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Hello there this is Krista with Episode Number 118 on the Wag Out Loud pawdcast . Did you know that Chihuahuas share a common trait with human babies? Both are born with soft spots on their skulls that close up as they get older. Did you know that? Sponsor AdA big thank you to our friends at Bonne Et Filou! Like many of us, they believe that our dogs should be treated like royalty and that's why they created French-inspired dog macarons. Bonne and Filou, were the two favorite dogs of French King Louis XIV that were treated with a private chef, satin sheets, diamond collars, and more. And we want to pamper our pups too! These are not your ordinary dog treats, but handmade with human grade, all-natural ingredients, in packaging that looks better than what you buy for yourself. These are definitely the best gift for the dog who has everything. And unlike human macarons, these are actually healthy for dogs. Handmade in small batches right here in the US, these look so decadent that you'll want to try one! Isn't it time to give your dog the royal treatment?Use the code WOL to receive a 15% discount off of your first order at https://BonneEtFilou.comWelcome to the Wag Out Loud pawdcast where we are obsessed with bringing you helpful tips on canine health care, nutrition, and overall well being. If you'd like to support the show, check out the amazing online events, products and resources that I personally recommend on the Wag Out Loud website. I'm your host, Krista and I'm super excited to be bringing you yet another tail wagging episode.A big thank you to our friends at Bonne et Filou. Like many of us, they believe that our dogs should be treated like royalty and that's why they created French inspired dog macaroons. Bonne et Filou were the two favorite dogs of French King Louie XI4th that were treated with a private chef, satin sheets, diamond collars and more. And we want to pamper our pups too. These are not your ordinary dog treats, but handmade with human grade all natural ingredients and packaging that looks better than what you buy for yourself. These are definitely the best gift for the dog who has everything. And unlike human macaroons, these are actually healthy for dogs, handmade in small batches right here in the US. These look so decadent, that you'll want to try one. isn't it time to give your dog the royal treatment? use the code WOL to receive a 15% discount off of your first order at https://bonneetfilou.com/. That's https://bonneetfilou.com/. You can also find the link in the show notes.Hello, dog lovers. we so appreciate you for advocating for your dog's health. And today, our friend Emily O'Neil is going to share how You Can Take the Leash and Help Your Dog's Health. Emily, why don't you introduce yourself and tell us about why you are, “crazy for canines”.Emily is mom to Flynn, a 5-year-old Border Collie, as well as host for the podcast Dogs are the Best Friends where guests share stories about their best friends and Emily shares some hard earned wisdom on training and care. Emily and Flynn are about to travel in their tiny home on wheels to see her birth parents who she just found in the summer of 2019. She is sharing her story and travels on her YouTube channel: Emily O'Neil.Thank you so much Krista. I appreciate being here. I have my own podcast and I had you on I want to make sure that people know to go and listen to your episode as well. And I'm so grateful to have a friendship with you. Because we get it we are crazy for the canines. And we love our dogs so much they've taught us so much. And they inspire us all the time. And so on my podcast people, you know, they share their stories, their love of their dogs, what they've learned from them from training or health or whatever it is. And I'm grateful to be here because I learned a huge lesson through my dogs of how to advocate how to be pro dog and take care of my dogs in a way that sits well with me. And we all have to do that we have to be in charge of that we understand that, you know, we can take charge in that basically. So that's why I'm here today to do that. And I'm grateful to share my experiences and and to just, you know, to be able to speak on that because it's so close to my heart. I'm a researcher by trade. I'm a dog mom. And it just this is this is what I believe in. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you.I am so thrilled you're here. Right now you have Flynn, who is adorable. Why don't you tell us a little bit about him and what he means to you, you know the bond that you guys have?Yeah, Flynn is five years old. Now. I got him when he was one and a half. He was not a puppy. And I still can't believe I did that. Because I always said, Oh, they have to be a puppy so you can bond with them. But I had lost my beloved dog she was I call her my soul dog. That was my Mazie. And she was another Border Collie. And she passed on at 13 1/5. And sadly, it was due to cancer. I'll tell you that story, you know, in a little bit, but I was heartbroken. And I was so lonely and devastated that I thought I'd never want another dog part of me and the other part just couldn't live without a dog. So three months later, ended up finding Fynn and I went to find a puppy. But the the man said no, you know, you might like this dog. He is a year and a half. He's a very nice dog. And I went thinking No way. I'm going to get a puppy but I saw Flynn and he was so happy to see me and we just bonded in that few hours that I sat there and and petted him and played with him and get to know him. So Flynn is just a joyful friend that I'm so grateful for. He's definitely become a heart dog and I don't know he must be on the way to a soul dog too. he's a wonderful inspiration. Yes. That's a. great story. Well, am I right that you've had three dogs so far?As an adult. as a as a kid, we had a bunch. Yeah. And we weren't the best owners. I have to admit, up front straight up. Oh, gosh, definitely. And that the first dog Morgan, I learned a ton with her. I was not the best dog mom with her in the beginning, because I was so green I she was not well behaved. And I didn't feed her the best food. And yeah, she's the one that started off the learning process for sure. Yeah, what's great to say, I can start .Yeah, Morgie, Oh, my gosh, well, I got her as a puppy. She was adorable. She had just been spayed. I got her from the SPCA up in New York State, I lived in western New York at the time. And she was just so cute. I just was in love as soon as I found her, but I took her home and, you know, feeding her I'd like to say the brand, but you know, just really bad food. And the poor dog developed horrible skin problems. And she's this gorgeous dog, but she literally smelled and she had skin problems. And like she was itchy. And, you know, like the worst situation you can pick, you know, like the hot spots, everything the poor, the poor dog. And so I started to try to figure out what was wrong with her. And you know, you take them to the vet, and they say something, or they want to give them you know, different shots or different medicines and things. And I already was on the path of not believing in and just going ahead with what other people told me to do. So I started asking other people what they did, and doing research and looking into it the best I could. And the more questions I asked the more, you know, of course, more answers you get, but also it gives you you start to see patterns, like and people that you feel that you can trust, and you understand their point of view. And they also if they're somebody that really cares about the truth, they'll lead you to like, you know, different articles or books or whatever, that have great information. And I'm so grateful for the people that led me in the right direction for poor Morgan because she, you know, was just a tortured soul. I think to that point, because her mom just didn't know any better. But once I learned about raw food, and you know, like that, right there cleaned up 90% of her problems, getting her on the right food that was crucial. And then also just her mental health, I had to get her out more right walking and taking better care of her and training her giving her boundaries. So all that came together. And again, I'm grateful to the people that helped me, because that started me on the right path of looking for more natural ways to heal and heal myself. Right. We learn through our dogs sometimes. Sure. And then we realized we can apply it to ourselves, which, you know, sometimes it's backwards, but that's us humans. were we sometimes care more about our dogs than ourselves. So yeah.Ok. So, there's a happy ending with Morgan. How long did that whole process and journey take to get her back on the road to wellness?You know, this is like over 20 years ago. So trying to think I think it was, you know, it took months to detox. There's all that junk that was in that food, like corn, corn is like the worst thing for dogs, right? So there's things like that, I'd say, probably a year before she didn't need a bath every week, we could go like, you know, and Morgie never got to go beyond like a couple months. My other dogs can go beyond a couple months without a bath. But Morgan, I think because of that start, you know, and then I also let her get all the vaccinations that they always told me she should have. And I believe that is another reason that poor Morgan needed a bath like every four to six weeks. But yeah, I say within a year, she had detoxed a lot in her skin, and her body and her stomach, everything was just so much better. And speaking of vaccinations, just really quick, I have to make sure I share this, I would let her get the distemper shot because of course it's recommended every year. And the last time she got it. She was almost five years old. And she came home and she was a completely different dog. And I know that sounds dramatic and ridiculous to some people but she literally was not my Morgie. She was not as sweet, or as patient or anything. She just became a different dog. She was not. She didn't want to be touched, you know, like snuggled anything. And so that was a huge red flag to me that I needed to research like, are these things really needed or not? And so after that, with Morgan and every dog since I do not over vaccinate, I refuse to give my dogs everything that they recommend other than what I have to do by state law, which in Florida and New York state where I used to live you know, that's rabies. But yeah, I'd recommend people really do some research on that too. Just so your dog doesn't become a different dog. It broke my heart but I learned again on poor Morgan right. my first dog so yeah, Well, she was there for a reason. She was your teacher. Yeah. Very true. Yeah. I hope she forgives me. Thank God. Yes. Is True, very true.Okay, so that was Morgan. And then your second dog.Yeah, Mazie. So Mazie, I guess, I would say that Morgan was so smart, I had to get a border collie, because Morgie was a mixed dog, she was supposed to be a German Shepherd. And actually think she was a German Shepherd or a Malinois and a coyote. I know sounds ridiculous, but it's true. So I got a border collie. And Mazie was, again, my soul dog. I just loved that. We just clicked and she wanted so much to please me and do what I want. And that's one of the great things about their brains, but they're high energy, and I also called her Crazy Mazie, because she was. So Mazie Lou, she, Oh, my gosh, when she was nine months old, I was already in love with her. She developed this tumor on her throat, that just kept growing, I felt it grow all the way up to the size of like the top half of my thumb, it got to be pretty big. And I took her into the vet. And the vet said, You know, I could cut it out. It might grow back, I don't know what to tell you. And she did withdraw a syringe full of fluid out of it. And it took a couple of days. And then she got back to me, called me and said, You know that fluid is pre cancerous. And that was devastating because I thought I could lose my dog in months. Or maybe maybe she'll even be around a couple years. But you know, you're already crazy about your nine month puppy, and you don't want them to go anywhere. So what happened was my friend had been bothering me, I call it to try what she I called it her crazy energy medicine, which I know sounds not very nice. But that's what it was to me. I did not understand the concept of it at all. And so I told her, I said, Well, my dog has been diagnosed with pre cancerous fluid in this tumor that will stop growing. And the vet doesn't know what to do. So if you and your crazy energy medicine can fix my dog, I will believe in it. And so what happened was that my friend tested her and discovered that she had all these different toxins in her body from the vaccinations, like the cocktail shots, that they like to give puppies, and yes, very scary. And so we detoxed her and I kid you not, with that one first remedy, but went all the way down to the size of a pea within like a week, maybe two weeks or something, it's been a little while sorry, it was like within two weeks. And then it went down to nothing, and it never came back. And so that was my that was that convinced me that there's obviously other ways to heal the body, whether it's dogs or humans, or whatever it is. And so Morgie started me on the path of eating right and looking at those things. But then Mazie started me on the path of looking at completely different types of modalities that I might never have considered before. Because they just seemed just not logical to me. But once I started studying, and looking at the different ways that people are able to heal, and your shows, your episodes really help highlight that. There's so many different things that people are using to help their dogs, whether it's CBD oil, or you know, whatever you have, of course, food always and like you said you had mushrooms on recently. So there's, there's so many ways that people can help. And I know that can seem overwhelming. But I would just say start looking start asking questions. And you might be surprised at what can actually help your dog heal. A lot of people don't believe in homeopathy. I do. I've seen it work I've seen it help heal. Well, me and my dogs to be honest with you. So I think that if we let ourselves learn, like you said, Morgan was my first teacher, Mazie was my second teacher, I'm learning things with Flynn as I go. And if we let our dogs teach us, you know, it's just, it's amazing. It can literally be the difference between death and life. Now, I did lose Mazie years later to cancer, but that was 13 and a half? Well, let's say she's nine months or so, over 12 years later. So I got 12 years with that dog. I mean, and what amazing 12 years we had. we traveled all over and just had a wonderful life together. So was it worth it? Yeah, it's totally worth it. And I'm grateful. So again, my second teacher. Yes, it is.So when you say homeopathy with Mazie, what was that? Yeah. Besides the energy work, herbs, or did she have acupuncture or anything else as far as treatments?Yeah, yeah, good question. That's a really good question, because I don't believe in just one modality. So in her case, we did this thing that, you know, basically, it's really hard to explain, but I'm going to try to do it. And I actually became a practitioner, I studied and I became a practitioner because I became to believe in it so much, and I would work on dogs and people up in New York state when I used to do it. But what happens is you can actually test the body, through kinesiology to see where the weaknesses in the body, you know, so let's say in the heart, and then you can test to see which toxins are actually making the body sick, it might be just one, it might be a few different things going on. And you can actually carefully detox it out of the body so that it can heal. And then you can go on and keep helping the body heal and see what comes up the next time. So that is actually what we were using with that first initial remedy, that helped get rid of that tumor. And then I kept going, and we kept detoxing, and they explain it and I think someone was on your show before they explained this too, but it's like, an onion, and you have to pull off the layers, you know, to get get down into really, how we're supposed to be much healthier, and we are healthier when we're born. But all the toxins in our environment, our food and everything really add up. And so it adds on these layers that your body's trying to fight through. And we can help our bodies. And that's one of them, that's one way to do it. And there's different practitioners that do that all over the world. And so that that's something that I still help, you know, work on myself and my dogs with that. And then also homeopathy dovetails nicely, because that is, that is like, something that's natural that the body knows how to deal with. But if the, you know, how do I say…the symptoms, if they're looking like that, then and even if it's not related, let's say it's like a bee sting, like you're having the symptoms of a bee sting. And if you give your dog, you know that remedy, the homeopathic remedy can actually help the body know what to do, and heal that as well. And then there's Yeah, there's acupoints like hands on pushing at different points to their bodies that can help them heal. So there's so many different ways that we can learn. And I know people might seem over overwhelmed at first. So just start with one start to learn about one and figure out what you're comfortable with. I've used everything from tuning forks, which I, when I first heard that, at that, that was crazy. But let's face it, when we hear music that we enjoy, that lifts our spirits, it is healing. And so the same thing with the tuning forks. Yeah, it's like this, again, it's kind of energy, but it's, it's the tuning forks, I have are musical notes. And there's just, it's beautiful. And I was able to help a neighbor the other day, who is in extreme pain, and we were able to reduce her pain. And she had more movements, like within 20 minutes in her neck, which was totally frozen before that. So these things are powerful. They get, like, I hate to say it, but you know, often what Western medicine doesn't take them into account. And if you can find a doctor that's open minded, and does, you know is willing to entertain that that's wonderful. But it can be tough. And sometimes you have to take their advice and maybe even use their medical tests or something if you want and then look at other possibilities. like find other ways that you can help your dog heal. And and yourself. To be honest, I think this goes along with all living beings. There's different ways I was even able to help a llama I used to have with a remedy. So yeah, it can be for anybody. It's a big deal.So now you have Flynn. And he's five years. Yeah. So is he 100% healthy? Or did he bring you something that says, Hey, Mom, check this out? What should we do? Right? Yes, he's the most difficult dog I've ever had with his stomach. He likes different foods, he'll grab different things. See, but it doesn't mean his stomach will like it. So we've had to, you know, go, he can't do raw, which just breaks my heart. I totally believe in Raw. So I do the raw of freeze dried patties. And that has helped him tremendously. He is, oh gosh, I'd say he's like 90% better in that area. And it took me it took that actually took about two years for his gut to heal. And that was adding in like some greens and, you know, just different things that I had to figure out. And through Kinesiology and I can, you know, people can actually look it up, you can teach yourself how to test different foods and things to make sure that it's okay for you or for your dog. And it might be okay, one day and not the next. It just depends on our bodies. Right. And the sleep we've had and the sleep they've had or whatever, or even the water what kind of water have they had to drink today or something too. So I yeah, it's interesting. I thought Flynn. Oh, he'll be perfect. I know what to do about everything. Now. No, no. Yes, yeah. And we're all individuals aren't we like Flynn. You know, he's had I would say probably some trauma. He was flown over from Ireland when he was six months old. And I don't know it was I hope he was in the cargo or something. I don't know. But you know, that was quite a shock for his little body to go through. And then a man that had him before he sold him to me, you know, he had him almost a year, and then he had to change homes again. And I knew that how does that not affect them? So I think he was just a nervous bellied pup, you know, like, he had different nervous things. And he had to know I was never going to give him up. And, you know, now he has me wrapped around his paw, of course, because he's just a wonderful dog. But I think all these things add up, and just like our own trauma can add up and actually damage our body. Same thing with dogs. So Flynn had a nervous stomach, it's come along way. That's not to say that we can have a setback. we will go a couple months and all sudden, you know, he can have some serious problems. And that that means like, you know, diarrhea or whatever. So we have to then figure out what happened and back up and, you know, if I want to change his food, I have to do it. So carefully, like half a teaspoon, starting to incorporate it and change it. So, yeah, just a heads up to folks that, you know, just because you think you learned it all. No, that's not how the universe seems to work. So what do you recommend for people? You know, because most of us learn by Oh, my dog was just diagnosed with XYZ, I guess I better figure it out. Now. What is this? Right? versus? Okay, I have a brand new dog, a new rescue, I have a new puppy. How do I set them up for success? So yeah, you can't learn everything right off the bat, because you have no idea what their body is going to do throughout their lives. So are you saying food for sure. Not over vaccinating, plenty of exercise, both physical and mental. And then learn about these other integrative or holistic techniques that do work. And that when you need them, you know, be open to it. Is that a good summary?Yeah, that's excellent. Absolutely. I mean, food is not cheap. But I would rather spend the money on the food than on, you know, the vet bills. Yeah, totally. Because they're so expensive and heartbreaking. And it's scary. You don't know what's wrong with your dog. So yeah, yeah. All that you said, you know, they need training for their mental stimulation, the physical, the food, everything that you can do. And then there's still going to be things like little Flynn here, you know, there's different things that, you know, set their body off in different ways. You know, and when we're stressed, it just passes on to our dogs. I really believe that. And so, yeah, and I was just sharing with you before we started that, right now, I'm going through a little bit of a health crisis of my own, and that stuff keeps you humble, of course, too. But it also goes to your dog. And so I think sometimes when I'm exhausted and stressed, you know, it's just really, you know, Flynn feels it. So, I yeah, I would recommend that people start with those basics that are so key to all of us, and into our dogs, they really need that. And that's a great foundation, and then look at the different issues that are coming up. And I honestly believe in taking notes. Take notes, like on certain days, if your dog you know, if it's having some problems, you know, and try to see what's going on around you did they just spray the lawn or your neighbor's lawn? You know, look at all the things that are going on. Look at the season, maybe you know, Flynn has horrible pollen allergies, oh my gosh, he's, I cannot believe how bad he was itching a few weeks ago. But in Florida, we just had the pollen just dumped, seemed to dump off in the trees, basically, the oak trees and things and pine was back in February. And it just he'll have ups and downs just from that alone. And he becomes very itchy. And it's not from his food, he doesn't ask him promise because that is because of the environment. So my boy is incredibly sensitive to any kind of thing like that. And so then what I've been doing with him is like the acupoints. And of course the best food I can give him and and he does have to be rinsed off, I don't believe in giving them you know, bath after bath with the soap and things. But I do rinse him off. He needs that pollen and that spray off of him. And that's the thing in Florida, there's major spraying people are, you know, we're really in a humid environment. So yeah, bugs are a problem. But they are trying to solve it, you know, for all these years with spraying. Oh, gosh, yeah, it's horrible. So I think the biggest thing is, yeah, be an advocate for your dog. Number one, go ahead if you want to have the test done and things but it doesn't mean you have to solve it the way that your vet is telling you to solve it. And I'm not saying that they have no value. Of course, ideally, you can find a vet that you do trust, and that you can have open dialogue about you know what you want to do and see if they know anything or are willing to work with you. But also I think we have to go with our gut. There's nothing wrong with saying to yourself, I'm not comfortable with this solution. I'm not comfortable with that idea. So let me go and research it, and take some time to figure this out. So I think, too often we, you know, and we do, we were like, We're exhausted, right? We want to be able to just take what somebody says, go do it. But if you can, step back a moment, go with your gut, and take your time and start asking your friends or ask people that you trust, you know, they, and they might be, you know, the I, that's one of the first people that taught me, I found a wonderful dog food, you know, pet food store owner. And so she actually, not only, you know, sold things, but you know, which, because then sometimes we think, oh, they're just about the sales. No, this woman truly wanted to educate people. And she was tremendous. I can't say enough about her. So if you can find someone like that wonderful. But I think if you can start reading different journals, like I love the Whole Dog Journal, that is a phenomenal journal. So good. And so start there and start reading it, see which writers you trust. And then you know, they might have books or other articles, and start there. And just know that you can empower yourself. There's, I was just looking, for example, at Colorado, like I know, Florida's resources, right, but I wanted to see what does Colorado have. And so Colorado, has completely free databases that you can research and look for articles. And so that's where you can go start looking and looking for, you know, look for articles there. And completely free the state pays for it, use those resources, and empower yourself to, to know that you have your gut, you have your feeling about something for a reason. You might like I had a dog come to me when I was in New York State practicing, and they had recommended this certain type of food. And it turns out their food had cranberries in it, and the dog was allergic to cranberries. So yeah, go with your gut. And if you feel like you know, if you know the food caused it, you know, and if you can find somebody that can help you figure out what's wrong with it. Great. But otherwise, take the food bag, get your money back and try something else. Yeah, I think it's so crucial that and I just as a researcher, myself, I just want people to know that the information is out there. And don't necessarily go to Google. I know everybody wants to because it's easy. But please use some of these really good resources, like the Whole Dog Journal or other things that you've talked about a ton of resources on your episodes. So they definitely need to listen to those. And if they haven't heard them, go back and listen again. Because, yeah, it's crucial. And it's worth it. It's worth it. And don't, don't get overwhelmed. Everybody can do it. If I can do it, anybody can do it.Well, that's a good point, Emily, because you are such a huge believer and community. And there are others out there who are going through what you're going through. So you don't need to feel alone there. You know, there's groups, there's forums, there's so many resources to your point. Well, as we are wrapping up, again, Emily hosts, the Dogs are the Best Friend's podcast, which is awesome, great guests. great stories. So Emily, what is the main takeaway that you've learned from all of your interviews on the show?Oh wow! that dogs are such wonderful friends to us. They teach us they challenge us, they help us grow. And their love is just like, unlike any other really, there's just nothing like it. I've had people that have shared horrible times that they've gone through. Or, for example, there's one young woman that came on, and she was her dog was supposed to be trained to alert her. And sadly, it wasn't very well trained. So she had to give, give it some more training. And then they came to realize that the dog was not only alerting for her diabetes, but it also is alerting for another condition that she has. So I think if we just remember that, to listen to our dogs, and to appreciate them, and to see what they're trying to teach us like like you said before, Morgan was my teacher. Mazie was my teacher, and Flynn's teaching me as well. And I'm just grateful for all the stories that people share because they just bring life and light and sometimes encouragement when people need it. Like if their dog wasn't behaving well. And I just hope that people will come and have a listen and enjoy. Like you said, it's a community we love our dogs and are crazy for our canines and and it just helps to kind of bring a little bit of light into those dark times that we have sometimes too.I so agree with you. Well, Emily, where can everybody find out more information about you and your podcast? Dogs are the Best Friends and I know you've already started a YouTube channel as well.Yeah, yeah, it's https://dogsarethebestfriends.com/ is the website and you can find me also on Instagram. @dogsarethebestfriendscom for the account for that, too. And then we are actually on Facebook, we have a small community on there as well just to share fun stories and funny memes and things like that. And also just encourage each other there too. And that Yeah, and then the YouTube I know it's so funny. I don't have enough going on. right but the the YouTube channel is just to share some fun stories about Fynn and I we are on a very interesting adventure. I found my birth parents just in the summer of 2019. And that was huge. That was life changing. So I will get to go see my you know, my birth family as I call them this summer, and I will share those journeys with people in the lessons and also the good and bad of like converting a cargo trailer. Because I've learned from that as well. And I'd love to have people join me on the journey. It'll make it more interesting. Right. So thank you so much for having me. Amazing.We so appreciate all of your insight. And thank you to Flynn, Mazie and Morgan for doing their part and teaching you and therefore teaching us so safe journey. I can't wait to hear about your adventure. And thank you for being with us and being an amazing dog mom.Thank you so much, Krista. You're the best. Truly, thank you so much.Sponsor AdThanks again to the team at Bonne et Filou. for sponsoring this episode. Treat your dog like royalty and use the code WOL to receive a 15% discount off of your first order by going to https://bonneetfilou.com/ link is in the show notes. Thanks for listening. You'll find some helpful links in the show notes and if you enjoy the show, please be sure to follow and listen for free on your favorite podcast app. And please please share your feedback. Visit https://www.wagoutloud.com/ for great product recommendations with discounts, amazing online events and fantastic resources. That's also where to visit our Bark About It page where you can suggest topics, guests or products. Be advised that this show offers health or nutritional information and is designed for educational purposes only. you're encouraged to do your own research and should not rely on this information as a substitute for nor does it replace professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. If you have any concerns or questions about your dog's health, you should always consult a veterinarian or a nutrition expert. Have a tail wagging day and we'll catch you next time. Hey Winston was that another tail wagging episode?Thanks for Listening!Thanks so much for tuning in again this week. Have some feedback you'd like to share? Leave a note in the Bark About it section. Or you can click on the social media buttons to share an episode.Special thanks to Emily O'Neil for being on the show. Catch you next time!Also, don't forget to Subscribe for FREE and please leave a review: Apple Podcasts | Android | Spotify I Stitcher I iHeartRADIOThe purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. It is no substitute for professional care by a veterinarian, licensed nutritionist or other qualified professional. The host as well as guests who speak on this podcast express their own opinions, experience and conclusions, and Wag Out Loud LLC neither endorses or opposes any particular views discussed here.

Despite its name, Wisconsin's 1,200 mile Ice Age Trail mostly attracts thru-hikers during summer. But for professional gardener Emily Ford, a winter thru-hike aligned better with her schedule. So Emily and an Alaskan husky named Diggins post-holed through knee-deep snow and watched their breath turn to ice in their tent. Emily drank cream by the carton, and boiled snow for water. After 69 days on the trail, she became just the second person, and the first woman, to thru-hike the Ice Age Trail during the dead of winter. She also formed an unbreakable bond with her four-legged companion. Tune in to find out how (and why) Emily took on this midwestern beast during the dead of winter. Follow Emily on Instagram for another window into her life. Also make sure to check out the Out and Back Podcast on Instagram.Remember, podcast listeners get a Discount on a Gaia GPS Membership!

„Morgens immer mütend“ titelte die Süddeutsche Zeitung am 24. März 2021. Die Mischung aus „wütend“ und „müde“ beschreibt gerade ein allgemeines Gefühl. Mütend soll das neue pandemische Kollektivgefühl sein. Mit diesem Begriff beschrieb in einem vielbeachteten Facebook-Post die Ärztin Carola Holzner, was 13 Monate Pandemie und das „politische Rumgeeiere“ bei ihr auslöst. Die Müdigkeit, das Gefühl der Erschöpfung kann ich sehr gut nachvollziehen. Mit Wut kann ich persönlich nicht so viel anfangen. In dieser Podcastfolge setzen wir uns mit der Emotion Wut auseinander. Wut ist eine Kraft – wie Wasser oder Strom. Eine Kraft, die Großes schaffen kann, aber auch zerstören kann. Wut entsteht aufgrund der Bewertung „Das ist falsch!“. Voraussetzung dafür ist, dass man selbst eine klare Position hat. In unserer Gesellschaft erlebe ich den Umgang und die Bewertung von Wut als ambivalent. Zum Teil wird Aggressivität des Managers in Verhandlungen durchaus geschätzt („jetzt hat er aber mal mit der Faust auf dem Tisch gehauen“). Zum Teil wird Wut aber auch als unkontrolliert und kindisch angesehen. Nicht von ungefähr sprechen wir abwertend von „Wutbürgern“. Sowohl ein Zuviel als auch ein Zuwenig an Wut kann schaden. Wenn wir nicht in der Lage sind, Wut zuzulassen, zu spüren, fällt es uns eher schwer, Position zu beziehen. Es kann schwierig sein, Grenzen zu setzen, „Nein“ zu sagen. Wenn wir allerdings cholerisch, aggressiv reagieren, können wir anderen und auch uns schaden. Der bewusste Umgang mit der Emotion ist daher hilfreich. Das gelingt uns, indem wir „Emotionsforscher“ werden, unseren Emotionen mit Neugier, Mut und Mitgefühl begegnen. Indem wir anstatt „Ich bin wütend“ sagen „Ich fühle mich wütend“ kann ich Abstand zu der Emotion herstellen. Hierzu sehr spannend Susan David in ihrem Buch „Emotionale Beweglichkeit“ und Marc Brackett in „Permission to feel“. Emotionen sind wie Tunnel: sie haben einen Anfang, eine Mitte und ein Ende. So Emily und Amelia Nagoski in ihrem Buch „Burnout – Solve Your Stress Cycle”. Die zwei Autorinnen zeigen auf, wie wichtig es ist, den Stress-Kreislauf aufzulösen. Sie sprechen in ihrem Buch davon, dass wir viele Stress-Kreisläufe in unserem Körper gespeichert haben als Reaktion auf stressige Situationen. Um durch den Tunnel bis zum Ende durchzukommen und damit die Emotion zu beenden, empfehlen die Autorinnen 7 Aktionen: 1. Körperliche Bewegung – Sport, Tanzen, um die körperliche Anspannung zu lösen 2. Bewusste Atmung – tiefe Bauchatmung reguliert das vegetative Nervensystem und aktiviert den Parasympathikus 3. Positive soziale Interaktionen – ein Lächeln, ein Kompliment, Wertschätzung gibt dem Körper das Signal, das er entspannen kann 4. Lachen – lautes, echtes, unkontrolliertes Lachen löst Stressymptome 5. Umarmung – schon 20 Sekunden sorgen für einen Wechsel der Hormone 6. Weinen – the good old cry – lost emotionale und körperliche Anspannung 7. Kreative Aktivitäten – Malen, Töpfern, Stricken, Fotoalben kleben, … verändert die Hormone im Körper und entspannt. Probier es aus! Was bringt Dich runter? Wie kannst Du regelmässig die im Körper angesammelten Stress-Kreisläufe wieder auflösen? Wie kommst Du durch den Tunnel?

Vanessa Schneider:  Hello and welcome to the Government Digital Service podcast. My name is Vanessa Schneider and I am Senior Channels and Community Manager at GDS. Today, we are looking back as fondly as we can on 2020. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that this was a momentous year and we have many reasons to be proud of what our organisation and our colleagues have achieved.    What better way to reflect on the year than to ask a couple of my colleagues to put their knowledge to the test? We're going to see who has been paying attention to GDS happenings in 2020. Please welcome my guests Louise Harris and Kit Clark.   Louise Harris:  Hey, Vanessa, good to be here.   Vanessa Schneider:  Great to have you on, Lou. Do you mind telling us what you do at GDS and to spice things up a little bit for the end of the year, maybe a fun fact about yourself?   Louise Harris:  Sure. Well, of course, we know each other very well, Vanessa, because I have the pleasure of working with you in the Creative Team. But for everybody else, I'm Lou and I head up the Channels and Creative Team at GDS. I'm a relatively new starter - I'm one of our lockdown joiners because I joined in May 2020. In terms of a fun fact, it may surprise some of you given my accent to know that I'm a fluent Welsh speaker.   Vanessa Schneider:  You sou-I-do you sound very Welsh? You know what? We've got to put it to the test. Can you tell me what the team is called that you work for in Welsh?    Louise Harris:  Ok, this is something I think I can do. So I'll give you my intro again in Welsh. Louise Harris dw’ i, a rwy’n gweithio yn y Tim Creadigol a Sianeli yng Ngwasanaeth Digidol y Llywodraeth.   Vanessa Schneider:  Ok, anybody who knows Welsh, you've got to contact us and tell us if she got it right or not. Kit, would you mind introducing yourself?    Kit Clark:  Sure. My name's Kit, I'm an Engagement Manager within the Strategic Engagement Function. An interesting fact I suppose about myself, is that my uncle composed the Eastenders theme tune. So that's something I always, always bring out in introductions.   Vanessa Schneider:  I was warned that your interesting fact would be amazing. And I think it does live up to that disclaimer. I think that is a very, very fun fact indeed.   Louise Harris:  I was not warned that your fun fact was going to be as good Kit, I'm so impressed by that. What a claim to fame.   Vanessa Schneider:  I think I might just start with the quiz. Of course, if you're at home, you can play along if you like. Just make sure to keep score as you go, as I'll be sharing the answer after each question.   So let's start with the first question of the quiz.    Here it is: what was the most popular GDS podcast episode in 2020? So what topic do you think was in the most popular episode? I'll take that as an answer.    [horn noise]    Louise Harris:  I'm presuming that we're excluding this episode from the list of most popular ones, so it's the most popular one before this one, right?    Vanessa Schneider:  Yes. I'm afraid we don't have any foresight, so it'll have to be one from January to November.    Louise Harris:  OK, well I think we've had some really great guests and different people from across government this year. The big one has got to be the GOV.UK response to Coronavirus and setting up the Coronavirus landing page - I think that was such a big achievement, both in terms of the work that was done to get that product up and out, but also for you folks over here on the podcast, because I believe that was the first remote recorded podcast that we did.   Vanessa Schneider:  Hmm. Any thoughts, Kit? Any competing offers?   Kit Clark:  Not too sure. I know that accessibility's been quite a theme this year, and I believe that was in January. But I also know there was a couple of celebration ones - there was one looking at two years of Local Digital Declaration. So I think I might I go, I think COVID's a great shot but I'm going to go different and go accessibility.    Vanessa Schneider:  Alright. So there are some pretty solid guesses with both of you. Well done. I can reveal that the third most popular episode was in fact our accessibility episode. Good hunch there Kit. Second most popular was about the GOV.UK Design System. But indeed in first place, most popular episode this year was on the GOV.UK response to COVID-19.    Louise Harris:  Wahoo!   Vanessa Schneider:  Points go to Lou on that.    Vanessa Schneider:  Alright. So GDS has run a lot of stories this year. My second question is about the blog and which post attracted the most attention?   [horn noise]    Louise Harris:  This is a really tricky one because I think we've had so many good stories go out this year about the work that GDS has been doing across government. And of course, so much of what we do is used by our colleagues in the public sector. So there's often a lot of interest in what we have to say, which is great.   I mean, a big moment for me this year was our Global Accessibility Awareness Day celebrations where we were joined by thousands of people who came together to talk about digital accessibility and the work that we needed to do. So I feel like maybe the wrap up blog that we did about that, which had all of the links to the training webinars, I feel like that might be pretty popular. And even if it wasn't the most popular, it was definitely my favourite.    Vanessa Schneider:  Yeah, I, I can reveal to you that the third most popular post this year introduced GOV.UK Accounts.    Louise Harris:  How could we forget? That was such a big story.    Vanessa Schneider:  Well, you might want to hold onto that thought. It could just help you later in the quiz. Our second most popular post described the launch of our online Introduction to Content Design course. Content Design, hugely popular. I think we might have done a podcast episode about that. Finally, I can reveal our most popular post in 2020 explained how GOV.UK Notify reliably sends text messages to users.    Let's go on to our next question. As a bit of a preamble GDS leads the Digital, Data and Technology Function in government, which is also known as the DDaT Function. And we believe firmly in user-centred design, hint hint - keywords. So there are several job families in DDaT, but can you tell me how many job roles feature in the user-centred design family?    [buzzer noise]    Kit Clark:  There's seven.   Vanessa Schneider:  You seem pretty sure about that. On a dare, could you name all of them?   Kit Clark:  I hope so because I've had some training on it relatively recently. So in the user centred design family, there's the user researcher, content strategist, the technical writer, and then there's the content design, graphic design, service design, and the interaction design.   Louise Harris:  Wow, hats off Kit. I had a feeling it was like about seven roles, but I don't think I could have named them.    Vanessa Schneider:  I am, I am very impressed. You gotta make sure that that team doesn't poach you away from us now. For those of you following along at home, you can find out more in the DDaT Capability Framework which is hosted on GOV.UK.    And as it happens, we actually spoke to some content designers earlier in the year. So we're going to play a clip.    ---------- [clip begins] Laura Stevens:  So GDS is actually the home of content design in the government too as the term and the discipline originated here under GDS’s first Head of Content Design, Sarah Richards. And why do you think it came out of the early days of GDS?   Amanda Diamond:  So really good question. And I think it is really useful for us to pause and reflect and look back sometimes upon this, because it's not, you know, content design, as you said, it came from, as a discipline it came from GDS.   So really, it only started to emerge around 2010, so 2010, 2014. So in the grand scheme of things, as a discipline, it is very young. And so it's still evolving and it's still growing. And so back in the early 2000s, before we had GOV.UK, we had DirectGov. And alongside that, we had like hundreds of other government websites. So it was, it was a mess really because users had to really understand and know what government department governed the thing that they were looking for.    So what GOV.UK did was we brought websites together into a single domain that we now know of as GOV.UK. And that was a massive undertaking. And the reason for doing that was was simple. It was, it was to make things easier for users to access and understand, make things clearer and crucially to remove the burden on people to have to navigate and understand all of the structures of government.    So back in the early days, GOV.UK, GDS picked I think it was around, I think it was the top 25 services in what was known as the Exemplar Programme. I think things like that included things that Register to Vote, Lasting Power of Attorney, Carer's Allowance. And so I think through that process, we, we, we discovered that it actually wasn't really about website redesign, it was more about service design.    And that's where content design and service design, interaction design and user research kind of came together under this banner of user centred design because you can't have good services without content design essentially.  [clip ends] ----------   Vanessa Schneider:  Alright on to our next quiz question. So at GDS, we like to talk about “build it once, use it often”, and are responsible for a number of amazing products and services as part of our Government as a Platform or GaaP offer. Many of our products have been put through their paces during the coronavirus response and have hit some impressive milestones in the last 12 months.    I'm going to award 2 points in total. It's a 2-part question, so I'll ask the first part first. So how many messages had GOV.UK Notify sent as of the beginning of December?   [buzzer noise]    Kit Clark:  Is it two billion?    Vanessa Schneider:  Oooh, ok.   Yes, Notify has sent more than 2 billion messages as of the beginning of this month. As you buzzed in first, I will give you first right of refusal. How long did it take Notify to send its first and second billion messages?    Kit Clark:  I'm going to pass it over to Lou and see, see what she knows about Notify?   Vanessa Schneider:  Very gentlemanly.   Louise Harris:  I'm really glad that Kit kicked this over to me because I remember seeing one of our colleagues, Pete Herlihy's tweet, which said that it took them a full 4 years to send the first one billion messages, but it only took them 6 months to send the second billion, which is an absolutely incredible achievement for Notify, and has shown just the kind of pace that that team's been working at.    Vanessa Schneider:  Truly is an incredible number. But Notify has really had a big year. And Pete Herlihy actually shared some of Notify's story in our May episode of the podcast. Let's have a listen.    ---------- [clip begins] Laura Stevens: But to talk specifically about Notify, they, in the blog post it’s talking about this huge increase in numbers, like 2 million SMS messages were sent using Notify on a single day in March compared to the daily average of 150,000. I’ve also got a figure here of daily messages up as much as 600%, as high as 8.6 million a day.    So what services are using Notify to help with the government’s coronavirus response?   Pete Herlihy:  Yeah, there, so the, the increase in communication is obviously massive and needs to be. And one of the biggest users of Notify is the GOV.UK email service, and they, they do all of the email for people who subscribe to any content that the government publishes - so travel alerts for example, if you want to know can I take a flight to Namibia, here’s the guidance, or if there’s hurricanes coming through the Caribbean and these countries are affected, then I need to like push out information to say don’t go to these places, or whatever it might be.    And those alerts are, you know, again potentially protecting people, life and property - they’re like really important. And there’s been a huge amount of travel advice and alerts being given, as, as you can imagine. So that’s been one of the biggest users.    And then I think, from, from the health perspective there’s, I’ll just say NHS because there’s like various bits of the NHS that are working like ridiculously hard and fast to spin out new services really quickly, and these services are like just incredibly crucial right now.    So the extremely vulnerable service, this is one where the government said if you are you know, in this extreme risk category you should stay at home for 12 weeks, and they’ve been texting this group of people.   There’s all the stuff around testing and results for testing, ordering home test kits, all these sorts of things. So there’s the very specific COVID response type stuff and that is, there is a significant volume of that that’s still ongoing.   It all came very quickly as well. You know this wasn’t a gradual ramp up over weeks and weeks to 5,6,700%, it was, it was almost overnight. [clip ends] ----------   Vanessa Schneider:  Ok, I feel like this has been a bit too easy. So I thought about making the next 2 tricky and then I thought I was being too mean. So they are again connected questions, but they will be multiple choice this time. So again, if you buzz in for the first one, you get first dibs at the second question as well. So on 20 March, the GOV.UK Team shipped the Coronavirus landing page, which established a critical central source of guidance and information for people across the UK. But do you know how many days it took to go from concept to live?    Was it A, less than 5 days, B, less than 12 days or C, less than 15 days?   [horn noise]    Vanessa Schneider:  Lou.    Louise Harris:  I think it was less than five days.   Vanessa Schneider:  Alright. That is correct.    Louise Harris:  Wahoo.   Vanessa Schneider:  In fact it was only 4 and a half days. We had Markland Starkie and Leanne Cummings join us on the podcast in April to explain how we did this and what effect it had.   ---------- [clip begins] Markland Starkie:  The thing that the landing page I suppose was able to do over and above the standard solution was really to bring together, in a more consolidated fashion, wider signposts to existing and new content across government. It also allows us the flexibility to redesign or extend or iterate on that landing page at pace, which we’ve been able to do in the, in the week since. So that’s based on ongoing research into the landing page and insights to move certain content around, add certain content that was missing in the first instance, and remove content that’s not working, all of those things.   Laura Stevens: And was also, one of the reasons why it’s been able to be built quickly and iterated quickly, is we’re using other GDS tools that already exist, for example the GOV.UK Design System. Is that, was that, has been part of it as well?    Markland Starkie: Oh absolutely, yes. So without those things in place, like the Design System that you’ve mentioned, this would take weeks and weeks. So we’ve been able to take existing patterns, modify them where needed to. So being able to bring in elements whilst using existing patterns to really like kind of push it through at pace. [clip ends] ----------   Kit Clark:  I mean, I personally still find it incredible that things went from conception to actually delivering in such a short span of time. It’s incredible I personally think. And also when you're talking with such high stake products as well. You know, this is a time when the nation was looking for trusted sources of information about what they could do to keep themselves and their families safe. So it's just an incredible body of work to have done. And not only that, but also in true GDS style, they were keeping the user at the centre throughout the whole process. So I believe the Coronavirus landing page was the first landing page that we designed to be mobile first because we recognised that was where our users were going to be accessing that information. So in addition to delivering some incredible services and information at a pace we’ve probably never had to do before, we’re also continually iterating and innovating to give people the best possible experience on the site. I think there's so much to be proud of. And just really hats off to GOV.UK.    Vanessa Schneider:  So you've earned yourself the right to answer the next question first. GOV.UK receives thousands upon thousands of visits every day, but in a week in March, it experienced a peak of how many visits? Was it A, 2 million, was it B, 67 million or was it C, 132 million?   Louise Harris:  Ok, so it was back in March, so that is kind of peak COVID times. I think it's got to be 132 million. It must be.    Vanessa Schneider:  You are officially on a roll.    Louise Harris:  Wooo.   Vanessa Schneider:  Yes, the answer to the second question is 132 million. Although that is probably an underestimate as our analytics only count users who accept cookies that measure the website use. So the true figures are likely even higher, as Jen Allum explained in a blog post on the topic. So visit gds.blog.gov.uk to check that nugget out.    Onto our next question. GOV.UK Pay has also had a busy year and last month we celebrated some recent milestones with them on this podcast. What were they?    [horn noise]   Vanessa Schneider:  All right, Lou.   Louise Harris:  I think it's been a really exciting time for Pay over the last couple of months. And I know that we spoke to them on a recent podcast, so I think that the milestone you're looking for is that they've onboarded their 400th service.    Vanessa Schneider:  Well, I'm sorry, Lou, but that was only half the answer I was looking for.    Louise Harris:  Oh no.   Vanessa Schneider:  Kit, it's your chance. Do you want to score another half point maybe?    Kit Clark: I believe they processed half a billion pounds since their inception.    Vanessa Schneider:  Well done. That is spot on. And together, those two factoids make a pretty sweet nugget - that was so cheesy. But yeah, it's, it's incredible. And they only started in 2015. So that's an amazing number of services and sum of payments to process.    So my next question for you both is that we were also very busy on the GOV.UK Twitter account this year and saw a huge spike in users coming to us with queries and looking for support. That is something that I actually blogged about back in May. But can you tell me as a percentage how much our engagement increased on our posts? Was it 12,500%? Was it 150% or was it 700%? And for a bonus, can you tell me to the nearest 100,000 how many people are following the GOV.UK Twitter account right now?    [buzzer noise]   Kit Clark:  I want to go with the 12, 12 and a half.    Vanessa Schneider:  All right, Kit, I can confirm that you are right. Do you want to, do you want to try and punt for the bonus point? Do you reckon you've got that?   Kit Clark:  Yeah, I’ll go for it. I think the GOV.UK Twitter account has got around 1.2 million people following it.    Vanessa Schneider:  Oh, you are so close. I'm going to give you a half point. It's 1.8 million. And I have to say, it's been a real whirlwind of a year because of that. So we completely changed the way that we approach community management, responding to people. Lou I think you oversaw the project, what did you think?    Louise Harris:  Well, I think it certainly felt like we experienced a 12,000% increase in engagement, and I know that you, Vanessa, and so many of our colleagues over in Comms have been working really, really hard to make sure that we get back to the, frankly, thousands of people who come via the GOV.UK Twitter account every day looking for advice and signposting to guidance on the GOV.UK website. So it's been a phenomenal year. You've all done a phenomenal job and I think you've got lots to be proud of.   Vanessa Schneider: That's very kind of you to say. I wasn't really fishing for compliments, but I'll take them anyway.    You can actually find out a little bit about how we tackle that, as I mentioned in the blog post I wrote. But we've also put out our Social Media Playbook earlier this year. We've made an update and it just talks about the kind of things that we've been considering over the course of the year. It includes updates on accessibility, security and very important in this time of year, mental health.   Louise Harris:  I think that's a really important point, Vanessa, because so often in digital comms, people think about the technology, but not the people behind that technology who are using it day in, day out. So I was really pleased when we were able to include that section on wellbeing in our GDS Social Media Playbook. And it's just another example of that GDS mentality of build once, use many. So we created that as a resource to share how we do things and what we're learning and what's working for us. And we just hope that that's a useful tool that our colleagues across government can put into practise as well.   Vanessa Schneider:  All right. I think we've got some points to pick up on this next question. Earlier this year, we launched the Data Standards Authority with our friends and counterparts over at ONS, which is the Office for National Statistics and DCMS, which is the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. You’ll hear from our former Director General Alison Pritchard now who explains a little bit more about the DSA.    ---------- [clip begins] Alison Pritchard: Government holds considerable volumes of data in a myriad of places. But often this data is inconsistent, incomplete or just unusable. If the government is going to realise the benefits data can bring, we'll need to fix the foundations. And one way of doing this is by focussing on data standards.    GDS is leading a new authority, the Data Standards Authority (DSA), that focuses on making data shareable and accessible across government services. The metadata standards and guidance we published in August were our first deliverable. They cover what information should be recorded when sharing data across government - for example in spreadsheets - to assure it's standardised and easy to use. It's a step in quality assuring how government data is shared. Our focus on standards is one part of the bigger picture around better managing data to assure better policy outcomes and deliver more joined-up services to citizens.  [clip ends] ----------   Vanessa Schneider: So now, you know what the DSA is. Have your pens at the ready. I'm going to read out a series of letters that relate to the DSA that I would like you to unscramble.    Louise Harris:  Oooh, ok.    Vanessa Schneider:  Alright.    So it's T-E-M-A-T-A-A-D. Those are the letters, 8 of them.    Louise Harris:  I find these so difficult. I'm so rubbish at these.    [buzzer noise]    Kit Clark:  I think I've got the letters written down right in my dyslexia mind might not be playing in my favour here but is it Data Team?   Vanessa Schneider: Oh, I would love that. That is a great one. And it makes use of the right letters. It's not the answer I'm looking for unfortunately. It has to be about the Data Standards Authority.   Louise Harris:  Oh, ok. I don't think I would have got this had Kit not unscrambled half of it. But if it's not Data Team, is it metadata?    Vanessa Schneider:  We've got a winner here. That's right. I'm not going to repeat the letters. It definitely spells out, if you get them in the right order, metadata.   So Kit do you mind sharing with our listeners what metadata is?    Kit Clark:  I realised that I was going for speed over quality in that answer and Data Team is a bit of an overly simplistic answer. Metadata is correct me if I'm wrong, but actually data that provides insight into other data, it's a little bit inception.    Louise Harris:  Other Leo films are available.    Vanessa Schneider:  Spot on. Yep, that's right.    Last month, so that's November, we blogged about the Document Checking Service pilot that is running until next summer. And there's still a number of points up for grabs here.   So let's see who's been paying attention. What does the Document Checking Service let you do?   [buzzer noise]   Kit Clark:  So the Document Checking Service is a project to see whether organisations outside government can use real time passport checks to build useful digital services.    Vanessa Schneider: Oh, I will score that as right. So it is great that we've got this pilot underway, especially considering that a lot of people are working remotely right now, given that individuals can provide their details without needing to go any place in person to prove their identity.    All right. So now we're onto a topic that both of you've already broached. So I'm confident we're going to get some points to some people here. In May 2020, we celebrated Global Accessibility Awareness Day by running a series of webinars and talks to help prepare public sector organisations for a forthcoming accessibility regulations deadline. Can you tell me what deadline we were building up to?   [horn noise]    Vanessa Schneider:  All right, Lou, point, a potential point for you.   Louise Harris:  So the most recent deadline, and particularly the one that we were working to for Global Accessibility Awareness Day, or GAAD, would have been the 23rd September 2020, which was the date by which all existing public sector websites and intranets needed to be accessible.    Vanessa Schneider:   Yep, that’s right.   To hear more about that, we are going to go back in time cheekily to January where we had Chris and Rianna on the podcast telling us a little bit more about public sector duty to accessibility.    ---------- [clip begins] Laura Stevens: I guess part of this is also thinking like why is it particularly important that government is a leader in accessible services. Like what, why is that so important?   Chris Heathcote:  I mean as you said at the beginning, you know you don’t choose to use government, you have to use government. So you can’t go anywhere else. So it’s, it’s our obligation to make sure that, that everything is accessible to everyone. And it does have to be everyone, and especially those with disabilities, or needing to use assistive technology, tend to have to interact with government more. So we do have an obligation for that.   Rianna Fry:  And I think if you think about it, these are public services. They’re online public services so they need to be able to use, be used by the public not exclusive groups. And I think that’s what it's all about.  [clip ends] ----------   Vanessa Schneider:  So looking ahead, there is another accessibility regulations deadline coming up. When is it and what is it for? One point to award here.    [buzzer noise]   Kit Clark:  Is it the 23rd of June next year, so 2021?    Vanessa Schneider:  That's right. Yes. And what is the deadline for?    Kit Clark:  And I think it's all mobile apps to become compliant as well. So not just websites.   Vanessa Schneider:  That is right. If you are worried about those deadlines, we have some great resources. You can find them on accessibility.campaign.gov.uk. That's not just restricted to the public sector. Accessibility is important to everyone. So please visit. We've got everything you need there.    All right. So we are slowly but surely coming towards the last few questions. GOV.UK is built on the principle that you shouldn't need to know how the government works to use government services. Very prescient. But the way people interact online has changed a lot over the 8 years since GOV.UK launched. Services like shopping, banking or entertainment are increasingly personalised, and that is something that GDS wants to explore for citizens too.   In September, we were excited to share our future strategy for GOV.UK Accounts. We think this is important and exciting work that will make it simpler for citizens to interact with government to do the things they need to do. But can either of you tell me how many times will the average individual in the UK visit GOV.UK in a year? Just guess away please, folks, guess away.    [buzzer noise]   Kit Clark:  Is it 400?    Vanessa Schneider:  I like the optimism, but also in a weird way, that's pessimistic, isn't it? I'd say it's a, it's a 2- digit number.   Kit Clark:  I doubted myself halfway through that.    Vanessa Schneider:  No worries. No worries. Try again. Like cut a zero.   Kit Clark:  Is it around 40 times a year?   Louise Harris:  I think this is a really difficult question because on the one hand, GOV.UK is such an important part of our national infrastructure. I mean, you can do so many things on GOV.UK, you know, you want to renew your car tax, you do it there. You want to check when the next bank holiday is, you do it there. But on the other hand, it's so easy to use that it's almost you're in, you're out. You got what you need. So often, like, I'm trying to think how often I maybe visit it. It's got to be at least like 4 or 5 times a month. So yeah, I think I would maybe land some where where Kit is.    Vanessa Schneider: That's a really good point, Lou. I think you've just overestimated it a little bit. We’ve done rough calculations and it looks like it’s more like 2 interactions with GOV.UK a month. So according to our rough calculations - it's something like 22 times a year. If you head over to the GDS blog you can see how we reached those numbers.   But yeah, it's really hard because obviously there's no competitor to government to provide the services that people need. It's not like you can register your car somewhere else. So we, we have to just try and make this kind of interface, the service, as easy as it can be. So it is painless, you know, that people aren't frustrated with that experience.    And we've come to our final questions of the quiz and we're ending by testing your knowledge of some common words and phrases you’ll hear used in digital government. So a lot of people refer to us as GDS, which stands for the Government Digital Service. But how well do you know other acronyms that we've been throwing around all year long?    Louise Harris:  Oh, I think Kit is going to have the edge on me here because he does so much cross-government engagement. I think this is where I'm going to really fall down.    Kit Clark:  Fingers crossed.   Vanessa Schneider:  All right. So fingers on buzzers.   What is DDaT?    [horn noise]   Louise Harris:  I'm going to get in there with this and an easy, early one. So DDaT is Digital, Data and Technology. And I know that because during my round of welcome coffees on day one, that was the acronym that kept coming up. And people said, if you just get one acronym under your belt today, make it DDaT, because it's so important to the work that GDS does as the Head of the DDaT Profession.   Vanessa Schneider: That is correct.   All right. Our next term that we're looking for is Retros.   Kit Clark:  Does it stand for retrospective?    Vanessa Schneider:  It's as simple as that. Indeed. So what happens at a retrospective, if you don't mind sharing?    Kit Clark: So a retro is I think it kind of does what it says on the tin really, where the group that's been working on a project will come together and essentially evaluate the good, the bad and the ugly of the work that's just being done to see what could be applied in the future, both in terms of positives as well, and things that could be improved in future, future pieces of work.    Vanessa Schneider:  Nice. An iterative process.    So obviously there's been a lot of change this year, but I think most of it has maybe been unanticipated. However, what we had been planning for this year is recruiting two leadership positions and I know everyone at GDS is excited about welcoming them in due course. One of them is for CEO of GDS and the other is GCDO. No pressure, given that they'll be your bosses and you don't know, they might even be listening.    But can you tell me for one more point what GCDO stands for?    [buzzer noise]   Kit Clark:  GCDO stands for the Government Chief Digital Officer.    Vanessa Schneider:  That is correct. Sorry Lou.    Louise Harris:  Missed out, too slow.   Vanessa Schneider: The quiz has come to an end. So let me quickly tot up the scores.   I hope everyone listening did well and I hope we don't have to go to a tiebreaker.    Louise Harris: Oh, do you have a tiebreaker?    Vanessa Schneider:  Well, fact is, I won't need a tiebreaker because the winner is Kit. Well done. Congratulations to Kit and commiserations to Lou. You almost had it.   Louise Harris: Kit, a worthy opponent. Very well played.   Vanessa Schneider: So, Kit, finish us off. Why don't you share with us what your highlight of this year has been? Might be tough. It's been a crazy year, but I'm sure you've got something.   Kit Clark: Yeah, it's been a bit of a funny one starting a role completely remotely. I think the the people that I work with have been a definite highlight, but also with this being my first role within the Civil Service and within the public sector, just the kind of confidence of standing on my own two feet and being more confident in the work that I'm doing and getting more responsibility with each passing month is, is a really good feeling.    Vanessa Schneider:  That is such a lovely thing to say. I'll make sure to pass that on to your colleagues, because, yeah, I really enjoyed that. How about yourself Lou?    Louise Harris:  Well, I think similar to Kit it's all about the people, so I'm lucky enough to lead the team that's responsible for recording the podcast that you're listening to. And what you folks don't get to see or rather hear is just how much work goes into this each and every month. And of course, earlier this year, the team had to pivot, as so many of us did, to do things differently because recording in the way that we once did would not be safe or within the guidance. So I wanted to say a big shout out to Emily and to Vanessa. So Emily is our Producer, you never hear her here, but she's a big part of the podcast. And also to Laura Stevens, who's one of our old hosts and is now in another part of GDS. And to everybody else that's been involved, because it really is a huge challenge to do this. And I think they do a phenomenal job. So we hope you enjoyed listening and we hope to see you again in the New Year.   Vanessa Schneider:  I don't want to sound like I'm gloating, but actually it's been a really good year for me. I've had a lot of great opportunities come up this year, maybe because of what's changed, you know, and working remotely. But I don't think it's a bad idea to not acknowledge it. I got to write for the blog for the first time at GDS. I presented to the entire organisation, which was simultaneously nerve wracking and thrilling. And I've been able to share my expertise among members of the devolved nations thanks to our National, International and Research Team. So there's a lot to reflect on really positively. I think all of that could not have been done without having a really good team backing me. So I think that's probably my highlight.    Louise Harris:  Oh, my God. So cute.   Vanessa Schneider: Thank you so much to our guests Lou Harris and Kit Clark for coming on today. We wish all of our listeners a happy New Year and look forward to sharing new episodes with you in 2021. You can listen to all of the episodes of the Government Digital Service podcast on Apple Music, Spotify and all other major podcast platforms. And the transcripts are available on Podbean. Goodbye.   Louise Harris:  Bye folks.    Kit Clark:  Bye.

Delegate Solutions: www.delegate solutions.comTRANSCRIPTDiane Dayton  0:01  This is Changing the Rules, a podcast about designing the life you want to live, hosted by KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world. KC Dempster  0:11  Good Morning, everybody, welcome to Changing the Rules. This is KC Dempster. And as our announcer, told you at the very beginning, this is a podcast about changing the rules and designing the life you want to live. And we like to talk about changing the rules, because we have discovered that when people decide to take control of their lives, and to design it to be the way that they want and need it to be, oftentimes, they do have to change rules. So some people need permission, for some reason to do that. So that's what we're here to do, we're here to introduce you to people who have given themselves permission to change rules. And as a result, they're living exciting and interesting lives. Ray Loewe  0:55  Yeah, and we need to capitalize on these people, you know, being one of the luckiest people in the world is, is, it's, it's a special person, because these are people who first of all, take control of their lives and design them. And that's not an easy thing to do. And in fact, it's an ongoing kind of a thing to do. And one of the things that we hope you're going to get out of our podcast, is by get being exposed to many of the luckiest people in the world, one every week, we hope you're going to get excited and motivated. And you're going to get new ideas about how you can go with the flow. And one of the things that we're going to talk about today is one of the special things. You know, we talk to you about the luckiest people in the world designing their own lives. But we're also going to talk to you today about one of the luckiest people in the world, knowing where they're going. But being prepared to pivot. So we're going to take a short station break just to let you know where you are. And we're coming back with Emily Morgan. Diane Dayton  2:03  You're listening to Changing the Rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world. We will be right back with more exciting information.KC Dempster  2:13  Welcome back, everybody. And I am delighted this morning to introduce our guest, Emily Morgan, who is the founder of a company called Delegate Solutions. And we got to know Emily because Ray is availing himself of what Delegate Solutions provides.Ray Loewe  2:34  Yes, they are running my life for me as a matter of fact. So Emily say hello, first of all, no, nothing more, just say hello,Emily Morgan  2:42  morning. Hello,Ray Loewe  2:43  you had to make it different Didn't you change the rules on us over here, which is exactly what we expected you. So long ago, and oh, so far away. Because I've been a customer of Emily's for a while I needed help, I needed to figure out how to get some strategic strategic assistance. But I no longer had an office, I no longer had a place to put employees and I no longer, you know, had the need for full time person. So  Emily was recommended to me out of a coaching program, and we had a chance to meet because she is a South Jersey, Greater Philadelphia, native local person, local person. And what she does through a company called Delegate Solutions is to provide premium virtual assistant support. And that's what I'm availing myself off. And there's also some delegation coaching that goes into the process. And she is one of the remote workforce thought leaders in the country in the whole country. And she's had several accolades. There was a time when she was one of the Forbes fastest growing 50 companies in the whole country. And even now, with all this stuff going, she just got another accolade of being one of the top fastest growing companies in the Philadelphia area. So ah Emily, welcome, welcome, and welcome. And tell us a little bit about the strategy behind Delegate Solutions.Emily Morgan  4:20  Thanks, guys, very excited to be here. So the strategy behind our business is really to create help people create freedom to do what they love. So a lot of what you're talking about Ray is changing the rules. We're all all about creating freedom, so that you have time to do different things that you like in your life, whether it's growing your business, or spending more time with family or pursuing some kind of hobby. It's all about finding ways to strategically clear your plate to make room for extra time. So the way that we tackle that is really through delegation. And part of the one of the things that makes us different is that we're not only here to for you to delegate We help our clients figure out what to delegate and how to delegate processes together to make sure that successfulRay Loewe  5:07  No, and you do all the hiring and screening of people too, don't you and talk for a minute about I know you took a lot of time to match my need. And, and, and me personally personal instinctive way I do business with the assistants and I was going to work with. So want to talk a little bit about that if you will.Emily Morgan 5:29  Yeah, part of what we do is, is an art and it's also a science. You know, when we're looking at pairing our clients with team members, it's really about understanding, you know, what your specific needs are? What times of day do you work? how responsive Do you need someone to be? What type of skill set are you looking for? What type of personality Do you work really well with or have had challenges with, we use a tool that I know Ray you're familiar with called the Kolbe test. And we use that to validate our team's ability to do the work. And then we also use it to inform how we go about supporting our clients based on their Kolbe scores,Ray Loewe  6:10  I have to come in on this, excuse me, because it's an entirely different world of working. So I have a strategic assistant who happens to live, you know, a couple hundred miles away. And I have had other people that I've worked with from time to time from across the country, and I've never personally met them. And yet, we have meetings and we'll sit down and all of a sudden, my video monitor in front of me opens up and I get this great smiling face every week. And the smiling face or the body behind the smiling face, solves all my problems and makes my life simpler. So it's, it's a little different. But it's it's wonderful. It works. And you use teams now too, don't you? You just you just don't help a person with one strategic assistant, you actually have background teams. And I know there's a lot of support that goes on in the background. So take a minute and talk about that please.Emily Morgan  7:12  Yeah, I mean, the administrative world in general, I think it's a pretty high turnover industry. And that can be really painful, when you've handed something off to someone and things are moving along really well. And they quit or they don't, they don't come to work that day. So we've taken the steps and made our team our employees. So we, we take all the responsibility for managing them, hiring them, vetting them, all that type of stuff. But for us, it's about creating, creating a team approach for clients so that they always have somebody, you know, present and active and aware of what's going on in their world. And we pull on the strengths of two different types of people. So one person is really there to be the project manager to do the delegation strategy. And then the other is there to handle all the execution on the task level, to create a level of redundancy for fines,Ray Loewe  8:12  and then there's a lot of backup beyond that, because when I know I as an entrepreneur needs some special skills, and maybe my, the person I'm working with doesn't have them all. There's a whole background team that you bring into force. And it's a lot easier than me having to do that research and going out in the marketplace and finding support people. So thank you for that. Of course. Okay. So so there's a story behind this. And I know, I guess 12-13 years ago, something like that, that you started Delegate Solutions. Yeah. And you started it. You were a student at Penn. Is that correct? Or were you beyond that when you start a delegate?Emily Morgan  9:02  I was beyond that. But I when I worked at Penn, I was able to go to school there for free. So I graduated from UPenn with my bachelor's, basically for free.KC Dempster  9:14  Yeah, but boy, that's the way to do it.Ray Loewe  9:16  Yeah, that's, that's a couple hundred thousand dollar tab they're going on right now. Okay. Okay, so, so where did this idea come from? And how did it evolve? And how did you put it together?Emily Morgan  9:28  Yeah, I think, um, I worked at University of Penn, like I shared. So one of my first clients when I started the business was my old boss at Penn. So they were a client from the very beginning. But I started the company when I was I just had had my son and I was not interested in commuting in and out of the city and trying to have a baby at the same time. So I knew I had the administrative skill set to do admin work. I recently learned that you could do this remotely, what I didn't know was anything about business. So I am a self taught entrepreneur, I never went to school, my degree is in English, not in business. So, you know, basically how to figure out how to start and grow company, which that was 13 years ago.KC Dempster  10:18  And I think that that leads us to something that it's important for our listeners to understand is that your remote assistants are all working from their homes. So you're providing an opportunity for an entire workforce, to be able to stay home, get their work done, and still balance family and work and all of those stressors that that we find in our lives, especially during the past six to seven months.Emily Morgan  10:45  Yeah, I think I shared in the beginning that our mission is to create freedom for people to do what they love. And that's not just for our clients, that's for our team members as well. So, you know, we really have created an opportunity where people can do work that's professional and fulfilling, but more on their own terms.Ray Loewe  11:02  Yeah, and, and you were working remotely from the beginning here and look at how important that is today. I mean, so all of your people are fully engaged, and they're working. Okay, where other people that were coming to work may or may not have been working.Emily Morgan  11:19  Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I feel like for 13 years, I fought this battle around remote work, why it works, how it works. And overnight, you know, the world had a reckoning around, we need to figure this out. Um, like, for us, where the challenge came into play is that so many of our team members are mothers. And mothers were significantly impacted by this in ways that other demographics were not. So we've, we've had to deal with that as we navigated this, like, we all knew how to work remotely, there was no change for us there. It was really just about now, these women are trying to do this with kids not in school, or homeschooling on top of work.KC Dempster  12:01  Right. Right.Ray Loewe  12:02  Yeah. And I know you did some really unique things for your your team, because talk a minute about the invention of daycare camp, or whatever, you know, I'm not gonna get the words, right. But tell us about it.Emily Morgan  12:16  Yeah, we did something called Virtual kids camp. So you know, things were going crazy. Everybody's kids were home. So we said, You know what, it takes a village and we put on a virtual kids camp where we basically created like a Google spreadsheet. Everybody would volunteer for different time slots across the day. And we invited our clients, children, our children, some of our clients, like volunteered to teach some of the sessions. But we did it for like, probably five weeks, where we were just running camp for kids. And we would, you know, I was teaching, we would make cards for first responders. My mother was teaching hula, one of our clients was teaching Mandarin.Ray Loewe  13:00  Want to be invited to see mom to hula? So So, you know, I want to think this through a little bit, because I think there's some really unique stuff here. So your business model was not only great for the entrepreneur, your ultimate client, because I know I was disrupted a lot less than probably many of my counterparts. I didn't have to worry about people not coming to the office, I didn't have to worry about putting in this emergency remote system. I didn't have to worry about my staff taking off time to babysit and take care of kids.KC Dempster  13:41  It's because your staff is oldRay Loewe  13:43  well, you know, agent has some value to you know, but but but i think i think the whole business model really is interesting. And from the point of view of entrepreneurs, I think that it's something worthwhile putting into their system. Talk a little bit about your solo entrepreneur program, because I think there are a lot of people out there that would be interested in this and that and you have it and you have it. You have it down pat.mily Morgan  14:13  Well, we're always working to make it better. For sure. Um, so our program basically we sell time for money. So clients come in and they purchase blocks of hours that they can use across the month and the team builds out a delegate strategy that brings the most return on investment for those hours sold. And that looks different for everybody, a lot of that is personal stuff, so we're working on not just the professional side of life, but also on the personal side. So those hours can be used for anything you need to better leverage your time.Ray Loewe  14:54  Yeah, and and i think people that are going into retirement, you know, even if you're not working you know, to to all of us sudden have a staff that you use to do a whole lot of things. And all of a sudden that's gone. Mm hmm. So you're saying that this, the staff kind of thing can be used for personal use as well as business use. And that just expands what people can do with this.Emily Morgan  15:15  Yeah, and our entry point is about an hour a day of support. So it's 20 hours, 20, excuse me, 25 hours, a month, an hour a day of help.Ray Loewe  15:24  Yeah, cool. And I know, that fits me pretty well. And I also know that I have the ability to expand my hours when I need it for special projects. So your system works great. And now I want to get into something a little different, because one of the traits of the luckiest people in the world is knowing where you're going. And when we had kind of our pre interview, you added something to this, that I'm stealing By the way, so it's no longer yours. It's mine. Okay. And that's knowing where you're going, but being prepared to pivot. So talk a little bit about some of the things that happened during this virus thing to you, and and why this why it's important to know where you're going, but also why the pivot comes into play.Emily Morgan  16:13  Yeah, so we follow a program called EOS, the entrepreneurs operating system. And as part of that program, we have a 10 year vision, a five year plan, a three year plan, a one year plan, and quarterly plan. So we have a vision or where we're going and what we're going to be doing each year to get there what it looks like, you know, three years from now what does the company look like, but nowhere in that plan is there COVID, or the impact of that on my business, which was, you know, not just work the mothers that I employ being affected. But our clients are small business owners, so they were deeply impacted, freaked out, we weren't, we lost about 25 to 30% of revenue in a matter of a couple of weeks, which I know is not a significant, as my friends experienced, but it was still really scary and terrifying for us to go through that. And so we we had just going into COVID, we had just had our quarterly planning session for q2. So we had just said our plans and like, right is all happenings. So we really had to change a lot of our priorities for the quarter to be able to address the energy that had to be put in to deal with everything that was happening in the world, as it impacted the business.Ray Loewe  17:36  So So what do you think's gonna happen going forward? So why, you know, I hate the word new normal. So we've adopted this thing called normal 2.0, which is where we're going and and maybe we'll even get to normal 3.0 and 4.0 and 8.0, or whatever. But But, you know, you've learned a lot from this experience of pivoting. Okay. And and where do you see changes in the way you do business going forward? And the way some of the people that you work with do business?Emily Morgan  18:11  Yeah, I mean, overall, once you get past the shock and awe of what happened in March and April, and May and June, um, it's been very, it's, we're very busy right now. So we're selling more than we ever have. Because now I'm not fighting that battle of trying to educate people why remote work, like remote works, because it needs to. So we're growing very quickly, because of that. So we're pretty much back to where we were pre COVID revenue wise. But one of the ways that we're impacting you negatively is one of my value propositions and hiring was, it was a remote admin job. But now, most jobs that are administrative are going to be remote. So I'm going to be feeling it on the talent side, trying to find what makes us different from other employers and be able to express that to, you know, ideal 15 members.Ray Loewe  19:08  I don't think so, Emily, you have kids day camp.KC Dempster  19:14  You know, I was just good. I've been thinking while we've been talking and about 14-15 years ago, I was working with Ray but I did not come into the office every day because I lived in the city and did not have a car. So I worked several days from home. And at that time, it was a bit having people work from home was a big problem to a lot of managers, because they were afraid that the their employees weren't really putting in the time or that they were, you know, doing their home chores, and you know, maybe not even sitting behind the desk. And so I think for a lot of people, this was a very rapid indoctrination, not only for the employees who had to learn how to be Little bit self disciplined, but also for management to accept the fact that people are going to work from home and they're going to do the job.Emily Morgan  20:07  Right. I think it's worth noting, like, none of us were doing this with kids home.KC Dempster  20:13  Right, right.Ray Loewe  20:14  Yeah.Emily Morgan  20:16  It's different. And so this isn't like normal remote work. This is like crisis remote work. So there is a difference between what you know, before we went into this till now, on our side?Ray Loewe  20:28  Well, you know, unfortunately, Emily, our time is up already Time flies when you're having fun, but but in in a closing comment over here with you. You know, one of the things that I've found is, I didn't have to worry about this. Okay. And that was the beauty of not trying to do the remote stuff myself, but to have an experienced team behind me, who was going to worry about all these problems for me, who had many of them solved before, and, and figured out how to do it and my life just kind of went on the way it did you know I, I wrote your check every month, and I bought so many hours, and my system showed up with a bright, shiny face, you know, one on zoom and, and all of a sudden things were done. And, you know, thank you for making my life consistent, and continuous and happy.Emily Morgan  21:26  Ray, We love working with you.Ray Loewe  21:27  So Emily Morgan delegate solutions. Emily, give us your website if people want to reach you, and we'll post it on our on our podcast notes, too.Emily Morgan  21:38  Yeah, it's www dot delegate. solutions.com.KC Dempster  21:43  Easy peasy.Ray Loewe  21:44  Easy enough. So Emily Morgan, thanks for being with us. And you are one of the luckiest people in the world. You exude all of the things that the luckiest people do. And it's been a pleasure to be associated with you. And if this COVID stuff goes on, maybe we can actually go out and have a drink again, or something like that. Right. So So I have a great day. And let's take a quick break and come back and kind of close up.Diane Dayton  22:11  You're listening to changing the rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world. We will be right back with more exciting information.KC Dempster  22:20  Welcome back again. And thank everybody for listening. This this whole thing that Emily is doing with Delegate Solutions is it's I think it's cutting edge. And I hope that the listeners got some really good information and might even be availing themselves of her services.Ray Loewe  22:41  Yes. And we will be back next week with another guest another one of the luckiest people in the world. And we hope you continue to listen. And we hope you continue to look at these luckiest people and figure out why and how you can steal things from them and make your life luckier and luckier and luckier. So see you next week, everybody.Diane Dayton  23:04  Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules, a podcast designed to help you imagine your life the way you want, and give you what you need to make it happen. Join us in two weeks for our next exciting topic on changing the rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe the luckiest guy in the world. 

This is the second of two podcasts with the authors of the new book Sugarproof, The Hidden Dangers of Sugar that are Putting Your Child at Risk and What You Can Do. Our first podcast offered a fascinating view of the effects of sugar on children and this podcast will discuss what might be done. University of Southern California's Michael Goran leads the program in Diabetes and Obesity at Children's Hospital of Los Angeles, his co-author Emily Ventura is a nutrition educator, public health advocate, writer and cook. Interview Summary So Emily let's begin with you, so some families might feel overwhelmed about where to start because there's sugar reduction because sugar is in so many things and it's kind of a perplexing topic for many so why don't we start with your thoughts on how much sugar a child can safely consume. Just to validate with what you said, it is completely overwhelming. We try and simplify things and make it less overwhelming by giving practical solutions and also by giving some more specific guidelines on what would be ballpark range for safe levels of sugar. We're not suggesting that families take out all sugar because that's just not realistic and not going to work but we do give some age specific recommendations that are all based on the guidelines of roughly 5% of your daily calories from added sugar. The recommendations we came up with kind of echo what the World Health Organization has been promoting for a long time which is 5% of daily calories. The problem is in children, a one year old is very different from an 18 year old so how do we come up with recommendations along that spectrum? And so we came up with age specific recommendations based on the needs of a one year old versus an 18 year old. What we recommend--which is now looks like it's going to be recommended in the new Dietary Guidelines--is that for zero to two years of age, zero added sugars. Then from two to 18, it depends on the age, and it goes from about five grams or a couple of teaspoons of added sugar per day up to about 15 or 20 grams per day depending on age. So there's room in there for added sugars and like Emily said, we're not suggesting that we completely eradicate had sugar out of children's diets. We think that's just completely unsustainable and not going to work in the long run but reflecting back to those recommendations from the World Health Organization and now the new Dietary Guidelines of America those translate to roughly 5% of daily energy coming from added sugars as safe levels. So given the recommendation of our around 5% of calories contributed added sugar, how does that compare to what children are actually consuming now? Yes, well, currently that number for added sugar is probably around 15 in some populations up to 20% of daily calories so we have a long ways to go in terms of producing added sugars back down. And by the way, just to clarify what we mean by added sugars, this does not include natural sugars in fruit or natural sugar in milk or dairy products, we're talking about sugars added to food in processed foods and more so things like soda but also many, many other different type of processed foods and snacks. Juice is a little controversial because the Dietary Guidelines and the FDA don't count juice as added sugars so they would not count juice technically towards those 5%. We think that the sugars from juice is just as harmful to the body as the sugars from soda so we do count the sugars from juice against those 5%. Thank you. The context really helps here because given that the average intake is three or four times what's recommended this is a really pretty serious challenge to bring those numbers down. So Emily, where would you suggest that parents focus first? The first thing we suggest to look at is beverages. The reason for this is because when you have sugar in liquid form, it delivers such a quick dose and a big dose of sugar all at once. A lot of these beverages are also very high in fructose which is especially harmful for the liver and for the body in general, especially for growing children. So we suggest that families take a look at switching from drinking juice to having a glass of water and whole fruit, for example, at breakfast. Or, gradually reducing the other sweet drinks like sodas both regular and diet sports drinks, other juice drinks or coffee drinks, all of the things that are popular that are just full of sugar and really unnecessary sources of added sugar in the diet. And are there some other strategies or swapping things that families could do to help reduce sugar? Definitely, so putting some of these sugar guidelines and recommendations into perspective, some of the recommendations depending on the age might be to limit your added sugar to say three to seven teaspoons of sugar a day, it is helpful to realize that you could easily be getting that amount of sugar in your breakfast cereal alone. Things like staple cereals that families might buy that are really convenient and the kids like are ones that are good to take a look at because if you make a simple swap in breakfast. Or, even if you do want to stick with cereal just changing the type of cereal that you buy. Those kinds of changes can have a big impact on the overall amount of sugar that kids get in the given day. It's interesting that you mentioned sugar and I was reminded of a study of that I was involved in, led by my former Yale colleague Jennifer Harris. They randomly assigned children to different conditions to test whether they needed sugar in breakfast cereals in order to enjoy them. So half the kids got a low sugar version of a cereal—say cornflakes rather than frosted flakes—and the other got a high sugar version. What the study found is that kids who got the low sugar version of the cereal didn't add much sugar to sweeten it up. They added fruits voluntarily to sweeten it up, and it ended up having a much better nutrient profile compared the kids who got the high sugar version of cereals. So the industry's chief argument for sweetened these cereals is that they deliver a lot of nutrients--which is true—but the kids won't eat them unless they have a lot of sugar and that apparently is not the case. And that's consistent with your recommendation. Yeah, I love that study, it was very influential in some of our work and I think it makes a very clear point that kids will adapt to what you put in front of them. They will still eat the little sugar cereals and in fact, opt to put fruit on top of it as natural sweetness. The opposite is true that with the high sweet cereals because kids have a higher preference for sweetness, they will also opt to eat more of it because they want more sugar so if you put the high sugar in front of them they will probably serve themselves more of it. So let's ask about non-calorie sweeteners or low-calorie sweeteners even including natural ones like Stevia and monk fruit, are these a good idea for children? No, we don't think so. For sure, the more conventional synthetic sweeteners like sucralose and aspartame we just don't know enough about the long term effects in children. We're beginning to realize some of the short term effects and you know, they're not good, we don't recommend them for children. A lot of food companies and parents are turning to natural sweeteners like Stevia and monk fruit, we just don't know enough about how the affect of body and to be honest, I think we'd rather sweetened with natural food. What we recommend is if you are going to cook or bake is to use natural sweeteners and by natural sweeteners I don't mean honey or maple syrup or coconut sugar, those are all added sugars. What we recommend is using whole fruit or dried fruit or dates or frozen bananas. There's lots of inventive ways that you can get sweetness into foods while maintaining a natural sweetness and get the nutritional benefits of the whole fruits. Emily, are these sort of low-calorie sweeteners showing up in lots of processed foods and what might parents look for? It can be so confusing especially with all the claims on the front of products that say no added sugar or all natural. And you think that you're getting something that's good for your kids. But, then when you start investigating at the back of the label and looking at the ingredient list you realize that some of these artificial or even all natural low-calorie sweeteners are showing up side-by-side with regular sugar. Or sometimes they're in there alone and you just don't realize it. It is important to note that sweeteners are much sweeter than regular sugar. What they do is this sort of reinforce a sweet taste preference that kids already have. So, it makes it harder for kids then to enjoy, you know, more subtle version of sweetness if they're used to the amplified tastes. We give ideas for how to read labels and avoid them but also to help your kids gradually reset their taste preferences and be more happy with things that are naturally sweetened. Also it sounds like you're saying that if kids get used to a very high level of sweetness because of either added sugar or even these non-calorie sweeteners but then that could generalize to preferences for highly sweetened versions of other foods in the diet and it could have a cascading effect, is that right? Exactly. Yep, exactly right Kelly. What about the problem that some parents might worry about, this over restricting kids and causing a backlash about sugar? We all know stories of certain kids that you may have known when we were growing up, or kids that you see now whose have parents just forbid sugar entirely. You see the after effects when those kids on their own eat as much as they can. Or they're really confused or they become afraid of eating things with sugar in them and we certainly don't want any of that. So kids to have some sugar in their diet, what we suggest is for dual pronged approach, just think about your home food environment and think about the staple foods that you have there for your kid. The idea is to create a safe, healthy food environment where kids can't go wrong. Whatever they're going to choose from the pantry to eat—as part of their staples foods, their breads or snacks or cereal or whatever it is—you want all those things to be good, healthy choices so that kids aren't accidentally getting a lot of sugar in there. The other thing is to raise kids with awareness about sugar but also giving them some autonomy to make their own decisions. Take for example, maybe you go to a party and there's juice and there's soda and there's gummy bears in a dish and there's cake and there's ice cream. What we suggest is raising kids with an awareness that maybe they don't need all of those things. They can choose what would they most like to have at that party so that they still have a treat but they don't have to sample everything all in one day. Well, it sounds like very helpful and concrete advice. Well, let me ask both of you about your opinions of our policies. So many policies could be affected by the sort of points that you're making. You mentioned earlier the Dietary Guidelines and how that might change things—especially no sugar added at all for kids zero to two. But what are the implications on other things like getting rid of soft drinks in schools or changing what's in vending machines or offered through school lunch programs and I'm wondering what you both think about that? Emily, we'll start with you. Well, we've seen some examples that can be effective, we would like to see more of them more changes in the school lunch programs and access to healthy foods for kids that live in areas where there aren't any grocery stores or markets with healthy things. Thanks, so Michael what are your thoughts on that? Research actually shows that kids and teenagers get most of their soda at home which is kind of a little surprising and this gets you pretty quickly into talking about marketing and advertising. Other countries are starting to do more in terms of advertising and marketing policies, especially when it comes to targeting their of children so I'd like to see more of that. I'd also like to see better warning labels especially on things like soda and very high sugar items that are marketed to children, we ought to have warning signs on some of those products so that consumers know more directly what some of the health effects are.     Speaker Bios   Dr. Michael I Goran is one of the world's most widely recognized experts in childhood nutrition and obesity research, with more than 30 years of experience as a researcher, mentor, and educator. He is a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Southern California, Keck School of Medicine, Co-Director of the USC Diabetes and Obesity Research Institute and leads the Program in Diabetes and Obesity at the Children's Hospital of Los Angeles. He holds the Dr. Robert C and Veronica Atkins Endowed Chair in Childhood Obesity and Diabetes. Michael is a native of Glasgow, Scotland, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Manchester, UK. Dr. Emily Ventura is an experienced nutrition educator, public health advocate, writer, and cook. After working in writing and public relations in the arenas of environmental protection and food, she completed her Master's in Public Health and Doctorate of Philosophy in Health Behavior Research at the University of Southern California. She was selected as a Fulbright Scholar to teach Public Health Nutrition in Italy and now lives in California and works as a writer, recipe developer, and mother to two young boys.

When influencer & entrepreneur Emily Gellis posted a personal opinion about the F-Factor diet program to her 100k+ followers earlier this year, she had no idea the can of worms she’d be opening up… or that she’d ultimately pivot her entire life to that of a crusader. What started as an innocuous social post turned her into a modern day Erin Brokovich… Emily received thousands of messages documenting people’s adverse reactions - both physically & mentally - as a byproduct of the following the diet or consuming the products. So Emily started sharing it all… the good, the bad, and the ugly. The situation snowballed, and when the story landed in the New York Times and then the TODAY show, Emily vowed to see this through to the end for the victims.Emily shares her story with us on today’s episode, along with two other guests: Liz, a former client of the practice who shares a jarring & heartbreaking story; and Lauren Slayton, founder of Foodtrainers(™) a New York City consultancy dedicated to weight management and sports nutrition. Lauren holds a Masters Degree in Clinical Nutrition from New York University, and she helps us dig a little deeper into the question on everyone’s minds: what the hell is going on here?? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this episode of "Real Talk and Conversation with Today's Candidate" I welcome my guest Emily Leslie. "Emily is different from most of the people who run for office. She was raised by a family who believed in serving their neighbors. Her grandparents were teachers, and her parents were social workers. Public service is in Emily's blood. In her house, she believes in the community. She believed in standing up for the needs of the community. That's how she was taught, and that's what she still believes. Emily grew up living with a disability and raise a child who lives with a learning disorder. She knew she needed advocacy and to be an ally who would fight for people's rights. So Emily decided to pursue a career in Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities and Addiction Recovery. Over the years, she has helped people in crisis. She has fought for human rights. She has organized for a more representative democracy with progressive organizations, It has been a long, satisfying career for her. Our elected officials keep themselves distant from these daily struggles. That has to end." Thank you for tuning in. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/ptg-tv/support

Today's guest is the perfect example of how literally one connection can change your entire path -- personally and professionally.  Emily Merrell is the founder of Six Degrees Society, a group that is redefining networking. Networking is usually one of those obligations people feel like they have to do, and it may come with some level of dread. So Emily started Six Degrees Society to change the way we network and bring women (and men) together from all different industries and backgrounds to connect at events that focus on personal, professional, and lifestyle development. Now more than ever, we need to find ways to connect, foster relationships, and build a sense of community and Emily is helping so many people do that no matter where they are. In today's episode, we talk about how Emily had to pivot SDS to digital in light of COVID-19 and how she can reach so many more people than when the events were limited to IRL. Emily also shares some advice on networking in this new normal, and how you can try a SDS event for yourself with a code to go to your first event free!  Minute-by-minute topics: 14:40 -- How Emily transitioned from the fashion industry in NYC to founding Six Degrees Society  20:00 -- Why asking for help and hiring coaches is so important 23:00 -- How she's pivoted Six Degrees Society from IRL to virtual events 33:50 -- Tips for networking in the new normal 37:00 -- Emily's self-care routine  44:20 - How to join SDS and work with Emily   Links: First Six Degrees Society Event Free: Use Code: VIRTUALSDS Six Degrees Society Event Schedule Six Degrees Society Blog and Podcast Emily Merrell's website Book: Get it Together by Lauren Berger 

Today I’m joined by a very special guest. She’s the most amazing person in my life, mother to my 3 children, and head of our house, my wife Emily Pope. Thanks for joining me Emily.I’m rather excited about this episode. I predict it will be the most liked episode we shoot out of our first 100 episodes. This is going to be a little bit of a roast. Because I’ve put Emily through quite the Amazon journey and she’s had to deal with it all. I hope all Amazon sellers share this with their spouses, because it’s all in good fun. So Emily, what’s it like to be married to an Amazon Seller?We own the brand Momstir. As well as My Amazon Guy.Failed productsBasement full of 9 pallets of goodsHot sauceLong hours at night talking to ChinaRetail arbitrage phaseReverse wholesale phase garage full of candy17k on Scotch tape liquidation buyCrazy entrepreneurNever leave the houseExcited about Amazon sales holidays such as prime day and 12k days during Christmas seasonWhat about decorating the Christmas treeChristmas gifts are just old products or liquidationA lot of other Amazon sellers have empty bank accounts cuz they continually reinvest but that doesn't describe usFriends and family to do reviews and testing productsGuy at UPS store knows my name.Romantic date nights he's checking his Amazon seller app for salesFantasizing about private hot sauce labelsKids are obsessed with mail trucks because we get packages every day at the houseKids making cars out of boxesKids using pallets as play houses Now focus on consulting companySupport the show (https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/myamazonguy)

Book recommendations: https://www.amazon.ca/shop/sandra.clarke.canada Let's chat on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/makerspodcast/ Hello, Welcome to Small Town + Co podcast I’m your host Sandra Clarke, welcome to episode 2. Entrepreneur + business operations in small towns have unique growth strategies that differ from urban + online companies. Most small town businesses are brick and mortar with little, if any online presence. Small Town + Co. Podcast helps small town businesses navigate the digital world, social media marketing and business growth to increase sales and reach their personal and professional goals. I have one foot in the urban art world of Toronto + the other foot is in Highlands East, Ontario -- between Bancroft + Haliburton -- the southern most part of Algonquin Park. In today’s episode I am speaking with Emily Clarke. Emily is millennial, a brilliant writer, and about to study veterinary administration in January 2020. She has spent a lot of time in Bancroft, Ontario, the small town I’m currently focusing on. Emily is my daughter I’m trying to talk her into moving out of the GTA to start a business in a small town. Some background. In 2002 our family was camping at Earl Rowe Conservation Area near Alliston, Ontario. We went into the small town of Alliston for lunch. I remember chatting with a middle aged woman about how lovely and artistic Alliston looked. She said, “Move here! We need young blood.” I didn’t quite understand what she meant. But now that I’m a middle aged woman in love with the small town of Bancroft, I get it. So Emily, “Move to Bancroft, we need young blood!” --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/makers/message

[Ep 213] If you didn’t click to read this first sentence, I failed. If we want to hook readers and hold their attention so they read all the way to the end, we have to generate an intriguing title or headline. Lure Readers with Your Title Books, chapters, articles, essays, poems: they all need names or titles that invite the reader to stop skimming and scrolling and think, “Hm. I wonder what this is about?” or “Oh, wow, I need this information.” I opened up Feedly when I was preparing this article and stopped on an article at The Write Practice titled “How to Find the Core Message of Your Writing” because it was clear and seemed relevant to the kinds of things I like to read. But I also stopped on an article by Emily P. Freeman: “How to Find (and Become) A Good Listener.” That sounded useful to help me as a coach and to help me improve relationships with family and friends. Or consider James Clear’s book Atomic Habits. The main title intrigues me with that word “atomic” connected to “habits.” His subtitle is “An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones.” Then he includes a tagline that clarifies it further: “Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results.” That sounds like a doable approach to the topic of habits, doesn’t it? He hooked me with his title and subtitle combo. We have to entice our readers to click on the link or open the book by capturing that first concept in a few words that hint at or outright reveal the subject, topic, theme, or problem we’ll address in the piece. Hook Your Readers with Attention Grabbers Let’s say you nailed it—you lured in your readers with the headline. Now it’s time to hook them—to grab them by the throat, as novelists often say. Bring on the attention grabber: it’s that first line or two that will keep them reading. When I taught composition to high school students, I’d offer attention-grabber ideas like: a startling statistic a quote a question an intriguing statement or claim a story (e.g., an anecdote that stands alone, a personal story, or someone else’s story) That article about finding the core message of your writing starts, “Why do you write?”—a question any writer will instinctively answer, at least in his head. So the author, Joe Bunting, has probably hooked us. Our mind is engaged with the question. It’s a good attention-grabber. Emily P. Freeman’s article on finding and becoming a good listener has an epigraph—a quote from Dr. Larry Crabb about listening to each other—followed by the beginning of the actual article. She starts with a story: It’s 2012, and there’s a stack of brochures in the little room I type in. I keep staring over at them, rereading their invitation, “To know more about you: If you would like to be informed of upcoming events…” I reach over, and I turn the plastic holder to face the wall. I cannot keep reading that same brochure over and over again. What’s going to happen? Why is this brochure featured so prominently in this story? Is she going to take action? Is it going to change her? What does this brochure have to do with listening? You can see how stories are great for hooking readers—they’re great attention-grabbers. They awaken curiosity and open a loop that we must close. We want to know what happens and how it ends. So Emily has hooked me. You, too, can use stories. And here’s a bonus tip—if you start far enough into a situation, the action of a story engages and hooks the reader, but you can leave it hanging so that you complete the story in the conclusion. That provides closure that satisfies and gratifies the reader. It feels like you’ve come full circle. But for them to get to the end, you’ve got to hold him. First you hook them, then you hold them. Hold Your Reader’s Attention To hold the reader isn’t easy. We’re battling for his or her attention, and we all know the long list of distractions that can pull a reader away at any moment. Here are some tips.

RHOC EP 4 WATCHDOWN Here we go! Diving deeper into the train rumor.  “Eight guys pulled a train on Kelly.” TAMRA is the one that explains it to us?! Haha they added a train sound effect in the background.  Tamra and Shannon refuse to say anything, but BRAUNWYN wants to tell her.  12 hours later…  No opening credits?!  Tamra references last night and the rumor, without saying the rumor. Instead they just play the train sound which is amazing.  YESSS they’re featuring Braunwyn’s laugh. It’s amazing.  BRAUNWYN told Kelly off camera?!?! Rookie mistake!!!!  Shannon: “I don’t like seeing anyone in pain” referring to Gina. Sure, Shannon. Sure.  KELLY AND GINA AT BRAUNWYN’S Gina lost her keys.  Meanwhile Tamra tells Shannon that Kelly won’t go shopping if Vicki does.  Back at the house, Gina wants to know where the train rumor came from. Kelly insists it comes from Vicki.  Kelly: How am I slinging stuff to Vicki?! Genius cut to the pig message.  ACT TWO GINA IN THERAPY Well, this is good. I’m happy with this vs her crying on Emily’s couch. Let’s give Gina some helpful advice!  Gina says she’s emotionally moving on from the DUI. Gina says Matt has been dating the girl he had the affair with. It’s a gut punch to Gina. Gina said she told nobody because she wanted to protect him.  Gina doesn’t think this year could get any worse. NEVER SAY THAT Gina.  KELLY AND BRAUNWYN IN THE CAR Kelly and B talk about Emily doing a sexy dance for Shane in Vegas. They get to the class. The instructor was over the top, but then Emily says she knows Jackie Seagal! She is all over Bravo this year. Emily pops champagne, did you guys hear about theo from the challenge who lost his eye because a champagne cork got popped into it?  Kelly and B arrive at the studio, Emily tells them that Shane wasn’t comfortable with this.  HAHAHA they cut back to Kelly calling Shane a dork and a pussy. I could watch that over and over.  ACT THREE Braunwyn’s family heads to Beaver Creek. She’s staying back to work on her book.  Is there anything more painful than watching people wake up in the morning?  Sean is really leading the charge as warp speed like they’re fleeing their home.  The family leaves. Braunwyn is alone drinking coffee at the table. Honestly it looks so relaxing. I feel bad, but this was handled really well. I love when they go from a quiet sensitive moment to upbeat music. It’s like anyway that’s enough!!  GINA AND TAMRA AT LUNCH OR SOMETHING Gina talking about Matt only showing up for appointments. You know, it’s interesting that Gina came on this show knowing she was getting divorced but was SO determined to be private about Matt that she ended up rubbing the women the wrong way.  So I guess Shannon told Jeff lewis that she didnt think Gina or Emily would last very long on the show. So Emily goes on the attack and tweets: You may have lost 40 pounds of fat, but you definitely didn’t lose 40 pounds of jealous. … you know, if it’s not coming from Kelly, a juvenile tweet just isnt funny.  WHY DOES ANYONE TELL JEFF LEWIS ANYTHING??! Gina appreciates that Shannon called her and warned her about the podcast.  ACT FOUR On the way to Rodeo drive.  Emily feels weird that Shannon and Gina are friends now. Oooh this is interesting. Because it’s always been Emily and Gina, ad now it’s Shannon and Gina, and Shannon doesn’t like Emily.  Emily and Shannon speak spanish. Wait, are they not going to reference the tweet stuff to each other?  B’s dad was in a band. She was bathed in a bucket.  OMG why did they show Villa Blanca in the brolll?! Too soon!! Get us out of here!!  These housewives are shocked to see real clothes.  Emily and Gina have an aside Gina thinks that Emily has issues with everyone else and it’s coming out in a toxic way. Emily feels overwhelmed, and every little thing that happens triggers her. Emily seems like she can’t admit that Shane is the problem.  ACT FIVE Emily is crying outside, and Shannon wants it to be drama free. “Gina is outside with crying Emily.’ Shannon feels like she’s justified being mean because of the tweet.  Emily tells Gina she hasn’t seen Shane in a week. Flashback to her telling Parry. Parry doesnt seem to care. PARRY! Go drag him from that hotel and bring him home!  Emily leaves the table because her eye is bothering her. Tamra wants to know what Emily’s deal is. Why is TAMRA so bothered by Emily?  Emily and Shannon talk about the tweet. Shannon says that she only ever said to Jeff that she is getting along with Gina and Emily. Emily apologizes. Shannon accepts the apology.  Tamra says this is why people shouldn’t gossip. So, wouldn’t that make this Shannon’s fault for saying what she said to Jeff?  Now Emily is mad about the train thing. Shannon is mad that Gina told Emily about the train thing. Emily wants to know where it came from? Kelly tells everyone to fuck off. Emily just looks blank and chews her bread. Such a confusing reaction.  ACT SIX Shannon asks how Kelly knows about the train thing? B says it was her. Tamra can’t believe B did that.  Tamra goes in to talk to Kelly. Tamra says you can’t tell us all to fuck off.  Kelly doesn’t understand why Emily is bringing this up. Seems like misdirected anger. But it’s also totally random that Emily would bring this up.  Kelly wants to know why Tamra and Shannon wouldn’t have told her about this rumor. This is interesting. I think you should tell Kelly this.  Kelly is annoyed that Gina and Emily are getting involved. Braunwyn is keeping quiet.  See guys? Nothing good happens in Beverly Hills. 

Tell Me Something Good—that’s the name of a weekly email Emily Depetris sends to her coworkers in the pediatric cardiac ICU. In the PCICU, they take care of really sick kids. So Emily wanted to give the PCICU staff a weekly reminder of the good things that come from their work—in the form of pictures of their patients playing in the park, dressing up for Halloween, and graduating from high school. Emily is joined by Anne Schmelzer, a nurse in the PCICU, to talk about why she started Tell Me Something Good, and how it’s brought joy and inspiration to the staff. Find the full transcript at www.listeningbooth.info.

For this week's episode, we're speaking with Emily Freeman, a software engineer and cloud advocate at Microsoft, about the role of developer relations in developer marketing. Freeman wrote on her personal blog late last year about the role of developer relations, otherwise known as devrel, in software engineering. Developer relations roles have become more popular at large enterprises and the major cloud providers. We recently noticed Amazon Web Services advertising a raft of new developer relations openings focused on serverless and the Azure team alone has 15 advocate roles open.  But the position has taken a bit of heat, of late, among a vocal group of Twitter critics. So Emily is here to help clarify what devrel is all about and why you might just want to thank the next one you see.   In the second half of the show, we'll review our top stories for the week, including Mary Branscombe's article this week on HTTP/3.  When HTTP, the hypertext transfer protocol, was invented, the needs were pretty clear — to ship Web pages quickly and reliably from servers to end clients, which back in the early 1990s, was always a home computer. As the Web grew and spread onto other platforms, such as mobile devices, and took on new formats, such as streaming video, the packet-switching technology started to hit its limits.

It's Revengecast! The show that takes us a months per single episode of a long-dead TV show to record and then when we finally do we accidentally ruin the file and take another whole week to record it. But hey, our lack of ability to keep to even a vague and/or general and/or not-completely-meaningless/in-name-only schedule is why you love us! It is also, not coincidentally, a least a little bit of why we don't we have a Patreon! But hey, we can't all be CHAMBO TRAMBOPS. So anyway I'm gonna blitz through this as fast as I can because in the 24 hours since this Revengecast was recorded I managed to drop a whole glass (technically it was a mason jar) of water on my computer in such a way that the glass straight up exploded and water got everywhere and let me the first to sorrowfully inform you the AIDRIA TECHNIQUE did NOTHING to save it. So anyway got some salt about that. You know what else is salty? THE OCEAN. Where EMILY CURRENTLY LIVES with her freshly delivered pair of bouncing baby BULLET WOUNDS courtesy of Danny who for some reason was upset about being told he was a father (in fairness, because it led to Sara Paddingtonbeara's attempted suicide but wow, talk about burying the lede there Danno). So Emily got shot and we left her out on the ocean for this 6-ish weeks like "???" Only for her to end up on some gnarly-ass fishing boat being basically fine except for her plot amnesia which, thankfully, and yes there is a god, is at least resolved by the end of the episode in a way that almost makes it worth it. Meanwhile: everyone's got a story about where they were and what they were doing while Emily shot. With the combined powers of Charlock Hound and the reopening of Jashley Investigations (ft. Margaux) we tug taut these tangled tales into a swollen web of falsehood that you can only read one way: Lydia. Oh Lydia, I'd feel sorry for you if you weren't the worst. As it stands, you're just the bad version of Margaux--equally as hapless and misinformed about your position in the world, but totally supercilious about it. In the parlance of our streamcasts, we summarize this attitude with the acronym "I-M-T-B" And boy oh boy has there never been a more "IM" for "TB" to be than Lydia Davis. So of course they were gonna put the blame on you, you big, dumb baby--they're Graysons! It was in the cards long before your ill-conceived plan to do the thing that's been the cover art of this podcast for approximately 5 years completely without context. Well, red wine, your day in the sun has finally come! And people can finally know what that climactic shot of descending merlot truly means, except for how we replaced it with the Everything In The World Is Either A Potato Or Not A Potato image like a year ago, so once more for old times! ...oh right in the course of writing this post I forgot that image is always at the top of the post... Is Charlotte the worst detective who ever lived? What dark secrets does Margaux Lemarchal hid on her nefarious memory stixx?? Will Conrad and Danny ever "Jash" it out or will their tamped rage finally boil over like an overstuffed pot of idaho golds??? Will Graz log on in time to complete her grand company dailies??? I don't know, but I'll tell you one thing: Revengecast is back & it'll never leave you again! Except for the part where I have to go frantically google "apple care liquid damage macbook air" like six thousand more times before my appointment on Wednesday just in case Apple changes their mind on the subject in the meantime. !!!!REVENGECASTNTERNVENGECASTRENVEGENATVCAST!!!! Topics for Consideration: Eldorast, Wizard of the Blue, Scion of the Seventh Age Gutshot Triathalon DARK NOLAN The Dangers of "Bodycon" One Degree of YRP The Beautiful Potpourri of My Supposed Innocence

The rest of the story… On this special 2 part episode Russell recaps and summarizes what happened at Funnel Hacking Live. He also reflects on how he felt about different aspects and speakers at the event. Here are some of the cool things you will hear in this 2 part episode: An overview of the schedule during the 3 day event, who spoke, and what they spoke about. How Russell felt about certain speakers and what he thinks went right with his own presentations, and what mistakes he feels he made. What the best part of the event was for Russell (hint – It involves his lovely wife). And what Russell plans on doing differently at next year’s Funnel Hacking Live. So listen below for the conclusion of Russell’s thoughts and feelings about Funnel Hacking Live 2017. ---Transcript--- Day number two now, Devon got on stage he intro to government estate. Then we came up and did a section on follow-up funnels. Which was Todd and Dylan and Ryan and me and we talked about how email funnels are from 1998 and the future is follow up funnels. And we did a presentation and during the presentation we ripped our shirts off and we had these shirts. I’m actually wearing the shirt today. It says, “We are not confusion soft, we’re Clickfunnels” and then we challenged everybody to go all in and be all in, in Clickfunnels. And we gave them these t-shirts and temporary tattoos and a whole bunch of stuff for anyone who went all in. Basically they had to open up their phone and go to imallin.com and if you’re not all in it had Macauley Culkin slapping his face saying, “ahh, you’re not in.” and there was a big button where you could upgrade. And if you were all in, it showed you were all in and basically you’d run to the back of the room, show them the funnel and then we’d give you a huge packet of swag, which was cool. So if any of you guys are listening to this. Don’t do that right now. We’re updating it to make it work online, I think by next week. Actually my birthday, March 8th. So on my birthday we’re going to be doing that presentation live to Facebook Live and it’ll be live so you can all go all in and get the same swag shipped out to you, which will be fun. But it was cool to show people what’s possible in Actionetics. Most people don’t know, they assume it’s an email auto-responder, and that’s like saying that Clickfunnels builds websites. Come on now, that’s 1998. I had a slide, I wanted to use Urkel, Steve urkel in my slides, and I was able to use him twice. I was like, “You know what else was cool in 1998, Steve Urkel. Actually no, Steve Urkel’s show was cancelled in 1998. So even in 98 Urkel wasn’t cool anymore. But that’s what you’re using if you’re doing email funnels. We’re talking about follow-up funnels and all the stuff that’s possible.” So we showed people what’s possible in Actionetics, and most people didn’t even know. And everyone is shifting everything over to Clickfunnels, which is the goal. We want everybody all in, I want you all in. So that was what Follow-up Funnels is about. It was probably the coolest presentation. So much energy, it was awesome. Then we had a break after that. And then Justin and Tara Williams came on and did a whole section on podcast funnels, which was awesome. They told their story, which was cool. And basically showed how these three podcasts they had done, how these three podcasts had each launched three entire businesses for them and it was just cool to see. Anyway, that part was awesome. So podcast funnels, Justin and Tara were amazing. They killed it. After that we had Emily Shay come up and she is 11 years old and she stood up there on a huge stage where most people would be so scared and so intimidated and she crushed it. She was so awesome. She had about 15 or 20 minutes up there and she told her story and did it in a really fun way that tied it to the audience. She’s just a superstar. Some people would say the youth speakers were the best one’s of the whole thing, and I was like, “Yes.” So Emily crushed it. Caleb Maddix came on, I talked about him yesterday on the podcast. He came on and just did an amazing job as well. And it was just so cool to see Emily and Caleb, two young entrepreneurs who were able to stand in front of a room and control the audience like that. For me, it took me honestly, it took me ten plus years to get a spot that they were in already and it was just so cool to see them. They’re the future. So exciting, so they both crushed it and did such an amazing job. Then we had a lunch break. Again, the annoying thing where our stomachs were hungry and we had to go eat. So everyone went to lunch. We came back and Trey Lewellen stood up on stage and Trey is really, Trey spoke at the very first Funnel Hacking Event and he did a great job then. But it’s fun seeing him transition, him owning the stage now, he just, he did awesome. He went into deep funnelytics, like here’s the metrics you’ve got to figure out to make your funnels works. And he showed this stuff where it’s just like, well I didn’t understand that. Most people who set up a funnel that doesn’t make a million bucks day one they’re like, “This didn’t work.” No, you gotta understand the math behind it. And Trey showed how he’s built these huge companies. 20-30 million dollar companies off of a funnel that was not profitable upfront. But when you understand the funnelytics, the math behind the funnels, how it worked. It was so cool for him to document and show it all off, it was just amazing. Then from there, we’re only halfway through, it just keeps getting, the whole thing was amazing. Then Jason Fladlien, who is someone I’ve learned, in fact in the Expert Secrets book, I dedicated a lot to him as well. Because there’s so much I learned from him about breaking belief patterns and rebuilding and reframing and he’s just brilliant. He got on stage and talked about Amazon Funnels. And even though a lot of people know him as the guy who’s the best in the world at selling from webinars, he happens to also be good at Amazon as well. So he showed 7 different Amazon funnels that he uses in his company and then he gave everybody at the event. “Here’s the Amazon funnels, there’s 7 of them. You guys can knock them off and use them in your business.” Which was so cool. So if you’re using any Amazon or ecommerce stuff, Jason’s stuff was amazing. From there Darrin Stevens got on stage. A lot of you guys probably don’t know Darrin Stevens but he is a legend. He was one of the, he did the marketing behind Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus. Brilliant book launch and stuff like that. But he also runs events. He does these events that have 80 people in the room who make 2-3million dollars in a weekend, for a room of less than 100 people. And it’s all about how he structures his events and event funnels. So he walked us through the whole process and he had 18 or 19 things that he does at events to build rapport and get people buying. If I was able to close what Darrin does, again he did what did I say, 2.5 million dollars from 80 people. I would have done like 60 million dollars from this event, but I didn’t so Darrin is still the king. He’s amazing. So he shared event funnel stuff, which was awesome. Then we had another break, then Setema got on stage, and Setema is the Super Bowl winner who had to sell his ring because after he won the Super Bowl his life kind of fell apart and talks about how you win again. How do you get that stuff back? How do you implement all the stuff you’ve learned? It was amazing. He’s nicknamed himself the reverend of the revolution. I feel like he was the reverend preaching to us about how to take this stuff and have success with imperfect action and just going through and doing it. It was so cool, Setema is the man. That was awesome. After that we came onstage and we awarded the Two Comma Club awards, which was amazing. We had, I think right now, we have over 100 people who have qualified for the Two Comma Club. Which means they have a funnel that made at least a million dollars. 100 people! So we gave away I think 80 something Two Comma Club trophy’s. These huge trophy’s with a gold record on it with two commas etched into it. It was cool for everyone else to see that and be like, “Wow, these are my peers. And they’re all making a million dollars in a funnel.” I was trying to make it so real. If they can do it, you can do it. So we did that, and afterwards I did a presentation called “You’re one Funnel Away.” Which basically I had no power point slides, I just told the story of all the ups and downs in my business and the funnels that have saved me. I talked about the two or three times I’ve almost gone bankrupt. I talked about the fears, the pain, all that kind of stuff. What were the funnels we created that saved us from that. It was emotional, I started crying, which is really embarrassing, especially on stage. Other people were crying and it was cool. I hope people enjoyed that. It was a scary thing for me to get vulnerable like that, but I think it was important so that everyone understands, whatever you’re struggling at, it happens to all of us. It happens to me, it happens to everyone. So understanding that and being okay with it and giving yourself permission through that to be able to succeed. That was really cool. After that we had a hack-a-thon at night. I was super tired. I went to the hack-a-thon, talked for a few minutes, then I went back up, ate some dinner and then passed out because I was so tired. But then I hadn’t finished my next presentation for the next night. So I set my alarm for 4:30 in the morning, the next morning to get started. Hack-a-thon was awesome, people were up til midnight building funnels. We had a whole bunch of people who built, launched and made money on funnels that night, which was cool. We catered dinner again, which was cool. Then the next day, the last day, which was Thursday. So the last day we came in, Devon brought everyone in, brought the energy high. Then Garrett White and his wife, Danielle and their kids were going to come to the stage and when the event started we couldn’t find them anywhere. I was like, “Where’s Garrett? Where’s Danielle?” We started freaking out. I was totally stressing out and we’re trying to Vox them and text them and call them and nothing. And finally Melanie found out what room number they were in, so Dave ran up and knocked on the door like, “Ahhh, we’re on stage trying to announce you, where are you guys.” It was a miscommunication, we had told them the wrong, we messed up on our side. But they came down and during that time it was fun because Devon was able to invent a new secret handshake for all funnel hackers, out of necessity. He bought ten minutes time by inventing a new secret handshake, which all of you who have been to Funnel Hacking Live know the secret handshake. Don’t show to those who were not there. They’ll have to learn it at next year’s event. But we’ve got a secret handshake now that is so cool. In fact, I should add a chapter to the Expert Secrets book about secret handshakes, that would be cool. Anyway, we got a secret handshake and then Garrett, Danielle and their two kids came on stage and gave a presentation that was, I don’t even know what to say, it was so amazing. It was so cool. I’m just going to leave it at that. It was something where if you were in the room you felt it and you heard it and it moved you. It was amazing. So there you go. Maybe someday we’ll do a launch like warrior funnels .com and share all the presentations of Garrett throughout the Funnel Hacking Live events because they have just been amazing Anyway, who knows, but we’ll look at that. So then we had after they got done. I came up and did a presentation called fill your funnel, which is how to make it rain. How to get people into your funnels. And this was the only presentation where I actually sold-sold. We were selling things throughout the event and I’ll talk about this at the end, but this is the only one where I did the actual presentation. It went good, but a couple of weird things. When I got on stage after Garrett, there was so much energy from Garrett and Danielle and it was amazing. I came on immediately afterwards and the audio/video guys didn’t turn the music on, so I got up there and it was just kind of a weird transition. And then we awarded Stu and Amy their checks for World Teacher Aide, which was the quarter of a million bucks, which was awesome. Then it was my chance to get up there and teach affiliate funnel and we sold a course called fill your funnels. And just something about that, I don’t know what it was. Something about the presentation was kind of off. I’m just going to be completely honest. I had numbers in my head of what I thought I was going to do and I didn’t do that. It did well, if I told you guys how many we sold, everyone else would think I was a selfish kid and rude. It did well, but what I expected, and there was this, I was doing it, I couldn’t get the flow right.  I don’t know if it was, part of it I think was because I worked on the presentation the week earlier, then that morning I woke up at 4:30 trying to get it done and I was tired and worn out. There was something about the energy that wasn’t quite right. I think it was good, but it wasn’t great, like I wanted it to be. But at the end of it we sold, and it was awkward. I’m like, in the pitch, “This is hard selling you guys through my perfect webinar, even though I’ve trained all you guys on it and most of you guys are doing it now. It’s like, I’m doing it onstage live. It’s funny how that works.” But it did well, that was when had breaks, we had snack breaks. And then basically we had to clear the whole audience out, secret service came through for Tony Robbins group, swept the whole thing and then Tony was onstage and I was in the back super nervous and awkward and worried. It’s so different, because with Marcus when he came, he just showed up in his own Uber, it was laid back, he hung out with the crowd, it was really easy and laid back. And Tony was the opposite of that. He had his security detail of 10 or 15 people there who were like, swept all the chairs making sure there were no bombs or guns and we had check people as they came through. I was in the back and they had to pull us all out so he could come in. Very intense and caused anxiety and nerves and all this stuff, that was nervous. Plus, I found out Tony was throwing up before he came. So he wasn’t feeling good. So much stress. He brought Tony into this little green room and they let us come in and he came out. It went from this nerve, all the nerves, it was like an hour of this, while we were waiting for him to get here. All the nerves and fear and anxiety. What if he’s sick and he can’t speak? What if people don’t get what, they were so excited for him to be there. Secret service security was honestly kind of frustrating because it just. You know how I am, I’m so laid back, it was beyond corporatey, it was secret service, military. Which is good, he needs that, I understand that. But it was just kind of, at first we were trying to make this cool experience and it was so hard. And then again, Tony came in and did his thing in the green room and came out and came to us and we had moment before he got on stage where he just kind of came in and gave me a hug, and gave my wife, Collette, a hug. And Dylan and Todd and their wives, he just connected personally with us at a level. I was so grateful for that, because it just made all the stress and everything go away. It was like, it’s going to be okay. Tony’s here, he’s going to do what he does, and he’s the best in the world and everyone’s going to love it. I’m not going to stress and I’m going to let it happen and it was cool. Normally, I guess they don’t let people introduce him, but I was like, “I would love to introduce Tony, there is a reason why I wanted him here and I want everyone to know that reason.” So they let me introduce Tony and I got all choked up during the introduction. But I was talking about how in his bio it talks about how he’s helped 50 million people around the world. I was like, well that’s cool. Tony helped me.  He helped my wife. He helped our family. If it wasn’t for Tony, my wife and I were at a rough spot before I met Tony, before I went to his event. It was honestly, it was what healed us. And I’m just so grateful for him and after I went to Tony’s stuff, I went to all of his events in a year period of time, and then right after that my company collapsed. Had I not been equipped by the tools he gave me, I don’t know if I could have handled that. I was just talking about how grateful I am and how excited I was to share him with my world and my people, my funnel hackers. Then we played a video of him and we all went crazy and Tony came up on stage, gave me a hug and took over. And he was supposed to go for three hours. And again, he was puking five minutes before he got on the stage and I was nervous. And he stood there and he went not for three hours, not for four hours, but for five hours with everybody. It was just cool. Everyone’s jumping and screaming and having fun. It was awesome. It just made the event, it was already amazing, just that much more amazing. And when it was done, all of the Inner Circle members had a chance to get pictures with Tony, which was cool. Then we went up and ate real quick, and then I had a chance to go up to his hotel room afterwards and interview him for his new book, which hopefully you guys saw him on Facebook live. We showed that. And it was just awesome. That night we passed out, woke up in the morning. We had late checkout, so we hung out for a while and it was just cool to sit there and reflect with my wife. And the coolest thing for me is that this is the first time that Collette has ever been to, I mean she’s come to my events and poked her head in and then had to leave to watch the kids or all these different things, that time the kids didn’t come. So she had a chance to be there and be present and sit in the audience for almost the entire thing. For me, that was special. It was cool and it was I think the first time she’d ever seen me doing what we do. And you guys have a chance to see it through the podcast and through all the stuff I’m doing, but she’s not connected to that. She’s not connected to the business very much, she’s very much supporting from home, but not part of everything that’s happening. So for her to be able to see that and experience it with people in the audience, it was special for me. So I just loved that. It was awesome. That was kind of Funnel Hacking Live. And then as we’re, that day we’re leaving, flying home and I look at the Facebook group, and everyday I’m looking, kind of scrolling through, and if any of you guys are in our Facebook group you’re probably bombarded by millions and millions, everyone talking about it. I was like, alright, ready fire aim. Everybody is excited right now. Why don’t we sell tickets for next year’s event right now? So from the airport I did a Facebook Live. “Okay, we’re selling tickets. There’s a discount and Sunday at midnight we’re pulling the page down. So you gotta buy them now if you want them. Otherwise you gotta wait six months and who knows what the price will be then?” Did a Facebook Live, emailed the list and over the next three days we sold almost a thousand tickets to next year’s event. We almost sold as many tickets as last year, just from that. Hopefully won’t lessen the momentum. If the momentum is there, capitalize on it. Don’t wait six months, “Hey you guys remember the event we talked about six months ago? Who wants to come again?” When people’s energy and emotion and excitement are high, that’s the best time to sell. So we sold a lot of tickets, which was cool. It’s funny, I had some of the Inner Circle members freaking out, “Do we get discount tickets or not?” I was like, “I don’t know, I haven’t thought through this.” This is the lesson for everyone. I’m a big believer in “Ready Fire Aim” We just fired and I have no idea. We’ll figure it out way later, but we don’t have time right now. We just fired. Sorry, but that’s how it works over here. Everything’s not scripted out and planned second by second. Some things are, but most things aren’t. Hopefully that’s inspiration for you guys to. To know, “Look, figure things out and just do it.” So that was kind of the event in a nutshell. For those who were there, hopefully that was a good breakdown. I wish I could spend the hour or two hours on each presentation that people did, so you can experience it. But hopefully those that weren’t there, this will give you desire to come next year. I want you guys to be there. Yeah, I will probably sell recordings, and you will probably have some of these videos that are easy to see, but there’s something different about being in the room and being surrounded by 1500 of your peers who are doing the same thing. Seeing 100 of your peers on stage with a big trophy saying I made a million dollars with a funnel this year. There’s something different about that. So I recommend for all of you guys to make that break and come to the event. One last thing I want to share, because I kind of hinted to this earlier. And I think it’ll be cool for you guys to know. This is actually not a victory, this is a failure. A failure in my eyes. But I want to share with you guys, just so you understand that I mess things up too. So one of the cool things that I wanted to do is, usually at each Funnel Hacking Live we sell one thing. We did certification at the first event and second event. This year, I didn’t want to sell, I don’t want this to be a selling event, but there’s things we want to offer people. So we had this big trip to Kenya, which was awesome and people jumped on that. We had the Follow-up Funnels which was awesome and people jumped on that. Then I was trying to, we had this new event called the FHAT event that I was excited about and want people to come to that. Then we also had Fill Your Funnel and I think I tried to offer too many things. Not that we, it wasn’t like I was selling each thing, but we had them available. At the Hack-a-thon, I was like “Hey if you want to come to the FHAT event, here’s one more thing on it.” And I think it almost caused confusion. People didn’t know what to do. I think moving forward next year, we’ll probably just pick one thing and focus on that again, just to not cause confusion. But one of my big things, again I only want one session when we sold, and that was Fill Your Funnel. That one went well, but it was just, the energy wasn’t quite right when I did it. So that was one thing. But the other cool thing is that the entire Funnel Hacking Live event, if you look at it from the outside, it was a big perfect webinar. Session number one, if you’ve gone through the perfect webinar in detail and as you read the Expert Secrets book, you’ll understand it at a level I’ve never really shared it before. But the first thing we do is talk about the vehicle putting people in. So my first presentation was about creating a mass movement, becoming an expert. So that was the first vehicle. Session number one, would have been secret number one if this was a webinar. Session number two is about the internal beliefs and that’s how I walked into, I shared the story, showing “Look, you can create a mass movement.” And they’re like, “Well I don’t know if I can.” I’m like, “If you can master stories you can.” Belief number two was all about can they internally do it? So the second presentation for me was all about that. The internal. Then the third presentation, which was the One Funnel Away, was the external. I believe I can do it, I can tell stories, but I don’t know how to do this whole funnel thing. So I shared at the One Funnel Away presentation to help people understand the external fears. So if you look at, again if you break down the perfect webinar, you’ve got the belief pattern is tied to the vehicle, which is the new opportunity we’re putting people into. That was session number one, number two is their internal beliefs, false beliefs about themselves, and number three is the external false beliefs about themselves. So that’s how we structure those three presentations, and what we do at the hack-a-thon is offer people to come to the FHAT event, because that was kind of the natural continuation of that. The problem I have is that, if you look at the perfect webinar, what’s the last step? It’s stack and close and we didn’t stack and close anymore. We just basically said, “hey you should come to the FHAT event because it’s awesome.” And we had a lot of people who did, but not what I expected or hoped. My two big lessons, number one when you’re doing a webinar you can’t forget the stack and the close. It’s important even if you break their beliefs, if you don’t offer them the opportunity to buy and do it in a way that’s going to convince them to buy, a lot of people that you could have served, won’t be served. I honestly think that everybody should be at the FHAT event. I don’t think there’s anything I could do to serve anybody at a higher level than that. And because I kind of shied away and didn’t sell it and skipped the last step, I’m not able to affect as many people’s lives’ because of that. For me that looks like a failure. IT’s not the money. Money’s a cool way to keep score, but for me, I should have had 100 people from that room coming to Boise so I could help them create the perfect webinar. And I don’t. I have a lot but not that many because I…..I don’t know the exact reason, but I didn’t do it right. It came down to me having fears of trying to make it an official offer to people. It’s funny, even after this long I still make the same fears that other people make as well.  That was one big thing. And then the other thing, is again, shipping the focus of the event to being focusing on core thing we want people to do. Because I think people were confused, “I’m coming to Kenya, I upgraded and I’m all in, there’s this FHAT event Russell’s talking about and I don’t know what that is because he didn’t tell me about it. Sounds cool, but I have no idea. Then there’s Fill Your Funnel.” So I think that that was my other mistake. There was confusion in where I wanted people to go from here. So those are the things I learned, and again, that’s something you always learn as you do them. So it’ll be fun, next year my goal is to make the event even better. It’s shifting the focus, well I don’t know what the focus is going to be yet. But it’s making sure that everyone has an amazing experience, both from a marketing standpoint and also a personal development standpoint. I think that’s one neat thing we bring that nobody else does, which is cool. And then the third thing is really figuring out for people who come through the experience, what’s the next step for them. And focusing everything on that and not having two or three next steps, but one. And saying, “This is what you guys should be doing next. Those who are interested.” So that’s what I learned at Funnel Hacking Live as well. Anyway, I appreciate everyone who was there, I had a great time. With that said, this is probably the longest marketing in your car of all time, but it’s a recap for those who missed it. And hopefully you guys will come next year, because it’s going to be amazing. Tickets are not for sale right now, but in four or five months we’ll open it and we have probably 1500 more tickets or so I believe. When we do open it up, the price has gone up, I apologize for those that didn’t get my emails and everything else. I tried to warn you. With that said, thank you guys and I’ll talk to you all again soon.

What follows is an edited transcript of my conversation with Emily Hamilton about land use regulations' effects on affordable housing. Petersen: My guest today is Emily Hamilton. She is a researcher at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Emily, thanks for being on Economics Detective Radio. Hamilton: Thanks a lot for having me. Petersen: So, Emily recently wrote a paper titled "How Land Use Regulation Undermines Affordable Housing" along with her co-author Sanford Ikeda. The paper is a review of many studies looking at land use restrictions and it identifies four of the most common types of land use restrictions. Those are: minimum lots sizes, minimum parking requirements, inclusionary zoning, and urban growth boundaries. So Emily, could you tell us what each of those restrictions entail? Hamilton: Sure. So, starting off with the first, minimum lots sizes. This is probably what people most commonly associate with zoning. It's the type of Euclidian zoning that separates residential areas from businesses and then within residential areas limits the number of units that can be on any certain size of land. And this is the most common tool that makes up what is sometimes referred to as Snob Zoning, where residents lobby for larger minimum lots sizes and larger house sizes to ensure that their neighbors are people who can afford only that minimum size of housing. Petersen: So it keeps the poor away, effectively. Hamilton: Exactly. And then parking requirements are often used as a tool to ensure that street parking doesn't get too congested. So when cars first became common, parking was really crazy where people would just leave their car on the street, maybe double parked, or in an inconvenient situation near their destination. And obviously as driving became more and more common and that was just an untenable situation and there had to be some sort of order to where people were allowed to park. But street parking remained typically free or underpriced relative to demand. So, people began lobbying for a parking requirement that would require business owners and residential developers to provide parking that was off streets so that this underpriced street parking remained available. But that brought us to today where we often have just mass seas of parking in retail areas and residential areas, which are paper focuses on. Parking substantially contributes to the cost of housing, making it inaccessible in some neighborhoods for low income people and driving up the cost of housing for everyone who has been using the amount of parking that their developer was required to provide. Petersen: So that's one where you can really see the original justification. And it makes sense, if you have a business and a lot of people are parking and it spills over onto the street then maybe that's an externality. And it seems reasonable for you to have to provide parking for the people who come to your business, especially if a lot of them are driving there. But we push that too far, is what I'm hearing. Hamilton: Exactly. Yeah, it does seem reasonable but the argument in favor of parking requirements tends to ignore that business owners have every incentive to make it easy to get to their business. So, in many cases there's not necessarily an externality because the business owner providing the parking has the right incentive to provide enough to make it easy for their customers to get there. The externality really comes up when we think about street parking and Donald Shoup---probably the world's foremost expert on parking---has made the argument that pricing street parking according to demand is a real key in getting parking rules right. Petersen: So, on to the next one. What is inclusionary zoning? Hamilton: Inclusionary zoning is a rule that requires developers to make a certain number of units in a new development accessible to people at various income levels. Often inclusionary zoning is tied with density bonuses. So, a developer will have the choice to make a non-inclusionary project that is only allowed to have the regular amount of density that that lot is zoned for. Or, he can choose to take the inclusionary zoning density bonus which will allow him to build more units overall including the inclusionary unit and additional market-rate units. Typically, units are affordable to people who are making a certain percentage of the area median income, so people who might not have low income but who are making not enough to afford a market rate unit in their current neighborhood. Petersen: Okay, so that's sort of forcing developers to build affordable units that they then will probably lose money on, so that they can build the market rate units that they can make money on. Hamilton: Exactly. That's how cities make inclusionary zoning attractive to developers is by giving them that bonus that can allow them to build more market rate housing. In other cities, however, inclusionary zoning is required for all new developments so it really varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction how it's implemented. Petersen: So the fourth land use restriction you mention is urban growth boundaries. What are those? Hamilton: So Oregon is the most famous example in the US of implementing an urban growth boundary. And what it is, is basically a state law that requires each city to set up a boundary around its edges, where for a certain amount of time no housing can be built outside of that boundary. And the idea is to gradually expand the city's footprint over time to allow the suburbs to expand a little further, but to restrict that suburban development using the boundary for some time period. Other examples like London's urban growth boundary I believe are permanent, so there are certain areas that can never be developed. Petersen: So I believe we have something like this in Vancouver. We have farmland in the metro Vancouver area which---for context this area is one of the most overheated high-priced housing markets in the world---and we have this land that's just zoned for farms. And a lot of the time people don't even bother to plant crops, they're just holding the land for the day when eventually it can be rezoned into housing. So I looked it up before we went on and some of these plots are $350,000 an acre, which of course is not reflective of just how productive they are as farmland but of how productive they would be when they are eventually rezoned. Hamilton: Exactly. Yes, very similar to Oregon's program. And a lot of empirical studies have been done on Portland's growth boundary because researchers can easily look at the block that are selling on either side of the boundary to see whether or not it's affecting land prices and several studies have found a very clear effect of the boundary in driving up the price of the land. Petersen: And in Vancouver, the city is very reluctant to rezone. So, people are constantly applying and being denied but you know it's like winning the lottery having your bit of useless farmland rezoned to super high value housing. And people are just holding on to those dead lands in the hopes of winning that lottery which is kind of---it's a bizarre outcome. Hamilton: It is. And urban growth boundary supporters often frame it as environmental regulation that's going to protect this open space. While encouraging people to live in more dense and transit and walkable friendly neighborhoods, but it's not as if Portland is free of other types of zoning rules. So at the same time it has this urban growth boundary it also has a lot of traditional zoning rules that limit the potential to build up while the growth boundary is limiting the potential to grow out. So it's coming from both directions. Petersen: So, just how costly do economists think these regulations are? What kind of estimates do they have? Hamilton: So, I think some of the most compelling estimates look at the macroeconomic effect of these rules. Because typically the most binding zoning rules are also in the most productive cities, where there's the highest level of demand for people to live. Because these are where the best jobs are as well as the best urban amenities, a lot of people want to live here. One study looking at this macroeconomic effect found that the three most productive cities which are New York, San Francisco, and San Jose---I should clarify; this is just looking at the effective growth within US---if those three cities lowered the burden of their land use regulation to that of the median American city it could result in a 9% increase in the level of US GDP. So, these rules are having just an enormous effect on economic growth. Not to mention the very substantial effect they have for individuals and making it difficult or impossible for people to afford to live in their desired location. Petersen: So, you know, San Francisco that's where Silicon Valley is. And so we think of it as a place with super high productivity---tech workers working at Google---and yet with their housing market being one of the most restricted. So not only is there the loss from the housing market itself, that you could sell a lot of housing there and that would increase GDP by itself, but also there are people living in less productive areas doing less productive jobs, who could come and work for Google. But they can't because they've been priced out of the market. Is that where most of the effect comes from? Hamilton: That's right. Yeah, I think the effect is also certainly at that top-end of the market where we're seeing all kinds of blog posts and articles about a person making six figures at Facebook who can't afford the Bay area. So those people might choose to go live in say Denver, or Austin, or a city that still has plenty of great jobs but isn't as productive as San Francisco or San Jose. But then we also see this down the income spectrum, where people who are in the service industry, say waiting tables, could make much more in San Francisco then they can in Houston, or wherever they happen to live. But their quality of life is much better in some of less productive cities because of the cost of housing and other areas of consumption that higher real estate costs drive up. Petersen: One thing I've heard about a lot of these Californian coastal cities---I think it was Palo Alto---where not a single member of the Palo Alto Police Department lives in Palo Alto because you just can't live there on a policeman's salary, so they all have to commute in every day and then commute out every night. Hamilton: Yeah, and for some of these hugely important needed services it just makes the quality of life of the people in those industries so much worse than it would be if they could afford to live closer to their job. Petersen: Right. So, to summarize the labor market mobility of the United States in general has been greatly restricted by these land use restrictions. Even though the land use restrictions are local, this has an effect on the national economy. Hamilton: Exactly right. And we can see this in the data where income convergence across areas of the country has greatly slowed down since the 1970's when these rules really started taking off. Petersen: You argue that the costs of these restrictions fall primarily on low-income households so can you talk through how that happens? Hamilton: Sure. It happens in two ways. First off, you have the low income people who are living in very expensive cities and these people might have to endure very long commutes---you talked about the police officer in Palo Alto who can't live anywhere near his job. Not that police officers are low income, but just as an example that illustrates the point. Or they have to live in very substandard housing, perhaps a group house that's just crammed with people maybe even illegally, in order to afford to live anywhere near where they're working. Petersen: Yeah, I was going to say I thought those group houses were illegal from these very same land use regulations, but I guess people get around it. Hamilton: Yeah, a lot of US cities have rules about the number of unrelated people who can live in a house. And certainly those rules are sometimes broken. That, I think, is clear to anyone who's spent time in an expensive city. You know, people have to live in these less than ideal conditions and waste too much of their time commuting in order to make that work. But the unseen version of it is the person who lives in a low-income part of the country and would like to improve their job opportunity and quality of life by moving to somewhere more productive, but they simply can't make it work so they stay in that low-income area without meeting their working potential. Petersen: There was a study by David Autor---I think I cited it in a previous episode and got the author name wrong but it's definitely David Autor---and it was looking at the shock, the trade shock that hit United States when it opened up trade with China in the early 2000's. And it basically showed that a lot of parts of the country just never recovered. So, if you worked in particular industries---I think the furniture industry was one that was basically wiped out---and if you worked in a town next to a furniture factory and that was your job, not only did you lose your job, you lost all the value in your home because the one industry in the town is gone. And you can't afford to move to one of the booming industries like Silicon Valley or in another part of the country because they've so greatly restricted the elasticity of their housing supply. And that's not all, Autor's paper basically just shows that it took a very long time to recover from the shock and a lot of places didn't recover at all. But I really think that housing is part of that picture if you're trying to figure out why the US economy can't respond to shocks like it used to in the 20th century. That has to be a big part of the picture. Hamilton: Definitely. And that trend, as far as people being able to leave these depressed or economically stagnant areas, this also comes out in the income's convergence as we talked about earlier. Petersen: So, the other part of that, I saw in your paper, was not only are poor people hurt but rich people who already own homes have seen those home prices rise. So it's affecting inequality at both ends of the spectrum, correct? Hamilton: Right, Bill Fischel at Dartmouth has done a lot of work on why it is that people lobby so hard in favor of rules that restrict development. And he terms it as the Homevoter Hypothesis, where people who own homes have a huge amount of their wealth tied up in their home and so they are in favor of rules that protect that asset and prevent any shocks such as a huge amount of new development that could result in a decline in their homes value. I think you talked about that in your episode with Nolan Gray on trailer parks. Petersen: Yeah, we talked about William Fischel's Homevoter Hypothesis. So the essence of that is that people vote in local elections, and they lobby to restrict the supply of housing in their neighborhood, and that increases their wealth by, you know, increasing the land values in that area. How do you deal with that when there's such an entrenched special interest everywhere to push up land prices? Hamilton: I think that's the hugely difficult problem. And at the same time as we have the challenges with the Homevoter system that Fischel plays out, we have a lot of federal policies that encourage homeownership as not just a good community-building tool but also as an investment. So people are programmed by the federal government to see their house as an investment in spite of economic challenges that it presents. David [Schleicher]---a law professor at Yale---has done some really interesting work on ways that institutional changes could limit the activity of homeowners and lobbying against new development. One of his proposals is called a Zoning Budget. And under a zoning budget, municipalities would have to allow a certain amount of population growth each year. So, they could designate areas of a city that are going to only be home to single family homes, but within some parts of the city, they would have to allow building growth to accommodate a growing population. Petersen: How would that be enforced, though? Hamilton: It would have to be a state law, or perhaps a federal law, but I think much more likely a state law that would mandate that localities do that. Massachusetts recently passed a law that requires all jurisdictions within the state to allow at least some multifamily housing. So it's kind of a similar idea. The state government can set a floor on how much local government can restrict development. Petersen: So, what I'm hearing is that different levels of government have different incentives with respect to restrictions. So, at the lowest level if I'm just in a small district or municipal area and I can restrict what my neighbors build on their property, that really affects my home price and that's the main thing that I'm going to lobby for at that level of government. But if I had to go all the way to the state government to try to push up house prices in my neighborhood, it wouldn't go so well. The state government has incentives to allow more people to live within their boundaries. Is that the gist of it? Hamilton: Yeah, that's right. It's easy to imagine a mayor of a fancy suburban community who simply represents his constituents' views that the community already has enough people, you know, life there is good and so nothing needs to change. But, I don't think that you'd find a Governor that would say "Our state doesn't need any more people or economic growth." So the incentives are less in favor of homeowners, local homeowners, the further up you go from the local to state jurisdiction. Petersen: Right. I guess a big issue is that the people who would like to move somewhere but live somewhere else don't get to vote in that place's elections or in their ballot measures. And so there's this group that has an interest in lower housing costs because they might move to your city or your town, if they could afford it, but they're not represented politically in that city or town and so they can't vote for more housing and lower prices. But then when you go to the whole state level and people are mobile within a state, those people do have a say or they are represented and pricing them out of the places they'd like to live really is bad for politics, bad for getting their votes. Hamilton: Right. So the Palo Alto police officer can't vote to change Palo Alto's policies but he can vote to change California policy. Petersen: Right, because he still lives within California. So one of the other policy recommendations I saw in your paper is tax increment local transfers or TILTs. What are they and how can they impact land use restrictions? Hamilton: That's another idea that comes from David Schleicher and I think it's another really interesting concept. The idea behind TILT is that a new development increases the property tax base within a jurisdiction. So, if you have a neighborhood, say a block full of single family homes that is allowed to be sold to a developer in order to build a couple of large apartment buildings, each apartment is going to be less expensive than the previous single family homes, but overall the apartment buildings will contribute more to property tax. And the idea behind a TILT is that part of this tax increment---which is the difference between the new tax base and the previous smaller tax base---could be shared with neighbors to the new development to kind of buy off their support for the development. So, those people who are in some sense harmed by the new buildings, whether in terms of more traffic or a change in their neighborhood's character, also benefit from the new building financially. So they're more likely to support it. Petersen: So economists talk about Potential Pareto Improvements, where you have a situation where some people are made better off while other people are worse off, but you could have a transfer to make everyone better off. And what I'm hearing with TILTs is you actually do that transfer, you actually pay off the losers with some of the surplus you get from the winners. So everyone can be better off when you make this overall beneficial change. Hamilton: Exactly. And sometimes communities do use community benefit as a tool to try to get developers to share their windfall and build a new project with the neighborhood. So they might say, "you can build an apartment building here, but you also have to build a swimming pool that the whole neighborhood can use at this other location," and in a way that achieves the end goal of buying off community support for new development. But it also drives up the cost of the new housing that the developer can provide. So TILTs have the advantage of keeping the cost of building the same for the developer, but still sharing that financial windfall of the new development with a broader group of people. Petersen: Yeah, I really like these policy recommendations. It would be so easy to just say "land use restrictions are bad, let's not have those anymore." But these really have an eye to the political structures that we currently have and towards making progress within the structure we have. So I like that approach to policy or to policy recommendations. I think economists should maybe do that more often. Hamilton: Yeah, looking for a win-win outcome. Petersen: The one other one that I don't think we've talked about is home equity insurance, which sounds like a business plan more than a policy proposal. But how can home equity insurance help to reduce the costs of land use restrictions? Hamilton: That proposal also came from Bill Fischel a couple of decades ago following on his work of the Homevoters theory. He proposed the idea that the reason home owners are so opposed to new development is often because they have so much of their financial wealth tied up in this house that they're not just opposed to a loss in their investment, but even more so, opposed to risk. So they want the policies that they see will limit the variance in their home equity and he proposed home equity insurance as a financial goal that could lower this threat and provide homeowners with a minimum amount of equity that they would have regardless to the new development. I think it's a really interesting concept but it's unclear, would this be a private financial product? Obviously the market isn't currently providing it, or would it be some kind of government policy? And while I do think it's very interesting, I think that we should be somewhat leery of new government policies that promote homeownership as a financial wealth building tool. Petersen: Well, the funny thing is that usually with insurance, if you have fire insurance you want to minimize the moral hazard of that, you don't want people to say: "Well I've got fire insurance so I don't have to worry about fires anymore." But with this, you sort of want that, you have insurance on the value of your home and then actually your goal is to make people less worried about the value of their home so that they will be okay with policies that reduce it. It's almost the opposite of what you want with insurance most of the time. In this case you want to maximize moral hazard. Hamilton: Yeah that's a great point and I think that's why it could only be a government product. Petersen: Right. Because if the private sector was providing home price insurance to homeowners then the company that provided the insurance would now have an incentive to lobby against upzoning the neighborhood. Hamilton: Exactly. Yeah it would create a new a new group of NIMBYs. Petersen: Yeah, at first I thought 'Oh great!', well this is something that we can just do, without the government. You can just get a bunch of people together, who have an interest in making cities more livable and they can provide this financial asset. But that seems like there are problems with it that are hard to overcome within the private sector. So overall do you think the tide might be turning on the NIMBYs? Are people becoming more aware of this issue and of land use restrictions and their effects on housing prices? Hamilton: I do think awareness is growing. There's a group popping up called YIMBY which stands for "Yes In My Backyard" as opposed to the suburban NIMBY to say "Not In My Backyard" to any sort of new development. And these YIMBY groups are gaining some traction in cities like San Francisco and lobbying in favor of new development to counter the voices that oppose new development. I am somewhat pessimistic, I have to say, just because from a public choice standpoint the forces in favor of land use regulations that limit housing are so powerful. But in spite of my pessimism, I'm seeing since the time that I started working on this issue several years ago, much more coverage of the issue from all kinds of media outlets, as well as much more interest in on-the-ground politics from people who aren't in the typical homeowner category. Petersen: Yeah, and I am hopeful too. But I often see people blame other factors for high home prices. They blame the speculators. The speculators are always the ones that are pushing up home prices. And rarely, I think, do people blame restrictions, although the YIMBY movement is a happy exception to that. Hamilton: Yeah, I think way too often real estate developers are framed as the enemy in these debates because they're the ones who make money off building new housing. But it's really the regulations that are to blame both for the inordinate profits that developers can make in expensive cities, and for the high costs of housing. Petersen: Do you have any closing thoughts about land use restrictions? Hamilton: I think that it's just really important to try to spread the message about the costs that these regulations have. Not just for low-income people but for the whole country and world economic growth. That's obviously a cause that I would think everyone would be behind: creating opportunity for people to live in the most productive cities where they can contribute the most to society and to the economy. Petersen: My guest today has been Emily Hamilton. Emily, thanks for being part of Economics Detective Radio. Hamilton: Thanks a lot for having me.  

Cast Patrick Emily Joy Jonathan   Show notes Transcript [Introduction] Welcome to LD State of Mind, a podcast about learning together and making a difference for college Students! Join us as we discuss tips and useful information with our peers and experts in the area of learner variability. [Patrick] Welcome to the LD State of Mind.  My name is Patrick Young and thank you for joining us for the first episode. Today we will be talking about learning disabilities and more specifically disclosing your learning disability. [Patrick] Everybody has a story. Everybody has some way they’ve used disclosing a learning disability to do better in school, or just may be more comfortable with friends.  So Emily, can you please give us a quick story about how you disclosed your learning disability when you were in school, and how you thought it helped you. [Emily] So for me, I was diagnosed with dyslexia in the second grade.  I have dyslexia and a learning disability in reading, writing, and math. And so being diagnosed really young, in my household like being dyslexic and everything was nothing to be ashamed of. It was something we talked about all the time and so, that was really great to have it be such a comfortable topic of conversation at home. Because then when I went into school, it was something I was really comfortable talking about.  I told kids in my elementary school class I had dyslexia.  I got plenty of funny looks, and what the heck is that, but that was okay.  I was happy to tell them what it was and I did get picked on a little bit for it, but it definitely was something that I was like hey, it’s okay, it’s whatever.  So that led me through elementary and middle school to then get to high school and really being able to advocate for myself and telling teachers, “hey by the way I’m in your class, I have dyslexia here’s my IEP, here’s all my documentation, this is what I need okay great let’s go.”  You know, and so for me, because it was so comfortable talking about it at home, it made it really comfortable to talk about it at school.  It did mean that people picked on me a couple of times, but in the long run, it was really beneficial that I advocated for myself so I could get all the help that I needed. [Patrick] Thank you Emily.  Now Joy, I heard you were homeschooled for a large portion of your schooling.  Can you please tell us about your experience? [Joy] Hey Patrick, thank you.  So, I started off learning that I had a disability when I was in fifth grade.  Growing up homeschooled, I really didn’t know that anything was different. I started comparing myself to my siblings and figured out that I had a harder time with reading and writing, when I saw that my younger siblings were catching up to me.  It wasn’t until it was time for me to be enrolled in our local public school that my mom decided that I would get tested for dyslexia.  Following that, I found out that I had dyslexia dysgraphia and ADHD. Going through the public school system, and making the transition to five different, sorry eight different schools, in five different years, was very challenging. But I was able to figure it out and become more confident with my learning disability over time. [Patrick] Sweet! That’s great you went to a lot of different schools, public, private, and homeschool.  What do you think it was like starting at a homeschool? Being compared to siblings more? And not having people you didn’t know, know that fact that you had a learning disability? [Joy] I would say that when I was homeschooled, I was definitely most comfortable with my learning disability.  Entering public school and not being very confident, not knowing socially where I stood within my peers; I really tried to hide and cover up the fact that I had a difference than everyone else.  When I would seek accommodations, or need to go out of the room, or go take my ADHD medicine, I would always lie to my peers,

Emily’s new friend Fernando had never seen The Big Lebowski before. This aggression will not stand. So Emily and her twin brother Sam dragged the Nervous Mexican into the studio to drink white Russians, giggle, and talk about

This is just the situation that was brought to CanAssist by two clients - who required two completely different solutions. The first client, Emily, is a pianist working on her Masters Degree in music. Although she has full use of her upper body, Emily requires a wheelchair and cannot use her legs to push a piano's pedals. Her instructors at the University of Tennessee felt that at Emily's level of expertise, it was very important that she be able to use the pedal that sustains notes. So Emily's aunt contacted a friend who helped search for someone who could help. They discovered CanAssist and sent us Emily's specifications. The CanAssist team set to work, creating a two-part technology: a mechanical device that sits on the floor and attaches to a piano pedal, and a headband containing a wireless sensor that measures changes in its own position. The sensor wirelessly communicates its position to the device on the floor, activating it to push down or release the pedal. So, wearing the headband, when Emily tilts her head down, the pedal is pushed down and the notes she is playing are sustained. By tilting her head up, the pedal is released.