, if you're going up to go to the bathroom three times, um, so stay away from why they're wasting a lot of water. Yes. Um, but that interrupted sleep is not really the best. Um, you know, and then yeah. You know, the next day you're going to feel groggy here to feel irritable. You're going to make the bad choices. So it's, it's getting to that wind down. And then even when you wake up, don't look at your phone, you know, leave your phone in another room. If you have to. I know, I know we just recently got, you know, um, alarm clock, old alarm clock. So our phones are in our, our possession. Yeah. But it's, it's only that, the reason why I say that is because it starts your morning. Like this you're on somebody else's talking about yours. Roy - Feeding Fatty - Functional Medicine Health Coach Sets Out to Inspire Women Over 40 (41:06): I'm going to check the chat box on this zoom con see of Terry sending you messages, because we actually just had our big, our, our, uh, thing is she likes to lay in bed at night and do her phone. And so I've been telling her, you know, if you want that sleep, cut that phone off and let's start reading. And so the last couple of weeks, she's been much better about reading. Well then, uh, I guess it was the other day. She's like, okay, well, now that I'm straight on, so what we need to do for you is no phone in the morning. And I'm like, I'm like, Ooh, that is tough because I like to look and see, you know, what's been going on in the world and, uh, it's a little harder. So we've tried to get up. The plan is to get up, take a little walk before we do, you know, any phone things Terry - Feeding Fatty (41:52): And get up fast, just get up. When you wake up, get up out of bed. It's not easy to do because you could just sit in bed and do what you're, you know, check your phone and do it. You could be there forever. So it's like an hour or so after you wake up, it's like, Hey, I've been at, I haven't done anything, but I've been on my phone. Yeah. Elizabeth (42:13): Right. Right. Exactly. Roy - Feeding Fatty - Functional Medicine Health Coach Sets Out to Inspire Women Over 40 (42:15): Yeah. I think it's important. Uh, you know, for me, I'm trying, I look at everything trying to be more balanced that sleep, listening to our body, drinking the water. Uh, don't do that enough, but you know, we got to get that water consumption, Terry - Feeding Fatty (42:31): But cutting it off at a certain time. So you're not going to the bathroom all night. Roy - Feeding Fatty - Functional Medicine Health Coach Sets Out to Inspire Women Over 40 (42:37): Yeah. And I think starting the morning off, you know, we, we're not, we go back and forth, but having that bottle of water with that first cup of coffee, uh, it seems to kind of, to me, if I can get that bottle of water in earlier, then it's like, I've set a precedent for the day to drink more water where if I don't have it, first thing I tend not to, you know, not to drink any water. So, so many things to wrap up and, uh, you know, we can help ourselves live, put it that way. You know, sometimes we're our worst enemy. And, um, because I think, I, I know I handled the stressful situations much better when I'm arrested. When I feel like, you know, I'm getting my exercise when I'm just healthier feeling things don't tend to bother me nearly as much. And I assume that's the way it is for most people. Elizabeth (43:27): Yeah. Like, I mean, again, you know, you can never eliminate stress. Stress will always be there. So it's how you manage it. So if somebody tells you, well, these are the, you know, things you can do to eliminate stress, they're lying because we're always going to have stress. Right. It's how you manage it and how you bounce back from that stress, that trauma, anything that's kind of overtaking that moment. Tell you bounce back. That's the key. Yeah. Roy - Feeding Fatty - Functional Medicine Health Coach Sets Out to Inspire Women Over 40 (43:54): Yeah. Yeah. So let's remember breathe when that stressful situation comes at you. When somebody tells you, you got to do this, just take a few deep breaths or, uh, you know, just be mindful. I think that's another good, good messages. Let's just be mindful of everything. Our breathing, our eating, our sleeping, listened to our body. Uh, we can help ourselves so much better, but I know we are way long Elizabeth. It's just been, it's been awesome. A conversation, a lot of great things to think about. So one question we always ask is, uh, what is a habit that you have a habit or a tool, maybe an app or something that you use in your daily life, personal or professional that you feel, uh, really adds a lot of value. Elizabeth (44:40): Good question. Um, the, you were talking to, you alluded to journaling yeah. That you do every day or I used to, um, I used to, um, but now that, you know, time, you should do yes. And it does help because it, um, so yeah, it's journaling is, is key. Um, and I will say, you know, that meditation for me, um, I'm more, I'm better as a meditation. So my morning I'll just like really quick, my morning, I get up, I actually had that warm water with lemon. Um, and then I go meditate for about 10 to 15 minutes. Okay. So that starts the day off. Right. You know, like that starts your day off. Yeah. So it's getting that meditation getting into that moment, getting that a Tet like intention, like what is your intention for the day set it up. So that I think is, is key and I will give an app out. Um, so it's called insight timer. I don't know if you guys heard of that, but that is the app that I use for meditation, for music, for anything. It's a great app. Um, and yeah, Roy - Feeding Fatty - Functional Medicine Health Coach Sets Out to Inspire Women Over 40 (46:00): So anyway, I hate, we could probably talk another hour, but something that, something you brought up that I meant to mention earlier was, you know, in the, in the, uh, trying to decide what we want to take on. I think that's a good question that we can ask is, is that gonna further where I want to go to thing or in life or with my plan. And that's why I think we have to get back, especially if you're in business, you kind of have to have that plan of where do you really want to take this? And then that's how you, um, that's kinda your litmus test for these things that come at you every day. Are, is this going to further my goal, if it's not, and it's not going to hurt somebody else, then we can say no, and we can be okay with that. Whereas if this is something I need to do to further that goal, then yeah. That's something that we want to take on for sure. Elizabeth (46:50): Exactly. It's the intention it's yeah. It's all of that. The purpose. Yeah. Roy - Feeding Fatty - Functional Medicine Health Coach Sets Out to Inspire Women Over 40 (46:55): And then the meditation, how do you do that? Um, I know there are apps and, you know, some, there's a lot of different methods. I think, I guess, uh, the biggest thing is you just basically kind of want to clear your mind, be in the moment and then, uh, not let these outset, but everybody kind of has to find their own path into that. Elizabeth (47:16): Exactly. And you said it perfectly, it's finding your own path into it. Like I do a lot of guided meditation. Some people can do just like breathing meditation. There's so many different types. Yeah. Loving kindness, meditation, um, uh, chanting, uh, you know, getting your shock, froze, you know, align. There's just so much, so many different ones. You just have to try it out for yourself. And don't do like the 20 to 25 minutes at first because you're going to hate it. You do that five minutes and you don't have to clear your mind. People think, Oh, I need to, like, not fake. You're always going to think your minds like working nonstop, it's just understanding and appreciating those thoughts, but kind of getting them a little bit out of the way and clearing, you know, just kind of clearing the way. Roy - Feeding Fatty - Functional Medicine Health Coach Sets Out to Inspire Women Over 40 (48:05): Okay. All right. I promise we're wrapping it up now. Uh, tell us how can people, well, who can you help? What can you do for them? And of course, how they can reach out and get a hold of you. And then not only with the, uh, you know, the functional health coaching, but also, uh, your podcast as well. Elizabeth (48:24): Yes. Um, so I am doing both so health coaching and, uh, podcasts, so they could reach out to me. My website is www.Elizabethdicristofano.com. Um, I'm on Instagram. So I have two handles. So the root of our health podcast. So T H E R O O T O F O U R health. Um, anyway, so you can reach me on there or Elizabeth.DiCristofano okay. And, uh, so I'm, you know, right now I'm taking, um, you know, anybody who is interested in finding out more of how they could calm, you know, manage their stress a little, uh, if you want, you know, 20 minutes, I can give you a introductory call complimentary. Um, and then we'll just go from there. And then if you wanna listen to my podcasts, I can be found at anywhere. This is a podcast, um, that deals with, you know, health and wellness for women over 40, see it through the functional medicine lens. So getting to that root cause. Roy - Feeding Fatty - Functional Medicine Health Coach Sets Out to Inspire Women Over 40 (49:23): Okay. Awesome, man. Great. You, we, we have a mutual friend, Dr. Uh, Carol, have you, have you had your, Elizabeth (49:31): During her interview at, uh, two, one today? So yeah, that'd be doing Roy - Feeding Fatty - Functional Medicine Health Coach Sets Out to Inspire Women Over 40 (49:37): Okay. Well, love her. So we have, uh, an episode, a prior episode. You can go back and listen to with Dr. Carol Sherry. If I get this, I gotta get the name right, Carol. And, uh, but anyway, and you can go over to Elizabeth podcast and, uh, hopefully within the next few weeks, that one will be released as well, but a lot of great information, we appreciate, you know, stress controls, uh, a lot of our situations these days. So we appreciate you talking about that very much. We will include all of your, uh, websites and contact information in our show notes as well. So people can reach out. All right. All right, until then that's going to do it for another episode of feeding fatty. We appreciate our listeners very much, and of course you can find us at www dot feeding, fatty.com. We're on all the major social media platforms, as well as this, uh, a video of this interview will go up when it goes live as well. So you can find it on YouTube. Uh, we are on all the major podcast platforms, iTunes, Google, Stitcher, Spotify. If we're not on one that you listened to, please reach out. We'd be glad to add it. So till next time, y'all take care of yourself and take care of each other. Elizabeth, Elizabeth (50:46): Thank you. Have a great day, everybody. Thank you. Thanks. www.elizabethdicristofano.com The Root of Our Health Podcast www.feedingfatty.com

Did you know Elizabeth and Jessica both have weird phobias about medicine? We do. So Elizabeth told us about the Tylenol Murders!

On this episode of the Healthy, Wealthy and Smart Podcast, I welcome Elizabeth Santos on the show to discuss burnout among new graduates. Elizabeth Santos is a Physical Therapist, Naturopathic Practitioner and Author of 'New Graduate's Guide to Physiotherapy: Avoid Burnout and Injury, Build Resilience and Thrive in Clinical Practice’ an academic style of book designed to be a supplementary text for final year students and new graduates.  Elizabeth has a special interest in maternity health care and works for a talented team of physiotherapists in a musculoskeletal private practice that focuses predominantly on running and sports, pelvic floor health and pregnancy and postnatal care. She is also an active member of the Australian Physiotherapy Association, and a member of the University of Adelaide Physiotherapy Advisory Board. In this episode, we discuss: -Are new graduates prepared for clinical practice? -Why new graduates are most at risk for burnout -The signs and symptoms of burnout -Elizabeth’s book, New Graduate’s Guide to Physiotherapy: Avoid burnout and thrive in clinical practice -And so much more! Resources: Elizabeth Santos Facebook Elizabeth Santos LinkedIn Elizabeth Santos Website New Graduate's Guide to Physiotherapy: 10% off with code: hwspodcast   A big thank you to Net Health for sponsoring this episode!  Learn more about Secure Videoconferencing and Text Messaging for Telehealth.   For more information on Elizabeth: Elizabeth Santos is an Australian physical therapist, naturopathic practitioner and author of ‘New Graduate’s Guide to Physiotherapy.’ Elizabeth completed a bachelor of physiotherapy at the University of South Australia in 2006 and then went on to work across a range of clinical areas, from acute care within the public hospital system, to aged care,  rehabilitation in the home, and musculoskeletal physiotherapy where she now works exclusively. She has a special interest in maternity healthcare and works for a talented team of physiotherapists in a clinic that focuses mainly on running and sports, pelvic floor health and pregnancy and postnatal care. Elizabeth also completed a second bachelor degree in Health Sciences – Naturopathy in 2014 so that she could provide a holistic and integrative approach to her clients. Elizabeth is an active member of the Australian Physiotherapy Association (APA) and member of the University of Adelaide Physiotherapy Advisory Board. During her career, Elizabeth became curious about the pervasive burnout she saw in the profession so she spent seven years reading literature on the subjects of injury, attrition and burnout in physiotherapy. Elizabeth has written an academic style of book that is full of the latest research to guide new physical therapists and is designed to be a supplementary text for final-year students and new and recent graduates. The book covers key areas of clinical interest for new graduates, including how to successfully gain employment, find a mentor, understand insurance and medico-legal requirements, build relationships with clients and colleagues, and learn how to work through professional challenges as they arise. Elizabeth provides one-to-one mentoring for new graduate physical therapists and also hosts in-person and online workshops for helpers and health professionals who wish to prevent burnout, build resilience and truly thrive in the roles they have chosen. She believes that when we take good care of ourselves we can be of greatest service to others. Elizabeth’s intention is to help new graduate physiotherapists truly thrive in those first years of clinical practice and beyond.   Read the full transcript below: Karen Litzy (00:01): Hi Elizabeth, welcome to the podcast all the way from Australia. I'm so happy to have you on the program. Elizabeth Santos (00:08): Thank you for having me. Karen Litzy (00:09): And now a couple of weeks ago, this is just for the listeners, a couple of weeks ago, I interviewed Tavana Boggs on burnout and physical therapy and she was talking about some of the clients that she works with and yeah, we were sort of centering the talk around people who are 12 to 15 years out of physical therapy school. They've been practicing for a long time. So today we're taking a different take on burnout. So today we're going to be talking about avoiding burnout as a new graduate. And Elizabeth has written a book, new graduates guide to physiotherapy, avoid burnout and injury and build resilience and thrive in clinical practice. So we are going to talk about burnout with new grads because sadly it's a thing. Elizabeth Santos (01:01): Right? It is, it is. It's a thing. Karen Litzy (01:04): I wish it weren't, but it's a thing. So go. So talk about why you took the steps to write this book in the first place. Elizabeth Santos (01:14): Thank you for the introduction. And look. Firstly, I want to say it's a really exciting time to be a new graduate. I think there's so much opportunity for new graduates and for physiotherapists right now, particularly. I wrote this book last year. It was published. It really was the culmination of lots of reading and research over many, many years and actually took me seven years to put it all together. From the moment I started taking notes in the clinic one day just on some letterhead and I thought, Oh, you know, what's going on here? What's happening in the profession? I was curious about the burnout that I saw and also attrition. So physiotherapists leaving the profession because they were feeling unhappy or not really wanting to continue for some reason. I actually looked into some research on this and found a study from Curtin university in Perth, Western Australia. And that study showed that up to 65% of the participants interviewed who were new graduates anticipated leaving within 10 years. It was so, I thought, what's going on here? You know, why is this so high and what can we do about that? Karen Litzy (02:33): I mean that does seem very high. So they've just graduated and they already have the plans to get out of the profession. Elizabeth Santos (02:42): Yes, it was quite an alarming study and I've seen it those results actually communicated at conferences since and people bringing it up as a real talking point. Within the same study they found that 25% of participants predicted a long term career in physio therapy. So there were some people who were saying, you know, I am going to stick this out and I do see this as a long term plan, but not as many as you'd expect at that point in their studies. You'd be expecting them to come out fresh and excited and ready to take on the world. Karen Litzy (03:17): And what do you feel that it is a lack of readiness? Are they not ready for clinical practice? Are they not ready for the real world? I mean, what are your thoughts on that? Elizabeth Santos (03:30): That's a great question because that's also something that's been looked at in the literature a lot in Australia particularly, you know, that sense of our physio therapists actually ready to step into the real world and step into their shoes. As a clinician, you know, we try to make sure that physical therapists have adequate clinical placements and exposure to different areas of physiotherapy because we know that helps them to make decisions about their career pathway. You know, they've got that knowledge to draw on when they're choosing their first job or their second job. But there are other things that can help physio therapists prepare and feel job ready. So some of the things that have been highlighted in Australian research where that physios who have as students had experienced in sporting teams or had additional training in radiology. So people who've gone on to study and look at scans in a bit more detail, have had good experiences with that and that's inspired them to go on and perhaps work in orthopedics or musculoskeletal physiotherapy. Elizabeth Santos (04:43): We've also found that practicing building a supportive relationship and mentorships with colleagues, but also with other professionals. So whether that's social workers or psychologists or doctors and other allied health professions, that's become something that's really big. And there's lots of research behind that now as well. And just, you know, starting to think about which areas might interest you and what professional development you're going to go down. Which pathway are you going to go down once you graduate? And there's more and more internships which are becoming available too, which are privately operated internships through private practices and things. But yeah, so there's some of the things that new graduates can do to sort of help themselves feel that little bit more prepared and job ready. Karen Litzy (05:32): And so what I'm hearing is, you know, getting some inspiration from your placements, getting inspiration and that can come from different places, right? That can come from a mentor, like do they mention finding a good mentor, whether that be within your Institute, your educational institution or outside of, within the profession. Does that help with burnout? Elizabeth Santos (05:57): So there is some research to show that mentoring actually helps not only the new graduates, so the fresh physiotherapists coming through, but it actually helps the more experienced ones as well. It helps them to develop a sense of meaning in their work. So finding the right mentor is really crucial and I think for new graduates and for students really, you know, they've got that mentoring in built beautifully in the undergraduate training programs. So they've got these really inspiring, highly qualified, highly skilled therapists teaching them, taking them through step by step. And it's a really important relationship. But then when they become a new graduate, they suddenly lose that sense of being protected by the university. You know, they're out in the real world. It's like leaving home for the first time, you know, it's a little bit scary being out in the world. Elizabeth Santos (06:52): And then they've got to find mentors in other ways. And so there's two ways that you can go about finding a mentor and one is to have a mentor who's actually got really more of a vested interest in seeing you succeed. So they're the ones who probably your employer because they're going to want to see you grow and they want to see you help clients and they want to see you do the best that you can because it's going to be beneficial for you and it's going to be beneficial for the practice. But then there are other people who become mentors in your life because they've got some sort of interest in seeing you thrive as well. So it might be someone who's a family member who's a physical therapist or someone who's been an educator, but then you've formed a relationship that's perhaps, even outside the university, which does happen too with different training programs and things. So I guess it is a really important piece of the puzzle and something that, and new graduates can, you know, definitely look into and find someone who's gonna help them. Karen Litzy (07:59): Yeah. Yeah. And, one thing that I found very interesting from a conversation I had a couple of weeks ago about sort of helping new graduates find a roadmap for their career is to really be very clear on what your vision or what your individual mission statement is. Mmm. And it's hard, right? You really have to do some soul searching and find out what is your mission statement. And this is from Tracy Blake. She is a physiotherapist in Canada and she suggested that everyone have a mission statement and that that mission statement should not have jargon in it. It should not have physical therapy jargon, right? So you want to try and find what your mission is even as a new graduate. Write your mission out, repeat it over and over again. Elizabeth Santos (08:53): Tell it to people. So that becomes real. Karen Litzy (08:56): And I think that will help you gravitate towards the right mentor. Elizabeth Santos (09:02): Fantastic. I really love that. That's a great idea. And something that's really practical that the listeners who are tuning into this podcast can actually sit down and do it is it aligns with something that I read a while ago about new graduates and is actually in the book and I can't find the source unfortunately, but it was to picture your list in two years time and work towards it now. So if you can actually start, you know, that sense of who do I want to work with, what kind of clients really light me up, you know, who do I feel called to serve? And being okay with that changing over time as well and knowing that through different phases of your life. It, it may change for a little and that's okay. It was actually an experienced physiotherapist. I've just had a flash of the face where that quote came from, so I can't give him credit by name, but Karen Litzy (10:06): But that's fine. He'll know when he listened to that it was him. Yeah. And I always find that I love that you said it may change and morph over time because I think what gives people a lot of stress is that when you graduate, like let's say you say, I'm going to work with children, this is what I want to do, I know it, this is going to be my life's work. And then you start to work and you're like, you know, I kind of like working with athletes, I kind of like working with pregnant moms, moms to be right. Karen Litzy (10:42): I think to avoid some burnout and avoid some guilt, you have to give yourself permission to change because if you don't, I feel like you're carrying this baggage with you and can’t that also contribute to burnout. Especially if you're a year or two out and you're like, Oh wait a second, this isn't quite what I thought it was going to be. I kinda like doing this. But I said I was going to do this and now I guess I have to do it right. And I'm sure you've heard that before. Elizabeth Santos (11:10): Absolutely. And so knowing that the path will unfold step by step, job by job, and you may not be in the same role for 20 years if that doesn't feel aligned for you. And that's okay. And it's that sense of knowing and trusting, which yeah, it's just something that you cultivate over time and have to feel confident in. But it's hard in the beginning because I've heard a lot of new graduates say to me that they're concerned that if they take this first job in aged care, or if they take this first job in musculoskeletal private practice, then they're locked into that, you know, and there's no way out and there's no, and if they want to change their mind and do this, and quite often it's me then encouraging them just to make a decision. And I never you know, I never really help anyone to make a decision. Elizabeth Santos (12:04): I just help them to sort of look inside themselves and make lists of the things that light them up and like we've discussed. So that mission statement kind of idea is going to help them find the right path and then reconcile that and you know, and back themselves and go for it.   Karen Litzy: Yeah, I think that's great advice. And now in the book, Mmm. You also say that burnout as we are talking about is an issue for new physiotherapists, right? So we talked about some things that maybe they can do, but let's back it up. Why are they at risk for burnout if they haven't even started?   Elizabeth Santos: Hmm, good question. Because burnout is something that we know about and we've all talked about. We've heard about it, we've read articles, there's a huge body of research looking at burnout among nurses and doctors and psychologists. Elizabeth Santos (13:04): And there is a relatively smaller but growing body of research about burnout in physio-therapy too. And we know it's because there's parallels between those professions. And because physiotherapists in direct patient care, really with clients every day lots of different people from all walks of life. And there's lots of different social and psychosocial elements that go along with that. But on top of the therapeutic relationship that you're building with clients and all of those things, new graduates are juggling seeing more clients than before as well. So they might've been able to cope with seeing and processing, you know, the pain or the stories of three or four patients in one day. But then when they've got to do that for 20 or in some hospital environments and clinics, even more than that with classes and things, you know, it can take its toll. And so navigating that professional work environment and even for physiotherapists, you know, navigating their own personal processing of that can the mental load and it can add up to burn out. Elizabeth Santos (14:15): So I guess we can also hypothesize that new graduates are really trying to put their best foot forward too and they want to work really hard and they want to be as good as they can for their employers. So they're going to be at risk a little bit there too. Karen Litzy (14:52): Yeah. So it's a lot of external and internal pressures. Yeah. That kind of happened all at once. Right? You graduate and all of a sudden, boom, you've got all of these pressures from the outside. And how do you deal with that mentally and emotionally? And it almost makes me think that there should be a, maybe there are, I don't Sort of mental health support groups for new graduates so that they can almost like an alcoholics anonymous, right? So they can go in and discuss the things that are causing them to have these feelings of burnout. I don't know if that exists. Do you know, is that a thing? Elizabeth Santos (15:09): It doesn't to my knowledge, but it sounds like a great idea, you know, just that community. And look, I think there are some communities on Facebook that we possibly don't know about because we're not new graduates. And I do know of some student association groups and we certainly have some great new graduate programs through the professional association in Australia in terms of building those support networks in. So, you know, that's up and coming as well, which is really exciting. Karen Litzy (15:46): It's definitely a growth area. Awesome. All right. So let's talk about what are the signs of burnout? So signs of burnout. Let's say if you're the new grad or let's say you're someone like me who's been out for quite some time, can I see these signs of burnout in new graduates? So go ahead. Elizabeth Santos (16:07): Yes, you can definitely see signs of burnout in people. And I think it's important to differentiate signs and symptoms just like you would if you were, you know, a medical practitioner. Even as physiotherapists, we do look at those things separately. So the signs would be seeing that reduced employee engagement. So perhaps loss of enthusiasm for new projects or for jobs that you're given. Perhaps less willingness to contribute. A sense of lack of transparency around how you're really feeling or what's really going on for you. So quite often new graduates will try and hide their emotions a little bit or hide that vulnerability and just put, you know, hold their chin high and keep going instead of being honest about where they're actually at. If we look at symptoms, they're actually the things that you're feeling as a physiotherapist. So whether you're a new graduate or an experienced physiotherapists, they're going to be quite similar. Elizabeth Santos (17:13): So they will be things like fatigue. It's going to be different for everyone, but you might get headaches or you might feel nauseous at work or you might have a sinking feeling or that sense of dread about going to work. For some new graduates I've spoken to, they've even been in tears in the car going into the job in extreme cases where they're feeling not supported in their workplace or they're feeling like they want to quit or leave that particular role. So it's actually coaching people through those feelings, those emotions because they're the symptoms. You actually manifest in the body. But then there are the signs which are those bigger picture things which people on the outside looking in tend to see. If we look a little bit deeper, we can actually look at some of the research around this and look at the validated tools which have been used to assess the burnout in society. Elizabeth Santos (18:13): So particularly in the health professions, the mass like burnout inventory has been used. And this is a 22 item outcome measurement tool, which takes about 10 or 15 minutes to complete and it's been considered the gold standard since it was created in the 1980s it's obviously been updated since then and there are now five different inventories which are used across different settings. And they're used in the research a lot because they contain some great questions which respondents can answer. So things like I feel used up at the end of the day and you would score that with never being a zero through two every day being a six. And there's different subsets within the outcome tool so you can score each subset or each part of it. And what it does is it actually provides some information for people who are looking at burnout in different populations and it helps to categorize them into three distinct categories. Elizabeth Santos (19:17): So the first one is emotional exhaustion, which is where physical therapists become depleted and they might be starting to feel a bit fatigued or some of those symptoms I mentioned. And this then leads to that second stage of burnout, which is called depersonalization in which the physiotherapists stops empathizing as well as they normally would and they might even start to become detached from their clients or show signs of cynicism, which is unfortunately not a good sign as a practitioner if you're having a dig at clients or locking them in some way. Yeah, it's a sign of burnout and then that third stage, yeah, it's reduced personal accomplishment. So for new graduates this might look like, you know, compromised standards of care or reduced sense of personal achievement. Then starting to wonder if they're even a good physio at all, if they even know anything at all. And that kind of ties in with the imposter syndrome and you know, that sense of being a fraud, which I talk about in the book as well, that these are all things that you can look at if these signs are starting to emerge and take some action, talk it through, find some strategies.   Karen Litzy: And I was just thinking as an employer, is this, let's say doing this Burt, the mass, like burnout, inventory, giving this to your employees, is that a good or a bad thing? Elizabeth Santos (20:49): I can a great question. I can't quite put my finger on that. It could go either way, couldn't it? It could, right? It could go either way. And sometimes just sitting down and having those honest conversations and actually you don't necessarily need to ask your employees if they're feeling burnt out, but you can check in on engagement and check in on, you know, are they feeling inspired? Do they have enough to work on? What kind of clients do they want to be working with? Looking at the personal mission statement stuff, sharing wins, you know, that's a big one. That sense of positivity. And that's something we do in the clinic a lot as a team, which is fantastic. Karen Litzy (21:31): That is fantastic. And, and I would imagine that all of that just becomes, just gives that new graduate, especially a sense of being taken care of. We spoke a little bit beforehand and we talked about the word comfort. So I can only imagine if you're the employer, if you're the more experienced, even if you're not the employer, if even if you're the more experienced physical therapist in the clinic or in the hospital and you're just checking in with people on a weekly basis, ask them, how are you doing? How can I help? What do you need help with? Are you stuck? I can only imagine that it would give, cause I know when people check in on me, it does give me a sense of comfort like, Oh, this person's in my corner. This is great. Elizabeth Santos (22:16): Yes. It's just that caring approach that we have to our clients that we need to then reflect out into the world, you know, for our team and checking in on people is a beautiful way to do that. And then extending that care to ourselves as well. So going, am I okay? Actually, no, I'm not. What's going on for me? What do I need to do about that? How can I take responsibility for changing that with the support of my employer? Karen Litzy (22:44): Yeah. Yeah. So again, we go back to having that both internal and external check-in, which seems to be a theme here. Okay. So what other big issues do new graduates face at the moment? So just so people know, we are recording this, it is in the middle of the covid-19 pandemic and there are changes in health systems, changes all around the world. How will new grads be affected by this? Elizabeth Santos (23:15): I think there is a level of uncertainty about the impact of covid-19 across the board at the moment. And we can hypothesize that the current situation is going to impact on physiotherapists who are final year students who are graduating out into the world. They're going to be unsure about what's available for them, you know, where they're going to be needed. Certainly clinical placements are going to be impacted. This at the moment, and this is something that I know in Australia we're working really hard on the Australian physiotherapy association as part of their advocacy role, which is wonderful. Just protecting those and making sure that we've got those roles for physiotherapy students and that they're getting all the experience they need because they do need that experience. I think we're going to see some really positive things in terms of the workforce because we're going to see more jobs. Elizabeth Santos (24:13): So it's actually a really positive time and a really exciting time to be a new graduate physiotherapists. So if you can look at that and think, you know, we are going to need therapy physiotherapists in key roles in assessment and treatment of injury both in the community, in the hospital setting, helping to increase or facilitate discharge I should say, and making sure that, you know, clients are actually, patients are leaving the hospital system in due course. You know, we really need those beds and the staff to be looking after people who of all walks, you know, they're still going to be in the hospital system, but yet really we need physiotherapists on the frontline as essential workers. We're seeing a huge uptake in telehealth at the moment, which is also really exciting. And that's because of the social distancing policies that are being put in place. Well clinics and hospitals remain open. Some people are still having services in those clinics and in the hospitals, but there is a large movement towards the telehealth sphere. So this is something really exciting that new graduates can learn about and put into their toolkit for use now and into the future as well. Elizabeth Santos (25:34): I don't see tele-health going away when social distancing rules are lessened. So I think as a new graduate it is really exciting to be able to have so many options. And because of the pandemic, all of these people who are sick and who are recovering, they're going to need our help. You know, like you said, we are essential and I think that as a new graduate that really at this point, yes, there's a lot of uncertainty but there's uncertainty across the board. But I don't think that new graduates have to be in great despair at the moment. I understand, you know those final year students who like you said, are trying to get their clinical placements, which is all over the place and just graduate for God's sakes are having a lot of stress at the moment. But I agree, I think that physical therapists or physiotherapists are in a unique position here to really show up and be part of the team. Karen Litzy (26:44): Earlier you mentioned being part of the team of physicians and nurses and doctors and psychologists. I mean we are going to be an essential part of that team. So hopefully if the research shows that being part of a team helps with burnout, it'll help with our new graduates now. Elizabeth Santos (27:02): Absolutely. And there are those vulnerable groups and vulnerable patients who are really going to need the support that physiotherapists have to provide and anyone in the community who's wanting to keep their exercises going and do those online classes and all of those opportunities which are unfolding. It's a great and exciting time to be part of the profession. Karen Litzy (27:23): I can't agree more. And now how can new graduate physios keep confident and keep positive? Right now we've said, Hey, it's, you know, it's not like it's a horrible time to be a PT, but how can they keep confident, positive and take care of themselves? Elizabeth Santos (27:42): That sense of reassurance I'd like to really impart, you know, just for new graduates to keep taking care of themselves. It's those simple things that they can do, like making sure that they keep their nutrition up and exercise and really try and inspire themselves at the moment and look after themselves and get plenty of sleep and those basic things which are useful for anyone to be honest. Because we all need to be practicing good sleep hygiene, keeping off our phones or having some boundaries around social media and the news and just looking for jobs, getting support with looking for jobs if they're in that phase, reaching out to a mentor, a debriefing if they've just started in a new role this year. So making sure that if things feel overwhelming or if they're unsure that they're asking for help and that they're asking questions and that they're supporting their teammates as well. You know, every country is going through lots of changes and there are some really sad and heartbreaking things happening in the world and we can't look away from those and we can't ignore them, but we can stay still keep moving forward as individuals and as a profession and feel hopeful about the role that we have to play. Karen Litzy (29:01): Yeah, I agree. And I think that was very well said. Now Elizabeth, let's talk, can you talk a little bit about the book. Elizabeth Santos (29:09): Good, thank you. I am really excited to reach as many new graduate physios who need this reassurance and this support the people who are looking for that sense of comfort or unsure about which role is right for them. So it's a mentor in your pocket style of book, which has an academic undertone. So there's lots of research in there. But then there's some light and funny comics which I had commissioned as well to kind of make it a little bit more enticing read so it wasn't dry because if it's too evidence heavy it can sometimes be hard to sift through. But our physiotherapists are good at that and it's designed to help you navigate all of the tricky areas as a new graduate. So things like negotiating a contract, building therapeutic relationships with clients, how to find the right mentor, how to choose professional development. Elizabeth Santos (30:11): So what you should be doing versus what your employer perhaps thinks you should be doing or what you know based on your mission statement I think is a good way to choose. But it also talks about the highs and the lows that you might experience and the mistakes that you'll probably make, which are part and parcel of being a physical therapist and then how to put all of that together and sort of trust the journey as it unfolds and build resilience over time. And it's written in the third person. So as I said in that sort of academic tone, but then there are some simple questions, journal prompts at the end of each chapter that you can workshop as well. And I'm happy to support people through because I think it helps to have that self reflection and actually to write some things down and go, what is working for me and what's not and what am I having trouble with here? Elizabeth Santos (31:04): So it's designed to help them kind of workshop and for it to be a little bit like a Bible for that first year or two. So if they have a really rough day, they can actually go home and flick it open to that chapter and go, okay, what happened here? What could I do differently? How could I learn from perhaps some of the mistakes that are talked about in the book, you know, and how can I integrate this and move forward and get the best outcome for myself and for the client, for the practice, for the team if I'm in a hospital or wherever I might be. Karen Litzy (31:37): Nice. So it's more than just a once read and done. You can go back to it and kind of use the tools in the book over and over again, which I think is great. And just for all the listeners for a limited time, Elizabeth is offering a 10% discount on her book when you use the code HWSpodcast at checkout. And we'll have her website, which is ElizabethSantos.com.edu over at podcast.healthywealthysmart.com and we'll splash it across social media. So we'll make it really, really easy to do this. So again the discount code is HWSpodcast. So Elizabeth, I've asked the same question to everyone at the end of each interview and I feel like in this particular episode it is the perfect question to end with. And that is knowing where you are now in your life and in your career, what advice would you give to yourself as a new grad? Elizabeth Santos (32:37): It's a lovely question. Funnily enough, I taught to my younger self a lot when I wrote this book because I needed her insights and I needed her stories and she had a lot of wisdom to share, which I wove through the book. And it wasn't just my experiences, it was all of the experiences of all the physiotherapists I'd ever known and spoken to. So it was a real collective of wisdom and inspiration that went into the book. And I'm grateful for that. And it's a nice moment to thank all of those people who were part of it in some way because it's created a meaningful resource. But if I could go back to 2006 I would say congratulations. And I know how excited I was at that time. And I would probably say straight up, listen, you're going to make some mistakes, you're going to make a lot of mistakes and you're going to really want to beat yourself up about those. Elizabeth Santos (33:38): And you're going to question the choices you've made in therapy and in your career. And you won't know if you made the right choice, but you'll have to back yourself and you'll have to know that you are enough and you have got a lot of knowledge to share. And you know, it's student experiences and it's life experience as well. So I always encourage new graduates to really draw on everything they have and know that they're always going to be in some small way, the expert in the room, you know, even if you think you don't know anything you actually do and you can draw on, okay. That strength and that knowledge in those moments. But I'd also really offer some words of comfort because it's hard to know if you're doing the right thing and it's hard to know if you've made those right choices. Elizabeth Santos (34:30): I'd tell myself to take some regular holidays too because I know I didn't do that enough in my first couple of years, so yeah, but just knowing that you can inspire others and that you can inspire yourself is probably the biggest and yeah, it's a really exciting time for all the physios out there and I hope that they can find some inspiration in this podcast and in these answers.   Karen Litzy: Thank you. I'm sure they will. And now, Elizabeth, where can people find you on social media?   Elizabeth Santos: So on social media, they can find me at whole living with Elizabeth Santos, which is my Facebook page, but the website, ElizabethSantos.com.edu probably has the most amount of resources and it has links to my new graduate mentoring and people can connect with me through email that way. And I do actually have a free chapter of the book available. If you want to jump on the email, you can do that and I'll send you a chapter to read and get a bit of a feel for what the book's about. Karen Litzy (35:38): Perfect. Well thank you so much. This was great and I just know that I think it will give new graduates inspiration. I think it will give new graduates a sense of comfort and of confidence as they go out into the world. So thank you so much Elizabeth. This was great. And to everyone listening, thank you so much. Have a great couple of days and stay healthy, wealthy, and smart.   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 Apple Podcasts!

Chris Morris and Elizabeth McCall are no strangers to the show so we're excited to have them back on again. This time, we explore the controversial topic of “what is a master distiller?”. How is a title like that earned through years of service? How is Brown-Forman laying the foundation for Elizabeth to take over when Chris is ready to retire? We also talk about barrels from their cooperage, the influence of char on their whiskey, and this week's Whiskey Quickie, the King of Kentucky. Show Partners: The University of Louisville now has an online Distilled Spirits Business Certificate that focuses on the business side of the spirits industry. Learn more at business.louisville.edu/onlinespirits. At Barrell Craft Spirits, they take blending seriously. They spend months obsessing over hundreds of combinations until they figure out the perfect blend for you. Find out more at BarrellBourbon.com. Check out Bourbon on the Banks in Frankfort, KY on August 24th. Visit BourbonontheBanks.org. Receive $25 off your first order at RackHouse Whiskey Club with code "Pursuit". Visit RackhouseWhiskeyClub.com. Show Notes: This week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick talks about rapid aging. Lawsuit challenges out-of-state retailers' ability to sell, deliver and ship alcohol to Kentucky consumers - https://www.wdrb.com/news/lawsuit-challenges-out-of-state-retailers-ability-to-sell-deliver/article_4881080e-acc4-11e9-9dbc-8b443dc97b9e.html Join us on barrel selections and see what other perks await. Support the podcast at https://www.patreon.com/bourbonpursuit Come drink some beer with us at 3rd Turn Brewing on July 26th from 4-7pm https://www.facebook.com/events/327452114804983/ Elizabeth, tell us about your role. Do different Master Distiller's have different styles? Is there a Master Distiller training manual? What do you think of everyday people becoming Master Distillers without significant training? What is a Master Distiller today? How do you know a bourbon will be good once it's aged? What flavors or notes do you consider defects? Are we going to see more single malts come out of Brown-Forman? Why is there such a fascination with making malts work? Tell us about the latest Distiller's Select? Are there two different char levels on the double double oaked? Talk about owning your own cooperage. Tell us about King of Kentucky. Why did you chose this label? Is there any pressure on Elizabeth to live up to Chris? How did you feel when you became a Master Distiller? Recorded live at Down One Bourbon Bar in Louisville, KY. 0:00 I love bourbon, but I'm not ready to restart my career to be a distiller. I have a bachelor's degree and I want to continue to use those skills in the whiskey industry. So check this out. The University of Louisville now has an online distilled spirits business certificate that focuses on the business side of the spirits industry like finance, marketing and operations. This is perfect for anyone looking for more professional development. And if you ever want to get your MBA, their certificate credits transfer into Ul's new online MBA program. Learn more about this online program at business global.edu slash online spirits 0:38 the king right there brother 0:40 if you want to use if you want some of that make sure you crack it open now because it's not open. Oh, I feel 0:45 that is it yours? Yeah, I product Yeah, open it. 0:49 Like always calls Kenny $1,000. 0:52 Bottle every every time it comes over I lose $1,000 1:07 Hey everybody, this is Episode 211 of bourbon pursuit. I'm one of your host Kenny and let's go through a little bit the news. Woodford Reserve has announced the release of its newest permanent expression. The Woodford Reserve Kentucky straight wheat whiskey with wheat as its dominant grain at 52% followed by 20% malt 20% corn in a percent rye. This whiskey was created by master distiller Chris Morris and more said that Woodford Reserve now has all four whiskeys as a part of its permanent family of brands. You have Woodford bourbon, Woodford rye, Woodford malt and now Woodford wheat. The Woodford Reserve wheat is 90.4 proof with a suggested retail price of 3499 verse 750 ml. That's quite the segue into our guest today, but we'll save that here for him. It was just a few weeks ago, we talked about the Supreme Court ruling that lifted the ban on out of state retailers in the state of Tennessee that could potentially affect shipping across the nation. Well, I think we're about to start witnessing the start of the domino effect. A Louisville attorney recently filed a lawsuit in federal district court against Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin, Kentucky Attorney General Andy this year and the executive director of the Alcohol Beverage Control, Norman, our flag. This complaint argues that the law is unconstitutional because as we've said before, it violates the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution, because by quote, It discriminates against out of state wine retailers engaged in interstate commerce. It also argues that it violates the privileges and immunities clause of Article four section two of the United States Constitution because it denies non resident wine merchants the privilege of engaging and there are occupation in Kentucky on the terms of equivalent those given to the citizens of Kentucky. And that's all according this lawsuit. We are going to continue to pay very close attention to see how this plays out and other states in the upcoming few months. On Monday, this week, we got to take a trip over to Cox's Creek with a few of our Patreon community members and select two barrels of four roses. The team came together and selected a nine year six month old BASF and a 10 year six month OVSK we're really looking forward to getting these barrels out to the art community sometime in September. We also selected a new riff barrel once again. You know if you want to see more about all the perks that are offered by supporting this podcast like going with us on barrel selections, please do us a favor go to patreon.com slash bourbon pursuit and get more information. Now if we rewind the clocks back to around February of 2018 all the fellas from the bourbon Community Roundtable we met up in Frankfort, Kentucky to select a barrel of Buffalo Trace what happened next With that said barrel is the next part of this story. When you have a used bourbon barrel you want to repurpose it. And what better way to do that then letting it age with some delicious Imperial stout, we teamed up with third term brewing and did just that. We aged a stout at 12.2% ABV and let it rest in that barrel for an entire year. And now it's time to release it. On Friday, July 26. from four to 7pm. Ryan and I we will be at third term brewing located in JA town in Louisville, Kentucky and we want to share a pint with you Please come on out and try this beer on tap. And if you really like it, you can take home a crawler for yourself to take home. We hope to see you out there. More information about that can be found on our Facebook page under the events section. Now today's podcast was recorded while ago when we were on site at down one bourbon bar in Louisville, Kentucky. So if it sounds like we're recording in a bar, no, it's because we were, however, Chris Morris and Elizabeth McCall. They're no strangers of the show. And we're excited to have them back on once again. But this time, we're excited to hear them talk about the job of master distiller and how that title is earned through years of service. And really how brown Forman is now laying the foundation for Elizabeth to take over when Chris is ready to retire. We also talked about the barrels that they have in their own Cooper bridge, the char and this week's whiskey quickie that ended on Tuesday, the king of Kentucky. All right, you've heard me talk long enough. So let's hear from Joe over a barrel bourbon. And then you've got Fred Minnick with above the char. 5:50 Hi, this is Joe Beatrice from barrell craft spirits. I work with a team that takes blending seriously, we spend months obsessing over hundreds of combinations, until we figure out the perfect blend for you. 6:01 You can find it on the shelves at your nearest retail store. 6:05 I'm Fred Minnick, and this is above the charm. Every week I asked listeners to send me an idea for above the char, I get so many. But the one request I get most of all, is what do I think of rapid aging. This is the process that new distillers or chemists use to try and make bourbon faster. And I want to tell you, this has been going on for a very, very long time. In technology, they like to seek solutions for problems. And the fact is making Bourbons biggest problem is the fact that making it right and making it tasty, can take anywhere from four to 15 years. So if you're a businessman or woman, and you want to make some money, it sure looks good if you can make a six month old bourbon taste like it's 15 years old. Now a little history behind this. The Romans actually employed rapid aging techniques and wine and spirits. You know, the mid 19th century we saw incredible amounts of people attempt rapid aging technology. In 1867. a Frenchman use a roadable wouldn't paddle to agitate barrels like a butter churn. Using a similar concept. The 1871 us patented peifer and Richards apparatus place barrels on roller slats and a heated room and agitated the barrels back and forth. The inventors claim that this ripened whiskey within a few weeks, several others hit the market in the 1870s to include a heat and motion device that offered practical value and utility. We'd also see ultrasonic radiation center in the 1930s. And the Germans would do things like raise the Ester content up to 120%. And wind is toilets, they also used sound technology. By the 1960s rapid aging fell out of fashion, it was not considered very satisfying. In fact, you would see distillers openly speak out against this. Today we have seen the rise of smaller barrels claiming that it's aged faster. We've seen people play heavy bass music to make the whiskey come out quicker. There's been chemical reactions there have been agitators very similar to you know, mixing a paint can. There's been all these efforts to make whiskey faster, and I've tasted almost all of them. They all lack a certain depth, a certain mouth fill a certain flavor that makes you want to buy it. In fact, I'd say the thing that we should really look at here, is there a problem with whiskey. And the fact is there is not. The problem is is in the making money of whiskey. So as long as you somebody could make money trying to figure out a solution to getting good whiskey to your doorstep, we will always see rapid aging technology. And I will always give it a shot. But I have yet to taste one that is better than even some of the worst craft distilled whiskies. Rapid aging technology doesn't add anything to the quality of the whiskey, at least from what I've tasted. Instead, it strips out a lot of character, and it doesn't have the time that's really required to be a good or great bourbon. So what's the old saying, if it's not broke, don't fix it. And let's face it, Bourbons now broken. And that's this week's above the char Hey, if you have an idea for above the char hit me up on Twitter or Instagram. That's at Fred Minnick again at Fred Minnick. Until next week. Cheers 9:55 Welcome back to another episode of bourbon pursuit. The first of the Live podcast we doing here at down one bourbon bar in Louisville, Kentucky, Fred Ryan and Kenny back here. Once again, and we this is a this is a new home, this is actually going to be pretty fun because Ryan and I had a tasting here last week when we did this. But this is going to be a new adventure bringing a guest Yes, I'm looking around and like I'm remembering our first time we record a podcast was in my basement. And like, just me and you and a laptop and like there was nobody there. And now there's like, like 15 people around us watching there's all these lights, we got master distillers here, there's reserved tables even though they're not for us. 10:37 But people thought they would act like there is it's like kind of crazy. You know, it really is and, and I'm Fred This is how many times you've been down one. 10:46 So it's a problem anytime I actually been here so often that I got my own car back there in the closet of things getting too far. But this is a this has been a fun bar to kind of see it develop. There's been a lot of talent from Louisville, Kentucky. I'm from here and go on to be brand ambassadors for for distilleries and go on to like other opportunities. But this for me is this is one of the places where I come in, and I assess talent for for things that I'm doing and they do a great job here. And of course, they're connected to the Galt house or part of the Galt house family. And so and never hurts from a purchasing opportunity, you know, for a bar to have that kind of purchasing power to be connected to someone like the Galt house, so they they get a lot of good things that a lot of smaller bars don't 11:35 and hold on. I want to know about this scouting report. 11:39 Like Like are you like NBA Scout, you know, going around? Well, 11:41 I you know, as, as you know, Kenny and Ryan, I do a lot of festivals. And I'm also on a lot of education committees for for for, you know, cocktail cocktail. And then I try to do things I try to create content for live festivals and and I usually have to tap into bartenders. And bartenders have to In my opinion, from a career perspective, they have they are a lot like an NBA player. Yeah. And like some people come in are like, really great for two years and then they're gone. Some people come in and they're wanting to the cocktail world. It's true. It's true, like bartending talent is something that from an education perspective, you have to scout you have to find the people that will you know, put on good seminars and can actually make a Daiquiri in a grown in an old fashioned and a man had don't they don't they serve the great Chris Morris the right way. 12:45 Don't give him the cocktail get give him the right cocktail that you know, he asked for 12:51 a frozen concoction. It's amazing Jimmy Buffett, 12:54 but but the Daiquiri actually was not meant to be 12:57 a blended 13:00 auction. Although it's tornadoes. 13:01 I love the blended 13:03 a bottle and you put a margarita or blender and shake it up, and it's ready to drink. But 13:09 all right, Kenny said about to explode. We got him. 13:14 Chris, as you may know, our friend candy here. He's a little he's all right. 13:23 We got it. We got him taking off the guardrail. Sometimes we gotta bring it back in focus. But that's really what we're talking about today's not cocktails and we are talking about bourbon and most important, we're talking about Woodford Reserve. So today we have Chris Morris the master distiller at Woodford Reserve and Elizabeth McCall, the Assistant master distiller at Woodford Reserve. And both of these people are alumni of the show. I believe it was back in the episode 40s and Episode 60s when when you made your parents so welcome back on. Thank you. 13:50 Thanks for having us back. So have you been 13:52 Yeah, and get to get this kicked off a little bit. Elizabeth, I kind of want you to kind of give people another recreation of really what your role has progressed to since the last time you're on because you were in the lab. You are the head taster, I believe and now your assistant master distiller so what what's what's that look 14:10 like back when we go back in time as Chris's wonderfully made Manhattan made its way to him. So when I last was speaking to it was master taster and senior quality control specialist at Woodford Reserve. Working production part of the time and the other part of the time was working with Chris on innovation and of course, tasting batches and all of that and it shifted to more focus on really getting in the weeds of trying to understand how Chris's mind works. Which 14:42 Hold on wait that out. 14:44 I have not figured it out yet. He's kind of 14:47 nice. You know how your mind when I respond 14:48 to emails as genius? I do he so he's being very embarrassed. But I really do because I won't ever be able to understand fully how his mind works and how he puts patches together and how he pulls in history and an actual where's this the market going? I mean, all that is very interesting, but I try to learn as much as I can. So I'm trying to just follow in his footsteps and learn that and that's just spending as much time with him as possible. He gives me projects. And he's like here the other day. I'm like, Okay, how do you build a new grain recipe? And he handed me the book of corn. He's like, I read this on a trip, like one string of corn. Yeah. 15:30 Like a Bible. textbook on corn. 15:32 Yeah, there's a book on corn. There's a book on corn. And I mean, that's the kind of thing Morris does when he when he thinks there's a lot of conscious thought. 15:40 It's amazing Kenny, but actually authors write things. 15:43 Yeah, let me know when it turns into an audio book. And I'll 15:48 forget on Audible 15:49 or the movie, the movie version. 15:52 But that but that's a lot of what I've been trying to learn that and then of course, still learning in the production side of things I you can never, you'll never know everything. I still have a lot of learning to do in terms of getting my hands dirty at the Cooper bridge and other distilleries outside of Woodford Reserve. So my and then education. I work with Chris and the team of other masters Stiller's at Brown Forman on educating our sales force and distributor folks on the whiskey category. So there's just lots of things nuances that go into it. 16:22 I got a question for you to Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt but like, so does the master is still or just do each different distillers have different styles or methods? Or is it more like plug and play? Or like, what is Chris's style? And what's yours? Or like, how are they different? Or same? Or? 16:38 Well, certainly, in my experience, 16:42 we see differences good talk with Fred before we stepped in this afternoon, that each company has its own criteria. For the job. There's no uniform, what is a master distiller what is the distiller it varies from company to company. And we're are of course, very proud to be the oldest spirits company and in America, the the round form and parent company. So we think we know what we're doing. And I am the seventh in the history of the company. And Elizabeth is, is working away to number eight. But we have criteria that differ from other companies. But you do see a difference in style. And interpretation. Of course, I everybody knows my mentor. My first boss in my whole life was Lincoln Henderson. And I'm very different than link. In fact, my palate is different than Lincoln. Near the end of his career, we would have arguments, because I was tasting things he didn't taste and he would get upset. Sorry, that's the way that it was. Because we know as people age, their sense of taste deteriorates. So a younger person will have a better sense of taste. I know that 17:58 I trying to say that you already kind of like see inevitable coming is that was that was happening, and you're trying to groom her to do 18:03 that. That's part of the process. One of my key roles today is to develop Elizabeth, to succeed me. So that's part of our brown Coleman process, passing on the mantle from generation to generation, so that nothing changes. Wink wink, things will change. Because Elizabeth is not Chris. Yeah, I wasn't Lincoln. 18:26 But we got a ways before we see that change, right, Chris? 18:32 I hope so. But not that I don't want Elizabeth and 18:38 I have a lot to learn. 18:39 But we're having such a good time together. And we got our new master taster over here. Katie joining us tonight. But that's that's just if you're making 100% natural product with reserve is corn, rye, barley, or how many whiskies? It's the limestone water, its yeast, its exposure to copper, and maturation and an oak barrel. It's as natural as you can get. And as you put those batches together, based on your perception of our standard, it will evolve. Because again, we're all individuals. And I think that's one reason people will love a brand, like what preserve it is our collaborative interpretation of this product. And again, it will change with the changes are subtle, the changes are evolutionary. But the The bottom line is it's it's it's a real product that somebody or some persons a team are putting together. It's not artificial, it's not manufactured. It's not a committee in in some corporate office, it's real. 19:54 Yeah. So is that like training manual? Is that something you do? Or is that something that, you know, brown Forman has like, here's how we want it done. And Chris is like, Yo, this should be done. Like so how's that kind of work in that process? Brian Yeah, 20:09 it's an audible book I had, 20:10 I had produced for me or developed for me. The that manual before it didn't exist. And when I was coming up, it was a guidepost for me, you know, sort of tailored to me, and, and that was back in 2019 years ago. And, and I've taken those that original work as as we've evolved and developed and tweaked it. And now brown Forman does have a professional development guide for master distiller, which means assistant master distiller we have a professional guide for master taster that both Elizabeth and of course Katie have gone through courses of the destruction experiences. 21:04 Let's take it Okay. All right. So you're just talking about like all these manuals you have and all this effort that you put into the terms and titles master distiller master taster system master distiller when I can just go right down the street, and get a diploma from a moonshine University, and then come out, start my own distillery, or Heck, I don't even have to go there. I can start a distillery tomorrow and say, I'm a master distiller even watching YouTube channel, I could watch it and 21:32 say, I'm a master distiller in the old Ascot brand takes off from there, 21:36 that's right, was shaking her head. What in the world is happening to American whiskey right now, where you have one company who's going through all this effort for the titles of distiller and then you have some random schmo wearing wherever and USA saying that they're a master distiller and they haven't done a liquor distilling What's going on? 22:03 Yeah, Elizabeth, I kinda wanna get your take on that one. Because you're, you've been, you've been trying to groom yourself for this role, and you've been really putting years of effort into it. So 22:10 so I only have 10 years in this industry, and which some people are like, Oh, my gosh, that's a long time. Long brown Forman that's not baby. And, and in this industry, in my opinion, that's not I don't feel it's a long time. And I am very, very much very proud and I think you hear it when I talk about Chris's going nowhere, I hope anytime soon, because I have a lot of pride in the fact that I'm assistant and that in implies a great deal of learning I had still have to do and the respect I have for the title of masters Still, if they were to tell me tomorrow, you're going to be masters still or I would have serious issues with being called that for especially for a brand like Woodford Reserve or or any of our brown Forman brands that have some much weight behind them. Um, it's just a title to me that I look to and I think of somebody like Chris Morris, who is a it has lived and breathed bourbon and whiskey his entire life. And it's not just about running stills, anybody can learn that skill. You really can you 23:20 think anybody can run a still. 23:23 If you have the right manuals, and you go out and you spend time training. Now you can't just walk in off the street and do this. No. But can you learn anybody can learn how to do that. A lot of people can learn maybe not anybody, 23:35 but there's a lot of people in backwoods that have stills before 23:41 you can learn how to do these skills. And but there's time and thought and experience that goes into something that really makes you want to believe that your product like what Chris Morris, I mean, what he's done for Woodford Reserve is unreal. You look at the like we sit down and we talk about things and we talked about brand planning. He introduced like, was he there for the start of the actual bourbon. No, that was he was with a different company at the time. But when he came in, we have right we have our masters collection that came out you have our malt you have wheat that's coming out soon. And that's not all out of just willy nilly. Like ma this would be fun. It's it's a lot of it is well thought out when you look at history. And when you look at what's the plan we we talked about flavor with Woodford and I mean, that's his genius and experience in the industry that led him to that path and that guided vision for brand and that takes nothing but time. I mean time is Yeah, I think is so hear 24:45 what you're saying there like with with with branding and everything like that. I think we don't know, as a society when I when I say society, I mean bourbon society. What a master distiller in so Chris, I'll bring that to you. What is a master distiller because it meant something in the 1800s and the 1950s? It means something different today. What is a master distiller? 25:12 Well, of course there is no, there is no criteria. In terms of industry, there's no set of requirements. As I mentioned earlier, it varies from company to company. And I believe ground Coleman believes. Number one, you're responsible for the overall quality of the product that your name is associated with the distillery associated with. And as Elizabeth said, that means a whole lot. If you're our colleague, Jeff Barnett at jack daniels, you're the master distiller of jack daniels. That's sort of important. Woodford Reserve, my gosh, old Forester, you know, those are important brands, not only to our company, but to the history of our industry. So there's there's a lot of gravitas, there, there's a lot of response ability. And also, I think it means your brands that you have helped create and develop, have won awards are recognized as good brands, you're, you're a master of what your master of a brand that is acknowledged to be of the utmost quality. You haven't won an award. I don't know how you can be a master yet. But again, that's our opinion, not a global opinion of any degree. 26:27 So again, I think it's a nice baseline. I mean, Kenny, wouldn't you agree that it's at least a baseline for what is a master distiller you have to have a wonderful an award when you have so many? 26:39 I don't know. I mean, you kind of you kind of take the anti part of that, right? I know that you're you're a judge at San Francisco, and then you've got the other group of bourbon enthusiasts out there that say, don't don't take that as as gospel. Right. You take that as as a as a way that you can start learning about a spirit or anything like that. But when you see gold, double gold. 27:01 Well, in fairness, I wasn't thinking about San Francisco. Question. I was thinking of like best bourbon at San Francisco, or, I mean, one of the three medals there. I 27:13 think that's what Chris was thinking to, or I could just pay off the 27:15 Forbes writer that I know Yeah. 27:20 Let me add maybe as a close to this, or we continue. But that's one thing brown Forman and the Kentucky distillers Association because this was the this was a subject of discussion years ago with the the membership, and we don't think anyone company organization can define or impose any restrictions on the rest of the industry. As Fred said, if a little startup distillery wants to call its whatever person master distiller that's up to them, that's fine brown Coleman is not gonna say you can't do that. It's not our job to improve punk upon the industry, our opinions. This is America, we don't do that. So I think the ultimate, the ultimate, the bottom line is, our brand speaks for itself. 28:13 Does it taste good? 28:15 Good. taste. I think that's fair for for the professional side. But now we're starting to see like this growth within like, the bar community. And everybody's saying they're an expert, about whiskey. And you in and Kenny brought up, you know, the judging competitions and what is best. There was just a gas station whiskey, that one world's best whiskey. And I seriously question how that one, you know, and I'm a judge or a lot of those things. And I and I know like people have to pay entry to get in that. So there could have been like a low point of entry, there might not have been a lot of, well, Chris, what do you think about like this rise of so called x books that are tasting things and putting their names on on things and hosting podcast hosting podcast, 29:09 full disclosure, we always say, and we 29:12 never ever named a whiskey of the year, you to have never done anything like that. So like, now we're in a situation where there are 1500 different, you know, whiskey, Somali A's, or experts or whatever. And, you know, they're not coming from the ilk of brown Forman. And you may even think that I'm that, too. But I'm curious as to what your thought is, in terms of like the people who are tasting. Consider the tasters of the community, 29:41 I would just be curious to know I mean, for me, like, you know, we're tasting and we want to know quality. Do you know what are the all the defects you can find in bourbon, whiskey distillate? And when you find them, like, Can you describe like, well, what did they taste like? What are those those defects? Where did they come from in the production process? How do you troubleshoot and work around that and get through all of that, and 30:09 I guess it important to know how to fix it, or it's just important to spot it as a taster. 30:14 As a taster, you probably don't have to know that if you're going to be a master distiller, you have to know how to do that. 30:19 But a taster can't fix it. Because it's already the 30:22 case. Yeah, you're tasting it at the end of the year. It's already out there too late, I guess. But you could maybe you could talk about but if you're a taster, you should know. I don't know. I mean, will will does this as if it's a new mic. Does it stay in new mic? What happens to that defect? Does it age out? Is it something that and so if you're tasting it something at New make and then you're tasting something? That's a finished product or maturing? How do you troubleshoot it on that end? If you don't know where it comes from in the production process? I don't know. I don't those things are important, I guess because my background and where I 30:56 that's an interesting question. Are you talking about how it push through the age and improve? How How much does that like experience like with Chris, are you like, you know, that like, what are those some of those notes? I guess that you're like, well, that 31:10 that is this is going to eventually work itself out? That's where 31:13 experience helps. Yeah, but sometimes you're surprised either positively or negatively. But that's an interesting point that everybody's bringing up. How has this person this expert been trained? As Elizabeth said, we're professionally trained, we're trained. We have PhDs on staff for professional professionals in the sensory science. Elizabeth is a sensory scientist, has her beginnings at Brown Forman. We have sensory science consultants come and test us and work with us. So we're, and these just aren't whiskey sensory scientists, they work for food on aroma only like perfume companies. These are experts, and sensor science. And so it surprises me and sometimes alarms me. When we taste a whiskey, and we note, defects. And a person critiquing that whiskey is just singing its praises. And you're like, there's these obvious defects in the whiskey. And this person either doesn't understand them doesn't recognize them, and 32:25 what they want in their 32:26 whiskey or they like defects. And so things become more complicated, Fred, when I almost had when I started the industry, because there was nothing like this in the industry. But when early books Gary and Marty Reagan and way Mac and Harris and the legendary Michael Jackson are starting to write about whiskey when nobody's right about whiskey. 32:52 It was a very tight 32:54 sorority and fraternity of whiskey riders and everybody knew each other. There weren't that many whiskeys. You know, there were a handful of Bourbons a handful of this. And they had there was nothing that we see today pre micro distillery movement. And pretty much everybody was on the same page, you understood what you're talking about, right? And as bourbon and rye and whiskeys have become popular, and everybody jumps on, which is fun. Again, that sort of dilutes the level expertise. And I think today, people well can be self styled experts, but what is their their base. So again, we leave that to the consumer. To the side, somebody says something good about a brand new glass of whiskey, try it, if you like it good for you, if you don't learn from it. So we can't impose upon the entire industry. Our views, again, we just have to hope people pay attention to what for reserve and what we're doing and, and go from there. 34:00 So I kind of want to educate some of the listeners and the watchers out there. Because, you know, you've talked about and both of you have talked about trying to find defects and whether it's in new maker whether it's in aging whiskey, and you know, today we brought these, I'm going to put words or words in Elizabeth now here, we brought our Bourbons to compete is because last time we talked, you said that compete is where sort of the, the way that you like to use in the tasting room to kind of get the most flavors, Adam because of the tool of shape and stuff like that. But I kind of want to pick your brain a little bit. What if there's somebody that's at home, and they're listening? And they want to try to understand what flavors to pull? And what are those possible defects that they're buying, or they're finding. Now, of course, not coming in at Woodford Reserve or this double out. It's definitely not going to be in this. But however they're going to go and they're going to find some random bottle you ever heard about and they're gonna buy it? And they're going to taste it and be like, Oh, what is this? So what what are those some of those of those flavor, those notes that you really think are the biggest defects that 35:04 that any good master distiller should be able to find. And before Elizabeth jumps in, again, we're looking at two sides of the coin, the first four sources of flavor, which is our mantra of the five sources, what is the water, the grain, the fermentation distillation bring to the palate. So that's our new make our new spirit. So we judge that. So it has a set of criteria. And we're looking, of course, you never look for good things, because you, you assume the good things are there. So we do look for defects. And at that point is too late, unless there's a certain defect, or saying forget this. But we want to know that defect is there as we barrel and then adjust as we go forward. But we use those defects to then go back into the distillery and say, something's not working here. Let's fix it, because where do you go to first to fix it? What do you like? 36:00 This is probably mostly the 36:02 reverse engineering part of it was 36:03 that you go to grain you go to fermentation, you go to distillation, yet one of the one of the three, the water, the water is going to be solid. And then we go into the would go into the barrel for maturation. And then of course, 678 years later, there could be different defects, because now the wood character has come into play. So it depends on where we are that we're looking for certain defects. Because as Elizabeth said, some of the new mech defects can be overcome by maturation. They're still there, you just don't know them because the wood has taken lead wrong, but you don't want them there in the first place. So we now have two places to adjust. New make means we adjust the distillery but what's in what's there can't be adjusted. But we can do that on a week basis. Years later, we adjust by bashing barrels together. So we can fix what we have in front of us except for one defect which is unfixable and, and go forward from there. So bad, she becomes very important, you know, a couple of barrels of this with 98 barrels of that are going to be okay. We don't like that. But it's 37:25 just one one bad apple makes them all bad. There's the one defect that we can't hide it. We can't hide 37:31 it. And what is that? Oh, my god yesterday. That's right. Jackie told us. We probably 37:37 got a little bit of that going on with all this rain right now. A lot of mas probably going in those non Pete cycle. Yeah. warehouses. 37:45 Yeah. Or if you have a leaky roof. 37:48 I got I want to switch gears a little bit for a second. 37:53 Brown Forman is such a dominant American whiskey company. And then last, like I'd say, 10 years there's been a such a dynamic effort to pull in malts like to try and do like, not necessarily a single malt, but some kind of like malt mash, or the five malt released from a few years ago. And I was and I know your passion, you have so much passion for single malt scotches. You have a you have a real like, craving for those and sometimes, Chris, but are we going to see a stronger effort from Brown Forman on the American single malt category that's just taking off and I know we've had some releases of late, but are we going to see more of that? 38:45 Yes, that let Elizabeth talk about our particular products. But 38:51 yes, I'm a big fan of single malt Scotch, if that upsets anyone, I'm sorry. 38:57 He's not really sorry. 39:00 And of course, brown Forman owns three single malt Scotch distilleries, which we Elizabeth and I visited back in July that we're just so proud of that. But I am the only Kentucky bourbon distiller who's a keeper of the quake. I'm the only Kentucky bourbon distilleries been honored by the Scotch whisky Association, which I'm very proud of. So scotch whiskey, of course, is our is our ancestor, you know, the bourbon tradition is, is the evolution of scotch whiskey evolving in Kentucky, in the 1770s through the 1850s based on our environment, so we love We love that, that that touchstone of Scotland and Ireland are is where our tradition comes from. But we released a Masters collection as as this group knows, and maybe many of the listeners do not know we released a Masters collection do I many years ago, that was 100% single malt, or hundred percent malt question say that was our distillers malt, it wasn't painted. It wasn't smoked. It was the same malt we make our wood reserve bourbon with. And we distilled that 100% malt fermentation and inner half of the volume produced and used Woodford Reserve barrels so they'd held Woodford Reserve bourbon one time. And then we barrel the other half of the volume produced a new with reserve barrels. And that became season seasoned malt and new cast some silly name. I can't remember what we called it, because we didn't want to call it single malt. Because at that time, if you said single malt and probably to this day, if you say single malt people immediately go to Scott. Hello malt. Yeah, you know, some 40:58 change up the verbiage and malt 41:00 and they weren't. They didn't. They weren't very popular. 41:05 You know, I remember the, some of those like, there was one classic malt. 41:11 Right. Thank you for remembering. Yes. 41:15 And there was classic malt in there straight malt. I can't remember which one I like more. He has a good memory. 41:22 But I liked one of them more than the other classic was 41:25 that you liked the I liked the the straight malt. I knew Cooper edge. 41:31 It might have been but, 41:33 you know, 41:34 I've always and I wrote this in one of my reviews. And and I have to tell you, Chris, I've always appreciated the fact that if I've ever been critical of your stuff, you've never taken me to dinner and yelled at me for an hour. 41:46 I've never taken a dinner. Yeah. But 41:52 I'm one of them. I was just like, what and what in that review set I the one that I didn't care as much for I think said I wish they would do more focus on bourbon. And the thing is, is that you all are such brilliant bourbon distillers. I wonder why it is that there's such a fashion fascination for making malts work. Okay, 42:18 well, so the malls came out. And of course 10 years ago who was buying bottles of would reserve masters collection, bourbon drinkers. And bourbon drinkers don't drink scotch by and large. And so it didn't go over very well. And I can understand that they wanted bourbon. They wanted seasoned oak finish, they wanted to cinema cherish Chardonnay finish, they wanted sweet mash, and we forward Don't forget 401k. And we sort of let them down, which is the way it goes. But we learned a lot in terms of the process of making malt heavy whiskey. And in my bottom line, lonely was going back to our earlier conversation of taste, he's just sort of boring. He's just sort of boring. Hundred percent malt again, we don't have this smoky that PD characteristics of some of the European malt or Japanese malt. And we're not, we're not aging for 20 3040 years, and we don't have port pipes, cherry butts, it was all American oak. And they were sort of born. That doesn't mean that they didn't taste good, but they were sort of born. And that learning leads to our new release of last year, Kentucky straight malt whiskey, which is a permanent member of our family. It will be coming back this late spring, early summer. 43:42 And it's it's a member of the family. So Elizabeth, have you been doing well? 43:45 Oh, yeah. 43:47 Yeah, it's been doing really well. We released it last June. And 43:51 it all sold out right away. I mean, people were like, six months later, like, Can we are you making more like, what's the deal? And, you know, Chris, and I get approached like, well, how can we make this you know, get get to the shelves a little quicker? Can we adjust something with our process or our quality? You know, we're like, Nope, can't do that. But we humored them and we put it into a little bit in the last Oh, there's a lot of pressure for that because 44:16 what 1910 from old for sir, 44:18 there's a lot of pressure because people really like we put out good products at Brown Forman if you didn't know and people get excited about it. But you know, the job of a master distiller you know, is to say no, I mean Chris's name is on that bottle. So you know, at the end of the day, yep, it's when things go wrong. They're like Chris and that was you know, he's the one who has to talk about it. And so when with the mall, it was very popular we did a Kentucky straight malt whiskey and we fought for it to stay at the process where we released it that we released that and because the taste you even a year makes it mean that there's a time difference with agent you know, you've got to let it go to what it should be. I got a 45:06 question dinner up just because I'm clueless about Malton. And I assume you're making these malts are you doing them in the call a copper still or Chi Stiller. 45:16 Yeah, it's both and they both okay. It is a if we're going to produce something and put it under the distiller select Woodford Reserve distillers select bourbon rye malt wheat that's coming out soon is always going to be that that batches of column and pot still because that's 45:30 all I'm from Shively and then the pots from were for sale. 45:36 Yes, yes. Because because we were tasting some Kings County I was Tom and it's a 80% corn 20% malted barley and we thought we were tasting like young younger notes and their distiller said hey, that's not younger knows that's our our pot still. And it's creating like some different buttery for me kind of funky flavors. And so I 45:58 like stuff figuring it out. Yeah. 45:59 So I was curious to get your take on that. Like, you know, funk. 46:02 He's not one of our don't say 46:04 funky. Okay. No, I was just curious. But 46:07 no, I mean, I think that I wasn't around at the beginning of starting our pot stills. But from those that I've spoken to figuring out how to run your pot stills is a challenge. We have gotten to a point with Woodford Reserve we've got it figured out. done all the hard work over the years to figure it out. But the notes you get from a pot still are big, bold, oily notes. You see the grain come through more. I mean, Chris, if you wanted to add it, I mean, that's there's a distinct difference between the two types of dis focus 46:37 on we normally use them wrong. Yeah. 46:42 You know, you don't you don't use it very often whiskey. 46:45 Yeah. 46:46 But if you're gonna it's probably coming from a pot still. Yeah, no distillation level pots. 46:54 But here's here's a fun bit of our story. And Elizabeth will tell you about our recipe is one thing that I've drawn on from inspiration is the history and heritage of our industry in Kentucky and certainly brown Foreman's history and heritage and started research on malt multi malt whiskey in the history of Kentucky. And one thing, brown Forman has a tremendous archive again for the the oldest spirits company in America 140 849 ish years old right now. We've got a wonderful archive it which is housed at the Frazier History Museum. And we have a we have a complete set of the wine and spirits journals from from the 19th and early 20th century, much less our own documents. And we found that there were there were malt whiskies made in Kentucky before prohibition, brown Forman had a brand called marrow malt MAROW. And when you look at the old Sanborn Maps, which are diagrams, schematics of distilleries for insurance purposes, you'll see these at the University of Kentucky at the Phil center, University of Louisville. And of course, in our collection, we see that the original brown Forman distillery had a mult floor and a malt kiln. We were sort of we were a Scottish distillery in the 19th century. And that's incredible. And that in the history of our state, their first Malthouse, and remember, we don't have a malt house in Kentucky any longer. The first multi operation in Kentucky 1785. Before we were Kentucky, is in Woodford County. So I thought what better provenance than a brown Forman brand made in Woodford County to be what is now the only Kentucky straight malt whiskey on the market, or Woodford Reserve malt is the only one of it's a 48:56 miracle. 48:57 That may be true. But folks crave the bourbon. And as they 49:02 as they did back all goes back to birthday. 49:09 Hey, it's Kenny here. And I want to tell you about an event that's happening on Saturday, August 24. Because I want to see you in historic downtown Frankfort, Kentucky, at bourbon on the banks. It's the Commonwealth premier bourbon tasting and awards festival. There's live music and over 100 vendors of food, beer, wine, and of course, bourbon. But guess what even will be there in the bourbon pursuit booth. You can check out all the events including tastings with the master distillers that you've heard on the show before and the People's Choice Award for the Best bourbon out there. You can get your all inclusive ticket for $65. Plus, you can join on the free Friday night event. Go and check it out bourbon on the banks.org you've probably heard of finishing beer using whiskey barrels but Michigan distillery is doing the opposite. They're using barrels to finish their whiskey. New Holland spirits claims to be the first distillery to stout a whiskey. The folks at Rock house whiskey club heard that claim and had to visit the banks of Lake Michigan to check it out. It all began when New Holland brewing launched in 97. Their Dragon's milk beer is America's number one selling bourbon barrel aged out in 2005. They apply their expertise from brewing and began distilling beer barrel finished whiskey began production 2012 and rock house was the club is featuring it in their next box. The barrels come from Tennessee get filled a dragon's milk with your twice the mature bourbon is finished in those very same barrels. Rocco's whiskey club is a whiskey the Month Club on a mission to uncover the best flavors and stories from craft distillers across the US. Along with two bottles of hard to find whiskey rack houses boxes are full of cool merchandise that they ship out every two months to members in over 40 states go to rock house whiskey club com to check it out. And try a bottle of beer barrel bourbon and beer barrel rye use code pursuit for $25 off your first first box 51:03 that may be true but folks crave the bourbon and as they 51:08 as they did back all goes back to 51:11 bourbon you know I it's hard for me to sustain now 51:15 no no I agree with that. But so Woodford Reserve is the home of innovative whiskeys first and foremost that's the big thing for us is that we can we have the with what our distillery we have the ability to be flexible and to play with Greg sorry, 51:28 but hold on folks. Let's just have a moment for King King Kentucky. I am this is good. Yeah. So good. 51:37 As good as names on 51:41 those labels to 51:42 every every one of these is like man it's just like a trip down like great whiskey bro. Holy shit balls. 51:51 I'm glad I can bring that least you let me open it with some 51:53 goodbye. There's so there's so many complicated notes in this. I did I know even Yes. And this was one of my This was one of my top whiskies of the year last year. And you know, the craziest thing is I went into like a blind competition. This was like my front runner to win it but you know how blind tastings go you just you just never know how it's going to go but 52:16 it's so good. 52:19 It's so good. 52:20 Kenny I'm gonna get us back my buddies get us back on the rails here. Because you were kind of interrupted her because she was kind 52:27 of talking I'm sorry I apologize. 52:31 bourbon like it is 52:32 because she started she 52:34 started going I love Barbara What can I say? That wrong? 52:37 Yes, drinking a beer. So 52:38 what I'm saying is that we're the home of innovative whiskeys and so we do a lot of really fun things and I you know, with the with our malt whiskey, we are 51% malt 47% corn and just 2% right, so we're right close to that bourbon requirement. You know, 47% corn, you know, the way malt is a gateway mall. But the thing is, is that yes, it's a gateway market who really knows you know, what, what is American mall? At this point in time? We're still defining what that really means. It's not it 53:09 was the marrow balter. Do you know the recipe that 53:13 was on your corn book? 53:16 Pick up a glass slipper. 53:19 What is American mall? There's actually incredible debate about that. I think the greatest mall producer in this country is Lance winters from St. George he's been making American mall you know since the 90s. Or there abouts legally 53:36 but it's not a category I mean, like it's not a category it's not something that people are really seeking out so why why do we produce these things and bourbon is is Woodford big thing Why are we producing more Why are we introducing we were introducing what why are you introducing this makes no sense. We are flexing the muscle muscle in fact that Woodford Reserve is the home of innovative whiskeys and we can play in flavor. It's all flavor so you look at our Woodford Reserve distiller select product and it's balanced and complex you can find 212 flavors in a glass of Woodford Reserve bourbon buy them all 54:13 start with the eighth at the gold order go 54:16 within you get into 54:17 acid TO acid 54:22 within you look at him and everything is done with purpose. I told you earlier Chris Morris is a genius when it comes to bourbon and understanding it and when we're planning out Woodford Reserve it's not just all willy nilly like oh, wouldn't it be fun to do a mall? How cool nobody else is doing it? Let's do that. No, it is thought out because you look at we got our distiller slick bourbon which hits all five areas of flavor. Then you have our double oak which came out in 2012. It's sweet, aromatic forward, it hits that we want you to know we want you to taste sweet aromatics. Then we've got our rye which is spice forward trying to hit that area of flavor. Then you've got our malt which is this grain wood notes coming through and then with our wheat will complete it with our our fruit forward notes, but then also going back to 1939 when they establish the TTP establish what are the four types of American whiskey, bourbon rye, malt wheat we're hitting all those so not only are we covering flavor, but we're also looking at from a historical standpoint as well. 55:27 Yeah. And you're doing a lot of the experimentation that hopefully bourbon geeks are really trying to trying to harness and on because you do it, you do it you know the you have the standard, you've got your double load but then you also have your distiller select series, right? These these sort of one offs that people really kind of they gravitate towards because it's something you knew is something unique. What's been the the latest one that has come out that that sort of garnered some attention? 55:51 Well, the latest one is our good old favorite. 55:53 Double, double, double, double, double, 55:56 double. Okay, okay, I don't know how many doubles we're on now. 55:59 It's just double double it's it's double ups but ah words of the 12 months 24 months. But man, I mean, it's, it's a totally shifts the flavor profile completely from our double oak. And people are obsessed with this. 56:15 How many? How many when you start taking over how many doubles are going to be on this? 56:19 Well, I just want to interject here like there was I got my Christina the story. I my wisdom teeth taken out one year. And I like where this is I died after for like three months, I couldn't taste anything. The only thing that I can taste from like that I could assess was double oak, and double double oak. And it is what I think barrel finishing is the hardest thing to do in American whiskey right now to put out like a really good product because you can screw it up so easily. And what they you have done with double o n double a double double. 57:04 Double yeah. Oh, 57:05 yeah. As I say we're getting some data is so hard to do it. I know. I am sure you guys went through a lot of batches to get that flavor. Right. But my God, is it? Does it feel like a dessert on the palate? Oh, no. Does it feel like dessert? Well, 57:22 thank you, Fred. That now to Fred's point. Barrel finishing has been around for quite a long time. Give Dr. Bill Lumsden who I'm very familiar with at Glen Margie as the the modern father of barrel finishing back in the early 90s. But when all of us because we finished we finished with reserve, as you all know and our masters collection and cinema treasures Chardonnay barrels and Pino voir barrels. We didn't make those barrels. They were used before it's and I'm a good prayer. finishes are typically completed in barrels that came from somebody else and had been used before. So in the development of double oat, we have created the first and only whiskey in the world finished in a barrel made specifically for it. by it. Having our own brown Forman coupe bridge has allowed us to make a second barrel brand new charred on the inside to finish Woodford Reserve specifically and it took two years to develop. And we take full limiter, Woodford finish it in the second barrel for up to a year, as Elizabeth said, and we have double hooks, it's the only whiskey in the world scotch Irish, Japanese, you name it, the only whiskey in the world that has been in two barrels, the original in the finish barrel that were both new made for it by its own its own coop bridge that's unique. And as Elizabeth said, we're in that second barrel for approximately one year for the word preserved double o double double we go two years in the flavor changes, but it's the 59:14 same barrel for two years. Yes, you don't leave the barrel. It's that 59:18 I think there's a misconception that there's two barrels. 59:21 And then we Yes, we have gone three years we have gone for years. And is it triple double is a quadruple double what we're going to call it, but we have decided that that flavor profile gets a little too intense, a little too far afield from what we want. And we have decided that double double is as far as we go career. So we continue to experiment. You may have said this and I apologize if you did. I was 59:47 distracted because somebody had a question online and like I was like trying to get it over here. But somebody was asking, Is there two different type of char levels on each barrel? 59:56 Yes, yes. So 59:58 you didn't say it did you know? 1:00:01 Alright, sweet, so you're gonna hear it right now. 1:00:03 But that's also what makes it so great. And the fact that we have our own Cooper is so we can build our own barrels I always jokingly call it couture barreling because we're making barrels specifically for each brand. And so with the with the double ocean we started out we have our Woodford Reserve distiller select barrel which is going to be a nine month seasoning, we do a 10 minute toast and 25 second char on that barrel, then that's age five to seven years then we go into our double oak barrel. The double oak barrel has the nine months seasoning a 40 minute toast and a five to 10 second char. So we're flash charging as we like to call it. But what we're doing is a long toasting process which gets into the lignin layer of the wood, which is where a lot of the Van Halen lives. So when you knows double oak to get those they've only been what's been battling, battling. 1:00:51 Battling 1:00:52 Okay, sorry, nella Sorry, no, that's okay. 1:00:54 I'm an idiot. I just 1:00:56 that's why it's 1:00:58 so that that's kind of where you get all those really really sweet aromatic notes. And you're going to find that with WOQU you get the color too. So it's really getting 1:01:09 so Elizabeth you and Chris, this is going to be exciting conversation probably just for the two of us here on the on this will start one over here. 1:01:22 But you talked about how you're the only distillery that has their own Cooper HO of 1:01:27 our size if you want to go there 1:01:30 with no no I'm no I mean, Elizabeth on our side. 1:01:36 So that story starts in like the 1940s when there's a lot of these acquisitions going on from the larger parent companies of the time, national Shanley you know Sega drums a lot of these kind of companies, brown Forman, instead of those companies were out there acquiring distilleries that could not meet the mandate for making alcohol for the war effort. instead of chasing that carrot instead of chasing those distillers to buy independent distillers they were purchasing Cooper juice. And when they did that, they kind of got themselves a lump in hundred 1:02:20 and 50 years, 1:02:22 we're going on ground for me. It just it was like it was like one of these brilliant business moves in the 40s and 50s. And then they later acquired a little company called jack daniels. Yep. You know, I mean, so there's like, all this week. business acumen within brown Forman and I always like when I hear you all talk about like, we're the only distillery that has our own Cooper bridge. I think of the guy who was in a boardroom, who thought in the 1940s is like, Hey, why are we going after distilleries when we can get what everybody needs? And that's the Beryl. 1:03:00 You know, Fred, that's a good point. I've never really heard that story. And I don't know if Chris if anybody knows it, Chris would know that story of just because that's probably like the Woodford Reserve story when it the Bourbons giants like hey, we want to acquire we want to buy a bourbon distillery and start a new brand and people are like, Are you crazy? So I'm sure it's the same kind of thought with our with our Cooper's? 1:03:21 Well, Fred was that was certainly pointing in the right direction. So coming out of the Second World War, the big distilleries, the big companies I should say, who had many distilleries, Shin Lacey firms national Linh more, and others had their own Cooper, just all in local or the local region. And they were making their own barrels. And that men barrels were hard to come by there is a fierce demand and therefore a fierce competition for barrels. And small independent companies. Were having a difficult time. So as Les Brown, the first son of our founder, George Garvin Brown, decided, well, we need to have our own Cooper edge if we're going to survive. And that led to the purchase of a wood making plant in the Highland Park neighborhood of Lobel that had been making of all things, plywood for the war effort. And it made rifle stocks. It had been a furniture factory. And we purchased that wood making plant and converted it to a coop bridge. So we were just one of many distilleries at the time that had its own Cooper edge. So it wasn't abnormal. It wasn't a big deal. It was sort of norm but 1:04:45 it was a step. It was a step toward the direction that you all became in the 50s you acquired 1:04:52 jack daniels and then and then by and large, those big famous distilling companies went out of business. Their brands were broken up there, distillers were there distilleries were closed and consolidated and little brown Forman kept plugging along. And here we are now today, as the only major whiskey company in the world. There are some small companies that make their own barrels, but we're talking tiny, tiny companies, but we make all our own new barrels. And that has allowed us to expand and develop the range of jack daniels products. Old forester obviously Woodford Reserve the unique barrels that Elizabeth told us about king of Kentucky Cooper's craft. Again, it's amazing to think that we're not the biggest whiskey company in the world by any stretch of the imagination. We are the top five but only and only we make our own barrels. And then when those barrels are sold on the open market, because we use them only once for our products. And certainly what for barrels are in high demand double oak barrels are in super high demand on the open market, from brewers, wineries, tequila producers, rum producers and whiskey producers of any strike. That brown Forman supplies annually, half the US barrels to the world. Wow. So there's not a scotch whiskey, there's probably not a rum, tequila, etc. That doesn't have a little Woodford Reserve, brown Coleman flavor in it years from now as they age their products. So our flavor is, is very much in demand. 1:06:31 So that's a that's actually pretty awesome, because you got some history there. And I kind of want to even bring the history up just a little bit too today as we started kind of close this out. And Fred sort of jumped the gun a little bit because we are we poured some king of Kentucky and Fred and myself we are at the the media gathering for it, we got to be there with you, as you kind of gave us a breakdown of the history. And really what this means is brown form is coming out with a new product. So I kind of want you to talk a little bit about what is in and I guess just give it like a 32nd overview of like what is king of Kentucky most of the whiskey geeks out here already know what it is, but kind of talk about what the future of this product line is going to be as well. 1:07:10 Well, we want to be transparent about the king good tequila. And you guys remember we told we told everyone we're very proud of it this this new make began as early times it's it's 79% corn 11% raw 10% malt, early Tams yeast. If we bottled it at four years old, it would have been early times hold another 10 years, it becomes something completely different. And holding a barrel that long for us whether it's Woodford Reserve, early times old forester is extremely special because we heat cycle our warehouses. And you can virtually double the age when Liz was said we're making with reserve from 5678 year barrels batch together, that's 10 1214 year old barrels based on the maturation profile because heat Cycling is an aggressive maturation process that dates back to the 1870s. So can give Kentucky this 14 year old bottle as a 28 year age persona. But it's not 28 years of course, it's 14 years. So it is chemically made sure we analyze the King and I showed everyone the chemical signature which is the molecular flavor structure versus early times four year old one 100 proof bottle and bond is completely different. So again, transparent how it was made. This is a revitalization or return of an old label king of Kentucky which goes back into the 1880s Why did you choose this 1:09:01 label because you guys have a plethora of 1:09:07 fantastic labels in Kenya why not bring back marrow I kind of like that. That would be cool. You know? 1:09:16 Well there's there's several reasons and

Discover all of the hot trends for 2019! Our trend analysis is perfect for surface pattern designers, textile designers, fashion and home decor designers. ............................................................................ Join ELIZABETH SILVER's newsletter: Get her monthly trend reports ;) elizabethsilver.com/fresh ............................................................................   Get LAUREN'S FREE 2019 Trend Guide: Get the PDF download!  http://bit.ly/2La8B2H ............................................................................   Check out Apt Therapy's Pattern of the Year article https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/anim... ............................................................................   Watch the full video of Living Coral the 2019 Pantone Color of the Yearhttps://youtu.be/SFDapYIJS2w ............................................................................   Be sure to subscribe for more design LOVE! 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Tags: 2019 fashion trends 2019 fashion trends forecast spring summer trends fall winter trends millennial fashion trends top spring 2019 trends stripe trends 2019 2019 trends home decor 2019 trends fashion 2019 home design trends lauren lesley studio design tribe textile design textile designers surface pattern design surface pattern designers 2019 color forecast trend report 2019 gift and home furnishing market atlanta market atlanta market show   Transcript: Speaker 1: 00:01 Hey, what's up fools? Speaker 2: 00:03 This is your house. Lauren. Lesley, the design tribe podcast based out of beautiful Atlanta. This is the podcast version of my webinar series. You'll find on my website at Lauren Lesley. Lesley is spelled with an e-y. We'll be discussing all things related to the design side of your online business and interviewing creative entrepreneurs. If you'd like to join my webinar series, you will be able to follow along with awesome slides that I made super Pretty and you'll get to interact with me on live video. I'll also be live streaming to youtube and in the design tribe Facebook group. If you'd rather tune in there to sign up for the live webinars, go to laurenlesley.com/webinar-series or if you'd like to join our Facebook community, check out facebook.com/groups/designtribelaurenlesley. Thanks for connecting with the design tribe. Let's start the conversation. Speaker 1: 01:07 Okay. Hi everyone. I'm Lauren from Lauren Lesley Studio and today we have special guest, Elizabeth Silver on to talk about 2019 trends for surface pattern designers. So Elizabeth is an amazing surface pattern. Boss. She's a licensed artist and knows all about trends. She does 10 tons of trend research and has a really cool, um, newsletter for you guys that we'll talk about in just a minute. I'm Elizabeth, would you like to kind of introduce yourself and give everyone a little bit of background about who you are and how you got started as a surface pattern designer? Speaker 3: 01:43 Yeah, definitely. Thanks so much for having me, Lauren. Um, I have, I studied surface pattern design in college actually. And um, when I graduated I was living in New York City and I designed for bedding and then table linens and finally for baby apparel for baby gap. And then I wanted to leave New York City. I'd been there for about nine years. And so, uh, my husband and I moved down to Raleigh, North Carolina and I went into freelance. So I have been freelancing for about six years now. And I, um, have a lot of different types of clients, do a lot of client work, um, for party paper so you can see my work in party city, um, for like wrapping paper and gift bags, a lot of stuff in different, I'm like Tj Maxx and Marshall's and target and kind of all over the place. And I also licensed my artwork, so greeting cards and rugs and also give bags and wrapping kind of stuff, a lot of stationery. Um, and so that is kind of a Speaker 1: 02:53 me in a nutshell. Awesome. And for those of you who don't know me, I'm Lauren. I have been a senior textile designer for the past 10 years. Um, and I'm really excited because my outdoor rug designs are selling at target this season. So if you're in need of our raw, go check that out. Um, but now, uh, starting as of February 1st this year, 2019, I'm starting as an independent surface pattern designer. So I'm really excited to go to blueprint in New York and meet a bunch of other surface pattern designers. Um, but yeah, so let's get into some of the trends. So first we're going to start talking about, um, Elizabeth Atlanta Gift Market Trend PDF. So if you sign up for her newsletter, you get all sorts of really great trend insights that she puts together and kind of does all of the research ahead of time for you. Um, so to get the free pdf, you can visit her website and sign up for her email list. I'm, the link is here and I'll also link it in the description below. Um, so let me pull up whore, uh, here is her pdf. Okay. And so Elizabeth, um, if you don't mind going ahead and kind of explaining, um, what is important about America's mart gift and home show? I'm, why is that important for surface pattern designers? Speaker 3: 04:15 Definitely. Thanks so much. Um, yeah, so I went to, uh, in Atlanta, um, they have a two times a year is America's mart gift and home show. And they have like three buildings in downtown Atlanta that have showrooms of gifts, companies, home decor companies, uh, rug companies, um, apparel companies, all kinds of like giftable things stationary. And they have a permanent show rooms down there. And so they have different shows throughout the year. But the gift and home show is a time when they also, people who don't have permanent show rooms can also come down and kind of set up a temporary showroom and they're all showing their wares for people, uh, for buyers who mmm. Who buy for their stores, you know, for their gift stores or their home decor stores or their both teaks all that kind of stuff. So it's a all in one place to, it's basically like going to 150 gift show, uh, gift shops at once. So it's like a perfect, you know, opportunity to see what's going on in the gift world, in the stationary world, in the home decor worlds. So, um, I had gone since 2013 and so I wanted to check it out cause I'd been going to Sirtex every year and this year I decided to skip Sirtex and go to America's mart. Speaker 1: 05:43 I see. Okay, cool. So for those of, um, for designers who are kind of new at discovering trends or finding trends, how did you, out of, you know, you said this is like going through hundreds and hundreds of gift shops. How do you decide what's a trend Speaker 3: 05:58 versus something that's not a trend when you were just kind of overwhelmed by seeing so many days for art and gifts patterns, you figure out what is a trend actually quite overwhelming I have to say. Um, and also I would note that like this is the stuff that's like going to be in stores shortly. You know, they're selling their current line, but it was designed probably a year ago at least, you know, six months to a year ago. Um, you know, and then it had to be produced and then it's, you know, the samples are ready and they're hoping people are ordering it and it's going to go into stores. Right? So this isn't necessarily like the cutting edge things that are coming. Right. You know, out of, uh, you know, very trend for a person's brain necessarily. It is stuff that's probably a little bit older, but still it hasn't fully gone into stores and trends kind of do tend to last at least for a couple of seasons are a couple of years. Speaker 3: 07:00 And one thing I noticed is there is, you know, there was definitely a lot of stuff that we've seen before, stuff that, you know, wasn't brand new. Um, one wrap up or like roundup that I read, uh, you know, kind of hypothesize that the reason for that is that people are, you know, a little bit nervous that, um, you know, they want to see something that has sold already and it is a proven, you know, good bestseller or whatever. And so they're a little bit scared maybe to jump into new things. The wrap up that I was reading was talking about, you know, like for economy reasons, but I don't, you know, I don't know. But there is a lot of stuff that we've seen in before. So like the farmhouse trend with a lot of like home decor stuff with, you know, big script lettering, brush script lettering, um, and sort of like the, uh, like galvanized metal and wood, you know, whether it would, and sort of that, that sort of style was, you know, really prevalent, um, saw a lot of stuff that I'm sure you could recognize like flamingos and llamas and Unicorns and mermaids and all those kind of like a fantastical creatures that we've seen a lot of, you know, in, in the, in the market. Speaker 3: 08:20 Um, and the big thing that we see at all these places, all these gifts shops are a Christmas trends, right? Christmas is a big, big seller. And so, yeah, you can see, I'm kind of talking about some of the things that we've seen already. Um, Christmas Pharm House was a big thing. And, um, you know, buffalo plaid, I say that green buffalo plaid was a little bit newer, but red buffalo plaid was definitely still in there. And lots of chemicals. Um, some really, you know, things that we've seen in past Christmases, the kind of like vintage red truck with the Christmas tree is still out there. Um, but to find, to figure out what is, you know, a trend, I think that for me it's just kind of what pops out, like, um, you know, as something a little bit newer that I've, that I see, uh, you know, a couple times more than more than just like one little interesting thing. Speaker 3: 09:19 So he having, you know, studied trends for the past couple of years with my newsletter, it's like, I feel like I've seen it all. So if it's something that kind of like perks my interest and says like, oh, that's kind of weird, or like, oh, I haven't seen that. Like, even if it's just one like animal off to the side, it's like, oh yeah, you don't usually see like, you know, I don't know what animal, but that if I then see it again later in the day and then again, then I'm like, Hey, okay, that could be something. And so I try to highlight trends that are, um, that could, you know, spark something sparks some creativity basically. And that aren't necessarily like everywhere. Um, you know, I'm not going to feature unicorns because everyone has seen a million unicorns and it is still trending, but that's not really what I do. Speaker 1: 10:10 Right. I think that as a designer, once you sort of get into that process of researching trends, it's almost sort of intuitive. Like something that does, like you said, kind of perk your interest or you are kind of responding to innately then you know, and especially if you start to see it over and over again, you know, they say that in order to buy something you have to see it seven times. And so I think that as, as designers it's like, well, you know, we are sort of picking up on an evolution of thing is too, like one design trend could naturally evolve into something else or it could marry with another trend. Um, I don't know. Like I remember just in rugs, um, the trellis and lattice patterns were so big for a long sort of the two color. And now they're sort of starting to be a little bit dated, but it's like, okay, how, you know, how can we evolve that trend? How can we maybe make it three collar or multicolor or, um, maybe make it a little bit more global, you know, there's different things you can do to a trend once it starting to kind of get some age on it, I guess, um, to make it evolve and grow the I agree. Okay. Okay. So, Speaker 3: 11:27 so this first page, um, just for fun was kind of things that I couldn't make a full like trend board out of, but I just kind of want to call it out because again, I kind of pricking my eye and I thought they were sort of interesting. So, um, last year for 2018, um, I did a trend guide of a roundup of SIRTEX and a national stationery show and one of my trends was called anatomy class and it was sort of about a female anatomy, uh, you know, like naked ladies boobs. Like, literally, there were cards out there with like, you know, like the whole, like female anatomy, like, like a real, like ovaries and stuff like that. So, um, so that is, you know, has been trending. The female form has definitely been trending, but, uh, this little, um, this first image with the like really, really happy jumping around naked ladies just made me smile. Speaker 3: 12:22 And so I just wanted to kind of call it out because it's sort of, you know, it reminded me that that trend is still going and they just seem like they're loving life so much that I was happy about it. Then the second one is I had also recently in my newsletter sent out a, a trend about floral crowns on animals being so huge in illustration and greeting cards and things like that. And one interesting thing that I saw, um, it was a green box, uh, which also like it's kind of owns oopsy daisy and they do wall art, right? And so one of their artists, actually a couple of their artists, um, had, you know, floral crowns was still big with the animals, but one sort of like evolution of that, again as talking about how to make it something newer and different and kind of bring it forward was I'm having sort of dessert and food items as crowns on animals. Speaker 3: 13:15 So I thought that was interesting. Take. And then the last thing that I showed there, it and that I saw a couple call outs of at the gift show, but couldn't really find enough reference to say it was a trend was the sort of the idea of pills and pharmaceuticals as like a little bit of a joke or just like something, something kind of interesting. So that card says hope they give you the good drugs and get well card by Lionheart prints. Oh, cute. Cool. Okay. So my first trend that I, um, wanted to call out as called plant ponds. And um, as I say here, uh, food ponds have been around for a while. We've seen, you know, Tacos and Sushi and pizza and give me a pizza, my heart and that kind of thing. Um, but I saw a big, uh, you know, a big showing of plant ponds because house plants have been a really big trend. Speaker 3: 14:13 Um, and now that's sort of evolving. So now we're getting sort of the two things together. The food ponds or the ponds I should say. And the house plants are coming together and these planters and different products have all these kind of, you can see, oh yeah. And here to make fronds and just like all these kind of like silly little ponds on plant life. So that was my first, um, call out. I left Penn. So this is making me really happy, you know. All right. My second one is called masters of Maine and this was a trend that actually I think it started probably in the home decor worlds. Um, and maybe with your rug experience, you've kind of been seeing it around, but I sort of pay more attention to gift and stationary because that's sort of my, um, you know, lane for what I designed. Speaker 3: 15:06 So I hadn't really noticed it necessarily, um, until it sort of started seeping into what I do. Um, but you know, I guess are ready in home decor is seeing these kind of, um, Ming vases and these, uh, uh, Chanel Zari vases with this, you know, like traditional Chinese look to them. The blue and white, um, has been, you know, those vases have been, you know, a decorative item that you can get for your home for a while. And now sort of it's becoming a surface pattern thing where you could see their feature featured is like, you know, uh, a tray that has those vases and, you know, Napkins and prints were those vases are being drawn out and illustrated and use for, you know, for artwork. And, um, I also liked the kind of the take on it where it's like sculptural pumpkin's up in the top right. Um, where yeah, they use the kind of imagery, but they put it on a pumpkin. And so that's just kind of, you know, something a little bit different. So I thought that was, I noticed a lot of that around, um, markets. Speaker 3: 16:15 Cool. Yeah, I've definitely seen this in home decor and um, there have been trans in rag with a kind of related to this more bent, a little bit more like Shibori or teak or things like that. The indigo thing is definitely been around and yeah. Shit. Yeah, you're right. I agree. And then the last one is sort of, I think it's, I think it's going to kind of emerge. I sort of hedge my bets when I talk about it and uh, in the uh, intro, but it's been sort of a graphic design trend for a little bit. Um, Paper Cup progress is what I'm calling this. And so it's sort of these paper cut paper sculpture, um, flowers which are really beautiful. And you can buy something like this on Etsy. The very center image is like an Etsy image that you can buy this kind of decor for your wedding or your party or whatever. Speaker 3: 17:10 Um, and the top, uh, center. And then the top left are both sort of the graphic design, um, versions of it where, you know, it's a, um, poster for one of the gifts companies and the center one was an invitation and that's where the, that kind of imagery was used. But then going around the show, I was seeing a lot of the home decor companies had these sculptural wall are that looks like Paper Cup florals, you know, they were made out of ceramic or resin or whatever, but they kind of looked this 3d paper cut look and then kind of looking it, I saw a couple other references, a wallpaper like that looks like a foe. Um, the bottom left is like a wallpaper that looks like cut paper. And, um, and I, I'm seeing it a lot per like decoration, um, decoration items. So I think that if there's a way, I'm not sure because I mean, I'm an illustrator, I'm not, you know, uh, paper sculptures. But you know, if there's a way to sort of give that cool flat flat turning 3d look to some of your flowers in illustration or whatever, it could be a really cool technique. Speaker 1: 18:26 Yeah, the dimension there is really interesting. I haven't seen that. Speaker 3: 18:30 That's cool. So those were my three big trends that I took away. Now I wouldn't necessarily say those were the biggest trends of market because like I said, some of the biggest trends, the farm house look and you know, um, I, I still saw a lot of lamas and that kind of thing. Um, those were, you know, bigger trends, but those are ones that we've seen before. So what my trend book kind of highlights is that, you know, hopefully something that's a little bit new and kind of sparks your creativity and you know, makes you ready to design some new stuff for your clients and for your portfolio. Speaker 1: 19:05 Did you see any spots? Yup. Yup. Definitely. Still off Speaker 3: 19:12 Kenny and not quite as many. I think that one might be fading, but, okay. Speaker 1: 19:16 Well, I don't know. Hopefully, if that's my opinion, it's, I'm going to Costa Rica on Saturday for my honeymoon. So I'm going to get in to see some real slots. Awesome poster. He gives the best. You've never been. So I'm excited. So fun. Okay, so next we're going to get into the trend of the month, um, which if you're a part of Elizabeth's newsletter, then you're going to get this every month from her. So we are in March and she recently released a new trend called sunshine day. So Elizabeth, can you explain this trend and kind of the impact that that has also on surface pattern designers? Speaker 3: 19:52 Yeah, definitely. So, well, we're all ready for spring, right? I mean this is, it's still, yeah, today here and rainy in Raleigh, North Carolina, but we're ready for spring and I had been seeing a lot of sunshine lately. I've, uh, in on gift products. So you can see from this board, there's a whole array of like rugs, reading cards, mugs, wall are all kinds of things here. And there are all kinds of sporting that, um, bright sunshine. Uh, look with the rays coming out of it. A lot of wordplay and puns. I'm not on here, but I on this board, but there was one that I saw the girls just want to have sun, which I love. And um, I think it also goes back to uh, we'll be talking, you can see there's some, you know, orange and pink and like it's got that living coral vibe and the top, but also mustard yellow is so huge. So it's kind of perfect. Um, that this, this ties right into that too. Speaker 4: 20:51 Cool. Speaker 1: 20:53 All right. So, um, also, and those of us newsletter, she mentioned that apartment therapy has just released a pattern of the year, which they've never done before. So I was really intrigued by this and had to look at APP. So I'm going to actually pull up there web Speaker 4: 21:11 Paige. Speaker 1: 21:13 Um, we can start on that for just a minute. Um, because I was really intrigued by this and good job for Elizabeth for finding it. Speaker 3: 21:23 Cool. It's, I'm happy because, you know, we've, of course we've been hearing color of the year for a long time, but as they explained in this article, they were just, you know, they're like, all right, enough with his color of the year, we're ready for the year. And I'm like, as a surface pattern, I'm totally for it. So, um, they kind of described, I mean definitely a link to the article, you know, hopefully, but check it out because they talk about their process of kind of narrowing it down and some of the other contenders, which were, uh, I think did, they said blush botanicals was a big one that they thought about. Um, and trying to remember what other things, but basically the pattern that they named was, uh, animals, but not the animal prints that we think of in a traditional way, but the full animals. So leopards, zebras and a Cheetah's kind of, you know, walking around. Speaker 3: 22:15 And I've definitely, I agree with this. I have seen this for the past year or two at featured, a couple of these, um, in my newsletter. In fact. Uh, so I, I definitely agree that this is, this is up and coming. I've seen it as wallpaper, it looks to me and saying, and um, when I was at America's mart, I didn't necessarily see that many cats kind of like walking around necessarily, but there were still a lot of like animal prints more than I was really expecting for the gift world. So I was kind of seeing, um, you know, a part of that, a version of that. Speaker 1: 22:52 Yeah. I'm really loving this and I've been seeing a lot of, um, like big cats as well. Like whether it's like tigers or leopards or 100%. Yeah, I've seen this a lot. So it's really interesting that apartment therapy called this out, especially because they have such a big focus on home decor. Um, I dunno, like coming from a rug that, and obviously we, you probably wouldn't put this on her drug. Um, I dunno, you know, Speaker 3: 23:17 crazy. It is crazy, but it's also not, you know, I don't know how scalable it would take a minute for like, you know, everything takes a while to kind of seep into like what people are going to put. Like a rug is a big investment. Right. Speaker 1: 23:31 Right. Could probably pull it off. But other than that, Speaker 3: 23:35 yeah. But it's not going to be, you know, definitely your trellises or you're kind of more safe option, but right. Some of those more trend forward places might start featuring this and you know, as it, if it has legs, we'll have to find out, you know, we won't know until next year or the year after that if it's still kind of around. But it, I could see it seeping into, you know, some rug fashion. Speaker 1: 23:57 Hmm. Okay. So yeah. Apartment therapy saying, but it's a big maximalist but we're seeing a shift away from the stark minimalism, which, I mean, that kind of resonates with me as well because I have a little bit of a hoarder too. I think every artist is with all their supplies and whatnot. Um, but yeah, I love maximalism. I love kind of that Boho global feeling. So, um, but yeah, they're saying that, you know, even in pattern and I'm like surface design that it is a bit maximalist and [inaudible]. MMM. I think also the idea of kind of layering patterns together, coordinating patterns together in the home is going to kind of be a big trend coming forward to definitely. MMM. Yeah. So here is this, um, other big cat on like the bathroom wallpaper. It was really cool. Um, and I'm sure we'll see it in like throw pillows, like that'll be kind of an easy way for people to incorporate this trend. Oh yeah, definitely. Um, but yeah, they kind of just talk about like, you know, why a pattern of the year, like you said, we've always heard about the color of the year. Um, and I will link this article in the description below so you guys can check it out on your own. But Speaker 3: 25:11 yeah. And it has some good, uh, when you read it as some like suggestions of kind of like I said, what they were there other contenders were. So those are other kinds of big things that are happening. Um, so yeah, little hint as to what's going on in the home decor world and also, you know, it translates to gift and stationary and, and kind of everywhere. Speaker 1: 25:33 Yeah, definitely makes sense. Then gift in stationary for sure. Um, but I love seeing it. I love seeing home decor, get more creative like this too. So it's fun. Definitely. All right. Um, okay, so, um, I'm going to touch a little bit on living coral because it is the pillar of the year and we just talked about the pattern of the year from environment therapy. So I couldn't leave out living coral and I do have a nother youtube video, the owl, um, I'll put the slide up for you guys. Um, so this is also in my youtube channel if you want to watch the full video, but I'm just going to give like a really quick summary over living coral. MMM. So living coral kind of embodies our need for a playful expression. I see it as a very happy color. Um, it's very bright and fun. Speaker 1: 26:24 Um, and representing the fusion of modern life. Pantone and coral is a nurturing color that appears in our natural surroundings. So when I first heard this, I thought, what natural, like, you know, when I think of nature, I think of Greens and kind of Browns, but maybe that's just because of where I live, but then when I started to think about it, yeah. Was kind of like, oh yeah, like I guess coral really does exist in the sea, but I'm not in the seat all the time, or it's in a sunset and things like that. So, um, Elizabeth, do you agree with this? Who would you think of coral as being like a natural color? Speaker 3: 26:57 Uh, yeah, I think I'm on the same page as you. Yeah. I wouldn't necessarily think that it's, to me, it's sort of like that pop of color, you know, w um, a little bit different than what I, what I normally see in my actual surroundings, but I guess depending on, yeah. You know, sort of in the Caribbean or wherever, they have a lot brighter colors, um, around them. So it sort of depends, I guess. Speaker 1: 27:22 Yeah. I mean, I definitely see it, like you said, Caribbean. I see it as a happy, like beachy color and it, I, it even reminds me of weddings, like I feel like bridesmaids dresses and things like that, but I just don't usually associate this well or with nature. But again, yeah, I mean it could be, um, a flower, you know, color for flowers, things like that. But I just generally, I think of like more neutral stones and, Speaker 3: 27:45 um, I think we just need to leave the east coast and moved to Hawaii and then we would be living the living coral lifestyle that we all dream for. Speaker 1: 27:57 Ah, I like that idea. Let's do it. But yeah, this is kind of how I traditionally see coral being used. Um, just like in, you know, kind of beachy weddings or as prom dresses, things like that. But, um, when I started to do, so I'm trying to research, I did see how living coral was starting to influence home decor, which was really cool to see. So again, this is kind of how I traditionally imagined coral being used in the home, if at all. Um, and again, I am on the east coast, so I kind of saw it as, uh, you know, in southern coastal homes, kind of a little bit of a preppy vibe. But, um, as I was doing my trend research, I was beginning to see it being used in these like fresh, modern ways that still looks like very sunny in tearful, but kind of gives a thorough back with a mid century modern looks or just kind of like the modern art on, which I thought was really fun and new. Speaker 1: 28:49 It felt very fresh. Ooh. And then also seeing it as kind of this smart and fluid evolution from millennial pink, which has been so big over the last, you know, two to three years. Um, it makes it a very commercial choice as well, which we don't always see pantone making a commercial choice, but you can see it even in, you know, this rug or a pillow or dishes. Um, it's just, it seems like it's a very kind of easy color to incorporate with colors that people and consumers have already been buying over the last couple of years. Definitely. Um, it also looks great and an outdoor patio space. If you're, you know, not this bold inside, then your patio is a perfect place to kind of bring some personality and some pop in it. It's, I'm going really well Speaker 4: 29:42 with soft textiles. I like drapery as well. That gives your indoors a little bit of a pop if you're, um, feeling a little bit bold and want that bright coral color inside, uh, in the navy and indigo blues can a pair really well with the coral as do teals. Okay. Speaker 1: 29:59 And also I was noticing some exterior uses, um, bringing some vibrancy and some personality to the outside of that home. And again, it kind of depends on, I think where you live, where this would be suitable. But, um, even if you just painted your door a fun pop color. Yeah, that can be great. Yeah, that can be really fun. Okay, so to watch the full video, I'm going to leave or I'm linking this other video here so you can just click on that to watch the full video of living coral. Okay. So next I wanted to let you guys know about my trend guide for 2019 so I did a ton of trend research and I'll let you know kind of what I was finding in terms of colors and then we'll touch on a few other things. So this is my ultimate 2019 trend guide that I'm giving away for free. So you can download the pdf and I will link that in the description below, so be sure to check that out. Okay. So some of the color trends I've been finding for 2019 include this blush and forest green combination. And like I mentioned earlier, millennial pink has kind of been out and about for quite a while now, but we're kind of seeing these muted tones coming into the blushes and seeing it kind of contrasts really nicely with [inaudible] this, sorry. Um, is really beautiful. So that's in one color combinations. Speaker 3: 31:30 Sorry, I love this combination. This is, this is kind of, yeah, like a new look. Um, that I think is really pretty. I think, um, what I was seeing a lot of last year as the stationary show was um, sort of millennial pink and like cobalt and this is just kind of pushing it a little bit farther towards the, you know, obviously towards the green and then the pink is a little bit deeper and it's kind of again, like a nice evolution but really a unexpected. Speaker 1: 31:59 Right. And um, what was it two years ago that pantone is called the green? Um, it wasn't this crane but it was a green. So I think it kind of got everyone thinking about Greens a little bit more seriously because we didn't see, especially in home decor, we didn't see a lot of Greens. But also the house plant trend I think has kind of influenced us to think about yeah. Speaker 3: 32:18 And tropical, all that tropical patterning that we've been seeing for years. Speaker 1: 32:23 Yeah. So shades of green I think are definitely going to be here for a little while. Speaker 1: 32:29 Okay. So the next slide is hello yellow. So I'm a, I'm a lover of yellow anyway, but I was really excited to kind of see some different of yellow coming out, whether in clothing they, we have sort of some muted like butters and mustard colors, but also even in these hair trends you're seeing this like really, really bright fluorescent yellow almost, which was really fun. Yeah. So iridescent Schein is the next color trends. So this isn't exactly one color, but you're kind of this mother of Pearl. Look, we're seeing everywhere whether it's in these hair trends or um, and clothing or indifferent like kind of home decor accents. Um, Speaker 3: 33:14 it's really a hundred percent. And in the gifts in the gift market and stationary market, hologram foil is so huge like that. A couple of years ago that was like the new thing and it's still holding on like the metallics of like gold and silver and copper are still big, but the Hologram foil and that you a destined look is, is big in those markets. Speaker 1: 33:34 Oh, so fun. I love it. I feel like I've even seen it and I'm a silverware. Speaker 3: 33:40 Oh yeah, definitely. Yeah. I had a trend like this a couple of like a last year called oil slick and it was sort of the like rainbow effect on and the same thing. I had some silverware featured as well. Those sort of like a deeper version of this. But I'm similar. Speaker 1: 33:54 Yeah. Cool. I'm really pretty. Okay. So the next color trend is lavender loves. So again, I think that millennial pink has been so big for the last two to three years and this is sort of another evolution of the millennial pink. It's kind of the softer lavender's, um, and kind of soft purples. And again, last year was ultra violet for the 2018 color of the year. Now, this isn't ultra violet, but I do think it is a spin off of that to get people thinking again about purples. What purples are people excited about? What do they want to see on their clothes or their shoes or in home decor or in you know, stationery and gift. Um, so I think that these colors are a little bit softer and they're kind of easier to use. So here is millennial pink that we have been talking about that a lot and I don't think it's going anywhere quite yet. Again, we are kind of seeing these evolutions and kind of be spinoffs of millennial pink, but I think these colors also kind of playback and work well with millennial pink and I don't really think it's going away yet. Like I think that pink is still big, big, big. Yup. Speaker 3: 35:06 Agreed. And like now a hot pink is coming into, into play. I think after like award season, right. There was so many dresses out there. I don't really follow fashion too much and you have a lot of like fashion inspiration and home decor inspiration. Whereas my trend boards tend to be really like gift and stationary and a little bit of home decor. So that's kind of like my, my perspective on it. But I, um, from award season, I know that all the like dresses where this like hot pink Fuchsia. So that's, you know, another thing kind of mix in there. Speaker 1: 35:38 Cool. Yeah, I love seeing all the different shades of pink and I love the bright colors too. This is a little bit more soft and muted, but um, yeah, I think especially in home decor, we were seeing sort of the blushes come through a lot. But I'm hot pink. I love, so that's exciting. Okay. So pastel perfection. So I feel like pastels have been out for a few years. It's not like the most new thing, but I do think that some of these color combinations in the pastels are a little bit new and different. Um, so I was really loving just the softness of this and love seeing it. Also on kind of more winter items like this winter coat for example, or more long sleeve thinking. The pastels. Traditionally we, I guess we think of pastels as being associated with Easter time or spring. But yeah, seeing these pastels being applied and like totally different ways as exciting. Speaker 1: 36:37 So peach perfect is the next color trend. And I think that this is sort of related back to live in coral. It is a lot softer and more pastel. Again, I'm going to say it again, but I think it is related kind of to another evolution of the millennial pink seeing kind of what plays with that or how it could shift and change a little bit. But I think these soft peachy colors are just on point and I really love it. They play nicely with a lot of other colors. Okay. So the pink, green and gold is just another sort of color combination I was seeing over and over again. Yeah. Speaker 1: 37:18 And the, I called this royal blue sign because I felt like the cobalt blues, the Royal Blues, we're mixing really nicely and having that amazing contrast with these really bright sunshine colors, these yellow colors. And I feel like, yeah, we're seeing it in all different ways, whether it's in fashion or in an artwork or um, in these bottles or stoneware, whatever's at the bottom left. I can't remember exactly what that, what product that was. But yeah, I feel like we were just seeing it all over. It looks gorgeous. Yeah. Okay. And soft sage. I feel like what we were just talking about earlier with all the Greens, the house plant trends, um, the tropical trend and greenery being the 2017 pantone color of the year, it's just really gotten people thinking about Greens in a different way and really paying attention to Greens more. Um, so I was noticing this kind of soft sage trend come up all over the place, whether it's in house, how paints or sofas and home decor or fashion. Speaker 1: 38:25 Um, and just again with these, um, succulents, they kind of have that exact same color. So I agree. I have heard that stages is trending as well. And I feel like I haven't seen it as much in my work, but it's probably just a matter of time cause it's probably starting in fashion and home decor and that it's going to kind of filter in. Gotcha. Yeah, I think it feels really fresh. So I love it. But yeah. Okay. And so the next one is called spice turmeric earth. And I think this is just sort of a new, a new neutral if you will. I think that gray is starting to finally kind of make its way out and we're turning towards these really hot neutrals. Um, I don't really see the chocolates coming back in yet, but I think that's kind of where we're headed. But I think first it's going to be more of these kind of like spicy colors, um, that you would see in your kitchen. Um, but it is coming into fashion. I think first most of these images are fashion images. We kind of tried to play with this in home decor. I don't think they were quite ready yet because everyone's at this point bought a gray sofa. So it's not going to matter. Speaker 1: 39:39 But I do think this is where it's heading and you know, it's a great color for like leather furniture, things like that. So I think we are going to see it coming up more and more over the next few years. Okay. So you got all of my color trends, but I wanted to go over some of the other trends that I've included in my free trend guide. So I've included illustration trends that are not going to share with you. You'll have to go download the pdf in the description below to get these trends. But I am also included a section on print and pattern trends and surface design trends and textile design trends. So definitely go check that out. Yeah, a lot of great stuff in there. Thank you. So this is my website. If you want to get my free trend guide 'em you can either go into the description or you can go to my website@lauraandleslie.com slash friend. Speaker 1: 40:35 Um, and you can download it there. Definitely share a comment or share any ideas. If you see some trends coming up in 2019 that we didn't mention, let us know in the comments below. We would really love to hear from you. If you have any questions, just let us know. Yeah, definitely. All right, so your assignment for today is to go ahead and research trends in your niche, so whether you are more in the gift and stationary like Elizabeth or if you're in home decor or fashion, whatever it is, start researching some of the trends in your niche and create a one page trend board for a new trend that you discovered because there's no way that we can possibly see every single trend that's coming out this year. These are just ones that we've noticed and we've shared with you. So create a one page trend board and upload it to the design tribe Facebook group and share it with other designers. Speaker 1: 41:32 That way we can all mutually benefit from each other's research and save time. So to join the Facebook group, go to the design tribe, Lauren Lesley, you can see the link below on this slide and you'll have to answer a few questions and just make sure that you are actually a designer, um, and is a private group, but we would love to have you, so please go over there and join. Um, and if you liked this video, uh, to get notified, please hit the little bell, subscribe to my channel, give this video a thumbs up. We'd really appreciate it. And in the future if you want to listen in the car as you're driving or whatnot, um, we do have a podcast version and I'm putting all the audio on the podcast of these conversations. So go ahead and subscribe to the design tribe podcast. You can listen on iTunes and Spotify. Um, I'm at Lauren Lesley studio on Instagram and Elizabeth, do you want to give your Instagram? Speaker 3: 42:33 Yeah, definitely. I'm at east silver design and um, yeah, you can subscribe to my newsletter@elizabethsilver.com uh, slash fresh. Um, Yup, there we go. East silver design and Elizabethsillver.com/brush um, has, uh, where you can subscribe and the 15th of every month a new trend board and all kinds of resources for designers, for illustrators and you know, creative freelancers basically. So would love to have you. Speaker 1: 43:04 All right. Well Elizabeth, thank you so much for coming on and really enjoy talking to you about all the trends we're seeing in 2019 thank you so much. Lauren. Speaker 2: 43:15 Thank you so much for listening to the design tribe podcast. I hope you enjoyed the conversation today. Here comes the part where I need to ask you for a favor, help a sister out. Next time you're in iTunes, Speaker 3: 43:29 please, please leave a rating and a review. Speaker 1: 43:33 Please. Speaker 3: 43:34 It only takes a few seconds and it would quite literally you make my day for real. It helps us podcast get found so that other awesome people like you can join the dialogue and connect with each other. As Speaker 2: 43:47 a reminder, we go live on the Webinar version of this podcast. Uh, so to get notifications, head over to Laurenlesley.com/webinar-series or check out the Facebook group where we will be streaming on Facebook live as well. Have a wonderful rest of your day. Talk soon.

Elizabeth White is an author and aging solutions advocate for older adults facing uncertain work and financial insecurity. Most recently, she served as a special advisor to the Executive Director of Senior Service America. Before joining SSA, she was the Chief Operating Officer of a mid-size nonprofit focused on improving economic conditions in Africa. She is also an entrepreneur, having co-founded and led a chain of decorative home stores in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and New York. She began her career in international development at the World Bank. Ms. White earned an MBA from Harvard Business School, a Master’s in International Studies from Johns Hopkins University, and a BS in Political Science from Oberlin College. A self-described Army brat, she grew up in various countries in Europe and North Africa. She resides in Washington, D.C., with her daughter and grandson. Elizabeth has a compelling story to tell that will resonate with many of you.   Key Takeaways: [1:04] Marc welcomes you to Episode 109 of the Repurpose Your Career podcast. 2018 was a year of disruption and clarification for Marc personally and regarding where he wants to take his business and this podcast. Marc will be making some changes to Career Pivot and to the Repurpose Your Career podcast in the very near future. [1:43] In next week’s podcast, Marc will review the results of the 2018 Repurpose Your Career Podcast Survey and the changes he will be making. Almost 60 people provided their input. Marc says thank you. That is double the number of participants over the previous year. The downloads have also doubled or tripled. [2:04] This week, after this episode is published, Marc will publish a Career Pivot blog reader survey and discuss how Career Pivot will evolve in the coming year. If you actively read the Career Pivot blog, please take a moment and take the survey. [2:21] Marc is recording this intro on New Year’s Day, 2019. Marc and his wife have permanently relocated to Ajijic, Mexico. Their Austin condo has been rented. The Millers have greatly simplified their lives and drastically reduced their expenses, all while improving their mental and physical health. [2:48] Looking forward 18 months ago, this is not what the Millers would have expected. Marc will share more on that, next week. [3:00] This week, Marc has a great interview with Elizabeth White, author of Fifty-Five, Underemployed, and Faking Normal: Your Guide to a Better Life. Marc shares her bio. [4:24] Marc will be publishing two separate book reviews of Elizabeth’s book in the coming weeks, written by two members of the Career Pivot Community. One, to be published on January 7, almost simultaneously with the podcast and the other will publish in a few weeks. The book’s official release date is January 8, 2019. [4:49] Marc especially loved Elizabeth White’s story about her relationship with Elijah, and how that relationship gave her perspective. Marc hopes you will enjoy this interview and pick up a copy of her book. [5:04] Marc welcomes Elizabeth White to the podcast and invites her to share her compelling story. [5:24] No one aspires to be the poster child for ‘Broke and Near-broke Boulevard.’ Elizabeth landed there, as many people do, through an event. For some it could be job loss, medical diagnosis, divorce, or something that sets a ‘before-X’ and ‘after-X’ mark in your life. [6:18] During the Great Recession, Elizabeth lost two really good consultancies within six months. Elizabeth was in her mid-fifties with a great employment and education background, but her phone never rang. She used to have a network that would let her hear about jobs before they posted but most of her network was retired. [7:30] Elizabeth wrote an essay describing what it felt like to land there, going from choice of careers to downward mobility. Weeks turned into months and months turned into years where she was getting little, short assignments, but nothing near earning what she was accustomed to earn. [8:08] Elizabeth started to notice that friends were going through the same experience and they talked with each other. The essay she wrote talked about what it was like to be part of the ‘formerly’ and ‘used to be.’ Elizabeth sent it around and it made its way onto the PBS Facebook page. Within three days it had 11K likes and 1K comments. [8:46] The comments were from people saying, this is my story, my husband's story or my daughter’s story. How come we’re not having this conversation? Elizabeth read every comment and she was astonished at the universal reach of her story. [9:08] Elizabeth had the background to look at the data. She was shocked at the magnitude of the retirement income crisis. We’re not talking about it. People sent her long emails messages with story after story of older people who felt like they had done everything right, got jettisoned from the workforce, and could not get back in. [10:05] Elizabeth met with some people who were in the D.C. area or were passing through. Some became friends. Elizabeth started to look more into what was happening to people. She couldn’t find the book that she wanted to read. She didn’t want a dense, scholarly tome but a story from somebody who was having this lived experience. [10:44] Elizabeth wrote her book in the model of standing at her back fence, talking to her neighbor about what it means to land here. She understood that the cavalry was not coming and there would be no big rescue to address these millions of people who landed there. [11:14] The median savings for near-retirees 55 to 64 is $15,000. The middle 40% of earners in that category have $60,000 saved. People talk about the longevity bonus, which is that people in good health in their early 60s have easily another 20 years of life. $15K to $60K doesn’t stretch to cover for 20 years. [12:10] Economist Teresa Ghilarducci says 40% of middle-class near-retirees are looking at poverty and near-poverty conditions in old age. These are not irresponsible ‘bad apples’ who’ve landed here. These are not the marginalized, chronic poor. These are people who are OK and are now looking at downward mobility. [12:59] Boomers do not have pensions. Boomers are in an ‘I don’t want you’ job market. Boomers are looking at escalating costs in housing and healthcare and facing $1.5 trillion in education debt. [13:24] So, why is all the conversation around retirement ‘happy talk’? We hear cool reinvention stories when the truth is that millions of people are trying to figure out how they are going to make ends connect to support themselves over the next 20 years. [14:03] Marc came up with ‘career pivot’ because you don’t go from being an engineer to a pastry chef. You make incremental changes. Marc formed his online community for everyone who feels alone in their circumstances. Boomers were raised not to talk about employment. When they graduated, if they couldn’t get a job, they were ‘screwups.’ [14:51] Elizabeth talks about ‘resilience circles’ as she mentions in her book. What saved her, during the worst part of it, was having a small group of people she could tell the truth to, and not fake normal. She had one friend with whom she would trade $300 back and forth when she or her friend had the need. [15:39] Elizabeth and her friend would play a game of ‘top this,’ comparing their money woes. The worst tale of woe won. Elizabeth appreciated having someone to listen to her difficulties. A group started meeting, not only to share stories but also to share information about community and agency resources. [17:04] A resilience circle helps you not to be alone. When you face burdens alone, you’ll get ‘full up’ of emotion. If you don’t have a circle to share it with first, that emotion will leak out of you in a job interview or a meeting about an opportunity and the person interviewing you will sense there is something there that they don’t want on their team. [18:01] The resilience circle allows you to vent and get some of your frustration and upset out of your system so you don’t leak it where it’s not appropriate to leak it. [18:21] Elizabeth suggests that if you are not comfortable announcing to your friendship circle that you are in this situation, look for a nearby library that could work with you to organize a community resilience circle. Or see if your church has a group that is getting out of debt, or setting financial goals together. [19:37] Elizabeth says, you’re going to have some bad days. You’re going to feel despair. You’re going to have some people that you thought were going to help you, not help you and it’s going to rock you. [20:01] When you’ve lost confidence, you’ll need someone to remind you who you are, what you know, and what you can bring. You’re not going to always be able to pull that out of yourself. In this period, when you are without a map and without a net, you are going to need old-school community. [20:47] Elizabeth has some great stories. She talks about her story of Elijah that she included in the book. She had coffee with him the day of this interview. She had seen him for years around town. He is always barefoot, except for flip-flops he wears when he goes into shops. He always wears cut-off jeans. [22:01] Elizabeth wanted to know his story. In a park she found him and they started a conversation. Elijah suggested they get together and Elizabeth was intrigued. She suggested The Potter’s House. What Elizabeth liked was his freedom from striving. He heard Elizabeth’s story about her rough stretch and gave her a ‘soft place to land.’ [23:52] Elizabeth and Elijah started meeting regularly. Elijah could ‘go off the grid’ in his ideas. Elizabeth will say, “Elijah, I can’t go with you there,’ and he accepts that. Mostly, he’s right there with her. [24:47] In a rough period, Elizabeth needed to borrow from him. She was telling her situation and he told her he was in a position to help. She borrowed $2,500, feeling a combination of gratitude and shame. Looking at him, he was not a guy who could help. [25:29] Her shame came from realizing that for most of her life, she had been in a position where she could help. She thought of the people she had looked at without seeing, such as a friend eating at a restaurant with her, not being able to afford more than a soup and a starter, putting $7 of gas in their SUV or going without a haircut. [26:35] Elizabeth thought of the times she could have easily picked up their meal and didn’t offer. [26:46] Elijah has Veteran’s benefits and he is not homeless but he lives very modestly and spends no money on clothes. He came to her mother’s family Christmas dinner in Bermuda shorts, a shirt, and sandals. He was welcomed there. Elizabeth meets him for a couple of hours close to once a month or six weeks. [29:07] Marc suggests that Elijah is one of the people who doesn’t judge Elizabeth and she doesn’t judge him. Marc talks about Making Stuff Up disorder. Elizabeth felt ‘seen,’ not for her credentials or her successes but for herself. [30:15] Elizabeth shares about the holiday season where there are expectations about things you would do, or donate to, or how much a dinner with friends will cost. It can be a minefield. It is exhausting to evaluate everything against its affordability. She visited a friend recently and they just sat together for six hours. She fell asleep on her couch. [32:00] Elizabeth had a green apple and her friend had some nut spread and a bottle of wine and they shared it and watched a movie. It was comforting for them to know each other’s ‘walk she’s on.’ Elizabeth has a few friends who are ‘right here’ where she is. They have become an extended resilience circle. [32:35] Every now and then you will not be included in something because everyone knows you cannot afford it. She doesn’t have words to describe how that feels. You don’t feel sorry for yourself and you don’t want them to feel sorry for you. Elizabeth lost her mother this year, so she is a little more sensitive to things.[34:27] Maybe you used to be able to cover an ice cream cone for your grandchild or take them to a movie but now you have to ask your son or daughter to pay for it; maybe you cannot help with your mother’s nursing home expenses. The ‘money piece’ is harder during the holiday season. [35:08] Marc frustrates people who want to know what to get him for Christmas. Nothing — he is done accumulating stuff! In moving to Mexico he just got rid of all of it! His self-worth is not related to the stuff he has. [35:44] In the second half of Elizabeth’s book she talks a lot about different ways of living in the second half of life, from health to living arrangements, to living more affordably into our nineties. Marc asks Elizabeth to share some thoughts. [36:08] While Elizabeth was writing, a friend, doing her hair, told her the book better not be a talkathon! She told her to include information and resources. Elizabeth wanted to make sure that this book was chock-a-block full of resources. [36:39] The biggest expenditure for most of us, after healthcare, is housing. After housing, many people can ‘extreme coupon it’ the rest of the way. So Elizabeth covers housing options, from tiny houses, co-housing, other shared housing, multi-generational housing, to moving to Mexico where they could live on their Social Security income. [37:45] Choosing housing is a process of determining your space needs. Can you keep up your current home or is it time to consider other options? A lot of Boomers are living by themselves and are isolated. Maybe, to make ends meet, more of us are going to have to start thinking about living together. [38:57] Elizabeth has included a lot of resources about home sharing, including security checks and credit checks. [39:55] In some ways, the book wrote itself. It was her conversations with lots of people who have landed where she’s landed, and how they improvised and figured it out. They shared their experiences of flourishing and floundering. Boomers are the first generation that will live this long lifespan, both healthy and active. [40:36] There are no rules, role models, or roadmaps, yet for how to make the money stretch. There are no policies or supportive networks, yet. We are figuring this out as we go along. What can we learn from each other? The government’s not doing a lot. [40:56] How are we, who are living this, making this work on housing, on income, on how we navigate with our friends and family? [41:08] Marc says, you are not going to do this alone. You are not alone. Yes, we are making this stuff up as we go along. We’re improvising. [41:25] Marc just finished reading Elizabeth’s book and there are some great stories in it. It officially comes out on January 8, 2019. It will be available on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Elizabeth’s contact information is in the back of the book. She likes to hear from people. Also, reach Elizabeth at FakingNormal@Yahoo.com. [42:33] Through this writing process, Elizabeth has made some very good friends who reached out to her. Elizabeth has formed ‘a family’ and she wants you to form a family of support, as well. This book is a tool to help you do that. [43:07] Marc thanks Elizabeth for being on the Repurpose Your Career podcast. Marc hopes you will consider getting her book and also passing it along to a friend. [43:31] Susan Lahey and Marc are working on the next edition of Repurpose Your Career, and Marc is looking for your help. Marc is forming a release team of readers who will get access to pre-release chapters of the book to provide feedback. [43:45] By the time this podcast episode is published, Marc will have released the first chapter to the release team. You can be part of this team by going to CareerPivot.com/RYCTeam where you can sign up. [44:03] When you sign up, you’ll receive the pre-release versions of chapters when they become available. What Marc asks in return is that you provide feedback and be prepared to write a review on Amazon.com when the book is released. [44:17] Marc and Susan are adding around eight new chapters to the book and re-writing several others. Marc will release a new pre-release chapter on the podcast and to the team every few months. [44:34] The CareerPivot.com/Community website has become a valuable resource for almost 50 members who are participating in the Beta phase of this project. Marc is now recruiting members for the next cohort. [44:46] If you are interested in the endeavor and would like to be put on the waiting list, please go to CareerPivot.com/Community. When you sign up you’ll receive information about the community as it evolves. Those in the initial cohorts will get to set the direction for this endeavor. This is a paid membership community with special content. [45:19] Marc invites you to connect with him on LinkedIn.com/in/mrmiller. Just include in the connection request that you listen to this podcast. You can also look for Career Pivot on Facebook, LinkedIn, or @CareerPivot on Twitter. [45:48] Please come back next week, when Marc will review the podcast listeners’ survey and what he will be changing in the coming year. [46:01] You will find the show notes for this episode at CareerPivot.com/episode-109. [46:09] Please hop over to CareerPivot.com and subscribe to get updates to this podcast and all the other happenings at Career Pivot. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, and Stitcher, the Google Podcasts app, Podbean, Overcast app, or the Spotify app.

David is not doing well. So Elizabeth has decided to try to boost his spirits by recording a new episode on Aliens! We learn about dreadlocks, human and not so human anatomy, and we meet Roger